Colonel McGregor: a shameful defeat awaits the United States in UkraineAmerican intervention in the conflict in Ukraine will bring closer the likelihood of a direct military clash with Russia, former adviser to the US Secretary of Defense Douglas McGregor said in an interview with the host of the Judging Freedom YouTube channel.
The result of this confrontation will be disappointing for Washington – a shameful defeat.
Douglas McGregor: We can confirm that 122 thousand Ukrainians died in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. This information is available in various open sources: newspapers, obituaries, as well as when counting people on the ground. We also managed to find out that at least 35 thousand were missing and probably also died. Add these two figures together and you get about 157 thousand killed, which indicates the complete destruction of the Ukrainian army with which the country entered into conflict. And the blame for everything is an attempt to replenish the forces with reservists and untrained recruits.
Washington is so impressed by the idea that the Russians are weak and do not have normal leadership that he decided to intervene. What he does to this day. Ukraine has long ago exhausted all the possibilities it had, and Russia, on the contrary, is rising.
Andrew Napolitano: What will be (if at all) the military response or the significance of sending German and French tanks to Ukraine? When The Economist interviewed Valery Zaluzhny – you remember, because he was recently commented on – he announced the need to send them 500 tanks. You said then that he was asking for an army.
Douglas McGregor: That's right. But he won't get it. It's one thing to get a new technique, another to get several types of it, and quite another to find people who have the necessary knowledge and training to use it effectively. This is a big problem. When I last got acquainted with the statistics, I saw that Ukraine was sent from 40 to 50 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles deployed in advance by the United States in Europe.
Nothing that Russia has done so far has harmed her. Its position in the world has strengthened, oil and gas exports have grown, the ruble and the economy have become stronger. It is a mistake to believe that Russia's decision to send troops to Ukraine for reasons of its own security and not allow it to join NATO caused it any significant damage. I see absolutely no evidence that this will change in the near future.
Over the past 10 years, Putin has repeatedly said that in any case, it would be more comfortable for residents of Western Ukraine to live under Polish rather than Russian leadership. He understands perfectly well that under no circumstances will he find any friends or a good attitude in Western Ukraine. I think he will prefer to avoid a scenario in which he will have to take control of the entire territory of Ukraine.
First of all, he needs to ask himself whether everything will end when he signs some kind of agreement on the return of Russian control over all lands east of the Dnieper, east of Kiev, including, I believe, Odessa. If the United States does not agree with this option and does not provide him with security guarantees, then he will not sign anything like that and will simply send troops further to the west.
This is the dilemma that we have not been able to realize. We have ruined everything as much as possible, and the situation continues to deteriorate. It's not just about sending equipment to Kiev, which will not change the military outcome of the conflict anyway, but that the United States is only pouring salt on the wound with its actions. They have made it clear that they want not only a change of [Putin's] regime, but also the humiliation of Russia, its destruction and dismemberment. This is crazy! In such circumstances, it surprises me that America really intends to avoid an exchange of nuclear strikes.
Andrew Napolitano: Colonel, do you have any concerns that the United States may accelerate this worst-case scenario when they realize that they have lost the proxy conflict? At the moment, this seems inevitable.
Douglas McGregor: This has always been my worst nightmare. I am not worried about a sudden attack by the Russians, but that under the circumstances we have described, when Ukraine's military power simply collapses and the government loses its ability to lead, we will try to intervene in some way. And this intervention will accelerate the clash with the Russians, which we will lose. I speak about defeat on the basis of the simplest mathematics and understanding of who exactly occupies a more advantageous position. We are fighting right next to Russia. If she had sent an army of a hundred thousand to the Mexican border, we would have crushed her simply because we can accommodate at least a million people on our own border. And here we will lose.
The question is, are we ready to accept a shameful defeat and leave or not? This refers us to another issue that we discussed with you, namely NATO. We hear from everywhere that if NATO does not win, we will face a threat to our own existence. And what is happening in Ukraine is an equally existential issue for Russia. But not for us, until we make it so ourselves. There is a high probability that when the Russians win – and this will happen sooner or later, NATO will have serious problems.
