The Duran Podcast - US Without a Strategy in Ukraine? - Stephen Bryen, Alexander Mercouris & Glenn Diesen

Episode Date: May 18, 2024

US Without a Strategy in Ukraine? - Stephen Bryen, Alexander Mercouris & Glenn Diesen

Welcome to today's discussion. My name is Glenn Dyson. I'm here with Alexander Mercuris and Stephen Brian, who is a former deputy undersecretary of Defense with this extensive background from Pentagon Capitol Hill and also an excellent writer. So I would recommend that everyone follows his articles. And yeah, we feel very privileged to have you here. So thank you so much. be with you. So, yes, I was wondering where to start. There's so much to cover. We really wanted to focus on the Ukraine war because, you know, in the West, went from such enthusiasm that we're winning, winning, till suddenly reality seems to have dawned on us and we have this question whether

or not we're going to let Ukraine lose or if we're going to NATO will join the fight. But But I thought perhaps we could start with what would explain Russia's victory the way you've seen it, or at least it seems it's moving towards a victory at least. Is it weapon systems which have evolved over the war? Is it, I mean, what would be the main variable in your opinion? Well, I think it's all those things. I mean, first of all, in the first part of the war, the Russians didn't perform very, well. I think

there's a consensus on that. They were poorly led. They had, I don't think they were ready. I mean, I think they went in. The Russian army was surprised to have to do this. That's how it reads to me.

Yeah, they were sitting for a year, you know, in Belarus and over on the Russian border, making, you know, waving at the cameras. So that, so that Washington would make sure to see them. But I don't think that they were really prepared.

They had a lot of stuff there, but they weren't prepared for conflict. I don't think they understood the level of Ukrainian preparedness, the level of NATO involvement with Ukraine even that early. And they sent, well, give you just one example. They sent tanks in down roadways where they were easily ambushed. and where they had very little protection on the tanks and no flanking of the tanks. I mean, it's really crazy.

That changed over the year, the first year of the war. The Russians got smart. They improved their leadership. They pulled away from places they couldn't hold. Kiersen being one of those examples. And Kharkiv, too, by the way. And then they started to improve their weapons. And the more important even than the weapons, I think, is they improved their coordination

so that they were able to do the things that we claim we do better, net-centric style warfare. But they start to do it. And they found out at work. They took that junkie Orland drone, and they upgraded it and they made it a pretty formidable piece as a way of coordinating the land battle. So, yeah, I mean, on the whole, they figured it out. And in terms of mass, of course, there's much more Russians than there are Ukrainians. So I think that if you do the math, the math says the Ukrainians can't win the war.

On the subject of military coordination, it was very interesting that Putin has just had a meeting in Moscow with the top military people. And he said, we now have a good team. He said, just to the military people there. So we're not going to change it. You know, we've, he basically, you actually read his comments very carefully. He admitted the fact that it has taken a time to build this team that, you know, that they've had to put in some people, remove them, replace them with others. But we finally reached that point where we have a good team that works and works.

works well with everybody. Yeah, there's still some gaps. Yeah. I think they're still having serious problems defending Crimea, for example. The recent attacks in the last couple of days illustrate that. So there's still some gaps. There's some stupidity. But every army has stupidity.

It's not restricted to Russia or to America or anybody. Everybody has that problem. But, yeah, I think you're Putin. I watch what he says. I mean, he's, first of all, he's quite interesting, and he's fairly straightforward when he wants to be. Not always when he wants to be. What do you think, I mean, neither of us is a military person,

neither Glenn and me. I mean, I find myself talking about me. I'm not either. I mean, I wasn't, you know, my, you know, I served in the synagogue, but not as a military. man. Anyway, you've been closer to soldiers, perhaps, than either. I certainly have not been closer.

Well, yeah, very close and very involved. And my daughter was the lieutenant colonel in the army. Just served two tours in Iraq. And won some awards for her performance there. I'm very proud of her. Right, Lisa. What do you think the overall Russia, strategy is. I mean, are they going to, I mean, Putin has just said, by the way, that they're not

going to try and capture Kharkiv. I thought that was obvious from the get-go. You said, I read your article saying. Yeah, I mean, I think that, why would you want to do that? Yeah. If you get tied down in a place like that, it just burns your resources and you don't gain anything. It's not a strategic city. It sits off by itself. No, I think they're going to around it. That's my, well, I'll tell you what I think. It may not be right. I was an armchair strategist.

Sometimes I'd even have the armchair. But it looks to me like there are two big, important fights going on. There's a whole bunch of fights along the entire line of contact. But the important ones are the Russian operation in Sumi, which no one talks about but they're up there and they're moving and they're not trying to tell much about it either because I think that's

part of the idea and the other is Chasifiar to the west of Mahmud which is a critical battle and a tough one and they're having trouble there the Ukrainians have committed 30 battalions to the archiv area, and I think that's a strategic

mistake by them. And they're going to get chewed up over time, and they're going to leave themselves exposed to a Russian operation that I think is going to focus on Kiev. That's my guess. Not to conquer Kiev. They don't need to do that. The only they need to do is to force the Ukrainian army into a situation, either where they surrender or where they changed the government in Kiev and make a deal with the Russians.

How much of... I'm sorry. You mentioned before that while I read that you expected that the Russians would try to rush now to victory or obviously pursue victory, not driving it for too long. But given that this is a war of attrition, what do you expect from the Russians in the weeks, if not the months to come? Do you think that the Donbass will still be the main priority or will they, do you see, well, obviously you don't expect them to go for Karkov, which will obviously eat up a lot of resources. And would be worthless from a...

But would it be that opening Cherenegov and Tsumi try to stretch out the front line to have wider gaps in the Ukrainian defenses or where do you see this going? Yeah, that's a good question. If you've been watching the war, what you see almost all the time is the Russians try to produce a cauldron, create a cauldron. Attack from the south, attack from the north, squeeze them, cut off their supply routes, and then move, you know, and then move out from there. I think that's their, by the way, same as they did in Second World War. It hasn't changed much. and I think

that all these things are subject to what happens on the battlefield and what the politicians decide in Moscow and elsewhere but it seems to me that that's a big cauldron is what they're after which would then trap the Ukrainian army and then the war's over

how long I don't know how what is U.S. policy because I find you very difficult to understand now what US policy is. I mean, they send some money to Ukraine. They send some weapons to Ukraine. I remember President Kennedy once spoke about, you know, it's like drinking a glass of water. There's a good effect for a short time and then you find you need another one. It's a little bit like that. But is there even a strategy or is it just making it up as you go along now?

Because I sometimes wonder whether it is. One day it's about sending advisors. And you wrote a very interesting article about this. And I think today we are seeing that article come true, actually. We're seeing reports about advisors actually being said. One day we hear about advisors. At the same time, we get the New York Times talking about, a Korean-style armistice.

Does the United States have a strategy? Does the president, who is, after all, the chief executive? Does he have a strategy? Are they hoping for something to happen in Moscow that will solve the problems for them? I mean, what are they thinking as they... It's the strategy du jour. Every day, it's another one.

I think politically speaking that Biden got invested in this thing in a big way that goes back to before 2014 actually more like

2011 so you can't blame it all one guy it's not one guy but after he lost was run out on a rail frankly in Afghanistan and blame for it

and he's a guy running for election he doesn't want another one. So this is holding on by your fingertips right now. Does it go beyond that? Yeah, it does. You can't get the whole defense establishment geared up and cranked up and supporting it. At least they pretend to support it without seeing some advantage.

They see an advantage to squeezing Russia. There's just a big crowd in Washington that's still, thinks they're in the Cold War. And really doesn't credit Russia with anything. Which is a big mistake because we've lost any leverage that we once might have had with the Russians

has gone down the toilet. The shame, really, because it's a big country. It's an important country. And if you do geopolitics where you do realpolitik, which is where my training comes in, you don't need two superpower enemies, China and Russia.

You ought to try to make a deal at least one of them so that you balance the threat, so to speak, and you reduce your exposure. But Washington hasn't done that. It's done the reverse. And I want to add something else. It's really troubled me a lot. There's the constant increasing the types of weapons

and the use of weapons that are bound, you know, are we trying to trigger a European war? I mean, this worries the hell out of me. The latest attack in Crimea used to attack him's missiles. The attack is a long-range solid-fueled missiles, a powerful missile to launch by High Mars, or by any other, but primarily Highmores, launcher. but it has cluster bombs on it,

cluster munitions. These are anti-personnel. I mean, this is not, if you're taking out infrastructure, you don't do it that way. You know, you don't use cluster munitions. So I'm troubled by it. I think it's, it's, it's, it's, it doesn't speak well for us.

But how do you see this involved, well, NATO's involvement in the, war going forward because not only are they sending this long-range missiles, but first we saw David Cameron saying they could, you know, use this against Russian cities if they'd want to. And Blinken, he was less direct, he said effectively. The Ukrainians can use the weapons as they please, which appears to be green lighting attacks on the Russian territories with these missiles. At the same time, we see this, well, let's call the rumor so far, or threats from Macron

at least to send troops as well. So to what extent do you see NATO getting ready to join the fight? Because even sending these missiles into Russia, this is growing, I guess, likelihood that the Russians will have to retaliate against NATO at some point. But even if they don't, is NATO prepared to go deeper into this war? Or is Biden waiting for the election first? Or how do you read this? You're saying a lot of different things here. Sorry.

NATO is not prepared to go to war. I mean, full stop. It's an expeditionary army of some sort. They send people to Estonia or Lithuania or whatever, or Poland. But it's not ready to go to war. It doesn't have the war stocks. It doesn't have the armies. It doesn't have the will.

It doesn't have anything. Now, it doesn't mean it won't end up in one. But what I'm trying to say is that it would be a tragedy for NATO. to get into a fight because they lose. And Europe would lose because Europe would face a lot of destruction. So on that kind of strategic level, playing this game is very dangerous. I think you would be. Second thing is, well, Putin is, you know, Russia is not a democracy as such,

but Putin was elected by a very large vote. I'm not saying majority, but I don't know what that means in Russia, but by a large vote, larger than ever before. So he's quite popular at the moment. The Russians are patriotic at the moment. But if they start blasting away at Russian cities, I mean, Putin has to do something about it. He has tried to contain the war and the threats as much as he can so it doesn't spill over into something much larger, partly because Russia wasn't exactly ready either for such conflict.

and didn't want it. It's not his game. But although the people in NATO keep saying it is, he's going to take the Baltic states, he's going to invade Poland, he's going to do all these things. But the truth is that there's no evidence of any of that. But where I'm going is to say that he still has to deal with his home public opinion. You know, whether he's democratically elected or elected by some other methods,

he's the leader and he will be accepted or blamed for what happens. And if Russian cities are attacked by heavy weapons, it's going to get pretty grim. Incidentally, last, in the last night or two, about 100 drones were fired at Russian territory by Ukraine. First of all, it's stupid about the Ukrainians because they're not going to gain anything by it except make it worse for themselves. So this strategy of pinging the Russians or hitting Belgarad or whatever they're doing is very counterproductive, it seems to me, from a military, I'm speaking from a military political point of view. But sooner or later, I mean, Putin's going to be squeezed.

Do you think that people in Europe understands that. the problems, the risks that they're running. Now, of course, I understand that, you know, you're looking at this from an American perspective, but as somebody who worked in Washington, I mean, in the Pentagon, you must have had, people in the Pentagon have to think about Europeans. And I, I really, once in a while. Yeah, but I mean, I get the sense that the Europeans themselves don't fully understand the risks here at all. If you're talking about sending expeditionary forces to Ukraine,

the only concern I think that European leaders principally have is about what the reaction of their own publics would be, not about what the Russians might do. And I have to say, I find that really very dangerous, given that the Russians are on, are the other side and given that the Russians have been reacting very strongly recently to any suggestions of threats from Europe. But, you know, just to answer my own question, but I'd be interested to hear your comments. I don't think the Europeans understand the risks they're taking. And they box themselves into a situation where they seem to be prepared to take more and more risks. Yeah, I think you're right.

I don't know enough about public opinion in Europe. But in the United States, there's no support, real support for this war. I think Biden knows that. Otherwise, he'd have U.S. troops there already. I thought perhaps I chased you out of the room. I think, you know, if Biden had a free hand politically, the 81st Airborne would be showing up in

Ukraine somewhere in Ukraine he doesn't simply doesn't even though you know this is part of my rant the press both in Europe and the United States I read the British press

by the way which is horrible I read it every day and I read of course the American press too, is awful on this war. They don't understand it. They don't cover it. They write whatever the Ukrainians tell them or whatever comes out of the Pentagon. Complete nonsense.

And it's endless. It's absolutely endless. By the same token, it doesn't seem to have persuaded the American people very much. I wonder if the same is true in Europe. I get the sense that he doesn't. I mean, when this war began back in 2022, you saw all across London and England, in fact, people putting up Ukrainian flags. Those came down long ago. And you find that people do not want to talk about the war very much.

They're too absorbed in their many other problems. And in fact, if you are in Britain, by your way, you're absolutely right. The coverage is terrible. It is absolutely unbelievably bad, but it's been downscaled. There isn't the amount of coverage that there was. But going beyond that, I think that civilian societies, societies in general and in prison, and also a lot of people who serve in the militaries here are not keen at all to get involved in a war in Ukraine. And I think that governments understand that.

and they are worried about it. I think that is one of the major factors. In fact, the major factor that is holding them back. But the problem is they also want to win. They still want to achieve this mirage of a victory over Russia. Emmanuel Macron, we've all been talking about an awful lot recently, still talks in that way, that Russia mustn't be allowed to win. In other words, it must lose in some way.

The British talk about talk in exactly that fashion. And they're looking for ways constantly to bring that about supplying missiles, the kind of missiles that you said, talking about using missiles to strike at Russian cities, sending advisors in, perhaps even sending elite troops in, who are not necessarily nationals of your country, like the French foreign lesion, which I'd like to come back, I'd like to come to that subject

because I want to just say, and I want to say now, that I think that story was true, by the way. I've been speaking to people, including people in France, and I'm quite sure that it was true. But anyway, but I don't think that European governments

understand that when the Russians say, for example, that if their cities are attacked, they have the means to respond against the cities or at least the military facilities of the countries that are doing this. I don't think European governments understand that they are being serious about it

and I think they are being serious about it. I think it's, well, it's saying continental here, I think the whole narrative in which they've come to believe themselves has been so focused on keeping the war going. So in other words, everywhere day it's been, well, obviously saying that war, you know, it's unprovoked. The Russians just wanted territory in order to make it seem as if this is, you know, there's no space anymore for negotiations. And also a key part of the narrative, we still have it here that Ukraine is still winning, that they will ultimately win. They, at least in Norway, they actually still put on this headline.

So it's enough to make people still want to send money. and send weapons and keep sending, make sure that Ukrainians are still fighting effectively. So it's all geared towards keeping the war going and against Stoltenberg's, former Prime Minister as he says, you know, weapons are the path to peace and no one should speak of negotiations or diplomacy. So this is the main path. But I also, in Germany, they actually have some in the parliament now was arguing, yeah, we should shoot down Russian missiles from NATO basis. And no one seems to consider even the fact what Russia would do as if, you know, they wouldn't

then consider this basis to be part of the conflict. It's, I think over the years, it would become overconfident in America's protection that no one would ever dare to retaliate against the NATO country, given that the United States stands behind us. But this immense confidence, it can be quite dangerous. because when you're willing to send missiles to hit Russian cities, go after even civilian targets, send troops in to fight the Russians, in essence, what the Russians considers to be an existential threat.

And we still believe that this is really, that the Russians will never do anything to retaliate. I think this is, if we're going to have a third world war triggered, I think this overconfidence in NATO effectively is what we're. would be, yeah, the trigger. But big. I worry about that. I mean, I really do because, you know, I don't, you know, I watch Stoltenberg. And it's almost like a caricature, you know, in a way.

I mean, it's so unrealistic and so divorced from reality. I've never seen, in my experience, you know, I grew up in the Cold War. I'm older than you guys. And the desire was always to find some way to talk to the Russians, as hard as it was. It was never, in my experience, there was never a desire to defeat the Russians. It's never existed. No such idea. But to talk to them, to try and avoid, you know, potential of a conflict because of nuclear weapons, among other things.

which you have to worry about because there's so many of them and because who knows how well they're really controlled or what excuse could be used so the real problem the nub of the problem here is the West does not want to speak to the Russians I don't think that's true on the Russian side and I think they're willing to talk but they're not going to talk

where they're being set up. They're willing to talk on an equal basis. And I would, it would seem to me that the best thing we could do is to propose a meeting between the chairman of our joint chiefs of staff here in the United States and the Russian chairman, whoever that is, I don't know the name, maybe Garasimov, probably.

And let them have a conversation. no commitments on either side, just to start a conversation. Because then you have some basis to figure out a solution. You're talking about the West doesn't want to lose because of how damaging that might be. There may be solutions in there that could be worked out. But, you know, you have to start somewhere. I was reminded of the failure of the Istanbul talks. It was more than a year ago now, almost two years ago.

And the efforts by then the Israeli Prime Minister and Nafali Bennett to try and structure some deal, and where he was rebuffed, essentially by Washington, the UK to some extent, but mainly by Washington. And it got killed. And Putin still points to that. I said, you know, we had a deal. We had at least we initialed it. We were ready. And what happened here?

So I think if the only way out right now, aside from a Russian victory pure and simple, would be to open up some lines of communication. And I don't think using state departments and foreign ministries is the right channel, in my personal view, because it's too serious for amateurs. You used to say, you know, you remember, in Europe, the oldest son became the baron or the head of the property class, and the younger son went into the priesthood. Well, in the United States, the same idea.

Those that don't go into IBM or some other big corporation go into the state department. But I'm not a fan. But I think even if I was a fan, it's not the right channel. The right channel is for the two militaries. not to have the CIA, ridiculous idea. You know, the head of our CIA calls his counterpart in Russia, that's meaningless. That's meaningless. That's meaning because the Russians don't trust any of those guys.

Where there is respect and professional respect, it's between militaries. I'll point out to you that the one guy in Ukraine that the Russians respected, and the only one, as far as I know, was illusioning. because they say, well, he's a professional. Because he was an opponent. Clearly, their opponent. But they regard him as a professional. He's not on any wanted list.

Very good point, actually. And in fact, I've heard, I don't know whether you've heard the same, but I've heard that the militaries, the U.S. and Russian militaries in Syria, when they set up the deconfliction lines, that that actually worked quite well, and that they, you know, understood each other and were able to work and communicate with each other very well as military professionals talking to each other.

So, you know, that indebted, and it could be a model. And they don't oppose, you know, if the U.S. puts planes up to try and protect its base, you know, if something happens, they stay away, you know, they understand. No, I think those practical things, but we have to go beyond. that because Ukraine is much more serious than that. But, but, you know, what are your objectives? What do you want to achieve? How can we work out something?

You know, these are the sorts of things that, you know, there was a, just to remind, right before the war got started, NATO kicked out the Russian advisors that had in NATO. There were, I think, eight or ten Russian officers who were expelled. And when they were expelled, the Russians expelled the NATO advisors in Moscow. That was really foolish. Really foolish because it was indicative of this, you know, we're enemies. We're not going to talk. And, you know, I think that's the wrong approach today.

We can't do that anymore in the modern world. The British, you've just done it again. we expelled the Russian military attache. I saw it was really weird, don't you think? Of course, the Russians have responded by expelling our military attache. And there were comments actually, even in the British media, saying that this was a mistake to go after the military attach at this particular time. Particularly as apparently he was quite a well-liked man.

He was actually seen as being rather good at what he did. Obviously, he did do spine because military attaches apparently do. I mean, I don't know, but that's what you do. All of them do. But in maintaining. Friendly and not friendly, you know. Friendly and not friend. But as a military diplomat in contact with the British military,

he was apparently, he was seen as being very good at what he was doing and actually rather liked apparently by the British military, which says a great great. deal, by the way, because the British military, I don't think it's just detached emotionally from this as perhaps it needs to be. Can I just go back to my, the question and about, you know, what the Europeans are doing? Does the United States understand how risky some of the things that President Macron is talking about and is apparently prepared to do. And I want to stress again, I believe your article about the French Foreign Legion deployment is true.

The reason I believe it, by the way, is because I've been told by several people who probably know that the French Foreign Legion is indeed in Ukraine, that they already have people there, that the point was not sending, they might have sent more of them, but it was making it open that there are already covertly present and have been there for some time. And that absolutely was an intention to send more of these people openly to the conflict line to Slaviansk and those sort of places. Well, there are no doubt about Slaviansk.

Yeah, which the Russians were furious about, by the way, when they learned about it. But do people in Washington understand how potentially risky that is and how if France gets into trouble in Ukraine, as night follows day, I'm sure of this, they will come to the United States and say, help us. Because that's what they're going to do. Yep, yeah, I agree. No doubt. Yeah, I don't think they understand it at all.

You might. I don't think because it's small. The number is small. The U.S. has a lot of people in Ukraine. They're not there for going to bars and playing guitars, like a certain secretary of state did. You know, they're helping the Ukrainian. They're helping them run their patriot systems and running the high Mars and running all, running the intelligence and running the command centers and running the integration, training, and whole nine yards. It's plenty of them. I don't know how many.

The Russians say they're about 3,000 mercenaries, but they really mean mercenaries. They're not really referring to the, to the NATO forces there. So I think it's a good deal larger than that. And the Russians don't want to... The Russians don't want that to be known so well because it would force them to have to do something about it, which they don't want to do. Exactly.

So, you know, I think that's... Have you seen the video of a Russian... Actually, he's not Russian. He's Ukrainian. But he came from the Foreign Legion named Maxim Dmitrienko. Have you seen this video? Well, this is a young man who's in, who was actually convicted of being a mercenary by the Russians. He's in jail in Russia, so to speak. He was interviewed.

He's from the Foreign Legion. He says he's still in active orders from the Foreign Legion. Okay. It's a stunning video. You should watch it. And he says, well, what are you doing there? He said, well, we are there either as engineers. or as drone operators.

So, you know, these are professionally trained guys. He is Ukrainian origin, but the Foreign Legion has a lot of those people. And they were, you know, because they have the language,

they're very useful to the Ukrainians. If they speak French, it's a big problem for the Ukrainians. If they speak Ukrainian, it's not a problem at all. So, um, they're there

now the other the other thing I would just add one thing is we saw reports and I believe they're probably right that Macron had planned to send 1,500 foreign legionnaires to Ukraine

he had already sent some maybe 100 that's what I wrote so the Reuters and the AP and some of the other new services that I

It was fake news. The Russians didn't say it was fake, but they didn't say anything because I think they, again, they have this problem. They don't want them there. They don't want to acknowledge that they're there. But it's risky. The French, they already struck, no, so the Russians always struck some of the French mercenaries in Karkova and the Slaviansk. But I was curious because the NATO countries, I quite. open about the weapons, the supply, the intelligence, participating in war planning,

target selection, all of this. But you mentioned with operating the weapon systems, the Patriot systems. Are any soldiers from any NATO countries, from what you know, involved in effectively, well, directly pulling the trigger in terms of striking? No, they don't push the button. They say, Yuri, push the button now. All right. Somebody

These things require hundreds of people to maintain and support them. They're not things that you just set up and shoot. I mean, they're very sophisticated. You have to pick up the feeds from the drones and from the satellites and from the command centers and integrate that into your targeting. And you have to keep these things running and fix things that break or don't work right. I mean, it's a big operation. And it's not just the U.S. is doing it.

The U.S. has Patriot. But Europe has a number of different systems like Iris T and Samp T. And there's some other frank in something or other. I mean, they have a lot of different, a lot of different air defense systems. And they're all different, which creates a nightmare in terms of trying to operate. Because they're not, despite NATO's supposed attention to interoperability, something we've talked about for 50 years. It ain't interoperable.

It just isn't. The truth of the matter is that every country has to support its own stuff. So you have to expect, you know, if the Sweden sends a sophisticated system or Finland or Britain or Germans or whoever, you have to expect you're sending their technical people. They're operators. They have to. I mean, it's not possible to just deliver.

a patriot system and hey, hey, guys, here's your system. Have fun. They wouldn't know what to do. And I don't dismiss the fact that Ukrainians are very clever people. They're as good as anyone could be with technology, but you just need to be trained on these systems. There's no way around it. Even tanks.

Same story. I just wanted to say, go back. A tragedy. The last point on the Foreign Legion, going back to what you said, the Russians not only did not say it was fake news, they said that they'd find out whether it was true or not. And then almost immediately afterwards,

they called in the French ambassador and gave him a very, very strong talking to at the foreign ministry and made very tough points apparently about the unwisdom of this strategic ambiguity language that Macron has been using. So the Russians took those reports very seriously indeed and acted as if they believed them and as if they in fact had information that confirmed them. Again, what I think putting it together, I think the Russians, obviously they know the French Foreign Legion are there. Their point was that they were very concerned that the French were going to come out and straightforward.

would they say so. And that was why they immediately reacted, and they reacted very, very toughly. Yes, that's right. And it seems to have worked. I mean, it seems to have calmed down Macron quite a bit. But now it's resurging again. I don't know if you've been watching. So they're starting to talk about sending in troops again. And even the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States, well, it's inevitable we're going to send troops there. That's what he said, just reported today. Inevitable. Why is it inevitable?

What's inevitable about it? Where does he get that language from? Do you threatening the Russians? That's very foolish. What's he doing? That's very concerning. Can we, because you brought up the question before of the United States. States needing to keep these two, not needing to have two enemy superpowers at the same time.

Right. We've just had a massive meeting in Beijing of the leaders and governments of these two superpowers. And I follow more Russian use more closely than Chinese, but I was looking at who was there on the Russian side. And as far as I can see, virtually the entire government was there. both the military side and even more so perhaps the economic side. And energy, energy. And energy. Everybody. They were all there.

They were talking. They produced a joint statement, which they've obviously been working on for months, because I don't believe these things are written in a few days. They're never. They've been working on this joint statement, even while Secretary Blinken has been traveling to Beijing, and Secretary Yellen has been traveling to Beijing, and trying to warn the talk to. the Chinese, the Chinese have been listening to them and working on this joint statement

and preparing this visit. Again, is this, do people in Washington have any understanding of the extent to which it's US policy that's brought this all about? Now, I say this, I ask this question, this is Glenn's territory much more than mine. he's written to some extent about this. But nonetheless, I ask the question. Well, did you notice that all these agreements that were struck in Beijing between the Russians and Chinese, there was nothing about a peace plan for Ukraine?

No. Yeah. In other words, they were strategically in alignment. I think that's the message. I don't think Washington grasps what's how. happened geopolitically, let's put it that way. They don't act like they'd grasp it. They keep emptying our arsenal when they have a problem in the Pacific.

And the worst thing you can do is be weak because then, of course, all kinds of bad things happen. So they're letting themselves get weaker and weaker. And worse yet, I mean, there's no reason. well, I go back to either you're going to talk to the Chinese or you're going to talk to the Russians or you're going to talk to both but we're talking to the Chinese

to some extent and not at all to the Russians. We've cut them out and I think that's foolish. So but Washington doesn't seem to think it's foolish at least right now. I think it's different with Trump. I keep wondering

if there's some great strategy behind but sometimes one impression that exactly that there's no one behind the wheel because you see this, you know, what's happening with the Russians and the Chinese is this, you know, it's a huge, it's an important part in history. Over the past decade, we see the Chinese now really growing to become the leading economy. And at this exact point in time, we decide to effectively, over the past 10 years, well, fighting the Russians through this proxy war in Ukraine, this had a huge effect. They effectively gave up on the whole dream of our goal of creating a common new.

with their Americans and the Europeans and they instead look now to the east. So they're all pushed together as much as they could be. And then I see people like Blinken going to China and suggesting, listen, we're going to put some pressure on you. You should cut your relations with the Russians. But they're each other's most important partners. And at the same time, I see key leaders from, you know, Romney or Lindsay Graham, Mitch McConnell, all saying the same things.

Once we knocked out the Russians, then we'll go after the Chinese. And then they're all saying this very openly. And I'm just curious, what was the expectation that... Is that a strategy? Or is that something? Look, I'll just go one example. It's a small, well, relatively small. The Congress passed a law, and Biden signed it last week,

blocking Russian uranium, enriched uranium, from coming to the United States for nuclear power. we're significantly dependent on the Russians for that uranium. Why would we do that? Why would we be cutting off? And these sanctions do the same sort of thing. Yeah, they do some damage to the Russians. They do a lot more damage to us.

I mean, there's no strategy here that makes a lot of sense. I don't think so. And I know you've talked about it on your program because I listen to you. And I enjoy it. The Nord Stream pipe line. How did that make any sense? Do you want to sell natural gas? You'd compress natural gas from the United States.

It's kind of a poor way to go about it. But, you know, it's, again, a punitive approach without any common sense behind it. I think that's the best way to describe it. There's no great strategy. There's no great plan. Nobody could tell you what it is. Even our defense policy lacks an orientation in terms of our real requirements and needs. We spend billions, if not trillions of dollars and things we don't actually need,

and we neglect stuff that we do need. Like, I'll give just one simple example, is we have no particular air defenses in the United States of any significance. And what the Russians did is develop air defenses quite in depth. Chinese are doing the same. The Israelis have done it. I mean, it works. We haven't.

Why? We think we're immune to missiles, drones. I mean, we're not. So, you know, it's that kind of thing. It's all unbalanced. It seems to me that what you're saying is that we don't, the United States. doesn't have a strategy for

Ukraine and it doesn't have a wider geopolitical strategy either. You know, what some people call a grand strategy. It's just reacting to events. Well, in terms of NATO, it has a strategy.

Once to strengthen NATO. I think you have to give that one to Washington and expand NATO. Now, the question that comes from that is can you defend an expanded NATO? And has anybody even thought about it?

Probably not. Why is this problem? Because Glenn and I have interviewed several people in the military. We've spoken to Daniel Davis, for example. We've done the same one. The Duran, Alex Christopher and I, we've spoken to military people.

We've spoken to some diplomatic or ex-diplomats. There is no shortage of people in the United States, it seems to me, who understand the dangers. But what is it that makes it so difficult for these people to get their message through, be it to the president and his officials or to Congress? Where is the block? Well, Congress supports the president's policy on Ukraine pretty much. Yes. I mean, there's a growing opposition, but it's still a minority.

That's why all that money, $60 some billion, was just agreed upon. A staggering amount of money. But Congress supported it. So I think what I've seen on the Republican side especially, but I think it's also true on the Democratic side to a lesser extent, is you're starting to see some reconsideration. It's starting, and some important Republican conservatives are raising, you know, saying, what are we doing here?

Why are we doing this? And I don't think it's, it's a new ideology. It's something that's neither conservative nor liberal, nor it's something new. And I think Trump senses that. And, you know, he said, well, I'm going to go negotiate with Putin. So, I mean, that's popular. So maybe there'd be a change. But the old Republican leadership, for example,

who you refer to, supports the war. unequivocally. But the new generation of people coming up are skeptical. Let's put it that way, skeptical. I don't know that they have a bigger picture in mind, but they're skeptical. They're not sure we should be doing this. People are not yet alarmed about the danger in Europe. I think that's something people need to be educated about.

But there is a danger in Europe. And it's unnecessary. The whole thing is unnecessary. Of course, wars are always unnecessary. But in a more narrow sense, it's unnecessary because we could avoid a lot of this. And still have a stable global situation, which I think we need. I agree. It's very unnecessary.

And this is one of the points you began with that the Russians weren't really prepared for a large war. Initially like this, it took them a year into the war to get all their ducks in line as it was. But that was largely because they believed the Ukrainians would

negotiate and also that the Western powers wouldn't sabotage those negotiations. Anyway, so we're almost running out of time. So I guess... Can I get one point to invert that.

Invert that argument. Yeah. Okay. Instead of having, the Russian is not prepared, let's look at NATO and it's not prepared. Okay? NATO will have to learn all these hard lessons.

And unlike there is one major difference between Russia and NATO. NATO lives off whatever it has in its arsenal, and it hasn't spent much money on defense for a long time. I think there's common agreement on that. Trump screams about it. it. But the truth is nobody spends much money on defense compared to the U.S., of course, spends huge amounts and gets very little benefit from it. But in Europe, very little spending. The Russians had this massive arsenal from the Soviet period. Thousands of tanks, thousands

of artillery pieces, tons and megatons of ammunition. So they could fall back on that, I would call the reserve, that we can't in the West. because we don't have it. So there is, it's not a mirror image, okay, because we would not only have to learn, but we'll be running out of ammunition in two weeks. So I think that alone should tell a Western leader, we're going to avoid conflict because it's not in our interest.

We're going to lose. That's what I've been trying to say. I don't know if I've been very good at it, but I've been trying to say, Alexander said at the beginning that was a good writer which I greatly appreciate my wife doesn't appreciate that she thinks I'm not such a good writer need a good editor she says

but I try to just on my own humble way because that's all I is one person and I don't you know I do this on my own I don't have any backers or no money or no organizations

I just do it on my own my feeling is that our number one priority is to avoid war. Not for ideological reasons, although that part of it, but practical ones. Look at the, count the numbers, count the number of systems, count the number of troops. Who has this, who has that? And you come to the conclusion that it would be absolute disaster for us to get into a conflict, period. That's where I rest my case.

That kind of answered my question. I'm sorry. That's my little soapbox, so I tried to stand on it. I was wondering here where do you see this war going effectively because it seems willing to escalate in risk war, but I think also the people who does the decision making also realize this is not a war that can be won. So I was kind of hoping there would be restraint in negotiations.

But as I mentioned earlier, my great concern, is the assumption that in our own capabilities, that the Russians would be too deterred as it was, because they never seem to retaliate against any of the things we do. All this weapon systems, we pushed one after another, the F-16s, long-range missiles, all these things we recognized ourselves could trigger World War III.

The Russians didn't retaliate, and I think we're interpreting the restraints as a weakness. And this is my, if I was, see a path to war. I think this would be the strongest one. That's, yeah. Or the opposite is, I mean, I'm urging General Brown, who's the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, me with Gerasimov, and start a dialogue because we desperately need it. Any final words, or Alexander?

I agree. We've had dialogues before. I mean, it used to be the case that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the Chief of General Staff did speak, you would get regular telephone calls. You'd see them on the Pentagon website and the Ministry of Defense website. It should not be too much of a thing. And I just wanted to make one point, actually, which is that when the Russians talk about the situation with respect to Ukraine, always and invariably they talk about it in terms of security, their own security. Now, in fact, Putin has just done this again. He did an interview with the Chinese use agency, Zinhua, in which he actually said that.

Ultimately, for Russia, this is a paramount, in a paramount sense, Ukraine is a security issue. now that ought to open the way for some sort of understanding he said that amongst the things he said was we need security guarantees for ourselves because that can only work if there's if there's also security guarantees for our opponents too he actually said that which i thought most unusual but he did seem to say there ought to be a way back, that ought to be a way forward. The one thing I have to also say is, if that's going to happen, it can only come from Washington. It's not like it used to be in the 60s where the Germans could come along and start an Ostpolitik, sort of independent of what Washington was doing. There isn't that kind of thinking or ability in Europe today to do that. So it has to come from Washington.

There has to be someone in Washington who's prepared to pick up the telephone and say to the Russians, what is it exactly that you want? And maybe we can sit down and maybe we can find a way. You're absolutely right. Look, they could start by reading the December 2021 letters that Putin sent to the U.S. president and to NATO, where he outlined sort of what they want. And part of this involves getting the nuclear weapons problem solved in Europe, which is not an easy, but it's something that has to be sorted out. I see this as being the curse of the hegemonic order because when the collective hegemony of the West with the US, of course, in the front.

The problem is you don't have to listen to the rest of the world. And the problem is in the international system with the international anarchy, the security competition is really the point of departure. And if you want to solve security competition, you really need to know, recognize the security concerns of your adversaries and address them as well. But we stopped doing that a long time ago, it seems, and even addressing, you know, how are we threatening the Russians? what can we do to reduce the threat to them? This should be the first question in seeking peace and security, and this is a question. At least if you're an academic in this country,

you will be crucified if you even dare to ask the question, how we threaten them. It's a big no-no. So we seem to paint ourselves in the corner. That's my concern. You're correct. I think you're exactly right. well I got my dose of it this last week with my article

and the glorious way it was received by the Western press but anyway we've all been there we have all of us I mean it's I think it served its purpose yeah absolutely I'm happy about that absolutely I think it did I think it did push Macron and the French back it's also pushed the British back too, by the way. I think they were also taken aback by what happened. It

created an incident, a diplomatic incident, but an important one and a clarifying one. And yes, I think Macron is talking again. He's reviving all this. But without the same conviction, up to this point at least that he had before, it's not, it doesn't come across as quite as, you know, determined before. He's much more dialed down than he was previously. He'll never, I mean, he'll never admit that he made a mistake over this. I mean, politicians now never do.

So he will, if he's pushed, he will revive this language again. But I don't think he's doing so with the same enthusiasm, if I could put it that way. Anyway, that is me. For my part, I wanted to say thank you, Stephen, for coming on. And I hope we do have more programs with you in future. Thank you very much. I thoroughly enjoy your two programs that I watch and learn a lot.

And I think the key here is to get information out so people understand what's happening. That alone helps the cause. So thank you again. It was an honor to be here. Well, thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you, Steven. Thanks, Alexander. So, now this has been very, very interesting. Thanks again.