Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 5/16/24 Frank Ledwidge on What It’s Like in Ukraine Right Now

Episode Date: May 21, 2024

Scott interviews Frank Ledwidge about his recent travels around Ukraine. Ledwidge discusses the difference in mood between cities and rural communities, corruption, equipment difficulties and more. Discussed on the show: Nuclear War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen Willy OAM on YouTube  “A strategy is needed now before it’s too late for Ukraine” (CNN) Frank Ledwidge is a former military officer who served in the Balkans, Iraq and Afghanistan. He is the author of Losing Small Wars and Investment in Blood. 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

All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of anti-war.com, author of the book, Fool's Aaron, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and The Brand New, Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism. And I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2004. almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scothorton dot for you can sign up the podcast feed there and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash scott horton's show all right you guys introducing frank ledwitch he was a lieutenant commander in british naval intelligence and he served in afghanistan and we've talked with him on the show before about his time in the helman province And if you read my books, I think I'm pretty sure he's in both of them in the Afghanistan part of enough already and in Fulzarin and he wrote his own books, investment in blood, the true cost of Britain's Afghan war and losing small wars, British military failure in Iraq and Afghanistan. Welcome back to the show. Frank, how are you? Scott, it as always is an absolute privilege to be with you. I've been listening to your show for the last decade or so and it's great to be on. Oh, wow, that's really great to hear. Thank you very much.

I really appreciate the privilege of having you here. And so do I have this right that you are just back from Ukraine? Yep, that's right. I got back just a couple of weeks ago. I was there just for a week this time. And over the last two years, I've been probably spent about three months there on and off, looking at what's going on and seeing how things are essentially, as you know, very well, going downhill now. just as a tourist or you're advising somebody over there or what are you doing last time I was at a conference organized by the army I was talking about space because I teach space for in my day work in my which is as an academic at Portsmouth university but obviously you know when you're there you you pick up very easily I have quite a few friends and even you don't even need friends you pick up very easily the atmosphere

and it was quite different, it's fair to say, than it has been before. Not only that, you know, you pick up bits and pieces of information, which, let's say, lead you to believe that things are not as they would like it to be, to put it mildly. And you also begin to get a feel, really, as you know yourself. I know you've been involved in Ukraine, your wife's Ukraine and what have you, so you know this much better than I do. but the way that people live and that the society is not, of course, a Swiss-like democracy where everything works and what gets said gets done. And a lot of the media that were fed concerning people's views is also not quite on message when you talk to people, specifically concerning

recruitment and especially scot casualties. That's what you pick up there. It's a sense that everybody knows somebody who's been killed or seriously injured. And it's very apparent, you know, on the trains and in the streets, especially when you move out at the centre of Kiev where most journalists hang out. You know, the level of damage that's been done to people as well as things, obviously, it's not much damage in the centre of Kiev. But also, you don't get any sense in the centre of Kiev where, as I say, most visitors hang out, that you're at a country at war, you know.

Very few uniforms. see the patrols of the army, going around, presence of patrols, like it would in a sort of peacekeeping mission or that. But otherwise, everyone's getting on with life, including, I might say, very many young men, many hundreds or thousands of which are swaning around very happily in their SUVs or from bar to bar. So there's not that sense that you would expect of an embattled nation. That's, of course, different in other places and the close you get to the front. But Kiev, absolutely not at all. Let me just clarify the one thing there with the comparison to the Swiss.

And you're saying, it sounds like you're saying when a bureaucrat tells his underling to do a thing, it doesn't, the system doesn't work. In other words, the government there is so corrupt that it's just completely broken and doesn't really do what is supposed to do at all. You get a sense that the more you go, the more dysfunctional central government is. And I mean, just for example, within defense, there's a very clear conflict between the Ministry of Defense, which is quite fractious, and the military, which is quite fractious, and the various organizations within the military, not least, of course, famous military intelligence, the GOR. and some of this is at cross-purposes. So, for example, you know the firing of General Zalushni, who was very popular amongst the army, as it obviously didn't go down very well.

Replacement with this sort of Soviet-type Syracuse who's in charge now reflected very deep divisions, not only within the Ministry of Defence and the army, but the government itself, and my understanding that Zalusni was seen by the government is a threat to Zelensky, whose shine is coming off a little bit right now. But yeah, just to go back to your point, obviously, Ukraine is an incredibly corrupt country. Again, you know, one of my friends is an army officer.

And I asked this officer when she was going to be promoted. And essentially, the answer was either when I can purchase my commission, like the British did in the sort of 1870s or stopped doing that actually, or when somebody gets killed or dies and I move into that position. I was talking to an American, just a little couple of vignettes here, and we were talking about who's lived there for 20 or 30 years. American guy, very easygoing, very realistic, obviously closely connected with the Ukrainians. It just told me straight out, you know, it costs $50,000 to buy your generalship,

so you have to get that money back. And I think anybody who goes near the military and isn't shepherded, that's to say people who go down on the line and you'll have heard all this before or go near the line and talk to people frankly see the sort of mayhem that goes down there

it reminds me actually Scott you know quite a bit of the Balkans I was in Bosnia during the bad days in Kosovo and what you'd get there is one unit renting out to another some shells or even some artillery or some guys and I mean you see that you see that in Ukraine as well and you think two years on that they've got a grip on this

but that's not the case so for example you see around collection boxes for this or that brigade and what they're trying to do is raise money to buy an SUV or a car even to transport themselves backwards and forwards to the front and again I'll just just discuss another point When you're in Kiev, there are no shortages of cars or SUVs, rather nice and shiny ones that run rather well. But these guys on the front, who are being wrecked by artillery, need to transport their people to the casualty receiving station, have to buy second and SUVs, have them transported in from the West, or indeed just ordinary cars, if that's all they can get.

A lot of the Ukrainian military, and obviously it's the same in Russia, I would think, but a lot of the Ukrainian military is actually, it's, it's undisional. defunded, obviously on demand, which we could get to, and to some extent dysfunctional. I mean, I met one guy in the Foreign Legion, one of the Foreign Legion units. As you know, Ukraine operates this Foreign Legion system. I don't know how many people are in it. You know, some people say 5,000, some say 20. Anyway, there are thousands of foreigners who join this. Many of them, even most, I think, well-intentioned.

but they have to buy their own kit and what this guy was talking to was a commander of a brigade or whatever it wouldn't be a few dozen men really and he had to he ended up coming home or coming across to Europe buying a security van

which is vaguely bulletproof and bringing that back for a few thousand dollars because he'd raised the money because it's better than nothing in an artillery saturated environment So, you know, the closer you get to it, and I didn't get in any way close to the front, but spoke to people all the time who were, the less the image of a well-funded, well-armed Western-style army, which obviously becomes, you know, becomes very apparent it's not like that to a very great degree. And I'm sorry to go back to the beginning here, but I just wanted to be clear for people, because, you know, especially because you're, you know, especially because you're, you know, you know, your experience and all that you mentioned attending that conference where but you're you are not part

in any way of this foreign legion for the last two years serving as a as a contractor or an advisor anything to any these in any official position or any any any mercenary or contractor type position no i spent a few weeks as uh dealing with um a project back in april no wrong june 22 but I was also there in a sort of academic capacity as well but no I'm not involved in the Legion or anything like that but I will say you know it's very pro and still I'm very pro Ukraine it's just that you begin to see that the war that you believed in and this I changed my approach about a year ago there comes a point where the losses that are being sustained don't justify any potential gains

and I teach this kind of stuff in my academic life and to see it happen that where there's no reasonable prospect of success in so far as you can define success you have to question whether it's worth or put another way whether the time may have come and perhaps we can get on to this to think about settling it

Yeah. You know, I've done this long enough now that I'm beginning to see a pattern here, Frank. Well, yeah. I mean, there's, you know, the difference between the quick, you know, the image that's conveyed to us until really recently, you know, I mean, including on your show, over the last few months, it's just, the gap is just, it's a chasm now. You know, so I'll give an example. I was talking to some NATO officials. a couple of months ago and asked them what they thought the fatal casualties sustained by Ukraine were how many killed and they said 20,000

are you kidding? No, yeah, right, that's what I said, are you kidding? It was just serious. Said yes, yes, we've just come back from Kiev and we're confident it's 20,000. I said, yeah, last year we had the

Discord leaks, we said 70,000, then confirmed by US Congress. Millie said something similar to that. That's a year ago. And you're telling me 20,000 now. And they said, yes, yes, we're confident now. Well, of course, a couple of weeks later, Zelensky up that to 31,000.

But here's the thing, Scott. When I was there last time, you know, we're looking at three weeks ago now, I talked to a friend of mine who's got very good connections with the general staff. I mean, really good, official connections and unofficial. And I said, please don't, I would use the term, I use, but just tell me straight, what level of casualties are you at? And this person before had been very blunt with me about other stuff, about losses and gains and injuries and so on. And this character said, same as the Russians. And I said,

same as the Russians? Yes, same as the Russians. Said, what's your source there? She told me, which was, yeah, the general stuff. So, there you have it. And of course, now they're looking half a million new people, which doesn't really stand with the kind of levels of casualties that we've been told. Well, tell me, what does that mean, actually, because both sides lie about their own casualties and both sides inflate the other sides, so I never know what to believe, man. What do you think? Well, BBC put out something, which is quite interesting two weeks ago, I think, or certainly

last month. And they stated, they said that they could identify 70,000 Russian. debt. I don't know if that's practical in terms of the numbers, but that would live with at least the kind of order of magnitude that we're talking about the Ukrainians. U.S. Congress last year said half a million casualties, twice as many Russian than Ukrainian. Frankly, you know what? Over the last year, I'd tend more to the, you know, 50-50, given that Ukraine was trying to push forward for a long time. And of course, Russia has had artillery dominance. for a long time. It's a nutritional war. They've got drone dominance. They've got electronic warfare

dominance. They've got control of the air for the most part. They've now been malleting the Ukrainians with these bombs for these glide bombs for the last year. Again, that's only become apparent in the last few months, but Ukrainian officials or people involved with the army were telling me a year ago, these are a really big problem. That's what kicked them out of Bahmut. That's what the decisive factor was, I understand, in Ardivka back in February with these glide bombs. And they're a problem because the Ukrainians haven't got the air defences to hit them, as we all know. And the reason they've not got those now is, I think, this is my assessment, but that's reasonably well-based. They've run out of the Russian systems that were doing a lot of damage to the Russian Air Force

and stopping a lot of the missiles coming into the country. They've run out of those. They're entirely dependent now on Western stuff, as I think they've said. And that's not coming at the kind of rate they need. And the consequence is, therefore, that Russian aircraft near what they call the zero line have far more freedom to hit them with these bombs. The only countermeasure, apparently, were the Patriots. But the Russians started hitting those as well, which is why I suspect the Americans are very reluctant now to send any more systems there. Yeah, I guess it just takes what, a certain salve.

of glide bombs in a road before you take out the Patriot launcher itself, right? Yeah. I remember talking to a NATO anti-aircraft officer and he said, look, the Russians aren't stupid. They know what we're doing. They work it out. It doesn't take long for them to develop countermeasures for us. And that's what they did with the Patriots on the line. And so the Ukraine has had to withdraw them with the result that now Russian aircraft have not quite free reign, because they do have some opposition on the line, but a lot more freedom than they had before. And just to put this into context,

so everyone talks about the shells all the time. So 1-5-2-millimeter shell, which is the Russian shells, they weigh about 45 kilos, so what's that, 90 pounds. And the Russians are dropping 1,000 kilo bombs on, which is 2,000 pounds on target. And you don't recover from that. You know, that isn't the kind of thing that you can hide, from, it will just dig a whole 50 feet deep and 100 feet wide. And that's the end of you and all

your colleagues. So it's a completely different order of magnitude than artillery. And they're using thousands of these things. Yeah. And now, just to be clear, I guess, for people who don't read about this all day, essentially, it's almost like a J-DAM kit, right? It's a guidance kit on an old bomb from an old Soviet warehouse, right? Yeah, exactly right. It's a jury rig J-Dam essentially. And they they pin on, like I say, they're not stupid, they're clever, they can improvise, which is what soldiers are in airmen are supposed to do. And they stick a GPS guidance kit on it. They fold that into a glide kit, put it on a bomb, and there you have your JDAM or

paveways, as we call them. They've also got, so that's the FAB bombs. They've also got KAB bombs, which are exactly the same as our J dams. They're integrated, got integrated systems. Either way, you're in trouble if one comes near you. And there's no countermeasure now to those. So they've been probably the biggest single, single factor in Avdivka and Bachman, these very important battles. But then, of course, the first person viewed drones and the artillery itself.

And, you know, it's First World War stuff, Scott. You know, I was talking to another guy who, I said, I asked him, had he considered joining the army? He said, he had considered it got three kids. So that kind of affected him. But he said, you know, it's good pay on zero. He said those were his exact words in English. On zero, it's good pay. It's 100,000 Rivner, he said, which is quite a lot, like $2,000, $2,500, something like that.

But he said, you just get that for three days, and then you have to go to the hospital. Now, I'm sure that's the case on some parts of the front, probably some quiet parts of the front, it isn't. But the point is, that's the kind of thing that was going on in the First World War during the trenches, which informs the level of casualties that I think is going on there, which then informs this question of how just it is to carry on at the rate. you can just it is carrying on. All right, so let's get right to that point because there's so many other things we talk about, but that's sort of the overall thing here, as you're saying, surrender now before it's worse, which is such a horrible, cowardly cut and run thing to say when the other side of the narrative,

Frank, is that they want to fight. So we have to help them fight to the last man if they're willing to. But then I guess you got conscription and all that, which calls into question the willingness of these fighters. But, you know, that's the way the Democrats see it anyway. Yeah, but they're not surrendering, are they? Because they've won their war now. They've preserved their independence. It's highly likely that, well, depending on how it's negotiated,

they'll preserve between 70 and 90 percent or 70 and 80 percent of their territory. They'll have the support of the West. They'll have EU funding coming out of their ears for the next 10, 20 years to repair the records has been caused. And that's if they stop now or if there's some form of, advanced in negotiation now. If they don't do that, it's only going to get worse. You hear constantly now, very bluntly now,

and I'm surprised at this after the congressional award to them. But even now, you started here, senior Ukrainian officer saying there's no military path to victory for us alone. In fact, somebody said that in the last couple of days. It may have been Searski to come out, may have been somebody else. But certainly it was, you know, all this is open source stuff. And in that circumstance, you say, well, okay, then, while you're taking what between well let's say a thousand casualties a day including injured and for what

well yeah good question and look i think people have been saying this all along that and maybe predicting an earlier ukrainian defeat but still saying that obviously the manpower and the financial power and the just raw artillery shell production capability is all on Russia's side here. It's like Texas versus the United States. We'd put up a hell of a fight, but at the end of the day, what are we going to do against the entire rest of the union, basically, right?

Right, and it's an attritional war. And the central gravity of attrition, as you indicated before, is manpower. And they've said they're going to recruit half a million men. And as Colonel Davis says constantly, and he knows about these things a lot more than I do, or Colonel McGregor, for whom I have a great deal of time

you're creating an army even if you can recruit half of that you have to train them and they're not getting any training I mean look just to take a slight digression it's not appealing for young men to be told or hauled into a force where you're going to be given a few weeks training at most

put in the back of an armour personnel carry thrown in a trench because they just dump them in trenches but that's the way they have to do it otherwise be hit by drones and then shelled by Russian artillery that's not appealing But let's assume you can get people to volunteer for whatever pay they get, which is a fraction of what the Russian soldiers get, by the way, because they at the very least pay their soldiers properly or their contract soldiers properly. Let's say you can recruit 200,000. How are you going to train them all? Who's going to train them? You then have to form them into units. Then you have to form those units into the system of systems and integrated system of systems. So the army that big has to be if it's going to successfully act against the Russians. Now, just to put that into context, well, the West say, Oh, we'll train, we'll train thousands of, thousands of men. Well, the British train 5,000 people every three months. And by the way, their trainers are told,

don't make friends with these people because they're very likely not to be with us in the next few weeks. And that's the British. The Americans slightly more. The Germans do 10,000 a year. I think this is a drop in the ocean. And then you get the, the, the, the, um, the, uh, saber waivers who say, well,

we should deploy trainers in Ukraine. And that's seriously being proposed now by certainly British politicians. And you hear, of course, the Chihuahuas of the Baltic states constantly clamoring to go and even fight. And that's where we get a ratchet that becomes dangerous, Scott, to us all for reasons you know very well. You've written, wrote hotter than the sun, and you know very well the consequences of doing what none of our Cold War leaders did for nearly 50 years, which was put Western soldiers within combat range of Russian ones. Yeah. I recently saw, I'm pretty sure it was Joe Scarborough,

but it was somebody representing the consensus saying, come on, doesn't anyone remember the Cold War when we stood up to the commies? And it's like, well, but in the Cold War, Ike stood by and did nothing when the Soviets cracked down in Hungary. And LBJ did nothing when the Soviets cracked down in Czechoslovakia. And Reagan did nothing. And by the way, in all three cases, it was the CIA had kind of stirred them on in the first place. And I meant to say to finish there, in Poland, when solidarity started up and all that, and they cracked down, the local Polish communist cracked down on solidarity, Reagan said good luck, guys.

We'll see you in 10 years, but we're not going to intervene on the other side of the line. So how is, but they just invoke the Cold War like what happened was Ronald Reagan was elected president right after FDR and he stomped over there and he beat Stalin up and it's been peace on earth ever. Yeah, but what you're failing to see, Scott, you see, is that what will happen if we let the Russians stop at some unnamed town in anonymous town in eastern Ukraine and draw the line there is that the next thing they'll be in, they'll be in Riga and then after that they'll be in Berlin or Warsaw, you know, on the Dover coast or on the Channel coast, that's what's going to happen, you see. Save, of course, you know, that isn't what's going to happen because you've covered these things before

but let's let's just say this that the kind of schizophrenia of all this was laid bare and I read your very own that is to say the Americans very own it's called the National Threat Assessment which is the consensus of 17 intelligence agencies you can imagine they're kind of

squabbling it goes on over that and they said and I quote Russia almost certainly does not what this year this is March this year a direct military conflict with the U.S. and NATO forces? Well, how does that live with all the rhetoric about, well, we've got to arm ourselves to the teeth to defend Estonia? I don't see that. Yeah, well, and speaking of Estonia, I hope I don't have this wrong, but isn't that the Baltic state with the most

ethnic Russians living in it and with the most concern about potential conflict of having the Russians move their border a little bit west to take back their lost city and this kind of thing? I forgot the name of it. I was just reading about this previously. Latvia's got the most Russians in, but Estonia's a close second. It's about 15 to 20 percent. And they're all concentrated in the city called Nava, which is very near St. Peter's, but it's like a less than an hour's drive, I think. But, you know, what's the consequences of them?

First of all, they've never claimed Nava, as far as I know. They've no interest in it or any other part of Estonia or Finland or any of these other countries. Secondly, they know what would happen if they did that. Third, if they couldn't take a city and can't take a city of 30,000 people, or it takes them a year to do it, in some anonymous part of Ukraine, with hundreds of thousands of troops on call, heavy artillery superiority, air power superiority, and it takes them a year to do it. Against NATO, what do they think is going to happen?

And that's why the national threat assessment, fully and the 17 agencies, when they're talking honestly, fully understand that Russia has no ambitions and does the last thing at once is a direct fight with NATO because they know what to happen. And for what reason? To do what? what to be a strategic objective to do something like that okay but frank the ladies at the atlantic

council and the marshal fund they say that you just admitted that they can be beaten it's so hard for them to even take one town why can't we just tilt the war back in ukraine's favor which they think at one point it was in i guess i think we've rather tried that

but let's let's see and i'm sorry i don't mean to sound just too sexist about that i was referring to a debate recently between Daniel Davis, Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis and John Mearsheimer versus the ladies from the Atlantic Council and the Marshall Fund and the Council on Foreign Relations, who were very sure that this could be going fine, Frank, if we would just give them enough. Hi, Mars. Yeah, I saw that debate. It was a bit like a tiger against a rabbit, really, wasn't it? If you were to look at it objectively, it was embarrassing on their part. Yeah, I didn't quite understand their point because, of course, the first thing is we have given them all those weapons. of developed countermeasures. Secondly, and equally importantly, you need highly trained troops to do that,

guard them, take and hold the land that you're going to gain, and we arm the Ukrainians, or at least we said we'd done so, and we, of course, guaranteed them everything they wanted this time last year, and they had all they said that they wanted, and they took seven miles of land.

look we've done what we can it's very clear that the US military establishment let's be counted is not interested in having Ukraine be equipped to win this so I'll give you just one figure yesterday Blinken was in Kiev and he said we're trying to find some Patriot systems to give you trying to find the US has 40 batteries of wrong I'm sorry about that 80 batteries each battery's composed of all the radars plus eight at least eight launches they have 480 launches man if they can't find a launcher or two or even a battery or two somebody should be having a word with u.s army logistics because there are 480 launches they can give but they're not giving them why not because we need those things got to go and fight china that's why and save for all the thousands of armored vehicles

artillery and all the other things in reserve we gave them enough to to hold and to have a go It didn't work out. We're going to give them enough now to push it past the election and see what happens and land it on someone else's plate. All right. Well, so to change the subject to China for a second here, in a way this is, I think there's kind of a fight. I'm sure you guys talk about this in the UK as well, that the sort of disagreement, it seems

like, was before we take on China, what do we do about Russia? And one argument, which was Trump's argument and Kissinger's argument, and a few other of the realists, was we should befriend Putin. We should figure out how to share responsibilities and power with Putin and get along with him to try to split him away from China. And it seems like in the Biden government, the neoconservatives and the more hawkish neoliberals, their policy was no, we'll provoke and bait Russia. we'll give them a hard-ass time, and they'll be too bogged down dealing with our crap in Eastern Europe to be any good help to China. And then it seems like that's the policy that won out, but that ultimately this is about containing China or worse, fighting them. What do you think about all that crap? Well, I'm with John Meersheimer in this.

What we've managed to do is defeat what should have been our main grand strategic objective, which is to try and pull Russia onto our side in what he regards. is the sort of existential fight, as it were, against China. Now, I don't know if there's an existential fight, but it certainly seems a bad idea to me to alienate one great power, let's call them not a superpower, and push them over not only to ally, as we see today in Beijing, where Putin is, at least when we speak, but also provide China with all the oil and gas

that could ever want to cut prices. That's probably a mistake I would have said, but hey, what do I know, even if you accept that China is a massive threat to you. And surely, as Meersheimer would say, what you would prefer, what might be rather preferable to do, might be to, you know, in the medium term, will Russia and make sure that that didn't happen and that the oil and gas that helps your economy doesn't go to your supposed enemies. And as for connecting the Ukraine war with Taiwan, I just don't see any link relevant link at all. Yeah, well, I mean, their link is that if we don't go,

all the way to the nth degree in Ukraine, then that signals to China that they can do whatever they want in Taiwan. Yeah. Yeah. Well, if we do go to the nth degree in Ukraine, we'll end up in a nuclear war. So that doesn't, you know, that's the only solution to this. There's no way, there's no part as, as indeed, the Ukrainian commander in chief has said to, is reported to have said in the last few days. There is no military path to victory for us alone. But that implies that It may be a military path if we get some friends on side. If we get some friends on side, that's where NATO troops face off against Russian troops, and we know where that goes.

Because up to now, what we've had is a ratcheting of escalation, and that ratchet does not have a pattern of going down, and we know where that ratchet ends. People say to me, Scott, how do you get so much work done all the time? Coffee. It helps keep me from falling asleep. And it tastes really good because I get it from moon dose artisan coffee at Moondoseartisancoffee.com.

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And then you'll never have to believe them again. Yeah. You know, it does seem a lot of times too simple-minded. Like the politicians, they just, and the strategists, I guess, themselves too, they just get trapped in what they said before. Even probably when they know that they're kind of lying or they're leaving out important context about maybe their role and helping precipitate a thing. Like, if I get into a fist fight and I know that it was like kind of my fault, even if it was more of the other guy's fault, Like, I could just grandstand and pretend it was all the other guy's fault, or I could be slightly conciliatory since I know that I did play my own role in the conflict, too. I'm oversimplifying things.

But they don't ever seem to think that way. They seem to be absolutely imprisoned by whatever their propaganda line of the day is, which Putin is Stalin or he's Hitler and he's pure evil and it's pure aggression, as you referred to before. He's coming for Latvia next. If we don't stop him here, we're going to, it's like give. she permission slip to go to Taiwan if we don't, you know, and that's just the way they really believe it, it seems like. They're not just kind of putting us on, which, I mean, so what you just said then is the problem is there's not, other than a real regime change in the United States or Britain, it doesn't sound like there's a real smart way out of this because it would have

to include probably saying, look, Putin does have some points or something. You know what I mean? there's got to be a room to compromise over. Well, he would think so. But perhaps I'll sort that out in the Geneva Peace Conference in the next couple of weeks where everyone's invited a couple of a dozen countries are showing up except Russia. Yeah. You know, I mean, look, Andrew Coburn has the answer for all this,

or much of it, doesn't he? When he talks about, let's be candid about it. It's in some people's interest to keep this damn thing going. And that's where things get really dark in my view. Yeah. Yeah, I read, I guess it was a story. old article by Scott McConnell about George Kennan and what he had said, you know, not just warning against NATO expansion, but this quote I wasn't familiar with before we're, I mean,

it's obvious enough, but it's just interesting coming from him and quotable coming from him, that, you know, having another Cold War with Russia is almost certain to end in a real nuclear war. The thing that we did everything in the world to avoid and we successfully avoid it and then somehow, you know, do you remember when they made Terminator? or two, and it was after the Cold War was over. So now how are you going to explain the whole nuclear war thing, right? And so when the Terminator

explains it to the kid, the kid says, Russia nukes us, but aren't we friends with them now? Which is like, even though that's like the childish understanding, like that should have been the end all of everything. If we're friends with the Russians at all, if that whole

thing is over now, well then there's nothing more important in the entire world. There couldn't possibly be than staying friends with them forever. Absolutely. I'm taking about. Everything you wrote in Hotter than the Sun. And you probably read Alan Jacobson's book at Nuclear War.

And I didn't know about this. And you did know that proud profit. Every scenario involving some kind of nuclear use, whatever it is, demonstration, or full out, full on mad, it all ends the same way. And if there's a 1% chance of that, that's too much damn chance. And that's why when you said there, them with there's nothing more important in the whole world i'm absolutely with you we should not mess with this and um yeah that's i think enough said on that particular point yeah this i mean

you you know what i'm talking about proud profit the uh exercise in 83 where they were uh shelling and all his crew ran through all the scenarios they could find and every one of them ended up in civilization ending mayhem yeah and it's just use them or lose them and i mean the basic doctrine is just it's slightly oversimplified but basically the deal is deterrence doesn't work unless we really mean it that we will launch everything we've got at you but then it's no good as a bluff it has to really be real which means if anybody calls the bluff then that's it the as jacobson puts it in the book there the president's menu of nuclear war options are extremely limited and it's the same for the other sides too once you start nuke in chinese

Chinese start nuking back, right? Same with the Russians, and that's it. Yeah, and I play those games occasionally with military colleagues. Part of my job involves that. And I mean, they're very quick, very short war games. But when the question comes, do we or do we not get involved in this? Do we or do we not press the button? It's a 50, even then when all the consequences are explained to them, in detail and firmly,

there's always 50. And it's not because they're military. Actually, civilians in tests like this have shown themselves rather more willing to use them. But either way, it's between 50 and 60% say yes. Otherwise, deterrent, we've demonstrated that for 70 years, that deterrence didn't work. So we have to show that deterrence does work.

So yes, we'll send that missile on its way to Kaliningrad or whatever air base we've selected. Even against the threat that anything like that will result in a city going. Yes, fine. We understand that. well then we'll do the same to their cities and on it goes and you always get 50 to 60 percent sometimes fractionally less but regularly a majority saying yes do it retaliate for that and for anyone who hasn't read annie jacobson's book yet like put your fingers in your ears because i'm

going to ruin it for you that and see the book is based on all interviews of secretaries of defense and generals and admirals and sack commanders and every other thing and the highest level experts And so it's a realistic portrayal of how they would react and what they would do. And essentially, when the Russians nuke America over what the Americans know is a misunderstanding that the Russians think we're nuking them when really were just nuked in North Korea. And they have to know that the Russians mistakenly, but honestly mistakenly think that we're nukeying them. It's proposed. Well, maybe we should just take it on the chin because what are we going to?

going to do? We're going to kill all these people when we're dead anyway and they didn't really do anything. Their government, you know, or the people didn't and the government at least is making an honest mistake and we know it? Nope. Overruled. We launch anyway. We kill them all anyway because we're not just going to leave the earth for the Russians to inherit without us, are we? God damn it, victory's victory. Yeah. And then so I guess she's interviewing secretaries of defense who are saying, yep, that's how it would go. Right? She's getting that from Leon Panetta and Robert Gates. They're saying that's right, Annie Jacobson. That's what we would do. We would kill them all for no reason. Yeah. Yeah. Did you see the NASA experiment?

I think it was done by, well, obviously it was done by computer where they looked at a war between India and Pakistan using 100 warheads each of about 20 kilotons. Anyway, a fair old bunch of warheads. And they played the climate results out over two years. And in the northern hemisphere, more than 50% of the crops would die. So you've got famine, and he talks about this, of course, and a different experiment, but whatever parameters you use, this one just covers a localized nuclear war between two nuclear armed forces, essentially. So 100 warheads in a confined area.

And still, you've got between 2 and 4 billion people dying. Yeah. And you know, it's funny how normalized this all is. In fact, when I put out that book, like this is, I don't know, it's really notable to me, I guess. The subtitle is time to abolish nuclear weapons, because that's how I do with my subtitles. It's time to stop doing this and stop doing that, like occupying Afghanistan or the rest of the terror war. So going with that theme. But the book is all about nukes and all about every country's nuclear weapons programs or not. And all of these different things. And, but so whatever, man, I made my point in the subtitle, because that's what I, I'm really trying to kind of alert people to is the danger of these things overall. And I really do think they should be abolished. But, man, I might as well have said that you have to start trolling the gay bar now and taking puberty blockers and voting for Democrats. And, like, I didn't say that. You're saying we should just surrender to Russia and China and let them conquer us? I didn't say that, right?

And the idea that Ronald Reagan thought this could be done. They've never heard of that. It just sounds like what I'm saying is America should kill itself and let all of our enemies destroy us, let Osama bin Laden's ghost take over D.C. or whatever, right? That's what it means to abolish nukes, is to be helpless, is what people think. And worse, like feminine, you know, something they could never countenance. And so, like, anyone who knows anything about defense knows that this is. how it has to be for the rest of the history of

humanity is a permanent Mexican standoff with these national governments holding hydrogen bombs to each other's heads and there is no other alternative to that other than what are you saying? One world communism under the Ayatollah or you know what I mean? Whatever.

That's what we're up against is that kind of people don't even want to hear it at all. Back to a friend told me he was turning on his army buddy to it and his army buddy said what's this about abolishing nukes? I'm not reading this guy's book about the war on terrorism if he thinks we should abolish nukes. Like, all of a sudden, I'm Noam Chomsky, right?

Yeah, it's been really successfully suppressed, hasn't it? You know, in the 80s and even early 90s, certainly the 70s, there was very strong arguments against this, and there were public arguments made by the most credible people and sometimes the most surprising people. I mean, I've heard arguments made like that, by the way, you know, against nuclear, by very senior military officers who know exactly what the consequences of having these. Because, of course, Scott, as most of your listeners will know, we in Britain, we have to have nuclear weapons as well

because we have to be big and strong too, just like the French and you guys and the Russians. So we spend, I think, between 7 and 10% of our defence budget on keeping four rackety submarines floating around the North Atlantic with nuclear bombs on them. On the basis, of course, that for the next 30 years, when we get the new ones, that 17,000 tonnes of steel, space rockets, nuclear reactors and people

will be undetectable under 500 or 1,000 feet of water. Yeah, really. Yeah. Well, you know, speaking of which, how much of this is about competition over the Arctic Circle, which obviously Russia's northern coastline completely dominates the north? Yeah, they've got, so part of that coastline is called, they have their bastion there,

and that's where they keep their ballistic missile submarines. And as we's right now, I think we can be fairly certain because this has been happening for the last 50 years. There are American, British and French submarines sneaking around up there looking for the Russian ballistic missile submarines, which are guarded by all their military assets. So that's a start. That's a big part of the naval campaign over the Arctic Circle. And then, of course, of course, as you know, there is over the last decade or so.

There have been huge new oil and gas fields discovered there under the ice. And we can now get to that oil and gas, which is one reason why the Russians spend a lot of time putting little flags at the bottom of the sea. So, yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, so let's talk about what's going on in Ukraine more. What about the latest from the Russian offensive near Harkiv? Are they really taking it now?

I heard the debate that, no, they're just exhausting Ukrainian reserves and taking the, their time. I think they're doing what they said they were going to do. And I think that's going to be the pattern. Putin has declared as a minimal objective in Donetsk and Nuhansk, in due course, I think it may take him a while if the Ukrainians don't break. And Putin said back in March, right, tell you what now, because of this chaotic blunder into the Belgarod district by Russian renegade.

what we're going to do is we're going to build a cordon sanitaire of a few kilometers deep on the Ukrainian side, and that's what they're doing. So right now, it's very clear that that's how it's developing, and they may decide to extend that up to the northwest in Sumi, which is in the top sort of top right of Ukraine. There's no evidence, I think, that they're going to take Kharkiv with what, with 40,000 people, including all the logistics. I mean, Kharkiv was fought over three times by the Russians and the Germans in the Second World War. It was completely flattened and it took hundreds of thousands of casualties to take it each time. So I can't see the Russians trying to take that place. It would be a massive mistake. And anyway, they don't have the forces to do that deployed.

So they've got two, they've got a new division, I think, deployed near Kharkiv, which is feeding the forces now. Note, Scott, if you look at any of the footage around there, you don't see any or very few Russian tanks, because what you see are infantrymen in armored vehicles, some of them, not many, but they tend to have, they tend to be scaled for a few days in the field, and that's for reconnaissance units. So what they were doing is probing the defences. And what they found, by the way, as you know, is that these much vaunted Ukrainian defenses either weren't there at all or were completely ineffective. And so in the words of one Ukrainian commander, they just walked through, which I would imagine they weren't expecting to do. But hey, who knows what they expected? So it looks to me like they're building that cordon sanitaire, that security zone, whatever Putin calls it. As he said it was going to do three months ago, they're drawing away Ukrainian forces that have to stand ready.

And whether or not they do have another go in Sumi, what they're doing is fixing Ukrainian forces. And the Ukrainian forces there can't be in two places at once, not even magic Ukrainian soldiers. and that's a win for them because all of these are new units by the way up there on the Belgarod front it seems from what the reports I've seen they're new recruits basically and so reflecting of course the fact that Russia can recruit 20 or 30,000 people a month because they pay them whereas Ukraine now last week announced it was going to conscript prisoners in hey where have we had that before because because things aren't going so well on recruitment from anyway the point is i think this is going to be a security zone they may they may move

towards kharkiv to to threaten it but looks i don't think they've got the forces to be able to threaten let alone challenge for or take take that huge city of a 1.2 million people well i mean it all depends on the strength of the ukraine military force there and whether they can stand or are you saying that there'll be enough civilian resistance there as well i i think that 40,000 if that's the number that's there. And I'd be fairly confident in that because I would imagine it's informed by Western aerial intelligence and satellite intelligence. You're looking there only proportionate of combat troops. The Ukrainians, I think, could deploy that there. You need a three-to-one advantage in the assault. I can't imagine Ukrainians couldn't resist.

And also, you're going quite deep then beyond your artillery and drone cover, which you need to establish. That's why they're moving quite slowly. I just don't think there's the forces to to do that. They would need a much bigger force to do that. I just think they're going to establish the belt and see what happens. Now, it may well be. So these are reconnaissance units up to now as a few battalions, perhaps a brigade. That's five or six thousand troops worth at the moment being deployed. And Ukrainians haven't managed to push the back decisively. We'll see how that goes. But no, they just don't have the scale of forces yet to do that. Yet. And so, I mean, on the map, they control virtually all of Lujansk, but only about half of Donetsk, is that right?

Yeah, that's right, yeah. And however, and this is rarely reported, they're making advances every day in this area in Donetsk province, in Donets Oblast, you know, 500 meters here, a kilometer there, this village, this town. So the Ukrainians are being pushed back and back. I think what we may see over the next few weeks is a withdrawal to prepared lines, which this time, one hopes, will be prepared. prepared properly. And that'll be a moment that we will hear reported. But another thing, Scott,

which is, you know, like here, I talk to quite a lot of journalists. And I've spoken to journalists from two, I won't say who they are, too, because I would just put them into trouble. But two journalists who are really well informed about all this stuff, go down to the lines all the time, really know their stuff from major British news outlets. And we've discussed these things in exactly the same terms as you and I are discussing this now. And there's no, very little in the way of argument. In fact, obviously I get a great way to my information for people like that. And I say, well, why do you write, stroke, report this? And they say, it's just not the policy. We're very pro-Ukraine. We can't, we can't talk about this. They simply wouldn't

accept these reports. And I'm certain that's the case for US outlets as well. So one's just not being told, for example, that every day, I haven't looked at today's today's readouts, but every day the Russians are pushing forward into the nets like you said they've got most of their hands and i guess before the uh russians taking of abdivka it was said that it's kind of the last roadblock before they're able to you know they were arguing it was a strategic uh point that they had to seize in order to be able to pivot beyond there and that kind of thing and i'm not an expert of the ukrainian war map i know it's really frustrating that everybody relies on Kimberly

Kagan and Jack Kean at the Institute for the Study of War for all the maps. I don't know who's mapped to trust or if you can recommend somebody who's really reliable other than them. I can recommend Willie OAM. That's W-A-I-L-L-Y on YouTube. O-A-M. He's an Australian

soldier and what he does is ex-Ukrain Australian soldier turned journalist, really capable, very interesting guy, spent a long time in Ukraine. He collates the maps every day and describes you exactly what's happening both from the Russian and the Ukrainian perspective which is a very even handed and a really excellent commentator

he takes roughly I think the same view as you about the ISW thing so what he does is takes a step back looks at the Russian maps looks at Ukraine ones matches them and tells you what he thinks is really happening and he's been bang on for the last few months I've been following him and Danny Davis also I think he looks at him too yeah of course the great Danny Davis. Now, I guess I hope you'll say the same thing about Odessa that you just said about Harkeith, that now Putin doesn't want to bite off Odessa. Man, that would be way too difficult.

But then I guess it depends on what time scale we're talking. You know, you think he wants it? Yeah. Colonel McGregor thinks that they'll end up with that. I don't think they'll want the trouble of crossing the Dnieper. But, you know, what the hell do I know? I don't have my crystal ball. That might be one of those steps.

that Putin may not want to take because of this saber-rappling by Macron about that. And it may well be, it's not really worth the candle. And obviously, if they were to take that, then we'd render Ukraine a rump state forever and probably result in eternal conflict, which may result anyway. I just think it would be not necessarily a step too far, but step that Putin would not want to take for reasons of pragmatism cost and potential conflict with the West.

It gets you close to Romania as well, which NATO would probably look kindly too. But Colonel McGreg, I think they will. I would tend to disagree, but there we have it. No, I forgot what I was going to say, didn't I? Oh, yeah. And so Emmanuel Macron. This brings us back to the question of NATO involvement

and especially the magical line crossed, right? The metaphysical line cross boots on the ground. Yeah. I guess special operations, you know, Marsot guys and sneakers get away with it, but once they're combat boots, and we've got a real problem. And so McCrone is talking about

just dumping regular infantry in there. I know others have talked about, as you mentioned previously, putting trainers in Ukraine instead of training them across the line in Poland and that kind of thing. There have been reports in the New York Times and the intercept and wherever from the beginning from the discord leaks

about special operations forces and intelligence officers from Western countries in Ukraine. But once you tell me everything, you think you know about the presence of NATO forces there and deniable and or not so deniable and the rest. Right. So as you pointed out, discord and other places in the case. that there are, I'll speak to the Brits, so Brits are very forward-leaning on us as they would say they crack on and all this kind of stuff

that got us into the shit in Afghanistan. So they're always very forward-leaning and trying to, candidly, I think what they're trying to do is impress the Americans with their willing. But there we are. That's generally the case of the British Army. Anyway, whatever the reason, there seem to be 50 or so UK Special Forces

there now. What they're doing, who the hell knows? None of them been caught yet or seen in combat. So there's that. Something though it's equally interesting, and I think could cause trouble in the medium term, is what was given away by the Luftwaffe chief of staff about four weeks ago, where they were having a conversation, the commander of the German Air Force and one of his subordinates saying, well, we've been asked to provide terrorist missiles, which are cruise missiles, a bit like the British storm shadows. I would think, by the way, the British ran out storm shadows in the Libya campaign. I don't know that we've built that many since, but I don't know, but it seems everyone's desperate for them and the German equivalent, which is Taurus. And what the German general said to his subordinate was, what we don't want to be doing here is do what the Brits do and put our own people into Ukraine and transport them in using British armoured vehicles like they do, according to him, and deploy our soldiers

there, which indicates to me, and not only to me, that they're already, as you indicate, I think, indicated British or possibly French troops there helping with the targeting of these damn things, which of course makes them a target themselves. So that's the first thing. That's all I know about the deployment of regular troops there. Macron was quite interesting. I think his idea was he put a brigade of foreign legion in there, which be the entire foreign legion. They use those, of course, because they're deniable. They can take casualties and they're not so much, sorry, they're not deniable. They can take casualties politically more expedient. But apparently what the French generals quite rightly said was, Mr. President, what do you propose

to do with these troops? Do you also propose, therefore, to deploy the Air Force to cover them, which you're going to need to do, or are you going to trust the Ukrainians? No, they're not going to do that. So you're going to have to have an air component there. And that air component would then get challenged, of course, needless to say, by Russian aviation or Russian ground-based air defense. They'd have to be, because they'd have to conduct patrols over those troops to cover them if they're combat troops. And then, of course, they've become a target. And that's what the general said. And then they said, how many troops do you think we've got, Mr. President?

How many brigades have we got spared? How do we replace them? What do we do if there are casualties? Do we, what contingencies you've got for massive reinforcement? Are we going to declare Article 5 if they're attacked? And all these questions should be at the front of any silly politicians' mind, waving their tin sabers around. before they even utter a word about this thing. I mean, Cameron, who's, by the way, Scott, you'll know this,

that Cameron has a history of making promises. So he declared, I think, two weeks ago that we were going to support Ukraine for as long as it takes. In 2011, he said we'd be in Libya as long as it takes. And most pointedly, in 2010, we'd be in Afghanistan as long as it takes. Ukraine should start counting it silver if Cameron says things like that but one thing of course Cameron did say is far as we're concerned Ukraine can fire as many missiles it likes into into Russia the response to which was as you can understand yeah and that's going to make you a target so take that into consideration before you make promises like that because we know of your

bases in Cyprus probably aren't that well equipped with anti-missile defenses but we're pretty well equipped with submarines and bases in Syria so put that in your pipe and smoke if you're considering using those missiles in our sovereign territory. So I think that message was received. And as far as I know, those British missiles have not been used in metropolitan Russia. But the fact they're even considering it, plus Macron's threats, says to me the quality of our leadership, in view of the conversation we had earlier about Cold War attitudes, is really, really poor.

And the advice they're receiving, if they are receiving it. Yeah. Well, you know, we've been on this slippery slope thing. and this is sort of part and parcel of how childish our leaders are but it's you know I don't know I guess yeah that is a big part of it but essentially what they've done is

and they really talk about it out loud in the papers a lot or the websites of the papers that well you know they haven't nuked us yet and we said we weren't going to give them tanks and then we gave them tanks and we said we weren't going to give them missiles

with this kind of range and then we did and they still didn't nuke us and we've been training them in huge numbers right there in Poland within range and they're not firing their hypersonic missiles at us yet and so I don't know man maybe we can push it a little bit further they've been talking that a lot and in fact

the you know Mark Millie the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff when the war started he said number two on his list of principles was we have to keep the war geographically contained inside Ukraine meaning we'll help you fight for your territory but will not help

you fight across the line into theirs because look at what kind of trouble that could get us into and yet they have attacked over and over and in fact it's been neo-Nazi brigades leading the charge with you know driving American armor personnel carriers attacking bellegrod and of course with drones and somebody smart pointed this out i wish i thought of it but at least i compared it that you know a drone attack might look like a cruise missile attack on a russian radar you know why should i assume that you understand everything the way I want you to. You know what I mean?

Yeah, I do. Yeah. That could, what, they might launch on warning over a misunderstanding. What does the radar say again? You know, hit the enter button. The radar says the same thing again. And so we launch. Maybe. Yeah, well, I suppose the question is, do you feel lucky, you know?

And obviously, our leaders do feel very lucky. But, you know, I mean, I was going to say good luck with that. It's a bit more serious, isn't it? because there'll come a point where luck no longer holds and that the ratchet you've just taken a step too far. And, of course, there's some of those circumstances. They've been actively threatened. It's not like these are hypotheses or may happen.

You know, it's conceivable that it might. They've actually been threatened. The idea of putting French or British trainers, or God forbid some few dozen Estonian soldiers on the line to make a statement. And then Estonia in its way, or Latvia or whoever it is, says, well, we've taken some casualties. We're going to declare Article 5 now. All this is well within the realm of possibility. And indeed, there's been no ratcheting down of any of these threats or supposed plans or flag waving or flag flying or whatever.

It's just continually ratching up. And at some point, luck will fail. And either there'll be an attack causing casualties on. NATO forces or something worse by way of demonstration. And even if, you know, as we said before, there's a 1% chance of that. Well, a 1% chance is just too much. And it wasn't a chance that our predecessors during the Cold War were willing to take. Okay, but is there anyone like, never mind in the press where we all can see, but, you know, friends of friends for a guy in your position, do you know if there's anything like these sorts of reasonable conversations taking place inside the British Ministry of Defense?

within the intelligence services, whatever, that there's some realism here about, well, you know, Joe Biden did overthrow the government there back 10 years ago. And you know what I mean? Just like a little bit of realism about what's going on here? Well, the British armed forces are in such a state. I have no doubt at all they are. I mean, they can't, you know, we've got probably two brigades

that we could deploy anywhere and we can't replace them. And I think we've got about 58 operational tanks. You know, so even if all those other considerations didn't apply, we have absolutely nothing. You know, we're very, very weak. And our generals know that. And I think they'll have been informing, which is why I think that there was no suggestion that the British send a brigade as well. Otherwise, if they had that stuff, they would do it. Because if you've got those toys, determinism indicates you're going to use them.

We don't have them anymore. And I think everybody's aware of that. I can only speak for the UK. Yeah. And there are sensible people around that, and I suspect that's what's restrained the politicians. However, I will say one thing. I did hear a minister who just got, well, he resigned a few months ago on a TV program, flying the flag for putting a British force in to do some training, which would amount to the same thing.

Of course, they could become targets. And I think that sank pretty quickly. I mean, our country has enough trouble. I mean, we're wrecked anyway, economically and socially, we're in a pretty poor state. I think there'd be very little support politically for getting involved in this kind of thing, particularly in the sort of few months before an election here. Yeah. So there's that too. Well, you know, that's good.

So before when you were talking about the deterrent effect of NATO, like in the Baltics, is one of the main reasons that Putin wouldn't try it is because he'd be picking a fight with NATO. I wonder if you're just thinking of nuclear deterrence at that point, or you think that Russia really would have a very hard time with. NATO's, you know, infantry on the ground there, because, you know, they just had to withdraw the Abrams tanks from Ukraine because they were always, you know, basically designed politically with this ridiculous turbine engine and whatever. Andrew Coburn wrote about that in his book about Rumsfeld, you know, 10 years ago, whatever, everybody knew the thing was a turkey. And here they finally tried it out against the Russians and one of them is a trophy in the Red Square right now. Yeah. So I think I think they've done the same with the British tanks as well. they've withdrawn. And by the way, I think that the German ones have taken, they've taken according to

the Orix site, which is really good on this. They confirm all the losses. It's taken 30, they've lost 30 of them. 30, the leopard leopards. It's amazing. So, well, but yeah, to the point, I don't think Russians be afraid of British involvement or French, except in a sense of a trip by, but I think the really formidable ground forces now are Polish, Finnish, Finnish. to less extent, Swedes who are pretty close by. And what about the Americans in Germany? Do they count too or not?

The Germans. No, the Americans in Germany. Well, they don't have very large forces deployed. I think they've got a couple of brigades, which would make no particular difference. And then, of course, if it really got serious, it'd have to reinforce them across the Atlantic, and then we get into a much wider conflict with submarines and all that.

So I don't think anybody want to risk that. And I think that's where it gets wider, doesn't it that if the u.s get involved if they cross that that line and get the u.s troops involved they'd be reinforced immediately so what are you going to do with the reinforcements are you going to stop them in the atlantic you're going to sink the ships you're going to attack the carriers they're going to have a go at the aircraft and that's where things get really serious when america gets involved obviously hey y'all let me tell you about roberts and roberts brokerage ink nobody trusts the u.s dollar anymore foreign governments are stocking up on gold

instead of $100 bills. One, they know they need to, and two, that means you need to too. Interest rates are up, but for some reason not much for savings accounts. Park your money there and watch Uncle Joe Biden just counterfeit its value away. You can see how the Fed is afraid to raise rates to beat inflation for fear of popping the current bubbles, at least before the election. So more inflation it will continue to be. Gold is your shield against monetary and price inflation, just like it always has.

been. Now Tim Fry and the guys over at Roberts and Roberts are recommending gold over silver since the world's almost 200 governments are putting their own pressure on the price, which should help everyone else who make similar calls on their own. Of course, Roberts and Roberts can help you with platinum, palladium, and silver as well as gold. Don't let the Fed and the war party inflate all your savings away. Look up Roberts and Roberts at rrbi.co. That's rrbi.co. up for my substack. It's Scott Horton's show.substack.com, and if you do that, you'll get the interviews a day before everybody else, but not only that, they'll be free of commercials. How do you like that? Pretty good, huh? Scott Hortonshow.substack.com. Hey, y'all, Libertasbella.com is where you get

Scott Horton 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. Libertas Bella from the same great folks who bring you ammo.com for all your ammunition needs too. That's libertasbella.com. Now, you know, Trump and everybody else, too, the Republicans and the Democrats, obviously Trump makes more of a show of it, but they all complain that the NATO countries don't pay their fair share. You're supposed to all spend at least 2% of your GDP on your military forces so that we're not carrying that much of your weight for you kind thing. And so I wonder if the reluctance of NATO states, at least in a previous era, going back

two years, whether that reluctance to spend that much is just because they would rather spend it on other things, or if that was actually part of the strategy of not provoking Russia was like, for example, the Germans, let's not arm up because we're just going to make Putin sweat. And why bother pissing them off when we don't have any real need to? And when I say the germans i guess i'm talking about angela merkle in that era right and it was her policy to accommodate him but was there in other words i remember um dug bondo from cato saying notice the germans aren't arming up that's because they're not afraid of this russian threat that the americans keep hyping up you know what i mean they are more realistic about it but i guess i'm just

wondering if you think maybe it goes a step further than that that they didn't want to look like they were arming up either because that's a bad look if there's no real real real reason to get prepared for war. Yeah, I think there's an element of that, but in the German case, they have so far to go. They say they're going to deploy a brigade. Again, we can talk about the brigade, but that's the unit at the moment the NATO uses to move around large numbers of troops. So they were going to, and are planning to deploy a brigade in the Baltics, Latvia, I think.

And the current projection is they'll be able to do that by 2026, 27. to put 5,000 troops in Latvia because of all the logistical and duty of care and all that stuff. So they're really, they're in a very poor situation. I think they can barely put out enough aircraft to defend their airspace, despite having hundreds of them. Actually, to have them operational ready to go, they've a handful. There was a review of German armed forces, I think, just before this phase of the war, which was truly embarrassing.

But, you know, Germany has, it's put a hundred, billion euros aside for its for its rearmament the bulk of which scotch or the biggest single the plurality of which is going in to re-equip their nuclear delivery squadron because the german air force has access to if it's released by the american nuclear bombs so the Luftwaffe has a squadron of tornadoes now which are 50 years old they want to replace those with f-35s good look and use those to drop bombs or to be able to drop bombs on nuclear bombs on Russia, and they're spending 35 billion, I think, on that. So that's a big, big old chunk of cash. But when you come to Italy, you know, Spain and ask them, well, you know,

what are the threats to us, realistically? That's where you get these tensions within NATO and you get the so highly aggressive, ancestrally hating Poles and what have you, for very good reasons, arming up, coming arm to the teeth to the point where Poland is now, by far, I think, the most formidable ground power, you know, as against Portugal, which isn't really interested, understandably. But here's a power that's hardly ever mentioned, and is currently, possibly aside from Poland, the most formidable ground power and arguably air power in Europe, which is Turkey. We never hear about them. They're the most power, certainly the most powerful military overall in continental Europe.

And certainly more powerful than us, frankly, the UK, arguably the French polls are coming up. They don't get any hassle at all. And they're not getting involved in this war either. They play both sides. Yeah. You know, I never did understand why Erdogan didn't sack Mosul after ISIS cleared the way for him.

Yeah. Yeah, they played a funny game there, didn't they? Especially when the consulate got kidnapped, which I suppose would be good cause. for sacking Mosul. I think they could have done it any time. Then there was the fight in Aynarab, wasn't there? Or what do we call it? Just over the border with the army watching ISIS take on the Kurds.

Yeah. Very interesting, the Turks. Really, really formidable. And they're not getting involved in this at all. And no one's saying a word about them. Yeah. A lot of complaints about the Germans or the Brits or whatever. Not the Turks.

Yeah. Hey, not to beat a dead horse that we already discussed, but I thought, I wanted to bring this up before, but we got sidetracked on a different thing. But it was this New York Times article that you may have seen. The West doesn't understand how much Russia has changed by Alexander Gabouv or something from the director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin.

All right. And he cites all these statistics about how, of course it's a New York Times editorial so the language is all very sanitary about why it's this way and whose fault it is and boy is this obviously not a good idea you know what I mean? All that's sort of sanitized

out but what he's really saying is boy did you guys succeed in kicking Russia out of Europe which if you want to zoom out maybe this is total overstatement I don't know but it's almost like kicking the

eastern orthodox out of European Christendom civilization that like you guys are Asiatics go be Asiatic with the Chinese and how there has been just this I mean he describes it more in in economic terms but it he makes it sound like this permanent shift from the Russian point of view of looking toward the east and their trade with China and the rest of their Asian partners and fine if you guys don't want to be cool with us and we don't like that they have really made the turn now. Biden, you done, blown it all the way, or you succeeded in doing what you

wanted to do. But it makes it sound pretty irrevocable, you know, at least until what, America does a coup and puts a sock puppet in there. It doesn't sound likely to me, you know. No, no. Well, I've got quite a few Russian friends, and they're all anti-Pooten. And, I mean, I don't think they, they concur with that. You know, I mean, there's ebbs and flows in history, It has been, for the last 300 years that Russia's been involved since Peter the Great's time. And, you know, there's always this debate about how European and how involved Russia wants to be in Europe. And whether itself it considers itself European. So it's not, I don't think it's any of these, any of these sort of eternal judgments are always misfounded.

But one interesting thing, there's a couple of interesting things which these guys always say. So one of the things is be careful what you wish for for the next leader. I think you've discussed that before. Sure. The likelihood is that they're going to be, from our perspective, worse than Putin. So enjoy Putin while it lasts, is the point they make. The other point is it's a little bit more local. It's really interesting.

It really changed a bit of my perspective here and put into perspective the two-faced approach that the U.S. had to Ukraine, never saying this. But all Russians believe, and you know this obviously, all Russians believe, that Crimea is Russian, including Navalny. Navalny, the sainted Navalny, said this on multiple occasions. Crimea is Russian, of course, which is a constituent part of Europe for its start. But look, Russia is a European, is it, whether we like it or not, and obviously we don't now, but sometimes we do, depends which part of which century you're in, is a European power.

It's also an Asiatic power. You don't just extract them like that, I think. They're very well, deeply embedded, you know, certainly in the UK, whether we like it or not in our financial systems, and are likely to remain some. And there are 100,000 Russians in London alone, as far as I know. Well, I didn't realize the number was that high. But yeah, and also just, they're a huge, maybe the raw materials capital of the world, right? It's this massive chunk of northern Eurasia full of timber and oil and gas and whatever else you need.

Fresh water. Scott, can I offer you another article for examination, which I found just today. It's a CNN article, which you'll love by the Master of the Military Art, Ben Hodges and Gary Kasparov. The title is, and it's from May the 7th, it's over a week ago. It says opinion, this is CNN, this. And the strategy is needed now before it's too late for Ukraine. I was just gobsmacked by this I mean

and this is by Hodges of course really I guess Kasparov will add input but most of it's about military strategy I thought what kind of neck do you need to say that a strategy is needed now but maybe a strategy might have been needed

or I don't know February 2020 as opposed to let's hope for the best and rely on Ukraine's amazing and unique heroism to win it for us. Yeah, we'll just lie and the truth will catch up. It'll be fine. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it'll all be great. And because we're good, and we're on the good guys, we're bound to, I mean, even a couple

of months ago, I think it was Hodges were saying, the siege of Crimea has begun. I don't know. Get you on. Yeah, him and that other master and that other master of the strategic art, Petraeus. who still, I think he's changing his tune now. But these guys, honestly, where are they coming from? And how do you have the sheer effrontery to write an article like that as a general? Yeah.

Well, you know, I mean, back 10, 12 years ago, it was, unfortunately, however many years ago now, a long time ago, 15 years ago at the dawn of the American and NATO surge in Afghanistan, it was that same level I mean you could cite other examples too but that same level of just as we've discussed on the show

there's complete unreality about the ability of America and I guess especially Britain to remake Afghan society into the way we want it to be and then

set it you know let it go like a top and it's going to keep spinning it's going to stay the way we want it and then we're going to get out someday all we have to do is cure them with this counterinsurgency thing. I cite this in Fool's Air, and I'll never forget this great article by Kelly Vlejos, I think possibly then for Fox News, or I guess for the American Conservative,

about going to one of these meetings at the think tank. And you got all the civilian wonks, and you have all these arms contractors, and then all these military officers in their dress uniforms. And, you know, everybody's got their hair combed perfectly, and they're wearing their very best skirts and their, you know, whatever kind of thing. And it's like, you know, she's describing a scene from society, right? It's not about the Afghans. It's about, like, who these people are in their little insular culture of people who agree about things and make money off this.

And there's just no good. reason for anybody to pipe up and talk about how stupid this is. Yeah. You know? And so you mentioned Cameron before, but they all said that. That Afghanistan, we're curing it. We're going to cure it. We're going to make it our way.

And quite frankly, I don't know why we didn't talk about this at the time it was all falling apart. I should have had you on the show then to talk about it. But that, you know, really Trump and Biden's calculation that it's time to get out of Afghanistan. That really was nothing but them facing up to the truth that we had lost that war, that it would have taken a major escalation to reverse the momentum in the Taliban's favor that had been going on for years at that point, that we were licked. And it was only when they were up against absolutely a steel wall and no way out that they finally admitted that they never said it. But essentially they admit they were wrong all along.

That it never could or should have worked at all, that Bush should have. have been out of there by Christmas 2001, you know? Yeah. And it's, it's, I think it's, I think it's gone on the 17th. Yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a habit of Elisa, isn't it? That, it's, okay, next thing. That, yeah, well, anyway, it didn't work out next thing. I mean, this is the fear about Ukraine, though, isn't it? I mean, it was, I think it was Hemingway said in one of his books, so the sun also rises or, I think, anyway, he said, when collapse happens, it happens very slowly, and then it happens very quickly. And I know Danny Davis talks about this. He tends to think in those terms about Ukraine, but he's not wrong to present things in those terms. You know, that's what happened

in Afghanistan. It was collapsing slowly from when? 2010, maybe 2001, I suppose, the decision was made to stay. And then it happened very quickly. And that's the nature of collapse, isn't it? And but of course, you get in your helicopter and off, you go, the government go to do. The government go to Dubai settle into their condos or London or New York or wherever and with their cash and everybody carries on and it's next war and honestly to be candid with you know worst case I can see something like that happening happening in Ukraine we're shaping up for that because nobody there's no strategy there's no strategic thought being applied to this it's all hope hope and spin and hope and spin is no way to run any kind of war, least of all one in Europe where hundreds of

thousands of young men are being killed and women and civilians. Yeah. Every day. See, that's the part that's so unbelievable. That was so much at stake that it's almost like you could say the war's being run by the PR men, right? Like, it just has, it doesn't matter whether any of what they say is true, even though they're making these, the most important decisions maybe in all history based on these claims about what they're doing and how it's supposed to work. Yeah, and naysayers are suppressed. I don't know if you saw that. Well, Stoltenberg has a sidekick.

I can't remember his name now. He's Norwegian. And it says either as EA or some very influential executive, it's number two, was Shefter Cabernet or something. And he gave a talk more than a year ago now, when things started to look as if they weren't going Ukraine's way, and he said might be and this is a public talk you can find it I wrote about it in the Guardian and he said

might it be an idea for us to offer NATO membership to Ukraine in exchange for Ukraine giving up territory now look you can argue about whether either of those things are wise or could ever happen but the point was he was what he was doing was he was saying really what sensible people should have been thinking for a long time that maybe we should consider negotiations rather than slaughtering thousands of young men for no good purpose

or for no gain and it was stamped on immediately it hasn't been referred to since nobody mentioned it but no we carry on we're not going to do that's out of the question we're in it to win it we're in it as long as it takes right

but what is it then what is it that you're in it for to do well I mean they would say they did say over and over until they stop saying it that we're going to reclaim every inch of Ukrainian territory including Crimea and they've sort of dropped that and they've

admitted that now they just want to hold the line but they clearly can't do that. You know, look on the Atlantic Council side of this, right, if we're going to play war party here for a moment, they would say, come on Frank, you just trust Putin, you think you

can make a deal with him. All he's going to do is he's going to take the Dombas until he does want Harkiv and then he's going to take Archive. And then he's going to take Odessa when he gets around a feeling like taking Odessa and you think what? We should just never draw the line anywhere and just let this guy do whatever he wants and become

Vlad the Terrible and all of these things. Yeah. And I'm sorry, I already kind of pitched that to you before, but Right, well there's two responses to that, aren't there? So we fight then forever and we just have a not even a frozen

conflict. And the second one, which is a bit more practical, is to say, well, what we can do, of course, is to, if we don't trust Putin, it's to apply some form of deterrence in there by arming Ukraine in some way that makes it highly unlikely that be any success, which wasn't done before if you're going to be kinetic about it. But either of those options are better than the continuing slaughter of thousands of young people every month, or at least discussing it, aren't they? And you know, I kind of blew it. It's a chicken hawk argument, isn't it? It's a chicken hawk argument. Yeah. Although, you know, I kind of blew it because what I was really trying to get to there is, I think you did, you know, say earlier that you thought that it was realistic, that he really doesn't want Archive. It ain't worth the cost of trying to bite that off. He really just wants what he's mostly already taken, which is the eastern four provinces. Maybe he wants to finish Donetsk, but he doesn't want to go the rest of the way to the Nieper. He doesn't want to take Archive. He doesn't want to take Kiev.

and you think he's got his what he's bitten off so far and maybe plus a little is in other words if you if you were the diplomat and you made that deal you actually do expect that he would keep that deal because you you think that's within the realm of what he really wants there's no doubt that's exactly put my point better better than i could i mean implicit implicit in that is that there's never been any suggestion and as danny davis says all the time, as you sell time. There's no, they cannot take the whole country. They haven't even now with far stronger forces than they had at the outset. They cannot take, let alone hold, even half of the country. And the objectives are clearly Donbass, those four, or the remains of

the four provinces, should have annexed. But even then, so what Ukraine says is, on every Ukraine or most Ukrainians I speak, do they say exactly, well, you can't trust him, he'll try again. Fine, all right. Well, if you think that, make a settlement, or as a starting point, make a settlement on the, on that worsening basis that it's getting worse all the time, stop as soon as you can, and then ensure that it doesn't happen again, by deterrence, by denial, arm yourself up to make sure it doesn't happen again. Now, I tend to think that's probably one way forward for the Ukrainians, which would hedge against the possibility, highly unlikely, of the Russians trying to take Kiev. I mean, it's arguable whether they wanted

to do that in the first place. Look who they sent on the initial invasion. People in the before in the vanguard of those of those units were roscafadia they were the police the military police and why because they've been told that there wouldn't be any resistance and the army would collapse and that didn't happen that's one reason why they were seriously defeated that indicates that they were expecting something that didn't happen and they were not willing or able with 180,000 people anyway to take even a portion of the country because that wasn't the plan plan was to knock over the government and come out now the out for territorially the only area they claim it's very obviously don by Zapparizia and that part of curse on the hill already

there's no reason for them to take anymore carcive would be impossible and silly and if they do get involved in kharkiv that might be the end of them that might be the mistake that turns the tide because they get stuck into that meat grinder and be there for years and I don't think the Russians want that and that hypothetical but either way the answer to that point which is always made we can't trust Putin okay well what what dictator can you trust then Are you, are we proposing an endless war? Is that the alternative that's proposed? Some sort of war of attrition like the Israelis and Egyptians have for a few years,

which cut the heart out of both of them, except carrying on for decades. No, I'm afraid too many people would answer that. Yes, they would. That's right. Yeah, as long as it's not your son that happens to be doing the fighting. Yeah. And that goes back to the point that you were making at the beginning, where you go, I don't know, man, nightlife in Kiev right now.

was not too bad for a rich kid. Or a rich kid. And there's plenty of those. One of my friends, her boyfriend was an artillery officer on the front. So there was an artillery spotter. It's a pretty dangerous job. And I said to Natalia, wasn't that. I could say Natalia, I seem to be seeing lots of young, fit, strong young men

riding around in this town by the thousand. And she said, some wounds you cannot see. So it's not as if I'm the only one noticing this. I think everybody's aware of that about this is a poor man's war, you know. And there are, don't get me wrong, there's some very brave ordinary people, middle, I say ordinary people, you know, city people, middle class people, but equally, I know plenty of people whose sons are all abroad and they're all military age, and they're not coming back. And I don't see a militarized society in those urban societies. The militarization takes place in the poor, the villagers, who have not.

never been to the city. And that asks other questions. Yeah. Well, they don't even know enough to ask why they're fighting, you know, some poor farmer. Same as it's always been, right? Yeah. And then I was at the swimming pool in Kiev when I was there last time. And a person who's a medical type and a doctor. And he said, you know, we take some of the wounded people to swimming pools and wounded soldiers. They've never seen swimming pool. They don't know what it is. What's this blue water? You know? Because as you know, the bulk of Ukraine is rural. By our standards, it's very poor and it's very parochial. And we've even got villages like that in England actually still, not quite as poor, but very parochial. And they do what they're told.

They do their best to defend their people. And they don't know. know, they don't know, they wouldn't know what to do in a city like Kiev or Leviv or Berlin. Yeah. In other words, they're as innocent as can be. They're just caught up in this thing by these chess players they've never heard of before. That's right. Yeah. It's the same conversation. This is what you told me about the farmers down in the Helmand province. How they never even can see. Oh, this was, and in fact, I think I saw the video of this where they're shown was it you that showed them

or you talked about somebody showed them a picture of 9-11 and they said is that Kabul they thought that downtown Manhattan might be Kabul

that's how they'd never had any clue what world they live in no clue what are you guys doing here? Well we're here

because of what happened to the Americans in 9-11 what's America it's a big country across the sea and what happened

to them well some some Arabs flew flew some planes into some of their towers okay then they'd say so you are here because some people from a foreign country

were attacked by people we've never met who flew a plane which I've never seen into some houses and killed some some foreigners that you don't know either is that why you're here in a valley a long way off and that's obviously because these people as intelligent as anyone else and they could do things you or I could never dream of nor would be capable of they're not stupid it's just that world. Yeah. And look, um, you know, it's not supposed to be an insult to the poor farmers of Ukraine, but just to say, as you said, they're very parochial. They live in a very small world and they're conscripts here. They're slaves and people just, you know, like for example,

not to get too far into this subject and I'm taking up probably too much of your time today, but it's a pleasure as always. In, um, it, there's so many civilians being killed in Gaza compared to whatever the ratio is to suppose that Hamas fighters being killed. But here, mostly the civilians have somewhere to run to, and it's mostly fighting age males in uniforms blowing each other up out there in the field. And yet they're slaves on both sides. They're government slaves, conscript draft armies of people who maybe some of them really are into it, but I think all of them must be presumed to not.

want to be there and somehow their lives are forfeit just because they're fighting aged male it's okay to kill them with a drone or a bomb or a thing you know on both sides as you talked about high tens of thousands on at least on both sides killed in this thing yeah yeah high tens of thousands probably hundreds of thousands i think that's a low figure that's the figure that could be demonstrated plus hundreds of thousands of injured who'll never get proper care and will languish away in their communities for the rest of their lives And when you know what happens to our veterans, well, it's not good. What happens to them isn't going to happen to the Ukrainian ones.

But, you know, I studied the First World War a lot. I had plenty of relatives in the First World War. And one of them was quite, he was a poet. And he was a poor peasant, it was a peasant, a family Irish background, a pet, but it's essentially peasant background. And this guy was told and believed that he was going to Flanders or wherever, he went to all the theatres to fight for the rights of small countries. Being Irish, you thought, okay, that's good, I can go and do that.

Of course, when he got there, he found out. what was what and we don't need to get into that but i remember one time my grandfather saying that he came home this extremely brave and very experienced infantry soldier and was so asked once how was it before he went away again to be killed and he said um bearing of mind his background was rural irish peasant he said uh if the bosh came over that wall there i wouldn't lift a finger to stop them he just couldn't describe how horrendous it was but of course when you do get to know through media and you live in one of these cities how awful it is and what the casualties are and what you can expect when you get there after three or four weeks training and being shelled all the time then you may

not be inclined to go when you're informed about what your chances are and what is likely to happen to you And what will happen to you if you get injured, which is to say you will be, you will be slung away as a veterans inevitably are in any country, but not given anything like the care, if you can call it that, that our veterans get. Then perhaps it isn't so appealing anymore. Yeah, no, it's obviously a horror show. And for all the high-tech cameras in everybody's pocket, we don't really see the inside of the military hospitals over there or anything like that. you know we don't really see the reality of what is happening we i have seen a lot of pictures of a lot of newly greatly expanded cemeteries i wouldn't know how to count them but i've met lots of lots of wounded veterans over there and uh very badly injured people

some of them would like to go back as soldiers do and others of them are well i simply can't speak to you as you know it's the same for our afghan and iraqi vets here you know many of them wanted to go back and see to the enemy with no legs and some of them that don't want to talk about anything, anything, and can't speak about anything because they know all I'm able to speak. So, you know, I'm sure that spectrum applies for Ukrainian veterans. Well, I would like to know what plans the Ukrainians have to look after their hundreds of thousands of injured veterans and what funding Congress is going to supply for them. I don't see any any any any any any enthusiasm for that kind of assistance to try and do something for the damage that's been

caused to these hundreds of thousands of young people. Now, some enterprising young lawyer needs to hook up the right hospital company with the special interest graft, grift contract here to take care of these poor guys. Yeah. Oh, man. All right. I mean, you know, Linda Bill, sorry, one other thing. When I wrote my book about Afghanistan, it's investment in blood and talked about the American cost.

And as you know, it's two trillion dollars. And I spoke to Linda Billms at Harvard, so it was kind enough to give me an interview. And she said, look, by far the biggest cost of any war is the injured. Right. And she said, so for American troops, this was more than 10 years ago and it's massively increased in centuries. We estimate that the cost of just the injured, of looking after the injured for the next 50 years will be in the region. This is 10 years ago, Scott, right? It's massively increased since then because of the cost.

all kinds of factors. She had $800,000 million. So it's the biggest single cost. And of course, that's what, that's what, 100,000 injured? And many of them not very badly injured, well, you know. Yeah. And not just 800 billion, but 800 billion plus interest. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. And that was a low figure, by the way. Yeah. 0.8 trillion. Yeah. But it's a single biggest cost, however you, however you measure it. It's never budgeted for. Yeah. And, you know, I don't know, I haven't really watched that much TV, but I think it's fair to say as a rule of thumb that the news doesn't show inside Walter Reed these days either. Nobody has to face up to what happened to the American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, much less what happened to the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, you know. Well, that's not our problem.

Yeah. And so it will be in Ukraine, as you say. Yeah, that's exactly how it'll be in Ukraine. All right. Well, thank you so much, Frank, for getting in touch. It's great to talk to you. I really appreciate your time on the show and everything that you've done. Always a privilege and a pleasure, Scott. Thank you very much and good luck with all the work you do. Thank you, you too. All right you guys, that is Frank Ledwidge. He wrote, oh, he's a lieutenant commander in the British Navy intelligence there. And he wrote investment in blood and losing small wars. The Scott Horton show, anti-war radio, can be heard on KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A. APSRadio.com, anti-war.com,

Scotthorton.org, and Libertarian Institute.org.