The Duran Podcast - Biden's Ukraine Policy Shift w/ Lt. Col. Daniel Davis

Episode Date: June 3, 2024

Biden's Ukraine Policy Shift w/ Lt. Col. Daniel Davis

Okay, we are live with Alexander Mercutus in London, and we are joined today by the one and only Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis from the awesome YouTube channel. You can find it on Daniel Davis Deep Dive. Definitely recommend his YouTube channel. Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis, how are you doing? It's great to have you. I am doing so good. I can't even hardly stand it. Thanks for having me here. I have the link to Daniel Davis Deepdive in the description box down below, and I will add it as a pinned comment as well. Once again, we strongly recommend for everyone that is watching this video to subscribe

to Lieutenant Colonel Diane Davis's YouTube channel. You will get all kinds of great information and amazing content. And Alexander was on Daniel Davis Deep Dive just last week. And it was great. And by the way, just as I'll have to check the numbers today, but that he is just almost right at the number one most viewed video we have ever had in the entire almost eight months of our show. So big kudos to you. And thanks for coming on our show.

And that's why I'm so happy to be on yours. Well, I guess it's a huge pleasure to be on. Yeah. Well, it's a huge pleasure to be on. It's a great program, if I may say. But lots and lots of great programs altogether to find on Daniel Davis, Steve Drive. Please go on there. You'll find a massive amount of superb content to learn about and follow.

So please do what Alex just said. All right. Let's get started, gentlemen. Let me just say a quick hello to everyone that is watching us on Rockfin, on Odyssey, Rumble, the durand.com. How is our Durand community on locals doing? And everyone that is joining us on YouTube, a big shout out to our moderators.

we will go for about an hour, and then we're going to have a hard stop at about an hour, hour, 15 minutes. So Alexander, Lieutenant Colonel Davis, we have to talk about the Biden White House, Ukraine, and this policy shift, if it really is, a policy shift. So Alexander, Lieutenant Colonel, Daniel Davis, let's get started. Indeed, and with whom better to discuss these things than with Daniel Davis, who's been in the U.S. military, who's had an amazing career in the military, who's actually fought in wars and seen the face of battle, something which none of, you know,

I certainly haven't done, but I also suspect most of the policy people, the people who make policy in Washington. Very few of them have seen battle. The president hasn't. He's secure his team. Jake Sullivan and Tony Blinken. Tony Blinken was apparently the

person who recommended the change of policy. Well, they certainly haven't seen the face of battle. And I don't think they understand very well what they're doing. And before we proceed, just to say, I had a really rather astonishing, I'm not sure this is wholly correct, but I briefly saw a statement made which has been attributed to John Kirby telling us how this decision was made. And the decision I should say quickly, which I'll be talking about, is, of course, the one to allow Ukraine to conduct deep strikes using US weapons deep inside Russia and nuclear superpower. But anyway, what Kirby, as I understand it said, was that this was discussed within the interagency, and Daniel Davis will tell us what that is, the interagency decided

on the shift of policy. They made a recommendation to the president. and he signed it off. Now, that seems to me a bizarre way to make policy of this kind. I thought it was the president who made policy. I thought it was the president who initiated policy. I have all these pictures in my mind of JFK and other presidents meeting with their staff in the Oval Office in the White House and having in-depth discussions with them before they made a decision of this kind. but it seems this is how this policy decision was made. And it's a policy decision which allows an ally of the United States engage with what many people see as a proxy war,

waged by the United States, against another nuclear superpower, which is Russia, to conduct military strikes onto the territory of that nuclear superpower. That seems to me an astonishing thing. and certainly not something that ought to be decided in this manner. But anyway, let's go back and let's discuss what's happened. So Daniel Davis, did you ever expect when this war began that we would be here, that we would have a situation where the United States is authorizing military strikes

with American weapons on Russia itself? Yeah, just to answer your second question first, no, I actually gave us credit for not being, being stupid. I mean, you can, you can have, you know, decisions that you can say that's not wise or, man, there would be better ways to do things. And there's always room to disagree with, you know, smart people about how to accomplish something. But then there's a difference between being just reckless and, I mean, you can't say it any nicer, stupid. When you're talking about attacking, or allowing your weapon systems to be used to directly attack and kill the citizens and the troops of a nuclear-powered country. That just goes beyond the pale of anything.

And I'll talk on that a second. I do want to touch real quick before we get away from it, your comment about the interagency process. Because it actually, the system itself is good, actually. If used properly, it's good. Because what you do is you have people from multiple different, I guess, not just systems, but multiple different agencies, whether there's Department Defense, Department of State, Department of Agriculture, Department of Energy, et cetera, all different kind of people with a lot of expertise come together to say, all right, here's a proposed course of action. What are the ways that we may not be aware of that this thing could have ramifications, et cetera? So it's good in that regard because it gets a lot of expertise to find one

area because you may not be thinking of something from the Department of Agriculture, for example, but there may be something that you don't know about that could have direct impact on your preferred outcomes. So that's fine. Here's where the problem comes in. If you staff it with the wrong people. Now, you just brought up a big point about there that some of the key people at this interagency forum don't have the experience on the ground to what combat means even like. Now, you know, you have Kirby who was an admiral, so he should qualify on that. But so far as I'm aware, he doesn't have any direct combat experience and certainly not in the naval area because there hasn't been any for many decades, certainly since he was last on active duty. So if you have people with the wrong experience or the absence of the critical experience, then they come to a wrong decision no matter how good the process is.

So that's why, even though the system itself is good, the decisions coming out of are hideously bad because it's all about personnel. If you put the wrong people in there, you're going to get bad stuff out, right? Why does this decision be made at all? What is it going to achieve? I mean, what do these people think that it's going to achieve, which is going to make the situation better? Do they think it's going to change the course of the wall? is it going to change the course of the war? Yeah, well, that's again, you're asking all the right questions here

and what's just driving me crazy as I'm watching some of this stuff because, number one, I was trained in the environment to where you're, where this a version of this interagency coordination is supposed to go on. We were trained to what's called the military decision-making process where you're trained to form your mind into thinking about all these different things and collecting information from different areas. so that you get a comprehensive understanding of the ramifications of your proposed course of action. This one is so badly flawed.

It's just hard for me to know where to start. But we will start and what is the outcome? You should start from the beginning. What is the objective that I want to accomplish? And then you go about setting, okay, what are the means I want to use to accomplish that objective? That's rational. It's logical. You do that in business and sports.

I mean, you do it in all kinds of things. In almost any inhuman endeavor, you have that general framework. So it's logical. But in this case, I don't see any thought process into it. We aren't even articulating in the United States what this is supposed to accomplish. Literally, they just say we're going to do it. That's what Biden has said. We're going to have limited ability so that we can hit the Russian forces on their side of the Kharkiv offensive,

which is going on. And Biden has thus far said it's not a blanket opportunity. You can't just do anything you want. But over this past weekend, the first iteration that already has happened were Hamars were used to attack Belgarod north of Kharkiv. And that's what spawned the whole Kharkiv operation anyway to try to push them further back. But no one is articulating even suggesting, okay, by doing that now then, here's what's going to change in the war. And here's how we're going to succeed.

It's not even articulated. They just, here's something. Let's do it. see what happens. I mean, that's probably the best I can come up with because the alternative, looking at that back in its comprehensive form again, the next question you would have to say is, what is the likely response? So if I want this to push them back further and we use American weapons on Russian territory, Russian civilians and citizens and troopers are killed, what is the likely response? And I think, I fear that people are in the West, especially in the U.S.,

and UK are saying, well, nothing's happened so far. We've crossed a bunch of red lines in the past that Russia was upset about. They didn't do anything. So they never will. So now then we can just ignore them and do whatever we want. I fear that that's what's motivating right now because it's not rational to think that would do that would do nothing in this case. This does cross a genuine red line that's categorically different than everything else.

because look, Alexander, you know, there's been proxy wars as long as there's been mankind, really. And even going back over the past better part of a century between, you know, that Russia slash the USSR and the West, we've had proxy wars all over the place where we try to take care or, you know, harm each other's interest in peripheral areas. But we have never attacked directly onto the soil of Russia or on they onto the soil of America. And can you imagine how people's heads would blow up if Russia started taking some actions, even prior to this, it said, hey, we're going to attack British territory, American territory, because of something you've been doing here. And we would go crazy if everybody would be ready to go to war right away.

And yet they think that Russia won't do it so that it's no problem to do that to Russia. And that is, I think, potentially a fatal miscalculation. I completely agree. I mean, I remember the Cold War. I remember it very well. Now, I was not yet born at the time of the Korean War, but I remember that U.S. aircraft were not authorized during the Korean War to cross into Chinese territory. I remember that the same restriction applied during the Vietnam War, that U.S. aircraft were not permitted to cross into Chinese territory again. I remember that during the Vietnam War also, there was a policy. of not attacking Soviet supply ships going to Haifa. And I also remember that when there was the conflict in Afghanistan, after the Soviet troops entered Afghanistan and the US was supporting the resistance against those Soviet troops, there was never any question of authorizing or assisting the Mujahidim to cross the border

and attack Russia on its own territory. I mean, that never, that never arose. And as you absolutely rightly say, the other side, except, and imposed the same restrictions upon itself. There were understandings about how far people would go because people also understood that if you crossed certain red lines, you were in an extremely dangerous situation. What has changed to cause that understanding to go away?

Because this isn't something that's come out of nowhere. It's a relatively recent thing. It's something that has happened over time. time. But what has led us to this point where we're able to make discussions like this, decisions like this? And they appear uncontroversial. Yeah. In my view, there's three things that are combining to do this. One is arrogance. Number two is arrogance. And I could probably say number three is arrogance too. But you have this arrogant belief that you can do anything you want to. We have, especially all throughout the Afghanistan war, we believe that you could just use whatever words you wanted and create the reality that you want, irrespective of the truth on the ground.

And so we got used to just saying things that we wanted to be true. And when they turned out to be they want, we just ignored it. And until finally, you can only ignore reality so far and everything collapsed and fell apart, even though myself and Matthew Ho and several other people had been. for over a decade warning about looming disaster on it for very specific reasons why. But when it finally happened, what happened? Did they acknowledge the reality and the truth? And was people held accountable? No.

They blamed someone else. There was some other fault. Well, it was Biden's fault. Well, actually, it was Trump's fault. Whatever. It was somebody else's fault. Another general's fault. Everybody blamed somebody else.

But in the end, no one was held accountable. So they all continued to go up the ladder. Now that in this particular war here, at first there was this recognition that there is a line you can't cross that we've historically, you just beautifully laid out there what had been for many decades. Then we started tipping our toe cross it. Maybe this first it was with the anti-tank weapons and then it was with the anti-air missiles on the tactical level. And then it was with American 155 millimeter artillery pieces, the howitzes, the M-Triple 7s. And then maybe some Challenger tanks.

and some leopards and then even Abrams tanks. And now then Patriot air defense systems, every time we kept ratcheting up, something else that was previously thought off limits, and they're looking and they're saying, Russia didn't do anything. They didn't attack Britain. They didn't attack America.

They didn't attack anybody else in NATO, Poland, Romania, nobody. So then we'll take one more step. Now, of course, F-16s are coming. Long-range missiles have been coming. Now then long-range missiles into Russia has finally been allowed. So you see that you have this air. arrogance that we can do whatever we want. And then they have the experience that over the last two plus years, Russia hadn't done

anything. So now then this arrogance makes you think, and they never will. So literally we can do anything we want. And I've heard this many times. Several retired American generals have said, yeah, there's zero chance that Russia is going to use nuclear weapons because they know that Biden has already said that there would be this awful retaliation and they know that they don't want to pay that. and from an arrogant position, you can see, well, he's right, because if they use nuclear weapons on us, we will definitely use it back.

And because he knows that, he'll take the rational course, but we are going to continue to take this course to where we can just do whatever we want short of nuclear weapons. And as I think you pointed out, you sent something to me a couple of days ago, Putin is trying to tell people, that's not a safe assumption to have. and you had on Friday, you had Dimitra Medvedev also have a very stern warning that that don't go down this path and think that nothing's going to happen. You had Rehikov, the deputy foreign minister today reinforced that message again. We could be facing catastrophe if you keep going down this road. And the question is, will we ever listen to them and start doing something that makes sense? Or are we going to continue on with this arrogant path that we can do anything until there's a nuclear cloud somewhere?

And I fear we're heading toward the ladder. Why is there so little discussion about this in Washington? Now, I understand your point about the fact that there are these generals who are not just generals, I should say. I mean, there's a army of civilian commentators, people who, again, have never seen a battlefield. And they've never had any understanding, I think it seems to me, of what war involved. But I read the media here in Britain, for example. I read the media in the United States. Firstly, I get the sense that this whole topic is not receiving the kind of attention it should be getting.

I think this ought to be the big story, actually. I mean, you know, United States makes a decision to lob missiles into the territory of an adversary nuclear superpower. It seems to me, once upon a time, you know, I can remember there would be a massive outcry, huge public debate, massive controversy about this. I'm old enough to remember the arguments about whether to attack the Russian, the Soviet ships sailing to Haiphon, for example. Just to just say. But this time, almost nothing. The media is largely silence. Most people, I actually met someone recently, he was a banker, by the way.

He didn't know anything about this. You know, a person of some sophistication. why this extraordinary silence? I mean, why is that this curtain of silence? Is it because some people don't want a discussion? Or is it because people just don't understand widely how dangerous this whole situation is becoming? Yeah, there's another factor that addresses some of the problem that you're identifying right here, in that because we love to see things in black and white in this country, especially, and we don't do nuance. So obviously, Zelensky is the good guy and Putin is evil.

Zelensky is all good. He's like Churchill and Putin is all bad. He's like Hitler. So once you understand that, then you can now understand that you can never say anything that even sounds like it's not bad for Russia. Forget about saying anything positive or that they're doing something that's good here. You can't do that. So if you say anything that,

implies we should, what's the term that I keep hearing people ridicule us. They say if we self-detur, if you're afraid of what Putin might do, you're a Putin apologist and you're actually a defeatist. We need to be talking about victory here and helping, you know, that brave Zelensky, you know, keep on fighting the good fight down there. And so let's go. So if someone, whether it's on my channel, your channel or some other people want to say, hey, this is stupid. Don't go down this path. It's not going to get widespread public attention in the major media because it sounds like it's a little bit pro-Russian it's good for Putin so it must be bad for us so don't talk about it don't say anything about it not thinking that look if you keep going down a dumb direction this thing could spiral out of

control and he could finally say you've crossed one too many my red lines and now I'm afraid if I don't stand up here you're going to go all the way to Moscow so now we're going to take action and once that happens it's that genie's out of the bottle and it's almost too late. So I fear that that's what's going to happen that we'll be faced with a situation to where we either have to massively back down or foolishly go forward to catastrophic outcomes. Well, let's talk about going forward because, of course, Putin made a very strong statement just a couple of days ago in Tashkane, in which he made it very clear that for him the absolute red line is the use of cruise missiles, attack missiles and storm shadows and things like that against

Russian territory. And the reason he said that, by the way, and if you read his comments, it was clear to me that the reason he considers that a red line is because he says these weapons can only be used with the direct involvement of Western military people. So that means that the West is in effect involved in these attacks against Russia. So that was in some ways an extremely powerful warning indeed. Do you think that we are going to escalate to the point where we do start to use attack missiles and other cruise missiles against Russia? Because the Ukrainians are already agitating for it. They're already pushing it. And it seems that whatever they demand they eventually get.

That's been the trend so far. I will give it some chance to say that we might not guaranteed go across that. Because Biden has been, for all the criticism that I've leveled upon him, he has shown that he has been risk averse on taking that final big plunge, whatever it may happen to be. And only inch and forward with toes when he sees maybe it won't cause any negative stuff. like with the Abrams tanks, for example. You know, for a long time, I think the British were the first with a company of Challenger tanks. And then the Germans wanted to give a bunch, but they said, we're not doing it unless you got some skin in the game.

So we went with a, you know, a whopping single battalion of M1A ones that didn't even show up for like a year. So it wasn't a big threat. It didn't have any actual tactical impact on the battlefield at all. But it signaled to the Germans to go put some tanks in. And of course, most of their tanks got blown up and it didn't have any tactical. impact at all. But he thought, all right, well, that one's kind of safe because it doesn't really threaten Russia. This one, on the other hand, may, especially if we get into some cruise territory and beyond even just Belgarad, but like elsewhere in some of these distant places, yeah, I think you've also mentioned the recent

early warning radar, nuclear radar systems for the Russians that have been hit by Ukrainian drones. Now, that's domestic stuff. That's not our stuff. And I frankly have been surprised. that that didn't get a bigger response out of Russia than it did, given the criticality of those assets. But if that happens again, and instead it's a U.S. cruise missile or a storm shadow or a scalp missile and something that Putin's right can only be actually operated by Western countries and it strikes the territory, a military target, then I don't know what's going to happen. So I'm hoping that President Biden doesn't do that because nobody else is going to do that unless he, green lights at first, no other country in NATO, but it is right on the cusp of doing that.

And you're right. It's not only using Zelensky, but its other Western leaders are agitating for it, too. President Macron, France being first and foremost, he's pushing it before he can. He's talking about missile strikes on Russian air bases inside Russia. By the way, I agree with you. I don't think that France and Britain and Germany will do this thing unless the United States. does, I think they're always going to hide behind the United States. But my own senses, and I'd like your thoughts about this, that there is a very hard line of action inside Europe, which is intent on involving the United States as deeply as they can in this conflict.

And some of them almost would be happy to invite trouble upon themselves if they could draw the United States directly into that conflict, into the conflict in that way, as a way of achieving victory. Do you agree with this? Because that's certainly my impression of some of the things I'm hearing coming out of Paris. And by the way, and privately, hearing in London as well. Yeah, and add Poland and add the Baltics to that, several Baltic states that have been more and more open about wanting that very thing. And they clearly do. And part of me understands their motivation because, you know, whether you're talking about Paris or Berlin, their level of recognition of potential threat from Russia is one thing. But the Baltics or Poland right there on the border are

different. And they've had bad histories there. And so I don't, I don't just say that it's, inconsequential because they have, you know, what they consider to be quite serious reason for worry about Russia categorically. But what I always go back to is it doesn't much matter what you want to do. It doesn't matter what you claim to desire to do. It matters what you can do. So in 1938, 1939, you had Adolf Hitler making all kinds of threats and claims and aspirations, and he had an army to back it up. He had an air force, a mechanized force, ground force, industrial capacity, and Navy. He had everything that he needed to actually make good on those threats, Putin doesn't. He has, you're seeing right now, this actually stood out to me today when I was looking

at the tactical reports from all over the different parts of the front. And it really kind of stands out that Russia is putting its full effort into it. They have their full industrial capacity cranking. They're, you know, they're making bombs. They're making missiles. They're making drones, making more aircraft, rotary wing and fixed wing. They're making more tanks, refurbishing stuff. I mean, everything is cranking.

And you see yet with all of that, they can still just take meters and sometimes a kilometer or two of territory in a matter of days or so. They're just inching forward in these areas. Chesa Vyar, for example, a town of middle-sized town of 12,000 people. They've been trying to get that thing for months and they can't get it. It takes that kind of time to do even incremental little things here. Russia is no threat to anybody in NATO. That's against somebody who has no allies, has no Navy, virtually has no air force.

And they're just trying to scrape together in industrial capacity. And they really have none. And everything is dependent on what's coming in. And yet they're kind of still holding on. In time, they're going to lose because they don't have enough manpower despite everything else, which is why I argue that they need to make a negotiated settlement today because they are in serious danger of losing. But that's not the case for NATO, a 32-member alliance. Each of these nations, you know, they have well-trained people of various sizes of their militaries,

but they have direct Article 5 guarantees from everybody else. Putin knows that. He's made clear that from the beginning, that he's aware of the conventional imbalance between the two, and he could never hope to accomplish that. And he's not suicidal. So he's not going to do something that he knows would result in nuclear exchange. But he will use nuclear weapons if the, reverse happens and they come in there. So we don't need to worry about that, about the existential

threat from Russia. So we don't need to go into this offensive area. We don't need to escalate with missiles here because that's not going to change the tactical dynamic. Let me be clear on that. All of these missiles, this is an important point. People who think that if you give them the Ukraine side, the ability to strike with long-range missiles into Russia, that somehow that's going to change the tide of the war, all you have. have to do is look at what is happening on the other side of that equation. And you see that Russia for well over 18 months has been nonstop with his consistent long-range missile and drone strikes deep all the way across the Ukraine country, all the way to the western border and back routinely

just creating havoc on their energy production capacity, on their military industrial capacity, factories, ammo deposed, troop concentrations, et cetera, on a routine basis. And while it has caused a lot of trouble, you see, it hasn't knocked them out of the war. And they're still able to get troops up there. They're still able to keep fighting. Now, what do you think is going to happen when, like, a fraction of that would be going to the Russian side, which is much, much bigger, has far better air defense systems. It's not going to make any difference.

So then, here's where you get to the heart of this. Why do you want to take a risk of escalating into a nuclear confrontation with the country that has the biggest nuclear stockpile on the planet in pursuit of an option that cannot succeed? Cannot. It's impossible that it's going to change the tactical conventional dynamic, but you are risking nuclear escalation. It's irrational. It's insane. Absolutely. I completely agree.

Now, what will be the same strategy? Because is there a military route for the West to achieve its objectives in Ukraine? I, by the way, have failed to understand any longer what those military objectives are. Is it to ensure Ukraine's survival? Or are we actually still talking about returning Ukraine to its 1991 borders? Most people see to accept that the last is impossible. But is there. But is there. there a military route to victory? And how is military victory in Ukraine for the West definable today? Whatever it is. Yes, there is no, no military path to victory for Ukraine, period, full stop, the end of discussion, there's not. And it's what's so perverse is that you're right. A lot of people recognize, well, going back to the 1991 board is, is not going to happen. They can see that. Well, right there at that point before another breath comes out of their mouth and words follow, you need to say, okay, if you acknowledge that driving Russia out is not even possible, then you owe it to the Ukrainian people who are still alive and the cities that have not

been destroyed and the territory that has not been taken to seek a negotiated settlement right now because there is no viable path to where you can say, we're going to take the trend where Russia is, is inching forward, as I described a minute ago, and reverse it. And that's what you would have to do. To be able to justify continuing fighting, you have to be able to show graphically how the advantage that the Russians have in air power, in air defense, in engineering assets, in industrial capacity, and in manpower especially, all of those categories. You've got to show how every single one of them can be first met and then reversed in the advantage of the Ukraine side, a viable path. And if you can show that, you still can't go down that path. And here's why.

The day that Russia starts to be physically defeated from the battlefield and driven out, the Russians have been unequivocal. They will use nuclear tactical nuclear weapons. That's the reason they just did this exercise. What that tells you then, Alexander, is this. There is no viable military path for conventional to reverse this stuff. It's acknowledged. And I can tell you it doesn't exist. Even if theoretically it did, then you would have a bigger problem on your hand that then you would be precipitating the very nuclear conflict you claim to want to stop. So you see, it's a no-win situation to continue the war. There is no path to a positive outcome for the West or for Ukraine. The only rational, logical, humane, moral position is to end the war.

as soon as possible, on the best terms possible, anything else condemns more Ukrainians to unnecessary death. In fairness, I remember you saying this right from the early days of the war, that there is no Ukrainian path to victory, which then begs the question, why do we continue to gamble? Because that's what we're doing. We're gambling on Russian rationality as we interpret it, even as we ourselves act in manner which some might say is irrational or at least reckless, we are always gambling on the Russians being more rational than we are,

which is a rather dangerous line to take. What about negotiations? Why don't we do that? Who is preventing negotiations? Going back to the comment I made a second ago on the black-and-white way we view this, Putin is evil, he's Hitler, and Zelensky is good, and he's Churchill. Of course, we read history. Churchill wins. And that's the only outcome possible. So if he's not winning right now,

then we just got to keep it going until that changes. I don't know how, but we just got to do it. I'm being a little bit facetious, but only a little bit. That is what's animating many of our senior leaders. They're just going down that path. They're not stopping to think, okay, what are the four steps, five, step, seven steps it's going to take to turn this aspiration into reality? because they'll see you can't get step two. You need to step seven to have a viable path. You can't get to step two. So if you see that,

then you see it's irrational to go further. We're not doing that. We're not even looking at what's necessary or where we are. We just, let's just keep going because, I mean, we can't. I know the rules and Hitler has to lose. Putin has to lose.

So just keep going until something somehow changes. It's comical, like tragic comedy to say that at level. But I don't see any other rational explanation for what we're doing. And I think that is the path we're going down. I mean, I would say about that. That's what you've just described is not a policy. It's a suppose that people are adopting. They say, well, Putin is Hitler.

We can't negotiate with Hitler, so we must go on fighting. It doesn't explain at all how you're going to achieve the objective you set yourself. And achieving an objective requires you to defun what that objective is. And increasingly, I am not seen that anymore, which makes it even more complicated and even more difficult. Now, I've heard a rumor now, and I always say I heard it. I mean, I also read it somewhere that Anato Levin has been talking about this, and I believe a few other people, George Beeb and whatever. I haven't seen George Beebe's pieces.

But there's been suggested that what the administration, administration wants to do is to keep this situation as it is at the moment. And then after the election, they might even be prepared to contact the Russians and to negotiate. Do you think that might happen? I think that's a very legitimate possible. I think that there's every reason to think that there are many in the Biden sphere who are motivated directly by that. Because if they did what I just suggested what's the rational and moral position and seek a negotiated settlement like this afternoon, if at all possible. What's that going to do to their chances in the election? Because now everybody's going to see that everything you've been saying for two plus years has been disaster. It was an abysmal failure.

And an election that's already just barely like this, all it takes is, and it completely collapsed. I mean, that could make people say it. So, well, they're not going to want to do that because that would be an electoral loser position. so they want to just drag this out a little bit past at least say the 5th of November, then we can start doing something rational. Here's the, well, there's many problems with that, but here's one of the bigger ones. I'm not convinced that the Ukraine Army will survive intact between now and November 5th, given the level of losses that they continue to have in the relentless pressure, Russia continues to push.

And, you know, we mentioned at the top of this about this ongoing offensive in the north of the Kharkiv area right there, over about a 70 kilometer by about 10 kilometer deep zone, which has basically turned into just a slog fest where Ukraine keeps throwing reinforcements in there, and Russia keeps using lots of firepower. But the Russians have actually dug in many of the firms. So they're not even right now looking to in any large number go forward. They seem content on just eating up the Ukrainian reserves. Here's the big problem with that on the conventional level.

There's also reports, according to the Ukrainian intelligence service. is that there is up to 200,000 Russian forces operating somewhere in the northern area, which could come across, maybe in Sumi, maybe elsewhere in the Akarcki area, possibly in the Kupianzka, or maybe even in the Donetsk area. There's no telling where it may be employed. And if you have this brittle situation and you've used up all your reserves, all it takes is one big push and you could have a collapse at the front somewhere. I mean, you've seen what happened in 1940 in France with the Anglo-French army. once there was a penetration in there, this massive army that was greatly well-trained,

just collapsed and just rolled up like a house of cards. That same thing could happen here. And I think that that's probably a good chance that's what the Russian objectives are. We'll see how it's going to play out over the coming weeks and months. But that is a big risk. Interesting. Right. Let's talk about President Zelensky.

There was an astonishing article in the final. Financial Times a couple of days ago, which described his interactions with the US. And it was littered with words like paranoid, you know, delusional that relations between him and the United States are an absolute rock bottom. He doesn't seem to be able to get on very well with US officials. I've read other reports in other places and I stress I think all of these Western ones that he spends his time now he's getting increasingly angry

and he shouts at his generals which seems to me an incredible thing to do by the way absolutely misguided I mean the worst possible management how can the United States be how could it work with the person if that is all true and this is the financial times How can the work of the United States be giving permission to someone like that to launch cross-border strikes on a nuclear superpower like Russia?

I mean, surely the concern is not to give him everything he's asking for, but to try to rein him in. Well, right. I mean, that's what would make sense because he has never been anything but outspoken from day one that he wants to get us. drawn into the war. I mean, you know, he was, he was famously wanting us to give him a no fly zone within the first few days of the war that that ended up not happening. After the U.S. Air Force shot down 70% of the drones that were fired from Iran into Israel a couple months back, he was right away back on the airwave saying, yeah, that's what I want. Do the same thing here. Just bring in that U.S. Air Force or the Western Air Force to shoot down the drone. So he's been wanting that.

And so he's always been trying to suck us into the war one way or the other because he could care less if it goes nuclear or escalates into that if that doing so brings, you know, another force in on his behalf, which could help him win. He's just not thinking clearly about the consequences on his territory and the fact that if a nuclear war is fought on your country, you're ruined for life. I mean, for generations in a best case scenario. And so what we should be doing is saying, let's take more control out of that guy's hands. Because look, I mean, in all respect for Volody Mizolensky, if I was the leader of a country that had been at war with a global superpower much bigger than my country, and we've been hanging on by the skin of our teeth or fingernails. And every single day for two plus years, you have life and death decisions hanging on. you and your frustration here.

You don't get a time off. You don't get to go, you know, to take a vacation like the one I just took that where I met you and your lovely wife in person, you know, and you get a chance to just kind of unwind and relax. He never gets that chance. That is such a hard thing for any person to have to endure. And we should recognize what kind of strains that puts on somebody. And we should be taking a little bit more proactive action to say, look, we got to make sure

that you don't have our security in your hands to where you get to take actions that we don't know about which we may be paying. And that's just the hard realities. We can't do that? I mean, can I just say the United States has had problems managing its allies in these kind of situations before? We've had it with Ghanaian, Afghanistan recently. I can remember, again, I'm old enough to remember, Vietnam and the problems the United States had with President Hube in Vietnam. who was also very, very hostile to negotiations and also behaving in a very erratic way.

But at least in Vietnam, the United States didn't let itself in the end be tied down with President Chu. They did begin negotiations with the North Vietnamese in Paris. There were negotiations. Well, back up even from that, I mean, what happened when the guy that was in charge was what we thought was out of control,

we effectively supported a coup against him and that he ends up getting taken out. So I've actually wondered if something like that could happen here, if Zelensky does start to become a genuine threat that we fear could spark a war for us. I mean, it sounds horrible to even say, but given our history, you can't eliminate that as a possibility that we can support something like that, as opposed to just doing what's right and saying publicly, we're going to seek a negotiated settlement because we've concluded this can't work. But again, I know all the political reasons I just outlined why that's not

going to happen, but that's what should happen. To what extent are people aware in the United States that a roadmap for a possible diplomatic settlement actually does already exist? I mean, Putin has been talking about the Istanbul agreements that were reached, almost breached in April 2022. which both sides initialed. He said that this is the base point from which negotiations can begin. Obviously, things have changed a lot since then,

in Russia's favour, by the way, and he will push for a harder line. But it seemed to me that Istanbul did not affect US core interests. And I don't think the Russians were seeking to undermine Russian American core interests. be it in Europe or anywhere else. Is there any awareness amongst people in the United States,

including people who are, you know, if not decision makers, people in Congress, maybe people who are involved in the political situation, the United States? Are they aware that there is a roadmap and has been a roadmap and that Putin is still. keeping the door open. He's just saying again.

Yeah, he did. He never said anything besides that. But there is a vague understanding of that in some quarters, but going and circling back again to the beginning is they don't care because if it means Putin coming out on top, then we're out on that solution. So we don't give it serious consideration because there's still this arrogant belief that,

well, we'll just wait a little bit longer and something will change somewhere and we'll end up winning. It's irrational. but that's the mentality. Well, obviously we can't lose and obviously we can't allow Hitler. I mean, Putin to win, so we'll just ignore it. And so that's the case.

And I assure you that if this thing blows up in our face and something, any version of what we've talked about could happen does, I mean, people will be going back and just dying to take any of those deals that had been in the past. And they would do anything to go back in time to today and start to take this, the opportunity here and have negotiations. But I think the only way we do that is if something blows up in our face. I agree. Can I just say, I mean, I've been in these kind of situations before where people spurn opportunities to settle conflicts, I mean legal conflicts by negotiations. And then they bitterly regret afterwards when things turn out badly for them that they didn't take up those opportunities. I've seen that myself many times. And one of the things I always say to people

is who find themselves in these situations, is this, which is that if you play for all or nothing, you run the risk that you'll end up with nothing. And it seems to me that that's effectively what we're doing here, except of course, that the stakes are terrifyingly high. Right. Nothing, if you take that to the ultimate point,

is in this, context, the most terrifying sort of all. When the United States was contemplating a reaction in 1956, when Soviet tanks rolled into Budapest and into Hungary, there was a lot of outcry just like there was here when the Russian tanks rolled into Kiev or into the Ukraine in February 2022. But the leaders then from the president, especially vice president Nixon at the time, very famously said, hey, we feel for you, but there's no way on God's Earth, we're going to risk a nuclear war over something like that.

We will help you as much as we can from the outside, but it's just irrational to risk a nuclear war. See, at that time, they were still barely a decade away from observing a nuclear fallout. They'd seen it with their own eyes and they knew how terrifying that Posporik was. We've lost that. now that it's like a movie or just some theoretical possibility, but because we're the most powerful nation on the earth, I've lost to count of how many times I hear our leaders tell that. Our people hear that and they believe it.

Oh, okay. We're the most powerful nation that's ever existed in the history of the earth, President Biden said earlier this year. And people go, oh, okay, cool. So then we don't have to worry about that anymore. Only we do. And because we've been deluded, self-deluded, and that's some of the concern that I have is to where we are right now.

and the terrifying possibility of where we can stumble in the future. Daniel Davis, thank you very much for answering my questions. So completely and thoroughly and straightforwardly. I'm going to pass you over to Alex now. I'm sure he's got some questions from the viewers. We got a lot of questions here. So let's get rolling. Let's see.

Raphael says, hello, guys. Duran is a family. I love you guys. Thank you, Raphael. Tish M says, Russia cannot trust the U.S. What kind of deal and with whom will they consider making?

Yeah, you know, that's an issue really in every negotiation that's ever existed. There's always an issue of do you trust. And of course, it goes back and forth. I've heard the exact same comment from the, from the Western side. How could we trust Putin because he never does what he says, et cetera?

We can debate whether that's accurate or not, but that's the impression. And it is on both sides. And that's always at stake here. what you have to do is to have to have some kind of operation or some kind of agreement in place and actions on the ground that will give each side a chance to self promote the outcome that they want or self-defend, I guess, because you can never guarantee. So you want to put like, maybe you would negotiate some kind of a buffer zone in between here

that, no, nobody could come into it if it did. It might spark several things here and there. But at the end of the day, you're going to have to have some level of trust in the other side that you hate and didn't want to lose to be able to make some kind of negotiation. What you can't do is to say because I don't have any ironclad guarantees that I'm not going to make a negotiated settlement. Because then that's harmful to everybody's interest, even whichever side is looking at it from the side. You've got to take a chance because if you don't make a deal, then it's going to cost too much for your side as well. And of course, in this case, if it goes too much further, everybody can lose, which Putin has been very clear about why he wants to avoid nuclear escalation because he knows it would not be a win for Russia and he doesn't want to go down that path. Problem is we don't recognize that too.

And I'd like to see that change. Nova Storm says, thanks, Duran and Lieutenant Colonel Davis for all you do. Thank you for that. G1-416 says, where does the neocon ideology come from in the U.S. and what is it? We don't hear a lot about this in Europe or specifically here. here in Switzerland. Yeah, I wish we didn't hear about it here either, frankly. But where it comes from, really, I think that it's, you know,

neo-conservative is the, you know, the term where it comes from. So, you know, there's been the conservative viewpoint for long. And what caused or what created this neo was basically after 9-11. And George Bush kind of had this whole axis of evil and talk about all these bad countries, whatever. And so these, then the Bush shots, the neo-conservatives were hard. on everything militarily. And they pushed diplomacy to the side and said, we're going to lead with power. You're either for us or you're against us, you know, Bush would say. The insurgents in

Iraq, we're saying, we're going to take you on. What did Bush say? Bring it on. Let's go. So that kind of that mentality now then is a military first replacing diplomacy and say, we're just going to punch everybody in the face that doesn't do what we want to do. And in that period of time, I was aghast at it. I thought it was terrible, it had a bad future. But at the moment, at that happened, the relative balance of power around the world, we could do it.

Because who was going to tell us no? Who had the power? Then you had China, which was still starting to rebuild itself or rise up from its peasant army passed, but it was still a long way from being able to be able to go toe to toe to with the United States. And, of course, the Soviet Union had just collapsed. And it was still in disastrous shape across.

the board. Russia was, you know, had its Navy was a bunch of hulking flits. It couldn't even get out of port, et cetera. So nobody could do anything about it. So it was easy to do that. You may remember before we went into the 2003 war in Iraq, which, you know, the fake weapons of mass destruction and all that, that you had many of our allies in Europe, France and Germany in particular, that were adamantly opposed. There were millions of people protesting all over Western Europe. And what did Bush say? Pound sand. We're going to do whatever we want to do. We'll tell him that to Russia, China, Germany, France, I don't care. Y'all can all do whatever you want we're going to take here.

That's neo-conservative. And so that started this mentality that then was replicated throughout the senior levels, whether it was Republican or Democratic administrations after that, still pervades to this day. There's been some movement in the last five or six years, even with one of my organizations that I'm a part of defense priorities, Quincy Institute, and a couple of others that are finally starting to push back on that, talk about how dumb it is and how catastrophic it's been

for our interest, et cetera. So there's a little pushback now, but it's still kind of, frankly, it's in its infancy. And the people who are in the power positions are still from this neocon cut and inflicting bad policy decisions to this day. Akash von Kessel says, officer on deck, salute to Colonel Davis from the Netherlands. Thank for that. Matthew, Matthew says, despite all the decisions made to date and all of the rhetoric, do you think that NATO will still avoid the war with Russia? I hope we do. I don't have earlier in the war, maybe I had confidence that we recognized that there were

genuinely some limits that despite the rhetoric behind the scenes we did, but I no longer think that because you see with you see there's because in my view, there's no genuine leadership from the White House. There's just this halting kind of rhetoric that we say sometimes, but don't actually provide anything. You see the Duda from Poland. It's kind of chart in his own course. You see the Baltic states have been more and more willing to say things that, you know, from their own perspective, irrespective of what Washington may do. Obviously, Great Britain has its own positions that it keeps saying from time to time. And you have a lot of people pushing different directions within

the White House itself. You have a lot of different views about what needs to happen. And you seem to have a lot of freelancers. And you just don't, there's few people that really look at Joe Biden and go, that guy is a visionary. He is, that guy is in charge of his country. And he, you know, he's got an iron fist and he rules inside there and people follow it. There's not many people that say that, uh, anywhere, as I can see. And so when you don't have firm leadership of the ostensible leader position in the United States, then you got freelancers and people going all kinds of ways.

And now then you see over and over he's, Biden's allowing himself. to be talked into all kinds of things that he didn't want to do at first. And now then with this one, it's a, okay, it's a limited, uh, a permission to fire into Russia only in the carcive area. But you know, once, once one thing goes down that everything else has always fallen. It's only a matter of time before something else, you know, is, is released or that Ukraine just on its own chooses to fire something somewhere else. And, you know, we've seen in Israel that, uh, you know, the, the leader of Israel can just completely repudiate everything that the President Biden says and gets away with it.

So you can see where Zelensky, if he gets control of some of these weapons, can say, we're going to do whatever we want. And then, you know, I doubt that he'll do anything in response. That's not a good situation. And because of that, I don't have complete confidence that we're not going to cross some redline somewhere. David Jackson asks, how vulnerable to hypersonic missiles are U.S. carriers today? Extremely. That is, I think that what you've seen with the Russian Black Sea fleet is a premonit or a precursor of what you're going to see.

And the next time there's a major naval battle is that the surface fleets are just, you know, dead men floating and just waiting to go to the bottom of the sea. Because the missile defenses are sometimes really good, but you've seen no missile defense system is full proof. And with some of these hypersonic missiles, no defense is going to work against it. And you can, you know, you can shoot down 90%, 95%, 98% of everything. But if 2% gets through, that ship's going down. And I think that the lesson, one of the lessons learned here is that whether it's these, you know, these drones or subsurface kinds of things or a combination of a multiple attack from multiple engagements in the air on the surface, subsurface, no system can defend against

that. As long as you've got numbers of torpedoes and missiles. You can't defend against that. I mean, the only thing you can, that's why the subsurface fleet is the most important right now, because it's harder to identify and track. But the surface fleet, yeah, I think that all these war games that show two or more carriers going down in a hypothetical fight against China over Taiwan in the South China Sea area is spot on. It'll probably be higher than that. Ridiculous says, will Russia strike the USA in Syria if a red line is crossed?

It's a possibility, but I don't think that would be a first strike. I think that would be like a third or fourth level situation because it carries the same escalation risk as anything in NATO does for that matter. Because NATO doesn't say geographically where you are. If you hit a NATO force in Syria, it's the same as the NATO force in Poland, for example. So I don't know that would be the first one because Russia also knows that we have a lot more assets in the Middle East than they do. And if they strike us in the Middle East, they're going to be really vulnerable to a counterstrike, a conventional strike. So I would imagine they wouldn't do that just out of self-defense. Sparky says great work.

Good to hear Lieutenant Colonel Davis's insight. Thank you for that. And from GGI-1-4-16, who do you think is the aggressor in the Ukraine conflict? Can there be made a case for both West Ukraine and Russia? Yes, yes, there is. It's almost impossible for any one person to be guilty of something like this when you have a state-on-state war. I mean, even Pearl Harbor in, you know, the United States in 1941 came after we had an oil embargo that was physically put in the potential for lifeblood of the Japanese Imperial Navy and the Japanese nation itself. You know, that was a big, big motivator and their decision to strike.

And definitely is the case here. You know, I've argued that the NATO continuing to ignore every Russian threat and every Russian warning continue to move. NATO closer and closer to Ukraine and to get closer to actually bringing them in, despite all the warnings was an absurd and foolish provocation. I don't know why they ended up doing that because it didn't value, give us anything. But to suggest that Russia had no choice but to attack and invade, I think is going too far. There were still other things that Russia could have done short of overt war like that. But if I'm just being honest, I think it's like 75, 25, our fault, because

it was predictable. The same way, if Russia was doing something similar or China was doing something similar near the U.S. border, I assure you, we would not be passive. We would not say, well, let's just talk about this in the UN General Assembly or something like that. So it's, there's multiple parties at fault here, but I think the majority of the fault goes with us because we could have avoided the war much easier than Russia could have. Gabriel says Colonel Davis Marine Corps veteran here just curious about what the current size of the AFU is. Thanks, sir. And I'm afraid this is going to be the last thing I answer here because I just realized I've got to run here.

But it's uncertain. It's unclear. I've seen some numbers pretty wild or pretty significantly divergent. One is few is 750,000. I've seen another one as many as one million, but that actually adds police. frontier forces that are spread throughout the country. In terms of the number that are actually on the front lines, you know, along the line of contact, I think it's a lot less than what many people think.

It could be as few as four or five hundred thousand because I know that they've got a lot of other paramilitary forces and everything else spread throughout there. But it appears that Russia either has parity or actually slot superiority along the line of contact. And that's really what it all comes down to. What are the ratios at the line of contact? Daniel Davis, thank you very much for joining us. The YouTube channel, Daniel Davis Deep Dive, is in the description box down below. I will add it as a pinned comment as well.

Thank you very much for a great show. Always my pleasure. I really appreciate being here and look forward to having you back on ours pretty soon. Take care. Thank you. All right, Alexander. We have some more questions that we can answer. I think we can knock these out fairly quickly because I know that you're also on a time,

the time constraint. Can you unmute? Yeah. All right. All right. Let me just find my place and we'll answer the remaining questions. There were a lot of questions for Daniel Davis, but I think we got most of them. From Michael Seymour, the Ukrainian proxy is no longer sufficient.

The U.S. neocons hope Europe as a whole will become the next proxy. Everything must be done to weaken Russia and avoid the financial collapse of the U.S. economy. I think you, I guess, making a very good point. I think that this has become an obsession, an all-consuming obsession to which everything can be sacrificed. First Ukraine, then Europe, then if not Europe, well, who knows, maybe people from the United States. I certainly think that is the mentality of some people. The language that some people are using about this conflict in the United States and places like Britain is extraordinary. And it does basically come to that. I should say the some commentators here

in Britain and who are you know fellow travelers if you like with the US neocons. They are very disappointed, very angry with the decision the Biden administration has just made because for them it didn't go anywhere near far enough. They want complete overwhelming escalation. and they want missiles and rockets right across Russia. I even saw somebody talking about a bombing campaign of Russia, similar to the one that was waged against Germany and Japan in World War II. How crazy is that? The alchemist says last night Russia striked a facility in Western Ukraine

that had NATO forces. There were about 90 casualties. This is, of course, what is being reported. Of course, we don't know the full truth of that, and we never will. But it's quite plausible that it's true. David Jackson says, who are the billionaires that are underwriting the nuclear lunacy? Do they not realize they can reach 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit just as easily as we will?

You know, something I don't think they do. One of the problems with almost unlimited wealth is that you believe yourself to be completely secure from everything. I say that. I've not perhaps known billionaires, but I've known some very, very rich people, and I've seen that close up for myself. Natalia says General Kavoli Nato did his Princeton senior thesis on the effect of earthworms on the vertical distribution of slime molds in the soil. I don't know that. Let's see. It's quite funny, actually. But quite interesting.

Basil Bechkov says they can't live with a loss. They will not stop until their own people stop them. I agree with that, you know. And I think that, I mean, to be clear, they might lose in Ukraine and we might come through. But if they're not stopped, they will involve us in some other conflict somewhere else. And they will take the wrong lesson from Ukraine. They will say that the reason they lost in Ukraine and we lost with, them was because we didn't go far enough. And that's the message they're going to convey.

Until we, that is to say, the publics of the West, combine and say to these people, enough, they will continue to plunge us from one crisis to another. D.F says the likely Russian response, advanced weapons to proxies in Syria. It's number one. Number two, targeting NATO drones, Black Sea, international waters. And number three, NATO logistics centers in Poland and Romania, question mark. Well, okay, I think that the first, I mean, there is a real possibility if this goes on in the way that it is, and we go from one escalation to another, that the Russians will impose the no-fly zone over the Black Sea.

I think that is within the realm of the possible. And when they say no-fly zone, that could include interfering with glauble. global hawk, surveillance drones and other drones and things of that kind. I mean, they've shown increasing assertiveness over the Black Sea. And I think that is a real possibility. And by the way, if they do that, that will be a major step in the conflict. It would make it much more difficult for Ukraine to conduct operational strikes against Crimea. The Russians haven't done that at the moment because they don't want to be imposing no-fly zones because that might in turn provoke a Western reaction. Now elsewhere, if they do decide on strikes in various places, the Middle East or wherever,

I think that they will work through proxies. I don't think they will do it themselves. And I don't know how they would do it. But as I said, I'm sure that they would not initially, at least, want to do it openly. partly for the reason that Colonel Davis said, which is that if you launch missiles, Russia launches, missile strikes against the U.S. position in the Middle East, the United States can retaliate

against Russian facilities there. So they would get a proxy to do it. Iran may be, or one of the militias, or some but someone like that. And I think that is a distinct possibility. And it might not just be the Middle East, it might be Africa, it could be in any number of places. But I think initially,

they will work through proxies. Just as the United States is doing, by the way, Ukraine, even though that disguise is becoming very thin. Trevor Max says, Alexander, you answered your own questions a couple of days ago, i.e., they created their narrative and they live in it. Yeah. Sparky says, Lieutenant Colonel Davis, the attack on the Russian radar station ostensibly to protect Ukraine.

Was it actually ordered on behalf of Israel since that's, station could warn Iran of Israeli air and missile attacks. There's been a lot of speculation about this, including in the Russian media, by the way, to the extent that the Russian media has been able to discuss this at all. I've come to the view, actually, that Israel was not involved in this particular attack. I think Ukraine was. I think they did it all by themselves, maybe with some help from some of their friends in London. That's entirely plausible.

But I don't think Israel was directly involved. Now, of course, by definition, I don't know. I mean, I don't know what discussions take place between Israel and Ukraine. But I think that the Israelis perhaps do understand that launching attacks like this, getting involved in attacks like this, if the Russians got wind of it, would only harden Russian support for Iran even further, and that that is not in Israeli interests. So I think I thought there might be some merit to that possibility.

I'm not discounting it entirely. But on balance, I've now come to the view that Israel was probably not involved. David Jackson asks, how many Russian troops would it take to take over Kiev and sponsor new elections? Well, Putin, in a meeting he had with Russian war correspondence, last year said that Russia would need a one million man army to do something like that. Now, actually, they might not be that far from the point, that point. John Scott says Ukraine will get all its land back. The alchemist says, I disagree with the lieutenant.

Putin hasn't even used half of their full capacity, including Russia, would destroy the West. Russia is being conservative. He never declared war on the war. the people of Ukraine. Well, Russia has been extremely conservative. If you're making the comparisons with what the Germans were doing in the 1940s, we've now have a much better understanding of the degree of national mobilization in Germany in the 1930s.

And the proportion of GDP that was being devoted to military production and mobilization of the army is eye-watering. I read somewhere, there's like 40% of output in the late 1930s, was committed to war production. This is before the war began. Now that clearly, if you take a step back and think what that means, that clearly implies preparation for a major war across Europe. At no point, at no point since Putin has come to power, not even today, does Russian military allies, put come anywhere close to matching that kind of figure. Eric Smith says, when will you have Jacques Bard back, preferably together with Daniel Davis or

Larry Johnson? What a brilliant idea, great idea, actually. Very mind, it's not, it's a bit complicated to have lots of guests together on a program, but we should certainly have Jack Paul back. That goes without saying. The alchemist says the lieutenant fails to acknowledge that the entire NATO is at war with Russia, and they have not been successful. So how can you make such claims?

Well, I think the point he's making is that with the forces that they have, the Russians have been making incremental progress. Now, this is not an army that is clearly designed to conquer Europe. And I think that is irrefutably true. The Russians have never shown any interest in doing that. As I have said already in this just a moment ago, if you compare with Germany in the late 1930s, the Germans clearly were preparing for an overall conquest of more and more places in Europe because they had indeed geared their entire economy to that objective.

And it was showing stresses as a result. I mean, there was gathering inflationary pressures in Germany of a scale that are, completely beyond anything we're seeing in Russia or indeed the West present time. There were shortages of consumer goods. There were deteriorations in the quality of consumer goods as well, as invaluable imported materials had to be diverted into military production. There is no sign of anything like that in Russia now. From AD, your guest is criticized the same thing that he believes.

he thinks that the US can do anything different? No, I don't think he does, actually. I think that you've got to follow Colonel Davis's commentaries, if you do follow them, ask attentively as I do. You will see that one of his constant themes repeated in this programme now is that there are limits to what the United States can do. And he's been making that point repeatedly. his point is that there are limits with the degree of national commitment that Russia is making to this war.

There are limits to what Russia can do. The difference is that the Russians know that. The Russian leadership understands that. The American leadership does not. Zolt-Beshkov says the West is sitting on the toilet and just ran out of paper. That's so good. You know, that's so good. I think that's a tweet, actually.

I think you should put that up on X. John Scott says, no negotiation till Russian army leaves Ukraine land. Well, the probability, come back to what I said, if you take that kind of stance, if you take a normal or nothing stance, you could end up with nothing. You could end up with no Ukraine at all. if you follow the trends in the wall, that is the more likely outcome.

Yeah. Think about what you had on the table in Minsk 1. John, think about that. A.D. says how many examples they need to show you. You do not have air defenses, no meaningful attack weapons in Syria and Israel and Saudi Arabia. In Yemen, the only one that's going to use nukes are the Americans because they are empty. Well, we haven't discussed the ability, the willingness of the United States to use Ukes. I don't think they're planning to use them in Ukraine.

I think Ukraine is too far away, and I don't think that we will come to that there. But, of course, the dangers that the United States could find itself massively overextended in some conflict or other, and that some people will start to demand it is very real. The United States did threaten to use nuclear weapons at the end of the Korean War. We know that they did. Though in fairness, they did that in order to try to get the other side to agree to negotiations. And we also know that there was some serious consideration given to that during the Vietnam War as well, though the senior people in the military

and eventually the political leadership of the United States decided unequivocally against it. So we've been here before, perhaps we will be here again and with the near-cons in charge, such possibilities are very real. From Martin MDL, Tempe, will the US follow this pattern like,

Russia did insanity, corruption leads to collapse, which then leads to reform and recovery. Well, I hope we get to the reform and recovery without the collapse. That's how you know you might be right. AD says, Colonel Davis supposed to be the bright one among them. No wonder that they are losing everywhere. The wall is going to fall again and you're going to read about it in the newspaper. Yeah, well, he is the bright of one amongst them and the prediction that you make might very well turn out to be true. Sir Mug's game says, for 100 years, the most feared sentence in any language has been you've you've been sent to the Russian front true enough I always say this by the way and it's been taken up by number of

people now I noticed first law of war don't march on Moscow the first law of diplomacy don't love Beijing summer of 1970 says thanks Duran a great community thank you moon dragon says cannot take chasse of yahr really again colonel this is not about territory by the point you should know that Russia is fighting of 40 plus countries when was the last time the US fought something like this well if you followed what he said later on in the program he made that very same point he talked about a war of attrition and he was unsure that Ukraine that his military would survive until November 5th that's not so far Isn't that more dangerous in some ways, more important than the potential fall of Chassevya,

which, by the way, is coming? The alchemist says NATO is the modern-day Soviet Union and it's collapsing. How can they defeat Russia? Not true. They are not defeating Russia. They're losing. In fact, there's a very interesting article today in the Financial Times by Gideon Rackman, who of course supports the decision to supply Ukraine with,

with weapons and to give it leave to attack Russia and conduct and conduct deep strikes. And he says on the one hand, there's a sort of sense of bravado in the West because they think that they cross another Russian red line. But he also says that behind it, beneath it, there's nervousness because they know they're losing the war. Rockabilly says maybe Alexander should explain attrition war. I think Daniel Davis understands

such a mission war anyway Donald Smeet thank you for that super chat the alchemist says throughout its history this nation

considered powerful has never emerged victorious in any war except for the civil war but even then it was a divided victory with half of the nation losing

well the United States has emerged victorious from wars I mean it emerged victorious from the Second World War of course it had allies in it but it did And of course, it also emerged victorious from the Spanish-American War and other wars.

So the United States does have its record of success. It has not been repeated so much in recent, it hasn't been repeated at all in recent decades. And again, if you want to understand why, one of the best people to go to is Daniel Davis. has been writing extensively about this for many, many years now as a military officer who has seen the face of battle. He's one of the people who has been explaining why the United States record in wars recently has not been won a victory. And one of the points he's been repeatedly making about the procurement process of being broken and all of that, but also about the fact that American political leaders do not understand the limits of what can be achieved

in a military way. Serbos Games says, when the USS Zelensky is dashed on the rocks, it will make the shipwreck of the Batavia look like the good ship lollipop. Another superb tweet, by the way. Put it all up on X. Sparky says, Lieutenant Colonel Davis, Isn't the West, including the U.S., a deindustrialized and demilitarized shadow of a shell of its former self-hanging on by an arrogant threat over the abyss? Yes.

I'm not as hard to bring in place of Colonel Davis, but yes, I'd say so. David Jackson says, Colonel Davis, can you please compare strategic ICBM defenses of both Russia and the U.S.? My sense is we're much less prepared than Russia on all counts? Well, I'm not going to. I'm going to give a pass on that one. I'm not really very familiar with this issue. It does seem to me that the Russians have a much more advanced and modern system than the U.S. does. What do I know?

Gabriel, welcome to the Duran community. The alchemist says the West has sent powerful weapons to defeat Russia without war. Which NATO army are you referring to? Russian could defeat NATO without nuclear weapons. Well, I don't think the Russians are looking to do that. And I think that conquering the whole of Western Europe, or in fact, the conquering the whole of Europe, is certainly a war much too far and not one that any Russian leader is considering. I will reverse that, though, and I will say this, if Western armies go into Ukraine to fight the Russian army, even if, and especially if nuclear war is avoided, they will be defeated there. It would be smashed.

Yeah. Matthew says, will the European countries, France, use the anniversary of D-Day to announce troop deployment, great stuff as usual? Might be. Might do.

I'm with Macron. How can one know? I mean, a couple of days ago, he was inviting the Russians to participate. Now he's withdrawn that invitation. He's then talking about missile strikes on Russian air bases. This man is capable of making one decision

from one day to the next, and nobody knows what he could do. be, but the trend always is towards escalation. Nino NPC, 2003 says Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis, do you think Russia can defeat NATO on and off the battlefield of Ukraine if it came to an all-out war? Well, let's hope we never get at that point. I think in conventional terms, I think he's answered the question. A conquest by Russia or Europe is answered the question. I don't think it's something the Russians are planned for. I don't think they're prepared for it. I don't

think that's going to happen. If we're talking about an all-out war, we're talking about a nuclear war, and everyone loses. Sir Mug's game says, Alex, Greek F-16 pilot will teach Ukraine F-16 pilots to take off and pull the ejection cord as fast as possible, and blame it on Daugie maintenance, get to save Orthodox souls on both sides of the special military operation. Thank you for that. You know, this is a terrible thing. We're sending one person. Greece is sending one person, and we're going to win the war all with that. Yeah, nonsense. Tisham says that Duran, any thoughts on the new president for Mexico? I haven't any thoughts.

I talked about it in my video a bit today, Tisham, but no big change is expected, I don't think. Sparky says, I thought when Lieutenant Colonel Davis was speaking about how Russia wasn't ready to take on NATO, that he was being sarcastic. Maybe he's victimized by propaganda and misled by deep state or intel contacts. Well, I think we've discussed it now. Yeah, you've discussed it. A northernax says, isn't it disadvantageous to engage multiple hostiles? To engage two,

disadvantageous to engage multiple hostiles. Yes, of course it is. I mean, this is a topic I've again returned to in my program today on my channel. Taking on one nuclear superpower in Europe is a challenge, taking on two with another one of the Pacific as well. is strategic stupidity. We are, as a we, the West, the United States is disastrously over-extended. John Scott, welcome to the draft community.

Sparky says Israel, like the U.S. hasn't seemed to have acted in their own interests lately, unless that interest is self-destruction. Sparky says, build a better world with bricks. David March says, the last thing Putin wants is to act. At 45 million Roman Catholic polls to his Eastern Orthodox country, shades of Bismarck and the Six Weeks War. True. Tree Clymer says the U.S. has a war to fight and gains the bricks and gain the bricks to, they dug a deep hole. Michael Flyer, welcome to the drowned community, Jamila, Asfuthekva Super Sticker,

Raphael says African proverb When a snake hides his poison Children use him as a rope Putin needs to read this before something bad happens. He's too naive. I don't think Putin is a naive man at all. Just a a second.

Tree three climber. Welcome to the Drand community. The alchemist says I believe the colonel is referring to the USS Eisenhower in the Red Sea. However, the Houthis were able to target them. Yeah, there's just a lot of going on with the Eisenhower, and it's slightly mysterious, and we'll find out, no doubt, barely soon. Yeah, 3-3 climber. Welcome to the Dran community. Again, Dimitrake says thanks to Iran.

Jetset.1 says you're qualified, guest to what the Russian asymmetrical response might be, mentioned by the Russian Deputy Foreign Minister today. We've discussed it, both Colonel Davis and myself. I've discussed it already. I mean, it might be a no-fly zone of black sea. It comes to that. I think initially it will be a retaliatory strike against the U.S. through proxies. Elsa says, Colonel, have you changed since the Ukraine war? Oh, well, he can only answer that one.

Martin M.D.L. Kempi says, will the U.S. follow this pattern like Russia did? Did I read that one? And Saturday corruption leads to, yeah, I read that. Yes, you did. I read that. I have to stop. Yeah, yeah.

I know, I know. That's why I'm trying to get through these. We don't have many left. For a hundred years, the most feared sent to send us in there. I read that as well. Tisham says, as an American, I side with Russia's four D chess masters versus the collective West remedial math flunkies. John Sky says, to the West, you fell victim.

One of the classic blunders, the most famous of which is never get involved in a land war in Asia, physics from Princess Bride. Yeah, true. Samuel says, who would win a Russian-Natal war over the Baltics? Russia, if it was just over the Baltics. But of course, it wouldn't just be over the Baltics. Sir Mug's game says, take it easy on poor Ursula. After all, every puppet dreams of the one day becoming human and having a free will.

Ah, Hesta, it's never going to happen. Sparky says, doesn't the lieutenant colonel realize that Russia hasn't needed to take land as long as NATO has Ukraine conveniently bringing its soldiers to them to be fed into the grinder? I think we've just discussed this at length. One sec, let me just check that I got everything, Alexander, and we'll wrap up. Any quick final thoughts as I do a check? There's a brilliant program. And it's so useful to be able to talk to somebody who understands these things in a practical way. It's as Sir Colonel Davis has fought in battle, which so many people who talk about this happened.

And fighting in battle, I've seen from a very great distance to the face of battle. And it is terrible. I cannot imagine anybody willingly going through something like that. So it's been a privilege to have him on our program. I lost track of a lot of the... I agree with Alex. You can take off if you want, Alexandra. I'll wrap it off.

If I have anything, yeah. Yeah, go ahead. Jump off. Matthew says, I agree with Alex. China and Russia will control this to within the boundaries of Ukraine. They are too good at chess, pointless smashing the board. O.G. Wall says, good evening. The alchemist says, Colonel, tell us what could Russia have done.

that they haven't tried yet. Please enlighten us. And I think this is the last one. Jerry Cogan says, Alex, how sore does your left arm get when you're doing your walks and talks? Very, very sore. And Raphael says,

who told Blinken to talk like this? If you're not around the table, you are the menu. Big mistake. China's upset. We will regret him saying this. And Farrell says, I want to see Alex in a suit and a tie too.

Not going to happen. All right, that is everything. Thank you, everybody, for joining us on this live stream. Thank you to everyone that joined us on Rockfin, Odyssey, Rumble, the durand.com, and YouTube, and a big shout out to our moderators. Thank you very much for everything that you do. That's the stream. I think I got every question, every superchats.

Take care, everybody.