Speaker 1: Lute force. If it doesn't work, you're just not using enough.
Speaker 1: You're listening to soft web Radio Special Operations Military Nails
Speaker 1: on straight talk with the guys in the community.
Speaker 2: Hey, what's going on? It's rad and welcome back to
Speaker 2: another episode of soft rep Radio. But before I introduce
Speaker 2: the guests that I have on today, I want to
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Speaker 2: out the merch store. Keep purchasing those cool things that
Speaker 2: we've got coming out for you all the time, the
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Speaker 2: Slash book Club, so it's a book hyphen club. Just
Speaker 2: go check out the Software book Club. Look that up,
Speaker 2: Google it and who knows you might find this next author,
Speaker 2: Curtis Fox and his book Hybrid Warfare, who we have
Speaker 2: on the show today in our book club. Welcome to
Speaker 2: the show, Curtis.
Speaker 3: How's it going ra nice to be here.
Speaker 2: Hey, it's going great, Curtis. You've got me five y five?
Speaker 2: I do okay, wonderful. Well, welcome. You wrote a book
Speaker 2: called Hybrid Warfare. Because you're a former Special Operation Special
Speaker 2: Forces soldier, I believe you're like tenth group, Is that correct?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it came from tenth Group, first fourth Battalion, and
Speaker 4: then second Battalion. So I got out in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 2: Oh, no, twenty sixteen. What I was going to say
Speaker 2: is what did you enlist as? Like usually you know
Speaker 2: how old were you when you did enlist if you
Speaker 2: don't mind, and then what did you go in initially?
Speaker 2: As was it a Bravo eleven bravo or.
Speaker 4: So I came in as an eighteen X ray And
Speaker 4: so the default m O if you were to fail
Speaker 4: out of any part of that pipeline process is leven Bravo.
Speaker 4: But they stood up the eighteen X ray program as
Speaker 4: a means of bringing civilian talent into the special forces community.
Speaker 4: Prior to the War on Terror, you had to be
Speaker 4: an E five before you could even put in a
Speaker 4: packet to go to Special Forces selection. And then I
Speaker 4: believe in two thousand and three or two thousand and four,
Speaker 4: they decided that they would try to open it up
Speaker 4: to the civilian world for people they felt were qualified.
Speaker 4: There were a couple of key indicators that let recruiters
Speaker 4: know they were talking to somebody who would possibly be
Speaker 4: a qualified candidate. But I mean, there are a lot
Speaker 4: of guys that start the eighteen X ray pipeline. They
Speaker 4: played some call of duty and that's what they know
Speaker 4: about it, and those guys don't do particularly well. But
Speaker 4: there's also a lot of guys like myself that had
Speaker 4: college degrees or maybe they'd run small businesses, and those
Speaker 4: guys are the ones that end up doing very well.
Speaker 4: They've they've had experiences that teach them how to think
Speaker 4: long term, and so what they're going through in the
Speaker 4: present is, you know, it's something that they're willing to
Speaker 4: make the sacrifice for for a long term goal, and
Speaker 4: those are those are usually the folks that do pretty well.
Speaker 4: So you go through basic ait Airborne school and then
Speaker 4: they send you to a to a preparation and conditioning course,
Speaker 4: and then after that you go to Special Forces Assessment
Speaker 4: selection and then if you get selected, you run the
Speaker 4: Special Forces pipeline and you get mixed in with, you know,
Speaker 4: all the guys that came from the army. If not,
Speaker 4: you go to Needs of the Army. Most of those
Speaker 4: guys are airborne qualified for that point to the eighty second.
Speaker 4: Airborne's a pretty common place to go.
Speaker 2: Sure, because they're already, like you know, right up their alley.
Speaker 2: So really the eighty second, it's like if you're in
Speaker 2: the eighty second, then you have a couple steps up
Speaker 2: to try to go through a selections process. If you're right,
Speaker 2: like that's a good place to be.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's in.
Speaker 4: The airborne infantry too. I mean, the the Army genuinely
Speaker 4: can considers them to be a cut above the rest
Speaker 4: because they're they're double volunteers in a sense. They volunteered
Speaker 4: for the Army and then they volunteered for airborne duty,
Speaker 4: and then they actually have to volunteer multiple times to
Speaker 4: jump out of the plane you know, every however often
Speaker 4: that is to stay to stay airborne qualified exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So they.
Speaker 4: The Army, they treat the airborne Infantry is as you know,
Speaker 4: an elite unit unto itself. And so when you have
Speaker 4: somebody that's gone especially through the preparation and conditioning course
Speaker 4: for special forces, if for whatever reason they fall out
Speaker 4: of the pipeline, you know, maybe it's just a maturity issue,
Speaker 4: or maybe it was an injury and they need to
Speaker 4: they need to get fixed up before they come back.
Speaker 4: The eighty seconds a pretty intuitive home for them and
Speaker 4: a lot of those guys.
Speaker 3: You know, what they need is a sergeant.
Speaker 5: They can just sit down with them and teach them
Speaker 5: a little while how to be a soldier, and once
Speaker 5: they're part of that fire team or that squad for
Speaker 5: a while, then they might think about coming back.
Speaker 2: Do you know I of any like? Can I ask
Speaker 2: you an off tough question about who's in SF? Like,
Speaker 2: do you have any idea of any females that have
Speaker 2: Is there a female SF? I know there's like some
Speaker 2: other people who are clandestine. I guess, you know, I
Speaker 2: don't know if they're quite SF. You know, is there
Speaker 2: anybody who has put on the Green beret as a
Speaker 2: female candidate? Yet?
Speaker 4: If there's more, you know, congratulations to them. I do
Speaker 4: expect that to be relatively rare, simply because of the
Speaker 4: physical requirements to go through Special Forces training. My understanding
Speaker 4: issues this individual was an Olympian level athlete in her
Speaker 4: own right. You will, I think it will be relatively
Speaker 4: uncommon to see women go through, you know, the Special
Speaker 4: Forces training pipelines simply be because of the physical demands
Speaker 4: of the pipeline. But there will always be one or two.
Speaker 4: They're very far out on the distribution, and if you
Speaker 4: just think about it. In terms of a basic statistical analysis,
Speaker 4: there are always going to be you know, a few
Speaker 4: individuals who are several standard deviations ahead of the mean,
Speaker 4: and because of that, I mean, they're you know, those
Speaker 4: people are out there. Just to give you an idea
Speaker 4: of how common that can be. My understanding is when
Speaker 4: they opened Ranger School for women, they took a selected
Speaker 4: group of ladies in ROTC and ROTC candidates and they
Speaker 4: put them about six hundred of them through a special
Speaker 4: six month preparation course to get them ready physically for
Speaker 4: Ranger School. Out of that six hundred, I think there
Speaker 4: was like twenty five or thirty that were given the
Speaker 4: green light to move forward, and then they were rolled
Speaker 4: into this pre Ranger School that I think was run
Speaker 4: by the eighty second Airborne and from pre Ranger maybe
Speaker 4: only about half of that thirty we're given the green
Speaker 4: light to move on to Ranger School. And then of
Speaker 4: those fifteen to eighteen women, three graduated Ranger School. So
Speaker 4: you know, if you simply look at that, you know,
Speaker 4: and I may have that wrong, two hundred original it
Speaker 4: may have been. It may have been two hundred original applicants,
Speaker 4: but that means one, about about one and a half
Speaker 4: percent out.
Speaker 2: Of about six hundred original applicants. That's almost, according to
Speaker 2: the song, one out of let's see it. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's think a song where it says, you know, one
Speaker 2: hundred middle tests today only three. So let's look at
Speaker 2: the percentage there. So at three percent rate will pass
Speaker 2: females coming two hundred applicants, let's go at that number
Speaker 2: three of them qualifying, I'd say they're above the grade
Speaker 2: of the song. That's awesome, now, I'd be really you
Speaker 2: know if you think about the song, right, Barry Sadler, Well,
Speaker 2: that's super awesome. I want to let my listener know
Speaker 2: that like being a United States Special Forces Green Beret,
Speaker 2: you know, is something that it's an Olympian athlete in itself.
Speaker 2: Like you said she was an Olympian athlete. Well, you know,
Speaker 2: growing up with the father who was SF, it was
Speaker 2: always like, hey, come on, Aaron, we're gonna go I'm
Speaker 2: gonna go run. And so I would ride my bike
Speaker 2: while dad would go rock run around hill Air Force
Speaker 2: Base in Utah here and airman would We were running
Speaker 2: up this hill and it's kind of a big incline
Speaker 2: and we were just going up at and it's a
Speaker 2: normal thing for him. And someone pulled over and said
Speaker 2: you need to ride up onto the base and he's like, no,
Speaker 2: I'm good. He's just chugging right along up this hill
Speaker 2: to go around and go back home because he's Army
Speaker 2: and we were outside of an Air Force base, and
Speaker 2: so everybody was thinking he was probably Air Force running
Speaker 2: to the base with this. I don't know. It is
Speaker 2: an interesting you know. I always walked around with him
Speaker 2: holding his hand, thinking how come everybody doesn't have a
Speaker 2: green beret at the base, especially at the Air Force base.
Speaker 2: I was like, Dad, how come these guys don't have
Speaker 2: a beret like you? And they'd walk out and put
Speaker 2: their trucker cap on. I'm like, why are they putting
Speaker 2: a trucker cap on? I don't understand what all these
Speaker 2: big letters on there. It was just a different world
Speaker 2: for a kid raised under the Green Beret flag, right.
Speaker 2: So I just want to let you know you're you
Speaker 2: guys are athletes. You're extream athletes. You guys are drinking
Speaker 2: liquid protein to keep your bodies moving forward, and like
Speaker 2: doing all of the hard marathons and you're out there,
Speaker 2: you know, just breaking your feet and not saying nothing
Speaker 2: about it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I tell you what, the people that might really
Speaker 4: get my admiration are the guys that stick with it
Speaker 4: and do it for twenty or thirty years, and you
Speaker 4: know when they get out, Man, the amount of abuse
Speaker 4: that your body is taking, when you're pushing at that
Speaker 4: in your late thirties and early forties and even going
Speaker 4: into your fifties. The guys there are guys, man, that
Speaker 4: they will still blow you away, you know. And how
Speaker 4: quick they can crush a you know, five mile run
Speaker 4: at fifty five years old. Serious, and you know, I
Speaker 4: can't believe that some guys can perform at that level
Speaker 4: that late in life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like a mind game. They just know it.
Speaker 2: They just got it. They're just made to walk in
Speaker 2: the boots that they wear. And you know, there's a
Speaker 2: story out here of a guy that was retired, but
Speaker 2: for like three four months he was still shuffling up
Speaker 2: to jump, but he had retired, but no one said nothing.
Speaker 2: They're like, didn't so. And then finally the what I
Speaker 2: understood from the colonel was someone said, didn't so and
Speaker 2: so retire like three months ago? Man? And they're like, yeah,
Speaker 2: so he had to go approach him and say, hey,
Speaker 2: you keep shuffling up to go jump on drills, But
Speaker 2: these guys are just living that life. What do you
Speaker 2: do with a guy like that, you know who his
Speaker 2: whole life is, you know, Dale Pressel, to free the oppressed,
Speaker 2: to like have this teacher mindset, to teach others to
Speaker 2: be you know, free for themselves, free thinking. How where
Speaker 2: does that guy go who's still try to shuffle up?
Speaker 4: Well, I tell you who who snatches up a lot
Speaker 4: of them when they get out of service is professions
Speaker 4: that have a they're very high stress, and they require
Speaker 4: individuals that are okay with working unorthodox hours. Is the
Speaker 4: first one that comes to mind is investment banking. So
Speaker 4: you know, when I got out, the first place I
Speaker 4: went was to do my NBA at Georgetown and then
Speaker 4: you know, I specialized in financial services. The number of
Speaker 4: guys I knew that were in there from the soft community,
Speaker 4: or from the Marines, or you know, actually they're even
Speaker 4: a couple of you know, silent service, you know, Navy
Speaker 4: submariners in there.
Speaker 3: These guys are.
Speaker 4: Very used to working weird hours under an enormous amount
Speaker 4: of stress. And you know, if you're working in investment banking.
Speaker 4: You can be working eighty to nine hours a week
Speaker 4: on a regular basis for you know, and the burnout
Speaker 4: rate is very.
Speaker 3: Very high.
Speaker 4: And you know they're looking for people that fit the
Speaker 4: the exact same personality bill it as a lot of
Speaker 4: these you know, elite special operations communities, so you know
Speaker 4: there there are places for them to go.
Speaker 2: You're right, you know, Like I was thinking about my dad.
Speaker 2: He went through his MBA in business and finance and communications,
Speaker 2: so it's in human resources, right, So again you're you're
Speaker 2: exactly Yeah, I know it's true. Yeah he did. He
Speaker 2: was working on his doctor until his heart really started
Speaker 2: to stop that process. Yeah, heart surgeries and everything, but
Speaker 2: he was chasing his degree up to his doctorate until
Speaker 2: he passed.
Speaker 3: Yeah, hardcore, very cool.
Speaker 4: I tell you what, Man, in my heart of hearts,
Speaker 4: I really really want to run into like a mall
Speaker 4: cop one time that was like, you know, an airborne
Speaker 4: ranger and like he's he's you know, driving around in
Speaker 4: a golf cart now chasing kids when they mess up
Speaker 4: with Macy's or something like that, and that person must
Speaker 4: be out there, but I've never he's just.
Speaker 2: Trying to hold onto that uniform and that gigline and
Speaker 2: just make sure that everything's still good to go. Hey,
Speaker 2: we need that guy on the front lines of the
Speaker 2: malls these days. That's the guy I want to driving
Speaker 2: the golf cart. Give me Chuck Norris, Holy cow, Oh
Speaker 2: my gosh. Now your book Hybrid Warfare. But writing a
Speaker 2: book seems kind of what I get to interview you
Speaker 2: guys about. There's a lot of you know, special operations
Speaker 2: and veterans who are into writing their thoughts and bringing
Speaker 2: out what their knowledge is. And it's like, I should,
Speaker 2: you know, make a legacy, continue on with what I
Speaker 2: know and put it somewhere in a book. Whatever your
Speaker 2: thoughts may be, right, people can read it and understand
Speaker 2: it for their own words, and then of course fact
Speaker 2: check anybody's book out there, right, whatever you read, just
Speaker 2: just go read a book, right, I'm all about that.
Speaker 2: I like to read books. Now, I'm going to keep
Speaker 2: kind of talking here about Hybrid Warfare The Russian Approach
Speaker 2: to Strategic Competition and Conventional Military Conflict by Curtis L. Fox,
Speaker 2: who is now author former Green Beret Olympian athlete. In
Speaker 2: my mind, okay, I'm just going to give him that credit.
Speaker 2: So what the book Overview says, here is dive into
Speaker 2: the shadowy world of Russian military strategy in hybrid warfare.
Speaker 2: In hybrid warfare, the Russian approach to strategic competition and
Speaker 2: conventional military conflict, you are not just reading a book.
Speaker 2: You're embarking on a gripping journey through the dark corridors
Speaker 2: of Russian military strategy, where intrigue and danger lurk at
Speaker 2: every turn, From the enigmatic Little Green Men to the
Speaker 2: chilling echoes of poisoned doorknobs. This book unveils the cloak
Speaker 2: of mystery shrouding Russians approach to the global power. Authored
Speaker 2: by Curtis L. Fox. Our guest here are a former
Speaker 2: Green Beret, Russian Speaker, tenth Special Forces Group alumni. Book
Speaker 2: is a masterclass in strategic analysis. Fox skillfully connects the
Speaker 2: dots here from the era of Peter the Great to
Speaker 2: the modern day. Is it what is it? Machinations of
Speaker 2: Vladimir Putin?
Speaker 3: Yep, that's yep, you got it.
Speaker 2: You know he's a dick. Okay, I'm just gonna say
Speaker 2: how it is.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: I grew up in a warsaw family, you know, growing
Speaker 2: up in the eighties and nineties. My dad being all
Speaker 2: Green Beret and learning all the tanks and all the
Speaker 2: different weaponry, and the Cold War doesn't ever have seemed
Speaker 2: to have stopped. It still seems it's the same weaponry,
Speaker 2: same aks, same you know, cold furry hats on their heads,
Speaker 2: standing in the you know, red square with you know,
Speaker 2: saluting one guy who has the power over all the people.
Speaker 2: An auto cross auto autoocracy, I believe, where he's just
Speaker 2: the guy in charge with a few other people who
Speaker 2: are running the town. Let's talk about it.
Speaker 4: Sure, and well, you know, the first thing the Russians
Speaker 4: would say, you know, is who told you that the
Speaker 4: Cold War was over? They see the Cold War as
Speaker 4: unfinished business in a lot of ways. But it actually
Speaker 4: runs deeper than that the Russians are pursuing. It wouldn't
Speaker 4: It wouldn't matter who is in power in the Kremlin,
Speaker 4: even if the Russia was a democracy, which I don't
Speaker 4: think is ever going to be on the table, at
Speaker 4: least not in my lifetime. The Russians, by their geographic
Speaker 4: location and the nature of the land that they sit on,
Speaker 4: have always needed to expand in order to survive, and
Speaker 4: so the rut of ethnicity when it emerged in the
Speaker 4: ninth century has only ever been doing that. And when
Speaker 4: it runs into another neighboring tribe or people, they either
Speaker 4: you know, subsume them or subordinate them, or conquer them
Speaker 4: in one form or another until the empire can expand.
Speaker 4: And that's when you're located on the vast flat northern
Speaker 4: Eurasian step, that's really the only options. There are no
Speaker 4: geographic barriers like the Alps, there are no major bodies
Speaker 4: of water that really separate you from the neighboring peoples.
Speaker 4: And so they pursued that strategy for you know, hundreds
Speaker 4: and hundreds of years. And during that process there were
Speaker 4: there were times where the Russian people themselves were conquered.
Speaker 4: They were conquered by the Mongols. And what merged under
Speaker 4: Peter the Great when he came to power was a
Speaker 4: strategy where Russia was finally large enough to start trying
Speaker 4: to plug the holes on its periphery, and so it
Speaker 4: had gotten big enough where you could expand and to
Speaker 4: hit those hard geographic barriers, whether that's the Caucasus Mountains
Speaker 4: in the south, or the Baltic Sea or the Black Sea,
Speaker 4: or you know, even pushing more eastward you could or
Speaker 4: more westward, you could look at the Carpathian Mountains, you
Speaker 4: could look at the what is the Vulgar, the Vogelsberg Mountains.
Speaker 4: You know, once you're in eastern Germany, you know their
Speaker 4: strategy by the end of the Cold War was to
Speaker 4: forward station heavy ground forces there alongside tactical nuclear ordinance.
Speaker 4: They had successfully condensed many, many thousands of miles of
Speaker 4: borders down to just several hundred miles of terrain where
Speaker 4: they needed to be able to station military forces to defend.
Speaker 4: When you have blockades like the Gobi Desert in the
Speaker 4: far east and then the Caucasus Mountains in the south,
Speaker 4: you know that you can't march an army across. And
Speaker 4: so that's how the Russians kind of play the game.
Speaker 4: That entire security environment and it reached its apoge under
Speaker 4: Joseph Stalin. But that entire security environment collapsed in nineteen
Speaker 4: ninety one. All of the Warsaw packed states and the former
Speaker 4: Soviet republics all broke off. They had what the Russians
Speaker 4: would call color revolutions, which basically means that some sort
Speaker 4: of a populist sometimes liberals, sometimes not, but some form
Speaker 4: of a populist government came to power, you know, and
Speaker 4: they basically, you know, mobilized, you know, a plurality of
Speaker 4: the people to overthrow the standing communist regime which was
Speaker 4: favorable to Moscow. Once that happened, they lost all of
Speaker 4: that defense in depth. And Sivladimir Putin is he's pursuing
Speaker 4: that strategy again and trying to restore those that the
Speaker 4: Russian He's trying to restore the Russia's traditional definition of security.
Speaker 3: And what should really keep us awake.
Speaker 4: At night is that in order for the ethnicity to
Speaker 4: really feel secure, they have to dominate a collective peoples
Speaker 4: in Eastern Europe that are about twice as large or
Speaker 4: twice as numerous as the roof ethnicity itself, and that
Speaker 4: that is the Russian definition of security.
Speaker 2: Say that in a in a like, explain that just
Speaker 2: a little bit more in layman's term, they want to
Speaker 2: dominate a whole more, a bigger chunk than what they
Speaker 2: are right is out you're trying to tell me, is
Speaker 2: what you're saying.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, maybe twice as large. You know, all
Speaker 4: of these former Soviet republics Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, you know,
Speaker 4: you know, look down at Ukraine and what they're doing
Speaker 4: in Ukraine right now, you know, and then former FORESAW
Speaker 4: members like Poland and Romania, or Czechoslovakia or what became
Speaker 4: the Czech Republic in Slovakia. You know, these are all
Speaker 4: countries that they would like to be able to put
Speaker 4: into a client state status at the minimum. Georgia, you know, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: Moldova actually, and that that's another A lot of analysts
Speaker 4: that I hold in high regard believe Moldova's next if
Speaker 4: the Russians successfully annex Ukraine as they're trying to do
Speaker 4: all those was the next on the menu. And it's
Speaker 4: the low hanging fruit because it's not a NATO. It's
Speaker 4: not a NATO, right.
Speaker 2: And so you know we're here. This is the current
Speaker 2: thing he wants. And when I say he, I'm talking
Speaker 2: about the current you know, person in charge of Russia,
Speaker 2: of the dictator of Vladimir Putin. You know, he is,
Speaker 2: you know, trying to go back to Peter the Great,
Speaker 2: trying to get you know, McDonald's has left. Okay, places
Speaker 2: have left. The things that came in in the late
Speaker 2: eighties early nineties when Gorbachev tear down this wall was happening,
Speaker 2: is leaving he's coming back with you know, he's imprisoning
Speaker 2: you know, his political rivals like Nolvanney's still in prison.
Speaker 2: No one's heard from him for a minute. You know.
Speaker 2: Pussy Riot they opposed him and said a prayer on
Speaker 2: stage at a concert and they were in prisoned for
Speaker 2: multiple years because they're you know, a female band that
Speaker 2: opposes Putin and his autocracy. And then there's you know,
Speaker 2: just simple people who want to say something. And then
Speaker 2: when you go and see some type of documentary where
Speaker 2: they're talking to the doctors over there, and the doctor
Speaker 2: lives in some type of little apartment with a bathtub
Speaker 2: in this in his kitchen, and then he puts his
Speaker 2: tabletop on the bathtub to eat his dinner. And he
Speaker 2: is a doctor. And then the other people don't even
Speaker 2: have that much and he's living in a kitchen with
Speaker 2: a bathtub with a table that he has to make shift.
Speaker 2: And he's one of the most educated people in Russia.
Speaker 2: So it's like, you know, when do the Russian you know,
Speaker 2: young Russians, the thirties, the forty year olds, when are
Speaker 2: they going to say, hey, enough is enough? What's your
Speaker 2: thought on that? Uh?
Speaker 4: I don't think that points out there at least. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I don't think that point will be out there in
Speaker 4: my lifetime. Or maybe maybe the better way to say
Speaker 4: it is.
Speaker 3: The people.
Speaker 4: Vladimir Putin is not the return of Joseph Stalin. He's
Speaker 4: not that powerful. He's Russia's most important power broker, and
Speaker 4: he rose to power mostly by playing off a lot
Speaker 4: of the different factions against one another. He knows how
Speaker 4: to grant favors, he knows how to discreetly handle problems.
Speaker 4: And when he was, you know, deputy mayor St. Petersburg,
Speaker 4: and then when he moved to Moscow, and one of
Speaker 4: the very first things he became responsible in Moscow under
Speaker 4: Boris Jeltzen was taking former Soviet state assets and trying
Speaker 4: to figure out how to privatize them. And he collected
Speaker 4: an enormous number of IOUs and favors in that process.
Speaker 4: And it's no coincidence that he jumped rapidly up to
Speaker 4: being director of the FSB and then he was tapped
Speaker 4: to be prime minister. I don't think he was even
Speaker 4: in charge of the FSB for a full year before
Speaker 4: he jumped to being prime minister. And then when Yeltsin retired,
Speaker 4: he became the acting president until he was formally elected
Speaker 4: in two thousand. But there are power brokers within his
Speaker 4: party who he has to maintain faith with. One of
Speaker 4: those people is Serga Shorgu. So and currently the current
Speaker 4: name of Russia of Plutin's party is United Russia, and
Speaker 4: Serga Shorgu is one of the most important power brokers
Speaker 4: within the party itself. And Putin would never have gotten
Speaker 4: his shot for president without Shoygu. So when you look
Speaker 4: at all these really incompetent things that have happened in
Speaker 4: Ukraine under Shorgu's watch as Defense minister, you know, one
Speaker 4: of the things you have to keep in mind is
Speaker 4: he's in the inner circle and there's no replacing him.
Speaker 3: And you know, you can't.
Speaker 4: Putin can't get rid of him anymore than I could
Speaker 4: get rid of my mother, not that I would, I
Speaker 4: love my mother. But you know, their family and they're connected,
Speaker 4: actually their kit I think Putin's daughter is married to
Speaker 4: his son. Actually, so that's who that's who runs Russia.
Speaker 4: It's a click of about one hundred and fifty to
Speaker 4: two hundred former they call themselves, you know, the world
Speaker 4: calls them Slovaki, but their former national security professionals, whether
Speaker 4: they came from the intelligence community and the KGB, or
Speaker 4: whether they came from the Foreign service like Sergei Lavrov,
Speaker 4: or whether they came from the military. They consider themselves
Speaker 4: national security experts and they they are the individuals in
Speaker 4: Russia who really have the education and the background and
Speaker 4: the experience and the multiple languages to be able to
Speaker 4: run Russia's institutions. The problem is they run it kleptocratically.
Speaker 4: They run it mostly for themselves in this closed circle oligarchy.
Speaker 4: Now the young people, there's this hope in the West
Speaker 4: that you know, the youth of Russia are going to
Speaker 4: eventually resent this and they are going to fight against it.
Speaker 4: And I think, you know, they have always resented it
Speaker 4: and they've always fought against it. But it's not really
Speaker 4: that unique in Russian history. There's always been this kind
Speaker 4: of a kleptocratic regime in Moscow. You know, Communism made
Speaker 4: it worse, but and Stalin made that system work by
Speaker 4: pretty much guaranteeing that anybody who opposed his regime would
Speaker 4: be arrested and executed or at minimum sent off to
Speaker 4: the Siberian Gulags. But under the Tsarist regime and the
Speaker 4: old you know, the Tzar had the you know, the
Speaker 4: the old Cheka. You know they this is very normal.
Speaker 4: Russia has always, uh had a you know, a relatively
Speaker 4: despotic regime and power, and some of that's kind of
Speaker 4: owed to their geography as well. If you have a
Speaker 4: regime in you know, Saint Petersburg, which is, you know,
Speaker 4: the historical capital of Russia, but you have a you know,
Speaker 4: a populist in Keemchatka or of Vladivolstock, you know, that
Speaker 4: is string the pot. The best way to deal with
Speaker 4: that person is to have the secret Service arrest him
Speaker 4: and disappear him. It takes you know, years to marginal
Speaker 4: army all the way out that far. So the best
Speaker 4: way to hold the empire together is to, you know,
Speaker 4: make sure every town has you know, a local chapter
Speaker 4: of your selected special security service that's listening in on
Speaker 4: all the conversations and has a has an eye in
Speaker 4: eyes and ears in the room of pretty much any
Speaker 4: private conversation. And that that's a legacy in Prussia. And
Speaker 4: that's a legacy that Putin fell into right.
Speaker 2: And then you know, he's always seemed to have dabbled
Speaker 2: with the leadership, whether he was prime minister or somehow
Speaker 2: put into be prime minister and now he's the president
Speaker 2: of Russia or he's at the head of you know,
Speaker 2: like you said, the FSB or his the KGB or whatever.
Speaker 2: You know that. Growing up with my father, he was
Speaker 2: just always saying, you know, the thing you got to
Speaker 2: think about is just submarines, right, it's not so much
Speaker 2: like Russia's, you know, not around us as as a nation.
Speaker 2: You know, he'd always say, you know, it's the it's
Speaker 2: the subs off the coast you got to think about.
Speaker 2: And so, you know, I hear, I don't know if
Speaker 2: I'm just spreading rumors. I'm gonna call it a rumor
Speaker 2: instead of fake news. So I might spread a rumor.
Speaker 2: I hear there might be a submarine at the bottom
Speaker 2: of the ocean that they command that has all of
Speaker 2: the cable in its like little snips that connects the
Speaker 2: underwater connectivity of all the you know, Internet and everything.
Speaker 2: It could just like snip it. There's a huge underwater cable.
Speaker 2: And my understanding is that just sit they sit there
Speaker 2: ready for the go. You know what do you think?
Speaker 4: Yeah, Submarine engineering has been a it's been a high
Speaker 4: priority for the regime. In Moscow for the last seventy years.
Speaker 4: They realized that the U boats allowed Germany to go
Speaker 4: toe to toe with the world's two most powerful navies,
Speaker 4: you know, in World War Two, and I mean in
Speaker 4: World War One as well, and they identified it early
Speaker 4: on as a tool that they need to adapt.
Speaker 3: And so they've they've always they've always.
Speaker 4: Had, you know, a high priority on you know, submarine
Speaker 4: technology and the old Soviet vessels they weren't afraid to
Speaker 4: make them big and because of that, you could have
Speaker 4: a double hole whole format, and so the outer hole
Speaker 4: is your pressure hole in the inner hole. Uh, you know,
Speaker 4: it simplifies internal design. It gives you all of this
Speaker 4: extra space to really you know, create these you know,
Speaker 4: much more functional and much more lavish living spaces and
Speaker 4: so like you know, the old Typhoon class boats had
Speaker 4: like a sauna and a you know and a and
Speaker 4: a hot tub and stuff and swimming pools inside of them.
Speaker 4: In the modern era, they you know, they still have
Speaker 4: you know, it's a part of their nuclear triad. Is
Speaker 4: they call them the was it the Berete class nuclear subs.
Speaker 4: And then they still have the Delta Force that are
Speaker 4: online and those are most of those were made in
Speaker 4: the Soviet era, but they still have the delta force.
Speaker 4: So the Berets have the what is it, the be
Speaker 4: Lava ICBM, and then I think the old delta forges
Speaker 4: are still using the R twenty nine and those are
Speaker 4: both effective ICBMs. You know that that's something that should
Speaker 4: give us real pause. You know, they have that technology
Speaker 4: available and they could fire on anywhere. They could fire on,
Speaker 4: you know, the United States, from anywhere in the world,
Speaker 4: including their home port.
Speaker 3: They don't really need to be parked off the coast.
Speaker 4: So the Soviet strategy for years was actually to take
Speaker 4: one of these subs and park them underneath the the
Speaker 4: Arctic ice cap, where they'd be relatively hard to find,
Speaker 4: and they were just supposed to sit there and then
Speaker 4: in the event of war, they could surface, burst through
Speaker 4: the ice cap, and fire off a couple of rockets,
Speaker 4: and then go back down again. So the sub that
Speaker 4: you're talking about, they are making a number of special
Speaker 4: missions submarines. There's some details about this on the book website.
Speaker 4: I didn't include these in the book because it's interesting information,
Speaker 4: but it doesn't doesn't quite tie into the thesis of
Speaker 4: hybrid warfare. But yeah, they want to be able to
Speaker 4: interfere with the with the fiber optic trunk cables that
Speaker 4: are running under a lot of the world's oceans. They
Speaker 4: want that as an option, and they have engineered a
Speaker 4: number of specialist submarines that are that are designed for
Speaker 4: those kinds of special missions.
Speaker 3: And they don't even have to be able to dive
Speaker 3: that deep themselves.
Speaker 4: They can always just launch an underwater autonomous vehicle and
Speaker 4: that that robot will go down there and do the
Speaker 4: dirty work for them. But they're also incapable of taking
Speaker 4: like a you know, a SPETSNAS detachment from the Russian
Speaker 4: Naval Infantry. They call them, uh you know, uh, you know,
Speaker 4: reconnaissance teams, and they could, you know, they can offload
Speaker 4: them onto you know, a battlefield the same way our
Speaker 4: Navy seals would come out of a Virginia class sub
Speaker 4: And those are all capabilities they keep and the Russians
Speaker 4: have from the Akula classes forward, and to be specific,
Speaker 4: what we called the Typhoon class submarine, you know, the
Speaker 4: classic hunt for Red October. Those are very actually but
Speaker 4: called the Akula class by the Russians. Akula means shark.
Speaker 4: What we call the Acula class and NATO parlance is
Speaker 4: an attack submarine that was meant that was meant to
Speaker 4: be at parody or better with our Los Angeles class
Speaker 4: submarines in the United States. Now, whether they are at
Speaker 4: parody or not, I don't I don't know. And we've
Speaker 4: faced out the Los Angeles class and we're in the
Speaker 4: Virginia's and my understanding, the Virginias are extremely good. The
Speaker 4: Russians have moved their Coula classes forward. They still have
Speaker 4: the aculism Solves are very venerable boats as attack submarines,
Speaker 4: but they don't do those kinds of special missions, even though.
Speaker 3: They're very quiet.
Speaker 4: But they have developed what they're calling the Yasin class
Speaker 4: submarines attack and these are from the open source information
Speaker 4: that we have about the Yas attack submarine. It's probably
Speaker 4: the best and the most quot submarine the Russians have
Speaker 4: ever fielded, and NATO analysts have stated publicly they're very,
Speaker 4: very impressed with it. It's also extremely expensive. The first one,
Speaker 4: with the first one, I think it is called the severe,
Speaker 4: the sevierro Dvinsk, came off the line at something like
Speaker 4: two billion dollars, which for the Russians is not pocket change.
Speaker 4: They don't have that kind of money lying around, so
Speaker 4: each subsequent boat is supposed to be another billion dollars
Speaker 4: out of pocket. And so we'll see if they can
Speaker 4: maintain production.
Speaker 2: No, they don't even really even have like aircraft carriers
Speaker 2: comparatively speaking with a budget. I don't even john that.
Speaker 2: I know, we're kind of like a little delay. I
Speaker 2: just wanted to get in there. Like the Russian Navy,
Speaker 2: they do focus so much energy on their sub mariners,
Speaker 2: you know, and the navy itself, right, Like one of
Speaker 2: the most disciplined militaries in the Russia is the navy,
Speaker 2: which is why they're Spetsna's where with the blue stripes
Speaker 2: are more revered than the other stripes of Spetsna's. But again,
Speaker 2: the thing is is that they only have a few
Speaker 2: aircraft carrier, right, They're not very like robust on that, right.
Speaker 3: They have one aircraft carrier.
Speaker 4: It's a Kuznetsov class carrier, and it's it's it's pretty worthless.
Speaker 4: It's they had during the Soviet Union in the eighties.
Speaker 4: They had they started off with the Kiev class carriers,
Speaker 4: which I think they made three of, and that was
Speaker 4: meant to give them a fast ground attack capability against
Speaker 4: NATO surface ships, and they realized that their subs would
Speaker 4: be very vulnerable with that air cover, and so they
Speaker 4: wanted to try to be able to project some degree
Speaker 4: of air power.
Speaker 3: Even though they knew they could never have parody.
Speaker 4: With with you know, the United States, the UK and France.
Speaker 4: But the Kuznetsov class was meant to be the next
Speaker 4: four A forward and they're about you know, the boat
Speaker 4: itself is about twenty f five thousand tons. It had
Speaker 4: a sister ship that was actually after the class of
Speaker 4: the Soviet Union was left in Ukraine and the Ukrainians
Speaker 4: first turned it into a casino and then they sold
Speaker 4: the hull to the Chinese and that is what became
Speaker 4: the li and Ying in China. But the Kuznetsov class,
Speaker 4: at about forty five thousand tons can support something like
Speaker 4: a squadron of twenty five planes. I think they were
Speaker 4: running the mid twenty nine K. I don't know, I
Speaker 4: can't remember what it's been upgraded to at this point.
Speaker 4: But it breaks down all the time, and the fumes
Speaker 4: from the motor runs on this kind of it's almost
Speaker 4: a tar. It's meant to run off a very low
Speaker 4: refined petroleum derivative you could almost call tar and they're
Speaker 4: just a very poorly constructed boat. They suffocate the people
Speaker 4: that operate inside of them. They tried to bring it
Speaker 4: down for the war in Syria. They had to have
Speaker 4: it paced by an ocean going tug boat in case
Speaker 4: it broke down, which it did multiple times. And then
Speaker 4: when they started actually releasing planes to conduct combat operations
Speaker 4: in Syria, they had to close all air ops for
Speaker 4: the boat itself and then have all the planes land
Speaker 4: at their at their Hyinenem air base in Syria and
Speaker 4: just fight from a from an airfield on the ground
Speaker 4: because the carrier was, you know, it was prohibiting their
Speaker 4: their success. They haven't retired it because simply having an
Speaker 4: aircraft carrier is a is a point of national pride
Speaker 4: and it should be retired. It's caught on fire multiple times,
Speaker 4: but they just won't let it go. The issue is
Speaker 4: they don't have the existing naval facilities enable shipyards to
Speaker 4: actually build a boat of that size right now, and
Speaker 4: certainly not staffed with the subject matter expertise it would
Speaker 4: take to build a boat of that size. So until
Speaker 4: they until they update their infrastructure in their workforce, you know,
Speaker 4: having a real aircraft carrier is probably not going to
Speaker 4: be on the table for them.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Really that is a big deal. I mean with
Speaker 2: considering you know, air superiority and having aircraft that can
Speaker 2: just like be right off the coast or take off
Speaker 2: and you know, just dominate the airspace within landing back
Speaker 2: on its carrier group right, let alone just their carrier,
Speaker 2: which I understood was also like you said, I think
Speaker 2: sold over to China and it's a nineteen fifties fifty
Speaker 2: five version aircraft carrier that they've modeled their aircraft carrier
Speaker 2: off of, which has like that lip at the front
Speaker 2: of it when they try to take off so they
Speaker 2: can fall or something. I don't know. I mean, why
Speaker 2: is it that I feel like when I think of
Speaker 2: Russia equipment, it's frozen cold and not functional.
Speaker 4: Well, that's a common problem. The Russians inherited the Soviet Arsenal,
Speaker 4: and when Russia collapsed or what let's say, and the
Speaker 4: Soviet Union collapsed, Moscow went from having an economy that
Speaker 4: was maybe half the size of the United States.
Speaker 3: They always fudged.
Speaker 4: Their numbers, so we don't really know exactly how large
Speaker 4: the Soviet economy was because the data that they created
Speaker 4: around this is always very inflated. But by nineteen ninety three,
Speaker 4: the Russian economy was about half the size of the
Speaker 4: United Kingdom, and those are numbers that we can trust.
Speaker 4: And so with an economy half the size of that
Speaker 4: of the United Kingdom, they were trying to maintain an
Speaker 4: armed forces that could compete not just with the United
Speaker 4: States but with the entire NATO alliance, and maintaining that
Speaker 4: equipment is physically impossible. They simply didn't have the resources,
Speaker 4: and so this was all put in. It was all,
Speaker 4: you know, it was put in dock, and the ships rusted,
Speaker 4: and the tanks were put into you know, storage storage yards,
Speaker 4: and they you know, they had weeds grow into the tracks,
Speaker 4: and that's what's happened ever since. They didn't really start
Speaker 4: modernizing and updating their armed forces until the mid two thousands.
Speaker 2: Right after other countries had already had a run in
Speaker 2: the game trying to get up on them. Now they're
Speaker 2: trying to catch up, so they are. And in the meantime,
Speaker 2: you know, in the nineties, they did sign that agreement
Speaker 2: to like you know, allow Ukraine to be its own
Speaker 2: self with the nuclear proliferation act red or where they
Speaker 2: got rid of all their nukes and quote unquote said, okay,
Speaker 2: you get to have your own sovereign nation. You're now Ukraine.
Speaker 2: And then, you know, two thousand and twelve jumps up
Speaker 2: and they start to attack into Crimea and then they
Speaker 2: putin says don't fly your civilian airliners in the airspace
Speaker 2: or it will be shot down. You know, it's a
Speaker 2: war zone. But they shot down the airliners of the
Speaker 2: civilians that were just flying over. And you know, so
Speaker 2: now he's trying to say that it's annexed. He's like,
Speaker 2: this is ours now because we went in and fought
Speaker 2: on it, and you've got you know, Zelensky, President Zelenski
Speaker 2: of Ukraine trying to you know, keep it together, keep
Speaker 2: a positive mission for his troops who are either in
Speaker 2: their fifties and have old Russian experience or they're in
Speaker 2: their twenties and they have airsoft wargame experience. And so
Speaker 2: you have this war going on right now over there
Speaker 2: where it's needed to be defended because Ukraine is its
Speaker 2: own stone state. Okay, I recognize Ukraine, and just because
Speaker 2: they attacked in February of twenty twenty two doesn't mean
Speaker 2: that it's not been going on for some time, and
Speaker 2: for him to want to go back to the Peter
Speaker 2: the Great, the Peter of the Vlatimir the Great, whatever
Speaker 2: he wants to be thought of, I don't think it's
Speaker 2: quite doing it because you know, my understanding is they've
Speaker 2: lost around three hundred thousand plus Russian soldiers since that
Speaker 2: February initial invasion of Ukraine. You know what is Putin's end.
Speaker 3: Game, well, you know his endgame.
Speaker 4: His endgame is to restore the former buffer states to
Speaker 4: their subservient position. I don't think that that full game
Speaker 4: is in the cards in the next five years for certain.
Speaker 3: But what he can do.
Speaker 4: With Ukraine, even though they've floundered so badly on the
Speaker 4: war when it started in February of twenty two, what
Speaker 4: they can do at this point is wade out Western support.
Speaker 4: The Ukrainians rely on foreign donated weapons, they rely on
Speaker 4: foreign financing, and increasingly they rely on foreign fuel and
Speaker 4: foreign food. The Russians will attack the Ukrainian economy and,
Speaker 4: wherever possible, the Ukrainian population itself. If they can destroy infrastructure,
Speaker 4: the power grid, the port facilities, the railroads that are needed,
Speaker 4: you know, Ukrainian grain is you know, it's an important
Speaker 4: staple in the world, you know, food supply chain. Right,
Speaker 4: they're the fifth largest grain producer. That's a backbone of
Speaker 4: the Ukrainian economy keeping them from exporting those things. First off,
Speaker 4: that increases the price of wheat, and that's you know,
Speaker 4: Russia is the world's largest grain producer, and that creates
Speaker 4: demand for their own produce, but that destroys the capacity
Speaker 4: of the Ukrainian economy to support the government. And it
Speaker 4: the more you attack the power grid and the more
Speaker 4: you attack the water supply, the more you tend to
Speaker 4: create refugees, you know, especially in you know, as you
Speaker 4: do this in heavy population centers, and refugees have a
Speaker 4: number of characteristics, but one of the big ones is
Speaker 4: that they don't fight back, at least not in an
Speaker 4: organized way. They tend to drift into Europe and they
Speaker 4: become the European Union's problem, which is absolutely okay with
Speaker 4: the Russians, and that means that they can slowly roll
Speaker 4: the ball forward so they don't necessarily have to conduct
Speaker 4: you know, the bold Heinz Guderian style, you know, armored
Speaker 4: spearheads into Ukraine and surround Ukrainian forces and defeat them,
Speaker 4: you know, in a chest like victory on the battlefield.
Speaker 4: They can simply slowly advance the ball on each front
Speaker 4: and slowly chip away at Ukraine as a whole until
Speaker 4: there's simply isn't a population left to defend it, and
Speaker 4: there's no economy to support. And you know, it's becoming
Speaker 4: a very expensive endeavor for the Western Allies to invest
Speaker 4: in Ukraine's continued independence, and that seems to be the
Speaker 4: strategy that they're pursuing right now, and that it's a ruthless,
Speaker 4: ruthless calculus that they're going through. It's what's going to
Speaker 4: be done to the Ukrainian people over the next five years,
Speaker 4: is it? Well, we've gotten a sample of it. We
Speaker 4: got a sample of it, you know, and the war
Speaker 4: crimes that we saw in Bhucha and a number of
Speaker 4: other places around the the occupied areas.
Speaker 3: In northern Ukrain and you know that they have absolutely yeah.
Speaker 2: You know, I talked to some people who have been
Speaker 2: over there. I've talked to a guy who got captured
Speaker 2: by Ukrainian forces. He was with a guy that had
Speaker 2: a Russian passport. It was very hairy, you know. They
Speaker 2: were like, look, look, look, this is why he has
Speaker 2: a passport. It was just like in the beginning of it,
Speaker 2: he was just trying to get some folks out right,
Speaker 2: and boy, you know, it is a thing I don't
Speaker 2: want here. You know. I've said it on previous episodes
Speaker 2: where I was talking to my oil changed homie over
Speaker 2: here at my local oil change place and we were
Speaker 2: just bsing about an episode and I said, yeah, we
Speaker 2: were talking about are you ready for a hypersonic missile
Speaker 2: to blow up the grocery store across the street just
Speaker 2: out of nowhere? Bro? I said, are you ready for
Speaker 2: that right now? Because that's what's happening over there in Ukraine?
Speaker 2: And he looked at me. I said, are you really
Speaker 2: ready to go bandage your neighbors blown up children because
Speaker 2: their houses got blown up out of nowhere like like
Speaker 2: these things. And he looked at me. I said, are
Speaker 2: you ready for that? And He's like no. I was like, no, no, bro,
Speaker 2: these that's what's happening over there. And if if we
Speaker 2: let it happen and fight it over there, it doesn't
Speaker 2: happen here, right if we can help prevent it and
Speaker 2: thwart it and maybe help fight that battle and get
Speaker 2: Congress to you know, see the need to do that
Speaker 2: and not maybe sympathize, you know, like World War two.
Speaker 2: Let's let world War two Congress. Some people in Congress
Speaker 2: sympathized with with Hitler. Okay, they were sympathizers. There was
Speaker 2: German sympathizers that were involved in politics that were like,
Speaker 2: what's the big deal, He's just doing it. He just
Speaker 2: let him do it. What's the big deal. It's his country,
Speaker 2: it's his place, nah man, Look what happened. Right. History
Speaker 2: books are written based off of exactly all that stuff.
Speaker 2: So if we continue to let this guy do the
Speaker 2: same thing, are we just like what? You know, what?
Speaker 2: What do you think of that?
Speaker 4: There is definitely something to be said for maintaining the
Speaker 4: status quo internationally. It's not acceptable to be in the
Speaker 4: Community of Nations and to be integrated into the global
Speaker 4: economy and to just invade your neighbors because you want
Speaker 4: something that they have and that the United States and
Speaker 4: NATO and the European Union have a that is our
Speaker 4: defined interest in Ukraine that I think is absolutely one
Speaker 4: hundred percent right and absolutely one defensible. There is an
Speaker 4: added component that I think NATO really needs to keep
Speaker 4: in mind, and that is that they do not want
Speaker 4: Russia butting up directly against NATO allies.
Speaker 3: We would also be better off with a.
Speaker 4: Buffer between US and Russia, because the Russians if they're
Speaker 4: if they butt up against the country like Poland or Romania.
Speaker 4: There's a historian I really like named Victor Davis Hansen
Speaker 4: who talks about deterrence as the principal reason why people
Speaker 4: go to war. He makes the argument that it's, you know,
Speaker 4: World War One and World War Two, you know, these
Speaker 4: effectively laboratories of national power that kind of revealed to
Speaker 4: us through a very ruthless and brutal process what we
Speaker 4: should have known at the beginning. Right, So, if Germany
Speaker 4: had looked at the number of countries that would be fighting,
Speaker 4: you know, in nineteen forty five, before they invaded Poland
Speaker 4: in nineteen thirty nine, they would never have done it.
Speaker 4: They would never they would never have the generals and
Speaker 4: I don't even think Hitler would have been crazy enough
Speaker 4: to believe he could fight the United Kingdom and the
Speaker 4: Soviet Union and France and the United States all at
Speaker 4: the same time. But it's the loss of deterrence that
Speaker 4: makes them believe that they can do these things that
Speaker 4: at the end of World War One, the Allies were
Speaker 4: absolutely certain that they never wanted to fight a brutal, ruthless,
Speaker 4: industrialized conflict like that. Again, whereas the Russian excuse me,
Speaker 4: the Germans came out of World War One and they said, oh,
Speaker 4: we almost won that. I mean, we were like this
Speaker 4: close if the Americans hadn't come into the keep making cars, right,
Speaker 4: you know, So there's this. You know, Adam Hitler took
Speaker 4: all of Czechoslovakia. You know, he remilitarized the Rhineland, and
Speaker 4: he took the the Starland and took you know, in
Speaker 4: the Anslas he took he took Austria, he took the
Speaker 4: Sudate Land and Czechoslovakia then and he was a peace
Speaker 4: at he was pointing in that process. And so the Germans,
Speaker 4: both from political leadership in the West and then just
Speaker 4: from a cultural sense, they read weakness in the United
Speaker 4: Kingdom and France particularly, and that's what motivated them to
Speaker 4: do what they're going to do. If Vladimir Putin is
Speaker 4: you know, he's got forces stationed on the border of
Speaker 4: Ukraine or.
Speaker 3: Belarus, and they're.
Speaker 4: On the border of Poland or Romania, you know, then
Speaker 4: we start getting into a world where they might think
Speaker 4: that they can conduct military operations in a NATO country
Speaker 4: because they read that NATO won't do anything about it.
Speaker 4: And that's a real nightmare scenario. We do not want
Speaker 4: them ever thinking that they could start sending you know,
Speaker 4: spetsnazed troops across the border to you know, you know,
Speaker 4: conduct false flag operations in a place like Poland.
Speaker 3: Or something like that. That's how world wars get started.
Speaker 4: That's how that's that's how you risk something like a
Speaker 4: general nuclear exchange. So the Western Allies have a definitive
Speaker 4: interest in making sure that the Russians do not conquer Ukraine. Now,
Speaker 4: the one thing I'll say, and this is this is
Speaker 4: something for our domestic politicians to meditate on, is I
Speaker 4: have not heard that case clearly articulated to the American people.
Speaker 4: And that is the And if you if you're to
Speaker 4: go back to nineteen thirty eight, thirty nine, nineteen forty,
Speaker 4: nineteen forty one, leading up to per Harbor, Roosevelt, he
Speaker 4: is he's very sympathetic with the isolationist views that were
Speaker 4: in the United States at the time, especially after World
Speaker 4: War One, and he sees, you know, getting involved in
Speaker 4: the European conflict, as you know, a, we don't want
Speaker 4: to do that. This is Europe's problem. But be this
Speaker 4: distraction from my domestic initiatives, right like we're in the
Speaker 4: Great Depression stole. But a number of his core advisors,
Speaker 4: and the big one being George C. Marshall, with his
Speaker 4: in conjunction with Roosevelt, Secretary of the Treasury, and for
Speaker 4: the life of me, I'm struggling to remember that man's name,
Speaker 4: but he was one of Roosevelt's closest confidants. They make
Speaker 4: a case to Roosevelt that, hey, look that the United
Speaker 4: States military only has you know, two hundred and fifty
Speaker 4: three hundred thousand soldiers in the US Army. We're across Europe,
Speaker 4: everyone is fielding an army of two to five million
Speaker 4: men minimum. We're are at the beginning of World War Two.
Speaker 4: Our army was smaller than the army of Portugal. We
Speaker 4: are hopelessly and hilariously outgunned. And if we get into this,
Speaker 4: you know we're going to lose badly. We need to
Speaker 4: arm and you need to take this seriously. And Roosevelt too,
Speaker 4: he he you know, he's a political grand master and
Speaker 4: he knew how to listen to his advisors and make
Speaker 4: the case to the American people that this was in
Speaker 4: the national interest. He got the American people's he got
Speaker 4: Congress to vote for a peacetime draft. And you know,
Speaker 4: there's no such case that's been made. And you know,
Speaker 4: we we get told that this is important by a
Speaker 4: lot of the core figures, but you know, it's it's
Speaker 4: not nearly at the same level, on the same scale
Speaker 4: as Roosevelt's you know, attempt to communicate with the American
Speaker 4: people about the issues at the time.
Speaker 2: I would love to hear the case be made on
Speaker 2: behalf of what you just said, just like how Roosevelt
Speaker 2: came out and said, here's the case, you know, listen
Speaker 2: to his trusted advisors. Are I like how you said,
Speaker 2: you know, our national politicians need to like you know,
Speaker 2: meditate on that, you know, and like think about it,
Speaker 2: you know, and find their inner self and you know
Speaker 2: whatever they pray to and just come to terms with,
Speaker 2: you know, being bipartisan and just seeing the greater need
Speaker 2: of the good of the situation here. And that's it
Speaker 2: and for all of us, you know, really represent us,
Speaker 2: really represent what they're there to do, and and and
Speaker 2: swing the bat and hit it out of the park.
Speaker 2: We want to believe in that system. So I do
Speaker 2: as an American. I want the world to believe that
Speaker 2: we believe in that. My listeners that listen in the
Speaker 2: UK and everywhere else, I want them to feel that
Speaker 2: I have the confidence that we can overcome anything that's
Speaker 2: between ourselves too, for the greater good of mankind. Right,
Speaker 2: war is all you know, there's no peace without the
Speaker 2: word war. Right, I hear that, but I mean, damn,
Speaker 2: let's have some peace.
Speaker 4: Yes, And you know, to Roosevelt's credit too, he respected
Speaker 4: the isolationist position.
Speaker 3: And there were a lot of.
Speaker 4: Luminaries, uh, you know, in American society. Charles Lindberg was
Speaker 4: one of the big ones who were isolationists or even pacifists,
Speaker 4: and there, you know, the Midwest especially was very isolationist.
Speaker 4: And in all of his speeches he absolutely there was
Speaker 4: not this kind of down finger wagging and shame on
Speaker 4: you, you need to tone my position or else you're bad.
Speaker 4: It was explaining to them that yes, that's noble, and
Speaker 4: I agree with you, and I see your point. There
Speaker 4: are some things to consider here that that change the math.
Speaker 4: And that's the way the case was made, and you
Speaker 4: know they are these these makes the notable speeches when,
Speaker 4: especially when he introduces the draft, he starts the speech
Speaker 4: by saying, I hate war, and uh, the people in
Speaker 4: our time now that do not want to be in
Speaker 4: broiled in Ukraine are worried that US troops are going
Speaker 4: to be committed on the ground in the Ukraine. They
Speaker 4: have a point, and it's a point that I think
Speaker 4: we should all really pay attention to. And those those
Speaker 4: we do not want to go to war with Russia,
Speaker 4: but we do need to maintain deterrence, and we do
Speaker 4: need to make sure that this country that wants to
Speaker 4: maintain its independence can because it is in our absolute
Speaker 4: national interest to do so. We just have to communicate
Speaker 4: to the American public. White it's international.
Speaker 2: Interest, it's a global interest that it stays.
Speaker 3: And that's you know, that's a job for our political class.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and we're just stewards in our country to
Speaker 2: do the best we can. Uh, what we have as
Speaker 2: others around the world are stewards and theirs and together
Speaker 2: they all seem to like steward together for the most part. Okay,
Speaker 2: everybody seems to try to get along for the most
Speaker 2: part that there's just these actors out there launching things
Speaker 2: into space, setting them up all this different stuff. I'm
Speaker 2: gonna go do this. You can't tell me what do
Speaker 2: the Internet belongs to U? Look, I think you've been
Speaker 2: a great guest on our podcast here at Soft Rep Radio,
Speaker 2: and I've really it's really been awesome to have you on, Curtis.
Speaker 2: I just want to say thank you for just going
Speaker 2: back and forth about Russia and all of your knowledge.
Speaker 4: Hey, thank you for having me on. It's been great.
Speaker 4: And man, I can talk about this stuff all day.
Speaker 4: It's been it's been fantastic to speak with you.
Speaker 2: Well. I appreciate the objectivity you bring to the conversation.
Speaker 2: And you know, I am going to also be a
Speaker 2: better person and say I want our politicians to meditate more. Okay,
Speaker 2: find it on the inside. And I also want to.
Speaker 4: Pitch certainly, couldn't hurt a little objectivity and a.
Speaker 2: Little a little exactly and hybrid warfare right on Amazon right,
Speaker 2: Please leave a comment and a review once you go
Speaker 2: check out his book, read it, leave a comment down there,
Speaker 2: let him know that you're reading his book. It really
Speaker 2: makes authors feel really good when they see somebody leave
Speaker 2: a re spons anywhere that you are picking up his book,
Speaker 2: if it's at the local mom and pop shops or
Speaker 2: if it's at the airport. But Hybrid warfare the Russian
Speaker 2: approach god to conflict. Hold on, you do have a
Speaker 2: long title. One second, let me get it right. Hold on,
Speaker 2: hold on, hold on, hold on those Russians. Hybrid warfare
Speaker 2: the Russian approach to strategic competition and conventional military conflict
Speaker 2: by yours right here, Former Green Beret Curtis L. Fox,
Speaker 2: Thank you, Thank you, Red. And with that, that's Rad saying,
Speaker 2: don't forget to go to the merch store. Keep that going.
Speaker 2: And also check out the book club book hyphen Club,
Speaker 2: soft rep dot com, Forward slash book hyphen Club making
Speaker 2: a song, sing it all day long, go to it,
Speaker 2: check it out, and I appreciate it. And this is
Speaker 2: Rad saying happy holidays. It's probably twenty twenty four by now, Peace,
Speaker 2: you've been
Speaker 1: Listening to Sink Rep Radia