Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
I've been studying Russia for more than half a century, and I've been watching Vladimir Putin for more than 20 years. So here's what I think I understand about him. He sees himself as a czar. His mission is to restore the Russian Empire, which after 1917 was still the Russian Empire, just rebranded as the Soviet Union. Its claim to be leading a global fight against imperialism was just one of its big lies. After the collapse of the Soviet Union came the Russian Federation,
with the Kremlin still ruling much of Eurasia, including lands and peoples to the east, lands along the Sea of Japan and the Bering Sea. For Putin, that's not enough. In his mind, a restored Russian empire must include Ukraine. He explained why in an essay on the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians. I'll sum it up for you in a sentence. Ukrainians are just Russians from the hinterlands with funny accents.
So that's one reason for the brutal war he launched against Ukraine on February 24th, 2022. A second reason, Putin saw Ukraine developing into a democratic society, free nation, fusing to take orders from the Kremlin in Moscow. He found that intolerable. Third motivation for his launching the current war, he wants Ukraine's natural resources and he wants Ukraine's men, women, and especially its children
because ethnic Russians are a shrinking demographic within his shrunken Russian empire. Mark Montgomery served for 32 years in the U.S. Navy, retiring as a rear admiral in 2017. His flag officer assignments included deputy director for plans, policy, and strategy at U.S. European Command.
He was assigned to the National Security Council from 1998 to 2000, serving as director for transnational threats. I'm proud to say he's now a senior director at FDD. And he's just returned from Ukraine, where he was on a mission to support and train the Ukrainian general staff in planning and executing integrated joint operations and
and secondarily, to get a prioritized assessment of what the Ukrainians need to retain their independence to prevent being recolonized by Russia to defend their homes and families. I'm eager to hear what he learned about the terrible and illegal war that Putin is waging against the Ukrainian people. And I'll remind you
that Putin is being supported and assisted by the despotic rulers of Iran, China and North Korea, and anti-American access of aggressors. I'm Cliff May, and I'm pleased you're with us too, here on Foreign Policy.
Welcome home, Admiral. Well, thank you very much, Cliff. Thanks for having me. And I think we could almost call a wrap after your discussion of why Putin invaded, but Danielle will probably get mad at us for going for three minutes. So I think we need to press forward. But I'll tell you, I'm really glad to be here. I'm glad for the support FTD has given me in doing things like this, because I think if you're going to fight beleaguered democracies, you
You need to go to the beleaguered democracies. So you need to be in Iran – in Israel. You need to be in Taiwan. You need to be in Ukraine if you're going to understand what the threats are to these beleaguered democracies and what's the best way – Those are the most three beleaguered democracies. I think the Republic of Korea is coming up quick. I was going to say, yes, I agree with that. And we're going to talk about that. And I think –
Yeah, what North Korea is doing for Putin is a cause for some alarm. But maybe start by just telling us a little more than I got to in the introduction about the purpose of your trip. Yeah, thanks. So I was asked with some other retired military officers from different services to go there to provide kind of generalized discussion of operational planning, particularly as it applies to joint operations.
This is important because Ukraine and I helped train the Ukrainians 10 years ago. And obviously, me and my successors and my predecessors didn't do a perfect job in breaking them of what I would consider some bad Soviet habits about how you plan entities, how you organize your general staff, how you plan operations, how you do things. And they're still they have things that could be improved.
And so they bring in personnel like us to talk them through, who have a lot of operational experience and combat experience in joint operations to kind of help them with that. And then secondarily, as you said, so that we can get a pretty close-eyed view of what's happening and come back to the States and talk about it. Because I do want to say something. You hit it right on the face. Ukraine is not fighting Russia. Ukraine is fighting Russia.
Iran, North Korea, and China. And I got to tell you, I'm hard pressed to determine which one of those is the biggest player besides Russia in this. In other words, all three of the others, none of them is a laggard.
They're all doing a lot to make Russia more effective and to hurt Ukraine and to set back a beleaguered democracy because every one of those countries understands what deterrence is. And they understand that if you want to deter future Western action against authoritarians, you come in hard, you play to win. And that's not how the United States and some of our Western allies are playing this. Yeah.
And one of the reasons we call them the – you and me and Brad Bowman here at FTD call them the axis of aggressors is because every one of the countries we're talking about has designs on some foreign territory, on somebody else's land and resources. You know, Iran – the Islamic Republic of Iran wants to –
rule the Middle East and is doing through so all and has been through colonies essentially Lebanon the most obvious of them but Syria increasingly Iraq which we're not doing anything about Yemen and
North Korea obviously wants to take over South Korea. People's Republic of China obviously wants to take over Taiwan and then move on from there. Its ambitions don't end there, just as Putin's ambitions don't end with Ukraine. That's also something a lot of people don't get. It's not like he's going to stop there and retire if he wins on this. And he'll have Ukrainians, I think, with bayonets at their back.
invading Moldova and another place you know and other places. But all right, let's not go too far ahead of ourselves. Describe the state of the conflict at the moment. Is it a stalemate or worse are the Ukrainians losing? What's going on? Look, I'm hesitant to say losing because but I do believe that the Ukrainians are in a tough position right now. They're really not in a position I think
to take advantage of the weapons we've provided, to create operational salience, to maneuver their forces and operate their forces in a way that could cause a significant tactical defeat on the Russians. And that is because they're not allowed to use the weapons themselves.
in the way they're normally configured. They can't use attack them at range. They can't do what we would consider basic... At range means let the missiles fly... Into Russia. Into Russia. If necessary. And really what I'm saying is they're not able to do what the U.S. would do if we were going to maneuver forces...
you know, in an area, we would look to where the enemy's aggregating its defensive reserves, things like that, where its airfields are that would be in support of the immediate, you know, forces they'll be in contact with. And we would strike those ahead of time. A good example is what Israel did the other night. That strike was mostly to say, we can come back and strike again anytime we want because you no longer have air defenses.
That's what they did the other night. And it's the same way for the Ukrainians. They have to have the ability to strike Russian airfields within 300, 400 kilometers of Ukraine. They have the ability to strike logistics storage and weapons storage facilities. They have to be able to strike command and control, Russian military command and control and the aggregated forces.
You know, as they group their forces prior to maneuver. And they can't do that if they have restrictions on the weapon systems that don't let them fly out, you know, fly their planes or utilize their weapons outside of the territory that was either currently held by Ukraine or formerly held by Ukraine.
I mean, it's kind of like trying to imagine that Prime Minister Trudeau of Canada decided to attack the United States, take it over because he decided Americans really should be Canadians. And then all we could do is defend our borders and we could hit Canadian troops when they got into the U.S. But no hitting them in Montreal, no hitting them in Ottawa or Toronto. We can't do that. That would not be a very good way to wage this war against Canada. That is not the joint war fighting concept that the U.S. employs for itself. Correct. And...
And so, yeah, that's – so to me, the number one issue is that there's kind of an artificial stalemate driven by this lack of operational flexibility with the weapon systems. The number two issue is they are getting short on weapons.
The air defense weapons particularly, we saw quite a few, experienced quite a few air defense strikes going on against Odessa, Kiev, while we're in there generally throughout Ukraine. I would say I suspect there's about 100 plus drones or missiles fired into Ukraine daily on average. So 700 plus, maybe up to 1,000 a week daily.
week after week. I may be off a little bit on those numbers, but maybe it's 300 to 400 a week, but it's a significant number of weapons coming in to you. Now, a lot of these are drones coming in, and they have to make decisions every day about what to shoot down, what not to shoot down, what critical infrastructure they allow to be struck
because they don't engage targets going at it. Look, when we saw Israel get in this kind of jam, you know, start to get low on weapon systems, we actually moved a THAAD weapon system into Israel. And I have to be honest with you, the Israelis for 60 years have told us
We appreciate your support for 50 years since the Yom Kippur War. We appreciate your support. We appreciate your financing, things like that. We appreciate your weapon systems and research and development. But we never want an American to have to sacrifice himself for Israel. So no need for troops. We quickly, in missile defense, went right through that.
red line, so to speak. Because the THAAD is operated by Americans. Now, it's not, I guess it could be targeted by Iran on a ballistic missile strike. I mean, I'd be careful how I say this, but if I were Iran, it should be targeted because, you know, it's got... Isn't that the whole purpose of a THAAD, to knock down the missile before it gets to them? But it knocks down certain types of missiles. Other missiles it would never see. So, in fact, the Israelis are going to have to defend the THAAD against, let's say, a low-flying cruise missile.
using a system called David's Sling. Yeah, sure. And they'll have an iron dome around it so that it can't get any pop rockets from Lebanon in on it and things like that. So it would be working. It's in an integrated air missile defense. It's well integrated in Israeli architecture already, I promise you. When I say already, I mean 48 hours after landing, maybe 72 hours after landing. They'll be well integrated in. My point on this though is,
It's clearly, we recognize, the United States recognizes and Israel recognizes that you want to have as robust as possible an integrated air missile defense.
But what we're allowing to happen in Ukraine is anything but that. There's not enough of what are called the AMRAAM missiles that go with the Norwegian-American NASAMs, you know, cruise missile defense system. There's not enough Patriot missiles for the Patriot short-range ballistic missile defense system. There's insufficient French and Italian rounds for the SAM-T missile defense system.
You know, in all these areas, they have to take sacrifices. So what we need to do, we being the United States and its European allies, really need to be digging deep to see what missiles are still available. How do we get them to them? We need to be looking at our defense industrial base saying, hey, this production rate, you know, we want you to double and redouble it over the next two to four years, not just for Ukraine, but for ourselves as well, because if there's something we've learned from this,
or something the authoritarians have learned from this is that, you know, cyber and missile defense and a few other things, you know, the United States may be a powerful, uh,
And Israel may be a powerful, you know, air, you know, air control, air superiority military. We may be a powerful naval sea control military, but cruise and ballistic missiles can be a real leveler, you know, level the playing field. And certainly Russia's used them aggressively in Ukraine and Iran has used them aggressively against Israel.
I don't know if it's fair to call this a Biden doctrine, but his approach to both Israel and to Ukraine is to say, we want you to defend yourselves and we'll help you defend yourselves. We won't help you win. We don't want to see you.
We don't want even to appear that Putin has been defeated. That would be provocative. That would make him angry. We don't want it to appear that the Ayatollah Khomeini has been defeated. We want you to...
Try to deter them from continuing, but don't do serious harm to them. That seems to be what he's been saying, right? Don't escalate, don't escalate. And of course, when he says don't to the Islamic Republic of Iran, they say, yeah, right, we will anyhow. What are you going to do about it? You know, you sound like a Ukrainian general we talked to. I mean, he very specifically said, you know, as a U.S., we appear more concerned with the potential fallout
Right.
And, you know, that's the opposite of deterrence. Deterrence actually has to be a bowed up strategy. It has to say, I have the capability and capacity to do something and you know I have the willingness to do it. You know, and then therefore you credibly believe I will take action. The minute you don't have that credible belief,
Sometimes it doesn't matter what tools I have if you don't think I'll use them. And we're at the point now where not only will we not use the tools, but when we give the tool to a country, we ask them not to use it. And I mean, it's clear we influenced Israel's targeting. It's clear that we have significantly hampered Ukraine's ability to take action and target. See, it seems to me the U.S. position, and I don't think it is the Biden position. I don't know if it would be. I'm not sure that it would be a Trump administration position. It should be.
First of all, in Ukraine, understand, Putin, this is an independent country. It's a member of the UN. We've all recognized it. We've signed agreements with you, such as the Budapest Memorandum, guaranteeing the territorial integrity of Ukraine. So now if you cross that border with your tanks—
You're doing something absolutely illegal under international law as we understand it and as you should understand it, and that makes a difference to us. And we have the right to give an independent nation anything we want to fight you any way they want. And if you want us to help diplomatically, we will. But we are not going to even two inches agree that this is your territory and that therefore we have no right to interfere with –
an action taking place on Russian territory because it's not Russia. We don't buy that line. And I think that should be the way we are viewing it and we're not.
From your lips to the future president's ears, because absolutely, you're right. That is deterrence 101, what you described. And we are not practicing that. I can't describe exactly what we're practicing, but we're not practicing an aggressive statement of principle followed up by action and a threat to do more if necessary. So here's trying to think like Biden. I would imagine that he's worried that...
That Putin might just escalate. Because Putin has sort of more than suggested, he's threatened, that he might use tactical nukes on Ukrainian territory. And we don't want that. And what's worse, what if he were to lob a nuclear weapon into Washington or Los Angeles or New York or something like that? He's not confident of that. So he's in effect...
allowing Putin to deter him with that threat. Now, there are a lot of those on the right who would say, yeah, well, we just can't take that risk for Ukraine. I mean, who's Ukraine to us? Why are we going to risk Putin lobbing a nuclear weapon on American soil? I mean, it's just not worth it to us. I think I see the illogic of that point of view, but I hear it on the left and the right.
Yeah. You know, I don't worry as much about an attack against the United States. I mean, that's really, you're asking me, I mean, why would he not do that at any time? Right. You know what I mean? If he thinks we won't respond. Um,
Well, he may think he'll respond, but he thinks, so what? I can't do what I want to do. Yes, you'll – I mean, I agree with you. I don't – look, here's two things I would say. One is he could think, yeah, take out Moscow, take out Petersburg. I don't think that's – I don't think he's that crazy. And that's the end of Russia as an empire. I mean, Russia has two cities, really, Moscow and Petersburg. Beyond that –
But there's something else. The fact of the matter is if you set the precedent that Putin can deter us because he has nuclear weapons, then it follows that Xi Jinping can deter us because he has nuclear weapons and that Kim Jong-un can deter us because he has nuclear weapons and Ayatollah Khamenei will be able to deter us once he has nuclear weapons. At that point, America is never again great again. It's a has-been former superpower.
That can be bossed around by everybody. That's an American future I don't want to see for my kids. But that's where you are once you set that precedent. And Putin would love to set it. And Xi Jinping would say, you know what? I owe you a beer. Well, you know, it's a wonder we won the Cold War. So these weapons existed then. Yeah. This is – there is a sense of –
of, uh, of, uh, unwillingness to, you know, there's a difference between like measuring risk and having a balanced approach and just trying to create a risk-free situation. You know, don't become president, don't become national security advisor, don't become secretary of state. If you're looking for risk-free decision-making,
It is one, it's a four or eight year, you know, long struggle of balancing risk. And I think President Biden has failed in this. I think if you go back to Afghanistan, we failed. Well, that was shameful capitulation to the Taliban. And a strong signal to everyone. Strong signal. Just the United States. And by the way,
The fact that Europe jumped in with us on Ukraine should be considered, it's quite a compliment considering how poorly we treated them a year early or six months earlier withdrawing from Afghanistan. You know, basically like a half hour warning call, like, hey, things are going down, we're leaving.
You might want to evacuate your embassies, get your people out, all the Afghan nationals who work for you, all your troops that are downrange. I mean, it was insane. This was embarrassing. So look, if you're asking me to explain Biden's approach to deterrence, I can't. I'd only say-
what Bob Gates said, which is that, you know, Joe Biden has a track record of being wrong on every single national security issue. He, he, you know, he dealt with. I got to say, I'm not sure. I mean, I think J.D. Vance is a very bright guy, but I'm not sure that he sees why Ukraine is important to American national security. Maybe he does. Maybe he will. I get, I just throw, I don't know. You don't have to even respond if you don't want to, but. No, I will. Look, first of all, look, I have a real problem with restrainers. I mean, restrainers,
They bank all the benefits of the United States being the leading economic and security partner choice around the world, right? The fact that we can trade with people, the fact that we have, you know, that we make billions or trillions of dollars a year on international trade and just say, well, that'll keep happening. Even if we, you know, close the blinds and pretend we're not involved in any of the security things, all that economic value continue to pull in. That's not how the world works.
It wasn't how the world worked in the 1930s when Republicans said this, and it's not how the world is going to work in the 2020s if Republicans ask this way. The Republicans are the mature...
party, historically, are the party that have, at least since the end of World War II, always taking a mature approach to developing allies, addressing adversaries, and trying to make sure we did the right thing in international and foreign policy. I worked for John McCain, who took a very serious approach to every one of these threats. For us to suddenly be abandoning
You know, these commitments is beyond me. And look, you know, J.D. Vance has the luxury as a candidate of saying whatever he thinks and as a senator of, you know, basically having no value, responsible value. You know, one senator, not a chairman of anything. Once he's vice president, he's going to have to take a much more measured approach to
to how you protect America's economic viability and productivity. If we want to continue to be the richest country in the world who benefits from trade, heck, we probably benefit when North Korea and Iran trade something. Somehow American financiers or shipping magnets or insurance brokers make money. We make money when everyone trades. But that only works if the U.S. system is in place around the world. And the U.S. system is only in place around the world if we're out there as the security partner of choice.
But if we abdicate that responsibility, if we step back, if we don't defend Ukraine, if we don't defend Taiwan, if we don't defend the Republic of Korea, if we don't support Israel, we're going to lose that position. And over time, we will rapidly – I think not even over time – we will rapidly lose GDP. Yeah.
And a subject for another day, but I'll throw it out because I know you'll think about it. Beijing and others are beginning to say, you know, we're moving into a multipolar world.
And that is a total, total fiction. We don't need to go to now, but I know what they mean. They mean a world in which America is just one another country. And so is China until China becomes preeminent. OK, the Germans, the French and others, they've got a dog in this hunt, too.
How are they doing? How are they perceived as doing by the Ukrainians? I've been meeting with some West European ambassadors who say, hey, we're not getting credit. We've been doing better. We've been doing better. What do you think? So they're doing better. Okay. Not sure that warrants like too much extra credit. I think the United States is still the biggest supporter.
Oh, for real? Yeah. And one other thing I want to say, look, I listened to President Trump talk about making America great again. And I think support for Ukraine is just part of that. I mean, that is what makes us great. What makes us great is we're the country that decides what's right. Right. And if we don't enforce some kind of international like, oh, freedom of the seas, of the Red Sea and the...
then no one else is going to do it for us. Either we do it or those laws don't exist anymore. I agree. But let me get on Europe. You're right. So on Europe, look, I think they're doing more. I think the Germans, it's a little two steps forward, one step back. Be careful there. I think the French are pretty aggressive with support. The Italians, the British have been from the beginning.
Okay. Particularly, I have to give Boris Johnson credit, right? I think it was Boris right off the bat. Yeah, Boris has been good. And then, but since, you know, then, you know, they appear to still be supporting it. Yeah.
Look, they need to give more. Look, if we're going to give $60 billion a year in a grant or a loan, I think a grant probably under future President Harris, a loan under future President Trump, I mean, that's what Lindsey Graham would postulate, a good partner of President Trump's, then the Europeans need to give $60 billion. Right. Right? I know our GDP is slightly bigger than theirs, but the proximity to me drives an equal deal. If we each give $60 billion a year-
Don't restrict how the weapons can be used and that support can be used.
We're going to put Ukraine in a position to win, or at least to impose their will on Russia in a way that Putin has to ask for the cessation of hostilities. Right. And if he does that, it's a different rule set. I think you then can negotiate which land is, I don't think all of Ukraine gets returned, but some of Ukraine gets returned. I think that there's then a security agreement, a security guarantee for the United States to a point where they enter NATO.
There's an economic loan program to a point where they enter the European Union. And then you have a... Look, Ukraine is a... There's a reason he wants it. Part of it is, as you said, the idea of ethnic, of Slavs coming in, just have a bad, kind of have a Southern accent. I get that. But the other part is...
trillions of dollars of rare earth elements yeah resources right grain you know driving around i only saw farmland i mean it's the breadbasket of the world breadbasket of certainly of north africa yeah you know and uh and um and uh you know it's a um they have natural resources in the black sea as well yeah you know there's oil and uh and natural gas they're pretty good reserves my point on this is
There is a lot of money in Ukraine as well. And the kleptocrats and oligarchs that backstop Putin know this. I mean, that's why they haven't buckled on their support for him because, you know, they're bleeding the rest of Russia dry. Yeah. And they're looking for a new set of resources. And then, of course, there are the Ukrainians. Although I will tell you one of the things that worries me in Ukraine, it's got the world's lowest birth rate last year. Yeah.
It's hard to bring a child into that. In the middle of a war, yeah. I did see a few children, you know, a few babies, but, you know, I could count them on one hand over two weeks. And I worry about the will of the Ukrainian people there. You know, one of the things I would say is that if the Europeans and us don't continue to support, they will tire. They're losing a lot of people. Right. Well, I want to, all right, two things. One is I do want to just mention this. When we talk about Europeans...
The Baltic states, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, they're all in. They're good. I just want to – I have known these ambassadors a little bit and I want to make sure that I lump them in. I honestly think they put troops in if we would let them. Yeah. But they know that we – No, no. We don't need NATO troops getting killed. Right. And the Finns are – because they've been through something like this. The winter war of 1939 was kind of similar to this. And Poland –
They're all strong. OK, so I just want to say that now when you get back to what you're saying, the problem of Ukrainians general population getting more weary. I mean, they're getting hit every day. They're all. But what are they? Does that mean they're saying, you know what? Maybe it's time to surrender because maybe it's better to be colonized by Russia than to be dead. So let's just let it go.
So I didn't hear the general population that way. And I got, I was out and like, you know, I certainly visited McDonald's more than once. The, and so, you know, but you know, you get, I got around. I will say that there, there, you could tell, I can tell when a place is weary. I mean, I've been in our own, with our own combat units and seen it. You can see it there, but to see a civilian population weary, like you see a soldier weary is hard. They're getting hit and,
You know, you're, you're, uh, you know, they have like the, like Israel, they have the, um, the, uh, app, app, the mobile phone app with like your, you know, and you put in your localized area and it gives you a warning. Mine went off, you know, two to three times a day for wherever I was at in the country. It was going off two to three times a day, which means everyone's phone is going off two to three times a day that you need to get into a shelter or take a risk. Yeah.
I think if you have children, you're going to be getting in a shelter no matter what. You know, they're elderly. I think the 70 to 80-year-olds kind of just said, well, we'll play it out. But, you know, my point on this is that wears you down. The critical infrastructure is getting hit. I probably saw 10 sub-power stations, electrical power generation sub-power stations. All of them had clear indications of previous damage.
But they get them working again. Yeah, they're functioning. That place is a bubble gum and bra strap kind of place, you know, where they're using all these tools to get things going again. We can learn a lot from them on resilience and redundancy. But I would tell you, it's going to be a cold winter. I was saying winter. I've been to Ukraine in winter. It's not Miami. No, it's not Miami. And so I think that's going to be a challenge. Look, it's hard to not get the full support.
Um, you know, it's hard to find out that you're kind of an ally. Well, kind of a partner. And look, we look at it and say, we're giving you $60 billion a year, you know, totally in different kinds of assistance. They don't get, they only say there's a $60 billion supplement. I just want to make clear 10 billion of that goes to pay for us operations.
About $10 billion goes to fix our defense industrial base. And about $40 billion goes to Ukraine. But not as cash. Not as cash. Weapons and –
California, to buy in Arizona, those are the big states, to buy weapon systems that are then given to the US Army to replace ones the US Army sent. The old ones get sent. Or new stuff for the Ukrainians. Yeah, that's a great point that like 97, 98% of the procurement
is happening in the United States. That money just goes right back in. And the other money, like I said, goes to pay US soldiers doing operations all over Europe, which they were going to do anyway, a lot of them. And then some of it goes to restore a defensive industrial base, which we definitely needed to do. We were on a 30-year holiday on munitions. Right. We're getting it back. But then again, to get to the Ukrainian people, it is...
My visual sight, and I think as they're long enough to say that, look, they look tired. One of their senior officials admitted to me that they've had one or two protests. Usually it's surrounding communities that just had a series of combat deaths. And it's tough. You know, they're throwing, and I also say their soldiers are, you know, fatigued. You know, when you see their soldiers, these are guys who are, they're going up, they're running against, there's a Russians. The Russians are running against,
you know, a meat grinder operation where they're losing a thousand people a day, just running them in to gain three, four, five yards on a front line, um, by pressing forward with, you know, wave after wave of humans. Um, and you know, they eventually get some Ukrainians either that way or through artillery or through, um, a UAV, um, a, um, a drone, uh, a small drone strike. Um,
You know, that's wearing their soldiers out as well. And you kind of see that, you know, and I met with a couple of the colonel, you know, the frontline colonels doing this and they were, you can see a lot of.
Wear and tear. So two years into a war, they're not able to rotate. We rotate our commanders every six to 12 months in Afghanistan and Iraq. They don't have that luxury. So in any case, I'm telling you they're worn out, Cliff. And they are still holding some Russian territory, Kursk, right? Yeah, they are.
That was an innovative attack. I'm not sure what the end game is exactly. Well, if you want Putin to say, first of all, it aggravates Putin that for the first time since World War II, Russian territory is being occupied. And that's a humiliation for him. And then he should, I would think, want to put some resources to getting it back. And he hasn't. He has. He's gotten some of it back. Has he? Okay. Yeah.
But not all of it, certainly. And it's going to be interesting. I think the North Koreans may be there. Well, I was going to add, I want you to talk about what North Korea is doing, all of it. I mean, the idea that North Korean soldiers are going to be serving under Russian generals, I mean, it's mind-boggling.
I mean, I know you believe, because I've read some of what you've written, that the weapons from North Korea are more consequential than the – but it's still consequential from a messaging communications point of view that you're going to have. By the way, if I were Jake Sullivan and I were talking – and I wanted to get this job done properly, tell me if this is a crazy idea. I would say to Biden, look, you should say to Putin, quietly or publicly –
If you escalate this conflict, which I don't like escalation, if you escalate it and make it a Eurasian war by bringing in not just people who have Russian citizenship from Central Asia but North Koreans, you're going to bring them in. Okay. Then at that point –
We let the Ukrainians do whatever they want to do with the weapons. We have every right to give them. You can bring North Koreans into this. We can send American weapons and tell them no restrictions. Do as you will. Fire at will. What do you think? Well, again, from your lips to Joe Biden's ears. So listen, so you're right. I thought about, you've said this to me, push back a little bit on my, you know, a little bit on the, what I've said about the artillery. And I think I'll amend my thoughts to say,
This introduction of 12,000, it's going to be 11,300, 11,800 in the first. And the Ukrainians were telling me the exact number way before the U.S. were kind of saying it. Troops into the combat is a strategically a big deal. It's a strategic messaging issue. Our allies and partners. So I've kind of historically said this, access of aggressors is a transactional partnership. You do this for me, I do that for me, I will sell you this. This is more, when you lend...
Blood, you know, not just treasure but blood your people now I will say Kim jong-un of all the countries in the world Right. Don't think they value their own humans. I'd put North Korea number one on the list I mean Sudan might be competing with it, but I mean it's a tough competition there, right? No one that should be on the UN Human Rights Commission, you know, but You know, so they send these these guys in they're gonna get meat grinder if they go anywhere near the front line There will be you know several hundred less a day now
Now, if they keep them in the rear doing infrastructure, digging ditches, building revetments and defensive positions, okay, they'll survive. But it's a strategic message. Now, what isn't a strategic message, what's an operational tactical message is five to six million rounds of artillery.
That's what the North Koreans have given the Russians. And look, I get it. If you told me there's a North Korean round being used in a howitzer nearby, I would say, could you please stop while I move several thousand yards away in case there's an explosion? And maybe their downrange isn't that accurate. But it's allowing them to maintain this kind of eight to one to 10 to one artillery ratio that our friends at the Institute for the Study of War kind of talk about frequently, which I agree with them. They're right on that this artillery differential is a big deal.
It's facilitated by these 5 to 6 million rounds. Let's be clear. That's more than we've built in the last 20 years, maybe 25 years. Wow.
That's what the North Koreans have given them. That's a tactical value. And I think even the Ukrainian senior officers I talked to kind of said that artillery bothers us more. Bothers them more than the Shahid drones, bothers them more than the 12,000 North Korean troops. But I think you're right. For strategic messaging purposes, the 12,000 North Korean troops is saying this is a different kind of conflict. It's making what I said at the beginning true.
Ukraine is not fighting Russia. Ukraine is fighting Russia, North Korea, Iran, and China. And the sooner we realize that, the sooner South Korea, South Korea's got it, by the way,
Their position on Ukraine is changing dramatically hour by hour. I mean, they supported him before. Now they really support him. And it should change Israel's position. It should change. You know, our Europeans should be even more stout and steadfast, not just about Russia, but about China, about North Korea, about Iran, you know, and recognize that if they're going to be allies and we're allies, then we're opposed to all of you.
And we got to act like it. No, no. I guess I'm a little astonished that North Korea has that kind of defense industrial base that it can produce munitions at that level. Because, look, North Korea is threatened by nobody. The South Koreans were not going to invade North Korea. Nobody, I mean, even Kim Jong-un doesn't think that. So if he's building, he's creating, if he's had this big, it's a poor country, and he's had this defense industrial base,
capacity all this time. What has it been? What was the idea behind that? I'm not saying these are five-year-old rounds, right? Um, he's been building these, you know, he, his father and his grandfather have been building these rounds since sometime in late 1953. Storing them up. And storing them up, ready for the big one. Uh, and look, if they've given away 6 million, I'll bet they're sitting on 12 million. Right. Um, and I'll just say, you know, these, um,
The South Koreans have a bunch of rounds too. I mean, that was going to be a heavy artillery rocket war between South Korea and North Korea. So I believe that probably South Korea, and in fact, we removed some of our rounds in South Korea and our war reserve stock allies, Korea, much like we did from Israel and transferred some of them to Ukraine. And that's because we assessed how much South Korea had and said, we're okay.
But you're right. North Korea had an unusual number. I'll tell you, look, the North Korean state isn't good at much. It's good at like three or four things. Cryptocurrency, ransomware, Bitcoin, building nuclear weapons. Threatening Sony Pictures, making movies they don't like. Making the ugliest, dirtiest coal in the world. That's about it. Right.
Right. Feeding their people, not on the list. But I think we can add a sixth thing now, you know, building apparently building like one, six, two millimeter rounds.
All right. A lot of other things I could ask you about, but what else do you particularly want to talk about? One thing is, I think this is a point that always has to be made, and you've made it before, that in a way we've seen this all wrong. We're not doing the Ukrainians a favor. The Ukrainians are doing us a favor. The best investment we make in defense is what, the 3% that's going to Ukraine because it's being used to
incapacitate our number two adversary who's part of this axis. And what's a better investment than that? So over the last two and a half years, we have spent the equivalent of 2.7% of our defense spending. 2.7%.
the Ukraine support Ukraine in return for that Ukraine has Incapacitated five or six hundred thousand Russian troops killed or seriously wounded or captured They've destroyed nine thousand tanks or armored vehicles including 75% of the modern tanks in Russia They've destroyed 350 now combat aircraft look they have
have severely kneecapped the number two adversary of the United States for almost no – if you told me that for 4.7, I could do that to China, I'd be all over it, right? So for 2.7, doing that to Russia, that's pretty good. So that's it. But we've – Cliff, this is so much – like I said, I just want to reemphasize –
We have to release the weapons. We have to give them the weapons release they needed. And something I should have mentioned, in addition to that, that is in other words, allow attack them to be used at the proper range. Allow them to take US joint JDAMs, our airdrop precision weapons, and
And drop them into Russia, you know, in within approximately I get we could probably put a reasonable combat circle around Ukraine there, you know, that you can't go bomb the Kremlin. I get that you can do that with your own weapons, and they're trying, but to limited success.
But here's the other one. We are not providing what I would consider firing quality overhead imagery. In other words, it's so time late as to not be useful. We need to provide them with time sensitive imagery so that they can effectively pick out and target adversary weapons and stuff with their own systems.
By giving them old stuff, we actually put civilians at risk, right? If they're going to go attack a pier and we give them eight-hour-old imagery, something could have changed out. A cargo ship could have come in and the military ship left. We should be giving them immediate imagery. We have this capability. Of course we have it. I would only fire. I've spent the last 25 years or starting until about five years ago authorizing and executing strikes based only on that kind of imagery.
I would never accept this kind of time late. Why? Because we want to make sure. It's nervous, Nelly. Honestly, sir, there is not – look, I haven't heard – we're not going to get an excuse because the US isn't going to acknowledge this is happening. Right. So they don't have to acknowledge it. They don't have to explain it.
But when they – five or ten years from now, when asked about it, I would like to hear the explanation for this because there's no good one. Well, that should change. All right. This is an unfair question but I'm sure people want me to ask it and you don't have to. Do you have a sense of what the next administration, whether a Harris administration –
or Trump administration, how they would be different from a Biden administration on Ukraine. I'm not sure. I mean, maybe I'm asking to be too speculative. We don't really know. I think you'd have to tell me who's the Secretary of Defense. Well, okay. I'm going to say that it's Phil Gordon under Harris. And I'm going to say- So he's National Security Advisor. All right. He's National Security Advisor, but it's kind of his line, right? Yeah. On this sort of thing. And, you know-
You know what I mean? Tom Cotton. So what if it's Mike, you know, I mean, Representative Gates or Mike Pompeo as Secretary of Defense? You know, we'll have to see. So I think if we had a strong Secretary of Defense...
in a Trump administration, and I'll give you one further. If we had Michelle Flournoy in a Harris administration, who I think she's a strong leader, we might get a US Defense Department that says, this is the only way. This is the way, as they say in Mandalorian. You can't do this...
You know, you can't do this half-ass, you know, I'm halfway in to this problem. If you're going to give the weapons, give them the weapons release ranges. I think Lloyd Austin has not, and he knows better. He's been on the ground there a lot. He's a proven combat veteran in the United States military. For him to continue to supply Ukraine with weapon systems for which they're not authorized to use to their proper combat capability and without the proper imagery to effectively use their own systems,
We're handicapping the Ukrainians in an unacceptable way. So what do I think? I'm not comfortable with Phil Gordon. And that's just my perception. He's a longtime aide to Kamala Harris. And State Department official before then who I've worked with around. I just don't have the feeling that they will be much more aggressive than –
Biden, I think they'll do the $60 billion grant program again. Look, I think under Trump, it's going to be a loan program. I'm okay with that. Churchill was our special partnership. That was still a loan, right? And I think they paid it back. The 1941 to 44 loans were paid back in 1994.
I don't know what their interest rates were, but not much. And a future president can forgive the loan. I think if you ask Lindsey Graham, kind of a confidant of President Trump, that's what he would tell him. A loan program. And then look, if President Trump wants to try to talk Putin into conceding his position, fine. He's going to find out very quickly that on this issue, Putin's not the Putin he thinks he is. Putin is the authoritarian you described at the beginning. Right.
Does this sound like a possible way for Trump to go to say to Putin, here's the deal. I'm not saying that I would want this to happen. I'm just trying to think like Trump.
You're going to get Crimea. I know it's important for your Navy. Okay. But that's it. And I want you to desist at that point. Get off of the Ukrainian property other than Crimea. If you'll accept that, I'll bring Zelensky along. If you won't accept that, I'm going to let him do whatever he wants to do with the weapons. So you decide how you want to play this, Vladimir, because I'm tired of this and I got other fish to fry.
Well, I think if he did that first, you know, I'm not sure Putin would ever take it. But if he did that and Putin took it, Zelensky would be hard pressed to pass on it.
Crimea wasn't ours in 2014. They won't like it and it's wrong. Again, I'm not in favor of it. I'm just trying to think like Trump because Trump is a dealmaker. See, the difference between Trump as a dealmaker and too many diplomats, diplomats think if we just have negotiations, if we have talks, that's the win. It doesn't matter how it comes out. I come back and say, you see, I got them to sign the dotted line and then it's a bad deal.
Like we had with UN Security Council Resolution 1701 ended – theoretically ended the 2006 war between Hezbollah, Lebanon. I think it started the 2024 war. It absolutely did because it was clear that –
Israel would abide by 1701 and get out and that Hezbollah would not get out. And instead they would make a fortress out of southern Lebanon for the next war. But the diplomats all were able to shake their hands and say, look, what a great job we did. That's why I'm saying, anyhow, I'm going on too long about this. Thank you, Amos. So, you know, what I'll say is, yes, look, I don't like that deal, but I'd probably, if Trump got it,
I think Zelensky would have to take it. And I think Zelensky would put an asterisk saying we're not done on Crimea. Right. But I think the other thing if I was Zelensky, I'd say, okay, President Trump, I want a security guarantee and entry into NATO. And entry into NATO. Right. Three to five years from now. One of the big things I did when I was there was trying to talk to the Ukrainians about what it takes to get in NATO. In a previous life, I was at U.S. European Command. I was a one-star. Yeah.
One of my jobs was to train European, was to prepare European students
militaries and countries to enter NATO. And there's five or six doing it at the time in different stages. All of these are seven to 10. And these are former SSRs and former Warsaw Pact states. Former Soviet Republic. Yeah. Former Soviet Republics, former Warsaw Pact states. And they all took seven to 10 years. I just want to tell you, in that agreement we have, it's not going to be seven to 10 years. It's going to be three to four years. It's going to be a security guarantee because the US isn't going to have an open-ended US security guarantee. We're going to want to have a NATO membership at three to four years.
Look, if you want it bad, you'll get it bad unless you cheat and do some of the homework ahead of time. And so I was talking to them like, hey, you got to start doing some of this stuff. Now, look, some of the things are going to be great at like the part where NATO insists that you have an infantry that can take up weapons and go kill other infantry. I think the Ukrainians are going to be like block check.
you know, 600,000 dead Russians. I think we're there. You know, do you know how to integrate artillery and infantry? We do. But on things like, do you know how to integrate your air force in your army? They don't. Um, do you apparent, you know, do you have a military legal system that's, you know, Sovietized or Westernized? They're in the wrong camp right now. They, they have a Soviet one where, you know, this F-16 was shot down recently by likely shot down by a, um,
Patriot battery. And it's happened to the United States three or four times. No one's been accused of murder. But under the Ukrainian or the former Soviet system, you tend to do criminal charges against the battery commander. That's not how modern militaries like the US or Israeli or UK operate. Right.
So anyway, those kinds of things need to be done now. And so one of the things like if I were to continue to help the Ukrainians, I think my best value is going to be how do we pull aside a small amount of their staff and start working their future in NATO? And that's what a deterrent signal, what a strengthening signal to them. We're planning on this now.
And what a deterrent signal to Russia. All you've done is force us to bring them into NATO faster. And to me, that's what the United States should be doing. And you can get the Turks and say even the Hungarians to vote to have them in NATO? If it's part of a treaty. That's the beauty of this. The beauty of this is it's under – and by the way, EU as well. Yeah. I mean, they still have to do 24 chapters. I didn't want to describe getting in the European Union. It makes getting into NATO look easy. Yeah.
And that may be more of a five to seven year, because what you have to do there about lowering interest rate recovery, they have to have a recovered economy. So my gut reaction is Ukraine's entry to EU would be later, but that's not keeping Russia away. Right. That's just a reward to Ukraine for making this concessions. But my point on this is that those things need to be done now. Yeah.
And I think they're a strong signal to that. And I think that if they're part of this deal, Turkey doesn't get to do their Swedish blackmail where they get like free grippins or whatever they ended up squeezing out of the Swedish for their membership. And same with Hungary. Look, this is where Hungary learns what being a small country really means. Like shut the heck up and get in a corner. They're coming in.
And by the way, Putin's on board with it because he signed in this treaty. So I mean, on boards that were born. But Putin is acknowledging this is going to happen. So I think it happens. Anything else about your trip you want to mention that I didn't get from you? I just want to say that there are a large number of nonprofits, U.S. nonprofits, working in Ukraine, doing humanitarian assistance, doing emergency medical, EMTs, what we call EMT, emergency management, firefighting, that kind of services. Yeah.
and training and bringing supplies in. And then the group I'm with was the Ukraine Freedom Fund that's working all those issues plus this kind of training. They're another part of the United States. It's not all the government. We are world famous that our charitable support
isn't anchored in like USAID, although USAID is the biggest of its kind. On top of all that, we have so much giving, you know, through religious, through, you know, Catholic charities, religious organizations, through ethnic-based organizations, through just charitable like United Way and Combined Federal Campaigns.
We do all this charity work that goes overseas, and I see it in Ukraine. And I mean, it's just the strongest signal of what kind of country the United States is. And we got to stand by that, support the Ukrainians when they're in this most serious time of need.
Adam O' Montgomery, I'm glad you're back, glad you're safe, and thanks for the service you're doing here at FTD and for the beleaguered endangered democracies of the world. Adam O' Thanks to FTD and its donors for making it possible for our team to write so much about this issue, about Israel, about Taiwan. I think if we stick by this, we
This think tank has a strong niche as really the supporter of beleaguered democracies.
Well, let me just say, I never did before. Listeners to this program, you can donate to FDE, too. In a way, we're a listener-sponsored podcast, and everything we do, get on our website. We're just like NPR. Just like NPR, except we don't have the government helping us to contribute. Okay. Thanks again. Thanks to all of you listening here today on Foreign Policy.
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