Can the US Fight Two Major Wars & Win? W/Scott Ritter!

All right, I'm going live here. Okay, hello everybody and welcome to Geopolitical Trends. Excited to be here with none other than Scott Ritter. I don't need to give you guys an introduction. You know who Scott is and you know what he is about, and this is exactly what I'm gonna be addressing with Scott in this conversation. We're gonna be talking about whether the United States is in position to fight front wars, let's say with Russia, let's say with China, or both. So what do you think, Scott, given what's going on right now in Ukraine? But we all know Ukraine is losing anyway. And with the, the tensions that's been escalated in, in the Far East, where do you see this is going?

Well, uh, let's, let's address the underlying, uh, question you had You know, can the United States fight a two-front war? Can the United States fight a one-front war? And the answer is no when it comes to taking on either Russia or China. But don't take my word for it. Take the word of General Christopher Cavoli, the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, the head of all US forces in Europe, who, when speaking to a Swedish defense forum this past January, said that the United States and NATO could not imagine the scope and scale of the violence taking place on the battlefield in Ukraine. And if you can't imagine something, that means you're not prepared for it, because every contingency plan, uh, you know, that's, that's tucked away in a safe somewhere is premised on somebody imagining a problem and then creating a plan to address that problem. The fact of the matter is the United States cannot fight, uh, a war in Europe against a Russian-style opponent. And again, This has been underscored by a recent paper published by a US Army think tank that talked about the United States taking, you know, over 3,600 casualties in a day. That's basically half a brigade. That means the United States loses a brigade every 2 days in this large-scale conflict in Europe. And how many brigades have we deployed to to Europe. We may have 5 brigades there now. We might be able to jam another 2, 3 brigades in there. Let's call it 8 brigades. That's 16 days. A little over 2 weeks is what the United States would last in a large-scale ground conflict in Europe. That's assuming that we could logistically sustain this effort, which we can't. We don't have the fuel, we don't have the ammunition, we don't have anything that would allow this to be sustained. So In short, if the United States were to engage a Russian-style opponent in Europe in large-scale ground combat, we would find ourselves depleted in about a week, defeated, totally defeated. And the same holds true with NATO, our allies. They're not prepared. They're not equipped to carry out this kind of fight. We know this because General Bauer, a German general with NATO, recently talked about the exercises that NATO— he's excited about the exercises NATO is getting ready to execute. He said, you know, we're going to be testing our communications, our logistics, our sustainability, our interoperability. And this is all stuff we'll be doing for the first time. No newsflash, General Bauer, we used to do it on a regular basis back in the 1980s. I was in the Marine Corps. We, we, we had around 250,000 American troops permanently stationed in, in West Germany. We could fly in another 300,000 within 10 days. Europe had several hundred thousand more already on the front line, and we trained every day for large-scale ground combat. We know what it takes to do this, and we're not anywhere close to that today. The fact that NATO has to relearn a skill set that we used to possess 30 years ago means that NATO has forgotten this kind of warfare, doesn't know how to train it. We come back to General Cavoli's statement: NATO hasn't imagined this kind of war. They have no clue what they're doing. If you can't imagine it, you can't do it. If you haven't defined the problem properly, you don't have the solution. And neither NATO nor the United States has the solution to a Russian-style military opponent engaged in large-scale ground combat in Europe. Now we transfer to the Pacific. We can say the same thing about the American fleet there. The American fleet is trapped in a World War II type legacy of aircraft carrier battle groups. These are not survivable entities anymore. The modern weaponry that the United States will be facing in the terms of long-range precision-guided missiles with hypersonic maneuvering warheads can evade any air defense system a carrier battle group can put forward, means that the American ships will be sunk well before they get within range of striking any Chinese target. This is a reality. This is a fact. And again, don't trust Scott Ritter. Talk to Clinton Hinote. He was a lieutenant general, the deputy chief of staff of the United States Air Force, who from 2019 until just this year was responsible for wargaming, um, potential scenarios with China. And he recently reported to the Pentagon in the spring of this year, that report was carried to the White House, that there is no scenario in which the United States prevails against China. Not a single one. Every single scenario that goes forward that puts the United States conventional forces against Chinese conventional forces has America losing, and not just losing, but losing badly. He said it doesn't make any sense to continue a policy that could lead to potential conflict because it's a preordained outcome that America will lose this fight. So America can't defeat China, we can't defeat Russia, we can't defeat North Korea, to be honest, because not only does North Korea have superior conventional firepower. North Korea now has a nuclear deterrent that offsets any conventional power or nuclear power that America might bring to bear on the problem. So the, the fact that— and let's go one more— we can't beat Iran, you know. We, and we know this because— and how do we know this? Because when Donald Trump was president, Iran shot down an RQ-4 Global Hawk drone. And, um, at that time Donald Trump was talking about retaliatory strikes. He was gonna go take out some Iranian air defense systems. This would have resulted in Iranian casualties, which probably would have resulted in Iranian retaliatory strike against American facilities in the Middle East, probably the total decimation of the Fifth Fleet. Also probably strikes against strategic targets in Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, et cetera, related to oil production that would have crippled America's economy and the global economy. And what did the generals tell Donald Trump? They said, "Boss, if you go down this path, we're gonna embark on a course that's going to lead to a conflict with Iran that we're gonna lose initially because we don't have the resources available. And it will take us 6 to 9 months to build up the forces necessary to move into theater. But even then, we may not make it 'cause Iran possesses area denial weaponry in the form of long-range precision guided missiles that will probably sink the majority of our shipping before we go there." Every American contingency in the Middle East recently has us landing in friendly ports, has our aircraft landing in friendly airports. It was back in the day, in the 1980s, in the war plans that I helped prepare and write, we talked about forcible entry, forcible entry into Chabahar, forcible entry into Bandar Abbas, airfield seizure operations. We don't do those anymore. All of our contingencies in the Middle East are predicated upon having a host nation providing port facilities so that we can offload our, you know, significant amphibious shipborne capabilities in a relatively benign environment. That's not how reality works today. Today, if you want to go to war against Iran, you're going to have to seize a city. We lack the asked him to do that. Colonel Berger, the commandant of the Marine Corps, has reflected on this when he became the commandant. He said, I am not married to legacy-style operations, meaning that I am not going to be putting a battalion plus on a single ship and sail it towards an enemy that can sink that ship hundreds of kilometers offshore. That is suicide. And if you can't do that, if you— right now the Marine Corps is only geared to doing that kind of seizure. If you line up, you know, half a dozen amphibious assault vehicles and do traditional amphibious operations, um, we're not— we can't do that anymore. So the bottom line is we can't fight and defeat Russia, China, Iran, North Korea. Maybe we'll get away with taking on Venezuela, I don't know. But remember, war is an extension of politics by other means. So even if our military can prevail on the battlefield, as we did in Afghanistan, We will ultimately lose because the American people don't have the intestinal fortitude to stick it out when the going gets tough.

Yeah, you're absolutely correct. But speaking of North Korea and Iran, of course, as I'm sure you do know, that the Russian Defense Minister Shoigu is in Iran. But just last week, it was a visit by North Korean leader Kim to Russia. You know, as an analyst, I'm thinking Are we talking about an alliance in the making here? And if it is, will it include the four countries— Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea? And if so, how this is going to impact what's going on, for example, in South Korea, in Japan, in Philippines, or even in Australia, vis-à-vis the military, uh, capabilities of this alliance if it is to emerge? To the surface?

I, I don't think we're talking about a, um, a military alliance, and I'll explain why I believe that. One, um, I don't believe Iran wants a military alliance with Russia. Uh, Iran is a traditionally very independent nation, and it doesn't want to subordinate its, uh, national security imperatives to, to any alliance. It is, uh, fiercely, um, defensive of, of, of its own sovereignty and its own policies. The other thing is Russia doesn't want to get involved in Middle East politics, not in a way that would drag Russia into a conflict. And there's no need for an alliance. Iran has sufficient military power to, um, you know, implement a very effective deterrent policy. Why hasn't the United States bombed Iran, um, lately? Because the United States knows the retaliation will be devastating. Why is Israel limited itself to covert action or striking targets inside Syria? Why hasn't Israel struck Iran? Because Israel will cease to exist. This is the reality. So Iran doesn't need Russia that way. What Iran needs from Russia is economic cooperation. What Iran and Russia have in common are that they are both heavily targeted by U.S. sanctions, so heavily targeted, by the way, that the United States really doesn't have anything left to sanction. Which means it's the end of sanctions policy, because if you can't sanction anymore and the enemy shrugged it off and moving forward, it means you have failed. And so what Russia and Iran are doing right now is operating in an environment that isn't just two nations cooperating. Remember, Iran has been invited to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which is a vast economic and political and security, um, forum organization that is virtually sanction-proof, meaning that now Iran is a member, it can do business with these people, and they can't deny Iran the ability to do business with them. And the United States can't sanction everybody, or if they try, that's going to fail. Iran has also been invited to BRICS, another large economic forum that is easily the, uh, the equivalent of the G7, probably going to exceed the G7 in near future in terms of global economic impact, it definitely trumps the G20 because, frankly speaking, most of the BRICS members come from the G20, and the, and the BRICS forum is a more independent form. The G20 is simply an expression of G7 policy imperatives projected on the Global South. BRICS rejects that. BRICS says we are independent. Iran is part of this. So Iran is looking for strengthening itself through these new economic relations. Uh, it's walking, turning its back on the West, not really because it wants to, but because the West has made it sort of a mandate. You have to, you have no choice, the West won't work with you. Now, in this, in keeping with this, what Iran will do is strengthen through economic interaction, uh, military relationships by buying military equipment that strengthen it and by selling military equipment that helps enrich it. And we see that relationship being developed with Russia right now in regard to the, um, the, uh, Shahid, uh, uh, class drones that Iran has sold the Russians, either in terms of kits, in terms of licensing for, uh, indigenous manufacture inside Russia, whatever. We see the same thing happening with North Korea. Russia is not going to get involved in North Korea's quarrels with Japan, South Korea, and the United States. Russia doesn't want to get dragged into that conflict. I got a cat attacking me in the back. But what North Korea is doing is just like with Iran. Russia is liberating North Korea from the sanctions. Russia can do this because it has been sanctioned the maximum possible, and sanctions simply don't matter to Russia anymore. Russia is now lifting the curtain and saying, "You're invited in, North Korea." China's doing the same, and in doing so, they're going to not only allow North Korea to acquire military technology from Russia— look, one of the places that Vladimir Putin took Kim Jong-un was to a, a cosmodrome to show them satellite launch capabilities. One of the things North Korea really needs in terms of its own national security is the ability to launch you know, intelligence satellites that can monitor South Korea, monitor— Now the dog has got excited by this.

Dog is agreeing with you, Scott.

I think the dog just realized— the dog was asleep and he just saw the cat, so he's excited about that. But the funny world I live in. But the fact is, North Korea needs Satellites. Russia is going to provide that technology. What is North Korea getting out of this? Um, you know, contrary to popular belief, it isn't that North Korea suddenly opened up the floodgates and sending trainloads of artillery ammunition, and that wasn't part of the deal. North Korea may be selling to Russia a certain class of multiple launch rocket systems, an entire system that could be sold to Russia, um, because as Russia admitted with the drone conflict. You know, when this, when this conflict started, Russia had drones, but they realized early on that their doctrine, their drone doctrine, which drove their drone procurement, was insufficient to the realities of modern warfare. Russia has tremendous multiple launch rocket systems. They have a variety of classes, but there are categories where there's a gap. I think this conflict is positioned— the positional nature of warfare that exists right now means that Russia has gaps in firepower coverage that might be filled by this North Korean system. So Russia might be willing to buy these systems and bring them in intact to fill that gap. This is a mutually beneficial relationship that does not require a formal military alliance.

Very, very interesting. Now, in this, uh, just to follow up on this point, Scott, Then what will be the scenario for the two main allies of the US, Japan and South Korea? What would be— because I'm seeing the consequences here for them getting involved in something that they can't handle.

Yeah, well, we see it. First of all, remember earlier this summer, Joe Biden held a trilateral summit in Camp David where he invited the South Korean president and the Japanese prime minister to come in and basically develop a joint strategy for North Korea, for China, etc. And part of the joint strategy for North Korea was the formulation of what they call a joint nuclear policy, um, how the three nations would respond if North Korea were to use nuclear weapons. Let's look at what the South Korean president has done in the immediate aftermath of North— of Kim Jong-un's visit to, to Russia. He immediately comes on and, and panic tweets or proclaims, you know, don't, don't work with Russia. If you attack us with a nuclear weapon, we have a policy that will respond and eliminate you as a regime, not realizing that if North Korea were to attack South Korea with nuclear weapons, he wouldn't live anymore. He'd be dead. So would the totality of his military. So would his society. So would his nation. Um, Japan would suffer the same fate, which now begs the question, is with North— with South Korea and Japan destroyed, what is America's response going to be? Because now America would have to retaliate with nuclear weapons against North Korea, knowing that North Korea has nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles that will take out Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Denver. Is the American president really going to launch a retaliatory nuclear strike against Pyongyang knowing that tens of millions, maybe 100 million Americans are gonna lose their life? It's not so black and white anymore, is it? And guess who just woke up to that fact? Japanese Prime Minister. Because his reaction was, Hey, Kim Jong-un, call me. Um, love to have a talk with you, buddy. Sit down, no preconditions, let's just get some stuff off our chest. He's suddenly worried about North Korea and he wants to make good with North Korea. Where was that desire to reach out and have a no-precondition discussion dialogue with North Korea, uh, a month ago, 2 months ago? Japan and South Korea are now scared to death because they're, they're looking at 2 things. One, a resurgent North Korea, an invigorated North Korea. They're looking at an America in decline, in collapse, and it scares them to death.

Will the same be applying to Australia, given they got involved in AUKUS and all that? Could we see the same scenario in Australia?

Uh, first of all, I don't see Australia getting directly involved in a Korean conflict. I mean, Australia's got a very small military, and that's a very long way to travel. Um, I think Australia would get more involved with, um, China in the South China Sea, uh, maybe peripherally involved in any Taiwan conflict. But again, Australia has to watch out because it's, it's basically serving as a giant fixed aircraft carrier for the United States, and they need to understand that every single American military installation on Australian soil is a legitimate target for the Chinese, um, and that Australia will pay a price if there is a war, and the price will be heavy. They also have to understand that China is their most important trading partner, and, uh, China could shut down the Australian economy tonight. All they have to do is turn off the spigot. And so Australia is in a very, very difficult position where they have yet to learn to say no to the Americans based upon the dominance that America enjoys in the region politically, economically, militarily since the Second World War. But, um, they, they, they also have to learn how to wake up to reality that China is the, uh, the new, the new kid in town, top dog. And, um, Australia is going to have to start altering its policy to, uh, to reflect that reality. Wow.

Let me, uh, let me go back to, to one, one key data, one key, uh, sort of, uh theme, if I may, uh, that I believe most of us Americans do not understand the ramification of a conflict in that part of the world, mainly with China. What I'd like you, Scott, if it's possible, just to explain to, to my viewers here the logistics of getting involved in a war with China by having to move logistically your asset through through the sea to get all the way to the other side of the, of the world? Is it possible?

Well, the first thing I want to talk about is, before we get to the military side, understand that, um, we're coming up on the, the holiday season. I mean, it's one of my favorite times of the year. The leaves are starting to— they're going to turn pretty soon. We're going to have Halloween in a month, and then we have Thanksgiving, we have Christmas. And in the lead-up to Christmas, every American is probably going to spend some time going shopping for the newest electronic gadget, you know, whether it be an Xbox, a Game Boy, I don't know, um, iPhone, computers, something. Um, if there's a war with China, you will have none of this. None of it. Nothing. You'll have nothing. Walmart will be empty. Target will be empty. Costco will be empty. The shelves will be empty. Um, because China is the economic engine that keeps the American consumer machine viable, and it will be shut down. Our economy will literally collapse overnight. So get ready for that. That's before body bags start coming home, because the only thing that's going to happen by going to war with China is we're going to lose a lot of people very fast. You know, the Army talked about, uh, you know, 3,600 casualties in a day. Understand this: we send a carrier battle group against China, uh, we can lose 12,000 to 15,000 Americans in an afternoon. That's because the battle group will be engaged by Chinese missiles, sunk, um, the ships will go down, and everybody on board will go down with them. There won't be too many survivors. Um, that's the reality. That's what we need to understand. The level of precision of Chinese weapons is such that when they strike Guam, and they will, they will strike every facility that needs to be struck, and they will kill everybody in those facilities. This is non-nuclear attack, by the way. This is using conventional munitions. The United States wanted to go nuclear against China. Again, um, we're going to lose 100 million Americans back here at home. We're going to lose 5, 6, 7, 10 major cities., and we'll lose every— we'll lose Hawaii, we'll lose Guam, we'll lose the Philippines. Um, this is the reality. We can't defeat China. We have to put— we have battle plans. For instance, let's say we're going to fight China. Where are we going to fight China, by the way? Because Taiwan, we don't have a real battle plan because by law we're not allowed to consider that option. It's a One China policy. We can train the Taiwanese, we can provide military equipment to them,, but we don't have an alliance with them that allows for a concept of operations to, to be in place. We have a big one, I think it's 50-07, I could be wrong on that number, for the South Korean peninsula, and that one requires us to ship between 400,000 to 900,000 American troops over the space of 6 to 9 months to the Korean peninsula. We have earmarked units, we have units in the United States that are earmarked, meaning that when we execute this con-op, they get mobilized, they get brought up to speed, and they begin the tip fiddle. They get on ships and they start moving together with the logistics, and South Korea is supposed to receive them, have a plan to receive them. You don't— they all don't come at once. You come in a phase. It's a time-phase logistics movement plan. They come in. It works good on paper, except that none of the ports that we're supposed to be coming to will be functioning. So we don't know where these ships are going to go, which means we're going to have to do one of two things: forcible entry. We can't do forcible entry. As I said, we have— we lack that ability, or the ships will get sunk or turn around and go home. But we, we can't do this. Aircraft, you know, we keep talking about American air superiority and the superiority of American aircraft. Airplanes have a finite range and after a while they will go bingo fuel. Bingo fuel means you— it's the fuel level that you— when you reach bingo fuel, if you keep going, you're not gonna be able to make it home. So you have to come back. Now that's just ferrying yourself out and ferrying yourself back. Now we're talking about war. So you're gonna go out and you're going to engage in some sort of combat-type maneuver. Which means you're going to put stress on the airframe, you're going to be burning more fuel. Now, if you do things right, you'll have a refueling point midway to the, to the combat zone. So you'll fuel up, you'll be able to come in and extend your loiter time over the area of operations before you come back to refuel and go home. If you don't think for a second that the Chinese are going to find these refueling points and strike them, and attack them, disrupt them. You don't know the Chinese. They're gonna be coming at these places with everything they got, which means we need a lot of air power just to protect the fueling area before we even get to the interdiction part of this game. This increases the number of aircraft by an order of magnitude. When we take a look at the, um, Operation Desert Storm, uh, there were two, uh, big strike packages that were put together at the beginning of the war. One was called the Guerrilla Package, coming out of Saudi Arabia out of Kuwait, out of Bahrain, out of Oman that came in the first night. It was 700-plus aircraft. Another one was a big strike package that came out of Turkey, Incirlik, Turkey, and it came down and struck. It was several hundred aircraft. These aircraft include not just the planes that are gonna drop bombs, but electronic warfare airplane, airplanes for the suppression of enemy air defense, aircraft for combat air patrols, the refueling aircraft, the intelligence collection aircraft, a whole host of things. It's not just putting a bunch of guys, this isn't Top Gun Maverick, okay? You know, it's not, we're not gonna have 4 fantastic F-18s flown by the most sexy looking crew in the world flying in and doing miracles. That's not how modern warfare works. It's gonna be massive air packages that are gonna be taking off. Their bases though, unlike the Gulf War, are gonna be struck by the Chinese. So while they're flying, the bases are gonna be cratered. The hangars are gonna be blown up. The fuel depots are gonna be blown up. You'll need airfield repair teams. We used to train for that. When I lived in West Germany as a kid, I lived right on an airbase, and I remember them going up and blowing up airfields and having the crews come out and do emergency repairs on the airfield so planes could be recovered. Because if you don't repair the airfield, the plane can't land there, and if it can't land, it's gonna crash. This is the reality of war. We don't do this anymore. We don't prepare for this anymore. We don't have, for instance, air-to-air missiles. We haven't been producing them in large numbers for a while. Why? Because the last 20 years we've been fighting the Taliban and insurgents in Iraq, and they don't have air superiority fighters. So in an effort to save money, we have a handful of missiles that we can use for a presence operation maybe for a short-term conflict here and there. But if we go up against the Chinese in a massive air war, because they got a lot of airplanes, um, we're gonna wanna shoot 'em down. So we're gonna engage in air-to-air combat. It ain't one missile, one kill, by the way. We're gonna fire about 4 to 5 missiles per kill if we even get that, uh, because air, air combat is very complicated. We're gonna run out of missiles literally within a week. We won't have anything left and there's no stockpile waiting for us. It's the same thing for on the ground. ATACMS missiles. I don't know why we want to give any to the Ukrainians because we don't have enough for our own. If we go to war against China or Russia or Iran or North Korea. Javelin? Nope. Stingers? Nope. We don't have anything. We don't have artillery ammunition. We have nothing because we haven't been preparing for this kind of war. So we, we don't know how to do these large packages anymore because we don't practice them. We used to practice them all the time. When was the last time, you know, an expeditionary air wing did an elephant walk down the runway? An elephant walk is basically getting all your airplanes on the runway at once for a mass departure. They don't do that. It's expensive in peacetime. We, we have $900 billion in our defense budget, but we don't train properly. And if you don't train to fight a certain way, you're not going to be able to perform to that standard if called upon to go to war. The United States today does not train for large-scale conflict. Against either China or Russia or Iran or North Korea. We don't know how to do it, therefore we're not going to do it.

Yeah, but even the conflicts we got involved, we didn't even won this kind of conflict. You look at the outcome in Afghanistan, you look at the outcome in Iraq or in Yemen, some involvements in Syria, we haven't won any. So it's kind of like, you're absolutely correct. Uh, one point you mentioned, Scott, which is, uh, took my interest about the earmark of soldiers or the troops and so forth. Is this the reason why even Ukraine is calling for US, we can't send those because they are earmarked for— is earmarked for Asia, if I'm not mistaken this?

Well, understand this, that for last 20 years we've been engaged in the Middle East. And we've been— and if you take a look at the troop rotations in the Middle East, every time we expand the number of forces and everything, what has had to happen? First of all, we had to bring in the National Guard and the reserves. And so there was a lot of part-time weekend warriors that suddenly found themselves mobilized and sent abroad for 6 months because we lacked the regular Army capacity for this job. We only have a limited number of brigades and we fully stress them in the wars in the Middle East. So much so that in Europe, we just started withdrawing everything, you know, sometime in the mid-20-teens, I guess, we withdrew the last tank from Europe. We withdrew the last tank, we had no more tanks. And what I mean by that is I'm not talking about an armored brigade permanently in Europe. No, that left even before. For that. I'm talking about the pre-positioned equipment that was there for an earmarked brigade— fly in, marry up its equipment, and do its task. We just stopped preparing brigades to go to Europe because we didn't have any brigades that could go to Europe because they were all committed elsewhere. Now we've decided that we have to start putting brigades in Europe, so we had to find the brigades and then we had to dedicate them to this task. But once they're dedicated to the European task, they can't be doing something else. You can't tell a brigade that you have two combat missions you have to prepare for at the same time. You have a primary contingency, you can have an alternative contingency, but you can't execute both at the same time. You're, you're either going to go to Europe or you're going to go to South Korea, one or the other, but you can't do both. We don't have enough forces to do all of this. And God forbid we ever had to try to execute something against Iran. Where would these forces come from? Because when we stood down in the Middle East, We basically were preparing to pivot to the Pacific. We were gonna take these resources and rededicate them to the Pacific. But then Russia and Ukraine became a thing, and we now found ourselves fully engaged in Europe and in NATO. Now they're talking about NATO expanding to 300,000. Poland wants a corps-sized American force more deployed on its soil. We still need brigades in Germany, brigades in Italy. These are all coming from somewhere, from a limited number of brigades. That the United States has, which are now committed to Europe, which means they're not able to go anywhere else. For instance, the Pacific. So we just have insufficient forces, which again is mind-boggling given the fact that we spent the last 20 years, you know, spending $500, $600, $700, $800, $900 billion a year on defense. But our actual combat capabilities have shrunk. We're spending more We're getting less. Wow.

Oh, well, uh, I saw a tweet that came to my feed, uh, and I wanted to share it with the viewers here and get your take, uh, on it, Scott, if, if I may. So let me share this briefly here. Okay, here it is. I don't know if you guys can see that. I'll show up. Why it takes a while.

Yeah, right.

Oh, okay, it didn't show up here. So add to stage right there. Okay, it's not coming. Okay, is has to do with the, uh, the, uh, the Germans, the Olaf Scholz. I'm sure it was the foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, saying that the condition now for negotiating a peace in Ukraine is for the Russian Federation to— must agree to withdraw troops, and this is the condition for negotiations. And the quote here is— here is the quote here, and that's what it was. Uh, I am laughing, Scott, because I see how unrealistic this is.

Yeah, the, the, the fact of the matter is this, this conflict will end, um, when Russia wants it to end. Um, and Russia has already set forth the terms of conflict termination, and, um, they don't involve Russia leaving Crimea or the four territories. They involve Russia having total control over these territories. They also involve Ukraine committing to a, um, never-to-join-NATO posture. And again, Ukraine And NATO both say that they will never yield on this issue. But what's interesting is Scholz said that, Baerbock said that, but just today out of Germany, there's a new peace plan that the Germans are putting forward, which is the exact opposite. It calls for a ceasefire and then negotiations to be done on the auspice of the United Nations. And then, for a solution to Ukraine's security that does not have it doing anything that is seen as threatening by Russia. Now, again, Russia is not going to go for this, but this is a huge departure from Olaf Scholz's position. So, you know, who knows? The Russians may— I mean, you know, look, we know that Russia wants this war to be over. We know they do. Why do we know that? We know because when they started this war, the whole strategy was to bring an end to this war quickly, and it wasn't to capture Kyiv or anything like that. It was to compel the Ukrainian government to turn to negotiations to get Russia what it needed, namely, you don't go into NATO. Within a week of the initiation of this special military operation, Russia and Ukraine began negotiating, go mil Belarus. They had 3 such negotiations, and then they moved to Turkey. They had an initial negotiation in Antalya, I believe, where a preliminary document was agreed upon, signed off on all parties, and they were going to turn that into a formal agreement on 1 April. That was prevented by Boris Johnson flying in and saying, no, you can't do that, we won't support you, we want you to continue this conflict. But Vladimir Putin released aspects of this document. And what we know from this is that Russia wasn't looking for territorial acquisition. I mean, it was going to keep Crimea. That is Russia. They'll never give it back. But that part of that deal was that Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, two oblasts or regions that are now part of Russia legally from a Russian perspective because of a referendum. That was ratified and then passed on to the Russian Duma and the president signed off, et cetera. But those are gonna be returned to Ukraine along with all the territory that Russia took around Kyiv and Sumy and Kharkov, all would be given back. And this wasn't just speculation because part of the good faith measures that Russia was implementing in the lead up to the 1 April signing agreement was They voluntarily withdrew from Kyiv. They voluntarily withdrew from Sumy, and they would've withdrawn from Kharkov, but the Ukrainians backed out of the deal, compelling Russia to freeze the withdrawal and then initiate what they call Phase 2 operations, which was the liberation of the Donbas. But the Russians were also willing to keep the Donbas as an independent entity, Lugansk and Donetsk, that would, once the conflict ended, have a referendum to decide where they wanted to be. Did they want to be independent? Did they want to be part of Ukraine? Did they want to be part of Russia? Russia was willing to let that happen under international auspices. And Russia was also willing to work with Ukraine to come up with some sort of formula that would allow Ukraine continued cultural presence inside Crimea, meaning that Russia wasn't— well, Russia wasn't going to give Crimea back, Russia was willing to tell the Ukrainians, we're willing to let you have a role in what's going on here, given the historical ties. These are conditions that I would never have put on the table, to be honest. And I was shocked when I read them because it shows an approach by the Russians that is far more tolerant, far more lenient, far more pragmatic than, than Russia's ever given credit to. So Knowing that, I have to believe that today Russia would— might be willing to undergo a ceasefire under certain conditions. I don't think it would be an endless ceasefire, but to begin negotiations with the Secretary-General, but not saying right up front that our, our conditions are unequivocal. We— the four territories belong to us. So we need Ukraine to get out of these territories. This land belongs to us. And then we will work with Ukraine as, as needed to, to, to bring an end to this conflict. I think Russia would be willing to do that. And you're starting to see more and more that the Western world is waking up to that's the best deal Ukraine's going to get. That's it. Because if Ukraine continues this fight, they're going to lose their army. Then they're going to lose more territories. They're going to lose Kharkiv. They're going to lose Odessa. And that's the end of Ukraine as a viable nation-state. So who knows? I mean, it's a promising start. This is a sharp departure from the ridiculous position that you saw Olaf Scholz take in that statement. It's one that now reflects reality on the ground. And the reality is Ukrainian counteroffensive is over. They aren't winning. They're not going to win. And the West is tired of underwriting failed Ukrainian military operations.

And this is why probably Ukraine is getting involved now in, in mandatory military service and calling on all male age, sort of, that they are at the age of fighting to come back to Ukraine. Actually, Europeans are kicking now Ukrainians to go back to Ukraine to fight, and some of them are— I've been reading some articles about all this as to what Ukraine now is cracking down on the immigrants in Europe. So where it's gonna, how it's gonna end, at least for our involvements in Ukraine, will it ever end?

Well, I mean, first of all, it's going to end because Ukraine is going to be defeated. That's the reality. Nothing's gonna change that ultimate outcome. The timing of its defeat, the scope and scale of its defeat. You know, these are, these are things that, that, that, you know, we can play with or Russia can play with on the, on the periphery. But the end of the day, Ukraine will be defeated. It will never be a member of NATO. It's more than likely will never be a member of the European Union, at least not in the foreseeable future. And if it continues to play stupid games, you know, the old saying, you play stupid games, you win stupid prizes. They're going to win the dumbest prize of all, which is the dismemberment, further dismemberment of Ukraine. And if they lose the Black Sea, they lose everything. They have no more economic viability. It'll become a landlocked nation with a pathetically small economy trying to rebuild from a devastating conflict that will have done hundreds of billions, if not a trillion dollars worth of infrastructure damage. The cost that's going to be borne by the Ukrainian people is unimaginable, you know, in terms of dislocation, unemployment, just a very bad future, not just economic future, but quality of life future. It'll become literally the sick man of Europe. Maybe the best thing to do is just put it down because it's going to be so unhealthy. That's the future of Ukraine. The United States is going to have to live with whatever the future holds.

Yeah, well, it's, uh, I, I, I kind of don't see what the US endgame on this. As an American, I am like questioning, you know, what the heck wrong with the administration embarking on a policy that they know it's doomed to fail? And when you speak the truth, you become like the enemy, per se. Well, because we're saying where our country is headed with the, with the US embarking on, on this kind of policies, pushing, uh, for more war with Russia, which we know we can win. And that is where I'm like kind of frustrated as to what, what lies ahead. Now we are on the verge of presidential elections coming up. We don't know what the next administration is going to do. What, what do you think, Scott?

Well, I think first of all, you have to understand the, the thing that drives the Biden administration foreign policy-wise isn't Ukraine. It's maintenance of the rules-based international order and the notion that the United States is the lead democracy in the world and that our primary opponents are autocracies such as Russia and China. So we're in a larger competition. Ukraine is just sort of a regional manifestation of this competition. We're not just losing in Ukraine, we're losing globally. Let's, let's look at some, some things. I mean, Ukraine is the death knell of NATO, I believe. I think NATO is being exposed as a superficial organization that's incapable of, you know, living up to its high aspirations. It's not going to be able to produce a 300,000-strong rapid deployment force. Can't afford it, can't afford to sustain it, can't afford to train up to it. It just isn't going to happen. The economic pressures are going to be placed on NATO members going forward because of the consequences of this of failed sanctioning policy of Russia are tremendous. We're seeing the deindustrialization of Germany and France as we speak. Other European countries are suffering egregious economic harm. Some of it might be irrecoverable economic harm. There's gonna be a shift in the political dynamic in Europe. We're seeing the rise of right-wing parties that are coming in. And if on the one hand, if you're, a supporter of Russia, you'll say, well, these parties tend to be anti-Ukraine and against supporting Ukraine. But also remember the last time that Europe tilted to the right in the time of dire economic crises was during the Weimar Republic in the 1930s, and it led to Nazi Germany. We certainly don't want to see a resurgence of that, but that's a problem for Europe to be facing. The United States economically is looking at massive effort globally to de-dollarize. People are walking away from the dollar. The dollar is still the strongest currency in the world. It's still the currency of choice when it comes to, you know, the reserve currencies of nations, but the allure is lost. People understand that there are consequences when you deal with the dollar, and sometimes those consequences are dire for you if you ever find yourself on the receiving end of American, you know, antagonism. The United States has seized the sovereign wealth fund of Russia. They're talking about seizing the sovereign fund of Saudi Arabia now. The United States sanctions people who use the SWIFT banking system because it touches the American dollar. Nations are saying, well, we're tired of touching the dollar. We don't want our assets to be held hostage and they're walking away from this. So de-dollarization is a big— has a big impact on the global stage. Economically, the United States has relied upon the G7 to be sort of the driver of its economic/national security/foreign policy initiatives. But the G7 is running up against some real competition in the form of BRICS, the the 5-nation economic organization, it's now expanded to 11 because they had a successful summit in South Africa where they invited 6 more nations. BRICS is surpassing the G7 in terms of economic clout. And the G7, a while back in the, I think, 1999, sought to expand its clout by creating something called the G20, which involved the growth into the Global South, developing economies. The whole idea for the G20 was that it would become an extension of the G7, that the G7 would dictate economic outcomes to the G20, who would then implement these outcomes, extending the reach of the G7 economically. BRICS is the, the antidote to that. BRICS is saying, we don't respond to the G7, the G7 isn't our driver in terms of policy. And what is BRICS? If you take the BRICS nations out of the G20, you have the G7 plus a handful of nations, especially after you've done it. So the G20 is being surpassed by BRICS, meaning that there isn't going to be a Global South marching to the tune of the G7 American drummer anymore. It's going to be the Global South working together in, in harmony with BRICS for a multipolar, multilateral, uh, solution to global economic problems. This is the future. And this is what America is going to have to learn to deal with. The day of the American hegemon, the unchallenged American power, is over. It's done. It's finished. That's in the rearview mirror going that way. It doesn't mean that America is finished. You know, we're still a very powerful nation. We still have one of the strongest economies in the world. We are very powerful militarily and we still have a lot of clout internationally. It's not that, you know, this collapse means America goes bye-bye.

No.

But America is going to need to resize its ambition. There's a movie in Top Gun, I mentioned Top Gun earlier, but the original Top Gun, where Maverick, Tom Cruise, is standing before the CAG, the commander of the air group, and he says, "Son, your mouth's writing checks your body can't cash," meaning that basically, you're talking big, but you can't. America's gonna have to tone down its rhetoric, uh, readjust its policy, uh, ambitions to meet the reality of American power. It's still considerable power, but American power becomes weaker, uh, as we diminish. It becomes weaker if we continue to try to be the sole remaining superpower on the planet, because we're not. You know how we magnify, how we multiply America's, uh, effectiveness in terms of glo— global presence by working with other nations and leveraging this power together in a multilateral format. But we have to retrain ourselves to understand that we can't walk into a room and say, "We're Americans, we're exceptional." The day of American exceptionality is finished, is over. We may be good, we might even be damn good sometimes, but we're not exceptional. And we need to walk into a room as we would and treat people as equal. Equals, our equals. And if you have better ideas, then you prevail. Um, if you're able to execute ideas more efficiently, you tend to win. That's what we need to start focusing on. We need to start focusing on being better than others, not saying we're better than others, but actually being better than others. Two totally different skill sets.

Yeah, absolutely. Couldn't agree more, brother. I wish most Americans will wake up to this reality and just start see it for what it is. So, well, Scott, I can't thank you enough. I know you are very busy, and I promised not to take too much of your time. I'm very grateful. And for our viewers, I'm sure you can— you know, I don't need to tell you because that's why I put the title The Real Conversation, because here it is. You're hearing it directly from Scott Ritter, someone I trust I've known Scott for a while. I listen to what he has to say. I learn from it. And this is for you guys also to learn, because you need to see the other side of the arguments. And this is what this is all about, and that's what I intend to do moving forward. Scott, I can't thank you enough, and I look forward to having you again, uh, soon.

Okay, well, thank you very much.

My pleasure, my pleasure.

So, okay.

Bye-bye. Yeah, well folks, well, I hope you all enjoyed this, and I'm sure we'll, uh, we'll have Scott at some other time. He's busy, but he, he was kind enough to carve out time for me here, and we look forward to having him again. So as always, guys, remember, geopolitics impacts your daily life in more ways than one. Till next time, bye-bye.