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I'm Barry Weiss, and this is Honestly. Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky arrived in Kherson to address soldiers. But residents cheered him from their windows and crowded around him and his protection on the street. Last week, Russia ordered tens of thousands of its troops out of Kherson.
the first major city that Russia conquered in its war against Ukraine. — Ukrainians celebrating in the streets there as their soldiers liberate the strategic southern city of Kherson. Russian troops have retreated, flags being raised around the region.
It was a stunning victory for Ukraine. — This is a moment of pure relief. People there liberated just yesterday, just so happy to see people coming in, hugging the troops on the streets. I mean, you get this sense of euphoria and relief. Talking to people, you begin to understand why— — And yet the road ahead, it remains long and uncertain.
Mayor of Kyiv says Russia is bombarding Ukraine's capital once again. Mayor Vitaly Klitschko says two residential buildings... Putin responded to Russia's retreat from that city this week by unleashing a bombardment of missiles across Ukraine. The Ukrainian Air Force says about 100 Russian missiles have been fired at cities across Ukraine, hitting Kyiv, Kharkiv, Lviv, as well as others. Officials say the country is bracing for more attacks. An air raid alerts...
The stakes to all of this, the stakes of this war, have already been tremendously high in terms of blood and treasure for Ukraine, for Russia, and for Europe.
But they are made exponentially higher, not just to those countries, but to every country in the world, because of the looming danger of nuclear war. Vladimir Putin is becoming embarrassed and pushed into a corner. And I wonder, Mr. President, what you would say to him if he is considering using chemical or tactical nuclear weapons. Don't. Don't. Don't. It will change the face of war forever.
Unlike anything since World War II. And the consequences of that would be what? What would the U.S. response be? Do you think I would tell you if I knew exactly what it would be? Of course I'm not going to tell you.
It'll be consequential. They'll become more of a pariah in the world than they ever have been. And depending on the extent of what they do will determine what response would occur. Just a few hours ago, Putin said in a speech that if the territorial integrity of Russia is threatened, we will use all available means to protect our people. This is not a bluff.
Stunning comments from the U.S. president suggesting Russian threats to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine have put the world on the brink of Armageddon. Some think that the U.S. should do everything that we can to avoid the risks of nuclear war, even if it means pressuring Ukraine to take a peace deal that involves giving Russia generous concessions. They say that America has spent far too much money in Ukraine so far, especially given the economic situation here at home. But others say we haven't done nearly enough.
And if we don't make sure that Russia understands the consequences from its war of aggression, the message to U.S. adversaries around the world, including China, will be catastrophic. So today, I'm talking to someone who spent much of his career having to make these consequential decisions for our national security, General H.R. McMaster.
General McMaster served in the Army for 34 years, including during the Gulf War, the Iraq War, and in the war in Afghanistan. He retired in 2018 as a three-star lieutenant general, only to serve the country once again as the national security advisor to President Trump.
You may remember that I had General McMaster on the podcast last year to talk about our failure during the pullout from Afghanistan. So it's fitting to have him back now, this time to talk about why the U.S. cannot afford to fail again. McMaster and I talk about what a realistic end to this war might look like, what plans our military has in place in the case of a dirty bomb or a tactical nuclear attack.
and why McMaster thinks that America needs to remain actively invested in helping Ukraine win this war. One quick note, I recorded this conversation with McMaster before the news of Harrison broke. I did text him, though, to ask him what he makes of reports that the Biden administration is divided over whether or not to seek a diplomatic solution with the Kremlin.
He texted me back, the Ukrainian people will live in peace only after Putin is convinced that he has been defeated. That and much more after a quick break. Stay with us. Hey guys, Josh Hammer here, the host of America on Trial with Josh Hammer, a podcast for the First Podcast Network. Look, there are a lot of shows out there that are explaining the political news cycle, what's happening on the Hill, the this, the that.
There are no other shows that are cutting straight to the point when it comes to the unprecedented lawfare debilitating and affecting the 2024 presidential election. We do all of that every single day right here on America on Trial with Josh Hammer. Subscribe and download your episodes wherever you get your podcasts. It's America on Trial with Josh Hammer. H.R. McMaster, thank you so much for coming back on Honestly. Hey, Barry, it's so great to be with you.
Last month, President Biden said we have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis.
That wasn't the only thing that people have been paying attention to that has caused alarm among a lot of people that I know. There's a Harvard analyst who was on NPR that said there's a 10 to 20 percent likelihood that Russia may use a nuclear weapon. Another analyst, an MIT physicist, calculated that there's a one in six chance of eminent global nuclear war.
And the highest calculation that I've seen actually came from former Secretary of Defense and CIA Director Leon Panetta, who said that intelligence agents have now upped the probability from 1 to 5 percent from the start of the war to 20 to 25 percent today. HR, how did we get here?
well the way we get here is vladimir putin and this is not new you know barry i mean he's aware that he can't really compete with the rest of the world you know on our own terms economically or even militarily you've seen the failure of his conventional military so he's came up with this uh strategy of escalate to de-escalate you know which involves using you know a tactical nuclear weapon or a non-strategic nuclear weapon and then posing
us, you know, Europe with a dilemma, you know, okay, do you sue for peace on our terms or do you risk an all-out nuclear war? So, you know, I think this is nothing new. He first used these in an exercise, a Zapat exercise in 2009. And, you know, it's just clear that he doesn't have much left, right, in Ukraine. I mean, he's failed utterly. The mobilization is failing. He can't equip these troops. He can't train these troops.
And, you know, his coercion using energy hasn't worked so far. So what does he have left? He has the threat of the use of a nuclear weapon. And I think it's important, Barry, we'll talk more about this, not to play into his hands on that. I mean, I think it was unfortunate that President Biden said, you know, well, we're as close to Armageddon as we've been since 1962. That's what Putin wants. And I think what it does is it allows Putin to continue to use this threat to
to pursue his objective of convincing us to meter or to somehow curtail our support for the Ukrainians who are, of course, fighting for their lives. As a civilian, I want to understand from you, someone who's an insider, someone who's a general, what I should be losing sleep over and what I shouldn't.
I want to know what the plan is for the U.S. and for our allies for the various scenarios that we could be facing, the best case scenarios, which is what you laid out. He's not really serious about doing this. He's just using this as a bully tactic. Or the worst case scenario, that he is serious about doing something like this. So let's start with the worst. What is the worst possible scenario that can happen in this war in which we've already seen such a tremendous loss of life? Putin does what? What are we talking about?
Well, you know, he's threatening to use a tactical nuclear weapon. Just to place this into context, right, the Hiroshima bomb, atomic bomb, was about 12 to 21 kilotons. That bomb killed 70,000 people immediately.
tactical nuclear weapons or you know non-strategic nuclear weapons and it seems crazy just even talk about this right about uh the use of these most destructive weapons on Earth but some of them are a fraction of a kiloton and up up to 50 kilotons right so
Instead of incinerating a city, you're incinerating city blocks, for example. And of course, there are other factors that have to do with the degree to which that devastation is lasting, whether it's an airburst or if it's a groundburst. If it's a groundburst, then it contaminates the soil and it can render a place uninhabitable for a very long period of time. I mean, think about what happened in Chernobyl, for example. And of course, it's important to recognize that you can use the word tactical like it's maybe not as big of a deal, right?
but it is a nuclear weapon and there are significant residual effects like chernobyl and you know i think this is why putin is unlikely highly unlikely to use a nuclear weapon in ukraine first of all he doesn't gain any military advantage
from using a tactical nuclear weapon. He would have to use multiple tactical nuclear weapons. And hey, by the way, how does that play into his narrative, right? That he's there to save the Ukrainians who want to be part of Russia. You know, he's there to denazify, you know, Ukraine. Now he's incinerating people. You know, how does that work out?
And then, of course, you know, the winds do blow east, Barry, you know, and the Russian provinces that are on the border of Ukraine are Russia's breadbasket. So it is in many ways self-destructive to use nuclear weapons. But the worst case scenario, to answer your question, would be multiple tactical nuclear weapons used to try to gain a military advantage. But as I'm saying, I mean, I don't think there is a military advantage there.
to using tactical nuclear weapons on Ukrainian soil. Let's assume that the worst case scenario were to happen. What would be the next step? How would the U.S. and our allies respond? Well, you know, we thought a lot about this. So when I was National Security Advisor in 2017, it became very clear to me that we had let our nuclear arsenal atrophy a bit. We weren't paying enough attention to it. Russia has about 2,000 of them. We have about 200 of them. And these are all unclassified numbers, obviously.
And so we thought, hey, we need to think harder about how to deter Russia. How do we make sure that Putin thinks, understands that his use of the most destructive weapons on earth would result in unacceptable consequences to him, right? That he would get more than what he bargained for, more than what he factored in into his decision-making.
And so we decided that we needed to bolster a range of nuclear capabilities so that we could demonstrate that we have the capability to respond in kind. Now, the Biden administration has withdrawn funding for some of these capabilities, which I think is a mistake. But also, I think it's very important to note that a response to the use of a nuclear weapon doesn't have to be nuclear.
We have tremendous conventional capabilities and could impose unacceptable costs on Putin if he were to use the most destructive weapons on Earth, a tactical nuclear weapon or any form of nuclear weapon. And I think this is what you hear the president alluding to. You remember when Jake Sullivan said that if there's a strike, there will be catastrophic consequences for Russia. I mean, those consequences could be in cyberspace and, as I mentioned, through the use of conventional military capabilities as well.
I just want to go back to a number that you mentioned. Russia has 2,000 tactical nuclear weapons and we have 200.
How is that the case? Why would we be less armed than one of our major adversaries? Well, for us, the rationale was kind of gone for the use of tactical nuclear weapons. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the lifting of the Iron Curtain, those tactical nuclear weapons were designed to halt maybe a massive Soviet army invasion of Western Europe. And so they would be used maybe astride a major axis of advance for a conventional attack.
There wasn't really a rationale for that anymore. But of course, that changed with this relatively new Russian doctrine of escalate to de-escalate. And so we radically reduced our arsenals, as I think made sense at the time. And Russia was building up their arsenal and developing a whole range of disruptive nuclear capabilities. You know, these drones, these undersea drones armed with nuclear weapons that he's demonstrated in simulations.
You know, Barry, people forget the speech that Putin gave, I think it was in February of 2018, to the parliament, to the Duma, right? And he's standing on this big stage. He has this big screen behind him.
And he shows this cartoon. It's missiles being fired at the United States and then multiple reentry vehicles deploying from that missile. And the target was like Mar-a-Lago, Florida. I mean, it was a message to Trump, I think. And I don't know if you remember that. Everybody thought, like, that's kind of crazy. But, of course, this is what he does, right? He's a bully. He's a street thug.
And so it's important to recognize that his worldview and how he thinks about this and to make sure that when you think about deterrence, you think about deterring him based on what his perception of reality is. One of the other things that we're hearing a lot about lately, in addition to tactical nuclear weapons, is dirty bombs, a term that we really haven't heard bandied about since 9-11, where the nightmare scenario was that someone would walk into Times Square with a dirty bomb.
Now, Russia is claiming that Ukraine is about to use a dirty bomb. And of course, all the experts are saying this is ridiculous. It is a Russian disinformation campaign meant to cover Russia's ass if they wind up using a dirty bomb. So two questions. What is a dirty bomb?
And why is Russia claiming that Ukraine is about to use one? So a dirty bomb is actually, you know, a pretty crude device. It's basically conventional explosives surrounded by radiological material that then the explosion disperses and makes a certain portion of territory uninhabitable or, you know, inflicts casualties on a relatively low scale.
So why is Russia doing this? I mean, why would Russia kind of try to create the impression that the Ukrainians are going to use dirty bombs? First of all, it's ludicrous, right? I mean, the Ukrainians are gaining ground. They're waging a very successful campaign. They don't need to use anything like this.
But I think what Russia is doing is they're sounding us out, right? This is why Gerasimov calls the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, right? This is why Shoigu calls our secretary of defense, right? Because they're peddling this ridiculous story, but they want to hear how we're going to react. Will we tell them how we'd respond? And would that mean that we would respond in a certain way maybe if they use a tactical nuclear weapon?
So this is kind of like a fact-finding mission for them in which they're really analyzing us, I think, is what's happening. Now, the fear was that they're employing the same sorts of disinformation that they did in Syria when they would spread rumors that the Syrian resistance was about to use chemical weapons. And that's when the Assad regime would then commit mass murder of innocent people using nerve agents.
And so it was a precursor, you know, for their attacks in Syria using chemical weapons. And so that's a legitimate concern. But I just don't think that a dirty bomb is going to get them anything. But I do think what it did is it allowed them to conduct kind of a little bit of reconnaissance on us to see how we might respond.
It's very interesting to me the idea that this is kind of a reconnaissance fact-finding mission. Float the idea of a dirty bomb, float the idea of a tactical nuclear weapon. So give us insight. When Moscow hears the president of the United States saying at a fundraiser that we're sort of staring down Armageddon for the first time since the Cuban Missile Crisis, what do they take away from that?
They think, hey, well, it might work. You know, maybe we can coerce them or threaten them into backing off from their support for the Ukrainians. And by the way, Barry, it has kind of worked. You know, when we, I think last talk, you know, I said, hey, why don't we just give the Ukrainians now what we would give them, you know, after a million people were murdered, right? I mean, I think it's important to note that, I mean, over half of the children in Ukraine aren't displaced by this war. It's already a humanitarian catastrophe.
And during the course of the war, we started by, I think, almost greenlighting the invasion. I mean, it was extremely regrettable from my view that we talked about all the things we weren't going to do, you know, that we pulled our ships out of the Black Sea. You know, we evacuated our advisors. We evacuated our embassy. We offered to give Zelensky a ride out. You know, it was great. It was almost like we were greenlighting it. Well, the administration's recovered from that. They're providing, I think, very important and significant support to the Ukrainians and Europeans, or others are as well,
But it's time to really step it up. And I think one of the reasons we've been metering this support is because of Russia's threat to escalate the war. And so when Putin hears the president say, hey, we're getting close to Armageddon, he's like, yeah, score one for us. I think maybe we're getting through with these threats. You're suggesting basically that a lot of this is sort of rhetorical gamesmanship on the part of Putin and Moscow, which is frankly comforting to hear. Right.
But what if you're humbly, what if you're wrong, right? Isn't nuclear deterrence a real thing? Like the reality is you said the numbers before yourself. Russia, not us, is the biggest nuclear superpower in the world. And one of the lessons I feel like of the past few decades is when someone tells you who they are, believe them. So if Putin's saying I'm willing to do this, maybe we should take it seriously, right?
What do you say to that? I think that's right. You have to take it seriously. But I think that we have to not forget the don't part of don't take counsel of your fears, right? I mean, Putin is a coward. He's paranoid. He's xenophobic. And he's increasingly isolated. Does that mean he's not dangerous? No, it means he could be dangerous.
So it's important for him to recognize that there will be unacceptable consequences if he uses the most destructive weapons on Earth. I mean, I think the message to him ought to be, hey, you know, if you use a nuclear weapon, it's a suicide weapon. And of course, we have means to ensure that we can fulfill that.
through non-nuclear means. I think that there is no one who fears escalation more than him. HR, what do you mean when you say that? When you say it'd be a suicide weapon, meaning we take out the regime in Moscow? Like, what is it actually? What do you mean? Well, there'd be a whole range of options, I think, presented to the president, right? This is what would happen. And I'm sure all these contingencies have been developed.
One of the contingencies, I think, that would be an option would be to strike all of Russia's military assets outside of Russian territory. And that would include the Crimean Peninsula. It would include the occupied parts of eastern Ukraine. It would include the Black Sea Fleet. It would include maybe anything that he's got in Latakia and Syria. It would be, you know, it would be just, hey, watch Ukraine.
you know, your military largely go away. You know, I think there are cyber options that are probably pretty significant in terms of impairing Russia's economy even more, or, you know, certainly any kind of military infrastructure. But, you know, there are options that could be used on Russian territory, and these would be more dangerous. And I think what you would need to do, and I'm sure what's happened already, is that there's been a war game about this, right, to try to anticipate what the reactions are.
But, you know, of course, in war, there's no way to predict with a high degree of certainty what's going to happen. War is inherently uncertain because, as, you know, the Prussian philosopher of war, Karl von Clausewitz, said, war is a continuous interaction of opposites.
And you're interacting with the other, and the other has a say in the future course of events. So war is extremely dangerous as well because of the emotional and the psychological dimension of war. War unleashes a psychological dimension that defies any kind of ability to predict, which is why war should be avoided.
And this is why what Putin has done in terms of initiating the largest war on European soil since World War II is profoundly not only inhumane, but irresponsible in terms of security broadly across the world. HR, you've been in that war room, and I wonder if you can sort of take us
into what that looks like. You know, how does the US train and prepare for these different scenarios? If you can give us insight based on your experience in the Trump administration, I'd love to hear about it. - Right, so what we called it in the Trump administration, it was called the Policy Coordinating Committee. So this is really the assistant secretary level. And it's, you know, the Pentagon has the expertise kind of at war gaming, but you don't want it to be a Pentagon war game only because you want to bring to bear all elements of national power.
And also, of course, you need the full participation of all the intelligence agencies. So the first thing that's done is the drafting of the scenario. And then typically that will go up to the deputy's level or maybe the National Security Advisor will review it and say, hey, think about this. Have you thought about adding this to the scenario? Or they'll ask questions to the team that developed it. Then the scenario is refined. Really, the fundamental thing for an effective war game is a plausible, realistic, well-crafted scenario.
Then what you do is you have to assign roles. You need role players, and you need role players who are steeped not only in kind of the interest of the other, right, because we tend to mirror image if we don't consider the emotions and the ideology that drive and constrain others. So you would want people playing Putin who really know Putin.
who maybe have interacted with Putin for a while, maybe who were, you know, former CIA station chiefs in Moscow for a period of time, or knew him when he was the deputy mayor of St. Petersburg. So you want to assemble the right people with the right scenario, assign them those roles, and then also you assign roles to third parties as well, like how are, you know, key European Union countries going to react? You know,
You know, we're not the only country that has a nuclear capability. How is France going to react? How is the United Kingdom going to react? Because the way that they react and what they do can enhance deterrence or it could maybe reduce deterrence. I think what President Macron said the other day was foolhardy when he said we won't respond with a nuclear weapon. Well,
I wish everybody would just stop telling Putin what they're not going to do. Because I think actually the ambiguity, right, Putin not knowing what the response might be is one of the most important elements of deterrence. I'm wondering in this scenario, if we were in that room right now, if you would recommend that the person playing Putin assumes rationality on his part. So he's rational from his perspective, right? And so he's messianic.
You've seen, I think, one of the causes of concern. Lately, he's been using a lot of religious language to justify what he's doing. You see that he's under pressure, increasing pressure from the hyper-nationalist class around him. He's increasingly isolated, right? And you may have seen the photos of him with this recent nuclear exercise where he's at great pains to look like he's in charge, you know, behind this white desk and
Within the Kremlin, you know, when you see him at these meetings, you know, at the end of these long tables with somebody at the far end, I mean, these are a bunch of different studios that exist within the Kremlin because he's so fearful for his own security. He moves around to different locations. I mean, this is somebody who is isolated. Now, he's been out and about much more than he had in the past going around.
Going to Central Asia this Shanghai cooperation organization because he's desperate for support So I think that this is a really difficult time for him. He does feel isolated and beleaguered I think it's important to understand kind of his ideology if you want to understand just look at the speech that he gave maybe about two months ago about Ukraine that was full of his agenda to restore Russia to national greatness and
to restore the Russian empire, essentially. The essay that he published under his name in August of last year as well, I think is instructive. Go back to the Munich speech in 2007, you know, and it's not like a mystery in terms of what drives and constrains him. What drives him? What drives him is an obsession with restoring Russia to national greatness, really based on his sense of honor lost after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
And you have to remember, this is somebody who was really kind of a street thug, a punk, who came into the KGB, was not really stellar even in the KGB, but bought in to the authoritarian, corrupt Soviet model and ideology. And then he was left, he felt, without any support from Moscow when he was in East Germany. He was essentially a Russian Stasi officer in East Germany.
And from that point on, he was, I think, determined to do everything he could to restore Russia to national greatness. Now, how can he do it? Well, he knows he doesn't have the resources to compete on our own terms. So what he pursued since the year 2000, really, and accelerating after 2003, is
What you might call Russian new generation warfare he operated under the strategy to really drag everybody else down, right? The idea was that you know He would could be the last man standing if he helps us destroy ourselves with with polarization with disinformation to divide us on on issues that further on issues that already divide us, you know to help break apart NATO, you know to to rend the transatlantic relationship and
And then to create dependencies on Russian energy like he did with Germany, for example, and Europe broadly. But you blame the Germans for that foolishness, too, not just Putin, presumably. Absolutely, yes. You know, I mean, there's some things, Barry, that Donald Trump got right. I mean, he was offensive as hell, you know, but I'll tell you. I mean, on Nord Stream 2 and on burden sharing from allies, I mean, Germany really unilaterally disarmed.
and then rendered their economy vulnerable to Russian coercion. I mean, it made no sense, you know, and hopefully we've learned some of these lessons in connection with other competitions with China
especially, but I think that what Putin thought he could do is to help us defeat ourselves, right? And so when he invaded Ukraine, he did so like under four assumptions, right? He thought, okay, Ukraine's not even a thing, right? And they're going to collapse immediately. They don't have any national will. And I think part of that was he looked at Zelensky and goes, okay, here's a guy, he's a comedian, he's a ballroom dancer. Hey, I'm the shirtless guy on horseback. You know, I can take him, you know?
the old Saturday Night Live skit, "Kyennest Mas Macho," you know? And then he also thought that the Ukrainians were just gonna collapse. Well, they're not the Ukrainian Armed Forces of 2014. They made some significant qualitative improvements.
The third thing he thought is that his military prowess would be unstoppable. But, you know, he had built a Potemkin army. You know, the corruption that's pervasive in all institutions in Russia actually affected the military as well. And we saw them collapse. We saw their ineptitude, their inability to fight together as teams.
And then finally, Barry, he thought we would collapse. Our will was like close to zero. And I think that was tied to the disastrous surrender to a terrorist organization and withdrawal from Afghanistan, which was the topic of our last conversation. I think that he got all of those wrong.
We began this conversation with me sharing with you a bunch of sort of probability statistics of different experts, analysts, even the former CIA director who said that the probabilities jumped from 1% to 5% to 20% to 25% of nuclear war. What's your number? Gosh, you know, I think my number is 5% or below. You know, maybe that's wishful thinking on my part. You know, I just don't even want to think about the unthinkable.
But the reasons, again, Barry, it's not usable from my perspective. The consequences for him are going to be severe and far beyond what he might have considered before he used a nuclear weapon. He will become an international pariah overnight. And so you're going to have Moscow will be like Pyongyang. He'll be like North Korea on the Volga, right? And I think he has to know that. The people around him have to know that.
After the break, what General McMaster thinks of Elon Musk's 280-character peace plan. We'll be right back. Since the beginning of the war, the U.S. has spent something like $15 billion assisting Ukraine. And I think a lot of people, especially people who are looking at the economy here at home...
are wondering why. They're asking themselves, why on earth should we risk even the chance of a nuclear war with a superpower that has more nuclear weapons than we do over the question of the Donbass and Crimea? What do you say to that person? Well, I think the first answer is that actually the chances of a nuclear confrontation go up
if you succumb to Putin. He'll be like, oh, hey, that worked. Where can I apply that next? And whenever you hear people talk about an off-ramp for Putin, an off-ramp for Putin is just a chance to look for the next on-ramp. I mean, this is a guy who poisoned
a Ukrainian candidate for president in 2003 and permanently disfigured him. This is the person who conducted multiple attacks on Ukraine in terms of throwing elections, denial of service attacks against the Baltic states in 2007. He invaded Georgia in 2008. He first invaded Ukraine in 2014. He has enabled the serial episodes of mass homicide in the Syrian civil war. I mean, the list goes on.
right? I mean, it's not as if he'll say, okay, well, I guess, you know, I got all I can and now I'm done. You know, he's on this messianic mission to restore Russia to national greatness, and it doesn't end. And the second thing I think it's really important to note is that
$17 billion sounds like a lot, but when you consider what the Ukrainians are doing to help secure all of us from Russia's war-making machine, I think they're actually in many ways fighting on just a modern-day frontier between freedom and authoritarianism. And we know from the past that
that a leader like Putin is not going to be happy with a portion of Ukraine. We saw that with the renewed attack on February 24th of this year, and we've seen it with the pattern of his activities since he took over in the year 2000.
Most Americans probably had a vague sense of where Ukraine was in the world, but certainly couldn't tell you who Zelensky was, certainly couldn't tell you what Donbass was or Crimea was. Make the case to Americans who are skeptical of our involvement and our commitment to this war that this war is in the American interest. Well, you know, first of all, I think it's pretty clear that threats to our security that develop abroad can only be dealt with at an exorbitant cost
once they reach our shores. We're talking about a form of that, of course, with the threat of nuclear weapons. But we've seen that with cyber attacks as well. I mean, the attacks on some of our airport computer systems, I think that was a signal from Putin. In today's world, the moats of the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean don't mean everything they used to mean at the beginning of the 20th century.
And a great historian named C. Van Woodward wrote a great essay about this in the 60s about that transition called The End of the Age of Free Security. We've learned that from 9-11. And so I think what you're seeing with this war is that they don't stay contained either, right? This is not just Ukraine's war. This war has affected neighboring countries, obviously, with the refugee crisis. But it's also affected, as we've seen, global energy markets in a profound way and food security.
And so if this war continues in a way where Russia feels that it can accomplish its objectives, what does Putin do next? And so I think it's really important that Putin fails and that the Ukrainian people are able to reestablish their security and begin to rebuild. A lot of people I know who are skeptical of this war are skeptical of it for a very simple reason.
They look at the past 20 years of Iraq, of Afghanistan, of the pullout from Afghanistan, and they look and they say the very same experts, the very same group of people who are advocating for American involvement in this war are the same people who got us into all of those messes that really haven't worked out so well for us. What?
What do you say to that? Well, I'd say that's not really an accurate description of the people who are in charge now. The people in charge now were determined for us to disengage from complex challenges abroad. Remember, this was really the same group of people who were in the Biden administration, were in the Obama administration.
And they made the case that we needed to disengage from the Middle East broadly. And this was the pivot away from the Middle East and the triumphant announcement of the withdrawal of all of our troops from Iraq in 2011. Remember...
Then Vice President Biden called up President Obama and said, thank you for allowing me to end this goddamn war when he was in Baghdad. He called him from Baghdad. Well, hey, guess what? Wars don't end when you disengage from them. What happened? By 2014, a group called ISIS, the new version of Al-Qaeda, was in control of territory the size of Britain.
and had created a humanitarian catastrophe. And they became actually the most devastating terrorist organization in history, conducting almost 100 attacks outside of the territory of Syria and in Iraq. These are the same people who said, hey, we're going to intervene in Libya, but we're going to avoid the mistakes of the Bush administration in Iraq. And we're not going to do anything there to consolidate any military gains and get to a sustainable political outcome. Well, the war is still going on.
In Libya so in trying to avoid what they saw as the mistakes of the George W Bush administration they actually exceeded those mistakes and
These are the people, you know, who, along with, you know, the Trump administration, surrendered to a terrorist organization and withdrew from Afghanistan, you know, under this sort of fantasy, right, that the Taliban will share power. The Taliban will impose a more benign form of Sharia. You know, the Taliban will respect women's rights. The Taliban will be a partner with us against terrorist organizations, right? I mean, it's ludicrous.
So I think there is a case to be made against interventions that are not directly in the U.S. interest. There's a case to be made against interventions based on the idea that you think it might be easy. Barry, I think we're dealing a lot with the legacy of the Iraq war. And everybody still wants to debate, I think, should we have done it, invaded Iraq? I think the most useful debate would be who the hell thought it would be easy and why did they think it would be easy?
And I think paradoxically what's occurred in our experience in recent wars is an extremely high degree of incompetence, incompetence based in part on taking a short-term approach to long-term problems. And that short-term approach to Afghanistan and Iraq, you know, I would describe it as, you know, going into both of them thinking we could take the George Costanza approach to war and just leave on a high note.
Right. I mean, just go in, do your military and leave on a high note. I mean, the consolidation of gains to get to political outcomes has never been an optional phase in war. And so paradoxically, that short-term mentality lengthened those wars and made them more costly. And then Americans lost faith in the effort. And I think you had poor war leadership there.
over multiple administrations. Like in Afghanistan, we talked about this last time, you had three presidents in a row saying, hey, it's not worth it. And then they cite public opinion polls. Well, hey, Americans want us to get out. Well, why the hell do you think that is? You're not even explaining to the American people, you know, what is at stake and what is a strategy that will deliver an outcome that's worthy of the costs and consequences. And
And so I think that's what's required in Ukraine as well. One of the things that I think is extremely interesting right now is that the loudest voices pushing for what they call peace are not just left-wing progressives. It's the growing coalition on the new right.
who are saying we can avoid the worst case scenario by pressuring Zelensky to just give up the fight for Crimea and the Donbass, give Putin a little of what he wants, negotiate and get out of there. You know, former Secretary of State National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, not exactly a dove, has also suggested that Ukraine give up territory and put an end to this war. What do you make of that idea?
give up that territory and call it a day? And what do you make more broadly of the fact that many people who are on the right are embracing a sort of outlook on foreign policy that we typically think of as being reserved for the political left? Right. So I do think there's a new dynamic here in terms of what I would call, and I'm maybe, you know, being a little bit, maybe too critical on this, but I do think that there is the self-loathing far left that
that actually believes that we're the problem in the world, right? They bought into the new left interpretation of history. They bought into post-colonial, post-modernist theories in which capitalist imperialism is the problem. Therefore, if we disengage from complex challenges abroad, that's an unmitigated good. But now that's almost met, you know, it almost goes full circle with the realist and so-called realists, the really romantics. But the neo-isolationist far right believes
who share with the far left the belief that what we do or choose not to do is decisive toward achieving a desired outcome. And the problem with both the far left and this neo-isolationist far right is they don't acknowledge the degree to which others have agency, influence, and authorship over the future.
And so the problem is that they attribute really what Putin is doing to our actions, right? Oh my gosh, NATO and NATO expanding and the prospect of NATO expanding even further, you know, in the discussions in 2008 of maybe Georgia and Ukraine joining. That really provoked Putin. But I think it should be clear to everybody right now that Putin actually had aspirations and designs in mind, far
far beyond those that were in reaction to what we did, right? And so I think it's really important for us to understand that when you're facing an adversary, that the only way to do that, I think, is really effectively through strength, that actually weakness is provocative to somebody like Putin. And I think that's the argument that has to be made. But Barry, you know, this growing neo-isolationist movement is understandable, right?
I think these are the people who were left behind by transitions in the global economy, accelerated by China's accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001. These are people who were most affected by the financial crisis in 2008, 2009. Meanwhile, they were disappointed by the unanticipated length and cost of
of the wars in Iraq and in Afghanistan. Add on to that an opioid crisis. But the persona I'm thinking of here when I mention the sort of the new right is not the person living in Ohio or Pittsburgh where I'm from that's sort of been left behind and totally disenchanted by the
economic and foreign policy over the past two decades. I'm thinking about, say, someone like David Sachs, the venture capitalist, one of the founders of PayPal. I'm thinking about Elon Musk. Elon Musk, whose Starlink satellite communication system has been absolutely crucial for the Ukrainians, right?
also posted a Twitter poll for what he thought was a likely outcome for the war. And he suggested in that poll, among other things, that Crimea be recognized as Russia and that the UN supervise elections in regions that Russia had falsely annexed and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And people called him a traitor for this. Ukraine's outgoing ambassador to Germany told Musk to fuck off.
So I guess I just want to steel man that position. I don't think it's simply people that have been left behind. I think there is a growing cadre of highly sophisticated intellectual entrepreneurs who are coming to that conclusion as well. Well, you know, I think successful business people oftentimes are not the best people to understand the dynamics of war.
And, you know, they operate in systems that are tended to be bound by rules. They do business deals that they expect the other party to adhere to. And, of course, as I mentioned, you know, war really unleashes an unpredictable psychological and emotional dynamic. It has as much to do with ideology as it does with interest, for example. So I think...
Whereas business people tend to assume a rational actor. You know, Robert McNamara was a smart, smart guy, right? But he didn't know what he didn't know. And he and those around him assumed rationality on the part of the North Vietnamese communists. And they were writing memos before the beginning of the bombing campaigns against North Vietnam.
that actually likened Ho Chi Minh to the reasonable man in English common law. And they were talking about establishing, no kidding, in the memos, common law patterns of attacks against North Vietnam and to convince the Vietnamese communist leadership to desist from their support for the Vietnamese communist regime.
in the South. And they meant these acts of war as kind of signals, diplomatic signals. Hey, well, you know, when bombs are falling, that's war. And that does unleash an unpredictable psychological and emotional dynamic. And I think that might be what Elon Musk, for all his genius, you know, and he is a genius, you know, he doesn't get, I think. And I think at this stage, after the Ukrainian people have suffered so much, right, we've seen the horrors of
Bucha, right? We've seen the coverage. We have to make sure we don't become inured to that. And we have to recognize that the people who deserve to decide when to sue for peace are the Ukrainians. They deserve our support, but
But they ought to be the decision makers, you know, not a billionaire entrepreneur who, by the way, has a lot of important business interests in China. And China is about to go the same way that Russia's gone in terms of, I think, a very severe, probably disastrous for the world economy, but a severe disengagement from the world economy and decoupling. And I think maybe that might be in the back of Elon Musk's mind because, you know, he's very heavily invested in China.
Speaking of China, I've seen a lot of defense analysts arguing we're not invincible. I would add we have a very weakened national will.
We need to focus our limited resources on our most vital adversary, our most vital national interest, and that is China and preventing China's hegemony over Asia. And we shouldn't let ourselves get bogged down in an Eastern European war when China could invade Taiwan at any moment. How do you respond to that?
Well, I think some people make this argument in a way that is, I think, analogous to little kids' soccer. You know, they all want to run to the ball, you know what I mean? And they don't realize that the competition with China is a global competition. The competition with China is playing out in Ukraine to a certain extent because, remember, it's Russia and China that declared no limits to their partnership right before the Beijing Olympics. It's really worth, Barry, going back to read that statement, the joint statement between Xi Jinping and
and Vladimir Putin. The message to us was, hey, you know, you're over United States. You're over Western democracies. This is our era. We're in charge now. Well, how's that working out for them, Barry? It's not working out very well. You know, Russia is failing utterly in Ukraine. Putin is single-handedly devastated. You know, his economy is going to get even worse. You know, Xi Jinping has cracked down on the tech sector. He's imposed all the zero COVID policies and he's destroying his own economy.
and isolating himself. I mean, even Europeans now are calling him a competitor and acknowledging that doing business with China, investing in China entails significant risk and reputational risk, as well as the realization we ought to stop underwriting our own demise with
with China. But these problem sets are interconnected. You know, you have the Iranians now, you know, selling the drones and probably missiles as well to Russia. You have Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps advisors, you know, helping assemble those drones and teach Russians how to use them to murder Ukrainians. And then you have, you know, Kim Jong-un, you know, the first one to recognize Russia's annexation, illegal annexation of some of these territories, which, by the way, he doesn't even control now because of the Ukrainian counteroffensive.
And then he's fired 40 missiles, North Korea has this year. And what he said is a rehearsal for a preemptive nuclear attack to threaten the South with destruction to achieve red-collar unification. So these problems are interconnected. And I think that we have to recognize that we have to compete effectively against these adversaries to demonstrate that they can't accomplish their objectives through the use of force. I mean, we need...
essentially good old deterrence by denial. And you don't get that through really portraying weakness.
We're in a moment right now that feels a little bit like the lead up to World War I. In Eastern Europe, we have the war in Ukraine that we've been talking about for the past hour. In the Middle East, tremendous amount of uncertainty, including some would call it a revolution, but certainly an uprising in Iran against the Islamic Republic. In Asia, we have China, we have North Korea. It seems like tensions are just...
at a boiling point wherever you look, and old alliances are being tested. And I want to get your view as a general, but also as a historian, about this moment that we're facing in global geopolitics.
What's your sense of where we are? And do you think that we could be headed for another major world war? You know, I think the chances are higher than they've been since the end of World War II. And the reasons I think are geostrategic, as you're mentioning, I think the analogy to 1914 actually works, you know, and actually one of my favorite historians, Margaret MacMillan, was way ahead on this. And in 2014, she wrote a great long essay called The Rime of History, which
in which she made an explicit analogy between 1914 and geostrategic conditions today.
You have really revanchist powers on the Eurasian landmass who are determined to extend their power and influence. You have relatively weak countries on what the geostrategic analysts and philosophers, I guess, Mackinder and Spikeman called the rimland, the rimland of the great world island of the Eurasian landmass.
And, of course, you know, those weak countries invite, you know, aggression, various forms of aggression, whether it's island building in the South China Sea, the direct threats to Taiwan, bludgeoning Indian soldiers on the Himalayan frontier. This is all from China's perspective. You know, the increased military aggression in the Sea of Japan, threats to the Senkakus.
And then the economic coercion that we've seen China engage in with setting debt traps for countries to create servile relationships that give them influence. And then straight out economic coercion against like Australia or Estonia, for example. And then, of course, with Russia, you see the brazen reinvasion of Ukraine as an example.
So the Rimland is the area that's being contested at this moment. And this is, of course, occurring at the far reaches of American power, which is why we need alliances. We need capable forward position forces to deter.
And then of course the geostrategic strategists of the early 20th century talked about the shatter zones. And the shatter zones were in Central Asia and in the Middle East. And we're seeing that now because we haven't seen the end of Afghanistan. Afghanistan is an ongoing humanitarian catastrophe, but it's still a major security issue because there are 20 plus or so terrorist organizations that reside in the Afghan-Pakistan border area. They, by the way, are pursuing the most destructive weapons on earth.
You have, I think, increasing tensions and violence in the Middle East. Iran is beleaguered. The Supreme Leader is beleaguered, as he should be. I think we should be doing more to support the Iranian people and more to create problems, more problems for the Supreme Leader and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and the Basij.
We could talk about that for like another hour. But I think what you see is the cycle of violence intensifying to a certain extent in the Middle East. Iran is becoming more aggressive in Iraq, in Yemen, the threat to UAE and Saudi Arabia. And I think what you could see is
is a desperate Iran attack Israel directly as they have been really bolstering their rocket capabilities trying to get the precision rocket capabilities with Hezbollah and with Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza and and maybe try to use this proxy army that they've developed in Syria so hey
So if you were in the president's ear right now, right, if you were advising President Biden on how to manage all of these very scary flashpoints you just went through, what would the prevailing strategy be?
The prevailing strategy would be to be confident because we're winning right now. We're winning because, you know, democracies look ugly. And we've talked about it. You've talked about this on Honestly and in your column about the polarization in America, you know, the degree to which we're divided. But I'm telling you, democracies, they look ugly from the outside, right? But we actually, the benefit of our democracy is we all do have a say in how we're governed, right? We have a tremendous capacity for self-correction and to strengthen our republic.
And I think that's been our story, right? We've come out at difficult times stronger. These authoritarian regimes, they look really strong from the outside, but they're actually very weak.
So I would actually be aggressive in terms of trying to reach the people within authoritarian regimes with alternative sources of information. I would be trying to poke holes in the firewalls in Iran and in North Korea. You mentioned Elon Musk and the tremendous service he's provided in eastern Ukraine. Hey, how about airdropping Starlink terminals over Iran or into North Korea?
I think there's a promising development in Russia. There's been a 30% shift in where Russians get their information. 30% of the population that used to get their information only from state-run media are now getting it from various Telegram channels, for example. My friend Vladimir Milov, who's a Russian political opposition figure, has 30 million people tuning into his station every day. And so I think we ought to be confident.
I think these regimes, they appear strong, but they're actually quite weak. If you look really, you know, look at how Xi Jinping had Hu Jintao marched out of the Great Hall of the Republic. Is that a sign of strength? I don't think so.
And so I really think that we ought to be doing everything we can, you know, not only to strengthen ourselves, right, which needs to be our focus. And you've alluded to this already. We have a lot of traumas to overcome and work to do on improving our own communities at the local level, as well as, you know, our politics and our policies at the national level. But, you know, I think that we ought to also be trying to reach into these authoritarian regimes with alternative sources of information.
I never like to ask people to predict the future, but if you wouldn't mind sharing
What do you think is going to happen over the next six months to a year in this war? Well, I mean, it depends a lot on the amount of support we're able to give the Ukrainians in terms of what they need to sustain and accelerate their offensive. They've been extremely successful in the north part of the country. The offensive in the south is much more difficult. There are a lot of water crossings. You know, the Russians may blow this dam and flood the area around Kursan.
But what the Ukrainians really need from us is long-range fires, they need long-range surveillance, they need better air defense, and they need protected mobility and mobile protected firepower, tanks and armored personnel carriers, right, to conduct the offensive. So I hope that we do give all that support. We pull out the stops, right? We don't allow Putin to continue to threaten us and therefore meter our assistance to the Ukrainians.
And Ukrainian will is there, right? It's just really their capacity to continue the offensive. On the Russian side, Russia cannot win. I mean, they cannot, no matter what they do, they cannot renew the offensive. They're building Potemkin army after Potemkin army. The offensive in the northern part of the country recently that recaptured 1,400 square kilometers of territory,
That was the first wave of replacements. These were like hapless groups of soldiers. They weren't units, you know, and they folded immediately. Now he's rushing more untrained troops to the front. That's not going to accomplish anything except more casualties. And so Russia can't win militarily. So how does this play out?
What they can do is they continue to rain down on Ukrainians these missiles and the Iranian drones and continue to commit really mass murder indiscriminately by attacking residential areas and by attacking the energy infrastructure in Ukraine.
And so I think really the way this could end is if the Ukrainians are able to recapture all their territory and then essentially put even more pressure on Putin internally and see what happens internally in Russia. It's just so hard to predict really how it's going to play out. We don't know what's going to happen internally. Putin's under more pressure, but he's pretty secure in terms of his control of the security services. He is a 50,000 person palace guard, 50,000 person palace guard.
He has moved all the critical functions into that palace guard, like communications, for example, right? He studied how Gorbachev got pushed out of power because, you know, they shut down his communications. So he moved communications into the palace guard so that he's insulated from any kind of action like that. The people around him aren't going to do a palace coup because they know they're going to go down with him, right? I mean, they're tied to him. And so what are you left with? You're left with a popular uprising, potentially.
I mean, that's a long way to go in Russia because they've brutalized their own population. There are more political prisoners in Russia today than there were in the 1950s.
You know, there are more people in the internal security services than there are in the Russian armed forces. But more and more people are questioning this so-called special military operation, Barry. So I think there are cracks happening now. You know, there are so many casualties coming back. And you've had some uprisings in parts of the country really started by mothers who lost their sons in this war in Dagestan, for example.
And then, you know, think about what Putin told the Russian people. He's like, hey, man, I got this. You know, this is special military operation. This will be over soon. Now he's going to them to bail him out, trying to conscript 300,000 people. You know, so the economy is slowly deteriorating. You know, they just shut down an auto factory outside of St. Petersburg, 15,000 workers. I mean, so I think we have to be in this for the long haul, Barry. I mean, I wish I could say, hey, it could be over in a few months. I think this could still go on for years.
But we have to maintain our resolve. HR McMaster, really, really appreciate you coming on and making the time. Hey, thanks, Barry. So great to be with you. And honestly, it's the best. I love it. My thanks to HR McMaster for making the time. And my thanks to you, as always, for listening. If you like this conversation, share it with your friends and family. And if you didn't like it, if you found yourself in passionate, vociferous disagreement with the general, that's also great.
Use this conversation as a catalyst to have your own debate with the people in your life about not just the war in Ukraine, but American foreign policy more generally. Last but certainly not least, if you want to support Honestly, if you believe in the kind of journalism that we do, subscribe. Go to our newsletter at commonsense.news and support us today. See you next time.