The Megyn Kelly Show - The Truth About Russia and Ukraine： Narratives, Moralizing, and Humanitarian Crises, with Rod Dreher and Michael Repass

00:00:00.420 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:11.640 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:15.040 As Vice President Kamala Harris heads overseas to address the war in Ukraine with some of our allies,

00:00:22.460 we're going to take a deep dive into what role the United States should play in this evolving crisis.

00:00:27.880 The stakes are extremely, extremely high if we get more involved.

00:00:33.340 And it should not be done because the paper makes you feel something.

00:00:39.160 It should not be done because cable news pundits have an opinion, God forbid.

00:00:43.340 It should be done because we're being super thoughtful about it,

00:00:47.120 and we genuinely believe it's in the best interests of the United States.

00:00:52.840 There is no disputing that the Ukrainians are suffering, and we all feel for them.

00:00:57.520 Russia did invade a sovereign nation, and millions have been forced from their homes.

00:01:03.380 But are we getting the full story? Are we being misled? Are we being fed propaganda?

00:01:09.560 Should America get involved militarily? And what are the risks to us, to our sons and daughters, if we do?

00:01:17.860 And if we don't?

00:01:18.600 These are serious questions that we are going to raise in a thoughtful discussion with two men on opposite sides of the spectrum today.

00:01:25.700 I'm going to be getting a fair and balanced presentation.

00:01:28.420 Next hour, I will be speaking with retired Major General Michael Repas, and you'll find him fascinating.

00:01:35.580 But we're going to begin with somebody I've been dying to interview for a long time now.

00:01:38.440 His name is Rod Dreher. He's senior editor at the American Conservative and author of Live Not by Lies.

00:01:45.500 Rod is currently in Hungary. Rod, thank you so much for being with us.

00:01:49.480 Megan, it's a treat to be with you. Thanks for having me on.

00:01:51.940 Well, I think you're brilliant. I read all that you write, and I consume it voraciously,

00:01:56.640 because you have such a different take on certain things, and you're unafraid.

00:02:00.620 And you have been throughout the whole woke crisis that we've been dealing with.

00:02:05.000 You've been very brave. You call it like it is.

00:02:07.860 And so I was particularly interested to see how you would feel about Russia, Ukraine, and what's happening,

00:02:13.040 and you haven't disappointed. So let's get into it.

00:02:17.880 From a piece that was posted on March 1st, there's this.

00:02:21.120 So many people seem desperate for World War III. So can we talk about that? How is that happening?

00:02:30.040 Why is that happening?

00:02:31.740 I think it's happening because people are desperate for narrative.

00:02:35.980 We're desperate for the moral clarity that believing that there is a good side,

00:02:42.680 the white knights on one side, and the evil Darth Vader people on the other.

00:02:46.900 And we're being driven by passion. We are being set up, I believe, by the discourse that's coming out

00:02:55.260 from our mainstream media. And if you in any way dispute the leadership of Washington,

00:03:02.560 if you dispute anything that is proposed, like the no flies on that sort of thing,

00:03:07.500 you are immediately jumped on and accused of being a Putin apologist. You're carrying water for Putin.

00:03:12.920 I got to tell you, Megan, I remember back in 2002, after 9-11, as our country was marching up to the

00:03:21.000 Iraq war, I was living in New York at the time. I was working for a National Review magazine.

00:03:26.200 I had been in New York on 9-11. I saw the South Tower fall in front of my eyes. I was so hyped up

00:03:34.180 with moralistic fervor. I wanted some Muslim country to pay for what happened on 9-11.

00:03:41.080 But if I had admitted that to myself that openly, I would have immediately seen that this is no cause

00:03:48.480 to go to war. So I didn't do that. What I did was open myself up to any propaganda that came from the

00:03:54.360 U.S. government and other hawks that justified war. And I even remember writing for National Review,

00:04:00.240 well, we may not succeed in democratizing Iraq, but gosh, we sure need to try. I believed in the power

00:04:06.040 of our own good intentions as Americans. And it led to a disaster. I'm frantically trying to avoid

00:04:12.620 the same thing happening this time around. But so far, it seems like I'm losing.

00:04:18.180 Believed in the power of our own good intentions. And I know you've written about how you would have

00:04:23.040 thought that 20 years of less than stellar results in Iraq and Afghanistan would have caused people to

00:04:32.140 at least pause before putting blind faith in our military industrial complex.

00:04:37.820 And yet here we go again, because the narrative and it's starting to creep into both sides. You say

00:04:43.720 you've lost Democrats and Republicans starting to unite now around the narrative that we're the

00:04:48.040 leader of the free world. We have an obligation to step in, put total faith in. No one doubts the

00:04:53.180 abilities of our guys in uniform, you know, our guys who actually would be serving and executing

00:04:57.280 such a mission on the ground or from the skies. It's it's the leaders. It's the it's the I don't

00:05:03.920 know, are they NGOs who try to push wars on us over and over and sort of try to pull the levers behind

00:05:09.960 the scenes? It's guys like Millie, you know, who are more worried about white rage than they are

00:05:15.040 about actually winning. You know, there isn't that much pause. There's like a small pocket of pause.

00:05:21.900 But for the most part, we seem to be gearing back up. Do we not? Yeah, absolutely. And it is

00:05:27.540 unnerving if you live through the post 9-11 atmosphere in this country. I remember David

00:05:33.540 Frum, who at the time was a George W. Bush speechwriter. He wrote a cover story for National

00:05:38.780 Review that came out just before the war started in 2003, denouncing Bob Novak, Pat Buchanan and other

00:05:45.380 people on the right to criticize the war as, quote, unpatriotic conservatives. And it turns out

00:05:52.120 Buchanan, Novak, all of them were right about the war. But who's now one of the cheerleaders for we

00:05:58.140 must get involved now to stop Russia? David Frum. A lot of the same people are still here saying it

00:06:04.320 again. And so many of us seem to be willing to listen to them because we see on TV these atrocious

00:06:10.180 images of Putin's troops bombing the Ukrainians. Nobody denies that this is horrible. But what,

00:06:16.760 as you said at the top of the show, the important question, the most important question is,

00:06:21.400 is it in U.S. national interest to get involved with a nuclear, trying to fight a nuclear armed

00:06:27.340 superpower? These questions seem almost treasonous to the ruling class. And by ruling class, I mean,

00:06:33.020 the Democrats and the Republicans, I mean, the big business, the entire blob that that is dead set on

00:06:40.820 managing this discourse. It's not just about, well, did Putin invade invade a sovereign nation?

00:06:48.580 Of course, he did. We know that. And you are no Putin apologist at all in any way. I've read all

00:06:52.960 your stuff. It's not about whether he's good or bad or what he did is good or bad. You're real clear

00:06:58.660 on those. Bad and bad. But that doesn't answer the question about whether this is in our best

00:07:04.880 interest to get more involved than we are right now. Can I spend a minute on from, I'm sorry,

00:07:10.620 not in front, but on David Brooks, because you pointed out his writings in a piece you wrote

00:07:15.100 recently. This is how he's writing about this situation. This is, I think, I'm assuming this is

00:07:21.280 right after we saw the unified European response, you know, sending weapons and cutting off relations

00:07:27.540 and so on. He writes, there's been a restored faith in the West, in liberalism, in our community of

00:07:34.020 nations. There has been so much division of late within and between nations. But now I wake up in

00:07:39.020 the morning, pick up my phone and I'm cheered that Sweden is providing military aid to Ukraine.

00:07:44.160 And I'm awed by what the German people now support. The fact is that many democratic nations reacted to

00:07:49.800 the atrocity with the same sense of resolve. He goes on this week. We saw that foreign affairs

00:07:55.620 like life is a moral enterprise and moral rightness is a source of social power and fighting morale.

00:08:04.440 And you see it a bit differently. You don't quite see it as just a moment to wave the flag and feel

00:08:11.160 good about this international unity in disgust. Yeah, that's right. And David Brooks is a friend

00:08:18.000 of mine. He's a good and decent man. But I think he's deeply wrong about this. I think that

00:08:22.400 moralism, when it's completely divorced from realism, can be a source of great destruction.

00:08:29.820 I saw a couple of nights ago, Stephen Colbert went on his show and he said that, yeah, the price of gas

00:08:35.920 is going to go way up because we've cut off Russian oil, but that's a price I'm willing to pay for a

00:08:40.500 clean conscience. This man makes $16 million a year. It's not going to matter to him if the price of gas

00:08:47.080 goes up. I live in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, most of the time. It really matters to people in Baton Rouge

00:08:52.900 and South Louisiana, where we have to drive long distances to get to work, things like that.

00:08:57.920 But these people who are part of the blob, part of the ruling class, they don't care. They don't seem

00:09:06.300 to care. Or rather, they're so blinded by their sense of moral righteousness that they're not thinking

00:09:10.740 about the morality of doing this to their own people. This is what upsets me so much, Megan.

00:09:17.000 The same class that did not see Donald Trump coming because they had lost touch with the

00:09:22.380 American people. And look, I'm part of this class too. Don't get me wrong. I didn't see Trump coming,

00:09:27.460 but he came and he didn't come out of nowhere. In a similar way, Vladimir Putin in Russia did not come

00:09:33.800 out of nowhere. He came out of the chaotic and destructive 1990s after the Soviet Union fell

00:09:40.160 apart. We sent all these American experts over there to help Russia get itself in order, become

00:09:45.960 a free market democracy and all that. And it turned into total chaos. The Russian people love to have

00:09:52.180 Putin come in, a strongman come in and set everything in order. Again, I think Putin's a bad man,

00:09:58.060 but if we don't stop and think about how these things came to be in our world, we're going to

00:10:04.340 keep plundering into one destructive war after another. And this is why I know you must have

00:10:09.820 seen the things that Professor John Mearsheimer, the University of Chicago foreign policy said,

00:10:15.600 right? He's getting pummeled because this man said, pointed out how the West has pushed and pushed and

00:10:21.820 pushed Russia on Ukraine. And now Russia is pushing back and we're shocked. This came from nowhere. I mean,

00:10:27.540 it's just crazy. And I'm not saying that we shouldn't do anything.

00:10:30.860 And Putin kept saying, if you keep pushing me, this is what I'm going to do. And we didn't quite

00:10:35.780 believe him and now he's doing it. Right. And when I make this kind of argument,

00:10:40.420 some of my critics say, well, you have to understand Putin invaded a sovereign nation.

00:10:44.600 Yeah, he did it. He was wrong to do it. But guess what? We threatened nuclear war over the Cuban

00:10:50.540 missile crisis because we quite rightly did not want Soviet missiles in Cuba. This is how Russia is

00:10:57.120 thinking. You don't have to agree with them, but you do have to understand what Russia is thinking,

00:11:01.760 what your opponent is thinking in international relations so you can avoid war. So you can manage

00:11:07.760 these conflicts with wisdom and restraint and prudence. And right now in the United States and

00:11:14.280 in Western Europe, especially in the U.S., we see wisdom, restraint, prudence, the idea of trying to

00:11:20.400 understand the opponent as treasonous, as unpatriotic. This is going to end a disaster.

00:11:26.780 Understand is not the same as excuse. Understand is the route to wisdom and the route to being able

00:11:32.280 to do better and handle the next conflict better. Never mind this one. But let's spend a minute on

00:11:36.380 on that because we it is true. We would not. You've made this point a few times in your writings.

00:11:41.700 We would not allow China to partner with Mexico and put threatening missiles, never mind nuclear

00:11:50.780 warheads in Mexico pointed at the United States. We would not allow that. That would be really clear

00:11:56.380 for us. And and that's kind of how Putin sees Ukraine and its closeness, its growing closeness

00:12:04.200 with the West. That's right. That's right. And if you look at it from a foreign policy realist point

00:12:10.360 of view, you understand immediately why no great power could tolerate this. And I don't know why

00:12:16.800 it is so difficult for us to just see that this is how the world works. We don't have to like it,

00:12:22.160 but we have to deal with it because Russia has a big army and Russia has nuclear missiles. But this is

00:12:27.980 what happens when you moralize everything. It doesn't bring moral clarity. Rather, it fuzzes things up

00:12:33.960 so you don't have to deal with messy facts. And similarly, with the second order effects of what

00:12:40.140 we're doing with these sanctions that are is going to bankrupt Russia, I agree that we have to have

00:12:45.360 some kind of response to Russia. We have to make Russia hurt for what it did. On the other hand,

00:12:50.200 how on earth can we see completely obliterating the economy of a nation of 140 million people that

00:12:57.360 already hates us? What good is going to come out of that? I just people don't seem to be thinking

00:13:02.820 about it. If we look back to World War Two, as everybody wants to do, the Versailles Treaty that

00:13:08.320 ended World War One, it put punitive reparations on Germany. Germany couldn't pay it, the chaos and

00:13:16.720 the suffering and the economic depression that came to Germany gave rise to Adolf Hitler. I fear that

00:13:22.980 we may, if Putin goes down because of this, and he might, because Russian history shows that when there

00:13:27.960 is a major loss in war, Russian leaders tend to fall. We may wish we had Putin back, but we see

00:13:35.700 who comes in after him. We did. We utterly humiliated them after after World War One and

00:13:41.920 devastated their economy and their military. And that's ultimately what led to Hitler, you know,

00:13:47.800 rising up and finding a scapegoat group and saying, you know, he would switch it around,

00:13:52.100 he would restore national pride in Germany and so on and so forth. So there is a real danger

00:13:57.000 in, you know, you hurting Russia is not a real thing. Hurting the Russians is the actual people.

00:14:06.020 And so like, I think about, okay, imposing these crippling sanctions on, for example,

00:14:10.240 the oligarchs. I'm okay with that, Rod. I'm like, I'm fine. You know, they're close enough to him and

00:14:14.860 they made their money corruptly. Great. I, do I care if one of them loses their yacht or their,

00:14:19.740 you know, luxury property in London, not even a little, but the Russian people, I got to know

00:14:25.160 somewhat my few trips over there over the past couple of years and they're lovely and they,

00:14:29.020 they love America and they don't like the fact that our leaders get into these skirmishes to put

00:14:34.180 it lightly. Um, they want to know more about us and our way of life. They're curious. They'd love

00:14:39.020 to visit America. They love it when we visit Russia and we're treating them effectively like

00:14:44.140 they're calling the shots here. Yeah, exactly. And you've seen this insane anti-Russian sentiment with

00:14:50.340 people like the opera singer at the Metropolitan Opera being sent away because she refuses to

00:14:56.980 denounce Putin and you're seeing Russian. She denounced the war. She denounced the war, but she

00:15:02.180 wouldn't denounce Vladimir Putin. That's her home country. That's her president. Exactly. I don't think

00:15:07.340 anybody should be compelled to denounce their own country or president in a time of war. It would be

00:15:12.180 wrong to, to make Americans do that. Even if we did, did oppose our war, but you know, all this crazy

00:15:18.240 anti-Russian fanaticism is everywhere. Now it is causing us to become maniacs and not think clearly

00:15:26.800 through this. You know, I remember Megan, going back to the Iraq thing again, uh, we were told all

00:15:31.820 the time by our media and by our president, don't blame all Muslims for nine 11. And you know what?

00:15:37.020 They were right to say that because this was a very tempting thing. I wrestled with this all the time

00:15:41.960 in my heart back then, because I was so angry over nine 11, but it was important that we had to

00:15:47.320 realize that you can't blame an entire people for the actions of a few. Um, do you remember too,

00:15:53.600 that we traded with Stalin during the cold war? We did not treat Russians this way, even when, uh,

00:15:59.640 the communist totalitarianism ruled that country. And we were toe to toe with them, uh, with nuclear

00:16:05.540 arms on both sides. We still found ways to trade with Russia and to have cultural exchanges with Russia

00:16:10.840 and to recognize the good that's in the Russian people, even though they were ruled by an evil

00:16:15.360 government. Why can't we do that now? And we're not pausing at all to think about the fact that

00:16:20.960 we're creating a next generation of enemy. You know, the Russians a month ago didn't see us as

00:16:26.840 the enemy. And I don't think Americans looked at the Russian people that way either, but you raised

00:16:31.640 an interesting point in one of your pieces about how in the same way, I mean, the Russians right now

00:16:36.640 are being, they're being manipulated by Putin and his, his PR propaganda. You know, they're basically

00:16:42.400 all Western media has effectively been kicked out of Russia because they just passed an emergency law

00:16:46.640 saying, you know, if you, if you say anything that sort of disparages Russia's role in this war,

00:16:51.460 you could be, you could be in trouble. You could go to jail. So CNN and other organizations that had

00:16:55.940 presences in Russia have, have pulled their journalists fine by Putin because he likes to

00:17:00.700 control the media anyway. And the, you know, RT, all these things that these are state run news

00:17:05.260 operations over there. So he controls the narrative with the Russian people. That's why they do believe

00:17:09.380 that they're going in to fight Nazism and so on. They're, they're not stupid. They just don't have

00:17:13.660 access to all the information that the world does. Fair point. I get it. But too few of us,

00:17:21.160 even in the wake of Russiagate and the COVID lies, aren't pausing to ask whether we too are being

00:17:30.920 manipulated by propaganda. Oh boy. Yeah, you're absolutely right there. I, just before we came on,

00:17:38.120 I saw that YouTube had pulled an Oliver Stone documentary about the 2014 coup that the United

00:17:44.480 States helped, helped organize in Ukraine. I've not seen this documentary, but I would like to see

00:17:51.780 it now. I would like to know their point of view, but now you can't see it because it's off of YouTube.

00:17:57.280 We see this happening over and over and over again in our free country. I thought one of the things

00:18:02.840 that made us better than the Russians was that we believed in freedom of speech. We believed in

00:18:09.260 freedom of information. We trusted the American people to see claims being made in newspapers, on the

00:18:16.140 internet, on in media, and judge for themselves. I watched RT, Russia Today, last week before it was taken

00:18:23.140 off the air here in Europe, just because I wanted to see what the Kremlin was saying. I know it's state

00:18:28.600 propaganda, but I wanted to find out what the Kremlin's line was so I could better understand

00:18:34.540 this war. I don't have that opportunity anymore because it's gone. And yet somehow Americans believe

00:18:41.480 that what we get in the New York Times, CNN, and all of our media is somehow free of taint and free of

00:18:49.880 a narrative being spun. And boy, that is so dangerous. If COVID didn't teach us that,

00:18:55.320 then maybe we are ineducable. Why? That's a basic question. But why? Why do you think the media,

00:19:03.640 you know, the New York Times, CNN, and so on, why do they sound so very pro-war? You know,

00:19:08.040 because I remember back in the day when we had 9-11, when we had international conflicts,

00:19:12.920 it was more the Republicans and Fox News leading the charge for greater military action. After 9-11,

00:19:18.500 everyone was uniformly, you know, almost in favor. So why? Why is it that, you know,

00:19:24.900 this organization that we think tends to, well, it does tend to lean left in its politics,

00:19:29.700 become, they sound more like, you know, war mongers is too harsh, but definitely pro-military

00:19:37.220 intervention than we might expect? Yeah, that's an important question. I think there are several

00:19:43.600 answers there. First of all, the four years of the Trump administration with the fake Russiagate story

00:19:49.760 worked all the people on the left up into hating Russia, because Russia is the one that gave us

00:19:55.640 Donald Trump. And so this has been happening for years now. And I think it's very easy for them to

00:20:02.120 fall into Russia conspiracy theories on the left. And of course, the mainstream media is heavily on the

00:20:07.420 left. That's not even controversial to say. But I think it's also the case that even though

00:20:12.660 Vladimir Putin and the Russians do bad things, so do the Chinese. The Chinese do terrible things,

00:20:19.880 but we don't have the same, we're not lining up with a big business and woke media to attack the

00:20:26.560 Chinese or the Saudis. The Saudis are even more anti-gay than Vladimir Putin is. Why are we going

00:20:34.460 after Putin? I think not only is it the Trump that we blame him for Trump, but I think the fact is that

00:20:40.000 the Russians are Europeans. They look like us. And I think there is this sort of implicit racism in the

00:20:47.040 way the media attacks these things. The Russians are Europeans and they're Christians. And so we hold

00:20:54.380 them to a higher standard. I think everybody ought to be held to the same standard. I'm not saying we

00:20:59.040 ought to go easy on Russia, but let's be fair and let's think about our biases and why it is intolerable

00:21:06.200 when some countries do it. But we turn a blind eye when other countries like China do it.

00:21:12.800 That's fascinating. Now, forgive me, but you sound a little like Nicole Hannah-Jones, who's been saying

00:21:17.900 even Joy Reid, I know, who has been saying we're we're only interested in Ukraine because they're white.

00:21:23.580 That's our racism. We you know, we're only interested in them because they're white. And I remember I mean,

00:21:27.900 I was talking about this with somebody yesterday on the air saying I was at Fox News when the Syria

00:21:34.160 war broke out, the civil war and it was a nightmare. And, you know, the chemical weapons and the whole

00:21:38.920 thing. And we covered it as our lead night after night after night. We were very interested in what

00:21:45.020 was happening in Syria and the refugee crisis that followed. And those two morons just weren't paying

00:21:49.940 attention because they see everything through the lens of race. So they were probably figuring out how

00:21:53.200 to tear down more monuments to Abraham Lincoln. But it's interesting that you you're making kind of a

00:21:59.440 similar point. Yeah. You know, I gosh, I hate the idea that I'm on the same side as those people,

00:22:06.240 but but I'm trying to think about why it is that that, you know, you get in trouble if you called

00:22:12.460 it the China COVID, the China virus. That's racist. That's racist. But we it's open season on the

00:22:19.300 Russians. Everything the Russians do is horrible. We shouldn't even try to understand it, because if we

00:22:24.360 understand it from their point of view, we're giving aid and comfort to the enemy. I'm trying to make

00:22:28.660 sense of this too, Megan. And that's one of the only things I see what you're saying. So in other

00:22:33.720 words, to put it a different way, if if the invading country had more people with brown skin

00:22:40.020 and the and the victims of the invasion were still the white Ukrainians and there are black Ukrainians

00:22:46.680 too, you think the media would be covering it differently? In other words, just so easy to hate

00:22:51.560 Vladimir Putin and his people, most of whom are white.

00:22:55.620 Yeah. And because Putin is affiliated with white conservative Christians, we saw on Sunday,

00:23:03.660 the patriarch of Moscow, Kirill. And by the way, I'm an Orthodox Christian. So this guy is in some

00:23:09.360 sense part of my own church. Kirill gave this really shameful sermon talking about how the war in

00:23:16.740 Ukraine, part of it is part of the international fight against homosexuality. We're going to keep

00:23:21.580 Russia from being queer, keep the Donbass from being queer. Well, I think that was just embarrassing.

00:23:27.600 And that's the best I can say about is that it's embarrassing that he said that. On the other hand,

00:23:32.900 right after the war started, the head of MI6, the British secret top spy agency, put a tweet out saying

00:23:40.760 that the most important difference between Vladimir Putin and us in the West is that we support LGBT

00:23:47.860 rights. Now, why is it that if the Russian Orthodox patriarch, who's maybe under Putin's thumb,

00:23:55.480 or at least he's closely aligned with Putin, if he brings the culture war, the LGBT culture war,

00:24:01.620 into an explanation of the conflict in Ukraine, it's evil, and we get hysterical about it,

00:24:07.000 that the head of MI6 comes at it from a progressive point of view. Well, then that's just awesome.

00:24:12.220 It just shows how much farther advanced we are in the West. That's the kind of double-mindedness

00:24:18.260 and hypocrisy that I think is blinding us to some complicated realities about this war.

00:24:24.740 Well, we just put it on the board. Let's leave it up there. Put it back up, please,

00:24:27.520 so we can read it for the audience watching this on YouTube. And for those who are listening,

00:24:32.320 it reads as follows from the MI6 guy.

00:24:33.880 With the tragedy and destruction unfolding so distressingly in Ukraine, we should remember the

00:24:38.880 values and hard-won freedoms that distinguish us from Putin, none more than LGBT plus rights.

00:24:46.540 So let's resume our series of tweets to mark LGBT blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, all the letters 2022.

00:24:54.780 Really?

00:24:55.480 This is war we're talking about. This is war with a nuclear power. And, you know, yet the ruling class,

00:25:01.760 as I like to say, I'm turning into a Marxist, it sounds like, but this is what I see from both

00:25:06.700 the Republicans and the Democrats, this need to just throw everything we have at Putin just to see

00:25:13.680 what sticks. And I'm afraid it's going to lead us into a bad place. I tell you, Megan, when I'm sitting

00:25:18.720 here talking to you from Budapest, capital of Hungary, Hungary borders on Ukraine. Here in Budapest

00:25:25.220 last night, I went through one of the main train stations and you could see bedraggled refugees

00:25:30.680 coming here from Ukraine. The Hungarians are reaching out with other Europeans to help them.

00:25:35.840 It's a very, very sad thing. When you talk to Ukrainian, I mean, sorry, to Hungarians about

00:25:40.860 what's happening here, they're scared to death. And they're scared not because they love the Russians.

00:25:46.240 I mean, this was a country that was occupied by the Soviet army for 40 years and invaded in 1956

00:25:52.040 to put down a revolution. They have no love for the Russians, but they're scared that Western Europe

00:25:58.280 and the United States, the NATO countries, their NATO, is stumbling into a war with Russia, a war

00:26:03.460 that if it is fought, if it goes beyond Ukraine, it's going to be fought on their own land. The place

00:26:09.820 I'm sitting in right now, my apartment in central Budapest was where the worst fighting of World War

00:26:14.800 II took place when the Germans and the Red Army faced off against each other in the final days of

00:26:20.740 World War II. These are people, the Hungarians, who grew up on stories of their parents and their

00:26:25.720 grandparents surviving that war, surviving starvation, surviving the death camps, and on and on.

00:26:32.260 It matters to them in a way it can't possibly matter to Americans who are sitting on the other

00:26:37.200 side of the ocean. And just being here among these people and trying to understand from their point

00:26:42.900 of view and through the stories of their families, what it means to have a war fought on your land

00:26:47.700 has been really clarifying for me. And it was interesting. We can get into this, but

00:26:52.620 there was just a poll out about how do you feel about the possibility of American troops going over

00:26:58.560 to Ukraine? I mean, who would you support that? And the more money you make, the more supportive of

00:27:05.360 that you are, right? Because it's probably not going to be your kid who goes. But those who make the

00:27:10.860 lowest money in America on balance are not in favor of it because they know it's going to be their kids.

00:27:17.700 It's going to be their kids and their sons, their daughters, their husbands. It's going to be

00:27:23.360 them. And all these people sitting in Washington and New York in the think tanks talking abstractly

00:27:29.980 about what's going to happen. It's not going to be their kids, by and large, that get sent into a war.

00:27:34.780 It hasn't been their kids, by and large, who were sent off to Afghanistan and Iraq for the last 20

00:27:40.020 years. My brother-in-law had to spend a year of his life in Iraq. One of his friends from my hometown

00:27:46.940 in Louisiana, a town of 2,000 people, he came back from Iraq, and he can't go back into his church.

00:27:53.560 His wife told me, I don't know what happened to him. All he can say is, what I did over there,

00:27:57.860 God can never forgive. I mean, it's just heartbreaking. This was a kid who played baseball

00:28:02.720 on my team when I was a kid. Ordinary people being sent into these wars to serve their country,

00:28:08.320 to do what they're told, and they're coming back broken, maimed internally, maybe, and their bodies,

00:28:13.640 too. And look, sometimes we have to go to war, but by God, we ought to think about it,

00:28:19.480 and we're not thinking about it. Well, I mean, just to jump back, it's like,

00:28:23.140 I think after 9-11, that was one of those moments. I definitely think we needed to respond. Did we

00:28:27.660 need to have a 20-year war in Afghanistan and then go invade Iraq? No, go hit Iraq. We did not need to

00:28:32.760 do that. And that's more clear now, in retrospect, some people were fortunate enough to see it clearly

00:28:37.300 at the time. But I think, you know, given the right provocation, the right moral justification,

00:28:43.600 those numbers would be very different, you know, across the board. Rich, poor, middle class,

00:28:47.440 wouldn't matter. They'd all say, yeah, let's go fight the way it was after World War II,

00:28:51.220 during World War II, where, you know, people were lying about being 18 when they were under 18,

00:28:55.860 just so they could go and fight. They knew, they knew what was right, you know, and what duty looked

00:29:01.880 like and what love of country required of them. This one is far murkier. And we are smart to stop

00:29:08.640 and pause and figure out whether, you know, what the balance is in terms of our interests and theirs

00:29:14.920 and our commitment to be a leader of the world and to protect those who are too weak to protect

00:29:20.360 themselves and so on. Thing is, they're not NATO and we don't have any deal. Okay, stand by. There's

00:29:25.160 so much more to go over with Rod. I'm going to ask him, is there a red line, you know, that Putin

00:29:29.580 could cross. That would justify American intervention for him. And later we will be

00:29:34.960 joined by a top military guy for his response. He's a bit more hawkish. So you get both sides

00:29:41.100 presented today. Rod, so let's talk about the unique position of Ukraine and why it matters,

00:29:54.100 that it's it's not like England, you know, an island with water around it. It is right on Russia's

00:30:01.700 border. And you you write, frankly, about the unique position that puts them in and the fact that

00:30:09.440 as much as we'd like to say they they're pro-democratic and they want to be a free country and they want

00:30:16.140 to join the EU and they want to join NATO, and it's not for Vladimir Putin to say that they cannot.

00:30:23.880 Again, it's a little more complicated.

00:30:27.360 A little more complicated. Yeah. The the name Ukraine comes from the Russian word meaning on

00:30:32.840 the border. It's on the border of Russia. And not only that, Megan, but the whole Russian state,

00:30:40.400 its its nationhood and its religion all began in Kiev in the year 988 with the baptism of the Prince

00:30:48.680 Vladimir of the Kievan Rus, as it's called. All of this is ancient history to us, but it's not to

00:30:54.040 the Russians. They see Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, as that's their national Jerusalem. That is a city

00:31:02.880 that means the world to them. Again, it doesn't give them the right to invade and take Ukraine over,

00:31:08.140 but it's really, really complicated. And not only for national security reasons, but for cultural

00:31:13.220 and religious reasons. These things seem completely blind or we can't see them as Americans because

00:31:19.940 we tend to look out at the world and think the rest of the world is just like us. But it's just so

00:31:26.300 foolish because the Russians feel so passionately about Ukraine. And I think I respect what the

00:31:32.620 Ukrainians are doing. Zelensky has behaved heroically, but it's not like Ukraine is this

00:31:39.200 plucky little country that has never had an oligarch and has never been involved in anything

00:31:44.240 bad. It's being picked on by big bad Vladimir Putin. It's just not the case. We like to see

00:31:51.080 Zelensky as Luke Skywalker and Putin as Darth Vader, but that's just not how the world works. And if we

00:31:57.840 insist on imposing that narrative on this complicated part of the world, we're going to get to serious

00:32:03.380 trouble. I have to say too, Megan, that I think that cancel culture has become a part of our own

00:32:09.920 response, America's response to this. Our elites especially have gotten so much in the habit of

00:32:14.920 when they see somebody and something that offends them morally of wanting to smash it, to X them out,

00:32:21.740 to exile them from, from their purview and send them to the margins. Well, I think that's partly

00:32:28.360 explains why so many businesses and institutions have been trying to get rid of everything Russian

00:32:33.720 as if any, any connection to Russia makes them impure. This is what worries me too. When I see what

00:32:39.680 businesses have done to Russia, you know, within two weeks, we made Russia a black hole of the world

00:32:46.040 economy. I really do believe that in the end, what's being done to Russia today is going to be

00:32:52.340 done to dissidents in this country. Some point tomorrow, all we have to do is look back at what

00:32:57.660 Justin Trudeau did to the people in Canada who supported the truckers. He went after their bank

00:33:02.440 accounts. That could happen here too. And I'm afraid that we're setting ourselves up for that.

00:33:07.300 I mean, that worries me too, right? I worry about that myself, but I also see, you know,

00:33:13.400 if you're starting at square one, there's a very clear difference between being non-woke in America

00:33:18.720 and being Vladimir Putin invading a sovereign nation and killing civilians, right? So it's like,

00:33:23.560 it might be hard for some people to make that leap when, when we're talking about a slippery slope.

00:33:28.620 Yeah, that's true. I mean, I don't want to make a direct comparison there, but if we think about how

00:33:35.420 businesses prior to all this in England, for example, banks were refusing to do business with

00:33:41.220 people who they consider to be white supremacists. Well, if I ran a bank, I wouldn't want to do

00:33:46.720 business with a white supremacist either, but where do you draw the line? Do people who are

00:33:51.660 bad actors in the judgment of financial institutions and companies, do they have a right to participate

00:33:57.780 in commerce? This is a question that is live in China with the social credit system. And I just worry

00:34:05.600 about this. Maybe I'm worrying too much about it, but when I hear Elizabeth Warren- No, no, no.

00:34:09.440 Yeah, but when I hear Elizabeth Warren- No, we talked about yesterday about how Michelle

00:34:12.140 Malkin got banned by Airbnb, she says, because of her association with a guy who does appear to be

00:34:18.000 affiliated with a, or he himself is a white supremacist, or I don't, I, all I know is that

00:34:22.300 he's said absolutely hateful things about Ben Shapiro and, and mocked shooting Ben Shapiro with his

00:34:28.180 yarmulke on. Not a good guy, this guy, Nick Fuentes. Right. But she, so she's got an association

00:34:33.520 with this guy and she refuses to condemn him. Okay. That's Michelle's business. That's Nick Fuentes'

00:34:38.460 business. But Airbnb is saying she, she's not allowed to do business with them. I mean, that

00:34:43.920 does scare me. They call Tucker a white supremacist and he's not, is he next to go? Like, obviously they've

00:34:50.880 thrown the racist word against me, against half of our country at this point. How far, like,

00:34:55.480 how far could they take that? Right. If, if these companies get to decide if they're the moral

00:34:59.940 arbiters of us all. Yeah, exactly. I'll give you an example too. Ryan T. Anderson is one of the

00:35:06.260 prominent, most preeminent Catholic intellectuals in the U S he wrote a book about transgenderism came

00:35:12.760 out two or three years ago. It was critical of transgenderism, but it was compassionate and

00:35:17.240 learned and intelligent. He found out one year ago, exactly that Amazon had stopped selling the book.

00:35:24.060 They didn't even notify him. He just found out because one of his readers discovered it.

00:35:28.420 When Harry met Sally. Yeah. Yeah. When, when Harry, when Harry became Sally.

00:35:32.680 Became Sally. Yeah. Um, they told Ryan that we're not going to sell books that, that depict

00:35:38.840 transgenderism as a mental disorder. Now on Amazon today, you can buy Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler,

00:35:44.960 but you can't buy Ryan Anderson's book. Isn't that weird? And here's the thing too. Amazon has a right

00:35:50.700 in a free country to sell or not sell whatever it wants to. But because Amazon controls something

00:35:57.020 like 80% of the American book market, if they decide that they're not going to sell a certain

00:36:01.980 type of book, like a book that takes a certain stance on gender ideology, then those books are

00:36:07.500 not going to be printed because no publisher can afford to do that. This is the kind of thing I talk

00:36:12.140 about in my book, live not by lies, the soft totalitarianism coming in. When you have all the

00:36:17.220 companies and all the institutions playing off the same ideological playbook, they can bring a world

00:36:22.800 of hurt to people they consider to be dissidents. Right. And they're, they're just gearing up. I

00:36:29.120 mean, to see soft little doughy, Justin Trudeau unleash the measures he did on those truckers was

00:36:36.320 stunning. And not just the truckers, but just any random civilian who donated $25 to them. It was

00:36:41.820 stunning. So if you don't think it can happen here at home, it's already happened in a more liberal

00:36:46.180 country, um, with a very weak leader, uh, who somehow I'm not saying I respect it. I did.

00:36:52.720 It's disgusting, but somehow found the nerve to actually unleash those kinds of tactics on his

00:36:57.400 own people. And here in America, we've had even more practice over the past two years in the wake

00:37:01.700 of the black lives matter thing and the trans stuff and all the banning and the canceling we've been

00:37:05.320 doing. We've got way more practice. We were getting in our 10,000 hours, just about every,

00:37:10.120 every month here in America in, in, in how to hurt people whose views we disagree with.

00:37:14.920 Right. And we're training ourselves to be illiberal. I mean, I say liberal, I mean,

00:37:19.760 liberal in the broadest sense when, in which we respect, uh, classical liberal values like free

00:37:24.900 speech, freedom of religion, freedom of association. We, we are supposed to respect hearing other

00:37:30.480 people's point of view and trying to reason through that. All of that is being thrown out the

00:37:35.060 window in this moralistic fervor. And it's happening with wokeness, uh, which has become the successor

00:37:41.340 ideology to liberalism within American institutions. And I think that we can see the, the, the moral

00:37:49.280 panic that has been unleashed against all things Russian. They're even kicking Russian movies out

00:37:54.800 of film festivals here in Europe and Glasgow and Stockholm. I think this is part of the same thing.

00:37:59.380 We have thrown aside the, the liberal instinct that tells us, and when you and I were growing up,

00:38:04.820 we were all, we were taught that, wait a minute, you have to be tolerant of other people. You've got to

00:38:08.800 give other people their say, you never know. You don't know everything. They might have something

00:38:12.560 to teach you. All of that is gone now. What about the, you wrote something about how,

00:38:19.080 you know, on the left in general, there's a belief, never let a crisis go to waste,

00:38:22.780 right? Uh, the Saul Alinsky and Barack Obama belief and so on. Um, and I wonder about this because

00:38:29.280 somebody was making the point recently that it just happened to be coincidental that COVID

00:38:35.440 necessitated all the school reforms that the unions had been demanding for years, right? Like

00:38:42.200 they got these huge cash payouts to pay for all these necessary precautions, but really they just

00:38:47.360 used them for all the things that these far left unions had wanted for years. Okay. So coincidental

00:38:52.240 how it worked out. So what about that, right? Do our, our Democrat leaders in the white house on down,

00:38:58.120 this is a crisis. We're looking at, you know, potentially $7 gas. They're already seeing

00:39:05.280 almost that number in California. It's over four on a national average highest it's ever been.

00:39:10.560 Um, so what do they do with that, Rod? Well, I'm not sure if there is a plan in place here,

00:39:17.500 like some of the more conspiratorially minded people say, but I think what we're going to see

00:39:22.500 is the further ruin of the middle and the working classes. And it's going to make everybody more

00:39:27.620 dependent on the government and, uh, for, for our livelihood, for just survival. And this is what

00:39:34.340 I don't understand about what Joe Biden is doing with the, with the price of gas and with all of

00:39:41.220 these sanctions that is going to make life a lot harder for ordinary people. Um, is it's going to cause

00:39:47.860 a lot of civil unrest in this country? And when you look at this country at how divided we already

00:39:52.720 are, and it becomes since Trump years, since, um, you know, with COVID, with black lives matter,

00:39:58.160 all of this stuff, we are at each other's throats in some ways. We looking at the crime explosion in

00:40:03.780 cities, all of that stuff didn't just go away, Megan, because, uh, Putin invaded Ukraine. I think

00:40:09.260 some of the things that Biden and our leaders are doing or calling for is, uh, actually going to make

00:40:15.000 it a lot worse and a lot more difficult to handle these things. Once the price of basic goods, of

00:40:20.900 food, of gasoline goes through the roof and people start going bankrupt. Who does this benefit? That's

00:40:26.540 the thing that I worry about. And it's a huge distraction. It's a huge distraction. And Putin's, uh,

00:40:32.200 war, you know, what's happening in Ukraine. Now we're all focused on that. It's bumped everything off of

00:40:36.680 the front pages. I'm not saying this is why the United States is reacting the way it is, but you do have

00:40:42.440 to keep an eye on that because there are some massive battles unfolding right here at home

00:40:46.820 on the domestic and political front. And Joe Biden has been losing them. And he's well aware of that.

00:40:52.460 And his poll numbers have gone up over the past week, a bit, not hugely, at least according to one

00:40:56.780 or two polls. But, you know, my concern is what's happening to our kids in schools, what they've done

00:41:03.180 to us through the COVID restrictions and people losing their jobs, their livelihoods, their entire

00:41:08.100 businesses, what's happening with inflation, which already we saw the White House yesterday try to

00:41:14.340 blame the gas prices on Vladimir Putin. And when Peter Doocy said they were high before he invaded

00:41:20.260 Ukraine, there was total denialism, Rod. I mean, they're going to try to blame everything that's, you

00:41:26.180 know, the State of the Union as we approach the November midterms on Putin.

00:41:29.960 Right. Yeah. And I'm afraid, too, that the Republican Party is going to be lulled into

00:41:36.360 a sort of numbness or this with with the whole attack by Putin and trying to blame Biden and all

00:41:43.820 this. And they're not going to stand up for their own constituency. Tucker last night on his show was

00:41:48.500 laying into the Republicans saying, why are you being warmongers on this? It's the people who vote for

00:41:53.580 you in many states who would be sent over there. It's the people who vote for you, who look to you to

00:41:59.500 stand up for their economic interests, but you're not doing it. And I think that what we could see,

00:42:04.760 Megan, depending on the economic fallout, we'll probably see the Republicans take Congress back

00:42:10.320 again. I hope that happens. But if they don't take Congress back and do something for ordinary

00:42:15.080 people for once, who knows what's going to happen after that? We could see real civil unrest in this

00:42:21.200 country. So, I mean, we are facing an energy crisis. I mean, we had Michael Schellenberger on the show

00:42:26.540 yesterday saying, you know, the worst since 1973. We are now facing a global energy crisis,

00:42:31.640 which is the worst we've seen in about 50 years. The time to solve it was yesterday, a year ago,

00:42:38.400 five years ago, 10 years ago. Not now. You can't. That's not something you can turn the spigot on and

00:42:43.180 off also all that easily. So I wonder what you think we should be doing in response to Putin,

00:42:51.320 because Biden pulled the 7% of oil exports that we get from Russia. We're no longer going to get

00:42:57.400 that. He refuses to drill domestically more or make it easier for us to become energy independent

00:43:02.200 again. More nonsense from the White House about renewables, which are not going to get it done.

00:43:09.360 But we still live in this fantasy world of saying it is, it is. And we're good people. We're going to

00:43:13.180 save the world. So but what what should he have done when when Putin invaded? What do you think

00:43:19.580 the correct response would have been? You know, I actually liked what Biden's initial response to

00:43:25.580 it. He seemed measured and careful. I do think that we have to have sanctions at some level

00:43:30.900 sanction the hell out of the oligarchs. I'm all in favor of that. Make Russians pay or the Russian

00:43:36.280 elites pay a certain price and certainly make it absolutely clear to the Russians that if you go one

00:43:42.760 inch over the red line of NATO borders, there will be war. And we have to have that has to be a credible

00:43:50.180 threat. But I am not an economist. I don't really know to what extent sanctions really do affect

00:43:57.300 the behavior of regimes of authoritarian regimes. I've seen research saying that they actually don't do a

00:44:04.300 whole lot. They make the person imposing them feel feel good, but they don't do a whole lot.

00:44:08.480 I think the thing that concerns me the most, Megan, is we can't have a fair discussion and an

00:44:14.440 accurate and informed discussion about sensible and effective things that we could do to punish

00:44:19.300 Russia for what it's doing because of this moral panic and the censoriousness of our media and of our

00:44:25.640 ruling class. There is zero chance we should be doing anything that could cost American blood and

00:44:33.080 treasure without being extremely thoughtful about it. You know, we got into we've we should have

00:44:39.640 learned that lesson by now. And, you know, Congress is the one that's supposed to be able to declare

00:44:44.100 war. Let's see what they have to say about it. You know, let's let the American people weigh in on it.

00:44:48.680 Joe Biden is not a king. And before we start World War Three, we really do need to be thoughtful about

00:44:54.140 whether it's in our best interest. That's all you've been saying. It's a smart point. And you,

00:44:59.600 Rod, are always well worth the read. Thank you for coming on. Please come back.

00:45:04.760 Oh, it was a pleasure. Thank you so much, Megan.

00:45:07.020 All the best. And don't forget, folks. Wow, that was great. You can find the Megan Kelly show live

00:45:11.980 on Sirius XM Triumph Channel 111 every weekday at noon east and the full video show and clips

00:45:17.120 by subscribing to our YouTube channel, YouTube dot com slash Megan Kelly. If you prefer an audio

00:45:22.600 podcast, subscribe and download on Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:45:27.360 There you can find our show yesterday that I was referencing. You can find the original interview

00:45:31.880 I did with Michael Schellenberger, the author of Apocalypse Never. That was episode 94 for Climate

00:45:37.520 Dummies. It's a great primer. He's so easy to understand. You will feel so much smarter after

00:45:43.120 that hour plus. And you'll find all of our archives there. More than 270 shows. You'll love it.

00:45:49.680 So it's a fascinating discussion with Rod Rear. And I think, you know, his urging is to not let

00:46:01.140 one's emotions dictate one's response to this, because while you may be upset seeing what's

00:46:06.900 happening in Ukraine, and I think we all are, there could be a lot more upset coming our way

00:46:12.620 if we see American blood and treasure being spilled on the streets of a country that's not in NATO and

00:46:18.680 that we don't actually have an obligation to defend. Now, that doesn't speak to our moral

00:46:24.980 obligation, but that's more complicated. As we discussed with Rod, the media seems to be beating

00:46:30.400 the drumbeat for us to do more. And it's interviews like this that make us want to. Here is a former

00:46:36.360 Ukrainian lawmaker on MSNBC.

00:46:38.580 I understand. It's horrible. There are a lot of Americans out there who are, sorry, who are saying

00:46:43.840 they want a no-fly zone as well. But again, so far, what we're hearing from officials, they don't want

00:46:48.620 to start another world war.

00:46:50.000 There is no explanation. Believe me, there is no explanation. I'm asking Biden, I'm asking Congress,

00:46:57.540 please help our nations. This is about humanity.

00:47:03.680 Hannah, I'm, I'm, I'm sorry.

00:47:12.600 Oh, it is heartbreaking. Should we do more? What's the case for doing that? Up next, Major General

00:47:21.960 Michael Repas. He's retired now and he's got some strong thoughts on what our role in this ought to

00:47:28.500 be. Don't go away.

00:47:37.020 My next guest supports the calls for limited no-fly zones across Ukraine. Michael Repas is a retired

00:47:43.280 U.S. Army Major General. He commanded special operations during the 2003 invasion of Iraq and

00:47:48.620 later saw the deployment of U.S. Special Forces across Europe. He's the CEO of Able Global Solutions,

00:47:54.420 and for the past few years, he's provided advisory support to the Ukrainian military

00:47:59.500 on a U.S. government contract. Welcome, Major General. Thank you for being here.

00:48:05.040 Well, Megan, it's nice to be here. I look forward to the discussion today.

00:48:09.820 Okay, so what's your best case for the no-fly zone? Because, you know, our last guest and many people,

00:48:15.400 including even Michael McFaul, who was the former U.S. ambassador under President Obama to Russia,

00:48:21.500 and he's been very tough on Russia, even he said that that's a bridge too far. We're talking about

00:48:26.940 the beginning of World War III. We cannot do that. Okay, so the first thing I want to say is that

00:48:32.460 all the easy solutions for anything that we're contemplating doing in Ukraine are just not there

00:48:41.020 anymore. The time for doing easy stuff was two weeks ago. Everything from here on out is going

00:48:46.320 to be high risk and very difficult to do. So that's the first thing. So in regards to the no-fly zone,

00:48:52.700 there are a couple of things that are being said about them. The first one was General Breedlove,

00:48:58.180 Phil Breedlove, who was the former commander of NATO, Supreme Allied Command Europe. He laid out the

00:49:06.320 case for no-fly zone in a foreign policy piece. And I understood his argument, and he articulated it

00:49:13.140 very well. As a career airman, he has probably the best understanding of what it would take.

00:49:19.660 And what it would take would be, in the ideal case, would be a very strong commitment of the

00:49:25.260 coalition of the willing to set up the fly zone, to support it, and to sustain it over 24-7

00:49:31.880 for an indefinite period of time. That's a tremendous commitment of air power, logistics,

00:49:38.840 and it does put the airmen and people that support him in harm's way if they do that.

00:49:45.520 One of the things that he identified up front was very honest about it. He said,

00:49:50.140 to properly do a no-fly zone, you have to take out anything that would threaten the aircraft,

00:49:56.340 specifically radars, anti-air missiles, smaller caliber guns, things like that, that would

00:50:05.840 interfere with the execution of the mission. So that's a difficult task. And he pointed out

00:50:11.740 accurately that many of the radars and sensors that we'd be talking about are, in fact, based in

00:50:17.760 Russia. So if you have to take those air defense assets out, both the radars and the launchers and

00:50:25.660 missiles, they could potentially be inside of Russia. That obviously would be a horizontal and

00:50:31.920 vertical escalation in intensity and would accurately point out that potentially escalating into World

00:50:38.980 War III here, as some people have said. On the other hand, I think there's a different possibility

00:50:46.560 out there that serves multiple purposes. I think that there's a scaled down version of this that can

00:50:52.620 be worked out by the UN, Russia, and Ukraine, and any of the interested parties that are

00:50:58.660 willing to support the idea I'm about to propose here. So first, it would take a diplomatic agreement

00:51:05.600 to establish some safe zones for refugees and civilians to enter into. We've done this before

00:51:12.380 in other places. We can talk about that historically in a moment. And then there would be humanitarian safe

00:51:17.940 corridors where people can get out and then sustainment in the form of food, medicine,

00:51:25.260 relief supplies, et cetera, could be trucked in or brought in by whatever means, by sea, by air,

00:51:33.400 whatever is allowable in the negotiated agreement. As part of that negotiation, there would have to be

00:51:39.420 rules established where air defense assets controlled by Russia would have to either be put in check fire

00:51:46.980 or not be allowed to engage. And that would have to be a voluntary commitment by Russia.

00:51:53.300 Really what it would do is it would put the UN in the position of negotiating a ceasefire.

00:51:59.000 And then the terms of that ceasefire would be Russia does not fire on whatever means of conveyance or

00:52:06.200 moving through those safe zones on the ground air or by sea. And then protection of the civilians

00:52:15.300 in both the safe areas and the safe alleyways or corridors that would be established.

00:52:21.620 So I'm not I'm not looking for a maximalist no-fly zone. I'm looking for a limited float,

00:52:26.220 no-fly zone, strictly on a humanitarian basis. It is not risk-free.

00:52:31.300 Let me let me jump in and ask you, why would Russia agree to that? Russia that's been pretty

00:52:35.020 indiscriminately bombing targets that have civilians at the heart of them. He's been killing civilians

00:52:41.060 there. And some sort of attempts at civilian protections over there have already fallen through

00:52:48.260 and he hasn't honored them. So why would he agree to them? And why even if he agreed to them, would he

00:52:53.880 then honor the agreement? Okay. Great questions. First off, by approaching him with this proposition,

00:53:05.360 I would make him state to the international community, why he is not in favor of a humanitarian

00:53:11.020 solution for non-combatants. Make him do it. So he has to justify why he's not in favor of it.

00:53:20.040 I think the basis for why you would do it stands on its own merit in that it's a humanitarian,

00:53:26.660 I think, obligation that countries of certainly our capabilities in most of the Western nations

00:53:34.800 in NATO and some of the Eastern powers as well, like Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea.

00:53:40.380 I think these other countries could also contribute to this effort as well. And I think on a large

00:53:46.940 international scale, you have an obligation to prevent the massive humanitarian disaster that's

00:53:53.980 this building in Ukraine right now. I agree with you, but I don't think Vladimir Putin,

00:53:59.440 he doesn't seem to care at all. I agree with you. So why would he agree to this? Because we're

00:54:08.560 now putting our boot on his neck. These sanctions that have been imposed are starting to bite and

00:54:16.220 they're going to have an effect. I would like to talk about the sanctions later if you want to get

00:54:20.660 into that. But I think there are things that he's going to have his own humanitarian disaster

00:54:26.080 before too long, just to cut right to the point here on sanctions. He has already started limiting

00:54:32.860 what people can buy in stores and so forth. In a few weeks, he's going to have another issue on his

00:54:38.520 hands where he is going to start running out of food and medicine and things that are critical for

00:54:44.220 him to run his society. Then the people are going to understand what the effect of these sanctions

00:54:49.620 are. This has never been done. Look, we are in unprecedented territory. This has never been done

00:54:55.120 before, Megan. What's going to happen in Ukraine will precede the disaster that's going to happen in

00:55:01.520 Russia by a month or two. So I think he's going to have his own humanitarian disaster on his hands

00:55:08.040 building. Why will they be running out of food and other supplies inside Russia?

00:55:12.800 Well, the sanctions have been rather brutal, I would say. They've cut him off from all imports.

00:55:21.720 He imports a fair amount of fresh fruits, vegetables, agricultural products, etc. from the South

00:55:29.120 Caucasus, where I'm located now. He gets a lot of the food stuff from Eastern and Central Europe.

00:55:36.840 He, I should say Russia and Ukraine, grow about 25% of the world's wheat production or grain production.

00:55:48.760 There's nobody harvesting the wheat right now when it comes into play or planting it in Ukraine here

00:55:56.700 shortly. And I think you're going to have a hard time planting it in Russia as well. So the wheat

00:56:04.200 production is going to go way down, way down in the near future. So there's an impending,

00:56:10.920 I would say, agricultural challenge that he's going to have. I don't know what it is,

00:56:16.000 you know, how long he can last without imports of food and sustain the population of what they have.

00:56:22.280 The Russians are a very hardy population. You know, they can eat, you know, black bread and drink

00:56:27.020 black, you know, until the cows come home. But it's going to put a severe pinch on the middle

00:56:32.100 class to the upper class. Can China save him from that? You know, we've talked about China saving

00:56:36.880 him from the pinch of our oil sanctions, you know, in terms of backstopping or buying. Can they save

00:56:44.420 him from that, from the agricultural disaster coming his way? Well, China's been clever by half.

00:56:50.100 They embarked on this massive campaign to urbanize the rural population. So they built these mega cities

00:56:59.880 out there on their, on what was the little fertile land that they had. So they have essentially lost a

00:57:07.560 lot of their farmland and they are now a significant importer of food. China cannot feed itself, much less

00:57:13.980 feed its next door neighbor. They're not in a position to help, right? And India is not going to

00:57:18.660 either. And there's a question of, yeah, I guess who, who could and who would step in, but how would

00:57:24.120 it work? Because, you know, we just talked to our last guest about how, uh, Vladimir Putin is revered

00:57:31.200 in Russia. I'm sure the current action is causing questioning because we've seen the protests in the

00:57:36.900 street and thousands of people getting arrested because they're not allowed to protest in Russia,

00:57:39.940 unlike here. Um, but they're, they're being fed propaganda. So their natural inclination is to love

00:57:45.760 him because he stood up for mother Russia and he's made mother Russia stronger and he stood up to the

00:57:49.760 evil West and so on. Um, and they're being fed propaganda about why this is a justified war.

00:57:55.420 So when things go South inside Russia's borders, how does it work that, you know, the Russians rise up?

00:58:03.400 It's hard for me to picture them rising up against Vladimir Putin in a way where he would listen to

00:58:08.320 them. Yeah. So rise up in sufficient numbers to, you know, uh, convince him to change his ways and

00:58:14.880 to do something differently. Uh, difficult problem for sure. And I think you've hit the nail on the

00:58:19.820 head there is how he controls the information and what the society understands on mass, if you will.

00:58:26.820 So, uh, here's, here's a bit of good news. Uh, so I learned last night through a very good source,

00:58:34.220 uh, that has contacts in Moscow that, that CNN and BBC are getting through episodically,

00:58:41.180 uh, not on broadcast, but on their apps. So that information is getting in episodically. It doesn't

00:58:48.580 get through all the time. Uh, they're able to block it somewhat on the internet, but generally the

00:58:53.580 internet's still up. Uh, it's being filtered and screened, but CNN and, uh, BBC are still getting in.

00:59:00.100 BBC has, uh, reinitiated its world service on a long range AM radio. Uh, they're doing the

00:59:06.820 broadcast into Russia again. I would hope that, uh, uh, radio free Europe, uh, and, uh, radio Liberty

00:59:13.220 would start broadcasting again into Russia, just like the old days, uh, because there's still a large

00:59:18.620 AM radio, uh, capability, uh, and, and an audience in Russia. Uh, by that, uh, on the same line of

00:59:26.860 communication, uh, long wave, uh, correction, shortwave transmissions into Russia via, uh,

00:59:33.460 ham radio operators, uh, would be helpful as well. There's an effort afoot now to mobilize

00:59:38.820 ham radio operators to communicate, uh, person to person into, uh, into Russia and inform them

00:59:44.980 what's going on. They have no idea what the cash of the figures are. They have no idea that

00:59:48.560 they're campaigning outside of Donbass. Uh, so the more information, uh, the media can feed

00:59:54.140 into Russia, the better off we as the West will be in Ukraine directly.

00:59:59.320 So is that, I mean, do you think that's the plan that, cause you know, I was talking to

01:00:03.460 a guest yesterday saying, what's the plan? You know, I've, I realized we've all unleashed

01:00:07.120 sanctions on like we've ever seen before. We, the West, you know, America and European allies

01:00:12.080 and beyond. Um, but what's the plan? You know, Biden said, wait, but president Biden said,

01:00:17.040 wait, wait for a month. And you're talking about how things might look different inside of

01:00:20.560 Russia in a month, but then what? Because my feeling is, you know, I don't know Vladimir

01:00:25.340 Putin, but I've spent a fair amount of time with him. Um, I've interviewed him a few times,

01:00:29.420 but my feeling is his tolerance for human suffering is much greater than any of ours. And that's

01:00:36.980 being evidenced in Ukraine. And I think it'll be evidenced when his own people start to starve.

01:00:40.540 And so like, what's the next thing that needs to happen?

01:00:46.040 Yeah. So as I understand it, uh, the sanction regime is, is, you know, there's still arrows

01:00:53.880 in the quiver, so to speak, uh, and in the United States and allies and partners can crank up

01:00:59.660 sanctions even further. I don't know what that would entail. Uh, perhaps more sanctioning of,

01:01:05.240 uh, oligarchs. Uh, one thing I think we should do is, um, whatever assets we seize or, uh, whatever

01:01:12.240 assets we seize, uh, they should eventually go into a trust fund for rebuilding, uh, uh, Ukraine.

01:01:20.480 So the oligarchs are basically paying for the destruction of, uh, Ukraine to rebuild it.

01:01:26.060 So their planes, their, their, uh, yachts, uh, their ill gotten bills, um, should go into a trust fund,

01:01:34.280 in my opinion. So I think that's great. I'm sorry. I think that's great, but keep going.

01:01:41.040 Cause yeah, you're, you're getting to that. You know, how do we get Putin to change his position?

01:01:46.360 Yeah. How do we, how do we get his attention? So, um, I think he's going to be somewhat, uh,

01:01:51.680 uh, shielded from anything we have to say or do. Uh, it's not going to be,

01:01:56.420 there's very little that we're going to say or do that's going to get his attention.

01:02:00.880 Things at the UN, things in an international forum that, that will get his attention.

01:02:04.280 Um, and try to convince him otherwise. Uh, what would have the most effect is to mobilize his own

01:02:12.500 population, his population, uh, to continue the protest. I saw the leading edge today. I've got

01:02:17.980 a video of a, uh, a, uh, conscripts mother who's, uh, proclaiming loudly in a city hall meeting that,

01:02:25.700 that they've been lied to and that her son is in combat in, uh, Ukraine. And so if you remember back

01:02:33.860 during the Afghanistan campaign, uh, when Russia was there, uh, during the eighties and into the

01:02:39.920 nineties, the, uh, it was the mothers, it was the war mothers, uh, that were tired of what Russia was

01:02:46.660 doing there. It demanded that they end the war in Afghanistan. Uh, so the first thing is, uh, you can

01:02:55.080 mobilize the population home. The thing that's absolutely going to get his attention is the

01:02:59.340 significant losses, uh, that they're encountering every day inside Ukraine. Uh, he thought it'd be

01:03:05.360 a cakewalk like it was in 2014, but, uh, they are getting ground up in, uh, in, uh, Ukraine by the

01:03:12.520 Ukrainian armed forces, the territorials and the irregulars. Isn't that, can you spend a minute

01:03:16.920 on that? I know you're a military guy. Most of us aren't though. A lot of my listeners are, um,

01:03:22.000 it's been extraordinary to see because we think of Putin as like the big bad army guy. He's got

01:03:27.680 these military forces that will crush. And it turns out, you know, the more I listen, the more I

01:03:31.960 learn he's, he of course has the nukes, but the actual state of his military is perhaps less than

01:03:38.220 robust. And not only that, they seem to be getting outmaneuvered by the Ukrainians, which has been a

01:03:45.680 surprise to most of us, though. I understand not to you. Right. So, uh, I've been asked this

01:03:52.000 question multiple times. Are you surprised how the Ukrainians are performing as no, not, you know,

01:03:58.780 the commitment by the United States and, uh, our, our NATO partners to go into Ukraine after 2014 and

01:04:05.180 say, Oh, uh, Russia has got our attention. Now we got to do something different. And Ukraine

01:04:10.160 resolved that they would not be a cakewalk for Russia should they invade. So over the past,

01:04:15.980 we just call it seven and a half years, the United States and a heavy NATO contingent have been in

01:04:21.520 Ukraine, training the Ukrainian armed forces and reforming how they do business, how they're

01:04:26.780 structured, uh, training them on weapons and tactics and really creating a new army, uh, out of

01:04:33.620 the remnants of, of what the Ukrainian army was, uh, circa 2014. It was basically, I would say a

01:04:40.820 incapable, uh, military force. So when they invaded Donbass, it was really the, the civilian mobilization

01:04:48.580 that came out there and saved the day and stopped the attacks, uh, with the uniformed military in Donbass.

01:04:54.940 So they have moved on. They, the Ukrainian military have moved on. They, they're, uh, well-trained,

01:05:01.160 as I mentioned, but more importantly, they're superbly led. The generals, and I've met these guys,

01:05:07.880 uh, the generals are, uh, no kidding warriors. They've been through multiple combat deployments

01:05:13.560 in the Donbass area. They all know each other extremely well. Uh, their colleagues, they grew

01:05:18.780 up together through the ranks. Um, and they serve each other and they trust each other implicitly.

01:05:24.400 Uh, so that, that's part of the, uh, part of the magic, I think of what's going on.

01:05:29.240 Can I interject with a, with a quick question? Um, and just, just to, if you could just a short

01:05:34.500 answer on this one, but I am curious, why, why, why did we have such a different result

01:05:38.920 versus with the Afghanistan, you know, armies that we trained, right? They fell apart. So,

01:05:44.560 so fast. And these Ukrainians who we trained are fighting this noble fight and fighting it really

01:05:50.920 well and winning it against an incredible enemy. That's very well organized and, you know, well-funded.

01:05:55.620 Uh, so, so Ukraine has a modern society. Uh, they have a cohesive understanding of what nation

01:06:03.760 is. Uh, they're not a tribal formation, uh, tribal grouping of, of no central identity.

01:06:10.780 They're far from, they're, they are the counterploys to everything that Afghanistan was

01:06:15.200 sociologically. Uh, specifically they have a very strong Ukrainian identity. Uh, they in fact,

01:06:23.100 were the predecessor to, uh, the, the Russian, uh, the Russ, if you will. Uh, when, you know,

01:06:30.720 Kiev was a thriving city, uh, when Moscow was just a little village. And so, you know, uh, Vladimir

01:06:38.680 Putin's got his history inverted and inverted and perverted, as I say. So, so the Ukrainians,

01:06:45.240 they, they know who they are and they know what they're fighting for. Uh, the will of the people

01:06:49.380 is to defend their homes and their homeland. They have no place to go. And an invader comes in there

01:06:56.040 and tells them, you know, uh, leave or die. Uh, and they, they choose to stay and fight. Um,

01:07:03.400 so the significance is, is fairly profound in, in the will of the people to fight. In Afghanistan,

01:07:10.900 you had a, you had a different story altogether with the tribal structure. Uh, it was, it was,

01:07:15.740 you know, one tribe over the other tribe. Uh, you just had a different dynamic altogether. So I,

01:07:21.260 I think that's, that's part of the reason for sure. We've been talking about how in general,

01:07:27.420 the Ukrainians are outmatched by Putin's military prowess, but, and that it, that they're likely to

01:07:34.320 lose given the relative situations there. You know, we're not, we're not actually putting boots

01:07:38.840 on the ground, not actually, you know, open military anyway, and neither is Europe. But is that true?

01:07:47.820 What part of that?

01:07:49.080 Uh, that they're likely to lose, that they're likely to lose the Ukrainians.

01:07:52.360 Um, boy, it's hard for me to be objective because I, you know, I'm, I am, I'm not objective

01:07:59.400 when it comes to some parts of Ukraine. Uh, I try to be, but, uh, I would say, uh, it's possible

01:08:06.580 that they can lose. It's very possible that they could lose, if you will, uh, whatever that means

01:08:11.320 it is. But I, I see no, I see no possibility that president Zelensky is going to say, okay,

01:08:18.360 I'm done here. Uh, Ukraine quits. Uh, we surrender. I, I see no possibility of that happening.

01:08:25.240 It's not in their DNA. And I, I just don't see the path to that outcome. If I've told people,

01:08:33.520 this is if there's one Ukrainian with one rifle and one bullet, there's going to be a fight.

01:08:37.900 And that's what it'll come down to. Uh, the last person is willing to fight. So, uh, but

01:08:44.020 Putin recognizes that it's going to take destruction of the cities. And this is really

01:08:48.500 what his strategy is. If you will, I'm segwaying into this. Uh, I hope you don't mind. Yeah. Um,

01:08:54.340 so his strategy is to destroy the cities. We've seen this before in Grozny and in homes in Syria

01:09:00.460 and in Aleppo, destroy the cities. Uh, specifically you start with destroying the public utilities,

01:09:06.800 the, the sewer, the water, the electricity, and the communications. Uh, you create a,

01:09:13.300 create a humanitarian disaster. Then you allow the civilians to leave. Whoever's left alive,

01:09:18.600 you allow them to leave because the city's uninhabitable. So they leave and the city wants

01:09:23.580 it. You know, it's surrounded by this time and anybody that's left on the inside is considered

01:09:28.340 a combatant. So you solve a tremendous problem for, uh, the Russian forces. They don't have to decide

01:09:34.920 who's a combatant and who's a non-combatant because anybody left inside that cordon is

01:09:39.120 considered a combatant. And that's what they've done systematically. And that's the campaign they're

01:09:43.900 on right now. They've been doing this for four or five days now, destroying the cities. And that's

01:09:47.780 exactly where this is headed. Well, why wouldn't they be more in favor of letting the non-combatants,

01:09:54.060 the civilians out and letting them out safely if that were their plan?

01:09:58.460 Yeah, I, I really can't answer that, Megan. I, you know, they want to inflict maximum punishment

01:10:07.140 and, uh, and create a humanitarian disaster because not only does that, uh, uh, destabilize

01:10:13.620 the situation inside Ukraine, but it also has the knock-on effect and the derivative benefit to

01:10:18.700 Putin of destabilizing the economies and the societies of, uh, uh, Eastern and Central Europe.

01:10:24.380 Hmm. But it also upsets, to put it mildly, the West and makes us more and more likely

01:10:31.620 to get more involved, right? To create a no-fly zone. I mean, you've got people over here in

01:10:37.020 America who are normally pretty dovish when it comes to the prospect of war saying, we've got to do it.

01:10:41.900 We have to do something. We can't just sit by. We're the leader of the free world. Um, and I realize

01:10:46.560 there are all sorts of consequences to are doing that, but you know, his civilian casualty rate

01:10:51.020 is right at the heart that plus Zelensky's leadership of our wanting to intervene.

01:10:57.000 Yeah, I, I totally agree with you, Megan. Uh, there's historical precedent for everything you

01:11:01.720 just said. If you look at the end of the Gulf war, the first Gulf war, uh, the huey cry that went out

01:11:07.280 on, you know, Saddam extracting vengeance on the Shias down South in the marshes and down South by

01:11:12.980 Karbala and, uh, the Jaf and so forth. Oh, we got to have a no-fly zone down South. Okay. So that went up.

01:11:18.740 And then he took on the Kurds up in the mountains, uh, and they were saved by the 10th special forces

01:11:24.200 group and some other people that went up there and saved, you know, you know, a million and a half,

01:11:28.640 uh, dying Kurds that were freezing and starving, um, in, uh, you know, dying from dysentery up in the

01:11:34.540 mountains. So it's northern no-fly zone as well. Uh, so the policy, uh, was preceded by a tremendous

01:11:45.580 humanitarian outcry in the case of Gulf war one, uh, fast forward, uh, we're into the early

01:11:53.380 nineties. Now you have a huge humanitarian, uh, disaster brewing in Bosnia. Those refugees ended

01:12:00.980 up in central Europe, Germany, uh, where I lived at the time and work, uh, in other places. And they

01:12:07.100 quite frankly, overwhelmed the social system and were incapable of, uh, you know, or unwilling to

01:12:13.060 sustain the refugee population, uh, in the central European states, uh, you know, Greece, Italy,

01:12:21.560 Germany, Austria, et cetera. It overwhelmed the social system there. So it basically pled with

01:12:26.840 NATO, Hey, we got to come up with a solution here. And the international community got mobilized

01:12:30.540 around the Dayton peace accords. And we went in to stabilize that situation. But

01:12:34.940 in the interim, there was a, there was a no-fly zone in these U.S. safe havens that were put up

01:12:40.440 around Srebrenica, Zanitsa, and some of these other places, uh, to protect the Muslims. That

01:12:45.520 ultimately failed. Uh, it led to increased violence. It led to a bombing campaign by, uh, uh, the coalition

01:12:53.060 of the willing to include NATO. And it ultimately led to a coercive, uh, campaign that, that brought,

01:13:00.080 uh, the three principles in Bosnia to the negotiating table to come up with a solution there. So my

01:13:06.600 point is this, is that humanitarian disasters precede policy decisions for a more direct involvement.

01:13:14.520 Uh, and that's where we're at now. We're on the verge of a humanitarian disaster. We already have

01:13:20.300 2 million refugees into, uh, Eastern Europe, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania. They're already

01:13:27.860 there. Um, you're going to have many, many more than that. I think you're going to have two or

01:13:32.760 three times that easy in the next couple of weeks here. Uh, and it's going to overwhelm the social

01:13:37.940 systems in those countries. Uh, so something else is going to have to be there. Um, uh, so I want to

01:13:43.320 talk to you though. You mentioned NATO and there's a real question about war. We was NATO too provocative

01:13:51.460 toward Vladimir Putin was even Ukraine too provocative with respect to its desire to be a part of NATO.

01:13:57.860 So to be a part of the EU too provocative towards Putin, not to justify anything he's doing to be clear,

01:14:03.600 but was that played incorrectly? You know, do we underestimate his anger over that possible

01:14:10.040 relationship and so on? I want to ask you about that next. I'm going to squeeze in a quick break, pay a bill,

01:14:14.540 and we'll come back, uh, with that with former major general repass.

01:14:18.020 Major General, let me ask you this about NATO. Um, our previous guest was Rod, Rod Dreher, who I really

01:14:28.520 like, and he's not pro U.S. involvement in this. And this is from a piece that he wrote. I'd love to

01:14:35.080 get your reaction to this. He writes, despite assurances to the contrary, NATO is not a defensive

01:14:40.460 organization. He says, even though American memories are short, people elsewhere, elsewhere,

01:14:45.120 remember the bombing campaign against Serbia and the removal of Gaddafi from power in Libya.

01:14:50.100 What NATO is in fact, is the military arm of U S hegemony, which means dominance, um, a hegemony

01:14:56.660 that has seen it expand eastwards towards Europe, right up to Russia's very own borders. And he talks

01:15:02.660 about how Russia has been invaded several times from the West since Napoleon first crossed the border

01:15:07.380 to enter Imperial Russia soil in 1812. Russia has sought buffers to its West ever since.

01:15:14.660 And he writes that NATO originally set up to counter the U S S R's expansion into Europe

01:15:19.400 was left without a reason to be, forget my French after the fall of the Berlin wall and the collapse

01:15:29.220 of the U S S R. Nevertheless, it pressed on eastwards and he's trying to help us understand. He has no

01:15:37.040 you know, he's not holding water for Putin. He's trying to help us understand why Putin doesn't

01:15:42.040 like NATO and why there is a legitimate question to be asked about whether NATO was too provocative

01:15:46.960 in expansion to him and how one could understand how he could never tolerate a Ukraine, his immediate

01:15:53.980 neighbor joining that organization. Your thoughts.

01:15:57.200 So that's, uh, that's a, I would say a, an argument that has been discussed quite a bit here lately. Uh,

01:16:06.480 but at its root, it gets into this discussion of, uh, does Russia deserve to have, or should they be

01:16:15.520 allowed to have a sphere of influence? So let's go back to world war two. At the end of world war two,

01:16:20.800 uh, the United kingdom, uh, the United kingdom, Japan, and a couple other imperial powers, uh, got rid of

01:16:27.360 their imperial possessions. You get into the fifties and sixties and the, uh, in the European powers

01:16:34.640 got rid of their colonial possessions in Africa. They decolonized if you will. Uh, so you move forward

01:16:41.360 and essentially what we had in, uh, in 1989, uh, with the fall of the Berlin wall going into 1991, 92,

01:16:49.200 was a dissolution of the Warsaw Pact in the Soviet Union. So these spheres of influence, uh, in the

01:16:56.160 19th century, uh, just disappeared. So what, what Mr. Putin wants to do is he wants to go back to,

01:17:03.040 you know, the previous era, uh, the century of bad imperialism and reestablish his sphere

01:17:09.120 so that everybody in that sphere is, uh, I would say they, they defer to Russia's priorities and

01:17:16.400 preferences on who they can associate with, uh, the means of their economy and who makes, uh, the,

01:17:23.680 the decisions on how things are going to be run in a given country. So if you ascribe to a sphere of

01:17:29.600 influence, then you will ascribe to Vladimir Putin being upset to, uh, or being upset, upset at NATO for

01:17:38.640 expanding eastward. So I want to point out a couple of, uh, uh, fallacies in that argument.

01:17:45.280 NATO didn't expand eastward in, in the construct of we went out and grabbed these countries.

01:17:49.760 These countries voted through a democratic process to join NATO. They asked to be joined or asked to be

01:17:56.480 part of NATO through their elected officials. And in many countries, they held a referendum

01:18:01.520 to decide if the people wanted to do it or not. So that was a democratic process by which people were

01:18:06.640 brought into, into the NATO fold. Uh, that's not the, that's not the situation that we see unfolding

01:18:13.520 in Belarus, in, uh, in Ukraine, uh, where Putin has taken over the, uh, in the case of Ukraine,

01:18:21.360 trying to take over the country by the force of arms and coercion, uh, and in the case of, uh,

01:18:26.400 Belarus, a corrupted election, uh, subversion of, uh, legitimate political opposition,

01:18:31.360 followed by, uh, putting in his special, uh, security services to arrest and undermine any,

01:18:38.400 uh, legitimate opposition. So the, the methods by which we, we, uh, respectively NATO and Russia

01:18:47.760 are extending our, our frontier, so to speak, as described by the, uh, the person you just read from,

01:18:53.600 uh, one is a democratic process engaged in by, you know, public discourse. The other is a subversive

01:19:00.320 and coercive, uh, practice, uh, and done by the force of, of arms essentially.

01:19:05.600 All right. Let me ask you a question there because there, um, there's no question that we

01:19:10.720 have been engaged in Ukraine, that we had some hand, uh, in some of the more pro-Western moves

01:19:18.800 that they've made in Ukraine since 2000. Um, the, the various revolutions that they've had over there,

01:19:24.880 Putin calls it a coup. So to some American pundits, the replacement of the pro-Russian

01:19:30.080 leader and, uh, with a, with a more pro, uh, Democrat pro-democracy leader. And the, basically

01:19:38.240 the allegation and Putin's made this to me personally is, um, that we don't have clean

01:19:44.800 hands when it comes to messing with Ukraine, that we behind the scenes have been trying to force them

01:19:48.960 to be more pro-Western, more pro-liberal, and he's been trying to force them to be more pro-Russian.

01:19:53.920 And we were perhaps kind of winning. And then he did this. Is that not true? Do you, I mean,

01:20:00.880 we, we have had a hand in trying to manipulate Ukraine and its outward facing intentions.

01:20:08.320 So Mr. Putin has never demonstrated any direct involvement of the United States or any, any other,

01:20:14.720 uh, Democratic nation in the, uh, Maidan events. Uh, that doesn't mean it didn't happen.

01:20:21.920 You're saying he's never demonstrated where, where we were involved with that. He just threw

01:20:25.760 it out there as if it's a fact and provided no evidence of it.

01:20:28.640 So you deny it.

01:20:29.760 Right. I don't know whether it's true or not true. I just, I just know he's never provided

01:20:35.440 any evidence of it and I haven't seen any of myself. That's not something that I personally,

01:20:40.160 personally explored. What I do know is I've met the, the, the Maidan crowd. I've met him. I've

01:20:45.760 talked to him. I've had dinner with him. And I know that the revolution that led to the ouster

01:20:50.400 of the old pro-Putin guy and the installation of the pro-Western guy. Go ahead.

01:20:54.320 Yeah, correct. I'm sorry. I just back up there in, uh, in the fall of, uh, 2013, uh, there was an

01:21:01.200 election that was widely understood to be rigged by none other than Mr. Putin. So he's talking about

01:21:06.640 Western intervention in an election that he rigged to begin with. But it's not like,

01:21:12.080 you know, but you gotta hand it to the guy. I mean, he's, oh my Lord. So he's, he's complaining

01:21:17.920 about the rigged election that was nullified by the Supreme Court of, of Ukraine. Um, so, uh,

01:21:26.080 This is how it goes. I mean, you know, that's, that's what they call what about ism, right?

01:21:29.360 It was like you, you say, well, you're doing this bad stuff. And he looks at us and says,

01:21:33.520 well, what about you? You did bad stuff too. And he, you know, you can, this, this could go back

01:21:36.800 for decades. Yeah. Okay. So we'll, we'll, we'll end it there then, uh, for the sake of this one,

01:21:43.040 but, uh, just moving forward a couple of months. So finally the population had enough of this with,

01:21:48.000 uh, with the corruption, the, uh, the widespread, you know, uh, repression of the Western leaning

01:21:56.880 segment of the population, which was probably split, split at the time, 60, 40 majority of the

01:22:02.880 population wanted to be more EU and Western leaning, uh, the 40% at the time, which is now

01:22:08.240 probably 5% or less, uh, wanted to be more pro Russian. Uh, so that culminated in the demonstrations

01:22:15.120 at Maidan Square, Freedom Square in the central Kiev, uh, where, uh, Russian inspired and Russian led in

01:22:22.400 some cases, uh, forces, uh, fired on and killed a, a, a large number of citizens, uh, that were

01:22:30.080 demonstrating in Maidan Square, uh, that ultimately led to the, uh, uh, uh, the president at the time

01:22:36.720 fleeing to Russia for refuge. He didn't, he didn't go to Switzerland. He didn't go to Belgium or France.

01:22:42.480 He went to Russia. So we know, we know where his leanings and his, uh, the source of his power

01:22:48.960 was at the time. Sure. So the evidence in that regard speaks for itself. I don't have to, I don't

01:22:54.080 have to prove anything. Uh, so that stands alone and it's a priori evidence of it, that he was into

01:23:00.800 this up to his elbows. You're dropping some Latin on me. Okay. A priori is taking me back.

01:23:07.840 Hey, you brought French on me earlier. Okay. Yeah, but I barely did it. I didn't understand it.

01:23:12.480 Okay. All right. Anyway. So, um, anyway, uh, so I've, I've met with these people and they're

01:23:20.720 truly, they're true, truly democratic aspirants. And I would, at some level, I would call them,

01:23:29.360 you know, true patriots of the Western liberal tradition and that they want to have a representative

01:23:34.760 government. They want to have inclusion. They want to have, you know, an open society where people can

01:23:39.520 speak their mind and they can do what they please to make their own fate and decide their, their,

01:23:43.920 their station in life. Then, and that's, that's the crowd that's in their parliament known as the

01:23:50.120 RADA. That's the, the crowd that's in government. And so that, those are the people that, that Mr.

01:23:55.800 Putin is, is trying to throw out of power. And I don't understand for the life of me, why

01:24:00.340 we would oppose or we would, we would, we would stand back and allow that, that infant of a, of a

01:24:09.840 democracy to be snuffed out in, in the first years of its life. To me, democracy does not end at the

01:24:16.840 borders of NATO. I think we collectively as, as the, uh, I would say the Western liberal tradition

01:24:24.680 nations, not necessarily ending at NATO's borders, but I think we have a moral obligation and certainly

01:24:32.000 a political imperative to help, uh, these burgeoning democracies, these, these budding

01:24:39.420 democracies to flourish and grow and help them along the way and encourage them into living a, a, a,

01:24:46.420 a democratic, uh, and principled, uh, uh, society. So. Okay. But let me interject and say what,

01:24:54.040 to the people who would respond to that by saying that we tried that under George W. Bush and it

01:24:59.220 didn't work and we're war weary now, and we've lost faith in our ability to execute and win,

01:25:05.160 to win wars. We tried it. We tried it in so many places and we're, we no longer believe that we're

01:25:11.100 good at it and we don't want to start another conflict or get, get ourselves involved in another

01:25:17.080 conflict. What's the answer to that? Well, having served 33 years in the military, multiple combat tours

01:25:23.300 and, and numerous contingency deployments, I, I understand war weariness very well, uh, more than,

01:25:29.440 than a lot of people. So I, I understand that sentiment, uh, to my core. I have, I buried many

01:25:37.960 of my soldiers and gut-wrenching, uh, funeral ceremonies. And that's, that's left an indelible

01:25:42.740 mark on me that I'm, I will never step away from. Uh, but that said, there are certain things that are,

01:25:49.400 that are bigger than me, bigger than self and bigger than, you know, my comfort in my way of

01:25:54.800 life. And having a, a democratic nation struggling for its freedom and struggling for its future

01:26:01.240 is bigger than my creep ass. And it's bigger than, than some of the other, you know, self-centered

01:26:06.700 ideas that I've heard coming out of, of various, uh, advocates pro and for what's going on right now.

01:26:12.620 Hmm. Wow. That's quite an answer. That's a really good answer. Major general, first of all,

01:26:20.300 let's just pause and say, I'm sorry that you, I'm sorry you had to bury so many guys. And I'm,

01:26:25.460 you know, we watched it and I, it's different when you know them, when they they're under your command.

01:26:30.520 Uh, and I'm grateful to you for your service and I'm grateful to you for your insights on it.

01:26:34.880 You know, I, I'm not really taking a position on this. I, I can see the concerns. I understand the,

01:26:41.040 the weariness and the, the reluctance to get involved in yet another. It's like, Oh my God,

01:26:46.900 you know, we, we've lost so much already. And we, we just withdrew from Afghanistan and in disgrace,

01:26:52.520 you know, in a way that people felt just awful about. And I think that there's hesitancy

01:26:58.240 entrusting Joe Biden to command it. And, um, even some of our generals, you know, who have

01:27:04.880 sounded very political lately and not just like the old, you know, grizzled guys who we think are

01:27:09.600 just about winning wars, you know, do you know what I'm saying? Yeah, absolutely. I, I think strong

01:27:15.640 skepticism is absolutely warranted. I think our Congress needs to get involved and make decisions

01:27:20.840 here, you know, instead of us just going off at the, you know, under the war powers act or something

01:27:26.020 like that to do something. I think this needs to be, you know, we're either all in or,

01:27:30.820 or we're partially in, but I think, I think the people need to have a healthy degree of skepticism

01:27:37.560 and they need to, they need to express their concerns to their elected officials on how this

01:27:42.660 is going to go down, uh, in the future. We're either going to let it die, uh, which would be a tragic

01:27:48.920 shame or we're going to, we're going to, uh, do what we can to sustain that democracy into the years

01:27:54.860 ahead. Uh, I think right now we're giving them a fighting chance and they're doing rather well.

01:28:00.440 There are other things that we can do that would be more active, but in my view, uh, I think you're

01:28:07.040 right that we need to have a high degree of skepticism and, uh, uh, introspection on whether

01:28:12.900 we want to get involved in another war. That, that decision is not to be taken away. I'm not advocating

01:28:18.640 going to war. I'm advocating doing the best we can to enable another country to, uh, free themselves

01:28:26.280 from tyranny, uh, free themselves from oppression and to, uh, build their democracy the way they were

01:28:32.200 doing. Meanwhile, Zelensky is continuing to inspire most of us, most of Europe, most of the world to do

01:28:42.220 more than they planned on doing and gave an address. Uh, I think it was yesterday that's being

01:28:47.640 compared. I mean, of all things to Winston Churchill, when you're getting compared to

01:28:51.760 Winston Churchill, you're doing well. Uh, and at the famous Dunkirk speech, this is Churchill,

01:28:57.060 1940, just to remind our audience before we play Zelensky, we shall go on to the end. We shall fight

01:29:02.300 in France. We shall fight on the seas and the oceans. We shall fight with growing confidence and

01:29:07.020 growing strength in the air. We shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight

01:29:12.660 on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields and in the

01:29:16.900 streets. We shall fight in the Hills. We shall never surrender. So good. And here was Zelensky,

01:29:24.640 um, getting a standing ovation, uh, before an international audience. Uh, I think it was yesterday.

01:29:31.280 Listen. We will not give up and we will not lose. We will fight till the end at sea, in the air.

01:29:44.260 We will continue fighting for our land, whatever the cost. We will fight in the forests, in the fields,

01:29:53.880 on the shores, in the streets. Please make sure that our Ukrainian skies are safe.

01:30:01.280 Please make sure that you do what needs to be done and what is stipulated by the greatness of

01:30:11.720 your country. Best of all, to Ukraine and, uh, to the United Kingdom.

01:30:19.840 Before the British parliament, you know, major general, they say television is about moments,

01:30:35.200 a moment that makes the audience feel something and connect with the story that they're hearing.

01:30:40.120 That's what Zelensky does. He delivers these moments that make an international audience

01:30:44.680 feel something and want to help him. Um, but will it be enough? Do you think that,

01:30:50.240 do you think there will be more from the international community when it comes to helping him

01:30:54.000 fight for his freedom and his country's freedom?

01:30:58.120 Uh, I, I do know that, uh, so first off, uh, what a tremendous wartime leader he is. Um,

01:31:06.400 uh, a guy that, uh, I know very well. Look at me. He says,

01:31:10.080 he's not a politician. He's a leader. I was like, okay, he's, he's made that transition because of

01:31:16.000 the national emergency and the circumstances he finds himself. So what a great, great wartime

01:31:22.540 leader he's turned into being. Um, I know that the, uh, the members of NATO, not NATO as an institution,

01:31:29.980 but the members of NATO have individually spared no effort, uh, to empty their armories for, uh,

01:31:36.900 relevant weapons systems, uh, javelins, stinger missiles, uh, small arms, uh, all manner of

01:31:43.320 weapons, um, helmets, protective vests, et cetera. And they are supplying, uh, the means of war to

01:31:51.480 those that are, that are seeking to defend their frontiers. So I think as long as we continue to

01:31:56.340 enable them to, to fight, uh, the Ukrainians will fight to the last man, as I mentioned before,

01:32:03.020 but proportionally, I think they have, they have numbers and, and, uh, attrition on their side,

01:32:07.920 uh, 41 million people, if 10% of the people fight, uh, so you got, you got, you got 4.1 million people

01:32:17.040 that are out there with a weapon in their hand, willing to do something bad, you know, visit violence

01:32:21.920 and destruction upon the Russians, uh, to give them a bad day and send them back home.

01:32:26.340 So I feel very confident, uh, that as long as we supply them, as long as we give them the ability

01:32:31.960 to defend themselves, uh, we can do better, uh, like providing them in an air defense system,

01:32:37.020 uh, potentially, uh, potentially humanitarian safe zone, uh, that they will continue to resist.

01:32:42.680 This is not over, not by a long shot. Thank you so much, Major General Ray Paz for your,

01:32:47.400 for your thoughts, for your service. We appreciate it.

01:32:50.700 What a day. You know what? You're not going to get a discussion like that anywhere on cable news.

01:32:55.060 It's not possible. You can't go in depth in that forum and you can't like,

01:32:59.320 there are certain POVs points of view that you're sort of pushed to offer up when you're in that line

01:33:04.640 of business. And here we can do what we want. So we appreciate the forum and we appreciate you guys

01:33:10.760 making it a possibility for us. And we hope you appreciated the show and the info, uh, today

01:33:16.300 and in all days. And tomorrow, uh, don't forget to tune in because we have Senator Josh Hawley

01:33:20.540 who's here. We're going to talk Russia, Ukraine, but also he's meeting with Joe Biden, Supreme Court

01:33:24.560 nominee today. So we'll get his take tomorrow. Meantime, download the show, please on Apple,

01:33:28.380 Pandora, Spotify, and Stitcher. Leave your comments on Apple. Let's me know how you think about the show.

01:33:32.600 Helps us with Apple too, which gives us no love. Also at youtube.com slash Megan Kelly. You can comment

01:33:37.780 there and subscribe. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow. Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly

01:33:44.280 show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - March 09, 2022

The Truth About Russia and Ukraine： Narratives, Moralizing, and Humanitarian Crises, with Rod Dreher and Michael Repass ｜ Ep. 276

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