Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 4/18/24 Daniel Davis: It is Immoral to Keep the War in Ukraine Going

Episode Date: April 23, 2024

Daniel Davis was on Antiwar Radio to discuss the West’s effort to extend the war in Ukraine. He and Scott review some of the arguments he faced in a recent debate where he and John Mearsheimer faced off against some members of the foreign policy blob. They use some of the claims made in that debate to explain why extending the war is not just a mistake, but deeply immoral. Discussed on the show: Debate - Should U.S. Fund Ukraine War Again? 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 @DanielLDavis1. 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

For Pacifica Radio, April 18th, 2024, 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 at anti-war.com and the author of Enough Already. and the War on Terrorism. You can find my full interview archive, more than 6,000 of them now. Going back to 2003 at Scotthorton.org

and at YouTube.com slash Scott Horton's show. All right, you guys, introducing Daniel L. Davis. He was a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army, fought in Iraq War I, Iraq War II, in Afghanistan, where he was the great heroic whistleblower of 2012.

You can read all about it in my book, Fools Aaron, which is actually named after a conversation that he and I had on the show way back then and he hosts this great podcasts on the YouTube there. Daniel Davis Deep Dive. Welcome back to the show. How you

doing, Danny? Always good to be here, Scott. Thanks for having me. It was the damnedest thing. I watched this debate that you did with John Mearsheimer on your side against ladies from the Council on Foreign Relations and the Atlantic Council and the Marshall Fund over there on the other side

and it was really kind of funny and surreal in a way to boil it down you guys said look man when it comes to manpower and munitions there's just no contest it's over cut your losses quit while you're behind only this far not worse and their argument really did boil down to but you don't understand the morale

on the Ukraine side and their level. And also, the one lady said, they're jerry-rigging new technologies on the battlefield all the time, and we can expect that to turn the tide, Danny. What's your problem? Yeah, I couldn't get the words out of my mouth fast enough when she was saying that because it's true. As far as it goes, they definitely have. And I will just say the Ukraine people and men have fought just heroically and spectacularly. They, I have no shortage of courage, even in the face of overwhelming odds, they still keep fighting hard. They haven't broken yet, but, you know, I think that those numbers are limited.

But here's the thing. All those things are also going on on the other side of the line. The Russian side is learning. The Russian side is also using technological advancements, and they're creating new weapons of war, new strategy. I'm sorry, new tactics for war, employing new technology into a, existing warfare technology, you know, old, new and even ancient in some cases. And they have, as you pointed out, the Trump cards, they have more men, they have more material than Ukraine can ever muster. So no matter what Ukraine does, it will always be outdone on the other side.

And the longer time goes, the greater the disparity until one point, courage or not, fearless fighting or not, the Ukraine side will break. All right. So, one thing that she pointed out that sounded like a point at least for her side was yeah but that's what she said two years ago that man the ukrainians are doomed there's no way they can stand up to the russians and i think she's right in fact a lot of hawks also said that two years ago robert kagan and them said well once russia's done conquering ukraine then what do we do you know what i mean that was the idea at the beginning and now it's two years later and damn it just give them the attack they need, Danny, and they'll be okay out there, maybe. Yeah, in my view, that is one of the most immoral arguments and positions we can take. Because we are saying that because this wasn't like Desert Storm that were of the U.S. had 100-hour tank battles that ended that, or like Operation Iraqi Freedom in March 2003,

that took about a month, because that didn't happen, then you should just keep fighting forever because then you can turn the tide. Instead, Russia is fighting a different kind of war. That's not the one that they're seeking to accomplish. They're fighting a methodical and basically attrition level of war. So they are taking very few risks with their men, the way their tactics have, despite these absurd claims that Russia is losing like a thousand men per day. There's no evidence of that at all.

In fact, there is evidence that they're doing the opposite of putting their men at less risk by using firepower, whether artillery, drones, rock. of various tops, tank fire, long-range guns, all of these kinds of things so that they minimize the risk to their side. And Ukraine wants to do that, but they're at a disadvantage of about 20% to 10% of the firepower capacity, so they don't have the ability to inflict the same kinds of casualties on the Russian side. So by continuing to go on with this and say, well, since they haven't lost in two years, they should keep fighting, you have sacrificed a generation of Ukrainian men. I believe the number is in the multiple hundreds of thousands of killed,

probably at least that many have been permanently wounded and will need care for the rest of their lives. And I don't know where that's coming from because they don't have the capacity to do it. And even hundreds of thousands of others, you know, are minorly wounded or so. And that doesn't even count the PTSD. Now then you're mobilizing, you know, lower amount, no aged people because you're just running out of anybody to just even plug the gaps on the

line and you're sacrificing the future generations that Ukraine is going to need to rebuild and there is no path to victory there's no path to even avoiding defeat on the current trend lines and that's why I think it's immoral to keep doing down that path you know when they talk about the body counts I remember learning a long time ago about how you know in Vietnam this was a big error that we killed so many more of them than our guys died and that proves that we're winning and there's like the end of the tunnel in this kind of thing and i know that this was a problem back then too but it's a whole other problem when they're just lying about the body counts right it sounds like i always just try to point out that even if they were telling the truth

which they aren't and that the russians were suffering that russia has five times millions more men of military age from which to draw than the Ukraine side. So even if they were telling the truth, their logic is still, it's faulty. It's a lie to say that they can continue on indefinitely. And I heard the other day, Scott, that I wish I'd remember which official it was that said this, said that, look, we need to give them another six months so that they can get their feet, the Ukraine side, back underneath them. So then, especially heading into 2025, they can go on this offensive, which Zelensky claims, only there's no physical capacity to do that. And I don't know that they can last another six months without breaking as a force.

Yeah. Well, it's really funny that it's the center-left liberal Hillary Clinton women who are leading the charge on this. And the accused will be not just the Republicans, but the Republican right will be the subjects of the stab in the back theory. How we could have just won if you let the generals do their job and let them have the weapons they needed and all that. And so, you know, it's your throwing in the towel that's actually ending the fight early here, Danny. Yeah. And General Ben Hodges is one of the advocates of that. He has been, you may recall that he likes to forget it, but I always remind people that he said early last year in 2023 that Ukraine would be in Crimea, by August of 2023.

Even when the offensive started and it was clearly failed and by June and July, when it was clear it was not going to get anything, he still said that. But he added this caveat as long as they get the A. Tackham's long range missiles. That's the big difference. If you only had given on that in the F-16s early, we would already be in Crimea. And of course, that's insane and absurd on any kind of level. They had the storm shadow missiles. So they had long-range missiles just from, I think, the U.K.

They're allegedly some even from Germany, but they had some long-range missiles, and they're useful, but they're not decisive, as he claims. And you don't need any more evidence of that than to look at the Russian side, because the Russian side has had thousands upon thousands of long-range missiles that they have been just hammering Ukraine from one end of the country to the other all the way through the depths to the western border, and you see that it still has not brought them to their knees. So the idea that if Ukraine had that the Russian behemoth would be brought to its knees is counterfactual and clearly disproved by the physical evidence on the ground. But that doesn't stop them from going, making that stab in the back deal. And the current iteration is going on on Capitol Hill right now where if only those darn Republicans would pass that bill in the House, then everything would change on the battlefield. That's the only thing causing them to lose right now is that $60 billion package. So now I had argued, Scott, that that's a stupid thing to do. Why waste $60 billion?

Because I can paint a picture on the ground militarily where what that would buy is not going to do anything tactically. It won't change anything. They'll lose with or without this money. But the fiction is that that it doesn't come. That's going to be the cause of the law. So the administration's already saying that it's the Congress's fault already that they're falling behind. So if Johnson doesn't come up with his money, then they're going to seize on that when the collapse happens that I'm telling you about. And they'll say, ha ha, if only this, it was his fault because we had the path.

Just like you just said, just like you just said, is what they're going to say. So that's why I believe that Johnson will eventually come up with the money just so that they don't get blamed when this stuff falls apart. Because I argued that they shouldn't give the money because it's pointless to keep the fiction going along that they can survive with just a little. bit more money, but, you know, Johnson's looking at it politically, and I bet that he'll end up doing that just to avoid that. But what that's going to mean, Scott, is that more Ukrainian men are going to die because they're going to keep the fiction alive that they can keep fighting, and they're going to probably lose more territory, more cities are going to get rubbled. That's the cost for the political considerations in Washington. Yeah. Well, they don't really care that much

about the war in Ukraine. They're interested in the war between America and Russia and playing with the war in Ukraine as part of that. And you could hear that in the ladies' talking points in the debate. That, look, this is a relatively small part of the GDP. And for what we're spending, we get to keep most of the money anyway. It goes for jobs for you working class slubs out there who for some reason can't find a job doing any of the other thing right now. And besides no Americans are dying.

Oh, that's cool. Yeah, just, I mean, whatever the Ukraine's died, I mean, they're going to fight anyway, right? So if a bunch more of them died, that's cool because of Russia gets weakened. So they cling. Yeah, it's immoral again. And she says, well, it's their choice. But, of course, she's just referring to the government that was elected without the voters of the East in a post-cudita environment, as you pointed out in the debate. The regime change of 2014 is a precursor to all of this.

And, of course, with mass conscription and the outlawing of fighting age males leaving the country and video footage, constantly of press gangs kidnapping people off the streets enslaving them and forcing them to go be cannon fodder in this thing. Now you've got to resort to like some kind of Woodrow Wilson. The will of the national spirit

has volunteered en masse. And that means you go to jail if you don't sign up. Yeah. And there's people right now there's lots of reports where a lot of them tried so the issue in Ukraine. You can either flee run away and leave the country, you can pay a bribe if you have that kind of cash to keep from going in

or you get conscripted. Or the fourth way is you refuse to go because you don't have any of those other three options and you'll go to jail for three years. And more and more people are being willing that don't have money are being willing to just say, I would rather rot in a jail for three years and then come out on the fourth year than to go here and an almost certain death in the front line. And who's to argue that with that logic? Yeah. And now, so let me ask, about the tech difference and advantage i was talking a little bit about this with bill bupert a little while ago about the um well he was talking about how all of our vaunted tanks the leopards and the abrams and the whatever i guess they sent a few abrams right that they can't make any difference they all just get

blown right up in 72 hours if you send them out there and that the world has turned and this kind of armor is obsolete now it's drone warfare tech this that so maybe the more Marshall Fun Lady is right that they just need to jerry rig the right kind of drone or the right kind of drone jamming signal or some kind of new, sophisticated do wacky that can take care of the problem and, you know, tip the balance where it's not just manpower, it really is circuitry here that can make the difference. Is that possibly right? No, it's not. And I'll tell you, even back to the previous premise, armor is not obsolete, but the nature of war has changed. The armor is still incredibly necessary.

You still have to have it. But now then you have overlaid two, really three additional things that I never faced when I was in Desert Storm or that we had, and even the 2003 Iraq War on the mobile, on the maneuver part of it, is that you have the drones, you have the counter drones or electronic warfare situation, and you have the missile issue. So, you know, it's always been the artillery and it's still capable there. But if the side that can figure out how to limit the other side's drones while still using their own is going to win. But even with those, you still have to have infantry and armor to take and hold ground. You can't unseat Russia, for example, if you don't have armor to go into the trenches. You have to have drones to knock some of the stuff out. But then you still have to go in with manpower on the ground to physically unseat Russia or vice versa in the Russian direction here.

And Russia has more manpower, but they also have more technology. So, I mean, they're using, you know, T-62s, even T-55s have been reported on their T-72 stuff from the 60s and 70s. And that's adequate if you have the air cover and the air protection and the drone, the counter-drone stuff, the electronic warfare stuff. And that's where Russia has the big advantage. And I mentioned this during the debate that there was, by some reports, 80% of Ukraine's drones are getting knocked out of the sky before they even get to the battlefield. or to the front lines because of electronic warfare and other counter drone measures that Russia has. Ukraine is also trying to do that, and they also knock down a lot of the Russian stuff, but it's not as much, and Russia has more of every category.

That's the issue. They got more armor. They got more infantry. They have more drones. They definitely have more air defense and more air power. Everything that determines the winner on the battlefield is in Russia's advantage and growing by the month. Yeah. Hey, you guys.

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That's r-rbi.co. You'll be glad you did. Now, I make fun because the lady did really say that morale is, the difference maker here the Ukrainians really believe okay um and in fact well i want to ask you about uh what she said about insurgency in a second because i think that was a probably a pretty salient point there but one thing that she did say that was substantive rather than just you know kind of eye rolling like the morale thing was when you said look they just don't have enough men she said one of them

I forgot which one the Marshall Fund lady or the other Marshall Fund lady Atlantic Council on Foreign Relations lady said that yeah well the French are talking about putting ground troops

in there so how about that right right yeah it was the Marshall Fun lady yeah yeah to which I shot back then that's World War III potentially

that's the deal because she was saying yeah they'll just fill in with French and I'm like are you serious if you send in NATO troops into Ukraine one of two things

that can happen. Now, that's what I said at the time. That's World War III. Somebody I respect has altered my view a little bit. They said it's not necessarily World War III, because that implies that the NATO troops then would turn the tide and that Russia would start losing. But their view is that the French troops or Polish troops or anybody else that would come in there would suffer the same fate as the Ukrainians because of the methods that Russia is using right now. You pointed out that it's our Leopards, our Abrams tanks, our Bradley's, our strikers, our Patriot air defense systems, the Taurus missiles, everything. All of our Western kit is being blown up.

So all they would do is come in with more Western kit. And very critically, nobody in NATO has any combat experience in maneuver warfare, none of them. So they're all going to start with that early phase that both the Ukraine and the Russian side experience to their, you know, to their disappointment in the early phases of the war. The learning curve would start from scratch for the NATO side. So they said Russia could probably handle it. And there would be large numbers of Western troops coming back in body bags, just like there are Ukrainian troops going back in body bags every day.

Yeah. So maybe she's right that if the military is essentially smashed and the Russians are in a position to dictate terms of surrender to the Ukrainian state, that that won't matter because they still got. forests to fight from. And so maybe that'll be the Russian's new problem is fighting more of an unwinnable population-centric type of a war. Yeah, I think that that's likely, almost certain, in fact, and Putin is aware of that. So that's why he doesn't want, I don't think even all the way up to the Denepper. I know McGregor talks about that a lot. I would doubt that that's even in the

desire for Putin because the further west you get from the Donbos, the fewer, the shorter or the less percentage of the population is Russian speaking than Russian friendly, et cetera. I think he just wants to seal off all the Russian friendly parts that they've already annexed, maybe a little bit more, because there are still some other areas that are primarily Russian speakers, and then just, I mean, probably even put up a new fence. I wouldn't be surprised if they did that at all because he doesn't want the other stuff, because he will have that insurgency stuff. So that means, really, I mean, there will be areas on whatever the Ukraine side is where they'll continue to, you know, launch kind of what Russians will call terrorists to stacks. You know, they'll call freedom fighter stuff.

But I just don't see any outcome of it. I don't know what it's supposed to accomplish. I mean, just look at the counterins or the insurgency phase that was in the Soviet era after the Warsaw Pact came to life in the end of the World War II in like Hungary, for example. It was, I like another decade of insurgency kind of stuff when they went into the Soviet Union. And then it finally petered out because, you know, everybody can see it's not going to change any borders. It's not going to change any political realities. And what's the point? A lot of people were killed as a part of it.

And then it just died a natural death. And that was in many other places. I know Czechoslovakia had some Yugoslavia had a lot of that for a long time. And then it'll eventually die out. But it won't accomplish anything. So if the West thinks it's going to accomplish anything, it's going to get a lot. of people killed almost certainly won't change any political reality well and of course and this has been clear from the beginning too was from the russian point of view they removed the predominantly

russian population of the country they're essentially conceding to the western nationalists the ethnic Ukrainians and ukrainian speakers that like fine you can have the country then but they're leaving you know they used to win elections the pro-russian side but never again now So now they're going to have an enemy state. I don't know whether they'll really bring them into NATO or not. I fear they might, but they're still going to have a worse enemy state on their border from now on and have made their problem worse in that way. Yeah, it'll be a mess.

I mean, there's no question about it. There's no good solution to this for anybody that I think some relative stability will be returned once reality pokes its head into our face. But it's not going to be blood-free. It's not going to be trouble-free. it's going to be a mess that everybody's going to be dealing with for a long time. Yeah. Well, that's why I hate it.

I mean, the thing is to, and this didn't come up specifically in the debate, but it's what you guys were talking about, essentially, was when you were saying, look, we want to freeze the lines where they are now, not after they get worse, but I think the two major targets there are the city of Harkiv, which they failed to take originally. I think they surrounded it. The Russians did, but did not really take. And then, of course, Odessa, which is. is historically a Russian city, and I know there's a lot of Russian speakers there.

I don't know the percentage, but that doesn't necessarily mean they want to be part of the Russian Federation. But, you know, there's a lot of pride at stake there, national pride and all of that retake in that city, especially if they're right there in Curzon, you know. It's a hop-skipping one little town away, I think, there. And yet that also brings us back to the question of insurgency there, because there's all kinds of tunnels and catacombs and whatever under that city, which would make a great place to wage an insurgency from, as the Israelis are finding out right now, fighting in Gaza. So anyway, but that's the question, right? It's whether, because I guess once, if the Ukrainian military is essentially broken, if they've lost however

many brigades that it takes to support the other brigades out there or whatever it is, and they cannot keep it up, then the Russians get to just walk right into Harkiv and Odessa, presumably. Well, that's the risk is that if you keep going and Russia maintains this methodical, relentless pressure of never giving you a break anywhere and keeping pressure on this whole 600 mile front line is that at some point one of the sector's breaks. And Russia, by many accounts, does have a strategic theater reserve of over 150,000 spread in different locations, but which can exploit any kind of a business.

penetration they have. And once a line is penetrated, there's nothing in the back to hold anything back. And then you can actually have a big arrow movement, which up to this point they haven't. Russia appears positioned to say, we'll keep going on this, another year, another two years, however long it takes, because you can't recover. And I'm okay with being patient and just going at this methodically, as opposed to having a desert storm type big arrow movement like we did with the seventh core where we had that big left hook into Iraq, et cetera. They're content not to do it that way. So they're not requiring themselves to operate the way we would.

We call that a failure. They said, I'm just not doing it in 100 hours. I'm maybe doing it in two years. I'm not worried about the time because he thinks that time is on its side. And of course, I think he's right. And in terms of like R.Kee, we'll look at it. Because that's, in my view, probably the likely first target over Odessa because of the lines of communication and resupply and logistics and all that are much shorter,

much easier for the Russian side there. I doubt that they're going to try and literally block by block take the city. It would be a massive, enormous casualty producer. As you see, with Bakhmu, with Abdivko, with Chassev Yard in the current situation, those are small towns, and you see how long it took them to take. A city the size of Kharkiv would be enormously more expensive than that. But I think what they will do instead, and I see the position, the layout already setting up for this, is that they're trying to isolate the thing, to destroy all of its ability to have energy so that they can't make any war material or support and sustain life in there for large numbers of military or civilian people, something they're going to have to leave. Then I think that at some point they would move to try and surround the city, which they didn't do before.

they put pressure on it. They never actually tried to take the city. They just put pressure on it. This time I think that they would try to, like they have done with Bakhmut, with Adivka, and currently in Chesa Vyard, seems to be their new tactic,

where they will try to go across and cut the thing off, go pick a couple of flanks, and then drive deeper in there and eventually turn it into a cauldron and cut it off. And then basically it's a siege warfair. They don't have to take it city or block by block.

They can just cut it off to where they'll just wait there until the defenders end up running out of ammunition and then there's nothing there's no support left i think that's probably more likely than trying to you know take stoligrad type move well and like you're saying if they're playing that long of a game it does make sense for them to do that same thing to odessa too assuming they have the advantage to do so because it's not just odessa which is that if they take if they take kharky then then you can be sure that odessa is going to be the next to the crosshairs because then It's a strategic issue of completely cutting off the access to the sea for the Ukraine side.

And now Russia owns it all, and they've got all the economic and military cards. And it makes sense from their point of view to go ahead and connect, as they say the land bridge, to go ahead and build a road and connect under their territory all the way to the Transnistin, that strip a breakaway territory on Ukraine's western border with Moldova, which is one of these frozen conflicts. I mean that's the way to unfreeze it is to go ahead and draw the border that far but I mean that's assuming a lot for the sake

of argument but that's what's at risk here and so listen I'm sorry we're so short on time but let me just add real quick that it's in the news that the Russian military has been completely rebuilt back to the way it was the strategic defeat thing has not worked and as the ladies said there

when they spend money on the military in Russia it's a waste when they do it here it's a wonderful subsidy for the American working class, we ought to be so appreciative of it. But that's not the point. The question is, what about, is it really right the way you and Mearsheimer were arguing there? Can you explain as quickly as possible that this really didn't have to happen this way? I mean, they were basically saying that you guys are naive, that Russia is just going to get away with this. And you guys are saying, no, we could have negotiated peace back in the last. then, and it didn't have to be this way at all?

100%. Russia was never desirous to invade. That's why they didn't invade in the Donbos in 2014. They provided help and aided the rebels and the guys, the separatists, they call them, but they didn't move

in with military gear because they didn't want to. It wasn't until, and hardly anybody in the West knows this, in March 2021, so almost a year before the war, Zelenskyy signed an order that said that they are going to retake all of the lost territories to include Crimea. The next month, when asked about it, he said to include by force if necessary.

So he threatened war against the separatists and the Russian forces in Crimea. So that's when, after that point, that's when Putin started the military buildup. In December of 2021, they again tried to have a negotiated settlement that would just declare neutrality. That was the key part of it. Neutrality for Ukraine. They would still have ostensible control of all the Donbuss even. They would be some autonomy. But it was actually a pretty good deal, which we refused.

Then, of course, the war starts the next month in Istanbul. Zelensky realized it, oh, crap, I didn't think he would actually invade. I'm pretty sure that's the case. So now he's willing to discuss neutrality. He said this openly. They go into the negotiations. And then by all accounts, Boris Johnson led the way that says, don't do that, keep fighting. So they tore up all that, and they never went back.

So it could have stopped before the war. It could have shut down within a month after the war started. And instead, now we're where we are where they could face physical defeat. That's the truth. All right, you guys, that is Daniel L. Davis. He was a lieutenant colonel in the Army, fought in all the wars, blew the whistle on the surge in Afghanistan in 2012. He hosts Daniel Davis Deep Dive on YouTube. And he also wrote this great book, 11th Hour in 2020 America.

Thanks so much for your time again, Dan. Appreciate it. Always my pleasure, Scott. Thanks for having me. All right, y'all, and that's it for Antieter War Radio for today. I'm your host, Scott Horton. I'm here every Thursday from 2.30 to 3 on KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A. See you next week. Thank you.