The Tucker Carlson Show - WAR UPDATE： Military Insider Gives Terrifying Prediction & Reveals How Unprepared America Truly Is

00:00:00.000 Mr. Jeremy, thank you very much for doing this. So in the United States, I think most people,

00:00:09.440 to the extent they're paying attention, are watching what's happening in Iran and have a

00:00:14.100 sense that what's happening between Russia and NATO, Ukraine, the United States, the festering

00:00:21.120 war in Eastern Europe is kind of a stalemate and nothing really is happening there.

00:00:25.900 I don't know if that's true. Assess what you think is happening between Russia

00:00:31.100 and Ukraine and its proxies right now. Yeah, I think you're right. I don't think it is true,

00:00:37.820 Tucker. I think that the general sense in the West is that you'll hear from some people that

00:00:44.420 Russia is losing on the battlefield and that the Russian economy is about to fall apart. I mean,

00:00:49.680 I've heard it time and time again, and there's no evidence to support either of those things.

00:00:53.380 the um the the the battlefield issue is poorly understood and i think and the reason is that

00:01:00.480 people don't understand russia's motivations and they don't understand what the strategy is

00:01:05.280 um in an article i wrote recently on the coming war with russia i said that klaswich who was the

00:01:11.100 great political philosopher of war said that the most important decision that a military man and

00:01:17.040 a politician can make is to understand the nature of the war and i don't think that the west has

00:01:22.040 understood the nature of the war with Russia, nor for that matter with Iran. What they haven't

00:01:27.380 understood with Russia is that this is, as far as Russia is concerned, is an existential war.

00:01:33.880 You know, they are fighting to make sure that Russia is preserved. And when you get people

00:01:38.420 like Kayakalas saying that Russia must be broken up, who can blame them? I think, have we understood 1.00

00:01:45.160 that? I think that would be a start. And unfortunately, we're approaching the war,

00:01:49.940 it seems to me, is a negotiation, a negotiation with arms.

00:01:53.940 You know, if we increase a bit of pressure on Russia,

00:01:55.900 then they'll eventually come back to the negotiating table.

00:02:00.920 What they've missed, though, is that Russia, I think, has a clear strategy.

00:02:04.940 And I can't be sure about it.

00:02:07.680 I'm not in the Russian general staff, but I think it's got about five key phases.

00:02:13.580 I mean, we know that the run-up to the special military operation, Tucker, it was clear that there were so many warnings going back as far as 1996, and yet, unfortunately, we've ignored them all, notwithstanding the warnings not only came from Russia, but from some of our very best strategic thinkers, from George Keenan, back as far as 1996, and from John Mearsheimer in 2014.

00:02:37.840 but when you get to the start of the war then it seemed to me as the war kicked off and I have to

00:02:43.580 say I did not see the war coming I was involved in the offshore energy sector but as I got to

00:02:49.360 understand it then the first thing that became obvious to me that this was not a war to or a

00:02:54.800 special military operation to invade Ukraine and the answer the reason was simpler there weren't

00:03:00.240 enough troops you know Ukraine is about the size of half of Europe and you're not going to do that

00:03:05.040 with 190,000 troops. I cannot for a moment think that the Russian general staff advised Putin that

00:03:10.900 they had enough troops to invade Ukraine. This was always about the Donbass. And I think the

00:03:15.400 first phase of the strategy was really the use of military force to support a diplomatic engagement.

00:03:22.200 And indeed, that diplomatic engagement actually went quite well. The Russians had opened

00:03:27.260 negotiations with the Ukrainians after day one. And, you know, as we arrived in March,

00:03:34.880 and they were ready to sign, as both sides were, an agreement which would have stopped the war.

00:03:41.920 There was no NATO, neutrality for Ukraine, self-determination for the Donbass, but that

00:03:50.460 was ready to sign. And it would have been signed, I'm almost certain, if it hadn't been for Boris

00:03:54.220 Johnson, no doubt with Biden's support actually going across and persuading Zelensky to fight

00:04:03.360 Russia and that he would have all the support he needed. So that's phase one. I think at phase two,

00:04:08.980 when it becomes clear to Russia that they are going to have to fight and are likely to have

00:04:16.140 to fight NATO because of what they're hearing, what you then see is what I would call militarily

00:04:21.600 a withdrawal in contact so essentially what the russians were doing were recognizing that actually

00:04:27.240 the kiev um attack and and the actions in the donbass uh were although diplomatic they would

00:04:36.220 now need to withdraw to a line and what they did was they withdrew back to what's known as

00:04:39.840 sorry vacant line and which was a defensive line um instructed by the general who was the

00:04:46.960 expert in Russia in defensive lines. And that from about September onwards, they then moved

00:04:54.160 into phase three after withdrawal, which is what I call attritional defense. And what that

00:05:00.840 essentially means was meeting their two objectives. Their objectives were denazification and

00:05:05.380 demilitarization, both of which were operational objectives. And the strategic objective, though,

00:05:11.220 was clear, it was to preserve Russia's security. And what defensive attrition means is wearing down

00:05:19.820 the men and materiel of the Ukrainian army. And goodness me, we helped them a lot in that,

00:05:24.740 because we persuaded them to expend not one army, but two armies against that defensive line

00:05:30.760 for not a single penetration. So you get to late 2023. And at that stage, I think what Russia does

00:05:39.160 is they've started to, as the war got going,

00:05:44.040 they started to mobilize and increase the forces.

00:05:46.680 They need the industrial capacity.

00:05:48.800 And so by late 2023, they're ready to move into phase three.

00:05:52.920 Phase three was what I call offensive attrition,

00:05:56.240 not necessarily securing territory,

00:05:57.880 but really going on and starting to continue wearing down

00:06:03.800 the men and materiel of the Ukrainian army.

00:06:06.660 Don't forget, the Ukrainian army had no air superior.

00:06:09.160 None of the things that you want fighting an offensive war, or indeed a defensive war, and moving slowly forward.

00:06:17.440 I think as well, they were probably starting to clarify what it would be their ultimate objectives.

00:06:23.500 And I remember saying, I think to Danny Davis about a year and a half ago, I thought their minimalist objectives would be to secure the Donbass and the four eastern oblasts, Crimea.

00:06:32.960 and their maximum objectives might be to go further,

00:06:36.400 might be to go to secure the whole of Novorossia,

00:06:38.900 which is the Edessa,

00:06:40.940 and the next four oblasts to the west.

00:06:43.520 I wasn't sure which way they would go,

00:06:45.300 but I've heard Putin say quite recently

00:06:47.200 that actually he's talking about Novorossia.

00:06:50.100 And the logic behind that is about security.

00:06:53.380 It's about establishing what they believe

00:06:55.260 to be a secure buffer,

00:06:56.980 protecting the Russian people within it.

00:06:58.860 And the question really is

00:07:00.200 how long it takes them to get there,

00:07:01.740 if indeed they keep going in that way.

00:07:03.800 So I think when you start to understand that,

00:07:06.100 and all of the stuff that we've heard, 0.73

00:07:07.600 well, the Russians are going slowly,

00:07:09.500 it misses the objective. 0.83

00:07:11.120 It misses what they're trying to achieve.

00:07:12.660 And when you understand what they're doing,

00:07:14.180 what I think is a clear strategy,

00:07:16.120 then I think what that does

00:07:17.400 is to actually help you work out

00:07:19.420 what they're doing, why they're doing,

00:07:21.600 why they're doing it,

00:07:22.580 and how the West should be thinking.

00:07:24.380 Because at the moment, we sort of see,

00:07:26.200 on the one hand,

00:07:26.980 the Russian army is not doing very well.

00:07:28.740 It's not securing much, much territory.

00:07:30.720 That's not true.

00:07:31.380 It's actually increasing. It's been securing territory for at least the last 30 or so months.

00:07:37.800 But they're not securing, they weren't securing territory initially, simply to secure the

00:07:42.180 territory. They were doing it to actually, to wear down and attract the Ukrainian army with a high 0.50

00:07:48.480 degree of success, as we know from the casualties. So I think when you get that, I think it's much 0.96

00:07:53.400 easier to understand what they're doing and where they're heading. Well, having life insurance is

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00:10:14.720 edition now, only on Netflix. That has always made sense to me. If foreign leaders gave speeches

00:10:23.180 calling for the breakup of the United States, I would, of course, do everything I could to support

00:10:28.680 the defense of the United States. I would see that as existential. If someone said we're going

00:10:33.820 to break up the UK, you'd probably take up arms in its defense, of course. So I've understood that

00:10:39.820 since the first day,

00:10:41.680 what I have never understood

00:10:43.040 is the West's motive.

00:10:45.100 Why would the United States

00:10:47.420 and it's whatever you call them,

00:10:49.460 but it's partners in NATO

00:10:51.320 give this,

00:10:55.840 why would they want a war with Russia

00:10:57.320 and a war that has hurt them?

00:10:59.040 Like, what is the motive there?

00:11:01.780 It's a really, really good question.

00:11:03.340 And I have said

00:11:04.760 for quite a long time now

00:11:07.060 that the Russian operations

00:11:08.860 are being guided by a military strategy, and the Western operations are being guided by a political

00:11:13.600 narrative and with objectives that change quite a lot. I think the initial objective, and it depends

00:11:21.640 which particular party on the NATO side you're talking to, but the initial objectives were

00:11:28.220 possibly to break up Russia. There's a very interesting RAND study written in 2018, I think

00:11:34.080 it is which is called extending russia um the um russian intelligence chief budenov actually um

00:11:41.600 in a on youtube um video which is on youtube talked about the need to actually have a war with russia

00:11:47.760 to actually help them get into nato i think there's also what i would call um lag in thinking

00:11:52.960 because a lot of the um the uh um people who were proposing the extension the expansion later without

00:12:01.840 thinking through the consequences did not anticipate this. I'm certain they didn't

00:12:07.500 anticipate it because they weren't ready. You know, another great failure of NATO,

00:12:12.500 I'm afraid to say, they were not ready for the war. I mean, if they had thought it through and

00:12:17.720 said that if we keep doing this, then Russia will respond, then actually they would either

00:12:23.640 have made defensive preparations or they wouldn't have done it. I think we can say with a high

00:12:29.740 degree of certainty that they they did not think it through so i think there's some lag in there

00:12:34.320 and i think there's also i'm afraid to say and i think this is probably more european than um

00:12:39.080 than the united states although you will know better than the united states there's a high

00:12:43.540 degree of russophobia which i find it very very difficult to understand i think it's in part our

00:12:48.900 press it's in part the narrative that we've built it's in part the nature of spin in modern western

00:12:55.500 politics where you know an event kicks off and people spin to to help those parties that are

00:13:04.820 in power stay in power and what that means is that the population generally start speaking start to

00:13:11.760 get deceived i don't think they're lied to but they're deceived because they're presented with

00:13:16.240 one side of the story now that really matters in war because in war you need to be able to look at

00:13:21.760 all sides of the story, which is why I penned the article, The Coming War with Russia, because

00:13:26.520 nobody seemed to have thought of what that war might like. It's very difficult to understand

00:13:30.840 fully, though, the motivations. But I think within those factors, Tucker, you probably got the answer.

00:13:39.800 I understand why the European populations are Russophobic, because the propaganda has played 0.64

00:13:46.540 upon their best qualities. Russia is seen as the aggressor. Ukraine is the underdog. I think

00:13:52.840 Europeans in general root for the underdog. That's a sign of their decency. It's also allowed. You're

00:13:58.480 allowed to hate Russians because they're white. So you don't have to feel guilty about painting 0.99

00:14:02.620 them as animals. You're not racist when you do that. I understand all of that. And they just

00:14:08.460 don't know any better because Europe is a biosphere in its media. Like no outside information comes

00:14:14.940 in, right? Of course, same in the United States. What I don't understand is the motive of the

00:14:20.180 liars. Like, why do European leaders seek a war with Russia? Why do American leaders seek a war

00:14:26.460 with Russia? I mean, these are not stupid people, and yet they are hell-bent on destroying their 1.00

00:14:32.240 own countries in the service of this war against a country that doesn't need to be our enemy. I 1.00

00:14:36.700 mean, it doesn't make any sense. If I had to answer the question in one phrase,

00:14:44.940 It's the lack of the ability to think strategically.

00:14:48.800 There is a wonderful American general who I studied when I was writing on strategy called

00:14:54.360 André Beaufort, and he said that in war, the loser deserved to lose because his defeat

00:14:59.380 will be a consequence of inadequate strategic thinking, either before or during the conflict.

00:15:05.460 I think that the institutional lag in entities such as NATO, which had done badly in

00:15:14.500 afghanistan i was in afghanistan and let's face it nato lost um so the idea that nato could prevail

00:15:21.440 over russia having lost against the taliban it's just extraordinary thinking but it's it's in nato

00:15:27.540 i think as well that the advice um within the um the establishment i'm i used to call call them

00:15:35.540 the elites but i've now realized that they're not elite because elites about high performance

00:15:39.740 Whereas we're not seeing that within the establishment. So I think the establishments have what I can best describe as a sort of institutional lag and sort of blink of thinking. And we see that in many ways.

00:15:56.140 And when you look across the broad nature of the strategic context in which we're operating, and if you can be bothered to listen to what the Russians have been saying, then, you know, the logic that they present is, I find it sort of unequivocal.

00:16:13.120 I may have listened, of course, to your interview with Vladimir Putin and, of course, Leveroff, and there was almost nothing that I could think of that I disagreed with.

00:16:22.580 The problem, though, the West is not interested in listening, it seems to me. 0.92

00:16:26.460 And so I think this is more about incompetence, and it must be incompetence on the Europeans.

00:16:32.960 that, you know, there might be within the neocons

00:16:35.780 and certain elements of the sort of neocon-like establishments

00:16:40.660 in the West, in the E3 in Britain, Germany, and France

00:16:43.960 that is determined to break up Russia. 0.91

00:16:47.920 But it's obviously impossible, it seems to me.

00:16:51.840 You know, when you hear Kaya Callas saying that.

00:16:55.800 Well, can I ask you, I was at a dinner with her

00:16:59.180 not long ago in a foreign country with a lot of...

00:17:02.960 foreign diplomats who are not mediocre at all. And she got up to speak and the feeling of contempt

00:17:10.480 for her and bewilderment that someone this stupid could have a leadership position in Europe. People 1.00

00:17:16.120 were shocked by just how unimpressive, how uninformed she was, how childish, how girlish

00:17:21.700 she was. Everything was a kind of grotesque and dumb moral generalization, Hitler versus Churchill 0.98

00:17:29.400 kind of level stuff. 0.98

00:17:31.520 How does someone like that,

00:17:32.940 how does a structure like the EU

00:17:34.860 of continent with the smartest people

00:17:37.240 in the world, in my opinion,

00:17:38.860 promote someone like Kallus

00:17:40.460 to a position of leadership?

00:17:41.720 Like, how does that happen?

00:17:44.040 It's a very good question,

00:17:45.300 because you could ask exactly

00:17:46.280 the same question about von der Leyen.

00:17:48.240 Yes.

00:17:48.500 You know, von der Leyen,

00:17:49.420 when I was serving,

00:17:50.940 was notorious for being

00:17:51.960 the worst minister of defense

00:17:53.920 that Germany had ever had.

00:17:55.720 And suddenly we find that she is

00:17:57.460 is in charge or has a leadership role in the EU.

00:18:01.980 You could also say it about Rutter as well.

00:18:04.660 And I thought the last negative secretary general was bad,

00:18:08.440 but my goodness me, he's got very good competition now.

00:18:12.060 I think it also goes across the Western leadership as well, generally.

00:18:17.140 In my experience, I started in my naval career back in 76.

00:18:24.580 This is the worst set of leaders that I think we've got collectively

00:18:27.840 for as long as I've been alive, I think.

00:18:31.260 So I can't answer your question other than to say

00:18:33.820 that it's a very difficult position to be,

00:18:38.320 but also it's an incredible weakness that we have in the West

00:18:41.260 and explains so much of what's going wrong in the West

00:18:44.240 is the lack of high-quality leadership.

00:18:46.460 I used to teach leadership and I look at some of the ways

00:18:50.100 that these leaders are operating and it's it's um extraordinarily um well the issue is competence

00:18:57.920 and i'm sure some of these are decent people they're doing what they think but they're obviously

00:19:02.440 not competent and i say that strategically that that for us for a strategic operation

00:19:08.240 the measure of success is was the operation effective was it enduring and were the results

00:19:14.220 enduring, and was it efficient? Now, on all of the interventions of this century, starting

00:19:22.380 Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ukraine, and now Iran, we failed at every one of those, I would

00:19:29.100 say. Some people argue about Syria, although if you think recreating a caliphate within Syria is

00:19:34.660 a good idea, that's an open question. It looks to me like Iran is being lost. It looks to me like

00:19:39.660 Russia is being lost. So we've got a consistency in terms of capacity to think and act strategically.

00:19:46.740 I think this isn't just, though, about the politicians. I think it's also about senior

00:19:51.160 military officers, about senior diplomats, about senior intelligence officers. So I wouldn't want

00:19:57.940 to blame the politicians entirely. I've operated right at the top of British government as the

00:20:02.940 executive assistant to our chief of defence staff. So I've watched people operating and been part of

00:20:08.380 that. But strategic thinking is the key shortfall, and it's caused us a lot of harm. And I think it

00:20:17.220 explains as well why we're going backwards, whereas many other countries in the world are

00:20:22.500 going forward. Sadly, that is absolutely consistent with what I've seen. Lots of reasons to be strongly

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00:23:12.340 So at the point we're at right now,

00:23:16.860 it seems more dangerous 0.62

00:23:19.160 in the West War against Russia

00:23:21.360 than it has been ever.

00:23:24.280 Can you describe where you think we are

00:23:27.060 and where this is going?

00:23:29.540 Yeah, let me do it through the tool, Tucker,

00:23:35.580 of the article I wrote on the coming war with Russia.

00:23:38.340 And the reason I wrote it was I was hearing a lot of people here

00:23:41.000 saying we're getting ready for war with Russia.

00:23:43.100 We'll be ready to fight in 2030.

00:23:46.240 I don't think that's true because we can't afford to be.

00:23:50.100 But anyway, that's the narrative that's being sold to the European publics.

00:23:57.480 And the problem is that, of course, the Russians will be listening to this.

00:24:00.640 Of course, they'll be listening to it.

00:24:02.320 So I thought it would be a good idea to say, well, OK, well, if we're going to be ready to fight a war with Russia, what's it going to be like?

00:24:08.880 And the first thing about the article was I said that let's not assume that Russia is going to wait doing nothing until 2030, until we're ready. 0.59

00:24:20.100 So let's assume that because of the way that we're starting to promote attacks deep into Russia by the E3, that's Germany, Britain and France, providing weapons and weapons with significant warheads as well, 250 kilograms and significant range deep into Russia.

00:24:37.540 Let's not assume that the Russians are just going to sit back and let this happen. 0.53

00:24:41.380 So my starting point was to say, okay, well, let's assume that Russia attacks Europe or attacks certain elements of Europe.

00:24:51.820 And what the Russians have said is they have not taken these attacks off the agenda, which is a warning.

00:24:59.780 And it's a warning which we seem to be ignoring.

00:25:02.000 So let's assume that the first attacks happen in September of this year.

00:25:05.540 and my scenario and i should emphasize it's a scenario not a forecast so it's trying to make

00:25:12.700 people think about what could happen so let's assume these attacks happen in september of this

00:25:17.660 year and the russians destroy with hypersonic missiles the factories that are making drones

00:25:25.160 and missiles in britain in france and in germany and the question then is what does europe europe

00:25:33.100 do and of course the first thing europe does is it says okay well we're now going to invoke article

00:25:38.260 five as all of a sudden people realize what article five really means i mean you've got nato

00:25:44.380 which when i was serving in nato understanding nato force mediterranean we used to say that

00:25:49.860 nato is still for no ability to organize it's slightly unfair um but actually nato isn't this

00:25:55.720 great omnipotent coalition. People say it's the strongest coalition since in history. I mean,

00:26:03.460 that obviously isn't true. The strongest coalition in history, as far as I can see,

00:26:07.680 was the Allied coalition, the Second War with the United States, Britain, the Commonwealth,

00:26:12.540 Russia, and China. That's the strongest coalition by far. So NATO invokes Article 5,

00:26:18.740 and the three countries that have been attacked invoke Article 5. And they realise that suddenly

00:26:23.420 that actually what Article 5 means is that an attack on one is an attack on all, but it doesn't

00:26:28.080 mean that actually the whole of the NATO forces have to respond and people decide to respond

00:26:34.000 as they think best. And in the article, I propose that Hungary says, no, we're not getting engaged.

00:26:40.720 Spain says, no, we're not getting engaged. We don't think this is in our interest.

00:26:44.880 I think other countries might equivocate. It's difficult to say, but countries like Hungary,

00:26:51.180 for example, obviously won't. So at that stage, we suddenly see that this isn't all it means.

00:26:57.040 But the big issue, Tucker, is what does the United States do? Of course, we know that Rubio has been

00:27:04.020 looking as if the United States are shifting back in to support these operations. But at that moment,

00:27:11.500 I think there's an open question about what the United States do if it does, if it says,

00:27:15.600 seize attacks into russia especially if those have been warned uh that the attacks are warned

00:27:21.240 we've made no no response to them and my guess is that the america will not want to commit troops

00:27:27.620 into uh mainland europe to fight and align a war against russia on european soil and for the for

00:27:34.200 u.s troops to fight and die on the european soils i wouldn't if i were in the united states

00:27:38.340 so you're then in the situation well now what do the europeans do and again just to develop the

00:27:44.820 scenario i assume that europeans do the only thing they can do because their land forces are not

00:27:49.960 ready is that they use air forces to respond to russia and that that doesn't go very well

00:27:56.440 that actually they find that they're up against russia which got a lot of experience in air

00:28:01.420 defense and one of my jobs in the navy was to be the captain of air defense destroyer and i was

00:28:09.180 what was known as the anti-air warfare commander and i can tell you that we are in poor shape

00:28:13.780 in europe in terms of being able to defend our skies we would struggle to respond to saturation

00:28:20.460 drone attacks we've got extremely limited uh responses to to ballistic conventional ballistic

00:28:27.020 missiles i'm a great fan of ted postel who is an mit professor on this he thinks that the um

00:28:33.780 the patriot pack 3 systems are possibly looking about three percent effectiveness

00:28:38.780 and when it comes to hypersonic missiles we've got no response whatsoever so suddenly we're

00:28:44.640 making attacks that aren't very successful but in return I say that because the E3 have decided to

00:28:51.440 respond to Russia's attacks that they then take the gloves off and use hypersonic missiles probably

00:28:58.420 with conventional missiles to to do more damage and the thing that I would go after especially as 0.51

00:29:04.440 an energy expert, would be to do the same thing that they've done in Kiev and in Ukraine,

00:29:09.940 which is to surgically start to undermine our energy infrastructure. And I can tell you that

00:29:16.240 a Resnick missile landing in a liquid national gas terminal or an oil terminal in Milford Haven

00:29:23.680 or Rotterdam would do extensive damage. That would be bad enough. But unfortunately, of course,

00:29:30.520 because of the sanctions we placed on Russia in the first place about four years ago,

00:29:36.820 we've switched ourselves off from Russian oil, switched ourselves off from Russian gas,

00:29:42.420 and that's 40% of our gas. We've also, of the particular products, we've switched ourselves

00:29:50.660 off to Russian diesel, who used to provide us with 40% of Europe's diesel. Now, as an

00:29:56.580 energy use expert if you can explain to me how you can run a modern industrial society without

00:30:02.260 diesel then i'm all ears but i don't know how to do it and it's responded diesel is critical for

00:30:07.240 farming for fishing for food logistics for construction for running the other two primary

00:30:13.820 energy sources that's renewable energy and nuclear energy i could go on and on it is really is the

00:30:19.660 critical field and we've switched ourselves off to it and of course having switched ourselves off

00:30:24.460 and increased our prices in europe which of course is having an effect on our economies

00:30:29.500 especially germans economy and we're now in the situation when the straighter for mose is closed

00:30:34.080 and so we've got a second wham on top of the first wham so talk about being in a very very

00:30:41.020 fragile position it's an extremely weak position not least of all because we import um about 12

00:30:48.000 million barrels a day into oil into into the european region um norway is reasonably self

00:30:54.660 sufficient in fact norway is completely self-sufficient and we get about 45 percent or so of

00:30:59.440 our um hydrocarbons from the north sea although that's reducing but uh europe generally is

00:31:06.880 extremely um extremely vulnerable so what you've got a situation which is that our energy

00:31:12.280 infrastructure is being written down at a time when we have no no chance of defending our skies

00:31:17.440 against it. And again, this is why I was trying to actually make the point to people who are

00:31:23.080 prepared to think about what this wall might look like, because the economic consequences of this

00:31:28.160 would be profound. Mathematically, there's a really close relationship between the use of energy

00:31:33.700 and GDP. It's extremely close. It's close to one. It's perhaps sort of 0.99 or something.

00:31:40.860 So what that means is when you take energy out of the system, then you are going to have a

00:31:45.740 consequent effect which is similar in rough order of magnitude on your economy so if we take 10%

00:31:52.320 of the world's energy away then surprise surprise don't be surprised if we get a global reduction

00:31:58.820 in GDP of 10% and that's getting close to a depression indeed it's on the borderline of

00:32:04.020 depression but going back to Europe it wouldn't surprise me at all if we're in a situation where

00:32:09.760 were such an attack to happen then we would be in deep economic trouble

00:32:13.860 and I think that would lead to deep political trouble as well. But again, it is a scenario

00:32:21.680 and the point of the scenario was to help people really think about what such a war might mean

00:32:27.940 and really make sure that we've done the risk assessment. Now, I developed it as a scenario

00:32:34.800 because what I wanted people to think about was doing the risk assessment. At the moment,

00:32:39.160 the europeans risk assessment of what they're doing as far as i can see is based on a guess

00:32:44.500 and the guess is we're going to keep firing long-range weapons into russia and we're going

00:32:49.880 to guess that the russians aren't going to respond and i think that's a very dangerous guess i mean

00:32:55.360 people say the russians don't have red lines and i keep saying to the world just a second the russian

00:33:00.920 told us that if we tried to expand nato into georgia or to ukraine and it would result in a

00:33:06.960 war and indeed all our clever thinkers told us the same thing and surprise surprise when we did

00:33:12.140 do that a war happened so russia do have red lines so i think it's wrong to have that guess

00:33:18.220 and the way that risk management works i'm not a great fan of risk management it's used by the

00:33:22.840 financial sector to do risk analysis and as far as i can see it doesn't work for them but what

00:33:27.380 they do do they say if you're thinking about a risk have a think about uh the the um impact

00:33:33.380 and the probability. Now, even if the probability is low of Russia doing what I've said, the impact

00:33:39.920 is profound. So to me, that's a risk which you really need to work very, very hard to think

00:33:45.360 through and to make sure that the population who you're exposing to that risk have been taken on

00:33:52.500 board rather than just crack on without really thinking about it. So I think there needs to be

00:33:59.620 in Europe a political debate about this and whether we're prepared to let our politicians

00:34:04.360 lead us into a situation where we're exposed to this risk. And we've been here before in Europe,

00:34:13.580 it was 1914, I should say, you know, the run, Barbara Tuckman's famous book, you know,

00:34:21.040 The Guns of August, where we almost, we fell into the First World War. People thought it would be

00:34:26.040 over in four months and four years later Europe was devastated. So let's at least try to do the

00:34:31.580 thinking this time round and decide that if we are going to do these things and to poke the bear

00:34:37.720 for ready for a war which we would lose anyway, let's at least have a public debate about that

00:34:44.760 and see how the country feel about it and how the countries feel about it. Because I'm strongly of

00:34:49.080 the view that actually if the country were exposed to what I'm talking about, the difference in terms

00:34:55.880 of political support for it would be profound.

00:34:58.860 I think the political support for it would fall away.

00:35:02.540 It doesn't matter what the moral issue is. 0.92

00:35:04.720 I happen to think that the moral high ground lies with Russia. 0.85

00:35:08.200 What happens is the issue of power, 0.93

00:35:10.520 and Russia has the balance of power here and overwhelmingly.

00:35:14.680 So my suspicion is if we were able to have that debate,

00:35:18.100 and I think we should have that debate, 0.99

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00:36:35.860 I think one disadvantage that the Europeans have is they don't understand how hated they are by the people planning these wars.

00:36:43.400 I think it's true of all the wars the last hundred years.

00:36:45.460 I think, at least in my country, the foreign policy strategists, the neocons who are driving all of this, truly hate Europe and would like to see it destroyed.

00:36:57.020 The Israelis hate Europe, and Europeans can't seem to admit that to themselves.

00:37:01.280 It's very obvious by the effects.

00:37:03.740 So let's say that the Russians did lob a hypersonic missile into Rotterdam or into the UK.

00:37:08.520 everyone knows it's very obvious that that europe can't mount a conventional war against russia

00:37:16.260 they would lose instantly the one thing they do have however is nuclear weapons so how much

00:37:20.640 incentive would there be to use a nuclear weapon in response um it's a 64 000 question and i i

00:37:29.120 actually cover that in the article um i think that what what we're talking about is that if

00:37:35.500 either um britain or france the two nations with nuclear weapons chose to respond with nuclear

00:37:40.840 weapons that essentially is committing national suicide yes i would expect the russians to to

00:37:47.260 respond don't let's let's forget they've got nearly 5 500 nuclear weapons just short of that

00:37:53.780 and uh you know i think britain's got sort of i think there might be 200 is those sorts of figures

00:38:00.000 I think that a prime minister or a president of France who was prepared to use nuclear weapons to support a conventional war, which we were likely to lose in the first place, I think that would be a very – it's a suicidal call to make, so I cannot see it happening.

00:38:20.020 Really? Because they cheered the destruction of their own energy pipeline. They abetted the invasion of their country by North and Sub-Saharan Africa. They're suicidal. That's what it seems as an observer.

00:38:33.280 Yeah, I think it's suicidal by incompetence, but I would like to think that within the establishment, there are enough people who would, by this stage, especially if we were starting to go to war, have really started to think this through.

00:38:53.560 I would also like to think that, and I'd be interested in your view on this, that there were Americans who were saying, this isn't very good.

00:39:01.380 This isn't what we were thinking that we could help with the breakup of Russia.

00:39:06.040 It's not happening.

00:39:06.880 This war is starting to kick off.

00:39:09.680 We need to get this to a close.

00:39:11.360 And I don't know if that would happen, but I would like to think that actually there would be some voices in America.

00:39:17.300 You know, the sorts of people who would spring to mind for me would be people like J.D. Vance and Tulsi Gabbard is no longer there.

00:39:25.440 But the voices of reason within the White House.

00:39:28.640 I'm curious to see what Donald Trump's view as well.

00:39:31.700 But I'm sure that Americans would not want to be doing anything which opened them to the possibility of a nuclear exchange with Russia.

00:39:40.080 My sense is that Trump's views are irrelevant.

00:39:43.200 I don't think he was for this war with Iran. 0.97

00:39:45.220 He did it anyway. 1.00

00:39:46.620 He's utterly controlled.

00:39:48.360 So there's that.

00:39:50.040 J.D. Vance is the only person I'm aware of in American national politics with any power at all, to the extent he has power, who would oppose this.

00:39:58.340 But I don't see anyone other than J.D. Vance.

00:40:02.720 I hope I'm wrong.

00:40:04.760 Yeah, I hope you are too.

00:40:08.340 I mean, there's no doubt that the voices of the independent media is starting to be heard.

00:40:12.040 We've got a long, long way to go, but we're starting to be heard.

00:40:14.860 But again, this is why I think this debate needs to happen now rather than later.

00:40:19.260 I mean, Europeans haven't thought about this a lot.

00:40:21.560 I mean, when the attacks were conducted on the Russian strategic bombing force, I thought

00:40:29.780 that was an act of incredible strategic recklessness because those bombers were out on the airfields

00:40:36.800 on the pan so they could be seen by satellites as part of the START treaty.

00:40:41.240 So it was part of the treaty.

00:40:42.400 and uh russian nuclear doctrine is such that if there were if their nuclear triad uh an element

00:40:48.740 of the nuclear triad is attacked then their response is to respond with nuclear weapons

00:40:53.100 they chose not to do it thank goodness but we're playing with fire here and and i think that um

00:40:59.140 uh the the issue i think is is not the nuclear response and i i think it's a very open question

00:41:06.280 it's an open question not only for us but for the russians as well you know i could imagine the

00:41:10.540 Russian saying, yeah, actually, we've got people who are so incompetent in Western capitals that

00:41:17.760 we perhaps don't want to respond this way, or they might do it in a more measured way. I mean,

00:41:23.220 here's a very good question. What if the responses were not against Germany, France, and Britain,

00:41:29.600 but against Germany? And what if the responses were such that they took out Germany's drone 0.67

00:41:35.480 factories and poland's drone factories would then britain and russia and france be prepared 0.62

00:41:41.240 to sacrifice their nations and tens of millions of deaths to support germany in that situation

00:41:50.320 very very good question and i don't know what the answer is but i mean to me the answer is

00:41:56.620 let's at least think carefully about what we're trying to do with these long-range weapons and

00:42:02.000 fight attacks into Russia. And let's also think about diplomacy. I mean, the fact that we can

00:42:08.000 have, you know, have meetings where the West is talking about solutions to the Russia-Ukraine war

00:42:20.200 and triumphantly exclude one of the belligerents and its diplomatic incompetence of the highest

00:42:26.300 order, I can see. We, in the very difficult British and Irish relationships during the

00:42:34.560 troubles in Ireland, maintained diplomatic, very, very subtle diplomatic engagement throughout

00:42:40.440 almost the whole of that war. And thank goodness we did. What we need, I think, is to at least

00:42:46.060 think about this alternative pathway to peace. I'm sure it's there. I've often thought that one

00:42:52.520 of the biggest problems is nato you know nato at the moment is a bit of a self-licking lollipop

00:42:58.640 but what what i've what i once said nato exists to um confront um a threat which is created by

00:43:07.280 its own existence yet doesn't have the power to confront the threat that its existence has

00:43:13.200 created so i think nato to my mind is a key part of the problem here and what a beautiful formulation

00:43:20.700 that is nato exists to confront the opposition it's created but doesn't have the power to

00:43:28.640 successfully resist that up i mean that's that's the truest thing i've heard today yes as it was

00:43:34.100 in a real it was in a um um a one of the quincy institutes a responsible statecraft article about

00:43:41.220 18 months ago i mean it's so obvious you know um and yet people think that nato is omnipotent

00:43:48.220 So I think that understanding that actually the NATO guarantee is,

00:43:53.700 I wouldn't say it's as little as paper,

00:43:56.180 but it is much less comprehensive than people think

00:43:59.840 because it relies on military forces which are, to my mind,

00:44:03.720 nowhere near as battle-hardened as Russians are. 0.96

00:44:06.180 The second best army in the world, I would say, 0.93

00:44:08.360 at the moment in terms of battle-hardened is the Ukrainian army.

00:44:12.060 The first is the Russian army.

00:44:14.180 The Chinese will be watching extremely closely.

00:44:16.680 so the idea that nato um you know can with a disparate group of um countries with different

00:44:24.440 levels of force forces with different levels of um equipment capabilities can actually be brought

00:44:31.700 together into coalition to defeat the most battle pardoned army in the world you know it just doesn't

00:44:36.820 stack up does it you need to be a military man to understand that it doesn't stack up unfortunately

00:44:42.880 a lot of the military people don't understand this. They're not really interested, as far as

00:44:48.620 I can see, in understanding Russia. I just find it profound. I've been listening to a couple. I

00:44:57.700 was listening recently to one of our former chief of defence staff, and I said in a meeting in which

00:45:03.360 we were at, I said, what do you think about talking to Russia? And his response was, yes,

00:45:07.420 I think we probably should do that.

00:45:09.660 But he said, but not Putin.

00:45:11.660 I thought, well, that's just astonishing that anybody could say that.

00:45:15.500 And it shows you the degree of Russophobia.

00:45:18.620 I mean, I was, you know, in my service career, 0.57

00:45:21.280 I spent a lot of the time in my service career preparing to fight the Russians.

00:45:24.140 But when the Cold War came and Partnership for Peace was kicked off

00:45:28.940 and we started to engage with the Russians, nobody, we were,

00:45:32.820 most of us, in my experience, were delighted that we could be in that position.

00:45:36.660 so quite how we've got back to this situation of um seeing russia the enemy is a good question a

00:45:43.540 lot of it is to do with not listening to russia and not hearing russia because when you listen

00:45:48.560 to them and hear them it's fairly obvious what they want but people just don't seem to be able

00:45:53.180 to do it it's a bit like um i mean i'm not a soccer player but it's it's a bit like um getting

00:45:59.400 your team ready for a, um, a match and, um, not bothering to study the opposition.

00:46:05.880 Yes.

00:46:06.160 I mean, how many football coaches would do that?

00:46:08.340 How many American football coaches to do it?

00:46:10.360 How many, you know, everybody would be studying the opposition.

00:46:12.460 And if we were studying the opposition and that'd be a good start, we would then realize

00:46:16.640 the challenge we've got, but we would also be in a much position to understand the opposition.

00:46:21.460 Well, they're much more serious than we are and much more.

00:46:24.640 It's not close.

00:46:25.860 And so that right there gives you pause.

00:46:27.600 Why would you ever get into a conflict with people who are at least as smart as you and much more committed?

00:46:33.680 You wouldn't.

00:46:34.660 So where you, after your military service, spent 15 years in the energy sector, where's your qualified answer to this question?

00:46:44.080 Where is the West, the U.S., Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, with energy right now?

00:46:53.280 I think it's a very good question.

00:46:56.860 And my strong sense, this is intuitive with some analysis to support it, but my strong

00:47:04.560 sense is that we're on the edge of a crisis.

00:47:09.000 And the reason I say that is if you take, it's not 20 million barrels per day, and let's

00:47:13.260 just stay with oil for the moment, not natural gas, but just taking oil, which is the critical

00:47:19.140 resource for almost all of the others.

00:47:20.940 If you take 20 million barrels of oil out of the Strait of Hormose, in fact, it's 13, then sooner or later that has to show up.

00:47:30.440 Now, what I was surprised with is how long it's taken.

00:47:35.640 And, of course, when you start to see what's going on, you start to see what's happening.

00:47:39.700 It takes, from the closure of the Strait Formos, it takes about two months for the ships, which are travelling at 12 knots, which is about the same speed as a bicycle, you know, to get to the United States and to places like Cushing.

00:47:54.840 It takes about a month or so to get to Europe.

00:47:59.160 So firstly, you've got all the ships which had left were still moving.

00:48:03.940 The inventories, of course, were significant.

00:48:06.360 There was a bit of an oil glut at the time.

00:48:07.960 So those have been largely drawn down as far as I can see.

00:48:12.100 The Strategic Petroleum Reserves as well have largely been drawn down.

00:48:17.120 I think Cushing is now, the American Strategic Petroleum Reserve, I think is pretty low.

00:48:21.820 A figure I have in my mind, you may know this better than me, is about 20%.

00:48:24.980 That's right.

00:48:25.780 And again, when you start to get to the dregs, you've got to think carefully about it.

00:48:30.120 Even when the oil moves through pipelines, so from Cushing up to New England, it's traveling at between three and eight miles an hour.

00:48:41.320 So that, of course, takes time.

00:48:42.600 And, of course, you need to have oil in the pipeline for the pipeline to work.

00:48:47.420 So the oil in the pipeline isn't working.

00:48:49.780 It's not working in Montreal. 0.98

00:48:51.120 Last but by no means least is China.

00:48:53.900 And what I don't think any of us understood was how China would respond to this.

00:48:57.660 And I don't think we completely understand.

00:49:01.220 But China reduced its demand by about 5 million barrels per day, which is a significant reduction.

00:49:08.680 It's also home to the largest strategic petroleum reserve in the world.

00:49:12.800 I think the figure I've got is 1.3 billion barrels per day.

00:49:15.800 So it's a very significant reserve.

00:49:19.140 I also suspect, I don't know, I suspect one of the ways that China was thinking about this was not just about self-interest.

00:49:25.500 but i suspect the chinese were thinking that as an exporting nation they were thinking long and hard

00:49:31.380 about the impact that the straight-up almost closure would have on the rest of the far east

00:49:35.560 because there are other nations in the far east which are much more vulnerable japan had a very

00:49:39.980 big um or a reserve but places like taiwan the the 90 of the semiconductors are made in taiwan 0.93

00:49:48.680 so places like taiwan were much more much more vulnerable so i suspect one of the reasons china

00:49:52.840 may have done that is not just for tactical reasons, but also for thinking about their

00:49:59.680 export markets, because reduction in oil in these other places could have a significant

00:50:05.060 impact. I don't think anybody really knows. But one of the other things to think about is that,

00:50:13.640 sorry, I'll just finish. I think I would be surprised if we were not seeing consequences

00:50:17.960 of this in august uh and i've certainly heard some very um good analysts who i i follow um

00:50:27.700 talking about september as well i'm a great fan of an american geophysicist called art burn who's

00:50:35.420 an exceptional um exceptional analyst the other thing though of course is that even when the

00:50:40.400 straights foremost open then there is a lag there's a lag on actually those um um the whole

00:50:47.360 system getting going again it's a bit like sort of closing off your plumbing and your pipe in your

00:50:52.560 pipes at home and then expect it to function perfectly now one of the interesting things is

00:50:57.640 that when the um i can't remember what the ship's name was a ship like the container ship um blocked

00:51:04.820 the suez canal and for every one day that that container ship blocked the suez canal um of there's

00:51:11.660 a there's a very good merchant navy analyst called sam mcogliano who said it was about six days for

00:51:17.540 the whole logistics system to recover so even if it's three days you could be talking for um you

00:51:23.800 know as a minimum it would be the amount of time that the straits have been closed it will take to

00:51:27.900 recover but it could be twice that or it could be three times that so i'm expecting and forecasting

00:51:33.760 that we'll be looking at a significant recession

00:51:37.100 starting in the autumn,

00:51:39.420 and that could tip into recession in the new year.

00:51:42.560 Quite where that recession will play in the globe

00:51:45.140 is an open question.

00:51:46.280 I mean, the country that's most insulated from it, 0.71

00:51:48.320 surprise, surprise, is Russia. 0.76

00:51:50.680 You know, Russia's an autarkic nation. 0.98

00:51:53.280 It well understands the consequences 0.92

00:51:55.860 of what's going on, I think.

00:52:02.200 although Putin's first degree is in law, his postgraduate work was in resource economics.

00:52:09.180 So I would be astonished if they don't understand this. I know that the Chinese have been looking

00:52:15.600 at their own energy situation for decades. There's good evidence to say that in 2003,

00:52:23.040 when the Americans with allies went into Iraq, that the Chinese thought that that was about oil,

00:52:29.140 and they began increasing their own reserves.

00:52:36.740 But as for places like Europe,

00:52:38.960 we're incredibly vulnerable. 0.93

00:52:40.740 So is a lot of the Far East.

00:52:42.360 So I'm afraid to say on places like Africa.

00:52:44.880 And there's an open question about the United States as well.

00:52:48.300 The Trump line that the United States is an exporter of oil

00:52:53.880 is true in as much as an exporter of refined products.

00:52:57.020 but when it comes to to um crude it's an importer of crude in tune of about 6.5 million barrels per

00:53:06.460 day and even if you've got access you know through for example venezuela or canada oil is a fungible

00:53:12.740 commodity so you may have access but the prices will be all going to go up so i don't know what

00:53:17.800 it's like over there in the states at the moment um in terms of you know cost per barrel it's up

00:53:24.500 here. But if those costs were to increase significantly in the next two to three months,

00:53:30.980 I would imagine that would not be the sort of run you'd want into the midterms. And I would

00:53:36.760 be surprised if they don't increase significantly. And even if you open the straight-up-formos,

00:53:42.060 I would be surprised if the lag in the system is such that you're still not suffering

00:53:46.240 from the consequences of those well into the midterms and probably into the new year.

00:53:50.400 so oil brent crude was like priced in dollars i think 71 last week

00:53:59.040 um if you'd told me almost four months after the closure of the strait that it would be 71 i would

00:54:04.960 never have believed that what how did that happen were you surprised by it that it's so very very

00:54:11.200 i was just as surprised as you and i think most of the analysts were but i think a lot of it is

00:54:16.060 to do with the the lag it's also um this this distinction between the futures markets

00:54:21.660 and the actual delivery i was talking to a singaporean colleague last month

00:54:26.620 and he said that i don't know whether this is still the case that notwithstanding what

00:54:30.520 brent was at or what wti was at but in singapore they were buying crew for 200 a barrel

00:54:36.440 so you know the difference this the difference is is the interesting one it's what what people

00:54:43.020 are actually paying for it i mean there may be a short-term lag who knows but that's that's the

00:54:48.400 open question the so-called crack spread between um you know what you're paying what or what you're

00:54:53.580 forecasting to pay in the futures markets and what you're actually paying on the day

00:54:57.720 how does a country exist at 200 a barrel yeah well fortunately um singapore is an extremely

00:55:06.060 efficient country yes so you know but that must be having political effects i guess as well it's

00:55:12.120 quite a small country i didn't uh i was so surprised when i had 200 dollars a barrel i

00:55:16.160 didn't ask ask much more um but again if if we um get up to those sorts of figures you know think

00:55:23.300 back to to 2007 and 2008 the great global financial crisis yeah i was happened to be in

00:55:30.500 houston at part of that and i remember vividly seeing the stock market red all over i'll never

00:55:36.240 forget it i remember talking in to an american who was working in the british consulate in houston

00:55:42.000 He'd lost half his retirement savings in that crash.

00:55:47.360 And again, it seems to me that if you were to get up to those sorts of figures, 150,

00:55:53.960 and if you've got a global economy which is already not in trouble, but already very precarious,

00:56:01.120 then it wouldn't surprise me if we have another great financial crash.

00:56:03.620 I mean, who knows?

00:56:04.220 you know we might say it's it was 150 dollars an oil barrel oil a function of that to me it seems

00:56:12.960 impossible that it wasn't a function of that people will talk about um people talk about um

00:56:20.060 synthetic uh collateralized debt obligations in the housing market i think a lot of it's to do

00:56:25.000 with the euro dollar areas actually and how how funding in the euro dollar areas were actually

00:56:30.160 tightening but it seems impossible to me that actually that that that oil which is the primary

00:56:35.820 resource wasn't playing into that i mean it's playing into things like lift answer i can cancel

00:56:41.360 20 000 flights um about a couple of months ago um i don't know what bunker fuels are like that's the

00:56:50.260 fuel used for shifts but um when i was talking to somebody recently about those those were doubled

00:56:56.660 So again, it's what people are actually paying

00:56:58.600 rather than the futures market.

00:57:00.140 And it's when those two come back into alignment,

00:57:03.240 then we'll know probably more what's happening.

00:57:06.140 But the problem, I've said this before as well, Tucker,

00:57:08.620 is that when somebody, Danny Davis,

00:57:11.400 so I think you know Daniel Davis, said to me,

00:57:13.840 he said, if you were the czar of the world,

00:57:15.600 what would you do about solving the energy crisis?

00:57:17.840 I said, the problem is that the energy crisis,

00:57:20.420 nobody's in charge.

00:57:22.020 The whole of the energy markets are run by the market.

00:57:25.800 so there is no single entity can say well we need to do x y and z to sort this out you know you can't

00:57:30.900 just say well we need to actually um run more tankers few the straights for most because if

00:57:36.160 the shipping companies say well we don't like the look of that thanks we'll wait until it's ready

00:57:40.220 um so there are a whole load of issues here which are really run by the market and there i think

00:57:45.940 there's nobody who really understands the thing itself and even if they did understand there's

00:57:51.600 nobody who can actually press a button and press five or six buttons to make the whole thing work

00:57:56.260 again properly. Again, I'm hearing the same thing from other analysts. And I listen to this like a

00:58:01.640 book. And I don't say that I've got the answers, but what I do say is that you take this amount

00:58:05.800 of energy out of the system, it's bound to have economic consequences. It's a mathematical

00:58:10.960 impossibility that it won't. And in a globalized economy, no nation can have real sovereignty.

00:58:17.080 Of course, you can't act independently on behalf of your country because you're not in control of your country because you don't control its economy.

00:58:24.720 So, yeah, no one kind of thought about that, obviously, in the post-war era.

00:58:30.880 So let me just ask you a final question, which is how long are these two conflicts likely to continue?

00:58:37.380 Do you see hope of resolution in Eastern Europe or in the Middle East?

00:58:41.800 um i think if i take um the middle east first i've got a strong suspicion and i can't say for

00:58:49.640 sure that as the continued closure of the straits comes home to the united states and that as the

00:58:57.980 midterms go as i think it's almost impossible to avoid now badly and i suspect that that will

00:59:04.240 create a very different political atmosphere in the united states if you've got very significant

00:59:08.420 and price increases, and you're seeing lots of damage being done to the global economy. 0.90

00:59:14.060 So my suspicion is that that's the thing which might bring the Iran war to a closure. I can't 0.98

00:59:22.540 say for sure. The interesting thing as well will be to see the extent to which,

00:59:30.120 if were the situation to be improved between the United States on the one hand and China and Russia

00:59:35.600 On the other hand, both China and Russia could actually have a hand in helping to bring that war to a close.

00:59:43.180 What's for sure is that unless the United States is willing to deploy significant land troops,

00:59:51.340 and when I say significant, we're talking tens, hundreds of thousands,

00:59:54.880 because nothing else is going to make a difference, then the war cannot be mum militarily.

01:00:00.060 And we know, I don't think I'm overguessing to say that there's no political appetite in the United States to deploy land forces into the Iranian war.

01:00:10.560 I think as regards to the Russia-Ukraine war, that's a more difficult one to call.

01:00:16.700 My guess is that what Putin will be thinking about will be about the coming economic crisis in Europe.

01:00:24.780 because one of the things that he could be saying to himself is okay i could respond um by as the

01:00:32.560 europeans start to ratchet up pressure on me but actually i can see what's coming so by the time

01:00:38.120 this economic crisis hits europe and at that stage the europeans will be recognized finally

01:00:44.000 that they simply can't afford the weapons and they're actually because they're actually tipping

01:00:48.500 into recession i mean arguably germany's already in recession i think both britain and france

01:00:52.700 probably are on the edge of it,

01:00:55.340 that suddenly they're in deep economic trouble.

01:00:59.180 And the last thing they want to do

01:01:00.200 is to actually invite their countries

01:01:03.180 to invest 5% of their GDP in fighting a war,

01:01:09.420 which by this stage they'll hopefully rise,

01:01:11.720 cannot be won.

01:01:13.420 If that happens,

01:01:14.740 then I would like to think

01:01:15.560 that it could be brought to a close

01:01:18.220 by the end of the year if the recession hits.

01:01:20.840 there's a slightly sort of weird way to think about it perhaps if it were to be diplomacy a

01:01:27.620 lot will depend i think on again it might depend on the midterms it might depend on how the neocons

01:01:32.360 see it it might depend on the e3 and their policies but sooner or later people i'm sure

01:01:40.000 are going to recognize that the war cannot be cannot be won the one other thing that could

01:01:45.100 of bringing it to a close

01:01:46.440 would be a change in policy by Russia 0.56

01:01:48.240 because the alternative to striking Europe, 0.93

01:01:52.040 and I still do not think that's off the table,

01:01:54.900 even though it's in the scenario,

01:01:55.920 the alternative could be a move on Kiev,

01:01:58.580 an Arbor move on Kiev.

01:02:00.000 And I think that would be done

01:02:01.240 not for military reasons,

01:02:02.820 but for political reasons.

01:02:04.660 And if the Kiev government were to collapse,

01:02:07.980 then I think at that stage,

01:02:09.520 I think it would be game over.

01:02:11.520 So Russia would never mention it,

01:02:13.660 But I wouldn't be surprised if it's been something they thought through as a possible course of action.

01:02:20.940 I mean, Putin has got to be under domestic pressure.

01:02:25.060 He doesn't rule as an absolute dictator.

01:02:28.180 I mean, he's got constituencies in the GRU, the military.

01:02:31.480 Lots of people would like his job.

01:02:32.960 I mean, how much pressure is he under to respond with force, greater force, do you think?

01:02:38.260 I think he's under significant pressure.

01:02:40.380 Yeah, but I actually took the time

01:02:44.740 when the war kicked off

01:02:47.560 to listen to Oliver Stone's interviews with Putin

01:02:52.140 to get to know the man.

01:02:53.580 And I also took the time

01:02:54.760 to actually read Philip Short's biography of him.

01:02:58.420 And then I came out of that thinking

01:03:00.840 this is a man who's extremely strategic

01:03:03.300 and whatever you think about him

01:03:06.220 due to what you heard in the press,

01:03:09.180 this is a person who deserves significant respect yes so if i had been thinking about this i would

01:03:15.880 say we need to think very carefully because this is a strategic leader who deserves significant

01:03:21.000 respect i think he is under pressure but equally i think he's the sort of man who will um be able

01:03:27.460 to resist this pressure and do what he thinks best which is what i think he's been doing until now

01:03:32.600 so um although i often hear people say oh why hasn't putin um i hear podcasters and people

01:03:41.300 in the alternative media saying that putin is not being affected he should have responded by now

01:03:45.620 um i have a strong intuition that's supported by the general staff and when i went to afghanistan

01:03:52.220 before i went there i read the russian the generalist russian general staff's analysis of their

01:03:57.200 Afghan campaign

01:03:59.060 they did a 10 year campaign

01:04:01.740 and got out in good order after 10 years

01:04:03.900 and the

01:04:05.000 the structures

01:04:08.060 they left there took two

01:04:09.820 years before actually things

01:04:11.800 started to become again, we got out after 20

01:04:13.880 years, much more money expended

01:04:15.760 and things were collapsing around as we got out

01:04:17.980 I was really impressed by what the Russian

01:04:19.720 General Staff, so I would think that

01:04:21.860 actually he's going to be very well advised as well

01:04:23.980 by the Russian General Staff, so

01:04:25.480 So I would think he's the sort of man who will be able to hold his nerve.

01:04:30.040 And I think he's the sort of man who will do what he thinks right strategically.

01:04:33.920 So again, although I've pushed that scenario as one to think about,

01:04:37.440 and I would think that he will have that on the table,

01:04:40.020 and it wouldn't surprise me if that one way in which that,

01:04:42.500 if I were to forecast how that scenario would play out,

01:04:45.080 rather than to put a sort of worst case,

01:04:47.740 I'd say if he were going to use weapons,

01:04:51.780 the first thing he would do is he would ring up the White House and say,

01:04:55.080 we are going to use weapons against the E3.

01:04:58.900 Then having done that, he would then say,

01:05:01.160 ring up Mertz, Macron and Burnham as it will be

01:05:07.020 and say, we are going to use weapons

01:05:08.620 against the production facilities

01:05:10.080 unless we have a clear response from you

01:05:14.600 saying that you will stop providing Ukraine

01:05:16.660 with these sorts of weapons.

01:05:18.280 So that's what I would guess he would do

01:05:19.720 because he would escalate.

01:05:21.740 So it's a different type of escalation.

01:05:24.120 But in terms of holding his nerve, I would think he will hold his nerve for a bit.

01:05:27.540 But I think a lot will depend on, firstly, how the war continues to play out.

01:05:31.580 Secondly, the economic conditions.

01:05:33.540 And thirdly, the extent to which the Russians become nervous that they are going to find

01:05:38.680 large weapons fired into the middle of Russia, which have been built in France, Germany,

01:05:43.760 or Britain.

01:05:44.580 And if they do start to think that is going to happen, then I would expect Putin to respond,

01:05:51.360 but in a very measured way.

01:05:53.720 That sounds exactly right to me.

01:05:55.360 What a wise analysis.

01:05:57.280 Thank you for taking the time to do this.

01:05:59.820 It's a pleasure, Tucker.

01:06:01.500 And keep up the good work.

01:06:02.920 I think we in the independent media, it's important.

01:06:07.600 So often I get to the podcast I've done with Danny and Glenn Deason and others,

01:06:11.420 people saying, thank goodness, it lasts some common sense.

01:06:14.720 And we really need this common sense because the danger otherwise is that we'll do a 1914,

01:06:20.360 which is the last thing we need to do.

01:06:21.700 yeah i spent 35 years in traditional media and the second i went to independent media i thought

01:06:27.560 this is where all the smart people are i wondered where they were they're not in traditional media

01:06:33.900 so thank you and you're a perfect example so thank you for doing this yeah pleasure pleasure thanks

The Tucker Carlson Show - July 20, 2026

WAR UPDATE： Military Insider Gives Terrifying Prediction & Reveals How Unprepared America Truly Is

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