The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - WILL PUTIN USE NUKES?

Episode Date: September 20, 2022

He's got his back up against the wall in Ukraine and he's losing some support at home.  What options does Vladimir Putin have and will he use them, including nuclear weapons?  Brian Stewart is by with his thoughts. Also more on linear versus digital television, and a new study on life "out there"!

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. It's Tuesday, that means Brian Stewart, and the question today, will Vladimir Putin use nukes? That's right, the Tuesday Ukraine edition with Brian Stewart. That's also right. Vladimir Putin has got his back against the wall, and this question has been around since the beginning of this conflict, that if he ever did have his back against the wall, would Vladimir Putin use what he's capable of using if he wants to, which are nuclear weapons? That's a big question. And we'll get the answer from Brian

when he joins us in just a little bit. But I wanted to first of all, pick up on something I mentioned near the end of yesterday's program. It was on what that section we call N-Bits. And it was about this kind of debate between linear and digital in terms of the future of television. Linear being basically old school, digital being new school. Linear being the way you've always used to watch television, and digital by the way that you watch television now, or at least many of you do. And it's got the linear people all worried, the conventional television broadcasters, because digital is taking over with streaming services and the like. So that's what we mentioned near the end of yesterday's program.

But there's some things happened which is, well, it's kind of interesting. It's a theory that's now going around American television. And this theory is, you know, primetime, you know what primetime is? Primetime has always been the evening, kind of 8 to 11 on network television. Those are where you get the big numbers. Well, they still get pretty good numbers, but they're dropping. And they're consistently dropping year after year. And the drop is getting bigger each year. And why is it getting bigger

because people are cord cutting as they say they're getting away from conventional television services like cable and they're going to digital where they can get streaming services and they basically don't watch network television anymore. So that has, obviously, the network television broadcasters quite concerned about that prime time slot. Well, here's the theory. The theory is, well, maybe prime time really isn't the evenings anymore.

Where do conventional television still kind of rule the day? Well, they still kind of ruled the day in the mornings. And maybe that's an area they can beef up. And the first network to talk about, not just talk about it, but actually do something about it, seems to be CNN. What are they doing? They're taking one of their prime time stars, prime time being evening, their prime time stars, a fellow by the name of Don Lemon,

who's a pretty good broadcaster. They're taking him off the prime time hours. He's on at 10 o'clock. And they're going to put him on the morning. They've been having trouble with their morning broadcasts for some time now, actually. They think Don Lemon, partnered with a couple of other journalists, will make a difference. This could be the first kind of suggestion that something's going on in the thinking of network broadcasters. It's just one little hint, but you never know.

Because when you look at that prime time schedule, what used to be the hit television shows that drove the networks, bottom line, they've dropped in terms of the number of viewers what did they still own kind of in prime time they owned sports well the streaming services are going at sports broadcast now too look what's happening just in the past couple of months. You like the Toronto Blue Jays? You want to see the Toronto Blue Jays on Friday nights, sometimes on Saturdays?

They're not on conventional TV anymore. They're on Apple TV, which is a streaming service. Last Thursday night, first time, an NFL game, Thursday night football. Was it on its usual format on conventional TV, linear television? No, it was on digital. It was on Amazon. Now, there's still lots of football and baseball and hockey and basketball that are on conventional TV, but is this the first indication of the direction in which sports is going? Live sports? Is it moving away from conventional television and moving to the streaming services. It's a very interesting situation that's going on. The potential redefining of prime time, the potential loss of live sports, at least some of them, to conventional television. We are in a changing world. You know, much discussion has been made about the movement of programs,

the movement of people, and what's really going on behind the scenes. Well, you can see where some network executives may be seeing this as a big situation, much bigger than the public seems to notice that it's going on, in terms of where they should play their big people, where they should play their stars, where they should play their big programming, and the impact of those streaming services that are having on conventional television. This has all happened in the last couple of years. And when I say, as I've said before, five years ago, I couldn't have predicted what we'd be looking at today. And that means five years from now, I have no idea what the landscape will look like in television. I mean, look what's happened with podcasts. They've exploded on the scene in the last five years. There are thousands and thousands of podcasts.

Some of them only have a few listeners. Some of them do better, but none of them have have a few listeners. Some of them do better, but none of them have the huge numbers. Well, I shouldn't say none of them because there are a couple. Howard Stern, anybody? But the overwhelming majority of podcasts, you know, 99.9% of them don't get anything like television gets but these are all people who are listening to programming they didn't listen to five years ago and a lot of that listening is going on in the evening at times where they used to watch television talk to young people today they

don't watch television like we used to watch television at all. They watch their phones, right? Anyway, I wanted to add that little discussion that I saw going on today, and there's some news kind of breaking on that front in terms of this potential redefining of prime time the background to decisions being made about the shuffling of anchors moving from evening to morning now it may be all overblown, but something certainly appears to be going on on that front. Okay, enough on that. Let's get to our major topic for today.

And our major topic is, as it always is on Tuesdays, is the situation as a result of Ukraine. And the position that Vladimirladimir putin has put himself in we recall just last week when brian stewart uh was on the program with his regular tuesday thoughts he painted the picture of how dire the straits are for putin and russia right now. That Ukraine has made an incredible movement in terms of its offensive in Ukraine to gain back land that it had lost to Russia earlier in this conflict. And they seem to have the upper hand. So the question is what does Putin do?

So we're going to talk to Brian. We're going to talk to him right after this. And welcome back. You're listening to The Bridge on Sirius XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, and on your favorite podcast platform. And as usual, on Tuesday, you tune in because you want to hear

what Brian Stewart has to say about the conflict in Ukraine. Well, he's got a lot of important stuff to say today. And it all revolves around this issue of what will Vladimir Putin do now. So without further ado, let's get into the conversation with Brian Stewart. All right, Brian, let's talk about Putin because the issue becomes now what's Putin going to do? He seems to have his back to the wall. Things have not been going well for the Russian side, as you explained very clearly last week, and nothing's really changed on that front. He gave a speech or an interview last Friday where he said, well, he said

this exactly, we are really quite restrained in our response to this for the time being. If the situation continues to develop in this way, the response will be more serious. Now, that's not the first time he's sort of waved this kind of more serious flag, and everybody is supposed to interpret this, I guess, that he might go nuclear, he might use his nuclear capabilities. What do you make of that? Is that just a bluff? I mean, we know he has them, but would he use them?

Well, my feeling is Putin is a longtime saber rattler. He's been forever threatening one various horrible option after another when he doesn't get his way. But he's actually quite indecisive in a lot of crises. I don't think we're there that Russia would reach for tactical nuclear weapons or any kind of nuclear weapons. I think we may be on the path, but that path is a long one still. The risks he would run of going nuclear, however bad the risks are of kind of losing this war aren't nearly as bad as the risks he would run if he went nuclear i think uh he'd be he'd push russia into a complete pariah status in the world and i think he would bring down upon his head

the uh program of the last friends he has in the world china india who have already been making their displeasure felt over the way this war is going uh there'd be so much fallout if he went that route plus i think the uh the western allies are making it pretty clear now you you heard biden's reaction was don't don't't. They're making it very clear to the Russians that there's no easy use of tactical nuclear weapons or any other kind of weapons that the West is going to just sit by and allow happen. So I think it's a threat. I think he'll go to other measures. But I wouldn't be surprised if, you know, a year from now or six months from now, the threat is a little more, it's just considerably more serious than it is today.

If he said to his generals, okay, we're going to do, we're going to use this option and we're going to use it now. How would his generals respond? I think they would really say, this is, sir, we have to have a real discussion about this. I mean, you know, it's time we sat down and all of us discussed what are we getting out of Ukraine that permits us to take such enormous chances with our national treasure and our national reputation. And I think they would have the guts, let's say, at that stage to really say, we just we want to talk this through.

They would be very fearful of the way the war would escalate after that point. Another factor I think they would lay out for Putin is the Ukrainians are not without a power to fight back themselves in very many unconventional ways and up the ante in terms of russian suffering so it would be the western response the response of allies who would be horrified uh the complete uh outcast nature that russia would find itself caught up in and for what gain because the tactical nuclear weapons wouldn't change necessarily the face of the battle all that much. We're talking about weapons that are used on a localized area. And I think the Ukrainians might very well say, OK, you've used that. We're going to do everything we can to escalate ourselves now.

But we are certainly not going to give up to this kind of obvious war crime that will stain Russia's reputation for generations to come. All right. Well, if he's not going to go behind the option door that says nuclear, what option doors has he got at this point? He's got almost no good options. What I think he first of all has to do, he's got to stabilize the front. He's got to move his overextended forces back into the Donbass so they can actually stabilize the line and stop being taken advantage of by the Ukrainians' much better trained, better officered, better intelligence,

and now better armed forces, so he would lose more big battles like this um he's gone the option of upping the ante of ukrainian suffering with okoy nuclear you've already seen the shelling of nuclear plants or in the vicinity of nuclear plants or just power plants he could try to collapse the ukrainian economy altogether by bringing down its critical infrastructure. He can up the ante of the number of Ukrainians being killed in cities by Russian shelling. So I think he will escalate that way. I think we're going to see a lot more of the threats to Ukraine's economy, its cities, its people. But I would add the rider to that.

There's not an unlimited supply of weapons either for Russia. It's running low, they say, on a lot of its precision weapons. And the lower he gets in the stockpile, the more carefully he has to use them. And in the meantime, of course, the problem is if he brings the forces back further and further into a tighter area to control like just the donbass he opens all his back areas his command and control his ammo dumps his troop deployment centers all of that become ever more open to the shelling of these precision rockets and ammo artillery fire that the Ukrainians are now getting very good at, and even local Ukrainian airstrikes. So, I mean, even his best option, which is to pull back from being overextended brings another range of dangers to his very exhausted and badly supplied and

beyond weary troops. Well, speaking of troops, the best estimate I've seen as to what the Russians have there on site as a fighting force is around 200 000 is that enough peter i don't think it's even at that level i mean i've listened to a lot of people who are real experts in the russian army and they say the effective fighting force is around 100 000 which is i mean ludicrously short of what it's needed we've discussed before the the front lines here run for about 1,200 miles. I mean, that would require a force of 900,000 or so to adequately protect. It's not enough. And a lot of those forces are already battered to the point where they're not very effective. And a lot of other of those forces are very weak. There are things like National Guard

or mercenaries who've been hired for money who have a tendency to run like blazes if the going gets too bad. And, you know, recruited criminals who are looking for looting more than they are looking for a firefight with the enemy. So it's a very bad mix of forces they've got, and they're way, way under strength. Hopelessly so, I would say.

What do you do about that? Well, the only thing he can do is he's got two options. One is to go for full mobilization, declare this a war, say, well, really, it's more now than a special operation it's it's actually an all-out war that means we can call up anyone we want may who's male and able to hold a rifle or a gun and then bring them bring conscripts in and legally send conscripts into a foreign war the possible the danger there is of course is of a public upheaval and outcry the like of which russia hasn't seen since really the fall of communism probably the russian people seem to be okay in majority in letting a war go on as long as it's overseas somewhere but they certainly don't want the war brought home

where their sons are being conscripted to go fight in it. So short of that, there's a kind of medium mobilization, which means he would be able to call in a lot of reservists for the technical side. These are people who, you know, would be better at tech firing of weapons and complex weapons and supply and the rest of it. He could call in several hundred thousand of those, maybe even 400,000. The problem there is, of course, and again, every switch he tries is going to run into its own blizzard of problems. The problem there is all this takes time to train people. I mean, you need about three months to get people trained up to be anywhere competent near a battlefield.

And that means you need the time and you need a lot of trainers. And Russia is very short of junior officers, very short of trainers. And it hasn't done a very good job of training in recent years. I think he might end up there with a larger force, ill-trained, still ill-equipped, because nothing is helping that supply shambles, and still a very bad morale, because it's certainly not going to increase morale, dragging people out of civilian life and sending them off to fight in Ukraine. And, of course, there's one other big if or what if that hangs over that that's got to give him and his generals pause. However much they mobilize, Ukraine can mobilize more because they have 44 million people.

The number of males who could fight if called up and they have high morale, they train well and they're ready to go, could easily run up to 900,000 and over a million if the Ukrainians had the Western backing needed to train this mountain and supply them. So the Russians can only be met by increasing troops, knowing that the Ukrainians are also going to increase their troops. Well, will you explain to me this? Given the picture that you've painted for us here in these last 10 minutes, it's awfully hard to imagine why Putin still has support at home. They're getting beaten. The picture is ugly. And an increasing number of people seem to understand that.

I mean, this weekend, one of their biggest pop stars and in russia came out against the war which uh you know takes a degree of courage to bid to do that but why does he still have seemingly such a strong level of support on from the russian people yeah just to note on her, Ella Pugacheva, she's known as the Dolly Parton of Russia. She's just extraordinary popular. And her husband is a famous anti-Putin critic who lives in Israel at the moment. It's thought in Russia that 20% of the population are probably really for the war. 20% of the population are probably really for the war 20 of the

population are really against 60 are sitting on a fence not wanting to even discuss it not wanting to think about it the time comes when thinking about it becomes can happen very fast one little anecdote if i may When I flew down to cover Argentina during the Falklands War, when I flew into Argentina, it is as if they had won. This is when they were winning and they had sunk a couple of British destroyers.ers were all embracing each other and embracing me it wasn't a great for argentina when i left about three weeks later and the british were clearly winning i couldn't find anybody who supported the war they were all i was against it from the beginning you know that that happens in countries so i think it's it's possible that a lot of russians are starting to hear for really for the first time through various methods that you know relatives who've lost a son uh neighbors who've lost a son uh these military blogs that are coming out criticizing the war effort uh they're seen by

hundreds of thousands of people are heard by hundreds of thousands of people and that get passed around word to word uh and the kremlin is clearly worried enough they're sending no word to the right wingers who are making these blogs to cool it there's a line and don't cross it um so i think putin's got a limited amount of time when he can he can with an economy in near ruins with other aspects of national life close to ruin, a limited time he can call on that large mass to just remain okay, silent, what have you. Of course, there's always a fear factor. I mean, who in Russia wants to stick their neck out and answer somebody on a poll on a telephone,

would you give us your opinion of the war? You hang up fast and say, I'm sorry, I've got a sore throat or I've got COVID, I've got to go now. That's an aspect of it too. Let me throw your own words back at you because I listen carefully to you every week. I kind of hang on everything you always say and have been saying since, well, I guess we go back to February or March

when we started talking to you on Tuesdays. And one of the things you've always said, and you said it again just last week, is don't count the Russians out. They've surprised us before in history. It doesn't look good for them right now but don't count them out so yes it's possible that somewhere in the military command at the moment and in the kremlin command they could put together an imaginative bright officer corps who

could bring together you know 20 odd battalions of really good paratroopers and special commandos and the rest of it, and make sure they get all the gleam and the glory of the equipment and the supply they need, and then throw them in and they could maybe start making some major comebacks on the ground. Do I anticipate happen happening absolutely not uh i think the uh the russians uh at the moment are they have an imagination breakdown they can't seem to imagine how to run a war like this successfully and until we see a bit of that imagination i think i can't count on seeing the Russians coming up with anything particularly brilliant. Their Navy hasn't worked well. They've lost the Black Sea. Their Air Force

hasn't worked well. They're hardly showing up in the air at times. They lost four planes, apparently, last week. Their army is demonstrably not working well. So where's the surprise that they're going to show us with? So that's what I would say. I mean, two things that really struck me, and the military analysts have been saying the last week, old sayings amongst the military, the Russians should try and grab hold of it. It is better to have a foolish small war than a foolish big war.

You know, if you're going to have a foolish war, make sure it stays small or is small and doesn't become a big war you know if you're going to have a foolish war make sure it stays smaller is smaller no it doesn't become a big war the other one is doubling down on a strategic mistake doubles down on the mistake and you know pretty obvious sayings but this is something that you know it's got to be it's got to get to putin's mind somehow somebody's got to get to Putin's mind somehow. Somebody's got to get to Putin's mind and say, every single thing we're doing is just doubling down on a mistake and making it a bigger mistake. If we make this war, I won't call it foolish, sir,

but if it is a foolish small war, if we make it a bigger war, it's likely to become just a foolish big war. At a certain point, we don't what putin's strength is because so many voices now are starting to question and in the diplomatic field for instance being lectured by the president of china and india about uh this is not the way to go apparently the central asian republics have all been in dismal the allies of Russia, more or less, in many ways, have been giving their displeasure out. People have been showing up late for his photo ops. He goes to a meeting with a photo op of a foreign leader, and the foreign leader shows up three or four minutes late.

That never would have happened when the Russian leader was respected. I think these are all messages that, sir, you're losing power by the week. If this goes on many more weeks, we can't sort of suggest to you how much power you're about to lose, diplomatically, in public support at home, economically, Lord, and militarily. Who's to say the Ukrainians don't have another big offensive to launch pretty soon, somewhere soon, unexpected. You know, you're quite right. A year ago, on the sort of international stage, Putin was a big name and a big guy.

I mean, he had more space on the international stage than he probably deserved, but he had it. Now he looks pretty small, and you're right, that ticking off by the Chinese president and the Indian prime minister the other day was quite something to watch. Let me ask one last question. Sure. What do the Ukrainians have to be careful about at this point?

I think they have to be careful of being unrealistic. A hard thing to tell any country that's just had a big breakthrough and has the public fully in support of the government. The military acting really well, pressing the world enormously. The Ukraine brand is going up while the Russian brand goes down. Very hard to convince a country in a state like that, be careful, really careful. Because you've had a lot of casualties. Right up until fairly recently, that was a grinding war of attrition.

You're also losing elements of your economy that it would take a generation perhaps to rebuild even with a lot of foreign uh help so in imagining this war i would be careful about imagining taking say all the donbass and all the crimea i i think that's unlikely to happen maybe the donbass, but Crimea, I think Putin would make that a red line they couldn't cross. But, you know, I'm sure Western powers and friends of Ukraine are getting this message across. But that's always the case of a winning side. Don't lose caution as you go forward. And also, don't fall into a trap on the battlefield, which could be laid for you.

When they go in to attack Donbass in the east, that's an area where the Russians have laid down lots of defenses. It's a much easier area to protect than up in the north. And the fighting there can be very, very prolonged and severe. But at the same time, this hand on the other hand,

who's to tell the Ukrainians who have been winning big now that they shouldn't push it as far as they can possibly go? Well, good answer though. Use caution. Be sure you know what you're doing before you do it now at this point because things are in your favor uh brian as always uh appreciate this look forward to uh next week's talk take care great thanks peter brian stewart talking to us again

on the situation in Ukraine, in the conflict between Ukraine and Russia. And we should mention, because it didn't come up during the interview, but we should mention that the other thing that Putin has done in the last 24, 48 hours is to deny the claims by the Ukrainian army and some observers on the ground about the situation in one of the areas that has been liberated from Russian forces that there are mass graves have been discovered

with more than 400 bodies in them. It is going to take some proper international observers on the scene to write a report on this. But the early indications are that it was certainly a mass grave of some sort. And the bodies that are being dug up all appear to have recently been, recently being the last couple of months, being killed, either in a firefight or being slaughtered,

tortured in some cases. So those are the claims. Putin is responding by saying, it had nothing to do with us. The Ukrainians are making this up. He's not being believed by many outside of Russia, if any. All right, that's our report on the Ukraine situation today. We've got a couple of minutes left.

I want another one of what we've been calling end bits, for lack of a better term. I love this one. I'm in Toronto on this day, and Toronto was the site last week of the Toronto International Film Festival, the last couple of weeks, actually. And one of the big names in town in the last week was Steven Spielberg. In fact, his film, his new film that he was premiering here,

won the award, I think, for best film at TIFF. Certainly one of the best films. It won an award. Spielberg, of course, is somebody who's now well into his 60s and beyond, but caught our imagination as young people through the stories that he told, the films that he made. It could have been about Jaws. It could have been about Indiana Jones.

Or it could have been Star Wars. E.T., I think, was his as well. But so many of them had to do with space and the possibilities that perhaps, you know, life exists out there somewhere. Well, I was thinking of that and Spielberg. When I read this piece just the other day, it comes out of a website, a magazine called Space. The headline is this.

We can find life outside the solar system in 25 years, researcher says. Okay, well, fine. What researcher? You know, what kind of cred has this researcher got? Well, listen to this story. Let me read a couple of lines out of this story. It'll leave you with something to think about, let me tell you.

We haven't found life on Mars yet, but one researcher believes we might be able to detect evidence of it on planets outside of the solar system within the next quarter of a century. That's the 25 year mark. Speaking at a press briefing on September 2nd, the researcher, a fellow by the name of Quance, detailed the technology projects that are now in the works that may enable researchers to finally answer the question

whether we are alone in the universe. Here's researcher Quantz's explanation of this. Listen to this. In 1995, my colleague and Nobel Prize laureate, Didier Queloz, discovered the first planet outside our solar system, Quantz said during the briefing. And then he added, today more than 5,000 exoplanets are known,

and we are discovering them on a daily basis. What's an exoplanet, you say? Okay, an exoplanet is any planet beyond our solar system. Most orbit other stars, but free-floating exoplanets, called rogue planets, orbit the galactic center and are untethered to any star. What's the difference between a planet and an exoplanet? The short answer? Planets that orbit around other stars are called exoplanets. All of the planets in our solar system orbit around the sun.

Planets that orbit around other stars are called exoplanets. Okay, so our researcher friend says there are 5,000 exoplanets now being discovered. And in 1995, that's when the first one was discovered. There are many more exoplanets awaiting to be discovered, given that astronomers feel that each of the more than 100 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy has at least one exoplanet. That makes for an enormous number of exoplanets. And just like Earth, at the right distance from their host stars, they may be able to have the presence of liquid water. And we know what water means, potentially for some form of life form. I'm not saying that out pops some human as we're known, but some form of life could just be some kind of tiny little thing

that's swimming around in that water. What we do know, says Quance, and I'll leave it at this, is if these terrestrial planets have atmospheres and what these atmospheres are made of, we need to investigate the atmospheres of these planets. We need an observational approach that would allow us to take pictures of these planets. Now, you say the James Webb Space Telescope.

Sorry, I got TV on my mind. You know about the James Webb Space Telescope. You've seen these incredible pictures it's been taking of late, and you go, okay, just point that at one of these exoplanets. Well, it wasn't made for doing that. It's helping a little bit. It's detecting some things but they're all the races on already to to build and come up with the telescope that will in fact be able to look at exoplanets

you got all that wasn't that great think of that steven spielberg you know all that stuff that we thought was just make-believe maybe it's a little more than make-believe but 25 years that's a problem for me i'm 74 it's going to take 25 years i'm not going to know you have to send up a signal. Right? Somehow. So I can find out. But maybe it'll be sooner. Maybe it'll be quicker. Look how fast things are moving. Alright. That's going to wrap it up for this day.

Tomorrow, Smoke Mirrors and the Truth, Bruce Anderson joins us. I don't know what I'll throw at him tomorrow. Maybe we'll talk about this prime time issue that we talked about at the beginning of today's program. I don't know. We'll see.

We'll think of something. You can be sure of that because we always do. Thursday, the return of the random ranter and also your mail. So it's your turn. That means you've got to write. So whatever your thoughts are on whatever you may have, maybe there was something that you still want to say

about the monarchy and about the queen and now the king. It has been a couple of weeks. It is time to kind of move on. But if you have something you want to say, draw me a line, themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com, themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com.

So whatever the topic is, don't be shy. Send it along. I read all your mail, and I use some of it. Don't forget to tell me where you're writing from. Some of you have slipped into that already this year, this season, forgetting to tell me where you're writing from.

Make sure you add that to your name. All right. Friday, of course, is Good Talk with Sean Talley Bear, and Bruce will be back for that as well, as usual. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening on this day. It's been a blast. I'll talk to you again in 24 hours.