Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 3/31/22 Colonel Douglas Macgregor: The US is Deliberately Ignoring the Path to Peace in Ukraine

Episode Date: April 1, 2022

On Antiwar Radio this week, Scott interviews Colonel Douglas Macgregor. Macgregor has recently been appearing on talk shows across the political spectrum, drawing on his deep experience as an officer ...and war planner to argue that Washington must prioritize peace in Eastern Europe. His arguments have drawn criticism from establishment lawmakers and their media allies who instead want to focus on hurting Russia. Macgregor lays out why this is a mistake and what Washington can do instead to bring about a quick end to this war. He also gives his account of where the war stands today. He argues that, despite what western media says, Ukraine has suffered a near-total defeat.   Discussed on the show: “Is There A Path To Peace In Ukraine?” (The American Conservative) “Inside the Pentagon’s Fight Over Russia” (Politico) Douglas Macgregor, Col. (ret.) is a senior fellow with The American Conservative, the former advisor to the Secretary of Defense in the Trump administration, a decorated combat veteran, and the author of five books. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: The War State and Why The Vietnam War?, by Mike Swanson; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; EasyShip; Free Range Feeder; Thc Hemp Spot; Green Mill Supercritical; Bug-A-Salt and Listen and Think Audio. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjYu5tZiG. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 All right, you guys. Hey, sorry to bother you, but it's fundraising time again at the Libertarian Institute. And that's me and the legendary Sheldon Richmond, the great Kyle Anselaone, our news editor, and I've just promoted Keith Knight up to managing editor of the site. He is a great, dedicated anarcho-capitalist libertarian and podcast host and writer. And we'll be expecting great things from him. I also went ahead and hired our old friend, long-time friend, Will Porter, and relatively new voice, but a very talented and intelligent one, Connor Freeman, as staff at the Libertarian Institute as well. So they will now be joining those I just already mentioned, but also, of course, our podcasters, Tommy Salman's, and Patrick McFarlane as well. So check out all our great stuff. and we've got a bunch of great writers.
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Starting point is 00:01:42 I'm Scott Horton. This is anti-war radio. All right, y'all. welcome the show. It is anti-war radio. I'm your host, Scott Horton. I'm the editorial director of anti-war.com and author of the book, Enough Already. Time to end the war on terrorism. You'll find my full interview archive at Scott Horton.org and at YouTube.com slash Scott Horton's show. And you follow me on Twitter at Scott Horton's show. All right, you guys, introducing Douglas McGregor, former full bird colonel in the U.S. Army, and he's a regular writer for the American
Starting point is 00:02:30 Conservative magazine. His latest is called Is There a Path to Peace in Ukraine? Welcome to show. How you doing, Doug? Great. Thanks, Scott. Very great to have you on the show here. I have so many questions for you. I want to start with this article by the late great Mark Perry. He had written this article for Politico magazine, back in November 2015, called Inside the Pentagon's Fight Over Russia. And it's essentially, the narrative here is pitting you versus McMaster. And I guess I'm going to say this in the intro, as many people know, but everyone should know.
Starting point is 00:03:10 You were the commander during the great tank battle of Iraq War I when McMaster worked for you. And the way Perry tells the story here, you guys are kind of rivals and this kind of thing. He ended up becoming a general and all of that. but how in this story, you guys had somewhat different takes on how America would fight a conventional war against Russia, I think in this case, in the Baltics, but more generally, in Eastern Europe. And so without getting too far into the details
Starting point is 00:03:45 of just the difference of opinion about how to do that, I thought it was important to show that that's your role in this world, this is how you spent your life, is designing war plans for how the USA might best defeat even its most dangerous enemies on their territory.
Starting point is 00:04:10 And I know a lot of people have been upset with you about some things you said on Fox News lately make it sound like somehow you have sympathy for the devil here. And I just thought it was important that we're talking here to a man who designed, a plan, if not the plan, for how to fight Russia, if it ever really came down to it. And that seems
Starting point is 00:04:31 important to me. Can you talk a little bit about that? Well, first of all, Scott, you're right, from a purely professional standpoint, I've always been focused on how best to execute potential missions in the future. That's not to say that I was an advocate for going to war with Russia. I'm not. But I listened to people talk about what they thought might happen if we did go to war. And I became very concerned because I didn't think then and I don't think now that we're really organized, trained, equipped in any way to march into Russia and fight the Russians, just a silly notion. And at best, we might be able to defend for a short period of time, but even then, we're at great risk. So I took umbrage with the army and it's thinking about
Starting point is 00:05:18 how it would fight because, frankly, the army's thinking hasn't changed very much since World War II. and that's no way to go to war in the 21st century. So that's really the background on that particular article. If it's all right with you, I'd like to go back to the one that I wrote about the path to peace in Ukraine, simply because it received almost no attention whatsoever inside Washington or anywhere else. It was subjected to a media blackout. It's as though everyone in Washington desperately wants a conflict with Russia. which again, makes no sense.
Starting point is 00:05:56 Well, so yeah, now, and really the reason I brought this up is just to essentially establish your credentials. You're not just some Army colonel. You're the guy who works on the plans for how to do this if we ever absolutely had to. And then you come up with a plan for peace, and that was on my list. I was going to save it toward the end here. But let's talk a little bit about, well, first of all, go ahead and describe your peace plan here and what's at stake. but then go ahead about the blackout and elaborate if you want. Do you really think that the consensus in D.C. is to drag this war out?
Starting point is 00:06:32 Yes, I do. It's misguided. It's dangerous and it's self-defeating. But no, I think most of the Washington ruling class that lives in the bubble that we call the Beltway is very committed to prolonging this tragedy in Eastern Europe. They're not interested in any resolution that does not include significant damage to Russia. And ultimately, as President Biden inadvertently blurted out, the removal of Putin from office, it's ridiculous. The reason I wrote the past apiece is that there is one, if we're willing to step back
Starting point is 00:07:12 and use what power we have, not to harm anyone, but to create the conditions conducive to a settlement. And this is what great powers did for centuries to try and avoid destructive wars. And thus far, we haven't done it. And we can do it. And what I was hoping is that President Biden would break with the pest and step forward and say, look, this is a disastrous war. And we know it's disastrous. It's already affecting the global economy, the global food supply, the global energy supply.
Starting point is 00:07:45 Our European allies are gradually beginning to realize that they're being led down the past to destruction. Into a war, they don't want to fight against a country that is not really their enemy. They may not like the Russians. They may have different views of Russia, but Russia is not the Soviet Union. Russia is not armed of the teeth and ready to march west on a moment's notice. There is no theater offensive capability in Russia today, which existed up until the late 1980s. So I was trying to get people to say, first of all, let's stop the fighting. Let's get a ceasefire in place. then we can negotiate these issues. And the start point should be neutrality for Ukraine. There's no particular reason why Ukraine needs to be part of NATO. And I tried to alert people that when Eisenhower was
Starting point is 00:08:32 president, he was very, very responsive to Austria's interest in neutrality. And he eventually said we should try to neutralize more states. So when Austria successfully negotiated the Austrian state treaty with Moscow in 1955, President Eisenhower saw that as a potential. model for other states because he understood that we don't have the resources, standing military resources or economic resources, to effectively defend 30-plus countries in Europe. We couldn't easily defend most of Europe back in 1955 against a Russia, a Soviet Russia at that point, which was armed to the nth's degree and had millions of troops at its disposal. Today, Russia is is not what it was. It's not this overwhelming military capability by any stretch the imagination,
Starting point is 00:09:23 but on its own turf, operating from its own borders, it's a very formidable adversary. And Russia is not anxious to escalate to the nuclear level. But if Russia thinks we are escalating, yes, the Russians will turn to their own nuclear deterrent for security. We just need first and foremost to accept neutrality, no membership in NATO, and then let's look realistically at the territorial issues on the ground, because we haven't done that. We, as usual, dismiss whatever the other side says as wrong or immoral or evil or something else. And then we depict the side that we happen to be supporting as saintly and perfect. None of that's accurate. Well, you had me at H-bombs there. So, and this goes back to our original topic.
Starting point is 00:10:13 here, how to fight a conventional war against Russia. There's really no such thing as that, right? I mean, I guess my understanding has been... Well, remember that the piece that you referred to was not about invading Russia. It was about defending Lithuania, Poland, Latvia, from a potential Russian incursion. No, I don't. I don't think so. Because, first of all, we got to understand something. Putin has said this on numerous occasions. In fact, four years ago, he was accosted by some journalist while he was at a conference, I think He was in St. Petersburg and all the Baltic states were represented. And somebody said, well, you've threatened to use a nuclear weapon against the Baltic states.
Starting point is 00:10:51 You said, no, I haven't. He said, what do you think we are? Crazy. We would use a nuclear weapon in the Baltic states immediately adjacent to our own borders. That makes no sense at all. What most people don't understand is if you use a nuclear weapon in Ukraine or a nuclear weapon in Poland or a nuclear weapon in Lithuania, and you understand the fallout patterns. Virtually all of that radiation,
Starting point is 00:11:16 all of that fallout blows east across Russia, into Mongolia, Korea, Northern China, and Japan. So the notion that anybody would use a nuclear weapon there is just ludicrous nonsense, least of all the Russians. I guess what I was worried about would be that if we had a conventional war, like say, for example, Putin got angry and decided he was going to go protect, the ethnic Russians of Lithuania. And America said, okay, Article 5, NATO is in effect. We're going to go put a land army on McGregor's plan into Lithuania to keep the Russians out, that that would just lead a general nuclear war between the United States and Russia. Forget Lithuania. They'd just be caught in the middle, but we'd be at full naval and air and nuclear war with Russia. It would just devolve into the end of the world because that's how all American wars with Russia would eventually go, no?
Starting point is 00:12:10 No, no, not at all. I think, again, I see no evidence that Mr. Putin wants to attack the Baltic states or anything in the West. I see a lot of evidence that he wants to do business with us. But having said that, if for some reason there was an incursion there, no, I think it could be contained at the conventional level, the problem that I had. And I was trying to make this point. And it's one of the reasons that Mark Perry picked it up was that I said, we can't win it right now because we're not organized, effect. effectively. Our allies are not organized effectively. We're not effectively equipped. We don't have the command and control. And so you face the ugly prospect of being defeated and withdrawing. In other words, retreating. And suddenly you discover that the Atlantic Ocean is filled with Russian submarines. There is no escape and there is no reinforcement. In other words, you can't afford to lose the battle in Eastern Europe. There will be no Dunkirk. the war will not continue. You'll end up with a giant POW camp containing all of your troops,
Starting point is 00:13:16 which is the last thing that we want. And that was my warning to people about the U.S. Army, that the U.S. Army was so inachronistic and so antiquated in its thinking and behavior, along with most of the European forces, that if we got into a knockdown, drag out conventional war, we faced that potential disaster. Now, at that point, some people would say, would we use a nuclear weapon? I don't think so. I don't think so. I don't think that. think people in Washington are completely insane. I know that President Trump under no circumstances would have used a nuclear weapon. I can't conceive of any except in the event that we were attacked with a nuclear weapon. Then yes. But otherwise, he would never initiate something like that.
Starting point is 00:13:56 And this is my concern with Biden right now, who is just in Warsaw, and you heard his speech. And then after he makes his speech about regime change, he also makes it clear that he has no intention of adopting no first use. In fact, he's now changing the nuclear policy to say that we'll use nuclear weapons in response to conventional attack, chemical attack, biological attack, any number of different circumstances, which I think is, you know, very ill-advised because that sends a message to the Russians, well, if we think they're going to use a nuclear weapon, we might as well use our entire arsenal. So I would say that now, Scott, your previous assertion that a collision with Russia would lead almost inevitably to a nuclear exchange is
Starting point is 00:14:42 now accurate. Yes. And I think it's accurate because of Biden and the stupid remarks he's made, not because it was inevitable in any case. That's where we need to step back. We need to move forward to a no-first use. Make it abundantly clear. No use of nuclear weapons, period, unless one side uses it against us and our homeland. Otherwise, forget it. People don't, don't understand there are nuances and differences in these things. And when you make the kinds of statements that Biden has made on the use of nuclear weapons, on regime change and so forth, sends a very dangerous signal to your potential opponent in this case, Moscow. Sorry, hang on just one second. Hey, guys, anybody who signs up to listen to this show by way of
Starting point is 00:15:27 Patreon will be invited to join the Reddit group. And I'm going to start posting stuff over there more. That's patreon.com slash Scott Horton's show. Thanks. Hey, y'all, Libertasbella.com is where you get Scott Horton's show and Libertarian Institute, shirts, sweatshirts, mugs, and stickers and things, including the great top lobstas designs as well. See, that way it says on your shirt, why you're so smart.
Starting point is 00:15:51 Libertas Bella, from the same great folks who bring you ammo.com for all your ammunition needs, too. That's libretasbela.com. You guys check it out. So cool. The great Mike Swanson's new book is finally out. He's been working on this thing for years. And I admit, I haven't read it yet. I'm going to get to it as soon as I can, but I know you guys are going to want to beat me to it. It's called Why the Vietnam War. Nuclear bombs and nation building in Southeast Asia, 1945 through 61. And as he explains on the back here, all of our popular culture and our retellings and our history and our movies are all about the
Starting point is 00:16:31 height of the American war there in say 1964 through 1974 but how do we get there why is this all harry truman's fault find out in why the vietnam war by the great mike swanson available now it's anti-war radio talking with retired army colonel douglas mcgregor now you were sure right that this invasion was going to happen and is that because you had assessed how evil Putin was or what was it that made you so sure? No, look, I remember that when McFaul became ambassador under Obama and he presented his credentials, Putin's first words to McFaul were, you don't listen. And indeed, his predecessor, Ambassador Burns, who is now the head of the CIA, had penned a memorandum. And the memorandum was entitled, No Means No. And it was addressed the whole issue of NATO membership
Starting point is 00:17:29 for Ukraine. Of course, this became very important and topical in the aftermath of Georgia. I'm sure many of your listeners will remember that the Russians ultimately intervened in Georgia. And the whole purpose of that intervention was to signal to us that they would not tolerate a NATO member on their borders, particularly a member that was hostile to them, as at the time the Georgian government was. So I think what we're dealing with now is exactly the outcome that Ambassador Burns feared when he said no means no. This is an ongoing problem. This started really under Yeltsin. And it was very embarrassing for the Russians when we decided in 1999 to bring in Poland. The Russians looked at this and they said, you know, you said you weren't going to do
Starting point is 00:18:13 this, that you would not fill the vacuum, so to say, with your forces. That once we left, you would not do what you have done and bring in these East European states. We ignored it. We said, oh, well, you have nothing to worry about. It's NATO. But the Russians were very worried, not so much because NATO was hostile at the time, but because they knew that Poland was. Poland has a long history of hostility towards Russia. We brought Poland into the alliance. Poland is, if anything, at this point in time, a potential catalyst for war with Russia. They are very aggressive, even though the Polish population, according to the most recent polls, indicates that 60% of polls are opposed to a war with Russia, nevertheless,
Starting point is 00:18:53 the government is very aggressive and has talked about sending Polish troops into Ukraine as peacekeepers, which of course would precipitate an immediate war with Russia. The Russians would never tolerate that. So we're in a very bad position now because of all these things. And I don't know how we get out of it very easily. But I think if we declare a ceasefire and we adopt neutrality for Ukraine and then we sit down and listen to the arguments for territorial arrangements that make sense for both sides. I think there's a chance we could come out of this looking pretty good. Unfortunately, we seem to be obstructing. I know that General Keene is telling everyone that the Biden administration is urging Zelensky to sign a ceasefire and to come to terms with the Russians.
Starting point is 00:19:38 I hope that's the case. But I haven't seen much evidence for it. Yeah. Well, I sure hope that that's right, too. I mean, the alternative is what, to arm an insurgency and replicate Afghanistan as Admiral Stravredis says? Well, that will never happen. And the reason I say never, very simply, is that the Europeans themselves won't permit it. Proxy wars are very dangerous, as you know. You go into a place not with your own forces, but to arm somebody else to harm ostensibly an opponent that you don't like.
Starting point is 00:20:13 Those wars are difficult to control, and those wars can frequently result in the destruction of the people that you allegedly are trying to help. So no, I don't think it will happen because the Germans will step up, as will other European states and say, no, wait a minute. You're going to turn Poland into the supply point for weapons and violence against Russia, because they know that at some point that will turn Poland into a target for Russia. Russia will eventually reach the conclusion that the only way to stop an insurgency in Ukraine is to march into and destroy Poland. I think the Polish population, electorate, understand, that. But I don't know about the government at this point. So I don't think that in the final analysis, these notions of proxy war against Russia using other people as we've used the Ukrainians is going to work in Europe. I think the Europeans will say, thank you very much. We've had enough of the United States. Yeah. All right. Now, if it's okay, I'd like to spend a little bit of time talking about the battlefield as it exists now. I guess Maripole is now firmly in the hands of the
Starting point is 00:21:18 Russians. Is that permanent? Do you think? What do you think we think we need to need to know about what's happening on the ground in the war? Well, I would say in general terms, Ukraine has been defeated. Ukrainian forces have no mobility. Their only hope for survival has been to move into some urban areas and established defenses. They know if they move into urban areas where there is a civilian populace and they mix with a civilian populace, this makes it much harder for the Russians to advance. So that's very clear. That's what they've done. The Russians were never from the very beginning, interested in occupying or conquering territory. They were simply interested in destroying the Ukrainian forces that they saw as a threat, and demilitarizing
Starting point is 00:22:01 eastern Ukraine, if you will. You'll notice that their ground forces have made very few crossings over the Nepper River. They don't really want to go into the western part of Ukraine if they can avoid it. So I think that the Russians have accomplished in broad terms most of their objectives, but the Russians have never had that many forces. Ukrainians had 600,000 people at the beginning of this under arms. Russians came in with less than 200,000. So if you're going to operate that way, as Putin has decided to do, you have to economize in one area so that you can concentrate combat power in another.
Starting point is 00:22:37 And right at the moment, we see that outside of Kiev, and we see it also down south outside of Odessa, assuming that he still wants to go to Odessa. I'm not sure that that's the case or ever has been. But if you look at the rest of the region where there are concentrations of Ukrainian forces left, those are now targets for complete destruction. And that's where he's concentrating most of his combat power on the ground. That's in the Donbass and the southern portion of the Donbass region down towards Crimea.
Starting point is 00:23:08 That's where I think you're going to see some significant damage done to what remains of Ukrainian forces there. The longer we wait, of course, Scott, as you know, the worse this gets. the more people die, the more people are driven from their homes and move west. We think that right now 10 million people have been displaced. Almost half that number have fled to the west. This, of course, is a catastrophe. It's exactly why it was always in our interest early on to stop this. And then you have the problem internal to Ukraine of planting.
Starting point is 00:23:44 We're in the spring. The vast areas of agricultural production, have been largely untouched. The Russians don't want to go in there. They want to be able to plant. They want the Ukrainians to be able to plant. And we need to get that done because the food production is vital for the world. We don't seem to understand that in Washington, but the Europeans get it. And I think it's going to become increasingly a problem. We've already taken a terrible hit in the United States because we can't get our hands on fertilizer, most of which comes out of Bula Russia, Russia, and to a lesser extent, Ukraine. So in other words, there's nothing good
Starting point is 00:24:19 happening now. What's happening now is we're sort of bouncing rubble in the east with the Russians against the Ukrainians. Ukrainians are putting up stiff resistance where they can, but that resistance is ultimately futile. They can't win, and they've already effectively lost strategically. That's the problem. And that's what people need to keep in mind. Now, in terms of America and Russia escalating this conflict into one between the two of us, not just as a proxy war, I wonder, you know, how worried you are about that for, you know, one thing I read a piece, I'm pretty sure is the New York Times where they talked about, well, you know, we couldn't give them fighter jets because a fighter jet could be used to attack Moscow, like frankly, right? That could be an offensive weapon. So that would be going too far. But giving them stinger. missiles to take out Russian aircraft, well, we're just sure we can get away with that. And in fact, giving intelligence to the Ukrainians, which they obviously have been doing for the past weeks here in the war, that there's even articles in NBC and I'm pretty sure the New York Times saying
Starting point is 00:25:28 that the administration has discussed how these are, legally speaking, acts of war that make us co-belligerents in the war. But then the article is just, you know, how cheeky and smart they are to know that they can get away with it and what's Putin going to do about it, which is, I'm pretty sure what they were saying last October, but, you know, I don't know. Well, Scott, you've just cut through the nonsense with laser-like precision. At this point, people in Washington have turned out to be just about 100% wrong about everything that would happen. You talked about my comments that I made in December and then again in January at the national interest predicting that, yes, the Russians will intervene in eastern Ukraine and talked about this being a limited operation, provided we did not
Starting point is 00:26:16 expand it. Well, lots of people in Washington took issue with that. I've got lots of feedback at the time saying, oh, no, you're wrong. Putin would never do that. He's no fool. That will hurt Russia. Kept trying to explain to people that for the Russians, what happens in Ukraine is an existential matter. Ukraine is not some distant country in North Africa. Ukraine sits right next to Russia. Russia will not tolerate foreign forces and capabilities on the ground inside a country that is hostile to them that could conceivably threaten their existence. I've drawn the analogy with Mexico trying to say to people, don't you understand what we would do if the Russians or the Chinese or someone else established a force in Mexico. And people forget that the French did that.
Starting point is 00:27:04 between 1860 and 1865. And when the Civil War ended, we marched an army of 50,000 to the border with Mexico and made it clear to the French that they didn't get out of Mexico, we would invade and destroy them. We didn't mince words about it and with good reason. It was on our borders. The Russians take the same position.
Starting point is 00:27:27 So the real issue is this. The Russians are not leaving Ukraine until they get what they, want. It's not going to happen. They can stay there forever, if necessary. That's the view. Putin's support now is about 83% approval rating, maybe higher. If anything, we've destroyed what goodwill we had inside the Russian population, and we've hardened their position indefinitely. On top of that, you know, he's got China, India, the peninsular Arabs now who control much of the oil and gas in the Middle East and North Africa, along with numbers of important countries like Brazil in Latin America, other states in Africa and Southeast Asia. The Japanese have
Starting point is 00:28:14 said, well, we'll do a little of what you wanted. We'll go ahead and honor some sanctions, but we will continue to buy oil and gas from Russia. And oh, by the way, our joint exploration and Sokolene Island north of Japan, where you have some of the greatest deposits of natural gas and oil in the world. Well, we Japanese are going to continue to work with the Russians. Thank you very much. Yeah. So if you look at NATO and you look at Schultz, who's absolutely in over his head at this point, he's worried about hundreds of thousands of Germans in the streets protesting because the gas and the oil have been cut off and the energy is gone. You have a similar concern today in Italy. Italy is an enormous economy. And the population there has no interest
Starting point is 00:29:00 whatsoever in this war in Ukraine against Russia, the governments in Europe are afraid. They're afraid that they will not survive this. They won't say it publicly, but privately they've made that very clear. So when you ask, is Russia winning or Ukraine is winning, well, Ukraine is definitely losing and has lost terribly as a result of this. Russia, yes, Russia is going to win this encounter, but it's an encounter they would rather have avoided, and it's an encounter that We should have avoided, but we were unwilling to listen to them, unwilling to consider the legitimate interests and concerns of other states. We have been bullying everyone for decades. This is now going to come to an end. You can't bully Russia. It's not Iraq. Yeah. Now, very little time left here,
Starting point is 00:29:48 but just real quick, I know you're familiar with the counter-narrative, which is that this philosopher, Alexander Dugan, says that Putin has to make Russia great again by reincorporating all Russian-speaking peoples in the world and recreating the Tsarist Empire, if not the Soviet Union, and nothing short of total victory will do. And that's his mind comp and that any security concerns raised by the Russians as excuses for their actions are merely after the fact rationalizations for this insane policy that of course means that we must strengthen NATO in order to contain this newly aggressive Hitlerian madman Vladimir Putin. Yeah. Well, Putin is in charge, not this man, Dugin. And Dugan is exactly what you said. He's kind of a philosopher slash political scientist and no doubt that he's saying things when he's given the opportunity. But I don't see any evidence that Putin is committed to some crusade the way we are. We have been committing ourselves for the last 30 years to this open-ended war on everyone that doesn't want to adopt our
Starting point is 00:30:59 nations of liberal democracy, everyone who will not submit to the dominance of our financial system, everyone who refuses to recognize that our enemies are their enemies. So I think this is kind of a mirror imaging exercise. I think what Putin wants is economic development, prosperity, and stability. He was afraid of what we were doing in Ukraine. He acted in Crimea because he wasn't prepared to stand by and watch NATO navies dock in Crimea and set up forces and capabilities there that could threaten Russia. We have continually refused to acknowledge those things. It's disastrous. We've got to stop it. This is why I had hoped that Biden might be a moderating influence. In retrospect, it's turned out that he's exacerbated all the tensions
Starting point is 00:31:51 and made matters much, much worse. I just hope that we can somehow another stay out of it, at least not become involved because this will resolve itself, as you point out, Scott. The handwriting is on the wall. The question is not if Zelensky
Starting point is 00:32:07 or whoever represents the Ukrainian people commit to a new relationship with Russia in the form of a treaty. It's a question of when. The sooner it happens, the better for the Ukrainians. All right, you guys. That is retired U.S. Army colonel Douglas McGregor. You can find him in the American Conservative magazine.
Starting point is 00:32:27 His latest there is called Is There a Path to Peace in Ukraine? Thank you, sir, very much. Thank you, Scott. All right, Joe, and that has been anti-war radio for this morning. I'm Scott Horton. Find my full interview archive at Scott Horton.org and at YouTube.com slash Scott Horton's show. And I'm here every Sunday morning from 839 on KPFK. 90.7 FM in L.A.
Starting point is 00:32:53 See you next week.

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