Transcription
Today's Russian news here in the last number of hours. Sergey Narushkin, who's a director of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Services, said that according to him, there is the drums of war are now sounding especially loudly on the European continent, and thus a collision with Russia is actively incited by Britain.
We have, subsequent to that, Ambassador Paulsky, who was on our show about a week or so ago, saying some of these things. He has now escalated some of those.
The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation published a list of European enterprises that are associated with the production of drones in Ukraine. After that, Polyonsky said that Russia has the right to consider such objects as legitimate military targets. And now then, there's this warning that everybody, all the diplomats, foreigners need to get out of Kiev because they're going to bring some fire on top of that.
What do you make of this situation?
What's going on here has very little to do with the battlefield. It's important to emphasize that the Ukrainians, with assistance from the West, are increasing the number and the sophistication of attacks on the Russian homeland. And furthermore, you have all this warlike rhetoric in the West to go along with these Western-aided attacks on the Russian homeland. And the Russians have come to the conclusion, uh, that they have no sufficient deterrent against the West anymore, or against Ukraine, in terms of attacking the Russian homeland, and that something has to be done to rectify this situation. Uh, they, in other words, they, in in other words, have to reestablish deterrence. And the Russians basically have concluded that the only way that this can be done is to attack targets in Europe. And in effect, you're saying attacking targets in NATO member states. Uh, it's the only way to send a clear message and reestablish deterrence.
And as Karaganov argues, and it's very important to emphasize that Karaganov's views are shared by many, including in the upper echelons of the Russian elite, you start with conventional weapons. And if that doesn't work, if attacking a European state with conventional weapons doesn't cause deterrence, doesn't cause the Europeans to back off, and doesn't cause the Europeans to tell the Ukrainians to back off, then you use a limited number of nuclear weapons. And you do that not to win the war in any military sense, but you use that to send a powerful signal to the Europeans that you mean business, that you are so serious that you're willing to use nuclear weapons and throw all states out on the slippery slope to oblivion. And you're telling the West that the last chance to avoid going down the slippery slope is for them to cease attacking, uh, Russia, to cease helping Ukraine to attack Russia. So that's what's going on here.
And the problem is that in the West, most people don't take Russian threats seriously. Uh, and they think, people in the West think, and the Ukrainians think that you can continue to poke the Russians in the eye, and when they complain or say that they're going to take drastic action against you, you can just brush it off. They won't do that. They haven't done it in the past, they won't do it now. So, let's just keep poking them in the eye. Uh, and Caraganov says, "This is what's going on." And what is really going on, when you strip away all the layers of the onion, is they don't respect the fact that we're a nuclear power. They don't respect the fact that we live in a nuclear age. They don't think we would use nuclear weapons. And we have reached a point where it is probably the case that we have to use nuclear weapons against them on a very limited basis, again, just to send a very clear signal that number one, we live in a nuclear world, and number two, that we are deadly serious about putting an end to Ukrainian attacks on the Russian homeland that are aided and embedded by European states like Britain, and even the United States.
You know, you, you take a look at that. Here's just a compilation of a number of headlines over the last several months. Uh, Germany prepares their country for war against Russia. Uh, you have NATO saying, "Yep, we could be at war with Russia within three to five years." Uh, UK is urging Britain to get ready for a Russian threat. The French generals got upset because he said, "Yep, we're going to lose children in a fight against Russia." I mean, it's all over the place here. So, on the one hand, it seems like they do believe there could be war with Russia. They seem to be prepared for it, but as everything does, it, nothing is in a vacuum. And so that does have an impact on the likes of Karaganov, the likes of Vladimir Putin, and the, the Russian people. Well, they hear those things and they don't, it seems like that the Russians do believe what they're saying here, and they appear to be act on it.
The question is, and let me take this in three phases here. Uh, if Russia has now publicly said, "We're going to strike Kiev in a way we never have before." So if potentially in the next day or two or three days, something like that, they have some massive strike on command and control, on information and leadership, uh, inside of Kiev, which they have not done at any point. Would that be enough to get the attention of the Western Europeans, or do you think that'll just make them madder?
I, I don't think it'll work. I, I think that if the Russians are serious about reestablishing deterrence, and here we're talking about deterring the Europeans from helping Ukraine attack Mother Russia, uh, they're going to have to attack, uh, targets and places, uh, inside of Europe. Uh, probably the Baltic states. I think they're going to have to do that. The, the Russians are going to have to play hardball with the Europeans. Uh, playing hardball with the Ukrainians doesn't matter. Uh, the Ukrainians have suffered enormously up to this point, and they managed to hang in the fight, and the Europeans continue to assist them. So I think, you know, even a massive bombing campaign against Kiev won't do the job.
So, did I mean, that's a, that's a pretty sobering statement. Uh, so you're, you're arguing, or your assessment is that the current batch of European leaders, whether we're talking about, uh, Starmer, Metz, Macron, Ursand, Delean, Mark Ruch, etc., that they can't be deterred, and they, they are going to continue helping Ukraine, even if you have a big bombing campaign here, even with this threat that they could strike European capitals or, or European targets here. Um, does that imply that you think that these Europeans, they just don't believe that Russia would do outside of Ukraine? How do you, how do you assess that?
Well, I, I actually think, just listening to the European elites and, and many in the United States as well speak, that, uh, they don't fully grasp that we're dealing with a nuclear-armed adversary here, and that this is an extremely dangerous situation. My sense is, Danny, uh, that during the Cold War, we were much more cautious in talking about, uh, a war with Russia, or then the Soviet Union, and we were much more cautious in our behavior during the Cold War, uh, than we are now. It's quite remarkable to me the extent to which we are willing to help Ukraine use military force against the Russian homeland. I mean, we're talking here today about the drone campaign, uh, that targets infrastructure and civilian sites, uh, like this dormitory, uh, in, uh, Russia. And, uh, but that's only part of it. You want to remember, as I've emphasized on the show before, in August of 2024, Ukraine invaded Russia with assistance from the United States and Britain. Just think about that. Ukraine invaded Russia. Unthinkable in the Cold War that we would have aided any ally in an attack on the Soviet Union. And then remember that the Ukrainians attacked the bomber leg of Russia's nuclear triad. Uh, unthinkable during the Cold War. Uh, but we felt, we meaning the United States and Britain mainly, but the West more generally, that it was okay for Ukraine to go after one leg of the Russian strategic nuclear triad. I actually found that quite shocking at the time. I still find it quite shocking. And this gets back to Karaganov's point and the point of others in the Russian elite, that the West doesn't believe that Russia has meaningful red lines. The West doesn't respect the fact that we're a nuclear power. They don't understand that they can't, or they shouldn't be able to send Ukrainian forces into Kursk in 2024. This is supposed to be unthinkable. And the Russians believe, I think quite correctly, that they didn't make it clear at the time, back in 2024, that what the West and the Ukrainians did was unacceptable. In other words, a lot of people inside of Russia feel that Putin has not put his foot down early enough. Uh, and it's about time we put our foot down. And then the question becomes, what does putting your foot down mean? And as you pointed out, uh, it seems that what they're talking about now is bombing Kiev in ways that they haven't bombed Kiev in the past. And what they did this past Sunday night is the first step in that direction. My response to you on that issue is, I'm not sure that's enough, Danny. I don't think that will have that much of an effect, uh, on how people in the West think. And in fact, you may be right that this is probably going to cause the West to double down in its support for Ukraine, have the opposite effect. Well, if that's the case, the Russians will escalate, and that means they'll attack with conventional weapons, a target inside of Europe. And if that doesn't work, they'll escalate again. This is where we're at. We're going up the escalation ladder.
So, so let's look at phase two of that. Let's, let's just, let's presume that yes, that Russia hits, uh, a lot of Kiev, a lot of, you know, Zelensky coming out and saying, "Oh my God, please come and help us." And then the Europeans are angry and whatever. So they, they don't back down, they double down, and they send more stuff. And then Russia says, "Okay, we're now going to execute phase two, which they have published this list of enterprises and drone factories, missile factories, etc., all throughout from Great Britain all the way across." And they actually make good on that. So now then, and then in concurrence with that, they say if that doesn't work, the next one is tactical nuclear weapons. Will that finally get the attention of Western Europe?
I think it will. I mean, the question you have to ask yourself, if Russia uses nuclear weapons, uh, what will, uh, what will the West do? What are you going to do at that point? Uh, because if you retaliate with nuclear weapons of your own, then the Russians are likely to counter-retaliate, and you're going up the nuclear escalation ladder. Right? One could argue that if the Russians attack with conventional weapons in, uh, in a European country, and say at the same time that if this is not sufficient, and you don't understand our red lines, we want you to fully appreciate, we want you to fully appreciate that we will turn to nuclear weapons next. The idea that you're going to threaten their survival via Ukraine, that you're going to give Ukraine weapons to hit Mother Russia and kill large numbers of Russian civilians, is categorically unacceptable. And we are willing to play hardball, uh, up to the point where we will use nuclear weapons to cause you, uh, to change your behavior. Uh, if they do that, then you might not have to use nuclear weapons. But you do not want to underestimate, uh, how dangerous this situation is. And by the way, one of the reasons it's so dangerous is that the rhetoric in the West is rhetoric that I think is foolish. I don't think that Russia is a great threat to Europe. Period. End of story. But what I think doesn't really matter here. What matters is what the European leaders think. And I believe that you can make a case that the European leaders have convinced themselves that the, uh, Soviet, excuse me, that Russia is the second coming of the Soviet Union, or the second coming of the Third Reich, and that we in the West have to do everything possible to deter, uh, this monster, and then if deterrence fails, to defeat this monster in a war. That's really the way the European elites are talking. And again, I think there's a good case that could be made that they actually believe their rhetoric. And if they do, and if you listen to what you and I are saying about the Russian position, and then you marry those two things together, it is really getting to be a very scary situation.
And, and, and there's one other aspect I want to, I know we're about at the end of the time. Do you have a few more minutes for another? Okay. Europe can think that. They can say, "No, and if they, if, if the Russians represented this threat, so we're going to go on." I mean, they're already on this, we're going to rebuild Europe, and we're going to go up to 5% GDP, etc. But that's like a decade away. Doug McGregor on the show has has chronicled out how long it would take to actually rebuild the forces. And when you look at what they have right now, they have a poultry of any troops. They, we have given away so much of our stuff to Ukraine over the years, and then to Israel, and now we've expended our own in, in Iran. Our key weapon systems, which you mentioned a minute ago, whether it's the JASSMs, the Tomahawks, uh, the THAAD interceptors, the PAC-3 interceptors, we're on fumes on those right now, whereas Russia has been with their defense industrial capacity on the conventional level, have been stockpiling all kinds of stuff. Surely we would recognize that we can't do it right now. And even if we wanted to, we know that we can't conventionally compete with Russia right now. Can that get through to our heads to where we make a rational, if ugly, choice?
Well, I think that people understand what you're saying. And by the way, you want to emphasize that the manufacturing base is in the United States and in these European countries is in such pathetic shape that we can't produce quickly the weaponry that you would need to build a formidable military in countries like Germany, uh, and France, and so forth, and so on. So, it's not going to happen. But what's going on here, Danny, is that the Europeans are using the Ukrainians to wage the fight for them. Uh, it's a very cheap way of doing business. It's a form of buck-passing. In other words, uh, you want to bleed the Russians white, if you're the Europeans. Uh, if you believe this story that they've come up with, that the Russians are the second coming of the Soviet Union, they're poised to head for Berlin again, uh, and you can't stop them yourself, then you use the Ukrainians to do it. And that's what they're doing. They're using the Ukrainians, and they're giving the Ukrainians the weapons to attack Russia. Right? It wasn't the Europeans themselves that invaded Kursk in August of 2024. It was the Ukrainians with assistance from the West. And the same is true with the attack on the bomber forces. Uh, and in terms of the war that's now taking place, the ramped-up drone war against Mother Russia, the Ukrainians are doing the fighting. They're, they're launching, uh, the weapons, but they're in good part Western weapons, and they're heavily dependent on Western intelligence. So, we're working with the Ukrainians, but the Ukrainians are doing the dirty work. So, the Europeans, uh, are sitting back and concentrating instead on building up their military forces for World War II, uh, and letting the Ukrainians, uh, deal with the Russians in the meantime. But, but we can't get there. I mean, there's too many years that would be necessary if they full-on went on this wartime mobilization industrially. We can't get there in a long time. But this is something that could be coming literally in days, and some of it potentially in Kiev hits.
So let me ask you a final question here. If you were called to Brussels tomorrow afternoon and they said, "Listen, we're going to listen to whatever you say, what would you recommend to do right now in this environment that we just described to avoid an escalation in the conventional realm, much less in the nuclear realm, that could bring some kind of stability to the situation? What is a rational policy we could adopt right now?"
Well, I think that very clearly, uh, what should be done is, uh, that, uh, we should stop, uh, aiding Ukraine in the drone war, uh, against Russia, and if anything, we should push the Ukrainians to end the drone war and to reach some sort of peace settlement with, uh, with Russia. I mean, what's going on here, just getting back to a point I made a minute ago, is that the Europeans are using the Ukrainians, uh, to bludgeon Russia. The Ukrainian, it's quite clear that the European elites are deeply European elites are deeply interested in defeating Russia, knocking Russia out of the ranks of the great powers, inflicting massive harm on Russia. And they don't want to do it themselves. They want the Ukrainians to do it. And if the Ukrainians bleed themselves white in the process, so be it. So this war is not in Ukraine's interest. You and I have talked about this ad nauseam. It's in Ukraine's interest to get a peace agreement now. Get the best deal possible. The Ukrainians are never going to get back that 20% of Ukrainian territory that they lost. They're not going to get back Crimea. They're not going to get back those areas of the Donbass and Zaporizhzhia. Uh, and here's some that they've lost. They're gone. Cut the deal now. Uh, and we should be putting pressure on the Ukrainians to cut a deal. And we should certainly be putting pressure on the Ukrainians to stop attacking the Russian homeland with drones because this, if we're not careful, is going to lead to catastrophe. I think what has to be done here, Danny, is quite obvious. It's been obvious for quite a while now. But you and I, you know, are whistling in the wind when we make this argument because hardly anybody in power seems to think that the solution to this conflict that is in Europe's interest and is in Ukraine's interest is to shut this war down. It is not in Ukraine's interest to continue this war. Uh, all this rhetoric that you hear about, you know, Ukraine, uh, fighting on for democracy and how we should continue to support it and how Ukraine should fight to the bitter end because it probably won't be a bitter end. They'll defeat the Russians in the end is nonsense. They're not going to defeat the Russians in the end. And in fact, as the Russians are now now making clear, the better Ukraine does against Russia, and this is what's happening with the drone attacks, the Ukrainian drone attacks are becoming more effective. And what is the Russian response? To escalate. This means that anything that Ukraine does now or in the future to improve its situation will cause the Russians to escalate. And of course, the Europeans and the Ukrainians will counter-escalate, the Russians will counter-escalate, and up the escalation ladder we go. And where this ends, who knows? But one can tell stories that do not have a happy ending. Therefore, the best thing that we can do, what I would tell people in Brussels to do is shut this war down. But again, this is an argument you and I have been making for a long time. And for some reason, people don't seem to get it.
It, it feels to me, John, that we're in a condition right now where a lot of these people I just mentioned with this Rout or or Starmer, Macron, etc., they're not stupid people. And I would imagine that they may have even assessed the same thing that you and I are talking about. They can certainly see this, and especially if Russian missiles start just crushing Ukraine, Kiev, in a way that it hasn't before, that they could recognize the second, third, and fourth levels of what could probably come next and would maybe want to get it off the table to the extent that you just described there. But it seems like that they're caught in this mental trap that, well, we've made our entire careers based on saying this stuff, and if we walked it back now, we would lose our positions of power or something. And then they will just mindlessly go into the, at least up to potentially a nuclear escalation, even though they know it's the wrong thing to do. Have you ever seen that in in history where they know the right thing to do, but still feel powerless and just walk into the, walk off the cliff anyway?
I think you see this kind of behavior all the time. Uh, I often say to people that this reminds me of the Vietnam War. Uh, you know, I took away a handful of lessons from the Vietnam War. As you know, I was in the American military from 1965 to 1975, which was co-terminous with that war. Uh, one lesson I learned is don't go into places like Vietnam ever. Uh, but another lesson I learned in those years is that it's very easy to get into these wars, but it's almost impossible to get out. It's just quite remarkable. And you saw that in Vietnam, uh, and by the way, you saw that in Afghanistan. It was quite clear early on, uh, in that war, after four or five, six years, that, uh, we were in a quagmire. We had no winning strategy. It took us 20 years to get out. 20 years to get out. Let's talk about the Iran war. You know, uh, we'll probably still be talking about this a year from now, two years from now, three years from now, right? When President Trump went to war on February 28th, he thought he was going to win a quick and decisive victory. He's going to knock off the regime. That was going to be the end of it. We're all going to live happily ever after. When that doesn't happen, right? When that doesn't happen, you end up in a protracted war, and getting yourself out of that protracted war is extremely difficult. And Ukraine is a perfect case in point. U, you know, just to, just to go back to the Ukraine war and the origins of that war. Uh, you know, a lot of people say that what Putin did was he invaded, uh, he invaded Ukraine for the purpose of conquering the entire country. And that if you look at what he did in the first days of the war, he was bent on conquering Kiev. Uh, and then once Kiev fell, all of Ukraine would fall, and it would be like the fall of France in 1940. Okay, that's not what was going on here. What Putin was doing was he was launching a limited attack into Ukraine. Uh, General Searski says he only went in with a 100,000 troops. 100,000 combat troops. I used the number 190,000. That's the high-end number. Sirki says 100,000. Small force. Did not try to conquer Kiev. He couldn't have conquered Kiev with a 100,000 troops. And of course, those 100,000 troops were spread out all over five different axes. Right.
Exactly. So what was he doing? Putin was interested in going in, starting a limited war to show how serious he was, and then starting negotiations with the Ukrainians. And two or three days after the war started, Putin sent a message to Zelensky and said, "Let's start negotiating." And this is what led almost immediately thereafter to the negotiations that started in Belarus and then went to Istanbul. These are the famous Istanbul negotiations, March, early April of 2022, right? And it looked like Putin's strategy was going to work. In other words, what I'm saying to you, Danny, it was a limited aim strategy. Putin was not interested in conquering all of Ukraine. He was interested in invading and then using that invasion as a means of getting Ukraine to negotiate a settlement through the Istanbul process. And he actually came very close to succeeding.
Right? If Boris Johnson and the Americans had not told the Ukrainians to walk away, we might have had a deal and shut this war down then. But the problem is, the problem for Putin is when you launch a limited aim strategy, you don't defeat the other side decisively, right? And you're in a war, that war is almost impossible to get out of. And here's Putin into the fifth year of the war.
Great point. That's a great point.
You see what happened here?
In a very important way, Putin is in the same dilemma that we were in in Vietnam, and we're in in Afghanistan, that we I think are in in Iran. I hope I'm wrong on that one. And that he is in in Ukraine, right? If you, if you go into a war thinking you can win a quick and decisive victory, right? And you don't achieve that goal, right? Uh, and you're in a protracted war. This is Iran, right? We thought, you know, shock and awe, decapitation, decisive victory. You know the whole story. That doesn't happen. Here we are, right? And, uh, and, and Putin, it's a slightly different case in the sense that he wasn't expecting to win a quick and decisive victory, right? He was just wanting to use force to show how serious he was and to get negotiations going, which he did, and he came close, but close is not good enough when it comes to war. And here he is in a protracted war that, let's be frank, he's having a devil of a time getting himself out of, right? Uh, this is the point that about you and me. You and me, you and I, we argue that it's obvious what should be done here, that we should cut a deal now, but nobody listens. That's just another way of saying it's amazing how difficult it is to get out of a war once you're into it.
Well, unfortunately, we're going to find out, uh, one way or the other. I think, uh, just, just this second here, got a note from somebody who has some, uh, insight into what the Russians are thinking. They say that, uh, it's now just a matter of time until the first blow strikes in Kiev, and they're expecting it to fail, and they're ready to go to part two. We'll see if that happens, and I pray to God it's not. Yeah. But as you have just really laid out here in pretty solid logic, uh, that probably is going to happen. So I, I'm very concerned about where these things may go and how we may react, but we are where we are, and we appreciate you shining a light on that. Thank you very much.
My pleasure, Danny. Thanks for having me on the show.
Always a pleasure. Just remind people that, uh, especially as things come up here, go to mirshimer.substack.com because I'm sure he's going to have a lot of stuff to say about what may be coming out here, uh, as well as we will cover this too when or if anything breaks. Thank you very much, and we'll see you all on the next episode of the Daniel Davis Deep Dive. Don't forget to tell your friends, the ones that love to listen to podcasts. Get them to add Daniel Davis Deep Dive to their podcast list. They need to know what you know. They can get it to where they already get their podcasts. You just got to tell them.