Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 5/2/22 Douglas Macgregor on New Russia and “Hatred in the Plural”

Episode Date: May 3, 2022

Scott interviews Retired Colonel Douglas Macgregor about the war in Ukraine. Scott recently interviewed William Arkin who believes the Russians are actually losing this war. Macgregor has a very different take, and Scott gives him the opportunity to address Arkin’s argument. Macgregor shares his view of how the war has unfolded so far and how he expects it to evolve. He believes the Russians will pivot and attempt to occupy Eastern and Southern Ukraine. He thinks a battle for Odessa is looming and that the Russians will succeed in this endeavor. Scott then asks about reports about the Biden Administration’s new overt intentions to fund another color revolution in Belarus. Macgregor gives his take on how it may happen and then predicts that the Kremlin will respond with similar attempts in Latin America. Lastly, Scott and Macgregor talk about some of the institutional barriers facing those who want to change the foreign policy status quo in Washington.  Discussed on the show: Scott’s Interview with William Arkin Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky Douglas Macgregor, Col. (ret.) is a senior fellow with The American Conservative, the former advisor to the Secretary of Defense in the Trump administration, a decorated combat veteran, and the author of five books. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: The War State and Why The Vietnam War?, by Mike Swanson; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; EasyShip; Free Range Feeder; Thc Hemp Spot; Green Mill Supercritical; Bug-A-Salt and Listen and Think Audio. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjYu5tZiG. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 dot com slash scott horton's show all right you guys on the line i've got colonel douglas mcgregor retired u.s army and author of the margin of victory and regular writer at the american conservative

magazine welcome back to the show doug how you doing super thanks Really appreciate you joining us on the show here. And obviously the major subject is the war in Ukraine. And I don't know if you heard, but I did an interview with William Arkin, who I like. Sometimes he's a conventional thinker, but he's got his own sources. And he definitely seems to be beholden to no one. He's done some really great work in the past. So even though I don't agree with him, I do respect him a lot.

But he has what I would consider the most credible. version of the establishment take on the war in Ukraine. That is the Ukrainians with the Americans' intelligence and weapons help have really been taking it to the Russians and have frustrated the Russians' invasion in major ways and that casualties are very high and these sorts of things. And I know these arguments can tend to be sort of binary, but I would hasten to point out that he said the fact that Russia's proving to be such a paper tiger means, no, we don't need a single penny of increase in military spending, despite what the Hawks are saying. And he said, we should be negotiating now. We should be giving Putin an out and we should be coming to the table. So in other

words, he agrees with a lot of the common narrative about how the war is going, but he is not on board for the current consensus about, yeah, let's keep it going, which seems to be most of what we get out of the rest of D.C. But so anyway, I just wonder, with your expertise and the close attention, I know you're paying, if you could give us a good thumbnail sketch of how you think the war is going so far for the Ukrainians, for the Russians. I think even the Biden government is saying that they expected they would be supporting an insurgency by now, not still supporting the Ukrainian government at war. So what do you think? Well, first, I think it's useful to point out to Mark, and that if you were willing to go in and fundamentally reform and reorganize the armed

forces, you could save enormous quantities of money and ultimately extract more capability. That's the first thing. And that's something no one's been willing to do. The overhead in the armed forces is just astonishing. I mean, we've got 44 four-star generals and admirals for a force of about 1.1 million. And at the height of the Second World War, when we're We had 12.2 million in uniform in 1943, 44, we only had a total of seven four stars. That in itself should give you a snapshot of just how corrupt and bureaucratized and sclerotic the American military has become. So Arkin needs to back away from the notion of, well, we can afford to cut spending. Of course we can.

But you need to do it intelligently. and you need to fundamentally reform, reorganize, restructure the military. Yeah. That's the first thing up front. Secondly, I think he was just saying, on that point, Doug, I think he was just saying because the common narrative is, oh, we need a huge boost in spending now because of how dangerous Russia is. And he's saying, eh, they don't seem so dangerous to me.

Maybe we don't need a boost at all, you know, is kind of the point he was making in the, in the face of that propaganda. I don't necessarily agree with him. And I think it's a lot of the assumptions about what the Russians have. have or haven't done have turned out to be very erroneous. What I would say is that the Russians went into Ukraine with a set of goals that are no longer relevant. And if you go back and look at the original demands, they were really pretty straightforward. One, we would like Ukraine to be neutral. And in fact, we know that at some point during the negotiations in Istanbul,

the Ukrainian representative said that that's something that Zelensky and company would agree to, neutrality. Secondly, you have the two so-called breakaway republics. They wanted those breakaway republics to enjoy autonomy. They didn't even say independence. And of course, they've been very concerned about ensuring that Russians are no longer treated as second-class citizens in Ukraine, essentially to reign in this Ukrainianization, if you will, of Russians. And then finally recognize the legitimacy of Russian control of Crimea. which historically as being part of Russia was never really part of Ukraine at all.

So those are fairly modest demands. They're gone now. The negotiations failed miserably. We stonewalled everything. And Boris Johnson, our stalwart to lie in London, has cooperated with us to stonewall everything. So Russians are now in this for something a little more profound and more important, I would say.

So when they went in, though, with those goals in mind, they really, really confined their activities and operations to the periphery. And they went in on a very broad front. When I say broad front, I'm talking about the distance between Kansas City, Missouri and New York City. And they went in with these battalion tactical groups. And the idea was, let's not inflict any damage we don't need to. Let's give the Ukrainian forces that are there an opportunity to join us or surrender. and after all, most of the people in the areas, particularly in the eastern and southeastern parts of Ukraine or Russian anyway, we don't want to kill them, we don't want to harm them.

And we want to end this as soon as possible and make it clear that we're serious and we think they'll come and negotiate an end to this. Well, all of those assumptions which underpin the opening two to three weeks of the operation, as you know, turned out to be completely misguided. And one of the things that we didn't know at the time, the Russians didn't know it, I don't think we understood it, was that the Russians that live in Eastern Ukraine listened carefully to what Putin said, and they concluded that if the Russians were going to come into Eastern Ukraine but not stay, then under no circumstances would they cooperate with or support the Russian forces? Because if they did, once the Russians withdrew, the Ukrainian secret police would come in and execute all of them. So on that basis, Putin inadvertently conveyed the wrong message. So whatever support in a significant way that he might have gotten people withheld it. And then finally, this dispersion of force across this vast area was somewhat effective in terms of forcing the Ukrainians into towns and cities and urban areas. But it slowed everything down because what they really wanted to do at the outset was to drive the Ukrainian forces into the

open into the rolling open countryside of eastern Ukraine, which would have been ideal for the Russians, because that's exactly the setting in which they can, you know, decisively win. So you put those things together. Everything tended to take longer. But now I think we're learning that much of this celebratory language coming out of Kiev was, in fact, entirely fallacious. In other words, that all of these weapon systems that we've been providing have been somewhat effective, but not on the scale that we thought. Most of the claims of Ukrainian victories anywhere were ridiculous. They've never launched any serious counterattack on the operational level. Everything's been purely tactical on local initiative. And now what's left to the

Ukrainian armed forces in southeastern Donbos is being slowly grounded into pieces, which is is the final phase of the operation from the standpoint of the Russians. And then there was also this enormously misleading assumption that the Russians were interested in taking Kiev. They weren't. What they wanted to do, though, is to prevent any Ukrainian forces in northern Ukraine from being diverted south and east to deal with the real Russian goals and objectives. So I think you put it all together, you have this increasingly erroneous picture that we have in the West that Arkin was signing on for, I think at some point in the very near future,

people are going to wake up and they're going to be shocked that it just wasn't true. Sort of along the lines of, and I'm sure you saw this, the ghost fighter of Kiev, which is all utter and complete nonsense. I think we're going to see a lot more evidence for that sort of thing.

And I think this will come to a conclusion because the Europeans don't want to support perpetual war in you, The German chancellor just yesterday spoke out and said that famine is now confronting much of the world because Ukraine and Russia aren't able to ship out the vast quantities of grain and so forth that they have in the past. And of course, Germany right now, my friends in Germany are telling me that their shelves in the stores are thinly stocked. You can't buy any cooking oil. You can't get a hold of things that you normally could to bake. the Germans are not accustomed to this.

They've enjoyed a very high standard of living and there's a lot of discontent. Then you add to that the 10 million Ukrainian refugees and several million are moving west and they've already begun in Germany essentially assigning people to apartment blocks, Ukrainian refugees, where they've already got large numbers of Muslim refugees.

There's been an uptick and the criminality as a result, rapes and murders and so forth. it's a very ugly picture in central East Europe. So I just don't think that whatever we want to do in Ukraine, that the Europeans that live on the continent are going to be, allow themselves, if you will, to be dragged into a perpetual war there. So I think the whole picture over the next week or two is going to change dramatically in the West. I sure hope that's right.

And to go back to the battle space so far here, I think that you and Arkin are probably in quite a bit of agreement about the failures of the Russian invasion when you talk about the mistaken assumptions that they made about how to do it invading on such a broad front. And I know you've criticized before their plan where they didn't call in air power. I guess for public relations reasons, the Russian Richard Pearl promised Putin they'll greet us with flowers and candy or something like that. So they didn't want to blow that with a shock and awe campaign. But then they really could have used one. But then one thing that you guys definitely are in disagreement about then, and by the way, like, almost all of his sources in his article, I think, are all from the Defense Intelligence Agency. So they're certainly, you know, throwing cold water on a lot of the hype from the State Department at the same time.

But one thing was he thought that they really were making a move on Kiev, and they just ran out of steam there. He said it was way too many people that they and too much equipment that they had dispatched toward Kiev for that to have been. been just a diversion. But I had read, you know, other experts saying that they thought that really was just a diversion, just as you said, to prevent the forces in northern Ukraine from bolstering those in the South as they're taking Maripole and the so-called Lambridge to Crimea and all of that. So I guess it is just tea leaves, though, right? Like you can't exactly be sure what they were doing or you can. What do you think? Well, unless you see a copy of the op plan, the original operational plan, and you see the commander's guidance, which would have come

from the top in Moscow regarding what they wanted the forces to do, we haven't seen those things. I haven't read them. So I have to operate on secondhand information that comes to me from Russia, Ukraine and Poland, and to a lesser extent in the Balkans from Serbia. I don't have first-hand access to that sort of thing. So we're all in the dark a little bit about just what it was that they were told to do, but I think it's very clear that there was a deliberate attempt to avoid unnecessary collateral damage. And I think there's a tendency in the West to describe the Russians in terms that would have probably fit the Soviet military very well during the Second World War, but really doesn't fit today's Russian military. This business

of shooting people and mass rapes and all these claims I think are going to be exposed as utter nonsense, is that that was not ever the intention of the Russians going in. Now they're talking about staying. And I think that's what's really important, Scott. And for a second, I'd just like to point out that I think what we're going to see happen because of the failure of these negotiations and the unwillingness to sit down and compromise on anything from the Ukrainian side is that most of southeastern Ukraine will now be permanently occupied by the Russians. They'll probably declare it another republic. They might call it the Russian Republic of Ukraine. Who knows what they'll call it? But I think something like that's

going to happen where everything from Odessa to the east and then from the south, from Odessa up to Karkov, all of that will be Russian. The areas to the west of Karkov and just south of Kiev, which are Ukrainian, fundamentally Ukrainian, they will remain Ukrainian. I don't see any evidence that the Russians want to include them under any circumstances. So they're only interested in those areas where the population is overwhelmingly Russian in language and culture. But including the city of the Donvoss. Including Odessa, though, you're saying.

Yes. Oh, Odessa is a Russian city. Yeah. It was never Ukrainian, just like Karkov. Those are Russian cities. And they are going to end up under Russian control. I don't see any evidence to the contrary. Well, and then that, that means.

that in that case, they'll take the whole southern coast all the way to Transnistria, right, in this breakaway region on the border between Moldova and Ukraine? Well, I think that that will de facto be the outcome. But I don't think at the outset of this operation, there was an intention to do that. Again, I think they thought they were going to go in for a short period of time, make their point, negotiate an end of this thing, and achieve the three goals that I mentioned to you earlier. Those goals, obviously have not been achieved. So now you're going to see something else that looks a lot like something that Putin and other Russians have talked about for a long time. It's called

New Russia, Nova Russia. And those are the areas that were conquered by the armies of Catherine the Great. They were always supposed to be populated with Russians. And in fact, for the most part, they were. But then they fell under Ukrainian control. And we don't need to go back over that long history that explains how a place like Crimea that had no connection to Ukraine at all became part of Ukraine. But I think it's important to understand that the terms of, that's what's the right word, the terms under which this conflict will end have changed in Russian lines. Which means it's going to take a hell of a lot longer too. And to go back, and this is a point where you and Arkin are in agreement as well, I believe. But I think you referred to this previously,

was it was these claims of genocide in the town of Bucca that then scotch the negotiations, which you're saying the next step from there is, since they're not going to get recognition of their sovereignty over Crimea and recognition of the so-called independence of the Donbass and neutrality treaty, since that's dead, now they're going all the way to Transnistria, including Odessa. Yeah, I think so. They're going to turn Ukraine. into a landlocked country. And I think this is part of their determination to marginalize this Ukrainian state.

So Ukraine will consist of what it historically has been, which is largely everything west of the, the upper river and just above this sort of belt that runs across the top of the Black Sea, because those areas were always Russian. Before they were Russian, they were tartar and Turkic. So now you're right. You're going to end up with this rump Ukrainian state. They'll control Odessa, Chernigov, these areas that are just a little east of Kiev and south of Kiev, where the population is definitively Ukrainian, but the rest of it will be Russian. And as I said, I probably call it a republic or something else. But why would you leave at this point if you're Russian?

If you're dealing with the kind of resistance and hatred that Zelensky represented, resents and that we have been demonstrating, why would you ever want to give up the eastern areas where conceivably we were going to put in missiles that could reach the Russian nuclear deterrent force in the space of a few minutes? And that was the great fear. Yeah, but then again, they don't, am I right? As of now, they don't control the entire Dombas, and didn't they just lose their best battleship? And are they actually really capable of, uh, marching all the way to Transnistria? Oh, I don't think they're marching to Transnistria.

I don't think they need to. Transnistria has about 1,500 Russian troops in it. The Russian population there is obviously pro-Russian. They are in communication. I don't see them marching to it per se. No, but I mean, I just meant taking all of that land between Crimea and Moldova. In other words, you know, finishing, seizing that belt you're talking about. Oh, I think so.

Most of those areas are not heavily populated. If you visit that part of the world, you discover that most of the population lives in cities and towns, and there's almost nothing between them for long, long stretches of terrain. And there are very few good roads, even now. You have a good road that runs into and out of each town and city, but not much else. So in order to control those areas, it doesn't take the enormous numbers of forces that you would think. What you have to do, though, is you have to root the enemy out from inside these urban areas, and that's what they've been doing. Give me just a minute here.

Listen, I don't know about you guys, but part of running the Libertarian Institute is sending out tons of books and other things to our donors. And who wants to stand in line all day at the post office? But stamps.com? Sorry, but their website is a total disaster. I couldn't spend another minute on it. But I don't have to either, because there's easy ship.com. EasyShip.com is like Stamps.com, but their website isn't terrible. Go to Scott Horton.org slash Easy Ship.

Hey, y'all Scott here. You know the Libertarian Institute has published a few great books. Mine, fools errand, enough already, and the great Ron Paul. Two by our executive editor, Sheldon Richmond, coming to Palestine and what social animals owe to each other. And of course, no quarter, the ravings of William Norman Grigg, our late-great co-fellate founder and managing editor at the Institute. Coming very soon in the new year will be the excellent voluntarious handbook edited by Keith Knight, a new collection of my interviews about nuclear weapons, one more collection of essays by Will Grigg, and two new books about Syria by the great William

Van Wagonin and Brad Hoff and his co-author Zachary Wingard. That's Libertarian Institute.org slash books. I mean, I hate to ask, what does this mean for the city of Odessa? That's where my wife is from. She's terrified that this city is just going to be completely pulverized to bits, Doug. I hope not. You know, look, nobody wants to do that, at least of all the Russians, because, as I said, Odessa is historically a Russian city. But remember that back in 2014, the last Russians had kept fighting against the Ukrainian takeover

were all gathered into a building and burned alive. These kinds of things did not go unnoticed in Moscow. So hopefully they won't have to do that, but I would expect that there will be fighting. The question is how much it's difficult to know. I mean, clearly the Ukrainians have an enormous problem now trying to reinforce any of their forces from Western Ukraine. I mean, this is the problem with all of the new equipment that's being delivered. It's one thing to dump it on the doorstep in the vicinity of Lavoff. It's quite another to move it hundreds of miles to the east.

East. So I think that's a huge problem. And secondly, a lot of this equipment will be destroyed either in route by Russian air power or missile power or on the ground near Levovoff. And that's the other. Personally, I'm very concerned about Levovof. It used to be called Lembek under the Austrians. It's a beautiful city. And I would be very, very disappointed if that place were destroyed. But again, it's being used as a waste station and a redistribution point for the movement of all of this Western equipment. And then finally, I think we have to point out that you talk about casualties, we estimate that for about every run Russian casualty, there being three to four Ukrainian casualties. And that seems to be rising dramatically as we talk. The problem is that

even if you delivered the equipment forward, there were very few people. there that are trained to use it anymore. And it takes time to learn how to operate these howitzers. I mean, I listen to a retired four-star talk about delivering 500 tanks to the Ukrainians. Well, you can deliver 500 tanks to them, assuming they even get to where they need to go, the crews need to be trained. You just don't step on this equipment and magically operate. It's not like, you know, your family car.

There seems to be a failure to understand that sort of thing. Yeah. You know, I read a thing by George Friedman from Stratford that someone sent me, where he was saying that the fact that Tony Blinken and Lloyd Austin, the Secretary of State and Defense, went to Kiev and that they've announced this new increase of arms. You mentioned the howitzers. That's a step up from the javelins and so forth we've been given them. That this represents increased confidence on the Americans part, that they can really help the Ukrainian military or maybe even push. the Russians back. That's at least what the Americans believe at this point, Doug. I think anybody who believes that is delusional. But we have a lot of delusional people in Washington, as you know. There's a reason we call the place Versailles on the Potomac. And I don't see any evidence for that at all. I think it's a desperate attempt to forestall a negotiated end to this conflict. And you do that by promising enormous assistance and creating the illusion that you can actually influence the outcome when you can't. There is only one way to influence the outcome and make it what we would

like, and that is to commit U.S. forces to the fight. I'll be perfectly blunt with you. And even then, that would be very difficult for us. Our ground force is in no position to cover those vast distances and come to grips with the Russians. And probably much of it would be decimated or lost on the ground before it arrived. I mean, from the Russian standpoint, if you can control and dominate eastern Ukraine and keep it clear of NATO and U.S. forces, that means that you've got several hundred miles between the Dieppe River and the Polish border. That's fairly open. It's easily targeted. It's easily observed. From their vantage point, that's a good defensive outcome for Russia. So in other words, you're saying they're not going to settle for the

bombast now. They are going to take everything east of the NEPA eventually here. Well, as I told you, it'll be those areas in the north around Kiev to a little east of it and south of it, which are truly Ukrainian, by the way, and the Russians know this, they're not going to take those areas. But, you know, once you get to Karkov, I mean, imagine the shape of this future republic looks something like an overstuffed banana that reaches from the North, northeast all the way down to the southeast and then across to Odessa. I think that's what you're looking at. And you can go to the map.

So all of your viewers can Google it and Google new Russia, Novosia. It goes back hundreds of years. That's what Putin, I think, is now going to hang on to. Yeah. Hey, is it really right, Doug? Again, U.S. Army colonel, great hero of the big tank battle of Iraq War I and extremely experienced in all these things.

is it really right? They had just listened to you and negotiated in good faith last December that none of this would have happened. Oh, listen, that's exactly right. I mean, the notion of prolonging this war has been a tragedy for everyone. We see the consequences for our allies and friends in Europe have been disastrous economically. This was never necessary. We could have easily avoided this, but we have also decided to ignore anything that the Russian said for the last 20 years. And certainly at the least since 2007, what's now unfolded was always visibly on the horizon. We should have should have forestalled this. There was no reason to insist on dragging Ukraine into NATO, completely unnecessary.

Now, you know, I saw this thing. I don't know if you saw Elijah Magnié highlighted on Twitter last night, a piece in France 24, I think it was, about. how, I'm sorry, I need to memorize this lady's name. She's the wife of the famous dissident in Belarus, who they tried to do this color-coded type revolution in 2020. Yes. And she was saying she just had a great talk with Anthony Blinken, our secretary state, and he promised all new economic and technological support and so forth. Can you, first of all, Doug, just tell the people, where is Belarus and what difference does it make here?

Well, Belarus is a nation of about 8 million people, and about half of it used to be part of what we called the Polish-Lithuanian Congress or Confederation for hundreds of years. It's a poor country, but it is rich in resources, certainly agriculturally. And if you put Belarusia together with Russia and Ukraine, then you account for probably 40% of the world's grains and fertilizer and so forth, along with some other minerals and metals that are very useful. But again, Belarusia has been largely russified now, certainly since the Second World War, even before.

and the notion that we should try to break this away from Russia in order to create new trouble for Moscow is nothing short of ridiculous and crazy. I don't understand this unreasoned hatred of everything Russian and Putin. It doesn't make any sense. It's unnecessary. I mean, most of the world, you know, here's a news flash.

Scott, as I'm sure you're aware, most of the world is not a liberal democracy. Never has been. And we managed to do business with most of the world on any given day. There's no reason why we can't do business with these countries, Russia, Ukraine and Russia, and there's no reason why there should be a war there. But for some reason, we've decided that as long as Russia is not a reflection of what we think it ought to be, that we have some sort of right or moral obligation.

to do whatever damage we can to it. I think it's a recipe for disaster for us. I don't think it will last. I think it will go away because we don't need to spend an hour talking about all the problems that we have here inside the United States, economic, social, political, and so forth. And I think those issues here in the United States will overwhelm what we are trying to do in foreign and defense policy. Yeah.

Well, that's what Ron Paul always said. The Empire will come home, not because they wised up and listened to him, but just because eventually the dollar will break. our socialists will have to hitchhike home. Exactly. I always told people, you know, said, when did the British leave India? And they left India when the debt to GDP ratio after World War II in 1946 was about 240%. In other words, the British absolutely could not afford to stay there.

And the interesting thing is that, of course, during both world wars, what dominated British strategic thinking was, quote, unquote, the empire. and at the heart of the empire was control of India. And yet the war ended. Britain was broken financially, ruined financially, reduced to the level of a second or third rate power. And they had to do something. They had to cut their losses and they got out of India. I suspect we'll see something similar happen over the next year. Boy, I like that timetable.

I hope you're right about that. But, you know, I'll tell you on Belarus, Bruce, the defense expert Lyle Goldstein from the Naval War College and writer at national interest and other places, I asked him, hey, you know, Putin could have taken the Don Bass back in 2014 and 15.

He could have just taken a magic marker and said, this is independent now, it belongs to us, it's a protectorate now, much of it anyway. So I think I have a lot of reasons why he didn't do that then, but why did he do it now? What change?

And what's the big deal anyway? And Goldstein said to me, he thinks it was the latest attempt at the coup in Belarus in 2020. That was the final straw, not just for Putin, but as he put it for the entire national security establishment in Moscow, that these Americans are just psycho. They are absolutely relentless. They'll stop at nothing. Again, you mention maps. Everybody pull up your map and look at where Belarus is. Here's America trying to take Belarus away.

the most important and closest ally, more important to Russia even than Ukraine is. And Goldstein said this was the final straw. They said the Americans are absolutely out of control. We have to draw a line in Ukraine now before it's too late. And you know what, isn't it right, Doug? That even just in January, on the eve of war here, when the Russians were building up and you were warning that,

hey, they mean it, they tried to do a coup in Kazakhstan. Yeah. I don't know if we know that was the CIA, but it sure looked like it, right? Well, you're talking about something that we call the National Endowment for Democracy. And that thing has agents and agencies in many, many countries. And it's effectively, I guess you could call it a CIA front. But they're heavily engaged in promoting revolution in places like Kazakhstan or Bila Russia, where we think we have a strategic interest in destabilized.

the area and replacing governments with governments friendly to us. But I just want to say that, you know, Lyle Goldstein is a friend and somebody I, whose wisdom I take very seriously. If you had to pick someone to consult on these matters, I don't think you could do better than Lyle. So I happen to agree with Lyle. I think he's very right. And anything that Lyle tells you, you can definitely take to the bank.

You know, there's a great deal more about Russia than I do. The only thing I would say is that what's happened now, which is very bad, Scott, is that the relations between us and Russia are poisonous. If you're in Moscow today, first of all, you're winning, you're not losing. Ukraine is going to lose most of its territory east of the upper river. The Russians aren't leaving. Russia can no more lose a war in Ukraine than we could lose a war in Mexico. And rebuilding any kind of relationship with Russia is going to be very, very difficult in the future. And so I would begin to look at any number of areas where the Russians will probably intervene to do us harm, frankly.

And the most obvious and easiest place to do that is in Latin America. And I think we're going to have a lot of trouble in Central America. We've got it there now anyhow, certainly with a drug cartel. and this organized crime state in Mexico. But I just have this terrible sinking feeling that there's going to be a certain amount of payback. Does that make sense to you? Sure.

I mean, this was, you know, frankly, the failed promise of Donald Trump was that he's not a senator. Hell, he's not even a governor. He's not married in any way to any stupid decision that Bill Clinton, George Bush, or Barack Obama ever made. You talk about a clean break. We could have just made a clean break with all of this.

But he just didn't prioritize it. He could have made you the Secretary of Defense instead of James Mattis, and here we are. Well, Scott, that's what I was going to tell you, you know, that I think Donald Trump, if he were here, would agree with you. But he made serious mistakes in terms of selecting people to serve in his cabinet. And he also overlooked the fact that you have an entrenched bureaucracy. that has grown up over the last three decades that has a political agenda as well as an economic one. And people forget that when Andrew Jackson came in, he's the man we associate the so-called spoil system with, we forget that he replaced a government with his supporters that had been

entrenched for 20 years. Adams had built this government that was fundamentally opposed to everything that Andrew Jackson wanted to do. But Jackson did something that Donald Trump didn't do. He went in there with an axe and he cleaned it out and he replaced it with loyalists. Even loyalists, quite frankly, in many cases, were not ideally suited to the jobs because he understood that the only way it's going to accomplish anything is to have people in those positions that were loyal. Donald Trump's figured that out.

I think he understands that, but he didn't at the time. And as a result, no matter what he wanted to do. do. He was actively and routinely subverted. To be fair to the man, to be fair, they framed him for treason, which is kind of a big deal. And talk about, and they even said, uh, they did this in the first place to rein him in, to prevent him from especially making peace with Russia. Absolutely. So absolutely. And the only way, they say that about all of us, Scott, anyone who doesn't support damaging, harming, threatening Russia is obviously a Putin agent. I mean, this is ridiculous. And when people accuse me of this sort of thing, and I've had people on the hill

are you on the payroll of the Russians? How much money have they given me anything? I'm not on anybody's payroll. And I don't necessarily love Russians. I don't hate Russians. I actually grew up, Scott, with large numbers of Ukrainians, whom I really like. very much. But I'm an American, and I'm trying to look at this from the vantage point of an American who sees no benefit to us, to our European partners, or to the Ukrainians and the Russians, to kill each other in this pointless and self-defeating war. Right. Sorry, hang on just one second. Hey, guys, anybody who signs up to listen to this show by way of Patreon will be invited to join the Reddit group. And I'm going to start posting stuff over there more. That's patreon.com

Scott Horton's show. Thanks. Hey, y'all, Libertasbella.com is where you get Scott Horton's show and Libertarian Institute shirts, sweatshirts, mugs, and stickers and things, including the great top lobstas designs as well. See, that way it says on your shirt, why you're so smart. Libertas Bella, from the same great folks who bring you ammo.com for all your ammunition needs, too. That's Libertasbella.com.

You guys check it out. This is so cool. The great Mike Swanson's new book is finally out. He's been working on this thing for years, and I admit I haven't read it yet. I'm going to get to it as soon as I can, but I know you guys are going to want to beat me to it. It's called Why the Vietnam War, nuclear bombs and nation building in Southeast Asia, 1945 through 61. And as he explains on the back here, all of our popular culture and our retellings and our history and our movies

are all about the height of the American war there in, say, 1965. through 1974, but how do we get there? Why is this all Harry Truman's fault? Find out in why the Vietnam War by the great Mike Swanson, available now. Why just survive back to school when you can thrive by creating a space that does it all for you, no matter the size. Whether you're taking over your parents' basement or moving to campus, IKEA has hundreds of design ideas and affordable options to complement any budget. After all, you're in your small space. Sarah. It's time to own it. Shop now at IKEA.ca. Well, it's not just that. You grew up in the Cold War in the Army. That's kind of a big deal. And as I pointed out, the last time I interviewed in the

introduction there, that you had worked very hard on war plans for if we ever do fight the Russians, this is how we do it. And you took that responsibility on because you knew that this is the mess they've got us in. They've signed up the Baltic states to join NATO and the way I know how you guys are. You talk about my men. If my men are going to go out there and fight, they're going to do it on my best plan, rather than this one that we got handed down to us from some inept person before. And so for them to accuse you of putting Russia first, when you literally put the finishing touches on if we got to kill the Russians, this is how we do it. It's pretty damn preposterous. And as you said, as you said before on the show, that wasn't out of any animus toward the Russians.

That's your job. You're a colonel in the Army. Exactly. And I think this is the problem we have right now. Everything is emotion. And the mainstream media has worked tirelessly to whip up hatred on a scale that I haven't seen in my lifetime. I mean, the last time I recollect anything like this was at the beginning of the Vietnam War, 65, 66, 66, And I'm sure the few people who are still alive today who went through the Second World War will recollect the kind of hatred that was mobilized against the Japanese after Pearl Harbor.

But other than those two examples, I can't think of anything in my lifetime that even comes close to what's being done by the mainstream media towards Russia. Can you? Well, 20 years ago right now, I mean, the year 2002 was just incredible. I'll never forget it, the way that they bamboozle the American people into war. And, you know, yeah, it is. It's, well, I don't know. Maybe it's just because I don't watch TV anymore. Ever since Hillary Clinton ran for president, I just turned the thing off.

But that might be part of it. I'm not feeling the spirit of fear as much. There's, sure, a hell of a lot of righteousness and, you know, self-righteousness and demonization of Russia. But the way that they made it seem like we have to preemptively, attack Iraq before they attack us and that the average housewife should be afraid of Muslims that she sees at the grocery store and this kind of level of fear that they pushed 20 years ago to me is still the Guinness book I mean I don't know who could be well I think there's a lot no I think I think there's a lot of truth in that although I would tell you that when I talk to people

they that are watching the mainstream media and they approach me and say you know how can you say these things? Why don't you think we should fight the Russians and why shouldn't we cooperate closely and work with Ukrainians against the Russia, so forth? I'm always inclined to say to them, you know, have you learned nothing over the last 21 years? How many times does the media have to lie to you before you wake up? How many times did the same retired general officers who said over and over and over again, we are so successful in Iraq and Afghanistan. We've built successful Iraqi and Afghan armies. And we are bringing liberal democracy, human rights, and God knows what else to these places. And it was all a lie. None of it made sense. It was

never true, along with the mushroom cloud over Baghdad and all this nonsense, said, look, have you learned nothing? And they sort of stare at you and they be, you know, It's almost as though the circuits are now overloaded and they can't imagine that they're being lied to a gain on the same scale, if not worse than they were previously. Right. Yeah, it really is something. It's just the power of television, I guess. I mean, this is what we all think, right?

Well, people love to hate in the plural. You know, my family where I was raised, said, look, if you feel compelled to hate someone, for something they've done, that's one thing. Hatred is probably a bad emotion, but for an individual, at least we can understand that. But don't hate in the plural. Hatred in the plural produces things like the Holocaust

or the destruction of the Ukrainians in the Holodubour or the Armenian genocide. This is the sort of hatred in the plural that you want to avoid. But that's exactly what I see happening. Yeah. Now, Doug, before we went on, we had a little conversation where you talked about how great my books are. But what was important was you said that America's Middle East terror wars over the last 30 years, that this was all about China. And I think implicitly had something to do with Russia, although we know they're hydrocarbon exporters. But this was still the unending Cold War, even though actually,

America's Cold War against China nominally ended 50 years ago, not 30, back when Nixon and Kissinger made friends with Mao. Yeah, well, if you go back to the 90s and you look at the strategic situation, most people had written off Russia. It collapsed in ruins. It fell into chaos and disorder and criminality. So people sort of took the position, well, you know, Russia is, Russia is out of the picture now. China is the potential danger of the future. And what we need to do is to encircle China as much as we can with our alliances, but to control most importantly the mineral resources, the oil and gas resources in the Middle East and the Near East. If we can control those, then we have China in a vice. And I think that,

was on people's minds and that tended to animate lots of behavior. What no one expected was that Putin would show up and he would frankly restore order and end the chaos, anarchy in Russia, if not all the criminality, certainly the corruption, but he certainly rescued Russia from the ruins of the 20th century. There's no question about that. And then I don't think people ever ever imagined that he and Beijing would become close to eyes, at least to form a coalition that makes them fundamentally impregnable. I mean, that's Eurasia, the largest landmass in the world, China plus Russia and Central Asia. And that's frightened everyone. And they're now trying to figure out how do we deal with this. And of course, they made all the wrong decisions. And they see

threats and enemies everywhere where they may not actually exist. I mean, if you look at China, there are 1.4 billion people in that place. Every day is a challenge for the government just to maintain control, maintain a sense of order. I mean, it's miraculous that the place operates as well as it does. But we keep imputing to them a, you know, program for global conquest. Maybe global enrichment, but global conquest, I certainly don't see it. But, you know, it's almost as though we are in this permanent hunt for monsters to destroy overseas. Are we not? Yeah. Well, and as someone with this much experience in the military and in these kind of powerful circles in Washington, D.C., is it really all just as simple as the military firms, the military industrial complex firms have captured the U.S.

government and they set the policy well if that were true you'd have a different military from the one that you have right now because the military seems to be in the grip of the left and its social engineering policies in a way that was never the case 30 years ago well they keep buying f-35s oh well yeah well that's different because that puts money in people's pockets and uh you know a lot of those pockets are on the hill a lot of those pockets live in uh great falls and mclean and other places and A lot of those pockets are in Manhattan and the suburbs of various cities. So I think it's a little more evenly spread than to say one has captured the other. I think we have a very unhealthy, self-licking ice cream cone.

And the only way to break it, I think, is to bankrupt it. And that brings us back to where we were at the beginning of this thing, that I think bankruptcy will ultimately put an end to it. But then you need some leadership to ensure that it, it doesn't spring back to life too soon. Yeah. You know, it seems like even the phrase conflict of interest has been banished from the English language, like in 1984. People just don't even use that phrase anymore because it just describes too many things.

So it's just, it's not even a conflict anymore. It's just interests. I don't know. But I think you're right. We need to make that scandalous again somehow, figure out a way. And that's the real challenge is to figure out a way to break apart those special. interests from the policy that are obviously against the interests of the broader America.

Well, every time you bring a retired general on television or colonel, they should list underneath the name, you know, what are his affiliations? And if you did that, that would change the complexion of things. And I know, interestingly enough, this is about 15 years ago, CNN actually tried to do that. because at that time I had come on several times with Aaron Burnett and others and they asked me to write down my sources of income where I'd worked and so forth

because they were trying to deal with this issue that you're pointing out, the conflict of interest and then for some reason they dropped it. I think that's unfortunate because I think the American people need to know. Same thing with these think tanks. If you come from ex think tank, all these think tanks in Washington, And think tank, of course, is an oxymoron.

They're advocacy tanks, as Ambassador Chaz Freeman likes to call them. And these advocacy tanks are bankrolled. So what are the sources of the money? And there are big chunks of change in each of these places that tell you what the agenda is. And when you listen to these people, you're listening to the agenda of the donors. I mean, everything in Washington is about donors. Remember Ralph Nader? Ralph Nader was always one of my heroes

I didn't agree with everything he said but I liked him because he said Washington is corporate occupied territory he's right still is yeah all right one more and I don't know if you're expert on this or not but I bet you know a thing or two about it

there's a recent very popular Twitter thread going around among the center left Democrat types that says you know what if you game theory it out probably most of the Russian nukes are duds and wouldn't even be useful in a war and so maybe we don't need to even worry about

mutually assured destruction anymore because the half-life of Tridium is this and the shelf life of one of their you know, X, Y model, H-bombs is N and whatever and so maybe we don't need to worry about the Russian's capability to wipe our civilization off the face of the earth. Mr. McGregor, what do you think?

I think we should offer those people, you know, in all expenses paid vacation to an asylum somewhere. Thought you were going to say something like that. I think that's a very dangerous way to think, because if there's one element of the Russian military that is very carefully policed and administered and well-officered, it's the strategic rocket forces. and those are your nuclear arsenal for all intents and purposes. So, no, I think that's, and of course, the question, I always ask people, how many nuclear detonations do you need before this thing we call civilization, which is really very fragile, is suddenly destroyed? You don't need very many detonations.

I mean, look at the United States and its reaction to this COVID business. And quite frankly, COVID is not the black planet. leg, right? Right. But look at how we've responded to that. What would happen if you detonated nuclear weapons over some cities in the United States? I think it would be far worse than anybody can even begin to imagine. So that's a very dumb idea, Scott, really, to take that position. It's amazing the echo chamber effect. I mean, it's the neocons are in on it too, but it's not just them. It's really, I guess, more led by the Democrats now. But The level of kind of echo chamber, you know, bubble effect or whatever, where they all just, you know, as they love to, to, you know, slander other people and call everyone else a conspiracy theorist, where conspiracy theorists sometimes do have a tendency to just all agree with each other, even though they're not right.

And then, but that's all they need to know is that they all agree. But I'm seeing that same kind of group think from these liberals and Democrats. in the media and in, you know, all the experts that they parade on TV and in the magazines and whatever writing about this stuff, where they are just so certain how easy this all is and should be. I mean, think about Doug, and maybe I'm missing it, but I'm looking, but I'm not really seeing anyone outside of our type of circles, you know, like at the Quincy Institute or the American Conservative magazine or anti-war.com, saying, negotiate now. Where is Anthony Blinken? Why isn't he in Geneva hammering out some kind of ceasefire or another with Sergey Lavrov at all costs? How could we be engaged in a proxy war with Russia right on their border? There should be one and only one priority, and that is bringing an end to the fighting as rapidly as absolutely possible, and the Americans aren't even trying. And it seems like nobody's even complaining about that, that they're not even trying.

of course, is the kind of thinking that animated Eisenhower and Nixon and several others to end conflicts under the best terms possible, but terms that everyone could accept. We often overlook that. And I think that's something that we've accomplished on more than one occasion, certainly in 73. We were able to hammer out an agreement between the Israelis and Egypt and Syria, but specifically with Egypt that was very beneficial to both sides the Russians were part of that at that time the Soviets and we were known Chomsky and whether or not you agree with everything he says and I don't but I've always admired his mind I always thought his book manufactured consent was one of the best works I'd ever read and applies very much to the current

environment but he allegedly said last week the only voice of reason and out there advocating a diplomatic solution to what's happening in Ukraine is Donald Trump. And I think that's probably true. And of course, that probably explains why the Republicans hate Trump, not just the Democrats. And again, you know, these things we talk about Republicans and Democrats, Scott, I'm not even sure those labels are terribly meaningful anymore. What goes on in Washington is really this bipartisan swamp where everybody's got his hand out and everybody's trying to move money from the treasury into their pockets. Yeah, that's what William S. Lynn said on this show 15 years ago or something. He said,

it's not even the capital of the country at all. Washington, D.C. is simply an imperial court and full of its courtiers. And that is all, of course, just by definition, corruption. Yeah, well, it's, as I said earlier, it's Versailles. And we all know what happened to Versailles in 1789. so you would think they'd give it some pause and think about it, but they don't. All right. Well, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate you coming back on the show, Doug. Sure.

Thanks, Scott. All right, you guys, that's Doug McGregor. You can read them at the American Conservative magazine. 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 the libertarian institute.org.