Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 1/31/25 Daniel Davis on the State of the Ukraine War, Blinken’s Failures and Trump’s Nuclear Doctrine

Episode Date: February 3, 2025

Scott brings Daniel Davis back on the show to discuss where things stand in Ukraine. Despite quieter news coverage here in the US, Ukraine is still taking serious losses. Davis details what’s happening and reflects with Scott about how unnecessary all of this death and destruction has been. They finish with a quick look at Trump’s budding nuclear doctrine. Discussed on the show: Watch Daniel Davis’ Show on YouTube Daniel Davis did multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan during his time in the army. He is a Senior Fellow at Defense Priorities and is the author of the reports “Dereliction of Duty II: Senior Military Leaders’ Loss of Integrity Wounds Afghan War Effort” and “Go Big or Go Deep: An Analysis of Strategy Options on Afghanistan.” Find him on Twitter @DanielLDavis1and subscribe to his YouTube Channel. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Roberts and Robers Brokerage Incorporated; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; Libertas Bella; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

to analyzing to analyzing America's horrific foreign policy. Welcome back to the show. How are you doing, Danny? You know, I'm doing all right, Scott. Thanks for having me back. Very happy to have you here. There's so much going on in the news. I guess most of all, I want to ask you about Ukraine. And I know that you do a very good job of keeping track of the battle maps

and the latest developments. The last I checked, which is a few weeks ago, I'm a very busy guy. The Russians controlled virtually all of Lujansk and, I don't know, two-thirds of Donetsk. And then, what, three-quarters of Zeprosia and something like that, two-thirds or three-quarters of Kursan. And I have no idea what percentage of Harkiv Oblasts. And I know that they were, the main part of the front, in Donetsk and that there's been a lot of recent developments there. So I wonder if you can kind of help catch us up.

Help me picture the shape of the map there. Yeah, you bet. There has been continued advancements to the West by the Russian Armed Forces, and they have been taking now not just villages and settlements, but larger, medium-sized towns moving on towards some of the larger ones. They have taken just in the last couple of days, really three fairly sizable towns. Toretsk, Chesaviyar, and Villica Nova Selka. The last one is maybe possibly a canary in the coal mine type deal because they took that one in

very, very fast fashion, like within a couple of weeks, which is probably the fastest from the time they started attacking something that they've taken any town since the opening rounds in 2020, early 2022. So that could indicate that there's real problems. Oh, by the way, I'm sorry. Was I mostly right there the way I summed up the first? percentages. Yeah, who knows the actual percentages? I mean, you can look on a map and see that. Yeah, I mean, I'm just eyeball on it. I'm not counting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that is,

that is correct. Yeah, you're pretty close to correct. But the point being that those numbers are growing by the day. And the bigger issue, because Russia has primarily been, had a different objective than what most Westerners would have and what virtually any Westerner things. We always say what is the territory okay accomplishment how much how much ground have they taken how many cities have they taken and that's the measure but that's not what the objective is the russians that's a byproduct the primary thing they're focused on is the destruction of the ukrainian armed forces because in their the way their doctrine reads if they destroy the ability of the of their enemy to uh put up organized resistance in the field then they'll get all of the territory that they

want. And I think that is the growing danger much more than how much of, you know, Zaporizia Kirston and Lujans that they have, et cetera. And you see that there are real, real problems on that front for the Ukraine side. In just the last 10 days or so, we've seen the commander of the Ukraine are ground forces. General Sersky has admitted publicly that they are not able to even force mobilize enough people to offset losses. So that means that they have, and this is a shocking number, they're forced mobilizing about 30,000 people per month, and that's already not enough to offset losses. So that means killed and wounded is they're suffering more than 30,000 per month.

So now that it's a net loss every month, because they're getting, they're shrinking more and more, then you have whole brigades that are falling apart before they even get to the front line. The Ukraine side has done really, I think what modern warfare shows is the worst way to do it. They're forming complete new organizations from scratch as organizations are really, you know, shuttle down and ground into nothing that's on the front line. Instead of, you know, pulling that organization, whatever's left of it back and then refilling the ranks, they just bring in a whole new brigade, which just militarily, I don't think is the right way to go. But even those are starting to fail because they come to the front line, and two of them, in particular, the 155th brigade

and 157th brigade, one trained in Paris, and then the other one trained in Ukraine, both of which almost disintegrated before they got to the front line because of people abandoning the unit. And that's a growing problem. The number is now well swelling over 100,000 desertions on the Ukraine side because more and more men are recognizing it's a near death sentence to be sent to the front and there's no hope, zero hope of ever turning the tide on that. So you see you're getting closer and closer to a point to where at some point the Ukraine army could literally just crumble and disintegrate and then just collapses as a force. And then Russia, who does have a lot of operational reserves, could then literally possibly just drive into the interior

of the Ukraine side. So that's the bigger risk right now than just how many cities are being taken. yeah although like you're saying everybody gets that wrong so in a way it is the measure right it's like the body counts in vietnam well are they going up or are they going down and how many guys are we losing compared to theirs it's not everything but if that's the measure they're going by then doesn't look too good as you're saying they're taking city after city but then as you're also saying that's for a reason it's because they can because that's how powerful they are compared You know, clearly Russia chose an attritional model of conflict, so they lose a lot, and it's not a fake number. They are losing a great many of the Russians are.

Their troops, and I've actually interviewed on my show, a couple of guys who have fought for the Russian side or one in particular, and they admit that the casualties are significant and real, but they're less than the Ukraine side. But that's not the bigger issue. The bigger issue is they have millions more that they're recruiting. They're still not even doing force mobilizations. So if it ever got to a point to where, you know, they didn't have enough troops, they could simply start mobilizing like the Ukraine side did early in the war. But they don't have to so far. Well, they're still, though, grounding them down. Okay.

But so in Washington, I mean, I know you pay a lot of attention to what all the so-called experts say instead of what you're saying. And I mean, are they just in denial of the relative weakness here or even? then the danger of the Ukrainian military finally falling apart? Or is that basically the plan? Like, well, yeah, we're just going to keep the thing going as long as we can until the Ukrainian military falls apart. And then at that point, I guess we'll make a deal then. My opinion is, and I certainly can't crawl inside the mind of some of these people,

but I genuinely think that they are just ill-informed. They don't understand how national combat power. is generated. They don't understand how wars work because they just haven't had much experience with it. There's too many so-called experts who have grown up really since the end of the Cold War. And we're talking like, you know, Desert Storm, Operation Iraqi Freedom, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, et cetera, to where we can literally do whatever we wanted. And it didn't even matter what was actually going on the ground. We can just say whatever we want. And then at the end of the day, yeah, we got out of Afghanistan in a really ugly way. But,

but whatever, you know, we didn't actually physically lose militarily on the ground or so. And so now that they just can't come to the understanding that, no, really, this war between Russian Ukraine is not like any of those conflicts at all. I mean, radical differences, militarily speaking, that are demonstrable and easily identifiable, but somehow mentally they can't get out of their brains. So what they see is the Russians not succeeding on the ground very fast because they think in Western terms, well, if you're trying to compromise, territory, you're doing it really slow. So that must mean you don't have the capacity. But

the Russians are fighting differently, and so their objectives are different. And so I think that the Western analyst can't see the difference between what Russia is doing or what the West would do. And so they inaccurately believe that, yeah, the Ukraine side can just go on like this really indefinitely. And Russia will at some point get tired of it. And the casualty account will at some point get so high that they'll be forced to stop and negotiate or something. So they're like, yeah, just let this wind on. But what they don't realize is that Russia, this is not like a U.S. and Vietnam situation where we can get tired of it and just quit. It's an existential fight for them, and they will continue on until they finally ground down. Either the Ukraine army breaks or they

literally grind it into dust. But one way or the other, they are not going to stop fighting until they have what they want on the ground. On the other hand, counterpoint, it's been three years of this. And I know you didn't think it was going to last for three years. And talk about existential threat. There are certainly a lot of people in Ukraine who consider that 2013 border to be the real border in every single bit of this to be 100% aggression on the other side and that they have to fight to defend their country against them. So as the lady said in the think tank debate that you did six months ago or so, they have the will to fight. They have the morale. And all they need to do is just could jigger a new kind of drone or something.

that'll solve it. Yes, actually, and there are people who think that way. Very highly ranked people. I actually on my show yesterday used a clip from a former Ukrainian president of Peter Porichenko, who was interviewed by French television two days ago, and he actually laid out, and I'm not making this up, a five-point path for a Ukraine military victory, where he would drive, rush it back to the 2014 borders. And even the guy who's interviewing had this incredulous look on his face and ask him to repeat,

did you say when? And he did. And, you know, with straight up face, yes, we will win because that's what he wants to do. And certainly you can understand their desire. But, man, there is such a disconnect between what's happened so far. And again, you have to get to the balance of power between the two. Yes, it has taken three years. And that seems, you know, we wouldn't have expected it to take that long.

But we can't get away from the fact that the Russian mentality and the Russian history, and I'm talking centuries of military history, once they get on this role here, it could take another three years. Even if it took another three years, they're just not going to stop. And there is no practical reason to think that there's anything the West could do that would ever stop it. It's irrational to think so, but it probably won't take, I don't think it'll even take another six months. But, you know, nobody better get, you know, secure in saying, well, it took Russia three years to get to this point. So it could take another three years, you know, to get up to the Denepper River, for example, because the conditions are different.

So that's the problem is that you're only, if they're looking at it like this linear thing that they don't understand the inputs to, and they think that it's safe to just keep going on forever. But here's the thing, Scott, I got to point out, people who say what you just said, your counterpoint. somehow they don't look at the vast differences between Russia and Ukraine, and they say that eventually Russia will get tired and stop fighting, et cetera. Why do you think Russia is going to get tired and worn out before the Ukraine side will get tired and worn out when it has radically fewer natural resources and human manpower? I just don't understand the logic for those thoughts. Well, they have the Western printing press on their side and American high-tech weaponry. A lot of times, you know, it's believed that this tank or this missile system will be the real game changer.

Well, okay, fair enough. Fair enough for that concept. We put that to the test in 2023 and it utterly failed. So it's already been tried, past tense. So you can't bank on that now because even if, and especially because of 2023's failure and the massive number of Ukraine casualties by the people who were trained. and I'm talking dead and now permanently wounded that could never fight again. Even if you gave all of the American military equipment, let's say that you said, you know what, all right, I'm finished with this, we're just going to give them the entire equipment sets for the first armored division, first infantry division, first cavalry division. So you're talking thousands upon thousands of the highest quality military gear you can get and just gave it lock, stock, and barrel to the Ukraine.

They don't have the manpower or the trained manpower to use it. So it won't matter how much technology you get because ultimately a war is about men, not machines, not money. I don't care how much you can print. It's not going to make any difference because it's all about the manpower in Ukraine has lost it and they will never get it back in this war. Yeah. Now, so from the New York Times, January the 18th, when chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark A. Millie suggested in late 2022 that Ukraine should capitalize. on battlefield gains by seeking peace talks with Moscow. Mr. Blinken insisted the fight should go on.

What do you make of that? Yeah, I have actually covered that extensively on my channel as well, and I think that Anthony Blinken will be condemned by history, especially when all the emotion of all of its supporters and whatnot is faded, and people start doing analytical analysis of what happens with this, especially in light of how this is almost certainly going to end up, And they'll say, wait a minute. You're saying, first of all, that the Western side had a chance to end this war after

barely two months, less than two months. They could have ended it there and saved hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian people in most of their territory, and they didn't. And then in 2022 in November, they had another chance to end it on negotiating terms that would unquestionably be the best they would ever get from a position of strength while Russia was at a relative weakness at that point. And then Anthony Blinken shut it down. If the reports are true, and I have no reason to think they aren't, then he has got the blood of hundreds of thousands of more Ukrainians on his hands, and because of his actions and it also has to be accepted by his boss, Joe Biden, had to authorize that and approve it.

If they did that, then they will be responsible for possibly the entire loss of half of the country of Ukraine and the emasculation of what's never's left. and the literal physical destruction of generations of men in Ukraine that can never be recovered. Do you know, Danny, there's reporting about what the Secretary of Defense said in that fight at that time? In fact, let me just fill people in real quick. If you don't remember, everybody, it was the weekend of September 11th, 2022. The Ukrainian side did a brilliant faint in the north and then moved in the south and took back half. of Kurson and at the same time in their faint it was actually successful too and they were able to take back virtually all of Harkeef province at that point and so this was the relative position of

strength that Danny's referring to there where Millie in this case was saying and we know this was public at the time we've talked about it since he said it publicly at the time you should quit now while you're only this far behind, this is as strong a position as you're ever going to be in, come to the table. And it was clear we knew from between the lines that it was the diplomats who had overruled them because here he's speaking for the military. But then I wonder, I don't know if anybody ever reported what the Secretary of Defense said to Joe Biden during this time. Yeah, I've not seen anything about it. And, you know, I think that they, by all accounts, should have called Anthony Blinken, the secretary, not of secretary of state, but the secretary

of war, not even the secretary of defense. Because just imagine what the reality is. Here you have the so-called chief diplomat of the United States of America overriding the senior military advisor, the four-star general, and saying, no, I don't care what you say about the balance of power and your assessment that the Ukraine side can't win, and now's the better chance they're going to get for a diplomatic solution. He overrode that and said, nope, keep on fighting. And now then we have the results of that, I mean, the very next year, you know,

they had the 2003 Ukraine offensive that absolutely broke its teeth on the first line of five Russian defenses, never even penetrated fully, which was easily identifiable. I knew it. I wrote about it. I published it ahead of time. Warning, don't try this. It won't work because of the fundamentals that were involved in the Secretary of so-called state overrode that and then what we knew what happened did happen and so that's why i say that i think

history is not going to be kind to to blinking and i i don't personally know how you live with yourself knowing that hundreds of thousands of people are dead because you wouldn't seek what was supposed to be your primary job title of chief diplomat yeah he don't care at all all right last question i know you got to go but um i need the daniel l davis nuclear weapons doctrine here. The news is that Trump says he's going to build a massive missile defense system for the East Coast, at least. And the Russians are already saying, well, we'll just build more missiles then. Well, that is the, I mean, that's the dilemma that you face. And that's at every level,

tactical, operational, and strategic. Because without question this, both this war and the war between Israel and basically Iran with their long-range missile strikes back and forth has shown that air defense is absolutely preeminent if you want at a national level like an army level or even at the battalion level down on that if you don't have the ability to intercept enemy air assets whether that's drones or rockets missiles etc you're not going to win a fight and you can't just say all right well it's hard so we're not going to do anything because then you leave yourself permanently vulnerable uh so you've got to work on defense and russia can say whatever it wants, and Russia is working on its own, you know, attempted new, no more modern

air defense system. So they're doing it too. Everybody's going to be doing it. I think that the technical challenges are just mountainous. I don't know that we'll ever be able to get past them because the offensive capacity, especially of hypersonic missiles, is just too great to overcome by, be overcome by defenses. You can get pretty good, but Russia's right, and that means we're ride on our side too. If you have enough missiles, you can saturate any system, even if it's pretty good. I mean, nothing's full proof. As Israel's Iron Dome has proven, it's definitely a lot more vulnerable than what they publicly claim. And we know that for a fact. And it'd be the same for us, too. But I mean, we do have to try. We have to be able to defend ourselves from, you know,

an offensive missile attack. Okay. Counterpoint, though. Richard Nixon signed the ABM Treaty that George W. Bush, the worst person in American history, tore up because he's stupid. He was under the influence of John Bolton, the second worst person in American history when he did it. And he killed the Start 2 treaty while he was at it. It essentially died in that same act. And that would have prevented all Merv missiles, all multiple reentry vehicles on Russian and American ICBMs. And so that was probably the worst decision anyone ever. ever made. But anyway, Nixon's calculation when he made that treaty that George W. Bush

destroyed was, hey, man, there's no point in having an arms race in defensive missiles. If we know that both sides already have tens of thousands of ICBMs and that we're just going to make more and that it's just more arms race, more brinksmanship that at some point you just put a break on it and say everybody has enough defensive systems and everybody has enough offensive systems, there's no point in doing this. Otherwise, it's like, you know, Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd or no, that's not it. Maybe Marvin the Martian and somebody with, you know, the gigantic guns or they're going to blow up the whole damn earth in the name of keeping the other guy off.

So maybe we just go back to that where we have two defensive, like decorative defensive systems and a disincentive for building more and better weapons, maybe get back in the INF treaty preserve new start even expand it stuff like that well i i am i am a strong proponent of getting back into arms limitation treaties because they they did give a better chance uh to defend our our security by having agreements with the you know our potential opponents that have the capacity though that is 100 percent the best way and i I am 100% with no reservations was against getting out of all of these treaties, whether it was ABM or START or anything else, anything else we've gotten out of.

You know, Trump got out of the, I think the intermediate range missile treaty, whatever, that was also not good. And we have the Oreshnik that Russia designed as a result of that. So I think that we should go fully toward that end. And obviously, diplomacy is the best deterrent that you can ever get from giving somebody a reason not to want to attack you as opposed to going offensive. So I don't think it's one or the other. But simultaneously, I mean, just as a military man, I just can't say, well, I don't think

we should even attempt to have a system that can protect us if we have the capacity to do so because the other side's going to do it too. And then you just got the problem. It's just you see when men are involved, like the Bush that you mentioned there, when it suited him, he got out of the agreement no matter how hard it was. was to get into it. And bottom line is that as long as men are involved, you're going to have some trouble. And I don't see any prospect we're going to get out of that.

Yeah, welcome to Earth. But, you know, I mean, this is what Putin had told W. Bush then. It was like, look, man, you do this. And I mean, he said this publicly, too. Who knows what they said in private about it? He was, listen, if you do this, I got two choices. I can also build a new defensive missile system that's highly expensive and unreliable, judging by you guys uh you know journey to get this done here but uh or i can just make more missiles

of the offensive kind so i'm just going to do that because it's cheaper and it's proven technology and we just we can afford it so we're just going to make more h bombs and more ICBMs because of course we are so why even do this but you know so anyway i you know i don't want to sound all utopian and jane fonda e here we're like oh anybody can negotiate anything and everything will always be fine or something but then again when you have these massive errors on the american side like we're talking about tearing these treaties up for no good reason then it's pretty easy to see the better world we could be living in if they only hadn't done that you know yeah we know we gain nothing from getting out of a single one of those not any gain it was all net loss and i pray to god that we

don't find out how much of a net loss it was you know at the wrong end of a missile someday yeah Although, and here's the bright point, and I'll leave you with this, is that Donald Trump also said that, you know, we don't talk about the real potential effects of nuclear war. He says, because it's too depressing. So we just ignore it. But what he wants to do is a grand new nuclear weapons treaty with Russia and he wants to include China. And then even when he said it, he talked about how he recognizes that American Russia have far more nukes than China does. so the point is to call a break to them and maybe get us down to their level

this is man now talk about utopian Jane Fonda and all that like man I'm for it I know this is an important answer I thought it was odd but I'm for it yeah man you know so what happened is I like telling this story because people don't know it very much but he's mentioned it a few times I should really read

about this I've just heard him mention it but I know it's true that he had an uncle that taught at MIT and his uncle that taught at MIT taught him all about H-bombs so in a way you know most people don't know much about it they seen a picture of one on the TV or something but his uncle was like listen donald this is what it means when you fuse hydrogen isotopes together man and boost your atom bomb that way and and he realized how dangerous it was so um it seemed to have

made a real impression on him and i like it when he talks like that so yeah yeah i'm with you there all right well anyway listen uh thank you so much for coming on the show um i could interview all afternoon but uh we'll have to wait but uh thank you again appreciate always a pleasure all right you guys that is the great danny davis his um oh he he wrote a great book i should have mentioned at the beginning it's uh the 11th hour in uh something uh 20 2020 america the 11th hour in 2020 america it's really great uh mostly about our foreign policy crises and um he uh of course is a veteran of rock war one of rock war two and afghanistan's the great whistleblower from Afghanistan

of 2012. Read all about that in Fool's Arrind and elsewhere. And he hosts Daniel Davis Deep Dive on your favorite YouTube and YouTube knockoff channel. And on your favorite pod catcher on your phone.

The Scott Horton show, Antire War Radio, can be heard on KPFK 90.7 FM in L.A. APSRadio dot com. Antivore.com Scott Horton.orgton. and Libertarian Institute.org