The Duran Podcast
US Without a Strategy in Ukraine? - Stephen Bryen, Alexander Mercouris & Glenn Diesen
Welcome to today's discussion. My name is Glenn Deason. I'm here with Alexander Merk Yuri and Stephen Brian, who is former Deputy Undersecretary of the Fans with his extensive background from Pentagon Capitol Hill and also an excellent writer. So I would recommend that everyone follow his articles. And yeah, we feel very privileged to have you here. So thank you so much. Nice to be with you. So, yes, I'm 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 wind from such enthusiasm that we're winning, winning till suddenly, reality seems to have dawned on us and that this question, whether or not, so we're going to let Ukraine lose or if we're going to need to join the fight. But I thought perhaps we could start with, well, what would explain the Russia as a victory the way you've seen it or at least it seems it's moving towards a victory at least. Is it a weapon systems which have evolved over the war? Is it, I mean, which, well, 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 leads 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 Washington would make sure to see them. But I don't think that they were really prepared. There are 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, for 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, in the first year of the war. The Russians got smart. They improved their leadership. They pulled away from places they couldn't hold, you know, that Kirsten being one of those examples. And Karkiev too, by the way. And then they started to improve their weapons. And 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 it worked. They took that junky or land drone and they upgraded it and it made it a pretty formidable peace 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 as military people there. So we're not going to change it. You know, he basically, you actually read his comments very carefully. He admitted the fact that it has taken a time to build this team 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 well with everybody. Yeah, there's still some gaps. I think they're still having serious problems defending Crimea, for example, to 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. There's a knot restricted to Russia or to America or anybody else. Everybody has that problem. But yeah, I think Putin, I watch what he says. I mean, he sees, personally, is quite interesting. And he's fairly straightforward when he wants to be. Not always, but when he wants to be. But do you think, I mean, neither of us is a military person, neither Glenn and me. I mean, I find myself talking about- I'm not either. I mean, I wasn't, you know, mine. I served Pentagon, but not as a military man. But anyway, you've been closer to soldiers, perhaps than I thought. But I certainly have not been clear. Well, yeah, very close and very involved. And my daughter was a lieutenant colonel in the army, just served two tours in Iraq. And won some awards for her performance there. Wow. I'm very proud of her. Rightly, sir. What do you think the overall Russian 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 Harkov. I thought that was obvious from the get-go. I read your article saying- Yeah, I mean, I think that. Why would you want to do that? 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 go around. That's my- well, I'll tell you what I think. It may not be right. It 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 don't- I think that's part of the idea. And the other is Chassafyar to the west of Makhmut, where- which is a critical battle and a tough one, and they're having trouble there. The Ukrainians have committed 30 battalions to the Karkiv 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. All they need to do is to force the Ukrainian army into the situation, either where they surrender or where they change the government in Kiev and make a deal with the Russians. How much is- Oh, sorry. Well, 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 drag it for too long. But given that this is a war of attrition, what do you see expect from the Russians in the weeks, if not the months, to come? Do you think that Donbas will still be the main priority, or do you see a- well, obviously, you don't expect them to go for Karkov, which will, obviously, would eat up a lot of resources, but- And would they work from- Well, would it be that they opened in Cherengev, in Tsumid, tried to stretch out the front line to have wider gaps in the Ukrainian defenses, or where do you see it going? Yeah, it'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 out from there. I think that's their- by the way, same as they did in Second World War. That 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 will then trap the Ukrainian army, and then the war's over. Show me- How long? I don't know. How- what is U.S. policy? Because I'm finding it's very difficult to understand now what U.S. 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 out? Because I sometimes wonder whether it is. One day it's about sending advisors, and you know, 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 want- 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. Let's go back to 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 blamed for it, and he's a guy running for election. It 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 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 or you do real politics, which is where my training comes in, you don't need to superpower enemies, trying to end Russia, you ought to try to make a deal at least one of them, so that you balance, you know, 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 that's really troubled me a lot, is 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 you. The latest attack in Crimea used to attack them's missiles. Attack them's a long range, solid-fueled missiles, a powerful missile, to launch by by by high Mars, or by any other, but primarily high Mars launcher. But it has cluster bombs on it, cluster munitions. These are anti personnel. I mean, this is not, if you're taking out an infrastructure, you don't do it that way. You don't use cluster munitions. So I'm troubled by it. I think it's, it's, it's, it doesn't speak well for us. But how do you see this involved, all 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 Russia, cities if they want to. And Blinkian, he was less direct. He said effectively, the Ukrainians can use the weapons as they please, which appears to be green lighting attacks on Russian territories with these missiles. At the same time, we see this, well, let's call the rumors 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, they, 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. 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, 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 then 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 about his game. But although people in NATO keep saying it is, you know, 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 a, whether he's democratically elected or elected by some other method, 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, in the last night or two, about 100 drones were fired at Russian territory by Ukraine. And 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 were hitting Belgorod or whatever they're doing, this 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 understand 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 some of you who worked in Washington, I mean, in the Pentagon, you must have had people in the Pentagon have to think about Europeans. And I read it. 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 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. That's otherwise he'd have US 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, and I read the British press, by the way, which is horrible, 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, the 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 it 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 absolved 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 in Britain, 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, if that 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 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 advisers in, perhaps even sending elite troops in, who are not necessarily nationals of your country, like the French foreign legion. I'd like to come back to that subject, because I wanted 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, 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 the same on the net level here today. I think the whole narrative, 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 the war is unprovoked, the Russians just want a territory in order to make it seem as if 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, weapons are the path to peace, and no one should speak of negotiations or diplomacy. So this is the main, 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 bases. But, and no one seems to consider even the fact what Russia would do as if, you know, they wouldn't then consider these bases 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 a sense, 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 effect, at least what will be 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, it's so divorced from the reality. I've never seen in my experience, you know, I grew up in the Cold War, and 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, it 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, you know, who knows how well they're really controlled, 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. I think they're willing to talk, but they're not going to talk in whether 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 Gorasimov 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 how damaging that might be. There may be solutions in there that could be worked out. But you have to start somewhere. I was reminded of the failure of the Istanbul talks more than a year ago now, almost two years ago. And the efforts by then the Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett to try and structure some deal and where he was rebuffed, essentially by Washington. The UK to some extent, but namely 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 the 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. This is my personal view. Because it's too serious to our amateurs. You used to say, you know, 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 for the two militaries. And not to have the CIA ridiculous idea. You know, the head of our CIA calls his counterpart in Russia. 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 said, Oh, he's a professional because they was an opponent. He clearly their opponent. But but they regard him as a professional. He's not on any wanted list. It's a very good point. And in fact, I've heard, I don't know whether you've you've heard the same, but I've heard that the militaries, the US and Russian militaries in Syria, you know, 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 that in that it could be a model. And they don't oppose, you know, if the US 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, 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? What, you know, these are the sorts of things that, you know, there was a just a remind right before the war got started, NATO kicked out the Russian advisors that it had in NATO that were, I think, eight or 10 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 going, we're, we're enemies. We're not going to talk. And, you know, I think that's, that's the wrong approach today. We can't do that anymore in the modern world. The British who just done it again, we expelled the British, the Russian military attaché. I saw it was really weird, don't you think? Of course, they've now, the Russians have responded by expelling our military attaché. And there were, there were comments actually, even in the British media saying that this was a mistake to, to, to go after the military attaché 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 spying because military attaché is apparently due. I mean, I don't know, but that's what all of them do, all of them do. But, but in many ways. Friendly and not friendly, you know. Friendly, not friendly. But, 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, rather liked, apparently, by the British military, which says a 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, 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, they know down about Slavians. 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. Yeah, I agree, no doubt. Yeah, I don't think they understand it at all. Because it's small, the number is small, the US 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 Ukrainians, they're helping them run their patriot systems and running the high Mars and running the intelligence and running the command centers and running the integration and training and holding on yards. It's plenty of them. I don't know how many. The Russians say they're about 3000 mercenaries, but they really mean mercenaries, and not really referring to the NATO forces there, so I think it's good to deal larger than that. Yeah, 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 that's it. 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 Dimitrienko. Have you seen this video? Well, this is a young man 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 you're doing there, he said, well, we're 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 work 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, they're there. Now, the other thing I would just add one thing is we saw reports, and I believe they're probably right, that if a crown had planned to send 1,500 foreign legionnaires to Ukraine, it already sent some, maybe a hundred. That's what I wrote. So, the Reuters and the AP and some of the other new services that I was, I 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 Russian soldiers struck some of the French mercenaries to win Karakova and the Slaviansk. But I was curious, because the NATO countries are quite open about the weapons to supply the intelligence, participating in war planning, target selection, all of this. But you mentioned with operating the weapons systems, the Patriot systems, and do they? Are any soldiers from many 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. It gets stuck in. These things require hundreds of people to maintain and support them. They're not 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 US is doing it. The US has Patriot. But then Europe has a number of different systems like Irish tea and Sam tea. And there's some other frank and frank and something or other. I mean, they have a lot of different air defense systems at all. And they're all different, which creates a nightmare in terms of trying to operate because they're not, despite NATO's supposed 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. And so you have to expect, you know, if the Sweden sense sophisticated system or Finland or Britain or Germans or whoever, you have to expect or sending their technical people, their operators to have to. I mean, it's not possible to just deliver a Patriot system. And 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 game about tragedy. Just the last point on the foreign Legion, gave 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 after, which 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 on wisdom 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 straightforwardly 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. Absolutely. 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. It's reported today. Inevitable. Why is it inevitable? What's inevitable about it? Where does it get that language from? The threatening the Russians? That's very foolish. And then what's he doing? That's very concerning. Because you brought up the question before of the United States needing to keep these two, not needing to have two enemy superpowers at the same time. We've just had a massive meeting in Beijing of the leaders and governments of these two superpowers. And I follow what Russian use more closely than Chinese. But I was looking at who was there on the Russian side. And as far as I could see, virtually the entire government was there. Right. The military site. 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 people in Washington have any understanding of the extent to which its US policy that's brought this all about? Now, I say this, I asked this question. This is Glenn's territory much more than mine. He's written to some extent about this. But nonetheless, I asked the question. Well, did you notice that that all those 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 happened geopolitically, let's put it that way. They don't act like they grasp it. They keep emptying our arsenal when they have a problem in the Pacific. 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 you. Either you're going to talk to the Chinese, 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 hate that's foolish. So good Washington doesn't seem to think it's foolish at least right now. I think it's different with Trump. Yeah, I keep wondering if there's some great strategy in behind, but sometimes one depression that it was 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 a very important part in history is 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, so if I will fighting the rocks, the Russians through this proxy war in Ukraine, this had a huge effect. If the effectively gave up on the whole dream or goal of creating a common Europe with their Americans and Europeans, and they instead look now to the east. So they're all they're pushed together as much as they could be. And then I see people, you know, like Blinken going to China and suggesting a list, we're going to put some pressure on you, you should cut your relations with the Russians. But this is, they're each other's most important partners. And at the same time, I see key leaders from, you know, Ron, or Lindsey Gray, Mitch McConnell, all saying the same things, you know, 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, well, what was the expectation that is that a strategy? Where's that something? I just go one reason. And it's a small, well, relatively small. The Congress passed a law and Biden decided last week blocking Russian uranium uranium enriched uranium from coming to the United States for nuclear power. We're significantly dependent on the Russians for that, for that uranium. Why would we do that? Why would we 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 listened to you, and I enjoy it. The Nord Stream pipeline. How did that make any sense? Do you want to sell natural gas or you can press natural gas from the United States? It's kind of a four way to go about it. But, you know, it's again, punitive, 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. But 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. 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. 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 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 the NATO, it has a strategy. It wants 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 on 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 bloc? Well, Congress supports the president's policy on Ukraine pretty much. I mean, there's a growing opposition, but it's still a minority. That's why all that money, 60 some billion dollars 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 we're starting to see some reconsideration. And some important Republican conservatives are raising, saying, what are we doing here? Why are we doing this? And I don't think 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 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, he was referred 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. Well, 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 necessary. 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. And so we're almost running out of time. So I guess one point that invert that argument. Instead of having the Russians not prepared, let's look at NATO, and it's not prepared. 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. But the truth is nobody spends much money on defense compared to the US, 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 interests, 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 Alex Anderson at the beginning 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 tried to just humble away because that's all I have is one person. And I don't, I do this on my own. I don't have any backers or 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 them, 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's kind of answered my question. That's my little box, so I tried to stand on it. I was wondering, yeah, where do you see this war going effectively? Because it seems we're willing to escalate in risk war, but I think also that people who does the decision-making also realize this is not a war that can be won. So I was kind of hoping it would be restraint and negotiations. But as I mentioned earlier, my great concern is the assumption that in our own capabilities that the Russians would be to deter as it was, because they never seem to retaliate against any of the things we do. All these weapon systems, we pushed one after another. The F-16s, long-range missiles, all these things, we recognized ourselves to 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 would see a path to war, I think this would be the strongest one. Well, the opposite is, I mean, I'm urging General Brown, who's the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, meeting with Garraso off and started dialogue because we desperately need it. Any final words, Garraso? 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 news agency. Xinhua, in which he actually said that, ultimately, for Russia, this is 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, of course, that can only work if there's also security guarantees for our opponents too. He actually said that one, which I thought most unusual, but he did seem to say that 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 go along and start and ask politics 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. Well, they could start by reading the December 2021 letters that Putin sent to the US 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 one, 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 the 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're even there to ask the question how we threaten them. So it's a big no-no. So we think to paint ourselves in a 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. I mean, 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 already, it's also pushed the British back too, by the way. I think they were also taken, taken aback by what happened. It created an incident, an incident in, you know, 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 doesn't come across as quite as, you know, determine 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. And I, for my part, I wanted to say thank you, Stephen, for coming on. And I hope we do have more programs with you. Infusions. 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, Stephen. Thanks, Alexander. So now this has been very, very interesting. Thanks again.