Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 6/17/22 Douglas Macgregor on the Lies Getting Ukrainians Killed

Episode Date: June 18, 2022

Scott is joined by retired Col. Douglas Macgregor to discuss an article he wrote about the war in Ukraine. Macgregor points to the lies that got us into a situation earlier this year where a Russian invasion was inevitable and the lies that are allowing the war to grind on. He goes through how the Russian goal has shifted from one of Ukrainian neutrality to one of Russian annexation. Macgregor says there’s no going back to a Donbas region without Russian troops. The question now is: how do we end the fighting?  Discussed on the show: “When The Lies Come Home” (The American Conservative) “When the secretaries of Defense and State said publicly the U.S. wants Ukraine to win and weaken Russia, Biden said tone it down” (NBC News) 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.com slash scott horton's show you guys on the line i've got retired u.s army colonel douglas mcgregor and uh you know what i was looking at his amazon page today uh an extremely prolific writer here the margin of victory Five battles that change the face of modern war, breaking the phalanx, a new design for land power in the 21st century, transformation under fire, which has an F-35 on the front. That must be hilarious.

And, of course, Warriors Rage, the great tank battle of 73 Easting about his role in Iraq War I. And yeah, good stuff. And then here he is writing for the American Conservative again. I swear, I checked this morning. Is there a new article at TAC? And then just before we went on the air, you sent me this. When the lies come home at the American Conservative magazine, welcome back to the show, Doug. How are you doing? Great, great.

Which lies are these you're referring to here? Well, all of the lies connected with this tragic Ukrainian war. I mean, essentially, we have not told the truth. And when I say we, I'm talking about Washington, the Washington community, virtually everybody in it, They haven't bothered to tell the American people how we work tirelessly to essentially push the Russians into a corner from which they could not escape and how we ignored everything that the Russians said, everything they requested to the point where an intervention by the Russians militarily in eastern Ukraine was seen as unavoidable by Moscow for reasons of its own national security. And then you add to that the lies that have been perpetrated ever since this war began at the end of February that are just ridiculous, portraying the Ukrainians as some sort of victorious army, marching to victory every other week, the Russians as hopeless, bungling incompetence who can't possibly do anything. So here we sit.

we've obviously sabotaged every conceivable negotiation that took place and essentially told our friends in Kiev, you know, fight on to victory. It will supply you with anything you need. And I think behind the scenes, they may have even made some promises. Obviously, I don't know, that we would actively intervene in this thing, which is probably one of the reasons why the Ukrainians kept on fighting. But the truth is, from the very beginning, the Ukrainians were pushed on to the defensive. And a lot of people don't understand, you know, if you move into a defensive position right at the outset, essentially move into cities in urban centers, try to defend yourself from there, you're not going to win anything.

I mean, Bonaparte used to say the army that remains within its fortifications is beaten. Well, that's still true today. Ukrainians have never launched any major offensives. They've had local counterattacks by commanders, but nothing significant on the operational level. So there's been no maneuver. The Russians have then changed their modus operandi to adapt to what the Ukrainians did. And unfortunately, the Ukrainians have given them an opportunity to grind them and pulverize them into oblivion, which is what the Russians are doing. In the meantime, we continue to lie about it.

Keep telling everybody, oh, no, things are really great. The Russians are finished. The Russians are this, the Russians are that. The point now is it appears that President Biden and his team, along with a lot of people on the hill from both parties, want desperately to keep this thing going. So that even though the war is effectively lost and the Russians now control everything that's really valuable or of any utility to the Ukrainians in eastern Ukraine, they want to turn Western Ukraine into a base of operations for future attacks on Russia. So I guess they want endless war in the region, which is extremely dangerous to Europe. It's dangerous to us. And it's unnecessary. It doesn't make any sense. All right. So a few things there.

But let's stick with the battlefield and what's happening in the actual war. Because as you're saying here, there are these huge competing narratives about just how badly either side is losing here. I think one of the keys in your article is you say here that the Russians. strategy, at least for now, and in recent weeks, has been just destroying Ukrainian forces, not necessarily, you know, taking more and more land all the time. They'll get to that once the forces have been destroyed, I guess. But that, in a way, it helps feed the narrative that, oh, look, Ukraine is winning because the Russians withdrew from Harkiv, for example. And that was seen as a big strategic win for the Ukrainian side, I guess. But I am. I am.

I am, you know, and I admit to, I've been working on a book, and so I'm a bit behind on the news, but I have read from time to time these stories about how essentially the Russian war is simply just massive artillery, just more or less carpet bombing with artillery and moving slowly and taking, you know, whatever positions they need to. So I think that's misleading. I think we have to understand that, yes, the initial focus was the destruction of Ukrainian forces. Ukrainians had massed forces in front of these two breakaway republics. It looked like they were going to launch an offensive.

In fact, the Russians say they have copies of plans for exactly that with a follow-on offensive to drive the Russians out of Crimea. Complete lunacy in my judgment, but that's what the Ukrainians apparently thought. So they attacked before they were organized to do what they wanted to do, that is, attack the Ukrainians. And the Russians have now recognized that they cannot leave Ukraine, that whatever they do, if they leave eastern Ukraine, the Ukrainians will reassert themselves as they did in the past and turn it into a base for attack against Russia.

So the Russians have said, fine, we've abandoned our initial goals. The initial goals is, I'm sure your viewers remember, neutrality for Ukraine. In other words, not NATO membership. Number two, autonomy for the two republics where the population is Russian, wants to speak Russian, treat Russians in general inside eastern Ukraine, not as second-class citizens, but as equal citizens with equal rights, and then finally recognize the legitimacy of Crimea and its ownership by Russia. Those were the initial goals. They're gone. It's finished. And what they've decided to do now, and they've already begun by the

way is to firmly consolidate control of most of eastern Ukraine. They withdrew forces from Karkoff, not because they were beaten or forced out, but because they concluded that they needed those forces elsewhere to get the job done down in what we call the Donbos, this huge area down in south-eastern Ukraine, where most of the country's industrial mineral resources are located, natural gas fields, oil, and so forth. That's underway. The Ukrainian army is effectively destroyed. About 80% of it no longer exists, only about 20% of it is left.

So what the Russians are now dealing with are large numbers of reservists who really don't want to be thrown into this buzzsaw. And they're trying to plug gaps and hold on to whatever they can. But the truth is that Russia now controls 75 to 80% of anything that's worth having in Ukraine, the industrial area, the mines, the mineral resources, oil, gas, and so forth. And the Russian population is there. And they have told the Russian population, we are going to stay. So now they're getting enormous cooperation and support from the Russians who live there, because initially they said they'd come in and then leave. And the average Russian living in eastern Ukraine says,

well, that's fine. As soon as you leave, the Ukrainian secret police shows up, shoots me in the back of the head and kills my family. So I'm not going to help you. So that's gone now. They're very definitely going to stay. There will be no negotiation in terms of territory that the Russians already hold and the territory they will eventually capture because I think we're going to see them go back into Karkoff, take that. It's a Russian-speaking city, always has been, and also Odessa. Both Odessa and Karkoff are Russian cities, historically, culturally, ethnically. So the Russians will do that. Now, at that point, I think the Russians will be through. They're not interested in Western Ukraine. They don't want Ukrainians inside Russia. They know what goes on in Western

Ukraine. They know the hatred for the Russians that exists there that goes back long before the Second World War. So now the question is, how do we end this fighting? Because the last thing we want to do or should want to do is turn Western Ukraine into a sort of permanent target practice area for the Russians. And that effectively is what will happen if we don't intervene to stop this. And I don't see any evidence in Washington. Washington wants to stop it. So that means the Europeans are the ones that are going to have to come forward because I don't think any of the Europeans, even the polls, as utterly incurably anti-Russian as they may be, I don't think they want a permanent war between Russia and themselves in Western Ukraine. I don't think the Europeans want to be dragged into a larger regional war between the United States and Russia.

So as a result, I think we're going to watch this NATO business really unravel in the near future. And if you look at the economic conditions in Germany, especially, and let's be frank, Germany is the EU. Germany, frankly, is also, for all intents and purposes, NATO. If you take Germany out of the equation, everything falls apart. And the German economy is in ruins. Somebody said to me the other day, and I think this is probably accurate, that, we with our sanctions against Russia and imposing on Germany to support these sanctions have done more damage to the German economy in the last year, or I guess we should say, what, last six, eight months, than bomber Harris and the Royal Air Force did during World War II.

That's not an overstatement. The shelves are empty in many German stores. It can't get the things that they're normally accustomed to getting, sunflower seed oil, many of the food. stuff for bread and so forth that they're accustomed to and germans have a very high standard of living this this standard of living is falling and then of course on top of that they have an enormous refugee problem now in addition to a million Muslims they've got large numbers of ukrainians coming in the crime rate continues to climb in all of those areas the germans are not happy and i think olas schultz schultz rather has handled things very very badly he could have been a a source of communication and support between us and Russia to end this thing. And instead, he's joined the Biden Titanic, as I call it.

And then, of course, you also have our economic situation at home. And Scott, I don't need to tell you about that. I mean, Americans understand the inflation problem. And I point that out in the article. So I don't see this ending well for us. And Russia is frankly not suffering in the ways that the people that impose the sanctions hoped. Russia's economy is not being destroyed. I'm sorry, it's not happened. In fact, foreign investment is pouring into Russia right now. Yeah. Well, and just, you know, capital flowing in in the

form of high prices for petroleum. And, you know, they're hydrocarbon exporters. And so, you know, as all the sanctions and all the dislocations help spike the price of oil, that's just higher revenues for them. So whole thing's backfiring. In fact, the press had it that the Biden officials are complaining about this too. Oh, geez, it's not working how we meant it to work. Imagine that a government program. But you know, Scott, you know something that all of your viewers need to understand. And Americans today don't have an historical memory for this kind of thing. But I cannot imagine at the height of the Cold War, any president of the United States who confronted something like this, who would not have immediately

intervened and said, let's arrange a ceasefire, let's hold a conference, let's come to some sort of arrangements, sort this out. It's inconceivable to me that a president of the United States and his administration, like this one, would do everything in his power to worsen the situation, not just to keep this going and sacrifice. We think the Ukrainians have laws at least 60,000 dead fighting the Russians. But to push it further on the assumption that somehow this benefits us, benefits Western Europe, benefits Russian,

none of it does. It's all disastrous. I never thought I'd live to see something like this, Scott. Well, you know, I mean, we have the historical precedent there with the uprisings in Hungary and Czechoslovakia under Ike and under LBJ and the crushing of Polish solidarity under Ronald Reagan

and the American president's answers then were sorry pal you're too far east to be our problem we draw the line halfway across Germany and that's it it's the Soviet sphere of influence and we don't like it but it is what it is now we're 1,200 miles east of there

fighting right on their border well that's right pretty nuts. How many times do we have to explain to people how we would react to a large foreign military presence in Mexico, army equipping and training the Mexicans to fight us? Well, yeah, exactly. Now, as far as getting back to Germany here, I think a big part of the problem, right, is that their former strongman, Angela Merkel, is gone. And she was the chancellor for, what, 16 years or something? She had the courage, at least to stand up to Obama and, you know, on Minsk, too, and things like that. But part of our problem, I think, right, is we got the new guy.

He just got here. And so he's very much under pressure and the sway of the U.S. and doesn't have the kind of political capital that she had built up. Well, perhaps. I'm not nearly as enthusiastic about Merkel as you are. And I think if you went to doing that, I'm not enthusiastic. I just mean, she had the strength in her position to have a will of her own in a way that seems. to be somewhat different. Well, again, you know, my complaint about the Europeans is very straightforward. As long as we were bombing or destroying countries in the quote-unquote developing world remote from Europe, they may not have liked what we were doing, but they didn't care.

In other words, they were happy to make themselves dependent upon us for defense, as long as that dependency did not directly affect their security. And otherwise, what I'm trying to say is that the idea that we would create, push forward, sustain, and perpetuate a war in Ukraine against Russia is something that nobody in Europe inside NATO really bargained for. This is not a war where we are throwing Russian forces back from the border of NATO. This is not a war that was started against us by Russia. This is an entirely different situation. And the Europeans are beginning to figure all of this out. And they're beginning to

say, look, we didn't sign on to become satellites of the United States so that we too could be dragged into war, have our economies destroyed, our standard of living ruined, and our national security jeopardized. So I really think Germany is important because Germany is the one and future king economically, politically of Europe. And the Germans are reaching the boiling point over there. I don't think Olaf Schultz's government is going to last very long. And as far as Merkel was concerned, she was really, for the most part, on Easy Street. The one thing she did for which the Germans will never forgive her is bring in a million Muslim refugees that they absolutely did not want and would like to go home. I mean, the tension in Germany between the Muslim refugees and the

population is so thick right now, you could cut it with a knife. There's real problems, but Merkel skated, got out just in the last minutes before things really fell apart. And we can't even waste time talking about the German bank, the Deutsche Bank, which is effectively the European Central Bank for all intents and purposes. That place is a disaster. They've never come clean on the enormous amounts of money that had to be spent on reunification, specifically the billions and billions of the Marx that had to be paid out to the Russians. They've got a lot off the balance sheet that they don't talk about similar to what we have with the Fed. So there are real vulnerabilities and fragilities in Europe right now because

of Germany. Yep. Well, and of course, they had severe lockdown policies forced their self-inflicted depression and then bailed it out with all this paper money and inflation just like we did. So they're facing the consequences. All this is coming just on the heels of that. So now, let me ask you about this. I met a man in Reno, who he was one of your guys, an Army tank guy, but in Iraq War II. And he was telling me that these new long range, I think it was long range artillery pieces, maybe it was a rocket system that they're talking about sending over there, that these things

are the, they can take out a city block, essentially. these are extreme this is a real escalation and especially there's a real question of the range on these weapons and whether the Ukrainian military could attack with them inside Russia and to devastating effect and he seemed to be really worried that man when they're talking about sending these things over there to him it seemed like a whole other level of escalation of the war you know, in a really meaningful way. What do you think about that? We're only sending four launchers at this point in time.

Originally, we said we'd send one and they upped it to four. If you look at those launchers and a number of rockets, it's pitiful. The kind of devastation he's talking about would take several platoons, batteries, battalions. And I can tell you that the MLRS, compared with Russian rocket artillery systems, let's put it this way the russians are hurling volkswagons downrange we're hurling golf bowls so while our system is very accurate and is going to be limited to 50 kilometers roughly i guess you could go up to 60 but the long range the 200 mile range or 180 kilometers and so forth though we're not going to provide those rockets to them because we don't want them to attack russian territory with those weapons the other thing is remember you've got hundreds of miles that you've got to cover the soldiers that have been trained to use this are only now just reaching the point where they could conceivably operate the equipment it takes on average a minimum of five

weeks to train people to operate the rocket artillery system that we have then you've got to move that system hundreds of miles to the east and position it so that it can find and destroy Russian positions. Well, the problem, Scott, right now is that the terrain that we're talking about is flat and open. This is the Ukrainian step. I mean, it's a wonderful place for the standpoint of growing food, but there's no place to hide. It's why these areas in the world were dominated for centuries by cavalry and are now dominated largely by tank fire and artillery, long-range, precision-guided missiles. These things are impossible to avoid void in this vast open area. And the Ukrainians don't have the air and missile defense to protect

these systems. So I don't think these are going to have much of an impact at all. I think they are likely to be destroyed very early once they come within range of any Russian forces. Hang on just one second. Hey, y'all, the audiobook of my book, enough already. Time to end the war on terrorism is finally done. Yes, of course, read by me. It's available at Audible, Amazon, Apple Books, and soon on Google Play and whatever other options there are out there. It's my history of America's War on Terrorism from 1979 through today. Give it a listen and see if you agree. It's time to just come home.

Enough already. Time to end the war on terrorism. The audiobook. Hey guys, I've had a lot of great webmasters over the years, but the team at Expanddesigns.com have by far been the most competent and reliable. Harley Abbott and his team have made great. sites for the show and the Institute, and they keep them running well, suggesting and making improvements all along. Make a deal with Expanddesigns.com for your new business or news site. They will take

care of you. Use the promo code Scott and save $500. That's expanddesigns.com. Hey guys, Scott Horton here for Listen and Think Libertarian audiobooks. As you may know, the audiobook of my new book, enough already. Time to end the war on terrorism. Is finally out. It's co-produced by our longtime friends at Listen and Think Libertarian audiobooks. For many years now, Derek Sheriff over there at Listen and Think has offered lifetime subscriptions to anyone who donates $100 or more to the Scott Horton show at Scott Horton.org slash donate or to the Libertarian Institute at Libertarian Institute.org slash donate. And they've got a bunch of great titles, including Inside Syria by the late

great Reese Erlich. That's Listen and Think.com. Long-bendy Twizzlers candy keeps the fun going. And keep the fun going. And can you give us an update on the harpoon and trident missiles that they say they're sending for anti-Russian ship maneuvers there in the Black Sea? well the harpoon is a different animal that's uh we we actually became very concerned about it because you would launch a harpoon missile beyond the horizon at sea but you were never completely certain that the harpoon would hit the target that you had originally designed to destroy in other words you could launch it once it got out of

sight it could hit almost anything and so we recoiled from its use I don't know anything about the Trident. I mean, I can't imagine Trident missiles being given to anybody for use anywhere because those are potentially nuclear missiles. Not that the Ukrainians have any warheads, but I just don't see that happening. Look, the problem in the Black Sea right now is that the Black Sea is a puddle. It's not a big place. So even the Russian Navy chafes at having to operate there.

so systems ashore can defend against naval forces very effectively if the naval force comes within range. And I think that the Ukrainians have demonstrated that. But I would expect that the Ukrainian coast that remains will be in Russian hands over the next couple of months. So I don't think these weapon systems are going to make much difference. The problem that we as Americans have is that we always earn a hunt. And I'm not saying we as the nation. I guess I should say many of the flag officers are always looking for some silver bullet weapon that they hope and pray is going to dramatically change the outcome on the battlefield. Short of a nuclear strike, that kind of weapon doesn't exist. And what works well and what succeeds ultimately,

what you're seeing with the Russians right now, are all the arms, tanks, artillery, infantry linked to overhead surveillance, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance platforms, unmaned, man. Those links to these precision systems are devastating to any force on the ground. And that's really what's happening. And I don't see that changing any time soon. In fact, I think the Ukrainians are hanging on by their teeth right now, and they will shortly be out of business. All right. Now, can you address for us a bit the controversy about the grain shipment?

and who's mining what and who's preventing grain from getting out, especially to the poor people in the global south? Sure. I think the first thing we need to understand is that the Turks step forward for good or bad and offered the Ukrainians and the Russians a deal under which they would help the Ukrainians demine the harbors. Now, this is very important because most Americans are not being told about this. the port of Odessa and the ports that neighbor it there that entire coastline is mined not by the Russians by the Ukrainians it was mine to keep the Russians out which makes perfect sense as soon as you mine the waters approaching any area where you might land troops you can call off any amphibious assault this is one of the reasons why people have been saying for decades why are we spending all this money on amphibious assault when we know that any place it counts is going to be mined so the

first thing is the Turks would go in and demine. And the Ukrainians being lukewarm on that proposition. The second is that once it was demined, the Turks would escort Ukrainian ships out of those ports so that they could reach the Black Sea and move through the straight past Istanbul and move into the Mediterranean. Now, the Russians have said, yes, we'll support that. The Russians are not fools. They know that the world. needs grain. The Russians have also suggested the Ukrainians that they put them on rail, that is the grain stocks, and move them to neighboring countries, move through Romania and Bulgaria to other ports on the Mediterranean. Ukrainians aren't really in control of everything anymore,

and there are other agendas at work in Kiev. And so Kiev has not really stepped up and agreed to do what the Turks have suggested. But everyone is pointing the finger at the Russians is the problem. But the Russians are not really blocking anything. The place is monged. Although the longer the war continues, the longer all Ukrainian agriculture is disrupted, right? I mean, the seasons come and go. We only have so much time to get the seeds in the ground

and get them ready for growing and harvest in a few months from now. Well, Scott, that's another matter that no one in Washington bothered to sit down and consider before we decided to do what we've done. Yeah. Well, why would they? Well, you know, this is the thing. It's the whole thing is a disaster because when we embarked on this proposition that we should build up Ukraine into this giant military threat to Russia. And we have banked heavily on the Cold War hangover that treats anything that comes out of Russia as evil and bad. And we've done everything we could to demonize Putin and his government. We thought that we were sort of. preparing the ground for Ukrainian success. What we did is we paved the road to Ukraine's destruction. I read the other day that 75 to 80% of all of Ukraine's gross national product comes out of the area. The Russians are now occupying.

Gosh, what a surprise? Yeah, Mearsheimer said in 2014, in the pages of foreign affairs and on this show and in a speech that he gave right after that, too, that I'm pretty sure the exact phrase he used in all three. cases was America's leading Ukraine down the primrose path, and they are going to get wrecked. And even implied in that whole thing was nobody thought we were really going to come to their rescue. We're just telling them, yeah, you go and tell the Russians, what are you going to do about it to their face and see what happens? And then we'll just sit back and watch and laugh. And then I guess some of our more crooked corporations can cash in. And we'll just have

a war. Well, I think there was always an interest in somehow or another ruining Russia, bringing down Putin's government so that we could go back in and essentially rape Russia and its resources, which is effectively what happened in the 1990s. And that's what brought forth Putin. He and other Russian nationalists were tired of seeing their country exploited and ultimately destroyed by people pouring in from the West trying to take advantage of Russia's weakness. So, yeah, Mirzheimer was always right, and no one wanted to listen. You know, I was castigated by the hill because I had advocated in 2014 a plebiscite. You know, people talk about democracy in this town all the time.

And as soon as you suggest that people should be allowed to vote and decide whether or not they want to live in Russia or they want to live in Ukraine, they're not allowed to do that. And so we took the position that the borders are fixed. Well, borders have never been fixed in Europe for very long, and certainly not in the area that we're talking about. Those borders have changed many, many times over the last three or four or five hundred years. Well, and it's pretty clear, isn't it, that, I mean, Putin's position was, I really don't want the Don Bass, but I want you to respect Minsk, too, and stop bombing them. Oh, absolutely. The Minsk agreements were always a fraud, sadly. The Germans and the French tried, but not with all the.

energy at their disposal very half-heartedly to push the Ukrainians into implementation. There were problems with the Minskic Accords. I don't think anybody disputes that. But it was very obvious to the Russians that the Ukrainians had no, no intention of ever fulfilling the expectations of those accords. I want to get back to what you said about just how dangerous this is and kind of how crazy is. And we're having this conversation halfway through June right now, almost unbelievably,

this war has continued all this time. And it was never the priority. They didn't even pretend that their priority was to try to negotiate a ceasefire and put an end to the danger here, only to escalate it. And, you know, there was this piece in NBC, I think it was, where this doesn't sound true, but it sounds important that they're telling this lie. And the lie is that Biden got really angry and castigated Blinken and Austin for their expansive statements about. America's goals against Russia here and that they didn't want that so that seemed like you know possibly a bit of a climb down but they say in the same article quote we are planning for a long war and so again no emphasis whatsoever on negotiation you know

they're they're clearly trying to drag this thing out but I wonder you know from your perspective how does this compare to you if I brought up say you know early Reagan years and a lot of nuclear brinksmanship in Europe or the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 or the height of the H-bomb testing back and forth in the 1950s or, you know, some kind of comparison about, you know, tensions between America and Russia here. We talked about how this is all happening right on their border in a way that previous presidents would not have dared to bring it to this degree the way Bush and his, Bush Jr. and his successors have. So, but, you know, The question is, how much danger are we really in here of this thing getting completely out of control and turning into a real war between Russia and NATO?

Well, I suppose that danger always existed from the moment the first shot was fired, but I don't think it's as great now as it was six weeks ago. And I'll explain why. First of all, I think people have realized that, you know, Russia's military establishment was designed to defend Russia. In other words, the force that you're dealing with right now was never designed to attack NATO. In fact, you know, the Swedish foreign minister or defense ministers, same thing in Finland. They've all said, look, we want to join NATO, but we don't fear an imminent attack from Russia. There are not enough Russian forces to launch a serious offensive against the West. So that's the first thing needs to be understood.

That was never going to happen on the high-end conventional level. Secondly, I think people have now discovered that we, on the other hand, have harbored this enormous hostility towards Russia because of its unwillingness to become part of what we think is the global financial system dominated and run by us. and Putin's unwillingness to sort of subordinate himself to the Western banking system and cartels has made him enemy number one on the list probably with Xi a close second because those countries stand outside this U.S. dominated financial system. And if you look carefully at the comments made by Putin, Xi, and now the comments coming out of India, in all of those countries, people are talking about getting out from under the dollar domination.

And that really means that they're not going to be dictated to by the World Bank or the IMF, both of which are really instruments of U.S. power regarding what they grow, what they do, what they don't, what they build, what they don't. All of this is bound up with the larger issue. But at the same time, I think there were also people that said this is another good way to strengthen NATO. We'll force cohesion on NATO by perpetuating this conflict with Russia. It's a dumb idea, but then again, I listened to dumb ideas in the 90s when I think I can't remember if it was Udall. Or one of the one of the senators said either we get NATO out of area, in other words, working with us in remote places, or NATO's out of business.

Well, I back in 1993, 94, 95, privately felt strongly that NATO probably should go out of business, at least as far as we were concerned. But everyone in Washington was desperate to keep this imperial structure, which is really what it is, with all these dependent states intact. I think that was on the backs of people's minds. The interesting part, though, Scott, is that the people said that they wanted to consolidate NATO and impart cohesion to it and the most successful alliance ever in human history and all this business, they're tearing it apart right now because they finally created this monster

that nobody in Europe wants, which is a war between Russia and us. And the average European, even if he does it like Russians, is not interested in that. So it's kind of interesting that one of the underlying purposes of this, which is to strengthen, expand and make more powerful NATO, it's actually having the opposite effect. Yep. No surprise there. Now, did you see this? Putin, I don't know if he's really sick like they say, Doug, he must have something, because he was on some kind of muscle relaxers or something. And he said, hey, I don't care of Sweden and Finland join NATO. You know why? We don't have any problems with them. They're great. We don't have in that whole long border with

Finland. We don't have a single dispute. about that line with them never will either no problem it's all good which I was just amazed that he would say that in the middle of this war and I do think maybe he was on some pills because he did kind of sound like a hippie when he said it it was a bit uncharacteristic

not that I speak Russian or understand it but he's telling you the truth Russia and Finland have had good relations for decades the Finns have a long history with Russians some of which is not very good but then again they've had a long history with the Swedes. It hasn't always been very good either. But the bottom line is both

the Swedish and Finnish governments have said they see no imminent threat from Russia. There isn't one. Remember, the Swedish ambassador just a few weeks ago said, oh, this is wonderful. If we join NATO, we're currently investing 4% of our gross national product in defense. If we join NATO, we can cut that to 2%. Oh, man, he said that in front of a hot microphone. My God. Yes, it was. She's a very lovely. woman, and she's the ambassador to the United States from Sweden. She's telling you the truth. Doug Bandau, call your office. Everybody, everybody is happy to make themselves dependent upon us, provided, of course, we don't drag them into a war in Europe that they don't want. Remember,

from the European standpoint, NATO's principal purpose in terms of keeping it was very different from ours. They saw NATO, because I lived through this in the 90s and in the early part of the century, they always saw NATO as preventing another war in Europe. We were the ones that intervened militarily with airpower in Bosnia-Herzni-Herzegovina and then subsequently in Kosovo. And frankly, behind closed doors, most Europeans were horrified that we were dragging them into a conflict with another European state. In the case of Kosovo, it was obviously Serbia. So again, this is the differences in perception. We see NATO as this extension of our interests in this sort of global imperium that we've built.

The Europeans don't see it that way. But the problem they have is that they haven't been spending any money on their own defense. And they don't like to cooperate with each other to defend themselves. You know, Europe is probably one of the most interesting places in the world, but it's also incredibly diverse. This is why, you know, when people say diversity is our strength, take one look at Europe. No, it's not. It never has been. Well, you know, I mean, this is, isn't this, nobody wants to be ruled by anybody else.

Yeah, I mean, this is the primary argument, I think, in Europe and in America for American military dominance in Europe is we're not colonizing you. We're just your friends. But we are going to hold down all those little differences between all the little Slovakia's and Slovenia. is around and because everyone's going to be answerable to our centralized military structure and that that's better than any alternative because if it was under the germans everyone would be too afraid to submit to Germany or if it was under you know even with a European army with them in France dominating it together something like that so I'm not taking that side believe me but I'm just saying that would be the number one argument at the national review I guess

for keeping NATO is just what you say that Europe would tear itself apart again if we do. Yeah. Well, I don't think it will, but I think what you'll see are regions that develop their own solutions. I mean, there are groups of people in Europe that will more readily cooperate with each other than others. The view of the world strategically in Rome or Madrid is very different from the view of the world strategically through the eyes of people in Berlin or Oslo or London. So you have to accept that fact. These powers do not all see things the same way.

They never have. You know, when I got to shape headquarters in November of 1998, I asked somebody, what's the story now? You know, Russia is not an enemy. Russia is sort of slipped into irrelevance strategically for us. So what's NATO's purpose? And jokingly, someone said to me, well, with the Soviet Union gone, Europeans have only one natural enemy, France, because the one thing all the Europeans could agree on

is that they detest and dislike the French. I mean, that's, it was a joke, obviously, but that's the kind of mentality. Remember, people didn't particularly care for Napoleon to rule the world either. Again, Europe has got to do what it's got to do. They've got to sort through these things on their own and the notion that they should be a tributary,

of states to the United States is not a very healthy thing. Yeah, sure not. And you can ask the Ukrainians about that now. And I'm sorry because I really could do this all day, but I can't do this all day. I got to go. But thank you so much for your time again on the show, Doug. Thanks, Scott. I appreciate it.

All right, you guys. That is Colonel Douglas McGregor. When the Lies Come Home is this latest piece at the American Conservative. The Scott Horton Show, Anti-War Radio, can be heard on KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A. APSRadio.com, anti-war.com, scothorton.org, and libertarian institute.org.