This is the transcript of the interview Glenn Diesen <-> Douglas McGregor in https://slovozbritskejkolumbie.ca/maju-americania-dlhodobu-strategiu
Glenn Diesen:
0:00 hi everyone and welcome on today's program We are joined by Colonel Douglas McGregor welcome to the program.
Douglas McGregor :
Happy to be here Glenn
Glenn Diesen:
0:13 so Trump's first 100 days to end the war in Ukraine is coming to an end and the US has been preparing this peace agreement. Otherwise if it's not accepted the US might wash its hands with this whole war
0:26 and walk away from it. At least this is what's being said by JD Vance Marco Rubio and yeah the agreement was shot down fairly quickly by Zelinski and the Europeans piled on by saying that they would also never recognize Crimea as Russian Now how do you read this what is the significance of this you think.
Douglas McGregor :
0:50 I'm not sure the Europeans are even relevant at this point I don't think the Moscow is terribly concerned about them I think the whole idea of the United States operating as a broker in good faith is absurd. Without us there would have been no war at all.
1:10 So how do you explain the American role that really starts you know Larry Johnson sent me a note this morning. He said he started looking at all of the exercises involving Ukraine and NATO forces starting in 2007
1:25 What's remarkable is that they just become more and more frequent and intense over time So the anti-Russian or you know the Russia the hostility to Russia was sort of baked in long before Trump showed up and I don't think he understood from the very beginning that was really not his call to settle anything in the region.
1:50 You know he's not a honest broker in the Russian view. Now I think they've been very polite to him and let him spin his wheels and try to do things but ultimately I don't think they expected anything to come of it.
2:03 You know the question is why would you pay any attention to President Trump at this point because where has he been on these issues he was never a forceful voice for ending the war never a forceful voice for peace.
2:20 He came to it gradually and then made outrageous claims that he could not possibly transform into reality that he could end it all in a day Well that's absurd. I think that reflects his assumptions that he continues to hold about who we are in the in the world today
2:40 It reflects this lack of understanding that we really do live in a multipolar world that we are by no means the sole superpower. If anything we we're viewed as very weak and vacillating at this point particularly on the economic side.
2:50 So I I'm not sure the Russians are surprised. He may be surprised And so now the Trump team wants to cover its tracks and sort of save face and pretend that well you know these Ukrainians just won't work with us. You know, come on. It's deeper than that. It's more profound than that. So I think we are rightly now going to stop interfering.
3:12 I hope you know to what extent President Trump and his team have control of the CIA is very much open to debate and Radcliffe the man who's over there is a neocon. So I don't know what the CIA is actually doing and I think that's something
3:30 that Trump ought to focus on and find out along with Tulsi Gabbard because I just don't see that we're doing a sharp turn in any particularly new direction. We're just sort of pretending that we had a role to play and because the Ukrainians don't like us anymore or something we're leaving. We're picking up our toys leaving the sandbox and going somewhere else to play.
Glenn Diesen:
3:54 Well as you said the US does play a strange role because it has been a key participant in this war from the beginning from the yeah toppling of the government and of course as we learned from the New York Times article the US has been very much front and center at the war planning
4:12 but at the same time yeah Trump and his team presents themselves as the mediators was simply trying to get all the Europeans the Russians and the Ukrainians to all come to an agreement. It is an interesting yeah balancing act is a bit confusing as well with that but what is the wider strategy then what
4:32 if there is no political settlement here what, where does the United States go from here I'm I'm just asking because if Trump decides to double down and put more pressure on Russia then how is his policies any different from that of Biden.
4:47 And to this regard he can't really argue that this isn't his war anymore Because at the moment as you said this is our US weapons US intelligence being used to kill Russians So you know how long can you play to be a mediator if there's no peace to be made.
Douglas McGregor :
5:03 I think those are legitimate questions I think we have to come to the realization that the United States has no strategy. Now that's not entirely a new development Let's be frank once the cold war came to an end it was more an effort to maintain our hegemony political, military and economic than anything else.
5:26 And we thought that the way you do that is by threatening and bullying and intervening that hasn't worked out very well In the meantime we've largely ignored our own economic problems You know we like to blame China for everything that's wrong at the moment economically.
5:42 But the Chinese did not come over here in large groups and demand that we move our industries to China. They may have been the beneficiaries of that but we allowed it to happen because the people in the private sector saw huge profits to themselves and could care less about the United States. So that's a separate problem entirely.
6:05 People complain about the Chinese because they say "Well they've stolen IP. They've stolen this." Well, the Chinese have been doing that for the last couple of thousand years as the Japanese and Koreans and other will tell you. And that's our fault because we admitted them to laboratories and universities and government labs and so forth.
6:22 What did we expect to happen I mean it's just we are the authors of our own misfortune. Let's put it that way. But no one wants to admit that least of all Donald Trump. And so I think right now there is no strategy other than well we're going to punish those Chinese which of course is not working very well.
6:49 if anybody's being punished at this point it's us by our own actions. So what is the strategy, what are our interests you see. It becomes very difficult to define your true strategic interests when powerful lobbies make
those calls for you
7:07 And right now the Israel lobby is in charge and they're defining what our larger strategic interests are not Americans. And then you have the sort of military-industrial congressional complex which is all about funding itself and enriching themselves. They too have a huge impact on the conduct of policy. That's why I said instead of doing what he's doing I think he would be well served to find out whether or not he's got any control inside his own government
7:35 What's happening inside the CIA, what's happening over at the National Security Agency, what's happening on the ground in the State Department if anything. I mean the truth is I think the State Department is increasingly irrelevant. It's a relic of the sort of early 20th century. It doesn't seem to have any impact at all. And I think that Rubio is almost indistinguishable from Blinken in all important ways.
8:03 I don't know how many times I've spoken with delegations people from overseas that have been seeking contact with the Trump administration and all threw up their hands in disgust and walked away from the State Department Saw no point in talking to them at all So that leaves Department of Defense and the Department of Defense is obviously in complete disarray.
8:24 You know this is all self-inflicted nonsense but I don't think anything's going to change until we see the financial crisis develop and the economy implode which I think is not far off now.
Glenn Diesen:
8:35 well do you see a power struggle though within the Trump administration because it seems like there's some neocons and some of the America first.
8:45 We saw this with the strikes on Yemen that were JD Vance he said you know this is not our war and then you had the for new counts pushing forward. You see now the same with Iran. Some seem to favor war others are very cautious.
9:00 in Ukraine I guess this was mostly obvious with the Witkov proposal versus Keith Kellogg's proposals which were very different so is this a power struggle or is it just Trump who is unfocused without a strategy.
Douglas McGregor :
9:20 I think that's the biggest problem President Trump is unfocused and is without a strategy. Now I haven't seen much evidence that vice presidents mean very much in the context of our political system. You know in Britain they talk about the king has an heir and then a spare. well we have a spare. The spare is called the vice president
9:40 I don't see much evidence that President Trump listens to anything JD Vance has to say I don't know that he listens to anybody but certainly not JD Vance very much He's just assigned JD Vance a new task the quote unquote tariff tzar. What a terrible position to be in. I mean this is back with Camala Harris on the border.
10:02 You know they gave her this thing and of course she did absolutely nothing. And that was I guess the real purpose of it but she was irrelevant. And I think at this point JD
Vance is going to be this tariff tzar. What's he going to do? The horse has left the barn. Is he going to ride out there, capture the horse, bring it back and lock it up? No I don't think so.
10:25 You know I just this business of disputes inside the administration he's always had whenever he was president previously. People in his administration that he appointed and didn't agree with. This is monumentally stupid if you're actually trying to accomplish something. But we're back to the question of what are we trying to accomplish.
10:50 And I think that President Trump and his inner circle have been very focused on getting a win for the boss. We got to go out there and get a win for the president. How's how do we make this a win and that dragged us into the nonsense in Ukraine. There's no win there for us that we should never been in the place
11:10 So the smart thing for him at the very beginning was to say "Look I'm I didn't support this I didn't want this. So I'm ending all future aid to Ukraine and I'm pulling all the American troops and intelligence operatives and advisers and everybody else out of Ukraine the next 48-72 hours
11:29 Forget it. Leave the Europeans then would have moaned and groaned but there's not a great deal they can do about it. We know what the Europeans amount to militarily in the absence of the United States. Not much. And this goes all the way back to the second world war. I mean we had no strategy per se in the Second World War. We never had an interest in the destruction of Japan. We never had an interest in the destruction of Germany so what were we doing what was this unconditional surrender about?
12:00 Why were we bombing everyone into the Stone Age? We did it because we could do it. No thought was given to what happens when the Japanese field armies are removed from Manuria and Korea. Who fills the vacuum? What happens if you force the German military establishment to its knees and destroys it? Well you open the floodgates to communism and Stalin.
12:25 No thought, no imagination, a complete failure of imagination and ideologically driven hatred that is always part of the American way of war. You have to take go back to Wilson suddenly decides to turn old Kaiser Wilhelm into some sort of evil satanic figure. It's absurd. It didn't make any sense at all.
12:50 And what was our interest in World War I did we really just want to rescue the banks in England and Paris are we just rescuing you know imperialists what did we go there for?
13:03 What was our interest in that i mean none of these questions have ever been asked intelligently. So we're very poor in terms of developing strategy. There is no end state in mind. The end state is Germany's destroyed, Japan is destroyed, we win. that cost us what? 50 years and trillions of dollars and compelled us to stay overseas in places we didn't want to be.
13:28 So here we are, 80 years later after World War II, and what are people talking about? Withdrawing forces is going to happen because we have this other problem and that is the mismanagement of the economy and the financial crisis is developing. You know, remember that one of the promises made in the context of the tariffs privately was we're the big market.
13:52 Everybody needs us. No one can live without us. And once we do these things foreign capital will pour in to our treasury markets because that's how we finance ourselves. Foreign capital pours in, buys up the treasuries and that's how we finance our government because we can otherwise not cover the shortfall in spending.
14:15 You know the problem is we no longer have the manufacturing base we once did. We don't have the opportunity to employ tens of millions of people today as we once did. And that's the problem with the illegal aliens. You've got 51 million people who are illegally inside the United States. Well how do they live? Who's paying for their health care, their education, who is putting up with the widespread lawbreaking and criminality?
14:47 Well we are. But at a point in time where we can't afford it? It's just beyond our means. So there is no strategy. Period. And I think everything is impulse driven. You know Trump wakes up and says I want to get those Chinese. Okay, everybody on board and off we go. And then somebody comes back a few days later and says you know this is probably not a great idea. So how do we get out of this well?
15:13 We can't just say we were wrong and made a mistake. That's impossible. So I think your question is a valid one. I don't have a good answer because I see no strategy. I saw no strategy under Biden, I haven't seen any strategy anywhere, certainly since the end of the cold war. And even that was of questionable utility I mean it was this business of containment. But containment then became an opportunity to intervene in a place like Southeast Asia and Vietnam which made no sense. It had nothing to do with the Soviets.
Glenn Diesen:
15:51 That's an interesting comparison because in yeah World War I the the demonization of Germany it became almost a substitute for strategy.
16:01 And indeed Henry Kissinger he made a similar remark back in well I can't remember when it was he wrote that the demonization of Vladimir Putin wasn't a strategy It became the excuse for not having one effectively. So it does appear that yeah the hatred of opponents is doesn't take us anywhere.
Douglas McGregor:
16:23 But then look at the people who profit from these things Are they behind it do they have a hand in this i mean I think they probably do I think the bankers the financiers they absolutely have a hand in this and business is good for the hill I mean their their view is what is it's the old expression war is the health of the state and that's the way they look at it.
16:46 Whenever we go to war we make money. The fact that we may lose trillions in the process and tens of thousands and kill hundreds of thousands none of that makes any difference The bottom line is we profit everything. The stock market roars ahead. Check all the investments in the big five defense industries. Everything's just great.
Glenn Diesen:
Well what would be your strategy then because you know you're a former retired colonel in the US Army you you know you've spoken to Trump in the in the past.
17:23 You the CEO of Our country Our choice have you made up some thoughts of the direction you think the United States should go especially in terms of its relationship with Ukraine and Europe should it just decouple or how do you see well I guess a better approach a better American policy to I guess adjust to this new multipolar world.
Douglas McGregor:
17:47 Well I think the first point of any American strategy and I think this will eventually happen because we are simply going to be financially ruined and have no choice.
17:56 But number one is a hemispheric defense In other words we should defend the western hemisphere Our interests in the western hemisphere as well as our continental empire You know people talk about the empire. We are an empire.
18:10 The empire was built from the Atlantic to the Pacific And that should have been enough We all know now that for various reasons we were we were seduced into joining the British in the scramble for empire and that got us into the Spanishamean war and Puerto Rico, the Cuba, the Philippines and all these things. But I think number one is hemispheric defense.
18:37 Number two is we have an interest in doing business with everyone. There was this business of treating countries as permanent enemies particularly countries that don't necessarily agree with us on all of our policy positions is catastrophic We did not have that opinion back before the first world war. We tended to view you know places from the standpoint of what's in it for us.
19:05 Why should we be involved in China is there some particular vital strategic interest that justifies our presence there those questions have not been asked for many years I would argue that today we have a vital strategic interest in dramatically reducing our overseas profile and how we do that is very important In other words you pull the plug and just bring everybody home. That may not be the best way to do it You may want to do it over a period of three or four years incrementally.
19:38 But in order to do that you have to have control of your government You have to have a stable long-term end state that everybody understands and is striving to achieve We don't have that. So you know when Trump was the president the first time around privately he thought in those terms.
20:01 He said "Yeah why after 70 years are we still in Korea?" You know why after 70 years are we still in Europe what are we doing in Germany what are we doing you know in Japan and he asked those questions and of course the neocon answer from the people that profit from all of this disastrous policy they said
20:19 "Oh we have to be there If we're not there the world will fall apart Everyone will fight with each other. We're the keystone and the edifice of PAX Americana." Well that's just nonsense. You know that's not necessarily going to happen. And right now if that's why we look particularly impotent you know there's no one in Asia interested in a war except us.
20:43 You sit down with the Japanese the Koreans the Vietnamese and they'll discuss their neighbors and thinking but no one no one sees imminent war with China And in most cases they're not afraid of the Chinese militarily at all Now they are concerned about China's massive market its massive economy its massive manufacturing base.
21:05 But the Asian solution does not involve bombing China to get rid of it. It's looking for ways to cooperate and limit within certain restrictions how each side works with the other We don't think in those terms You're either with us or against us. And that was the problem in 9/11.
21:23 If you go back and listen to George Bush that was his message “Either you're with us or against us”. In truth most places most of the time are neutral and we should welcome that But that gets you back to the real question is what is the business of America and the business of America has historically been commerce.
21:44 You know George Washington when he left the presidency said "Give this nation 20 years of peace and we will grow so strong economically that no one in the world will ever dare challenge us." Well he was right And while we took that position we were very successful.
22:04 People liked us. You know we were popular. It's all of these interventions in places that are really of no concern for us We have no historic or vital strategic interest of any kind in Ukraine least of all in eastern Ukraine You could have made the argument if you were sitting in NATO.
22:23 In fact I suggested that this be privately communicated to the Russians. Of course nobody did it Every most Americans don't understand this Even the people in the State Department and DoD what are you talking about i said you know what happens east of the Neper River that's not part of the west.
22:45 Never has been. Kiev for most of its existence certainly after the Mongols destroyed it in 1240 was an outpost for the West on the Dnieper River and the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth controlled that for centuries.
22:58 That's why Western Ukraine is radically different from Russia. That's why the language is different. That's why many of the words that are used are not the same. It's why the population genetically is different. So the point is no one thought in those terms.
23:14 That's the way people thought who were prudent like Bismark. You know when the Russian foreign minister said we want control of the Bosorus in 1879 and asked Bismark you know what will Germany's position be on this he said well we have no interest in the Bosphorus you know it doesn't make any difference to us who ultimately controls it as long as commerce can pass through it.
23:41 But Bismark was very clever and he understood that the British would be horrified because the last thing they wanted was a Russian fleet coming out of the Black Sea into the Mediterranean that might put British control of the Suez Canal at risk.
23:56 Ultimately that's why there was no war between Russia and the Ottoman Empire because the British weighed in And again the Russians went back to the Germans said "Well if we go to war down there will you support us?"
24:09 And again the answer came back you know we're not going to fight a war in the Balkans I mean Germans have no interest down there We don't we got to get back to thinking more rationally and prudently and cast aside the emotion But today everything is emotion and again everything's impulse driven.
Glenn Diesen:
24:32 You see that also being the challenge in Ukraine because I find the especially in Europe the emotional rhetoric to be well fascinating because everyone seems to recognize that that war is being lost they recognize the situation will get worse every day we wait.
24:53 it's also a fact that the majority of Ukrainians want the negotiations But if you argue to anyone well perhaps we should negotiate an end to this war there You know you're probably a Russian agent or propagandist for Putin I mean it's very extraordinary the inability to have any rational conversations anymore.
25:13 People just assume that well if you just continue fighting Russia then it's anti-Russian which means it's de facto pro- Ukrainian I mean it's very simplistic thinking going on and yeah the insistence that everything was unprovoked that the Russians yeah were unprovoked they want to restore the Soviet Union.
25:29 All of this it's just that there's this very strong feelings built around this and it's if anyone opposes it yeah they're see essentially taking the side of the Russians against us it's I don't know how we ended up in this very emotional sloganish yeah rhetoric. But it's not very conducive to diplomacy though.
Douglas McGregor::
But well I I think people have lost their fear of war which is a huge mistake that's number one I'll give you an example of something I experienced back in 1995 I had been sent to Sarajevo and I ended up driving all over Bosnia Herzegovina.
26:12 After about 35 days I was brought back to Dayton to help draw the maps for new boundaries for Bosnia Herzegovina and Republic of Srpska and so forth. Other words how do you sort this child and I remember sitting there talking to a Norwegian subsequently and the Norwegian said something that the Americans were saying that all sorts of people were saying:
26:40 "Well you know these Serbs and Croats and Bosnjaks they all speak effectively the same language. There are no difference between these people. This is silly. They're all effectively the same people."
26:51 And I looked at this man and I said, "Well they don't think so”. So, they get a vote. And number two by the way is there any particular reason why Norway should exist what is the difference between Norway Sweden and Denmark.
27:17 Why aren't they all one country that would certainly seem to make a lot of sense to me Well you could imagine that Well that's wrong No no no Norwegians are very different from the Swedes. Okay fine. So the Serbs and the Croats and the Bosnjaks are all the same but Norwegians and Swedes are fundamentally different. This is the sort of what's the right word malignant stupidity that is widespread in Europe.
27:36 The first thing is to learn a little humility. Respect other people's views and what they think Stop treating those things as though they are irrelevant We do that all the time You know we went into Vietnam didn't understand what was going on there.
27:52 Nobody that went in militarily understood any of it You know
during World War II for instance when we were bombing the living daylights out of Germany and Japan Admiral Ley who's a little appreciated unfortunately he was the admiral who operated effectively as the senior military adviser for FDR.
28:11 He'd been chief of naval operations Roosevelt had known him for years is when Roosevelt was the assistant secretary of the Navy and he summoned during the war Arnold who was chief of Army Air Forces and chief of all army forces Marshall to the White House
28:31 and in a in the room he had a private discussion and he said this is late 1943 he said what are you doing in Germany and Japan and they said what do you mean what are we doing he said don't you realize that You're destroying these countries and after the war ends we want to live with these people.
28:54 You're making that impossible And Arnold and Marshall were "What are you talking about we were told to destroy Germany and Japan So that's what we're doing." No thinking no nuance And it's not entirely their fault because they got no guidance from the highest levels Roosevelt didn't think about it.
29:21 So here's Le Ley who's trying to cross this chasm where there is no understanding to get these generals to sit back and question what they're doing and trying to think of where do we want to be when the war ends Now just for your information the British always understood what they wanted when the war ended a bigger empire.
29:43 And so whenever they had a conference with us in World War I or World War II what was the focus enlarging the British Empire. So they looked for all the oil fields all the ports all the mineral deposits all the Mines. They had maps. They knew what they wanted when the war ended. They wanted to control all of these things.
30:03 Now my point is we have nobody thinking in those terms and I'm not advocating a war in which we should capture other people's mineral deposits or anything else Quite the contrary. We have all that we need right here in Canada and the United States. We Canada is very rich in rare earths and almost everything else you can think of.
30:20 We ought to be doing a land office business with them. We have things in our country we haven't developed. My point is there's no thinking. It's a huge lack of imagination a failure of imagination So everything's about destruction and total control And that's not reasonable.
30:43 It leads to disaster. And I think that's why we're on the road we are. But what do you do with a president like President Trump who says I support the mass murder and expulsion of millions of people from Gaza and I don't care how many people are killed in Lebanon and I don't particularly care how much of Syria Israel seizes and controls.
31:06 And by the way if they want to take Sinai and move to the Suez I'm not going to stop them. Well, Mr. President you're in a lot of trouble then. Why are we involved in any of that doesn't make any sense at all We're our interests are not served by the Greater Israel Project.
31:29 What are we interested in most of the world most of the time stability and prosperity We want to do business We want commerce That's what we have historically been about That's what we have historically done best But we're not even interested in that anymore.
Glenn Diesen:
31:47 I think the uniolar moment might have made us lazy and ignoring strategy because under this we all became a bit like the British well in in terms of ma maximizing only power that is you know the only source of stability is hegemony.
32:06 And given that our hedgemony is you know advancing liberal democracy it also makes its virtuous and all opposition essentially evil to be destroyed So we don't really have yeah much strategic thinking anymore but just yeah to finish off circling back to the negotiations
32:23 Do you see a diplomatic path or possibility to end this war because you know many people point out that Sinski is in a very difficult spot If he makes concessions the nationalist or the fascists will have him killed, if he doesn't make concessions Ukraine will be destroyed.
32:43 At the same time what concessions what other concessions would the Russians be willing to make given that they see this as an existential threat and they're well effectively winning this. So is there actually a meeting point here or is it does this war have to be finished on the battlefield I know sounds a bit crude and brutal but how do you assess this situation.
Douglas McGregor::
33:07 Well, two things Sometimes wars end when civil war breaks out in one of the nations I mean ultimately you know we had a sudden peace in November 1918 and that was because of unrest inside Germany itself and there was this concern that Germany could be destroyed if it did not end the war because of the social political unrest inside the country I think that frankly you might see something like that in Ukraine but tragically so many millions of Ukrainians have left and there aren't that many left for the size of the country I don't know if that's even possible.
33:49 so you know normally I would think someone like Zelinski would be put out of business by his own country and replaced by someone else who understands now's the time to come to a solution and rescue the country So that that's one example You know I'm trying…
34:07 I'm trying to think of another way to look at this that that would be helpful And I think you've got to go all the way back to Eisenhower in the 50s If Eisenhower were the president of the United States and your prime minister came and said we agree with you Russia is a terrible danger and Russia has to be stopped and so forth.
34:25 Eisenhower would smile and say "Well Russia hasn't invaded, has it? Russia hasn't attacked you, has it? Is there any evidence that the Russians are planning to do so and the answer, I think would be no. And so then Eisenhower would say you know if I were a Norwegian and I was bordering Russia a nation of 140 million and I only had five or six million Norwegians I would try to find a way to get along with my neighbor.
34:58 And that's one of the reasons that Eisenhower was a big advocate for neutrality He was delighted when Austria became neutral because he kept saying to everyone who would listen on the military side we can't defend everything.
35:10 We can't afford it We don't have the forces large enough to defend these places So we should neutralize more countries He would have been fundamentally opposed to the enlargement of NATO because he said "This is crazy”.
35:23 You know how can we defend Romania, how can we defend Bulgaria, how can we defend the Baltic? Literally, we can't. I mean that's sort of like waving a red flag in the face of your potential opponent. So you're right. There has to be some rationality.
35:42 But we're dealing with media and political activists lobbies that are there to pursue their agenda with our resources our forces all at the expense of our strategic interests So you've got to defeat that at home much like you've got to get rid of Zelinsky and halt this war before any more territory is lost which I think is now inevitable.
36:08 but no one no one seems to know how to do it I mean right now if you're sitting there in Moscow you're the chief of the general staff Where would you want to be when the war ended in Ukraine i think I'd want to be on the Dneper River line because that's a natural defensive position.
36:30 You know that buys you some degree of security in a in a larger zone Then you can debate whether or not it makes sense to take Odessa I know the Russians would like to because historically it's not Ukrainian it's Russian But they may decide that's more trouble than it's worth I I don't know I don't know what the thinking is Carov is another one how much I think the Russians will insist on that.
36:54 But again I don't know exactly what's going on But from a purely military standpoint if I were advising as a general officer in the Russian military I'd say Mr President let's stop at the river line Let's hold that Make that you know the final limit of advance.
37:16 If we still have problems we can always cross it and march further west But that would be my objective. And chances are very good that that could be accepted That means the Russians if they decide to pull back and give up some of it for some reason can do so I mean quite frankly they don't need to control all that territory but what they do need to ensure is there are no Ukrainian or foreign forces on the east side of the river line I suspect.
Glenn Diesen:
37:45 Well I wish there was some revival of strategic thinking well you're teaching You're a professor Yeah you know get out there and hammer this into people's heads Tell people to put their emotions in check That's our problem Everything is emotion No none of it's reason No I I agree And at least in this country they used to during Cold War to balance off deterrence with reassurance So don't put Yeah the American or British up in the north.
38:14 But now you know reassurance means you have to recognize that the Russians have legitimate security concerns which is yeah peacement now So you can't even recognize their security concerns which means you can't have reassurance which means that the only instrument in the toolbox is deterrence which is why we now have building American bases on our soil.
38:36 We're going to make the Arctic a front line against the Russians again diplomacy we used to always say in all conflicts at least start talking now diplomacy is also a peacemaking dangerous indeed concessions or even negotiations will be a reward for Putin so we can't even talk anymore so it's I think the reason has gone out the window I think this is my main concern.
Douglas McGregor::
39:02 Yeah No I think you're right Just one last anecdote that may illuminate this problem very well for all of us I was privileged to listen in on a phone call that was conducted between Secretary of Defense Bill Perry back in '95 during these talks and senior military advisers.
39:23 And what he said to them at the time I was a promotable lieutenant colonel I hadn't become a full colonel yet he said to them "Look no agreement is better than a bad agreement." In other words don't sign a peace agreement of any kind unless it makes sense Secondly we don't want any territorial outcome that includes dancing corridors.
39:47 Other words we we don't want to go through that again And then finally we want nothing that commits American ground forces for more than a few months in the Balkans I thought Secretary Perry was 100% correct You don't have to be a Democrat or a Republican to to appreciate the intelligence and the viewpoint of a man like that.
40:12 He was a good secretary of defense Now unfortunately he wasn't heated And eventually you know despite our best efforts to avoid the so-called dancig corridor business we ended up with something like that reaches all the way to Shrebbranita the highway from Serbs from the Bosnjak Republic out to Shreitsa
40:32 Be that as it may we ended up with a permanent fort down there in Kosovo. And we still have a presence European military presence down in the Balkans not much in American terms but we are stuck in this camp bone steel in in Kosovo So we got to get back to basics. And again all of this stems from a failure to appreciate our limitations.
40:59 And that's a huge problem for the United States. If you listen to President Putin whenever he speaks it's very clear that he sees limitations to Russian power and capability and interest This this man is not a fool and he understands that the goal is to end this and get back to building prosperity commerce.
41:25 So when he when you say what is what is he ultimately going to do he's already given a great speech about this to all of the economists and industrialists in in Russia and he said "Forget the West You know we can't depend upon anybody there to sober up and behave rationally. So we're going to focus internally and we're going to focus to the east and the south and develop our trade relationships there."
41:52
So he's already sort of written us off as you know with one foot in the lunatic asylum And I don't think he's I don't think he's wrong I think he's right Problem is there's no one thinking. It's all emotion
Glenn Diesen:
42:07 Well Colonel McGregor it's always fascinating to speak with you. So thanks again for your time
Douglas McGregor: Sure Glenn, nice to see you.
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