On tonight’s edition of the Other Side of Midnight: Col. Douglas Macgregor, retired U.S. Army Colonel, former senior advisor to the Secretary of Defense, author, and a senior fellow at The American Conservative to discuss the Russia-Ukraine war.
Friday, October 28, 2022
Thursday, October 27, 2022
A Neighbor's Choice 10/26/2022
Col. Macgregor: NATO Clueless in Ukraine, Daniel McAdams on Elon’s Arrival at Twitter HQ
October 26, 2022/ /by David Gornoski
Col. Douglas Macgregor returns to the show to discuss the US army’s recruitment crisis, the use of extremists in foreign wars, secret influence operations against American dissidents, the “coalition of the willing” against Russia, the coming Russian offensive, and more. Also in the show, Daniel McAdams calls in to comment on Elon’s Twitter takeover and the future of free speech on the internet.
Tuesday, October 25, 2022
Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom 10/25/2022
Playing at War in Ukraine
Congress should signal its readiness to invoke the War Powers Act, while demanding that the Biden administration broke peace
Backup Video:
Monday, October 24, 2022
The American Conservative 10/24/2022
Playing at War in Ukraine
Congress should signal its readiness to invoke the War Powers Act, while demanding that the Biden administration broker peace.
Douglas Macgregor
Oct 24, 2022
1:00 PM
David Petraeus on September 22, 2021 in New York City. (Leigh Vogel/Getty Images for Concordia Summit)
As the astute author Hunter S. Thompson noted, “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.” Weird is indisputably the condition in Great Britain, where Liz Truss, an arguably empty and talentless prime minister, is out—and was, it seemed for a moment, very nearly replaced by her vacuous predecessor, Boris Johnson.
Weirdness, however, is not foreign to American politics. An indicator of just how weird Washington is becoming is the apparent interest in General (ret.) David Petraeus’s recent suggestion that Washington and its allies may want to intervene in the ongoing conflict between Moscow and Kiev.
According to Petraeus, the military action he advocates would not be a NATO intervention, but “a multinational force led by the US and not as a NATO force.” In other words, a U.S.-led Multi-National Force on the Iraq model composed of conventional ground, air, and naval forces.
Petraeus does not explain why U.S. military action is needed. But it’s not hard to guess. The intervention is designed to rescue Ukrainian forces from defeat and presumably compel Moscow to negotiate on Washington’s terms, whatever those terms might be.
Admittedly, the whole business seems weird, but Petraeus’s suggestion should not be dismissed. Not because Petraeus’s military expertise warrants consideration—it doesn’t. Rather it merits attention because Petraeus would never make such a recommendation unless he was urged to do so by powerful figures in Washington and on Wall Street. And as Jeffrey Sachs tells Americans, globalist and neocon elites clearly want a direct armed confrontation with Russia.
For Petraeus, it is business as usual. He rose through the ranks by checking with everyone in a position of authority above him before doing anything. Seeking permission to ensure no one in authority is offended (like a “coalition of the willing”) is key to promotion. It works well in peacetime, or during wars of choice against weak, incapable enemies that present no existential military threat to Western forces. But Ukraine is not Iraq nor is the Russian Army an Iraqi-like force, or mounted on “technicals”—pickup trucks with automatic cannon.
These points notwithstanding, Petraeus’s suggestion confirms two critical insights. First, the perilous state of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Absent the foreign fighters and Polish soldiers fighting in Ukrainian uniform, Ukraine has little left to withstand the Russian winter offensives. The series of Ukrainian counterattacks over the last 60 to 90 days have cost Ukraine tens of thousands of lives, human capital in uniform that Kiev cannot replace.
Second, it is the 11th hour. The Russian sledgehammer scheduled to fall on the Zelensky regime in the November or December timeframe, or whenever the ground freezes, will crush whatever remains of Ukrainian forces.
In other words, Petraeus’s real message is that the only way to prolong the life of the Zelensky regime is for Washington and its coalition of the willing to intervene directly before it's too late. The usual war hawks in the White House, the Pentagon, the CIA, and on the Hill probably assume that a quiescent American electorate will buy the argument that the commitment of U.S. forces in Ukraine without a declaration of war could facilitate a face-saving deal with Moscow.
It's dangerous and stupid to think so, and Americans should reject this notion, but it’s not unreasonable to assume this deluded thinking is prevalent inside the beltway. George F. Kennan, American diplomat and historian, insisted 30 years ago that, “We [Americans] tend to overemphasize military factors at the expense of political ones, and in consequence, overmilitarize our responses.” The result, Kennan argued, is Washington’s chronic failure to relate the development and use of American military power to attainable ends of national strategy.
In Washington’s halls of power, the “going in” assumption always presupposes certain conditions: a subservient Congress that will ignore its responsibility to invoke the War Powers Act, unconstrained financial resources for military action, and senior military leaders ready to comply with whatever dumb idea the politicians in charge advocate. For Petraeus and his peers there is also the high probability that some tangible reward is promised in the form of future appointments or financial gain.
The questions of how much ground combat operations in Eastern Europe and Ukraine would demand in terms of U.S. manpower, logistical infrastructure, ammunition, medical support, and evacuation are relegated to secondary consideration. For example, in the 11 months after the landings in Normandy, when the U.S. Army was sustaining 90-100,000 casualties a month, the divisions that landed at Normandy replaced 100-300 percent of their fighting strength.
The commitment of U.S. ground forces to battle combined with the dispersion of U.S. military power at the end of a 5,000-mile lifeline across Ukraine, an area the size of Texas, will unavoidably weaken and dissipate the attacking army’s fighting strength. Finally, Petraeus’s critical assumption that President Putin wants to avoid a larger war is no doubt valid, but this assumption should not be interpreted to mean the Russian military opponent will treat U.S. bases in Western Europe or U.S. warships transiting the Atlantic as inviolate. Moscow enjoys escalation dominance, not Washington.
As noted at the beginning, weirdness in politics is not a new phenomenon. Then again, Petraeus’s remarks signal something far more troubling than mere weirdness. The intellectual and professional caliber of America’s senior military leaders is deplorable. In his landmark work, August 1914, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn described Aleksandr Samsonov, the Russian general who at the beginning of the war was renowned as the leading strategist of the Russian Army: “The truth was that his forehead was solid bone, his mind moved at a snail’s pace, and the thoughts that passed through it were worthless.” Solzhenitsyn’s words were harsh, but not inaccurate.
In Ukraine going forward, Washington’s path is clear. Congress should do its duty and signal its readiness to invoke the War Powers Act, while also demanding that the Biden administration broker peace, not expand the war.
Wednesday, October 19, 2022
The American Conservative 10/19/2022
War and Regrets in Ukraine
Washington may regret its role in the war in Ukraine.
Douglas Macgregor
Oct 19, 2022
Of the Vietnam War, Henry Kissinger, former national security advisor and secretary of State under Presidents Nixon and Ford, said, “We should never have been there.” Before long, Americans, even the politicians inside the Beltway, will reach the same conclusion about Washington’s Ukrainian proxy war against Russia.
No one in the White House, the Senate, or the House consciously set out to turn the proxy Ukrainian war with Moscow into a contest of “competitive societal collapse” between Russia and NATO. But here we are. No one imagined that the Biden administration and the bipartisan war party would drive Americans and Europeans into a political, military, and economic valley of death, from which there is no easy escape. Yet that is precisely what is happening.
For the moment, Washington remains blind to these developments. Whether in print, radio, television, or online, the narrative is clear: despite horrific losses—at least 400,000 Ukrainian battlefield casualties including 100,000 soldiers killed in action—Ukrainian forces are winning. Moreover, the narrative says, America’s financial and economic dominance will ultimately overwhelm the deceptively weak Russian economy.
The Ukrainian-victory narrative admittedly benefits hugely from Western media that actively “tune out” opposing views and depict Russia and its armed forces in the worst possible light. The fact that nearly half a century of the Cold War conditioned Americans to think the worst of Russians certainly helps.
Yet there is also a measure of “true faith” at work, a condition of national narcissism, inside the Beltway that believes Washington can control what happens thousands of miles away in Eastern Ukraine. The message resonates in Congress because it rests on a critical strategic assumption that American citizens have yet to challenge: that American national power is limitless and unconstrained—as though a series of strategic failures, from Vietnam to Afghanistan, never happened.
Given that American politicians are always more preoccupied by domestic affairs than foreign policy, members of Congress are quick to adopt the “true faith.” This faith explains why for the last eight years members thought a future war with Russia was a low-risk affair. Ukrainians would provide the cannon fodder and Washington would provide the expensive weaponry and munitions.
Predictably, Washington’s governing strategic principles are unchanged from previous U.S. interventions around the world. Muddle through: masses of soldiers—in this case Ukrainians advised by U.S. and allied officers—and huge infusions of cash, equipment, and technology can and will permanently alter strategic reality in America’s favor.
The stupefying air of self-righteousness the Biden administration assumes when it attacks erstwhile strategic partners such as Saudi Arabia or delivers moralizing lectures to Beijing’s leadership, or when its media surrogates express contempt for the Russian state, is downright dangerous. Political figures in Washington are ready to indulge any transgression if it is committed in the name of destroying Russia. They do not view U.S. foreign policy in the context of a larger strategy, nor do they comprehend Russia’s capacity to hurt the United States, a bizarre judgment of Russia’s actual military and economic potential.
The result is a toxic climate of ideological hatred making it hard to imagine a contemporary U.S. secretary of State ever signing an international agreement renouncing war as an instrument of U.S. national policy, as Secretary of State Frank Kellogg did in 1928. But as one of Shakespeare’s characters in the Merchant of Venice warned, “The truth will out.”
The ongoing buildup of 700,000 Russian forces with modern equipment in Western Russia, Eastern Ukraine and Belorussia is a direct consequence of Moscow’s decision to adopt an elastic, strategic defense of the territories it seized in the opening months of the war. It was a wise, though politically unpopular choice in Russia. Yet, the strategy has succeeded. Ukrainian losses have been catastrophic and by November, Russian Forces will be in a position to strike a knockout blow.
Today, there are rumors in the media that Kiev may be under pressure to launch more counterattacks against Russian defenses in Kherson (Southern Ukraine) before the midterm elections in November. At this point, expending what little remains of Ukraine’s life blood to expel Russian forces from Ukraine is hardly synonymous with the preservation of the Ukrainian state. It’s also doubtful that further sacrifices by Ukrainians will assist the Biden administration in the midterm elections.
The truth is Moscow’s redline concerning Ukrainian entry into NATO was always real. Eastern Ukraine and Crimea were always predominantly Russian in language, culture, history, and political orientation. Europe’s descent into economic oblivion this winter is also real, as is support for Russia’s cause in China and India and Moscow's rising military strength.
In retrospect, it is easy to see how Congress was beguiled by the denizens of think tanks, lobbyists, and retired generals, who are, with few exceptions, people with a cocktail level of familiarity with high-end conventional warfare. Members of the House and Senate were urged to support dubious strategies for the use of American military assistance, including reckless scenarios for limited nuclear war with Russia or China. For some reason, U.S. politicians have lost sight of the reality that any use of nuclear weapons would overwhelm the ends of all national policy.
It is not the first time that American political leaders misjudged the true nature of a situation. In 1969, Kissinger advised President Nixon against de-escalation on the grounds that keeping U.S. troops fighting in Vietnam remained one of Washington’s few bargaining weapons in its negotiations with Hanoi. Kissinger was wrong. Washington gained nothing at the negotiating table with Hanoi by sacrificing more Americans in Vietnam after January 1969.
In view of Ukraine’s bleak prospects of ever regaining lost territory and its deteriorating strategic health, Ukraine’s future now rests in Russian hands. For Washington, there is a morally responsible and practical answer: Kiev should stop the bloodletting and make the best possible peace with Moscow it can. Unfortunately, for Washington this solution is unthinkable.
As long as Washington delivers cash, military assistance, and equipment to Ukraine, Kiev will fight its unwinnable war, and Washington’s ruling political class will profit from the transfer of cash to the Pentagon and the U.S. Defense Industrial Base. But Washington, its NATO allies, and Ukrainians will gain nothing of strategic value, while Russia is likely to grow stronger. That is a development Washington will regret.
Wednesday, October 12, 2022
Judging Freedom - Judge Napolitano 10/12/2022
Colonel Doug Macgregor -Ukraine Russia War Latest
Ukraine slams Crimea bridge arrests; power restored at occupied nuclear power plant
Backup video:
Redacted with Clayton Morris 10/11/2022
They want TOTAL war with Putin, and he's ready
The deep-state globalists in Washington, D.C. are pushing for an all-out war with Russia. Putin launches another round of crushing attacks against Ukrainian infrastructure. Colonel Douglas Macgregor joins us to talk about the next stage of this war. The Grayzone exposes how the U.K. spy agencies were responsible for launching the terror attack on the Kerch Bridge. Bosnia's election chaos continues with a recount underway. And the Dutch farmers are out of options and getting desperate.
Backup Video:
Sunday, October 9, 2022
Trish Wood is Critical 10/5/2022
Eva Bartlett & Colonel Douglas Macgregor
Last night Joe Biden warned of a possible nuclear apocalypse but he neglected to say that it is his own escalation of the Russian/Ukraine conflict that has brought us here. Colonel Douglas Macgregor and indy journo Eva Bartlett, reporting from Donbass, help Trish unpack an increasingly dangerous war and America’s role in making it worse.
Monday, October 3, 2022
Against The Trend 10/3/2022
Dimitri Simes
Who is winning in Ukraine?
Sober analysis by Douglas Macgregor
Backup video:
Saturday, October 1, 2022
Tucker Carlson Tonight 9/30/2022
We Are Moving Closer To A War With Russia
Ukraine Joining NATO Could Start World War 3
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
