The war in Ukraine and the decline of the West | #1623 with Douglas Macgregor

I walked in and got a presentation from some people I can't name, but they're here in the United States and they showed me where there was a request to launch a cruise missile at a building, mhm, and this was in, say, North Central. Ukraine in a city because the Ukrainians had placed firearms, meaning missiles and artillery, in this building, they could not reach it from the ground, they could not attack it effectively, so within 10 minutes a cruise missile was launched from the black. Maritime fleet and destroyed that target, we can't do that, we are not prepared for that welcome to the new world, comprehensive conversations in times of change, my name is Adrien Vera and today I am visiting Colonel Douglas McGregor, he is a decorated combat veteran in the US Army and former Senior Advisor to the Secretary of Defense under Donald Trump, we are here in Orlando in the study of our country, our choice and it is truly a pleasure and honor to speak with you, Mr.

McGregor, welcome to Orlando, Please call me Doug. o Doug dou, okay, thank you, today's topic is very serious, we are going to talk about war and the future of the West, but I want to start with the war because at the beginning of your book you mentioned V. clausi the famous prian uh , he was a general I think oh, he was a general in the Russian army and in the Russian army Major general in the Russian army he served under the Tsar after Prussia was occupied by the French yes, you mention the three types of war he, um, he, he, he talks about a war of decision and shum in German, I think, uh, a war of correct choice and a war of observance, well, he talks about wars of observation, yeah, which would be qualifying today in our Parliament as wars of choice is fine because the argument is that observation war is not an existential war for the state, it is something that the state can choose to fight, but whether the state actually wins or not is not. really relevant because it is not a major war, a war of decision involves the life of the state and the people, yes, you know, he talked about the State Army and the people, and a war of decision involves those three things and they are existence itself now, now you can. say um when you read his book there, of course, make use of this distinction, but at the same time, um um, discuss different layers of a conflict in, I would say, even different types of wars that are going on. right now, so I first want to start with um and take a look at the current conflicts that we're in, especially the war in Ukraine, because it has a lot of my interest as well and then I asked what kind of war, the different participants are fighting right now, so because we have this idea about Russia, maybe we have an idea about ourselves.

I don't know exactly what idea Europe has, but let's get into that, what is, in your opinion, the central idea. and what is the strategy and that is behind Putin's or Russia's war right now. Well, thank you first for inviting me to meet with you and thank you for asking these questions because they are rarely asked. The first thing I think we need to understand is that the military establishments of armies are made up of flesh and blood. We seem to forget that, particularly in the United States, we tend to think in terms of technology and money, we lose sight of the human factor, which is also the cultural factor, yes, and with the human factor comes everything you know, history , culture, experience, all those things are applied in an army.

Establishment in case of a conflict or war and at the moment what is happening in Ukraine, mainly in the east of Ukraine, is not very well understood in the

west

. Putin, excuse me, sees this particular conflict as an existential conflict for Russia, in other words, for him, a war. of decision, yes, it is a war of decision, yes, this is on their border, yes, and he had been talking for 20 years about his concern about what was happening on his border in the

west

, yes, Munich, right, and He continued to say that under no circumstances can Ukraine become a party. of NATO because, believe it or not, we still consider NATO as potentially hostile, remember the Russians asked the question, we dismantled the Warsaw PCT, we left Eastern Europe and we did it because you promised not to continue, in other words, no fill the void that we had left behind and ultimately not threaten us in any way, it was very obvious to him in the early part of the 21st century that Ukraine was being used as a potential battering ram against Russia or what was left of Russia, that Ukraine that had been part of Russia for centuries from time to time was also part of the Polish-Lithuanian Empire changed sides borders the populations changed but it was always very important what happened in Ukraine it was the traditional invasion route and there was always fertile ground in Ukraine for the fight against Russian sentiment particularly in Western Ukraine, so he is very sensitive to all of this and then he looked at what we were doing and he kept saying: don't do this, don't do this, but you also want to say that this anti-Russian sentiment had in Ukraine.

It would imply that in case Ukraine became part of NATO, then anti-Russian sentiments in NATO itself would become a dangerous mix along with these anti-Russian sentiments in Ukraine. Keep in mind that Russians are not stupid, no, I mean all of them. Whoever lives in Eastern Europe knows the history of the last hundreds of years and some goes back thousands, so it is no mystery that Poles do not like Russians, no, and that there is mutual suspicion. There are similar feelings in the Baltic. The states and the Russians also know good reasons for those feelings, yes, and they have done everything possible since the dissolution of the Soviet Union to try to show that they are not like the Soviet Union and we forget the enormous economic collapse within Russia that sent Russia went back decades, effectively Putin in the '90s, you mean, yes, and Putin has spent much of his time trying to recover, rebuild living standards, improve prosperity and he has spent surprisingly little on the Russian defense system, Which is one of the reasons the war begins and he moves relatively few forces into eastern Ukraine.

People are surprised. I was surprised because I knew the force was small, but I was surprised how he did this and suddenly it became very clear that he has a small army and he doesn't. we have the strength, the ability to do what we are used to seeing the Russians do and it is interesting for me to hear people in the West who criticized the quality of the Russian army and its smallness, etc., arguing that well, let's see, there is no nothing to fear and this could always be defeated and that was what was behind the scenes what Washington continued to tell the Ukrainians and we put a puppet regime in power in the GIF that was pro-Western and anti-Russian and we threw out the anti-Russian regime in KF , we used our Ukrainian allies to do that, but that's effectively what we did, then we started seeing election after election and you could always see the electoral map and you could see everyone east of the Nepper River and part of the north .

The part that touched Bel Russia all the way down and through Crimea was always pro-Russian and west of the river tended to vote as a whole in favor of the Western perspective, the Western orientation and wanted to divorce Russia and in 2014 they interviewed me. On RT and I asked him to put up the electoral maps and they told me: What is your point? The point is that there should be a referendum for these people to vote for themselves out of one country and into another if that's what they want to do. I said we should, we should facilitate this, this is what exists to do this is what we as Americans should be interested in letting these people govern themselves as they see fit and clearly one side is unequivocally Russian and the other doesn't.

I had a conversation with Nikolai Pro the other day he talked about the history of this internal conflict within Ukraine and it is very important. Yeah, I mean, if you go back to the 1700s, you're dealing with Charles I 12 of Sweden, you've got the left bank and the right bank. Bank kacs, yes you have kacs fighting the Russians and kacs fighting the Russians, that extends to WWII but the point is that we recognize this exists and have a referendum, well then they attacked me on the hill. "You know that the territorial integrity of Ukraine must remain unchanged and of course now the Russians, who fear having a NATO naval base in Crimea, have already invaded and taken Crimea, yes, that's it, let's go back to square one "he said, the reasons. of Putin and then we will discuss the situation in Ukraine um but you say that it is an existential war for Russia um and the West had promised not to move an inch towards the uh towards the east, in fact, we did not and it became a kind of strategy simply to um yes lock up Russia and and and um even to um um to make the port of Crimea a Ukrainian port, let's say a port that that would be a port that would eventually become part of NATO, so one of its reasons is that, from a Russian perspective, all of this development was trending in a direction where Russia would be isolated by not having any warm water ports anymore, um, what are they?

Well, I don't think that would be as big a problem for Putin as losing control of Crimea and effectively seeding the Black Sea into NATO. Yes, the Black Sea is to the Russians essentially what the Great Lakes are to the United States, if you were to move a foreign flotilla through the St. Lawrence Seaway and into Lake Erie, we would be in Arms, we would also look at the Caribbean as a lake, it was experienced simply as part of Russia is part of their culture, so even without this, military relevance was part of their domain, it is said absolutely and, of course, they fought for hundreds of years to expel the Turks, the Mongols and the Tatars, they all had to be expelled because initially all of those peoples were surrounded by the Black Sea and were hostile to Russia, they were Muslims and the Tsars fought on and off all the way until Catherine the Great, she finally got the control of Korea or, excuse me, Crimea in 1776, but the other thing is that it was happening in eastern Ukraine and we must keep in mind that it was not just a good thing that if the Ukrainians wanted to join NATO, they could do so, so we were deliberately building a Ukrainian army in eastern Ukraine for one purpose and one purpose only: to attack Russia. and then that happened since 2014, yes, absolutely fine, we had already provided assistance in various forms, but it became an important focus for us to build a new Ukrainian army in NATO M, that is a really important point because now we are talking obviously of the the support of NATO and the support of Europe and the United States to the Ukrainian Defense Force, uh um, but there was the participation of NATO was already happening and in in in in in in what sense in what in what in what what are we doing in the yes So we see that this Army emerges apparently with the purpose of ceasing control or regaining control of Crimea.

This massive force of over 400,000 I think it was and how big that support was at that time since 2014 in billions. Do you have any idea? Billions of dollars coming from the United States and NATO countries, particularly Germany, Great Britain and France. I don't know what the Dutch contributed, but there was everything, there was a NATO program, obviously led by us, to create a new NATO army inside Ukraine that had an unequivocally offensive orientation now, at the same time they started building these extensive defenses that would be behind them that they felt they would need in the future, which turned out to be accurate but more importantly they were also attacking Donet and Luhansk and between 2014 and 2022 when this war breaks out with Russian intervention On February 22, there were over 14,000 people in Luhansk and Donet killed by Ukrainian military action, no one ever mentions that most of these people were just Russians living there there were not even so-called malicious Russian militias and yes, Putin was under a lot of pressure at home to do things for those people in luhans and donet who were after all russians so the artillery mainly fires artillery but there were some ground attacks in the areas and the point is that they were considered separatist provinces and these forces Ukrainians were being built to retake them and then launch them against Crimea and when they talked about Luhansk and uh Donet, they talked about the beginnings of ethnic cleansing that we're just going to expel all the Russians, get rid of all the Russians, remember this is in a by which time Russians were already second or third class citizens in Ukraine, which is why these Minsk Agreements were finally established, which turned out to be irrelevant in an empty facade, but the point is that even Angela Miracle later said that It was just to spend some time building the army, yes, yes, how big was the army at that time?

You think about two, well, when they came in, they were more than 240,000, but they went up to more than 400,000 because they were reserves, yes, so the combination was more than 400 serious armies, yes, it was a very good army, very well trained, it had a lot team and when the Russians came in, they were initially only on the ground in Ukraine. inThat part of Ukraine there are only about 990,000 soldiers, but what he thought about at that time is I mean, he saw this serious buildup of an army, but then he comes with an army of 100,000 soldiers in a strange way.

There wasn't first a dogfight or something, he just came in and listened. Asking critical questions and I'm sure we'll know the absolute facts, but let's back up and talk about Did you understand what? Oh, yes, yes, I understand it now, I didn't understand it at the time, okay, nor did the Russians, and we have to understand this. When he first came in, I think he thought this was his chance. Unity to tell us how serious he was, as if we would suddenly change our focus and take him seriously. He completely misjudged this. Yes, Putin is someone who has always been yours. he knows the main Russian figures, probably the most Western or pro-Western leader of the group, so he now he lived in Germany, yes, yes, he did.

You would have to go back to the night of the 18th century, early 20th century, defined as Russian. Zars, who had the kind of positive view of the West that he has, yes or had, and I think this was part of the problem, assumed that we would react well, he didn't understand that our view of the Russians was completely biased in his favor. of the Russians are weak the Russians are corrupt the Russians are stupid the Russians are incapable I just go through the list this is really what people in Washington thought and I remember having conversations with some of them in these think tanks and I tried to tell them You see this gentleman who is very prominent from time to time on YouTube and on television and I said to him: don't you understand that the Russian army is not the same as the Western military?

You can look at them and say, well, they don't seem to be. So polished, they don't seem to be as well-equipped or well-fitted with their uniforms and such. Those things are superficial. The Russian army has always had these types of relaxed-looking soldiers and has always had a large number of non-Russians. with this you know USCS units and chin units and others this is not new yes, this is their story, so don't come to the wrong conclusions and don't assume that these people are not, they are going to fight for their country, well, they are those who invaded.

But from Putin's point of view, once he enters Ukraine, what he thought was a problem is infinitely greater once they enter eastern Ukraine, they don't just find this monstrous Ukrainian. Army for which he was not prepared, also finds the bulletin, but the Intelligence on both sides failed at that time, yes, I think so, I think both sides misunderstood and misunderstood things, there is no doubt about it, but what? How is that possible? there has always been a good relationship between the russians and the ukrainians, he must have had spies or something, there are two things going on here, yes the ukrainians and the russians have cooperated and gotten along from time to time, they haven't either fact and, as we built this army, we essentially began to stoke the fires of World War II.

Remember there are an estimated 9 million Ukrainian lives, probably also two million more Russians than ever mentioned, but 9 million Ukrainians were systematically murdered between 1929 and 1933. The man who did it was in the nkvd his name was Yagoda and he and his NKVD officers went in there after emptying the empty prisons inside Russia and brought the convicts with them because the convicts could be trusted to rape, murder and steal everything they found. It's what they wanted to do, they were there to destroy what they said Ukraine was, what we would say is middle class, but in reality these people took the opportunity to effectively destroy Ukraine.

You mean Hodor, yes, yes, and this also the farmers, yes? yes, but there is a cultural uh yes, this is the wound in Ukraine oh yes, terrible, terrible and this is one of the reasons why there were so many Ukrainians and then many Russians as well who defected to the Germans, you know? It's something we don't talk about, but they started stoking these old fires and there were always people in Western Ukraine who were in love with National Socialism and these symbols started appearing, yes, yes, and of course, this was done to irritate the Russians. on the one hand, but also to create the illusion that this was a new Superior Army, you know, based on the model of the German Force.

You were referring to the AO regiment, yes, AB, one of them, and these things were funded at the time by Ki, who is Jewish and remember we have this zalinski man who is Jewish, so you have the jux toos of, for a On the one hand, these symbols of hate and murder, even Nazism, yes, on the one hand, yes, and all these Jews who play prominent roles within Ukraine and and within the government is strange, it doesn't make sense, but when you look at what they are interested in , the people who run the country were interested in anything that could mobilize Ukrainians against the Russians and, like us in the United States, we were easily fooled. with these unsophisticated depictions of the Soviet enemy 30 or 40 years ago and transposing that old image of the enemy to Russia, we are easily fooled by that in the United States because we have been listening to bad people speak with Russian accents on television for decades. something similar happened in Ukraine, yes, but let's return to the army itself.

My question is why was the intelligence on both sides failing? I think there are two things that need to be noted because I have seen this happen here. It may be that President Putin received different types of intelligent evaluations and chose what he thought was appropriate, yes, yes, I have to take that into consideration, a kind of wishful thinking, I think listen, I think President Putin probably the most adult and clearest thinking in Europe and the world today and, in a way, very prudent, but on this occasion I think he seriously misjudged the West and I think he misjudged what was happening, it was even worse than him.

I thought so, because you remember in your mind that you expected that any day these two missiles from the 1980s that were banned under the INF, which we now call standard missiles, but are very, very powerful and very fast, would appear in eastern Ukraine and that would put them within minutes of attacking the Russian nuclear deterrent and destroying its Sy early warning system and so on. That's what he was worried about, but he didn't do it. When he gets there, he finds out that this Ukrainian arm is actually exceptionally good, it's not perfect, but it's very good and they have to make a decision after several months, what are we going to do?

Remember they tried in Istanbul and thought they had an agreement because the cornerstone of the agreement was neutrality for Ukraine, yes. and at that time he was ready to withdraw from Ukraine and that brings up something else that's interesting when the Russian forces first entered eastern Ukraine they met a lot of Russians, obviously the people there were Russian and they said, well, thank you Thank God you have come and then the people said well, what are you going to do? We're just here to, you know, push, you know, push the Ukrainians back and then come to a deal and then we'll leave, and the Russian people said: if you go Leave, then the Ukrainian secret police will come back and shoot us all in the head.

A lot of them said, "To hell with you, we're not going to support you if you're not here to free us and protect us." Here to stay, go home, you know, literally, these conversations were had. This was reported to Putin. This is where Putin begins to realize that he is different when dealing with a different animal than he initially thought. In fact, when we talk about this war. So you could say that Putin tried to give a signal to Zalinski that this is very serious and to the West so that he has reached an agreement in which Ukraine remains neutral, it does not become a threat to the Crimean position.

This is recognized and what he was and what he was looking for was something of the Austrian model, yes, because just like AUST, once Austria became neutral and the Russian forces left, there was still a Russian representative on the Defense Council of Austria for many years and his work. was to make sure that the Austrians actually carried out, you know, to the fullest extent of the law what they had agreed to and that's what Putin wanted in KF. I want a Russian on the National Defense Council so they can monitor that you are genuinely neutral, yeah man, the interesting thing of course is how it's going to develop because it became something different, well, cool, that's true, the big lesson from the margin of victory, yes, is that whatever you anticipated does not turn out to be the case yes, so if you think that you will move away for a short period of time or that this will be a short war, you have probably made a serious mistake , so before you start anything you need to step back and look. all possibilities do you think at that time that Putin was aware that he, in fact, he was waging a war against the West?

No, no, that's the problem. He thought we were approachable. He thought that people, especially in Berlin, were surprised when Schultz. shows up and spits this nonsense uh you know, it was a case of cognitive dissonance as we say in English, he couldn't reconcile what the man was saying with reality, he said that Schultz has joined this Berlin, now he's in this camp which is violently anti-Russian and we have no reason for the Germans to hate us, we have done it and we get along well with the ger just what is happening he couldn't believe it, he was surprised, in fact I wasn't surprised that his reaction was so fierce in the west, maybe it's that it's good, you live in the west, I live in the west, of course, but especially in the Netherlands, we had this, of course, this is the problem with MH 17 at that time , you know, yes, so, yes, yes, yes, and I always think that we treat it in the wrong way, but that's another question that is a very sensitive topic in the Netherlands, but um, but I felt Yes, you can say um, not the discontent, but um, maybe a slight towards E, maybe a slight form of hatred towards Puttin himself, yes, and it is like that, and they demonized them and that started in 2014.

I think this was the decisive moment in in Dutch, uh, in relation to uh, I think the problem has always been his association with the KGB, you know, there is supposed to be another nkvd thug, yes, like Yoda in Ukraine, and that was not the case at all, The other thing is and me. When I was in grad school, I had time to meet with MH defectors, many of whom were members of the KGB or Gru, and what you found out about them was that they had traveled a lot outside the Soviet Union, yes, they knew more over the West and had a very different life.

They saw that Bren his mind and that was the case Putin had lived outside the country he had gotten to know Germany very well he liked the Germans they got along well with the Germans and he began to see the West as a potential partner remembers that he raised the La question of whether Russia could join, yes, NATO now, was this a serious proposal? I think it was very serious of him. I think he was looking for an opportunity to integrate Russia into the West, but he always had people around him who told him Vladimir, you don't understand, yes. they hate us no matter what you do and it's always interesting to me that people are so eager to attack Putin when he is probably the best possible representative of Western interests in Moscow of all those out there, everyone else wasn't surprised not at all why we did it, yes.

I think that's a very important comment because the whole question is when you start a war and you want to know the outcome and now, at that point, we're dealing with Putin and you can say, well, Putin at least. he is a man, he is, he is, in a way, prudent, he is not very aggressive towards the West, so, then, the question is when, for example, when you want a regime change, who do you think will be the alternative? absurd they have no idea what they are talking about but that is not new we never understood Vietnam we did intervene in a civil war we murdered the only man we murdered the only man who could hold the country together his name was DM we created a catastrophe in Afghanistan after We went in, the only man that everyone was willing to live with in Afghanistan was the king because he ran what we would call a confederation where these were regional interests and so on, what did we do?

We delete it. and we put in a CIA agent named Cara and, of course, then the corruption became unstoppable. uh, we go to Iraq and what do we do, we don't understand what we do, what we are doing. America makes mistakes like an elephant and crushes everything under its feet and then says aren't you happy he's here? He starts this and suddenly realizes that the elephant is the enemy, not the friend, and then in June his generals sit down with him and say, look, if you take this seriously, we're going to have to change everything. , Yeah come on.

He will have to be prepared to fight for years. This is a major war of decision and it is then that he realizes that this is an existential threat to Russia. This is not something we are willing to lose under any circumstances. He never thought that was possible anyway. because he very wisely said strategically you want to fight me at my door you are quite stupid uh and he was right uh but initially he miscalculated very badly he thought that he was dealing with a different group ofleaders of those who were actually there and then Decides to change everything when the fall comes, appoints new leadership and the general of the Russian Air Force, who effectively took command in the East, builds this defensive thing. and says look, We cannot hold everything because we do not have enough forces, you will have to retreat here from Kov.

The Ukrainians said, oh, look, this is the defense line that he built in Ukraine, but, but what is it called? uh I'm talking about the Russians, what the Russians built once they settled in eastern Ukraine, in the northern Russian speaking areas, they were very close to Kov but it was very lightly defended, they only had 2,000 men there and the ukrainians. We told them this because we began to provide them with satellite intelligence. How is this cold line? Well, it's just south of Kov and there this was just a plane down to the river on the Russian border and we said go ahead and attack that. and the commander said to President Putin, leave it, it doesn't matter at this moment, we need to consolidate our position, then we must become impregnable and when we have consolidated our position, our defenses will be impregnable, then we will launch offensives and we will go out. of them effectively a repeat of kers from the Russian point of view and then the Ukrainians were invited to do what they attack, yes, and we were stupid enough to tell them to attack and what the Russians have tried and demonstrated, something that understood since the 70s, was the criticality of linking all space and ground surveillance, manned and unmanned drones, satellites, everything with all the confrontation attack systems, rocket artillery, conventional artillery, tactical ballistic missiles, cruise missiles , everything, let's understand that and when that and when that was linked then we didn't seem to appreciate The lethality of that system.

I call it in the margin of my book Victory and previously in my previous 2003 book, Transformation Under Fire. I called it the ISR strike complex and said that we have to integrate the maneuver and logistics of the Ground Forces within this larger system. ISR attack complex, we have to go back to Ogarkov in the 19 ISR is intelligence surveillance reconnaissance and he talked about the Recon attack platform in space that will allow them to target and destroy anything on the planet, of course they didn't have. technology and this was conceptual, but he was right and that is what you see emerging in eastern Ukraine.

Let's go back to this moment, the decisive moment in June, when your generals say, well, this is something different and then we have to change the core. so they're starting to build those defense lines huge defense lines is zulin is yes that was that was yes that's the name I was looking for and he did a brilliant job he did a brilliant job um doing those uh allines in Ukraine so they built for months, on the defensive side, because they knew it was going to be a long, hard battle and then he brings in additional reserves, initially it was 300,000 and then you got another one. 100,000 now we are seeing even more hundreds of one of the things you mention in your book.

Of course, this is a culture. That can always be said to form the context of a military and, of course, the economy. a part of this culture and I think one of the surprising things that happened in the last two years is the way in which you could say that Russia's economy and especially the military capacity to build weapons was transformed, but there was also no drop in the Russian standard of living, in fact, the Russian standard of living has improved, but how is it possible that a change can be made in such a short time?

Well, first. Of all, we must take into account where all the production plans from the 80s are. What did they do with the plans? I mean, there are plenty of plans on the shelf that never threw out one of the things the Russians don't do. What you can't do is throw things away, that's what I mean, keep all the plans, but they weren't just plans, you had to have the factories there, the manufacturing base had to exist, it was there, it just wasn't there. had mobilized or used and at the same time. The Russians were always very good and I think the Germans, but not as good as the Russians during the second war, took lessons from the field for the scientists and engineers and they would come up and observe what was happening. and they would make the necessary changes to improve the weapons system, the weapons system, the platform, the other thing is that, organizationally, the force that entered Ukraine is different from the force that it had today, they made prudent changes and changed their chain of command. having the same structure in NATO that we had in 1944 45 with all these levels of command and control slows down the decision-making process saying that it is very difficult to maneuver and manipulate one of the things I pointed out in the book was that Eisenhower as Supreme Commander They had to fight with us and the British Air Force officers to get them to bomb certain things that were vital to the success of the Normandy invasion because their attitude was that no matter what you do, we are winning the war by crushing Germany.

It's one of the main points also in your book uh also at the end in the conclusion where you say, well, there has to be a command unit and see on the Russian side and when I covered the battle uh the uh the destruction of the group of armies Center in June and July 1944, although the actual figures I found were interesting because they destroyed many fewer Germans than we thought and the Germans managed to do much more damage to the Soviets than was reported. and the funny thing was that I just discovered that the Germans had sent over 100,000 men on leave because they knew exactly where the Russians were coming.

All this mosar. Steal, forget it, it didn't work. The German soldiers in the field and the commanders in the field knew exactly what was coming and Hitler refused to change the arrangements, so they said: well, what's the point of losing? You know, hundreds of thousands, so they sent 100,000 with lead, so on the day of the attack there are 110,000 German soldiers against a million, that's all. So, but you know, that's aside from the point, but what you have with Zukov, for example, who is the commanding general of these fronts, he is able to summon 5,000 Soviet aircraft in the space of 15 minutes and threw them against a concentration of Germans. troops that were enormously effective and successful and you say that right now, but look at jukov versus Eisenhower Eisenhower has to argue with the Air Force jukov gives an order and everything happens, you never realize now that's what you are, that's what you've seen with roin, but are you saying that Russia is operating under exactly this one command?

Yes, right now, the different services are, oh yes, they are absolutely integrated and responsive. There is a man at every level who controls everything, controls everything. yeah, in other words, it's your level, whatever it is, it can be 15,000 20,000 80,000 whatever. He commands everything, all the air forces and here's a good example, but, but how do you know all those different disciplines? It's just that you have to train well in that. I think it is a question in the Russian case, first of all, historically unity of command is something that the Russians have always practiced well, if the man who is the Supreme Commander says to do it everyone does it, we have no record of it.

That was true under the Tsars, now their generals were often not the best, there were also Soviet generals who were not very good, there were some generals who were initially there with the forces that entered Ukraine, as well as colonels and others. they left, they were removed and you talk about democracy, there was an incident involving the infantry, these were paratroopers who had been placed under the command of a brigade commander, when, when was it, this would be in the fall of 2022? Okay, they attacked and suffered terrible losses, yes, and the soldiers came back and sat down and wrote a letter, gave it to the journalist and explained why they had failed in this attack because all the measures that should have been taken were no, and the man in charge was at fault, which caught Putin's attention.

Putin went to the front and removed it and that's been happening there now, some Russians would complain and say they haven't removed enough. I have heard the Russians. I say that, but the truth is that Putin has done those things and now you have a force that has very few weak links. It is similar to the quality of the German force that invaded Russia after Poland and the Netherlands all week left mediocre officers. eliminated and the best people were in the right jobs, that's what Putin now has in place in Ukraine, but to go back to this instant leak link, I went in and got an introduction from some people who I can't name, but who are here at the United States.

United States and they showed me where there was a request to launch a cruise missile at an MH building and this was in, say, north central Ukraine in a city because the Ukrainians had placed serviced weapons, meaning missiles and artillery, in this building they couldn't. They could not reach it from the ground, they could not attack it effectively, so within 10 minutes a cruise missile was launched from the Black Sea Fleet. Through effort and also through common communications and understanding, people understand through these service lines that we don't have. We do that sometimes at the lowest level because the people down there who are fighting have to do it.

It's at the higher levels where you have the problem. Let's go back to this principle that you introduced in your books. This is the importance of surveillance and reconnaissance intelligence and why you have to have surveillance all the time, yes and, of course, now we live in an information age in which technology is special, of course, ICT, common information. Communication technology has become very important in, yes, the organization of anything, also in the organization of an army and we have those satellites in the sky and now we are using the technology with drones, um. I think one of the surprising events is that the Drone has become a central instrument, you can say, yes, instrument or what is a medium almost in which this war is fought, how do you look at it and from this perspective of surveillance reconnaissance intelligence, let's look at it from the point of view of function and effect for many, many years, there was an old phrase: "give the unit artillery and you have made the unit independent, yes, in other words, if you had a infantry or cavalry force in in the old days and you, you, professional, provided them with artillery, now they could go out and operate on their own because as long as they were provided with artillery, they could prepare, prepare, prepare the battlefield, attack , attack, objectives and then envelop or flank or whatever you do today give them unmanned systems at the lowest level you have made them independent because that unmanned system can provide instant information let's say you are an infantry squad maybe you have something of armor with you now you can see miles in front of you you have a picture of everything right now some of it will come from above but most of it is yours now you can act on your own information immediately because it's not just surveillance you have to be able to act on it yes, We have this thing we call intelligence.

Well, intelligence is information that is analyzed and refined, but that takes time, so the first thing is the surveillance that the information gives you, yes, but at different levels people can act based on that and turn it into intelligence before it gets to the top and and you talked about the organization. of the army itself now in Russia, that means that, for example, a colonel who is fighting a battle somewhere and has the information can decide to simply call for air support or something like that, well, today it is a matter of We have done everything what we can at our level and we cannot solve the problem.

MH therefore goes up to fix it. Someone at the next level who is a target. Someone who aims compares weapons with targets. He says well. We have a cruise missile ready. to go and it goes instantly to us before anything can happen everything has to be approved at multiple levels but that's how it is done Russian colonel can deal with it yes absolutely a lieutenant colonel can deal with it captains They can deal with it. I saw a video of a Russian tank commander of a Russian tank platoon and he is leading a full battle involving rocket artillery, convention artillery rounds, some infantry in his flags against a Ukrainian element that is being wiped out.

It's fascinating because it's a kind of decentralization yes, but you have to prepare for that because if you want to be decentralized you don't see massive concentrations of Russian forces on a narrow front like you did 80 years ago because that's a goal, yes, you want to be dispersed. He wants to concentrate his fire and then exploit it briefly by concentrating some of his Force, but then revert to dispersion as a matter of protection and then he has to build his own integrated air defense. No, we don't have integrated air defenses in NATO, right? We can now protect 5% of NATO territory fromair and missile attacks.

Think about that and people talk about going to war with Russia. They are idiots. What does it mean to have an integrated air defense that means you have different types of air? defense weapons at all levels you will have the shoulder shot, you will carry it with you and everything moves with you and you will see that when the Russians move they will stop at a certain distance because they do not want to get out from under the umbrella of integrated air defense because if they get out from under that, if they overcome it, then they can be detected, beaten and killed, but that's the way to have it, um, of course, they have this tradition, but they have shaped it.

They remodeled their army in the last two years, yes, dramatically and they learned at a very high rate, for example, they came to fight with brigades, but unlike us, we will have a brigade of let's say 5,000, maybe less, maybe more, and we. We will fight against that unit, what the Russians do is that they have the headquarters of the Brigade and they always have five battalions at their disposal, on average four or five, but they rotate them, okay, 48 hours have passed, this Battalion returns to rest, another one enters Battalion and takes their place, so they are very sensitive to the impact of hand-to-hand combat on their own troops, never mentally or physically, yes, they never cared in the past, no, they care a lot, but it is still the story that We are telling that the Russians are having their troops as Father Canon and, in any case, I am amazed because I know the history very well and even the great commanders who fought against the Germans were simply out of their minds, they suffered at least double the losses of those they publicly admit when I was in Moscow. in November 2001 and I was there, I was still on active duty then and I was there as a delegation and we went to the Russian staff school and we met with the Russian staff and they told me I asked Point Blank and I said what about the losses during the second world war we all know that you know that the official losses are inaccurate, they said oh that's true, so I asked what is the correct answer, MH, and they said two things that they said in the nkvd Archives, This is the Secret Police Archives.

We have been counting the losses, we reached 39,900,000. Now remember that Stalin executed 1 million soldiers in the Soviet army for refusing to fight the Germans. Some people know that the Germans executed 23,000 soldiers in the entire war. for not obeying orders Under fire, think of the difference, yes, in Stalin's two armies it was an army of slaves, people were led like slaves between the shots at the same time they said: take the figures there are, the figures Soviet officials, and multiply them by a factor. of two or at least 1.5 and then you will have a better idea of ​​the losses of just soldiers, which they estimated at 156 million.

Of course, the story that continues to this day is that the way the Russians fight is that they don't I don't care, I don't care about their soldiers, yes, but what happened was that in MI6, the CIA, working with the Ukrainians, he dusted off all this, not all this World War II stuff, repurposed it and sent it out saying, well, this is the same thing. As you have seen in the past, it is not absolute, is there reliable information on the sum of casualties that have fallen on both sides? Well in the West, no, no, from official sources, they are from your sources, what, what, are they my sources? combination of things, I have had to rely heavily on friends in Europe that I have known for years and some of them are actually on the other side, as well as in Ukraine, yes, for example, there is one that I shouldn't even say, but Will there be a Pole who has grandparents or Ukrainians and relatives who are able to speak and who give a very different picture of what is happening?

I mean, today the picture that is emerging is that all the Ukrainian people desperately want this to end. now the ukrainians are saying for the love of god let the russians come and put an end to this you know crazy you have ukrainian russian soldiers being interviewed and you can see them on telegram saying yes i know you know we should go with them and kill this seninsky and this crew, but how many casualties do we have? um, on the Ukrainian side. I have been told reliably that now there are probably 600,000 Ukrainian soldiers dead, over a million casualties and remember they have not had the medical evacuation or the effective treatment that exists on the Russian side okay, the Russians have probably had 50,000 dead. , although some affirm less, others affirm more.

I would certainly say 50,000. Figures of 55 to 60,000 could be obtained, especially if you look at the donuts and the Luhansk militias and perhaps the Kadirov chin forces. it could go up to 60 63,000 but you know the difference is profound yeah now. History says, of course, that the one who is attacking has more casualties, many more casualties and the Russians have let them attack, that debts are deaths for one, yes, but us. It is we in the West who have been urging him to move forward. If you go and look at some of these TV generals on the American side, as I call them people like Petraeus and Keane and others, they say, "Oh, I think the Ukrainians." they are really super prepared for this they are well trained they have the right equipment I know they are going to break through these defenses and then they try to talk about how to break the defenses they don't know what they are talking about the Russians having built defenses in depth yes they are linked to all the Ukrainian surveillance, they didn't even reach the lines and the Ukrainian Ukrainians say as soon as I stick my head out of the trench, I'm under attack, there's a drone up there, so it's a layered operation, both ground and space, in other words, you have it at all levels and, again, it is not enough to see it, you have to be able to attack and the Russians have dominated the links, but at the same time we must admit that the Ukrainians have been fighting very hard. courage.

I mean, it's like that, it's said, yeah, there's no doubt about it. Go back and read about Ukraine. because because the war has already been going on for two years and the army, the Ukrainian army has not been defeated so far, well, it is disintegrated, it is disintegrating, yes, because I think the Russians are just waiting at that moment and only the Russians No I really don't want to cross the river and go west and one of the reasons is that Putin says that if I cross the river right now, I could easily do it. They will say that he wants to conquer Eastern Europe and he says that he has never interested us that we have no interest in that that is not what we want yes, I am about to bet that there is a great possibility that he goes for Odessa, isn't it So?

Oh, Odessa is historically a Russian city, a Russian-speaking city. It was never Ukraine, but there is still a long distance from dbas to Nepper. I mean, well, there are a lot of bridges and the Russians have deliberately left them intact and what I see happening now is that these forces are close to Kov, yes. They are acting as a magnet for the Ukrainians, they are pulling forces from other places and putting them there because OB we Russians weakened them in the south, yes, and they said the Russians are going for KF, which they may still do before this finish, but right now that is not the goal, the goal is to get Ukrainian forces there for two reasons: first, you are weakening the South, which makes it much easier to cross to Odessa and, second, you are killing those who remain who can fight.

A large number of units have simply refused to attack and I don't blame them, why would you? I mean the French army built in 1917, they were tired of dying, so what kind of war is Ukraine in right now? Because it's okay that We're fighting a NATO war, yeah, because because you could also say that, you could also say that this war is, um, it's not an existential war in the sense that they're fighting for themselves, uh, but that they are fighting, in fact they are undermining their own existence, exactly in other words, they are committing suicide, yes, that's exactly it, it's a suicidal war, yes, and Zoro Vin, uh, invited them to do it and that's where they suffered most of their losses against their defense just when the Germans were stupid and took the bait in K, there were big debates, uh, the Russian deputy chief of staff of the Russian general staff and I covered this in the book M, you can, it was a tremendous.

Russian patriot, his father had been a colonel in the army and he planned K in great detail, he established defenses and went to see Stalin and he had Zukov on one side and I think on the other soosi or I don't remember the The book covers this and I found it Fascinating because Stalin, of course, was like Hitler, attack, attack, attack, and the deputy chief of staff said something to Stalin that no one ever said, no, sir, he said we can't win this war without attacking, he said. No sir, we will lose the war if we attack because at that time in '43, what could the German Jews do to maneuver brilliantly?

Yes, that's something the Russians hadn't learned yet, he said no, he said this is my plan and he described it and he said the Germans can't resist attacking us, let them spend themselves on this impregnable Salient kers and once they they are spent then we can continue with the offensives and Stalin got up and walked and he was not happy and the two marshal generals were trembling. They were very worried, so they told me and he came back and said, "Okay, but you know what this means and everyone did it, if this fails, they will shoot you, it worked, yes, and Zorin is not dealing with Stalin, so that Von made it work now." He then he was sent for other kinds of reasons because of the turmoil.

Remember, remember this man who died in a plane crash. I don't remember his name. Pan oh yeah, when Pran talked about what he thought was wrong in the high command of. the Russian army wasn't wrong, they were very critical of a lot of things, but it wasn't the kind of thing one should do publicly and you certainly can't lead some kind of crusade back to Moscow to see the Tsar, that's scandalous. It is indeed what he did, but Putin acted and dismissed people and changed things and very recently they removed more people. He had three general officers in various positions and one in the deputy chief of the General Staff of Logistics, all about corruption.

He accuses you, a lot of people don't understand how much time Putin and G spend on corruption, it's a problem, so they've cleaned up a lot and the Russian military is now probably better than it has been in 50 or 60 years, maybe better than What it never was, we don't know, but the point is that it is an existential war for Russia. They understand that now the West wants to destroy them. You hear Biden say that in March in Poland, uh, that Putin is evil. to have a regime change and when Putin, when they asked Biden, his handlers, I guess they had given him this answer, he says that there can be no agreement on the current lines, there is no commitment to evil, you know, yeah, Is this a silly ideology with everyone who disagrees? we are evil and we must die, this is some kind of stupidity in Washington DC, so you are talking about the disintegration of the Ukrainian army right now and yes, but remember again that Putin never wanted to cross that river, but there is a great force above. in Russia that can go down the north directly to KF and he can cross that river and go north to KF and who is going to interfere with him, there is nothing about how you think and that this is going to develop in the I don't know if you believe that Putin still has a master plan now or is simply acting on the situation.

Well, everyone has to act on the situation, but he has a master plan and I think it's what they expected. in the past and what they wanted was for a new government to emerge that would say that enough is enough, we want peace. I think there was a hope that one from Ukraine also this idea of ​​densification, well, that can be done easily if we want to do it and everything. you purge all those symbols and you get rid of those people, those people have to go somewhere else where they can't stay, but there aren't that many, I mean, it's one of these, it's disproportionate, in fact, there was one of these.

The so-called Ukrainian Nazi units got into a fight with a Polish unit because they wanted the Polish troops there to attack directly into the teeth of the Russian enemy and the Polish commander told them: "You are crazy, we are not." we're going to do it and then they threatened them and the polls killed them we these things don't come to the United States we don't know what the hell is really going on down there yeah, the Ukrainians have had it, it's over, it's done The Russians have won, we are the That we lack complete human compassion and understanding, we are leading this nation of people to disaster.

Millions are gone. Millions will never return. I don't know what will happen with Ukraine, but I can guarantee you that it will. It will be neutral whatever it is and, frankly, Putin doesn't care who runs it as long as he is devoid of NATO forces. Now that Schultz has finally stepped forward, he contradicts Macron and says there will be no NATO soldiers on the ground in Ukraine, it's over. We're not going to make that out of the question, yeah, and of course Marine Lean had a big victory now with the last election, so the climate is changing in Europe, Mr.

Doug, now we're going to talk about the West and our future and the war that is being fought in the West because we are fighting a war forpowers in F, in fact, and you talked about the way Russia and Putin were looked at towards the West and, in fact, We were surprised by the way we acted, we were surprised by the grand scheme of things you can say, but they were adopted and they started fighting a new war, a different war, it has become more and more of a war. Existential war um and you corrected me at the beginning saying that Putin had no intention of confronting the West, but now you can say um yes, takingThis battle and of course we try to eliminate the Russian economy, we expel them from the Swift system and there, together with China and India strengthened the brick relationship that they were even working on. on their own um uh um Financial system exactly um so what's clear now is that the divide between East and West is once again uh yeah deep uh not just Russia but also China and India something in the middle but but it's still part of the bricks, so now the future of the West is at stake and we have been fighting wars and especially with the United States since the second world war and it was not very successful as you described and that made me think about um, this, this, this, um, also, a beautiful period but also a disruptive period in the history of Athens in which, um, Athens was able to um um, have this confrontation with Persia and win the In the second Persian war, by adopting new strategies, there was a famous general at the time, Myally, who really changed the whole structure of, you can say, the army and they started fighting with a fleet instead of the farangs so obviously the Greek people, although the people of Athens were willing to change this strategy, but at the same time you can say that this victory of Victor over Persia was the beginning of the end of the the Greek Athens became an imperial power and um and and within this you can say that this period of approximately 60 70 years is also the period in which the famous philosopher Socrates was born, Plato later and all of them um I felt the fall of Athens in some way and in some way it made me think about what the West is and this period in which is the West right now, like the uh, we have the Athenian fleet and that was a sea. like a kind of navoo, they had other city states in it, but they became very dominant, but in fact, they had under the leadership of Pericles, they were moving towards this great confrontation with Sparta and and war broke out. and fourth 31 I think that before before Christ and and it was the beginning of the end of the this pipián war was a kind of suicidal war in fact and and now it made me think about what was happening right now, how we, we won the SEC, the United States won the Second World War, we always forget Russia.

I think without Russia there would have been a different outcome of the second world, but never mind the second world and Of course, then came the great victory in the 80s and 90s, at least that is how we experienced it and in the West as the spirit of triumphalism . I don't know if it's an English word. Yes, it's a good word triumphalism, rather than reflecting on what happened and that the use was dismantled in the west, there was a spirit of triumph at that time and I think you described the battle at the beginning of the 90s uh on the sidelines from your book Victoria and and what and and we can say in the early 90s we not only the military but the culture as a whole we set a course in a certain direction but I think that maybe that was also the beginning of the end of the Western order.

Paul Kennedy in his book The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers talks about a lot of these issues that what brings down the great powers is mostly internal and suicidal. Unlike any major failure in war and America, and particularly after Desert Storm of 1991, it was intoxicated with its sense of absolute supremacy. Now when I say America, I mean the people in Washington, the average American was just happy that we were successful, a lot of people took the position. We have now erased the stain on our honor of Vietnam. You know, we left this behind. We're back on track now and unfortunately, everyone talked about what they said. a uh, one benefit of reducing the military is that we would have this huge capital gain that would allow us to do other things and so on well, it didn't really happen if we came to certain wrong conclusions, we were facing an adversary that was formidable on paper, but in reality it was not as capable as a Russian, Turkish, Japanese or Chinese enemy, we became full of ourselves and decided that everything we had done was right and instead of seeing this as an opportunity to make profound changes. change in New Directions we kept everything as it was we simply reduced the size of the army so that they became antiquated versions of what we believe won the war, which after all was another manifestation of a World War II style war structure, so militarily that it was a stalemate after that we spent a lot of money, yes, because we were in love with the success of the button, we began to think about wars once again, without reflecting the human dimension of flesh and blood, but we began to think in terms of how much money do we need to buy. the new missile the new missile is our new wonder weapon, you know, it was delivered by the Air Force or the Navy or something else and there's no one else out there like in a can, you can say we were spellbound by technology at that time because The way you describe the battle also the battle you participated in is a kind of superiority at that time from a military point of view in which the casualties on the western side were minimal and on the enemy's side were huge and it seemed that we had such, especially the United States, such technological superiority that, in fact, wars could be won with technology, yes, and there were very few of us who actually saw action, yes. against an enemy that defended itself, in many cases the enemy simply surrendered and walked, this led to certain false assumptions, first of all, they forgot the human dimension to combat, they did not understand what had happened and who they had fought against, probably.

They had more in common with the wars that the British and French fought in their colonies before World War I, and of course they were very pleased with themselves and were so pleased with themselves that they began to fantasize that they could face war . The Germans, uh, and of course, the Imperial German Army was very different from the Sudanese tribes, the Zulus, or the Poshon tribes of northwest India, or the Berbers and the Riffs, etc., a big mistake, and we know how As it turned out, millions of people died. a disaster and once again we intervened and as a result the French and the British came out of this with their empires which is all they cared about in the final analysis but they didn't achieve much 1991 was another great achievement but instead of saying look uh, that It's good, it's okay, we don't need to meddle with the rest of the world, we just need to do business with the rest of the world, which is the traditional American point of view, yes, after World War I and even after World War II We dramatically reduced the size of our armies and were trying to maintain good relations with everyone, we discovered that we had not actually won the second world war that Stalin had and now we had a tremendous adversary or opponent in communism, long after 1991, no. there was such a thing there.

There was no one out there and that led us to the false assumption that we could do anything anywhere and anytime we wanted and we have this famous memo written in the Pentagon by Paul Wolowitz, who at the time was, I guess, the undersecretary of policy and strategy something like that and he was simply saying this the boss there is no one who can the famous unipolar moment yes and we can use our army as we see fit and we can rectify everything, of course, he was focused like Athens in the Mediterranean in time exactly we forget, although we are preeminently a maritime power, we are not a continental power, there is a big difference.

Historically, continental powers have been very good at fighting long, hard wars. The maritime powers do not do very well because we are mainly Naval and today it is Naval and air and we have a very small army at the moment, we cannot even recruit for it, we are having problems recruiting for all the Armed Forces, but what the People have to understand is that we are a version of the British Empire, but we probably should have taken the opportunity to change our relationship with the rest of the world to demilitarize it, which is what I'm talking about now, but we didn't want to do that because the army was ours, It was ours. trump card we think M Albright, who said to friend general Friend general, you keep talking about this great army, well, we want to use it, we want to go to Somalia, we want to go to Haiti, we want to go to Bosnia.

He was in the war plans division. of the Army General Staff in 1994 and they asked me to write a memo. I had a wonderful boss, a very competent man. Colonel should have been general. His name was Foster. Bill Foster. Very smart. He said: Look. McGregor just put this together. We need two... pagers and I said what do you want me to say he said well I want you to say what you think but I think you think what I think and I and he said and I said well what is that he said what the hell are we doing in the Balkans, The United States has no interest in that place and we do not want to be involved in this Balan Civil War.

If the Europeans want to go there, we can support them, but we should have nothing to do with this, that's interesting because, um. at that moment um my first doubts about NATO started to arise and um I was always in favor of NATO in the United States when I was a child or the way I was raised um we went to Normandy and my father was also very positive about the United States and that's the spirit that I was raised with, yeah, and during the '90s, I think, especially, the Kovo crisis and I started to have my say of what exactly is happening and, in fact, When we talk about the war in Ukraine, everything is related to this period, this change in time, the late 80s, the early 90s and, yes, the direction we took as a Westerner. culture as a whole, so of course we have this issue of the military and the way the military is organized, on the one hand and on the other, and that is a very fundamental issue.

You addressed the way we relate to other countries and other cultures. By the way, in that memo there was something else that I put there that he totally agreed with and was very well received when I approached the Chief of Staff of the Army, who took it to the White House after he had had a meeting. in the tank, but that's what we call the place where the Joint Chiefs of Staff meet and it was said that the Balkans historically are an area of ​​Russian interest, not American interest, you know, moving to that area will not be well received in Moscow and we wanted at that time, well, now you are talking about the military we want, we wanted good relations with the Russians, yes, we were not interested in confrontation, on the contrary, we saw them as partners, so what do we do there ?, was the question and the head of the staff agreed to go there but of course it got nowhere and a year later I was in Saro representing J6, was it J6, J7, J5, J5, excuse me, J5, which at the time was West Clark, was a three star and I went there to represent it, and then I came back to Dayton and we got involved in Bosnia Herzo and then just a year later, uh, and this is the night, and I guess it was a couple of years later, this would have been November of '97.

I'm at Allied Supreme Headquarters. The powers of Europe under General Clark and we are still dealing with Bosnia, but now we are starting to see problems in Kosovo, yes, and you know the rest of the story and again these old problems arose, you know the Germans in In particular, the military was very uncomfortable with this whole thing in Kosovo and they kept saying, you know, we don't really want to go there, we don't have a good history in Yugoslavia, we don't want to intervene there and I said Well, I agree with you, the The French were on board with the idea, yes, other Europeans, the further you got from the Balkans, the more enthusiastic the people were, so the Italians and the Greeks said: Have you lost your mind?

What are you? The Italian defense minister made a comment and said you realize that if we go to Kosovo we will become the new Serbs and then he tried to explain what was happening there and the Albanians and the criminality and he was hopeless but this was a constant march. in more and more interventions and we remembered that we had failed badly in Somalia, we went there to rescue people from hunger and we got into a war because we didn't like the tribal chiefs and they told us we were going to build a nation in Somalia.

You know, this is a long story and anti-Russian sentiment really takes off in a big way in Kosovo because the Russians made it very clear that they didn't like this, that they didn't want it and they were offended and you Look, remember this, this BTR caravan 60 Russians who arrived from Bosnia to Kosovoflying the Russian flag and the Serbs were applauding them because the Russians were so weak at that time and so incapable that they couldn't do anything to stop them. stop us from what we had done to the Serbs and the Germans were horrified because they said why are we bombing these people and what was heard more easily or more frequently within NATO circles from those of us in uniform was that I thought NATO existed to prevent war from breaking out in Europe, why is NATO starting a war?

Yes, that is exactly the change in Athens and what started as a Defense Force became an offensive for us, but here is something else that you We are talking about in relation to Aens and Sparta that initially Sparta felt very strong and powerful, but they also forgot that it was a maritime empire, not a continental empire, not a land like Sparta Athens, because yes, yes, the Latins faced Sparta, now the Spartans did not have to fight, but they felt that honor was forced to fight, they felt that if they didn't attack, they would. be attacked we just go down the list of why the new countries fight and you this explains it uh uh what is his name yes no no the author of The pipian Wars The name escapes me Anyway the point is that they give these reasons well, they are going to re they are going to war for honor they are going to war because they are under threat they are going to war you mean the Al Greek to toties toties he explains this very well yes, yes, yes, definitely, but for me, as an American, I saw Shadows of the British Empire is fine because the British end up going to war in 1914 when they didn't have to against a people who were never their enemy with whom they had always had good relations on behalf of a country that had been their enemy for hundreds of years. given that middle-aged madmen make no sense and then with Russia, which the British since the Congress of Vienna treat as this evil and barbaric entity that must be contained for the purpose of destroying Germany, did not make any sense, it is the First World War. that begins the destruction of Great Britain and the British Empire it is the Second World War that completely ends Great Britain and my fear at this moment looking at the world is precisely that we will end up in a conflict with the Russians with whom we have no reason to fight . under no circumstances or actually the Chinese but certainly the Russians and for reasons we can discuss a war with Russia will inevitably involve China, it may even involve India, we do not seem to understand that the world has changed, this is not so. the world of the early 20th century or late 19th century are not great power struggles.

I mean, I love John Mimer, but John is stuck in this pre-World War paradigm, we live in a whole new world, none of this makes sense anymore. In his right mind they should be interested in the West going to war with anyone, there is no reason to do so and the problem is that I worry that we are about to do what the British did and destroy ourselves in the process . Now there is a difference and this is true for you and it is true for us if we look at Russia. Russia's social cohesion is stronger today than perhaps it has been since the First World War.

I mean, people, everyone in Russia is behind this war. Yes, of course, there are exceptions. Yes, sometimes one of the side effects of war is unity, if the war is successful, if it's going the right way, if it's for the right reasons, if we just went and got involved in Vietnam and the opposite happened. to us because it was unfair it was strategically irrelevant it was wrong to kill two million people for nothing now we have killed 800,000 people in the Middle East at least for nothing so the United States is in a very different position right now and our society is not strong , we have at least 52 million people within our country that were not born within our country, that's probably not the full number because we have all these other immigrants and illegals that have arrived, someone said we have over 40 million illegals within from United States.

The point is that our social cohesion is terrible. We have people who live in this country and are not interested in being Americans. They did not come to become Americans. Most of these people came here to benefit from it in some way or just to get the admission ticket. go make money yeah I think the same thing applies to Europe right now and um Kingdom divided on itself this is one of the famous lines from Hop's political theory gets weak now let's go back to the 90s because um it was just Is it an American issue or a battle has also been fought within the administration.

I don't think there was any battle because I don't think there was much resistance. I can tell you that Bill Clinton privately does. his credit didn't want to get involved anywhere in the Balkans, okay, but everyone around him had mine, Albright Sandy Berger, who is the National Security Advisor, she had people in the state department, but there was, that means that there was also an ideology behind it, yes, and this is part of this, this ideology of a very successful ideology within the administration or governance, yes, expanding American power and influence to the point of being a bandit, okay, We all know, of course, the neoconservatives and the project for The New American Century is not hidden, it is that they have this program, the idea of ​​the United States as a hegemonic power and the majority of Americans, I think, were not paying attention.

This is our biggest problem. I once had a Spanish General Staff officer with whom I worked closely. At Shape headquarters, he was wonderful and he used to say, "You know, Douglas, America isn't a country, it's a planet," and he wasn't wrong, most Americans, and if you travel around this country, I don't mind. I am referring to large urban centers like New York. York La Philadelphia because they are so radically different now that it's hard to even count them, but if you go beyond them in the country, in the rest of the country, most Americans just want to live, they are not interested in any of this , they're not interested in it.

I don't know where most of that is. Our education has seriously failed us in recent decades. Most Americans don't understand the world. They have no sense of geography. Someone comes up and says we are the best. We are the best. Everybody says. yes, okay, we are the best, we are the best, what else and well, we have to prove it to these damn Chinese, we can't let them invade Taiwan, no one is invading Taiwan. The Chinese are interested in invading Taiwan, but we talk about these things we say. yeah we can't let that happen oh why oh well the Taiwanese are democrats oh okay the average American plays along and it's dangerous, just like the average Brit before WWI was in the same position says that not a big battle uh in At the time this can be said, the process of globalization was rapidly accelerating after, since the 90s, Sinister, you had the sinister agenda of bringing in large numbers of people who are not originally European to a country that historically is originally European, all of us.

They speak English, but the core of the American population came from Europe, now there is a part of the core population that is American, they came from Africa and they all spend a lot of time talking about slavery and so on, although we are done with that for all intents and purposes. Early on we stopped bringing in more slaves and then we fought a war to end this completely, but my point is that they are Americans too, yes, like this European core, so if you want to rule America, what do you have to do? You have to destroy. the core and that's been going on for many, many years and it's done through immigration, the Democrats had an old expression that goes back to the '50s and '60s, if I can't get enough people to vote for me here, I will get them.

Abroad, of course, now immigration has become a very important issue in Europe as well. In fact, in the Netherlands I think it was the main issue during our elections. We have seen the European elections in which it played a very important role. Me too. I already mentioned it, the intervention of Marine in France also in the United States has become something very serious, but what people have to understand is that it is a two-way street while you intervene and interfere throughout the world to impose your will and remember we talk about democracy, but we are thugs we come in and tell you this these are the crops you are going to grow these are the things you are going to produce if you don't do it our way we will sanction you we have 35 36 countries under sanctions the sanctions are really a active war is crazy you know so much because of our belief in free trade and everything else is nonsense we have been trying to structure the world financially economically in a way that serves us we see ourselves as the center of the world now when I say We, I'm not talking about the American people, not exactly, but, and I saw in your book that you once mentioned Oswal Spangler and he I think is a great underrated thinker, actually, but he's going around. in his grave, yes, yes, yes, but, um, he is making it clear that in the period of the economy of civilization, technology becomes the dominant players in a society, uh, in fact, we are witnessing that , um, the Dynamics right now, but um, what he's also trying to say is that that economy is a war with different means, yes, it's very true, so we were talking about the 90s, you can say, and The United States became this hegemonic power, the unipolar moment, um, you were talking about.

It's not about the average American, but let's say the elites that govern the ruling elite, so we're talking about politics and we're talking about economics, I think that's the law and the technology as well as the decisive powers. within a civilization right now and that is the essence of globalism that you ex exactly, that is the essence of globalism, so remember what globalism wants, it wants a sedated and obedient consumer population, yes, exactly, so, what? how do you get to that? You have to change the character. the composition, the culture of the core populations, you can't really change them, so you flood them, yes, with people who are radically different from them, yes, and you and you dismantle everything you said, the different types of communities, the local communities, uh.

Han Iron calls it the atomization, the atomization of society is also a preparation for a new totalitarian structure, uh uh, but remember that it was very seductive in the 90s, it was seductive under Reagan Reagan is the president who announced amnesty for millions from Mexico and everyone said don't do this Millions more will come he said oh no this is a one-time thing yes well this played into the hands of the so-called globalists who want to be able to govern without interruption but but this is your about what is happening right now , well what is happening now and I think it is happening in Europe, at least the recent EU elections would suggest it and I think it is very strong here in the United States, there is a backlash, the proverbial frog, yes, now He realizes the water is boiling, yes, and he decided that he wants to jump, we always talk about the frog boiling and what happened during the 80s and 90s was that the heat gradually increased internally in the frog and the frog swam, now you know, comfortably.

Now what does that mean? It means that if you told someone that I'm really uncomfortable with what's happening with immigration. Have you looked at the people who are being invited to come to the United States? Do you understand what the chain migration we are receiving means? people from all over the world, none of whom have anything in common with our culture oh you're racist, no, no, I don't want to be racist, well you're racist if you object, no, but it's what they always said. The interesting thing is that when I was young in the 70s they gave us an example of The Melting Pot in the United States and they said well, the Melting Pot worked in the 19th century, but we see a change. already at the beginning of the 20th century, as soon as people arrived from southern Europe, that is what we learned at that time and in the school of the 70s in 1924 we stopped immigration, that is what many people do not understand and we stopped It was because we said we wouldn't get the people we want, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and who were the people we wanted.

We wanted people who were like the people who already lived here, and so where what happened happened, there was literally a set of offices. by President Woodrow Wilson, that was the Nordic immigration office, think about that, well, Wilson was a Nazi, there were no Nazis at the time, it's silly that we look at who settled the United States, who built it now, if you go back and look at the southern Europeans and others who came. Eastern Europeans who arrived between 1815 and 1924. How many people immigrated to the United States from Europe? 32 million. That is a small number and we stopped it in 1924 because the lastwaves that were coming to us f A large number of people from Eastern Europe who came were communists who caused labor unrest, these scared people, we had people who came from Sicily and Colombia, not from northern Italy, from southern Italy, and they brought with it the criminality of the kostra and now we were alarmed.

Those 32 million, almost 2 million, finally returned because they could not assimilate into the country. That's how strong the American population was when we went to war with Mexico in 1846. We fought that entire war with volunteers. Everyone said that we must win this war because we must control the North American continent, yes, we will drive them out and defeat them, but after the war was over, we occupied Mexico, no, and within the entire area that we took there were only about 120,000 people, California , New Mexico, Arizona, we fill them. places with millions of Europeans quickly and they built them there was nothing there why we knew who we were if you said are you an American you get a yes and who was an American Andrew Jackson was an American we Grant was an American Robert E Lee was an American all these people They knew who and what they were, they understood the law, they understood the Constitution, they understood their history and how they got to where they are, yes, today you gather a group of Americans in a room and say who here is an American and you may not even get everyone raises their hands and people wonder what it means to be an American.

Yes, well, it makes me think of this famous American author, he published a book inin the 90s it was the it was the um uh what was his name uh let me think um Samuel Huntington yes, he wrote a wonderful book who are we exactly that was The Clash of the Dead civilization but that, but later, later, he, uh he wrote his book who we are and this book is still valid who we are and it makes a lot of sense there and we have ignored it, we have ignored it because anyone who raised objections and said now wait wait a minute, who are these? people who tear down our monuments, you know, I'm, by all definitions, I'm a Yankee, you know, my ancestors lived in Philadelphia and Pennsylvania and when the Civil War came they were Quakers or they fought, some of them were in the Army of the Union now we don't hate southerners, but you know leaving the union was unacceptable, human slavery was unacceptable, we went to the war after it was over, we all became Americans and all these again and all these monuments that everyone They are upset were built. as a means of reconciliation between the people of the South and the people of the North to bring them back and today, who is the first to step forward and fight for the United States anywhere in the world and at any time?

Going back to the United States, we talked about the '90s, this idea of ​​globalization as a kind of ideology, that determined, I think, the next decades of the Western world, and what this ideology is about. um nationalization exactly we can't have more Dutch yes, we don't want more central Americans we don't want more Germans or more Italians what's wrong with it yes, now it has been so bad there is another one there is another interesting publication in the 90s it was by the Spanish sociologist uh castels such Maybe you know him, he wrote this uh yes, yes, no, it was a, I think it is a very deep analysis of what the emergence of the network society would be.

This implies that this very functional way of seeing financial reality had a negative reaction and in his first book It is the rise of the network society, the second part of his trilogy is the power of identity. He thinks that identity becomes increasingly important exactly in this period of globalization. I think he's absolutely right about that, so that's what we're witnessing right now in the United States, in Europe and nationalism. One of the phenomena that has something to do with it is also the fierce manifestation of Na nationalism. It can also be said that the barbaric manifestation of nationalism is related to this process of globalization in which functional financial networks have become predominant in the way reality is organized and that is when people turn to the things they know, to the things that have not failed them, to the things in which they believe.

I saw this in Bosnia, what was good? in the case of Bosnians they suddenly became very Muslim, most of the Bosnians who were originally Muslims under the Turks when Yugoslavia had started to fall apart, the average Bosnian had no interest in going to the mosque, what about the Croats who were Roman Catholics, what about Serbs under communism? Not so much, but now, suddenly, in the midst of civil war, religion and culture became inextricably intertwined and became fiercely powerful instruments. There is a famous ANC political science professor. I'm trying to remember. his English name is serious and I don't remember his terrible last name, but he wrote books on nationalism, he understood a lot of it very well and he used to call nationalism if it's healthy, the dog doesn't bark, yes, but nationalism when it's unhealthy it is. the dog that barks the dog barks all over Europe is barking here in the United States exactly and barks in Russia and in Russia it is healthy, strong, vibrant I I I I I don't know if it's really healthy or not, but, but I can say in Ukraine it has something very dark, oh yes, but that was planted by us and it didn't arise spontaneously, we cultivated it somehow, it was uh itown, yes, but it was under it, it was under and it re-emerged in a terrible As you know, people say, what Do you think about World War II?

I think it was horrible, there's nothing good about it. Do you think there's a chance there could be a violent reaction in Ukraine where they get really angry? towards the West, I hope so, because they should be very angry with us, especially with Washington DC, because they have died uselessly in a war that was never necessary. Putin understands the history of his own country and he knows that one of the reasons he doesn't want to cross that river and go west, he doesn't want to govern those people, what a terrible thing to do, he's already big enough, well, well, well , the big joke in Moscow was good, let's deliver it to the polls. and everyone laughs at how well the polls did with the Ukrainians not very well.

I think Putin would give it to whoever wants it, but he just wants it to be neutral, you know, rum, whatever it is, should be. neutral, he wants that distance between Russia and the West and, frankly, if you look at the way we've treated Russia, what we're doing now because the emphasis is, let's just go kill Russians, let's commit more destructive acts against Russia, crazy, the war is done, it's over, they won, what are we doing, you know, it goes back to something we were talking about in the early fall of 1943. General Arnold and General Marshall, Head of State Major of the army, and Arnold was effectively Chief of the Air Staff.

The force, although not separate, came over at the request of Admiral Ley, who was operating as FDR's chief of staff interpreting military matters and said please sit down, then looked and what are you doing and they told him what he does. You mean you're bombing the Japanese and the Germans back to the Stone Age? Yes, yes, we want to live with these people when the war is over. Yeah, he said we don't want this and Marshall and Arnold were shocked because they had no idea. What the hell were they doing but could that be the reason we can't stop funding UK greine right now because we have no idea what it would mean for them to reach a peace deal with Russia?

Yes, let it go, stop it and then what should we do, but maybe we don't have any idea and that's the reason why we are still fine. I think there are many people who recognize that we have to help Ukraine. humanitarian assistance and help them find their own way, but they have to make peace with the Russians and, more importantly, Berlin, Warsaw, vus and all the capitals of Eastern Europe, they all need to make peace with Russia, they have what to have a PCT very similar to the one we signed and that created Austrian neutrality. Eisenhower, by the way, was very happy with neutrality at first he was worried about it, then he looked at it and said not only should we neutralize Austria, let's see if we can neutralize Poland, Lithuania, laia.

I mean, this is cool, but it's interesting. You mentioned the capitals of the different nations. You are not mentioning NATO. Not because NATO. I think that NATO has not only long since ceased to be useful and useful. I'm sure someone in Washington would like it. use that façade to legitimize itself I think NATO is illegitimate, it has long since overstepped its bounds, it has become a cause of war, it is not the preventive measure it was supposed to be, it is like in the times of Athens, which in fact they needed the enemy Sparta, NATO needed the enemy Russia to liiz, oh, I think that was the attitude and remember given these rules, but you can also understand that, um, it wasn't allowed, it was allowed.

But for the West it was not for the powers that existed at that time it was not a good idea for Russia to join NATO because then yes, there is no enemy that forces cohesion in the alliance exactly, but no one in Washington believed in the notion that NATO could keep the peace, which is what most European officers I dealt with thought NATO could do. They all saw NATO as a means to ensure and guarantee peace on the continent. We did the opposite. We reuse it. for our own interests, but remember that you must also look at the ruling elites in Europe who want NATO or want to preserve it at all costs, even if it is the destruction of Europe and the elites in Washington who are willing to sacrifice everything in Europe.

For your interests, what are they doing internally? These same ruling elites have caused destruction in Europe. They have caused destruction in the United States. You can say that it is a different type of war that is happening. It's and and and and and I think it's not like that. uh, but if you can't fight the Russians, yeah, what do you do about it? It's interesting because we also have this other notion in the United States of culture war and I think on a deeper side that we're dealing with. This is this culture war right now, well, when I left my job at Shape and they were very nice to me, we had a dinner and stuff, there were probably 100 people there, maybe 80 90 somewhere like that and I said there's a reason. why are we Americans here, because if water is purer at its source, Europe is the source of our civilization, that's all, yes, nothing about destroying other people's civilizations, we are making war on them, nothing from saying that other people's civilizations are bad, just recognizing that this is where it all began deserves to survive must flourish yes, it's like cultivating your heritage yes and it's in your interest it's in our interest that's why we're here yes, well, of course What do you know, I left hoping that that deal in Kosovo would be the end.

What a fool I was. The maniacs who led us to fight in the Balkans against the people there and the Russians. The Serbs are at the forefront of bringing us into conflict with people across the Middle East. People in Asia. It's crazy. enough, but how do we get people to understand the importance of demilitarizing our relations with most of the world because these people who are in charge have convinced everyone that the people we want to demilitarize our relations with are the enemy? What if you sat down and said? no, the Russians are not the enemy the Chinese are not you oh the Chinese are bad well these people have never been to Northeast Asia they don't understand Asians they don't understand nobody in Asia wants a war we're getting to um until the end of our very deep um uh conversation and your very deep analysis um maybe just to return to some uh central themes um uh Eisenhower uh said after the Second World War that um the military-industrial complex was a danger to the future of the United States United we talk about globalization we talk about the important role of politics, economics and technology and, of course, you can also say that the financial powers within this whole structure are enormous, there are many very um uh because the industrial powers are also working um Pro promoting certain actions promoting um also military interventions um you talk about uh Washington DC uh in which lobbyists are active um the networks that um govern the country govern the world in a certain sense, but also the powers now that some, within the Different populations in the United States, in Europe, are formulating their discontent with what is happening and we call it the rise. of populism but I think it's just a way to discredit disqualify what happens um but now you um started your own uh movement or organization our country our election well I didn't start it you didn't start it they brought me They brought you and the people who started this and created it, some of whom are not native Americans, but very fierce Americans.

They were concerned about all the issues that we discussed and they wanted something that they thought could be an alternative, yes, like an alternative to the status quo in the sense that these are people who looked at the Republicans and Democrats and said this is ashow, this is no longer real, this is a one-party party, yes, it is just a maneuver to decide how to redistribute wealth and power, yes, but the interesting thing when I look at it from the outside is that it seems that there is such a real antagonism between the two and I like that people really hate each other and the American Trump, Trumpists and Maga against each other and against you and now you say well, in fact, this is not the real problem, yeah, that's a show, yes, you have to understand that if you look closely, for example, the last law that was finally passed by the House and Senate they send more than 60 billion to Ukraine 8 n 10 14 15 billion to Israel, which of course is the tip of a very large iceberg and, uh, money to Taiwan of all places, where is the money for border defense?

Where are the forces that we can commit to defend our borders, okay, but you can hear a lot of Republicans say yeah, there's nothing there and when you say a lot of Republicans talk about a big game, but the group that We call Republicans, they Maybe only 18 to 20 years as governor of Texas. Well, what has he done? Yes, he has enormous authority, yes, the constitutions of our state and particularly of Texas. A long time ago he could have sent the National Guard in there and said, "You're going to stop everyone from getting in." the federal government wants to come here and shoot us.

I invite you to try it. That's true in every state. What was the opposition? No one, no one stood up and said: no, look at the poor people in the border patrol, they are committing suicide, several of them because they can't do their job, they are looking at everything they worked for. Look at the crime across the country and these district attorneys who have been elected or appointed thanks to Soros money to ensure that criminals are freed and police are prosecuted. I mean, things are out of control, the country is out of control and what are we worried about in Ukraine?

Israel Israel is a very powerful state. I think when all is said and done, we will find out that what happened on October 7th was not an accident and that there was a plan to pursue it. all Arabs inside Israel expel them or kill them. Now there are many people in this country who don't like Muslims or Arabs. They don't deserve to die. I certainly don't think so. Why are we subscribing to this? This is not defense, but, stop, come back to this, yes, but I think we also have to go to Ukraine and look at the money there, where most of the money came back here, it washes through the house and ends up going through the Pentagon and the state and finally it enters the industry, so most of the money never leaves, but the money that goes to Ukraine is lost in the sea of ​​corruption, how much actually reaches the front lines and now we have NATO forces NATO officers to ncos contractors from Western countries who operate the long-range strike systems because the Ukrainians cannot do it and creates the illusion that there is still something left of Ukraine, we have entire units surrendering to the Russians and They remember the people in eastern Ukraine. everyone understands the Russians, just like people in the west, they can understand, anyone who is Ukrainian can understand what the Russians say, the Russians will understand what the way out is, our country, our choice is an alternative, our position is to stop financing. this stop funding wars put an end to it bring the TRS trop home we need protection here we need to protect our own country we need to focus on the Western Hemisphere we treat Latin America with abject negligence we are surprised by that but it would kind of imply some kind of revolution right now Well, we need it, we need it and we can do it peacefully and because we were talking about these elites, we're talking about these complex networks, I mean, you're not just getting rid of them when you change the political color.

I think what happens is two things. I think you're going to see this in Europe too. Americans are going to vote, assuming we have an election. You don't know what can happen financially. "This country and economically given the very tenuous and fragile structure, but if we get to the elections and they vote and it is a remotely clean vote, in other words, we can overcome the fraud that is substantial in all the big cities, if that can be done." get over". We are going to end up with a new government now, will it be President Trump?

Maybe it's President Trump. He could be someone else. Don't know. Could you know? I don't think RFK Jr is in a very good position right now, but he certainly isn't. It's going to be the same people who are there now, it's going to be a different government, what can they achieve? And yes, we're not sure how easy it is to subvert the people who come. We found out that President Trump was completely subverted during his four years people say, well, things were great, so what he did was very little, he prevented a lot of bad things from happening, it could have been worse, but fundamentally he is president of the United States.

United, if I had come into office and said first of all 30 days I want the border closed sign an executive order it would have been closed it would have been absolutely barricaded I could have taken down troops I could have done any number of things it didn't happen Why didn't it happen and now him? He says, well, when I was there it was a lot better, well, it was better, but it wasn't enough, it's never been enough, the Republicans have been, so you're saying it's more rhetorical, yeah, and right now they're going to take office. and they are going to encounter a tremendously entrenched bureaucracy, they are going to encounter all kinds of people with enormous amounts of money who are going to fight against them, so how far are they going to go?

The question is how far a new government could go in France, yes, exactly either Holland or Germany starts and what I think happens over time is that people say that enough is enough, that we can no longer continue down this path and it is so when you end up with what I would call a Cromwellian revolution because it became clear despite all the efforts that were made for years to cooperate with the King to work with the King to work with the leadership the Aristocrats of AR did not work finally it had to come and say it's over, they have to go and Cromwell established a republic and that's why our militarism uh, the antecedents come, yes, but he had to establish a republic and he and George Washington are very similar and, as I tell the people all the time, you want to understand American history, it doesn't start in 1776, it starts with Cromwell and everything from Cromwell.

Those Puritans who went in there were a large number of people. New England came back to fight for it. You know, I live in Leiden and I'm famous there because the Mayflower left and the Puritans fled to L and lived there for At some point and then on my mother's side they were Quakers, they became Quakers after the Cromwellian revolution because they were horrified by violence and they had fought for Cromwell and they said: we don't want to do that again and they became Quakers. I want to say this. Americans have deep roots and it starts with Cromwell and goes to George Washington who is very Cromwell in his outlook and behavior, even when he becomes president he is very much the Lord Protector, he is a dictator and everyone loves him because he is a good dictator, but he understands us. on our feet, he prepares us and then he leaves and then you have a series of presidents who follow in his footsteps and finally everything falls apart and we have Lincoln and you draw that line from Cromwell through Washington to Lincoln and Lincoln. puts it back together changes the orientation and we move forward we are going to have to go through another Cromwellian Washingtonian Ionian moment at some point I really think we will, I don't know when or what, like a next Great Awakening, but we have to unite the country, we have to forging a new nation out of who we are, but it also has a spiritual dimension of course, that's why I mentioned a Great Awakening, it's like a turning point and you always see in these events that We were talking about this before in Bosnia Herova, the resurgence of spirituality and religion with the Muslims, the Orthodox Christians and the Roman Catholics, and this is a necessary stage and it is never permanent because if you go back and read the anatomy of the Revolution. by Crane Britain, taught at Harvard, gets some things right and wrong, gets the Bulvik revolution completely wrong, but gets the Cromwellian revolution and the French Revolution right and asks all the key questions, when they happen, why they happen. and what happens, how they evolve and within five or six years after the French Revolution broke out, what do you do?

You go back to the middle, in other words, you go to one extreme to fix things and then you go back to the middle. middle, and that's what that's what we did Cromwell, you went to the extreme and then you migrated back to the Middle Gate. I am very sure that a republic will emerge, a new Republic, it will be different from the one we have but it will have the bill. of Rights, which is really what we fight for, it is the Bill of Rights that defines us as Americans. I think our cornerstone is that we follow the North Star, true north for us is the Bill of Rights and the Constitution is a wonderful document, but inevitably there will be changes.

I mean, today we are not the nation we were in 1787 and we have done very well. How much will it change? I don't know, but the Bill of Rights is fundamental. They should stay, that's what makes us a successful nation and the erosion of that through this authoritarian globalism you don't agree with this we put you in jail you don't support our version of climate change you lose your job you refuse you know subscribe to our view of the world you oppose what is being done with agriculture in your country you don't like what is happening you go to jail the police will come and arrest you it's terrible in England I mean it's absolutely ridiculous that they imprison people simply by expressing his belief that free speech is the antidote to tyranny, it is vital, it is an uncompromising position just because it defends someone as if it is not a justification for suppressing it and then we have the Second Amendment, which is part of the Declaration of Rights, the right to bear arms, which of course globalist hate, but without that amendment all the others fall apart.

It is the fact that we are all armed that ensures that the Bill of Rights survives. That's a difference in Europe, of course. I would like to thank you very much for this conversation. uh Doug, it was really uh Illuminating uh and it made me think especially about the last part of um this famous quote from the Greek philosopher Herlet who lived in the 6th and 5th century BC and uh it's one of his, I think, most famous quotes, in which it says OS Pon EST, war is the father of all things, the king of all things, it delivers some gods, some men, it liberates some, it makes others slaves and, in the last part , In fact, we were talking about this culture war that is raging in AR and it is the deepest level, I think, of the things that we are witnessing on television and this this this war that is, yes, raging in the West. in which we have to look at ourselves and reinvent ourselves, refine ourselves in some way and I think that, yes, your Reflections are part of this larger, more well-known cultural movement that we are in, so thank you very much for welcoming me here in this Studio and for this inspiring conversation.

Well, thanks for coming so far to talk to me. I apreciate it. It's okay, thank you all.