https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=ZV2WImx4Nrg
It’s not obvious to me at all that the Russians will give up these newer territories. You’re speaking of the Donbass, I believe, and the territories on the eastern side. Now, I don’t know ever when I’m reading reliable information from that area of the world, but my understanding is there is some degree of support among the local population, especially the Russian speakers, for the Russian incursion into those territories. And so, I’m not trying to justify that. That’s not my point. I’m trying to lay out the complexities. My sense is that Russia regards these as rightful territories of their state, and that they’ll be very, very loathe to give up any territory. It’s hard for me to imagine that Putin could do that as well without having to declare something like defeat, which is a very unlikely thing for him to do, given all the options he has in front of him. So, why do you think it’s realistic to assume that with sufficient pressure, the Russians will give up those eastern territories, Donbass? And to what degree are you concerned that pushing in that direction will tilt the Russians towards, well, one option is obviously the use of tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield. And so, I see way more ways of this getting out of hand than I see ways of it proceeding towards something approximating a reasonable conclusion. So, well, I’ll leave you with that mess of questions to juggle. As I say, a lot to unpack there. So, let me start, I believe, where you started, which is I am not advocating for a Treaty of Versailles with Russia, and I’m not advocating for intentional destabilization of Russia or demilitarization, which is an absolutely unrealistic goal, which is what happened to the Germans in the near term after the Treaty of Versailles. So, I’m not advocating for that at all. And I do think that there are real concerns about advocating for regime change, because in Russia, the devil you know may be better than the devil you don’t. And we’ve seen that through history. So, I’m not advocating for either one of those things. And I want to be clear that I’m not saying that victory would look like regime change in Russia. I am concerned about them as a nuclear power being destabilized. And so, I’m not advocating for those things. What I am saying, though, is that we have not yet tested fully how much military pressure can be put on Putin to get him to concede some of those areas on the eastern side, in the Donbas. We have not armed them enough. Let me give you an example. When I was in Ukraine 10 days ago, President Zelensky told me that on the average day in August, Russia is shooting 56,000 artillery shells into Ukraine. Ukraine is responding with 6,000. Now, almost an 11 to 1 problem is not giving Ukraine what they need to be able to prosecute the war in the most effective way they can. And so, I think Joe Biden has given them enough, just enough not to lose, but not enough to win. And so, part of what I think we need to do here is to give the Ukrainians the ability to prosecute the war in the way they see fit. And then see how Russia reacts. It may be, once we’ve armed Ukraine sufficiently for them to meet all of their strategic goals militarily, that Russia still will not concede some of those areas. Well, then that’s when you sit down and have a conversation with your ally about what’s the best deal we can make here to bring this to a conclusion. But you can’t convince them, the Ukrainians, it’s in their interest to do that when you haven’t given them the ability as they see it, and I think just given the numbers they’re right, to be able to prosecute the war in as aggressive a way as it’s being prosecuted against them. And so, if we’re in, we need to go all in from a hardware perspective. The other reason to do that, of course, Jordan, is the message it sends to China vis-a-vis Taiwan and other areas in Asia, that they need to see that we are willing to stand up and allow an ally to have what they need to have to aggressively prosecute their own defense. And China’s watching very closely on this front, and we need to send that message both as a country and as an alliance very clearly to them. And by the way, I believe if we had done that early on in Russia, we wouldn’t be in this circumstance with Ukraine. And we should take that as a lesson for China and Taiwan and other areas in Asia. So I think that tries to answer specifically a number of the things that you laid out in your questions. Okay, so I’m going to ask one more question with regard to foreign policy, especially pertaining to Ukraine. So the cynical part of me thinks in relation to the dangers of the military industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us about back in the 1960s, that the war of attrition, the endless war of attrition in Afghanistan came to a halt under Biden. And that put the military contractor types in a difficult position because the endless market for their wares had now dried up. Well, now we’ve got a situation where we have a war in Ukraine that’s settling down to be a very, very long and drawn out battle. And you said yourself that Biden has sent just enough enough to the Ukrainians not to lose, but not enough to win. That certainly makes the possibility of a long, drawn out and hyper expensive war paramount. So one of the things I’m wondering about is, do you think that the president with his relatively short term in power and the multitude of his potential responsibilities and division of attention, as was the case with Clinton, do you actually think that the president can step into a situation like this, a new president, with enough power and credibility to stand up against the continually active implicit forces agitating for expensive war? Yeah, I think you not only can you, but you must. Now, look, the part of the reason this is going to be a longer wars because Obama, Trump and Biden have all failed to arm the Ukrainians quickly. I mean, think about this, Jordan. They’re now talking about F-16 training and saying it’s going to take until next summer to train Ukrainian pilots to fly F-16s. This is absurd, and it’s the result of wanting to drag it out. So I think your suspicions in that regard could be alleviated if we had acted more quickly. And I still think we can act quickly now. The Russians are still on their heels here. You have to believe that Putin believed that he’d be flying the Russian flag over Kiev by this point. He’s not anywhere close to that. And so we still have an opportunity by aggressively arming them to shorten this conflict. If we continue to do what we’re doing, you know, what past is prologue. And if we continue to act the way we’re acting now and the war is not coming to an end, but is that a stalemate? Well, then you either have to act differently or you’re going to continue to have stalemate. So you either have to withdraw completely and allow the Russians to completely take over Ukraine, which is unacceptable to me. Or you have to ramp up the hardware you give so that you can try to bring it to a speedier conclusion. Now, if you try that and it doesn’t work, then negotiation is going to be our only way of ending this. And we’ll have a significant say in that matter, given that we have treated our allies fairly and appropriately in giving them a chance to win the war. And say to them, we gave you a chance with, you know, much of what you’ve asked for and you haven’t been able to get it done. So we need to now step in and help to negotiate a conclusion to this. But until we do that, we are absolutely consigning ourselves to a stalemated situation here.