Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 9/23/22 Douglas Macgregor on the Russian Escalation

Episode Date: September 25, 2022

Scott is once again joined by Douglas Macgregor Col. (ret.) to discuss developments in Ukraine. Macgregor has been working hard to keep track of what’s actually happening on the ground, and the result is a very different narrative than what you’d find in most media outlets. Despite a very public “defeat” in northeastern Ukraine, Macgregor is convinced the Russians are dominating this war. He argues that Russia’s focus appears fixed on the southern coast, which may soon become part of Russia itself. Scott and Macgregor work through the current dynamics of the war and examine the risk of a nuclear strike.  Discussed on the show: “Playing With Fire in Ukraine” (Foreign Affairs) 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; and Thc Hemp Spot. 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

Hey, you guys, on October the 15th, I'm doing a Defend the Guard rally in Somerset, New Jersey. Find out all about it at defend the guard.us. All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton's show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of anti-war.com. 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 the 5,500 interviews since 2003. Almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scothorton.4. You can sign up the podcast feed there. And the full interview archive is also available at YouTube.com slash Scott Horton's show.

aren't you guys on the line again i've got colonel douglas mcgregger retired u.s army uh the great leader of the great tank battle of 73 easting in iraq war one of course and uh author of many books about military strategy and regular writer at the american conservative magazine his latest is holding ground losing war welcome back Doug how you doing excellent good good happy to have year. So listen, the big news is that, what, 13 days ago or so right around there, the weekend of the 10th and 11th, the Ukrainians made major gains in northern Lahansk, essentially there in the land adjacent to archive and drove somewhat minimal Russian force back there. And then in response, the Russians have now announced a partial mobilization, called up 300,000

reserves and announced a plan to hold referendums, whatever you think of them, give or take their legitimacy under occupation and wartime and what have you, obviously as a pretext or a first step toward annexing almost all of the southern coast, at least, and up to Zaforia, which is, you know, I don't know, a quarter of the way up the Nippur River, something like that, north of Crimea and Kurson northwest of Crimea there, which is almost to Odessa on my map. And so now I turn it over to you to explain what this all really means and go ahead and incorporate if you want all the talk and the news about the threat that the Russians might use nuclear weapons, and then the Americans will be left to decide what to do in response to that.

Sure. Well, first of all, we need to understand that the area where the Ukrainians penetrated and drove to this town of Isium along the river, up in the north was largely evacuated. The Russians left 2,000 paramilitary police and light infantry along a screen line. They withdrew those forces and sent them down south, where the Ukrainians had committed 30, 40,000. of their troops in a counterattack against Russian defenses. And they decided that, quite frankly, there was nothing up in the Karkoff area worth defending. They put the screen line there. And I think what happened very simply is that U.S. satellite-based intelligence told the Ukrainians who had lost tens of thousands of troops in these counterattacks,

you know, there's really nobody behind this screenline. And as a result, they drove through it. And on the way there, when the Russians figured out what was happening, they, of course, withdrew their forces. But then they caught the advancing Ukrainian force of about 14, 15,000 in the open and killed or wounded at least 40% of the force with artillery strikes, rocket artillery, air strikes, and so forth. And the Russians, who hold the shoulders, quite frankly, decided not to be bothered with it. because they have more strategic issues down south that they want to finish in the Donbos. But the Russian people, when they discovered this, and this was broadcast to the Russian media, were deeply offended and insulted. And they argued, why are we wasting time with these Ukrainians?

What are you doing? This should never have happened. So I think that was really the catalyst for Putin's decision. The other point is that I think Putin has finally concluded that we're at war with him, even though he's not necessarily at war with us, and that he has no choice now, but to finish the job in eastern Ukraine, be done with it, and recognizes that we are not going to negotiate with him about anything. So he went through this partial mobilization, which is getting a lot of attention, but it's actually partial, and most of the reservists will be sent to other parts of Russia where they will relieve regular army formations, particularly in eastern Russia or Siberia. These will then be brought west, and you will end up with substantial more formations

in the West. The remaining reservists will be used to fill out other Russian army formations. You have formations fighting in Ukraine that are about 70 to 80 percent strength. They'll be brought up to 100% strength. All of this will be done very methodically. This is not a rush job by any means. Russians are not desperate. They've got everything under control. But I think the Ukrainians are really quite desperate,

and that's why they've been launching these counterattacks that have cost them tens of thousands. I mean, they've been averaging about 20,000 casualties a month. And this has been going on for seven months, some months more, and some months less. But the bottom line is they can't replace most of the troops that they've lost. and the people they are forcing into the front lines at gunpoint in many cases or just civilians they've been handing weapons to who have no training

who sit around and wait to be destroyed. And I think that's why Mr. Zelensky has brought up this nuclear business. The Russians are certainly not interested in using a nuclear weapon anywhere in the vicinity of Russia under any circumstances. But we in Washington have been talking over the last several months And frankly, for the last couple of years, and I say we, I'm talking about senior officers, particularly Air Force and Navy, about the use of tactical nuclear weapons in a limited nuclear war. And the Russians have always made it very clear.

They don't really distinguish between what we call tactical, which would be five kilotons or less, and strategic nuclear weapons. And the Russians simply reminded us that if we're contemplating the use of them, these weapons to bear in mind that they will respond and they will strike. And I would expect them to strike with a very large arsenal that they have. I think it was an attempt to remind us that Armageddon is at our beck and call if we decide to move down that road. You know, and the thing I would say, Scott, in the midst of all of this, the thing that concerns me the most is this man, Biden, not because of anything he thinks or does, because I don't think

he's in charge. I was going back and looking at Joe Biden's record in the Senate and the House. And Scott, quite frankly, the man was never a warmonger. In fact, he was always lukewarm at best about the interventions. And under Obama, he was an advocate for getting out of Iraq and Afghanistan. So I think Biden is not driving the train. I think this is a feeble man in almost 80, and he's being taken advantage of. And I worry about the unappointed people that surround him, people that like Ron Clayne is the chief of staff, Tony Blinken, there are a whole range of individuals in the administration

that are just not elected. They're unelected officials, and I worry about their influence and control over nuclear weapons. Yeah. Well, you know, let's focus. on that point right there about who is really in charge because we keep seeing Biden be overrule. He was overruled by his own White House, quote, unquote, the White House on two major points from his interview on 60 minutes last Sunday, one of them on essentially saying the pandemic is over, which they walk back because that's all their emergency powers based on that.

They said, oh, no, he didn't mean to say that. And then he said, yes, we will put American, you know, sailors, essentially. eventually men and women, as they say, on the line to defend Taiwan, which is what he vowed we would not do in the case of Ukraine. We'll arm them up, but we will not be putting American boots on the ground. He has vowed in the case of Ukraine anyway. And then they said, oh, no, we didn't mean that. And they said, well, we don't mean it that we're walking him back either because that's too embarrassing to walk us back four times in a row now. So maybe we have now officially abandoned strategic ambiguity. But is it because the president went off of someone else's

script and who is someone else? And if you go down the list, you mentioned Ron Clayne, the chief of staff. It's an unelected position. I don't know enough about that guy. I know that from what I understand of previous presidencies, the National Security Advisor, in this case, Jake Sullivan, eh, he's only got so much sway as someone who's not really a member of the cabinet. So then that leaves Blinking, because I don't think Lloyd Austin is that ambitious that he's really running a shadow government here, is he? But is Blinkin the boss? And if Blinkin's the boss? Who's against him fighting over? What the hell's going on up there? We're all Kremlinologists talking about Washington, D.C. Well, you know, you're raising all the right

questions, and unfortunately, I don't have the answers. But I do think that there's a lot of evidence for national security advisors wielding far more influence than they should. Both Brzynski and Kissinger at various points in time had infinitely more influence and power. over events and foreign and defense policy than any of the cabinet members, let alone members of the Senate or the House. So I think it's a real concern. The problem is I just I just don't know what level of influence. And then, of course, you hear that Obama is frequently a visitor to the White House. I've heard people tell me, and it's being reported in the press that George Soros calls directly to Biden and definitely calls people in the White House. It expresses his

preferences. He's not the only one, and he's a major donor to all of the causes that the White House supports. So the real issue is who's in charge, who's in control, and I just don't think that Joe Biden is. Now, the thing that worries me even beyond that is this silly notion that somehow or another you can launch a low-yield nuclear weapon at the Russians or the Chinese or anybody else, and they will all sit calmly on the other side and say, well, let's not get too excited over this because this is a small nuclear detonation. It's absurd. And yeah, by small, they mean, Hiroshima-sized. Yeah, I mean, literally yes. And the issue here that doesn't seem to dawn on people is if you're sitting in Moscow or Beijing or Tehran or anywhere else and

someone uses a quote-unquote low-yield nuclear weapon against you, you're pre-degrading. disposition is to say, launch everything we've got because they're afraid that if they don't do that, the next thing that comes in will be a major strike from us. So the whole business is a sort of courting disaster on a scale that would end civilization as we know it. And I don't understand why no one has stepped forward and said, look, this is nonsense, no more talk about it. It's not going to happen. And, you know, finally, why? Why would we ever considered the use of a nuclear weapon for anything other than deterring an attack or answering an attack against the continental United States in Hawaii. That's essentially

the way the Russians and the Chinese look at the nuclear weapon. It's a guarantee of your territorial integrity, but nobody thinks in terms of using it offensively to gain some sort of battlefield advantage. Well, now, so yesterday, and I had my wife check the translation, because I didn't believe it, but according to Toss, Medvedev, the former president and head of the National Security Council there, threatened to use strategic nuclear weapons. And I think the implication here was now that they're annexing all of the, well, what, three quarters of the southern coast and up, you know,

a couple of hundred miles north of there at least, that as soon as they call that Russia, then that means any attack by Ukraine on that territory that Ukraine and obviously America will still consider occupied Ukrainian territory that they call Russia, they'll see that and claim that as an attack on the Russian Federation. And he said we will defend that with strategic nuclear weapons. In other words, threatening to nuke D.C. in Austin, Texas, not just a battlefield nuke somewhere in Ukraine, it sounded like. Well, if you look at the stated policy regarding the use of nuclear weapons it stated 22 June or no 21 June or 20 June of the last year or two years ago in 2020 signed into law by Putin it makes it clear that nuclear weapons will be used exclusively and only as retaliatory weapons against a nuclear attack so I that's that's the stated policy and I don't see

any evidence that the Russians want to change that. I think Medvedev is almost a sort of a crazy relative in the closet that you bring out periodically to frighten people, then you put them back in the closet. So I don't think the notion that once these areas are incorporated into Russia, and they will be clearly, without a doubt, the areas are historically Russian. The majority of the people that live there are Russians who speak Russian. These are the people that were furious when the Russian military came in and then announced that it would leave once negotiations had ended. They said, well, we're not going to support you because if we do, the Ukrainian secret police will come back and shoot all of us and our families in the head.

And then finally, I think six weeks into this campaign, there was a realization that if we just pull out again, most of the people that we've gone in to try and help who've been mistreated and brutalized by the Ukrainians will be back to where they were to begin with. So I think at this stage of the game, yes, we're going to see these areas incorporated into Russia. This is the area that Catherine the Great in the 1700s designated his new Russia and was ultimately settled by Russians. That includes Odessa, the areas along the Black Sea, all of it. Remember, 1776, when we began our revolution or war for independence was the year that Crimea was taken by the Russians. And that put an end to the unending Tartar Mongol incursions into southern Russia and Ukraine,

where they took slaves to be sold in the slave markets of Constantinople. So, yes, they'll be incorporated. But the notion that the Russians would respond to anything we did instantaneously with the nuclear weapon is nonsense. They will only use a nuclear weapon if we use one against them. It's very simple. 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 slash Scott Horton's show. Thanks. Hey, y'all, libertasbella.com is where you get Scott Horton's show and Libertarian Institute shirts, sweatshirts, mugs, and stickers and things, including the great top lobstas designs as well. See, that way it says on your shirt, why you're so smart. Libertas Bella, from the same great focus.

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 1964 through 1974 but how do we get there why is this all harry truman's fault find out in why the vietnam war by the great mike swanson available now And by the way, on that one point about Mietvedev, I guess that's my understanding, too, is that, which is kind of strange compared to, you know, the character that he tried to cut when he was the president, he does seem to play that kind of crazy uncle role. And then I guess there's a question of whether, you know, he's sort of out over his skis or out over Putin's skis and Putin would wish he would shut up or that's his designated role is to go out there and say the craziest thing. in order to make people look a little more reasonable? Yeah, we know during the Cuban Missile Crisis

that the Russians paid, or then the Soviet government, paid careful attention to Curtis LeMay. Curtis LeMay was viewed as a very serious strategic player. He was not just Chief of Staff of the Air Force. This is the man that built the Strategic Air Command and controlled most of the nuclear weapons in the U.S. arsenal at the time. So I think Kennedy made it abundantly clear that we were not going to use nuclear weapons,

but he always had LeMay there at his side as a sure deterrent to the Soviets who might think we weren't serious. Does that make sense? Sure. Yeah. So anyway, I wouldn't pay too much attention to that. The other thing is that we've just had a prisoner exchange between the Russians and Ukrainians and large numbers of the Azov battalion, which is this. neo-Nazi organization that the Ukrainians fielded that is guilty of all sorts of war crimes

and large numbers of them were traded for Russian troops and people were shocked by all of this and said, why would Putin do such a thing? But I think Putin has always been very concerned from the very beginning that he tried to end this in a way that you would end it on terms that both sides could accept. And that's something Americans don't think about a great deal. And that's why we're unconditional surrender all the way. Yeah, yeah, it's just crazy nonsense. There's no future for that. And I think he's held back a great deal.

I mean, he's exercised tremendous restraint. I know that his military commanders from the sources that I have were very unhappy with the way he shaped the operation on the way into Ukraine. And they have been upset with his extreme restraint and the use of force against the Ukrainians. Now, I'm a little concerned that at this point, we may see more violence than we would have liked. But I think Putin is under great pressure at home to bring this to an end. He's tried very hard to negotiate an end to it. But he knows that we will not permit this conflict to end. We even have that on record in a statement from Biden. And we have the same thing from that buffoon Boris Johnson when he was there from London.

well and now so this is a huge part of what's going on here right is the american side is so confident i just saw the new uh podcast on uh the new york times website is the former cia agent talking about how russia is losing this war badly and everything's going great and we just need to send some more weapons in and sounds to me like they're you know smoking their own BS here and believe it oh yeah and then and now meersheimer had written this thing i think for foreign affairs saying he really was concerned about nuclear war, and his simple syllogism was that obviously the Russians aren't backing down, and they do have the conventional might to take whatever territory they want over whatever period of time, eventually they will win. But then on the other side, the Americans absolutely will not accept that.

They are absolutely determined to win, and when they start losing bad enough, the pressure is going to be on Biden to send in the Marines. And at that point, we got NATO and led by the USA in a real war with Russia right on their border. And that was a concern enough of his that he wrote it and foreign affairs published it. Well, I don't know. I mean, I have trouble with the assertion that we will then commit U.S. forces. First of all, our ground forces are not in shape to take anybody on. And if you look at the distances that would have to be covered, we don't have a logistical infrastructure in place. Yeah, but what's reality got to do with it?

Politics says that if the Ukrainian government falls apart, America has to do something. Are we going to give up? I think what will happen is the sort of thing that we've gone through in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. When it becomes clear that we're finished and we can do no more damage or achieve nothing, Scott, what do we do? We leave. and when we leave, we tend to change the discussion topic. Yeah. We tell the media, stop talking about this.

Here's your new topic. The other thing is FDR in 1938, 39 was approached several times by Churchill saying, you've got to come in, you've got to do this, you've got to do that. And FDR said, look, I will not bring the United States into any conflict unless we ourselves are attacked. He said, the American people won't support it. The American people, as you and I both know, Scott, are paying very little attention to what's going on in Ukraine. But if all of a sudden the president announces that he's going to commit forces to Eastern Europe on a front that's perhaps 800 to 1,000 miles wide and easily 500, 600 miles deep, then he's going to get a lot of attention because we really can't do that. And if we do it, we're going to lose.

And Biden has said from the beginning, you know, people have mistaken Putin's determination to exercise restraint for weakness. It's not the case. Russia has not marshaled its resources. And here's the final thing. We have winter coming. Winter is already doing enormous damage in Eastern Europe. In Germany, Wood is openly referred to as the new gold. I've gotten comments from friends in Kausau and southern Germany up in the north and near Hanover people don't have gas. They don't have enough to heat their homes. They're having trouble heating water. Germans are buying up firewood, thinking that they're going to be stuck trying to heat themselves also the winter with firewood. It's a disaster. This is, and frankly, the Russians don't have to do anything except sit and wait.

Yeah. Now, one last thing here at the end, and I don't want to hear what you have to say about this, but I got to ask, you're pretty sure that Odessa is next on the chopping block here, huh? I am, yeah, I think so, because now it's become obvious that no one will negotiate, so he might as well turn Ukraine into a landlocked country. Yeah, and then they got that breakaway province that Transnistria or Transnistin, whatever they're calling it this year there on the Moldovan border with Ukraine. So once you take Odessa, you might as well go all the way there, right? Yeah, I think what you will have then is essentially a belt that becomes Russian that reaches from Odessa up to Moldova to where the Transnistrian Republic is located. and again you know these are things that were not planned everybody says well you know he always

wanted to do x y and z no he didn't he obviously wanted to negotiate an end he just wanted to make sure ukraine was neutral and there were no NATO weapons in eastern Ukraine yeah but now so once they take all that territory now we have a real problem because they're working on I think they haven't yet but they're working on bringing moldova into NATO now they had resisted and didn't want to join but now they do because they're afraid. And so now, yeah, I mean, this war, just like in America, this Russian war is a government program, right? It keeps building on itself, mission creep, and this kind of thing. So now we could have, we're just setting this table for the next conflict a few years from now. Yeah. Well, perhaps, but I would,

I would urge everybody to pay attention to the comments made over the last 24 hours by Mohammed L. Arian, who is probably one of the best analysts of the economy and the financial world. And he's now talking about stagflation and something much worse than recession in the future, potentially depression. And if you look at those things and you realize that we're on the brink of real disaster here at home economically, it leads you to question whether or not we can do much else other than tend to our own affairs. I think, think the whole overseas operation by the neocons and their fellow travelers on the left, the globalists, is going to be turned off, Scott.

It'll be turned off because we can't afford it. We're going to have dramatic cuts in spending. And we're going to have to focus on what's important here at home, whether the people in Washington like it or not. Yep. That's what Ron Paul always said. The empire's going to end, and it won't be because you listen to me. It'll just be because the economic conditions dictate it.

We just can't afford it. That's right. I think we're almost there. When I say almost, I think, within months. Well, as always, we used to joke about this 20 years ago. Geez, I sure hope the economic collapse can save us from nuclear apocalypse. You know, it's a race. Which disaster are we going to face first?

And I'll go ahead and take the Great Depression, please. Yes, I think you're right. And I think that's where we're headed. But at the end of the day, I just would tell people to paint. attention to what happens and not so much to what people say. Yeah. Remember that all of a sudden we left Iraq and we left in the middle of the night. Yeah. Remember? Yep. Don't let the door hit you in the ass I think is what they said. And look at Afghanistan. Yep. And what happened in Vietnam? It's the same sort of nonsense. And I think we're going to witness the same thing in Ukraine

and Eastern Europe. I'd be surprised if the EU and NATO survived to be blunt. Yeah. Well, you know what? when it comes to that, just real quick at the end here, it's so important that the narrative has been, yeah, that's when we finally do the right thing and give it up, as humiliating as it is, as much as Americans don't like to be humiliated. Biden obviously botched how to withdraw from Afghanistan. You and I've talked about that. No question there. But getting out of Afghanistan was him finally doing the right thing. Absolutely. And so, you know, it's really too bad because there's so much kind of tough guy macho stuff on the right about how oh you see our power's being weakened because we're being humiliated and all which is true but the point needs to always be we shouldn't be

getting into these messes in the first place and most of this is power we shouldn't be attempting to exercise in the first place either and all those questions go begged and then the problem is just that you know oh yeah these democrats make us look weak and so now we need to double down and increase spending and be even tougher and pick a new fight with somebody else somewhere. else and what's got these people are never going to go completely away but they can be removed from the stage for a while yeah but then the american people have to pay a lot more attention to what people do with the power that they give them yeah all right well it hasn't happened so yeah well the time is now and no time like the present that's right uh i'll tell you what man i can't uh tell you how

much i appreciate your time on the show Doug yeah just remember that uh if you substitute the word Ukraine, or excuse me, the word, yeah, the word Russia for Ukraine. Listen to what they accuse Russia of and then change the word to Ukraine. Then you have a pretty clear picture. Yeah. Sounds about right. And it's a bloodbath, too. It's a catastrophe for everybody all around. Absolutely. Yeah. All right. Most of all for the Ukrainians. Right. Yeah. And you know what? I'm sorry, because I was thinking of this earlier and I wanted to bring this up. up. It's a good place to end it, I guess. Back in 2014, John Mearsheimer said, America is leading Ukraine down the Primrose path, and they're going to get wrecked. That's what he said.

He's right. Dead on target. Yep. All right. Thanks so much, Doug. Appreciate it. Same to you. Bye-bye. All right, you guys. That is the great Doug McGregor. Read him at the American Conservative magazine, holding ground, losing war. The Scott Horton show, Anti-War Radio, can be heard on KPFK 90.7 FM in L.A. APSRadio.com, anti-war.com, Scotthorton.org, and Libertarian Institute.org.