Russia Stress Testing NATO | EYES ON GEOPOLITICS

that year. It's a very low cost investment for US, and it's the most successful military alliance, maybe the most successful alliance America has had historically, full stop. So, I mean, if you want to cut costs, I get it, but like we'd be a little bit smarter about it. And if we are cutting costs, my question is where's my tax break? And I don't just mean that like ironically.

I mean, if you're like slashing the size of the government in half, then it stands the reason that the budget is slashed in half and that the American average American worker should be taking home more money, right, But I haven't seen that in the conversation anywhere.

we kicked off. Pentagon informs European diplomats that the US will partially halt military assistant to Baltic nations and NATO states bordering Russia. All this happening, and uh, this is from Reuters. All this happening when we you know, for the third time in about a week, Russia's breached NATO airspace, Poland, Romania, and just recently Estonia. I think that was yesterday Estonia invoking Article four. Even though Article four was invoked by Poland.

I think this makes history because the last time Article four was invoked I think was Turkey, and that happened like within a couple of months of like a few months of each other. This is like the most the quickest it's been invoked in like history. Andy, we spoke about it last week in article four. Is kind of like, you know, window dressing a little bit. I mean, does you know NATO did come up with the Operation Eastern Century and stuff like that. I'm assuming I guess Estonia

wants to like kind of step that up a little bit. Uh, maybe they don't think it's going far enough. What do you guys make of US pausing or holding military aid to our NATO allies in the East while this is all happening, You guys can mud wrestle for who those first? Anybody make your own mute?

for the next defense budget. So if you really put that into it's it's not that much, but it's symbolically a big deal to cut it off right from these Baltic countries that are on the border of Russia, right, it's a Pole, and then Latvia, Lithuania and I think Estonia, right, So those those countries need to be bolstered, they need to be prepared. That's how you have a strong defense in NATO is to be ready. I think the US was right over a multiple administrations to push our NATO

partners to do more from their own defense. But they are now. But it's not the time to just pull out, which is in many ways symbolic, but security for those countries to be able to get their stuff together. And you know, as you guys know, my son's deployed an hundred first out there right now and they are working to make sure that our NATO allies are ready to go. And you know it's anecdotal, of course, but everything I've heard is these countries aren't fucking around. They are quadrupling

their defense budget. They are they're doubling the size of their military, they are spending money, they are basically doing everything I think we hauld ask them to do. That's not the time for US to then withdraw all our support for the very military alliance that fought side by side with US twenty years after we were attacked on nine to eleven, and not only in Afghanistan, going to Iraq with US, which had nothing to do with nine

to eleven. So I know I get on the soapbox a lot when we talk about this, but this is just another indication that the United States has withdrawing from which been a privileged position as leader of the free world for you know, as long as there's been one. So I think it's pretty clear. I'm against said withdraw off support. We need to be increasing it now. The last thing I'd say, obviously throw it to the rest of the folks, is I do agree with the idea

that Europe needs to stop buying energy from Russia. I think we should do the secondary sanctions to prevent countries like India and China and Turkey from buying Russian oil. But the fact that there's still European countries that are buying at the same time they're begging for US assistance, I think sends the wrong message. And it's the right message from the White House to tell them that they need to cut that off as well, because that's how we fund this war machine.

and we got nothing out of it. And again in the proxy conflict against Russia that Ukraine has been waging the last three years, we and our NATO allies have gained a great deal and the cost only of money. And again a fraction of the money that we spent in Afghanistan. So where were all these critics during the twenty years in Afghanistan? Right from the same voices, were the same people going, oh yeah, you know, you know.

don't understand it. It's one thing for us to talk about geopolitics here, but we you know, we we've learned we stay clear of domestic politics just because it's become such a state, such a hot issue and a divisive issue among people who don't have enough maturity to to argue. But anyway, so this guy brings up politics at a at a booseless cocktail party, by the way, which is even worse. Yeah, and he says to me, you know, it's about Ukraine. So he knows my background, and it's

probably not a good idea to defend Russia anyway. But he's like, you know, I'm just tired of seeing the Americans waste in American taxpayer wasting money on Ukraine. And then the second question thing, he said, I don't even understand what the war is about anyway, you know, it's just from the PhD. And then he went on a long monologue about you know, how much money it was costing this and that, and I'm thinking, dude, where were

you in the last twenty years? I mean I was, I went easy on him, but he's not.

you know, without without regret. But he and we've talked about this, but I'm amazed how many of my former colleagues seem more caught up in this same kind of weird argument about our current foreign policy, that that Russia is no longer an enemy and that you know, Canada is or Venezuela is, or that China is no longer something to be concerned about, or Taiwan isn't something that we should even think that, you know, I mean think

about defending or pretend to defend. You know, these are you know that you know that that's what's so from the norm among people that we used to think we're rational human beings. And alongside I.

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It's a very low cost investment for US, and it's the most successful military alliance, maybe the most successful alliance America has had historically.

because we're going to be an island of one. So if you amass all the other countries in NATO, they actually have a pretty substantial military capablity capability and within five years it could be a substantial military capability, right, because they are like they are taking this stuff serious. So it isn't our own national security, It isn't charity.

And at the same time that we're looking at whether we should have this alliance, and I agree with the Jack it's probably the most significant military alliance in history. Our adversaries are building alliances. They're going the other direction. Look at the conference they just had, the Shanghai co Operation.

Chinese are going to take Taiwan? I know, you guys know, do you think they're going to take Taiwan and the global economy will go on just ticking along as though nothing has happened. I mean, look what Taiwan is the source of all the chips. Then the video uses that micron technology uses come from Taiwan. Semi what's it, Semi Semiconductor, TSM, semiconductor manufacturer, it's anyway.

Another interesting example is Japan. Japan self isolated itself for something like five or six hundred years, and because they did that to kind of preserve their own culture and not look outward, they felt so far behind technologically that when they came back into contact with the West and with other civilizations, they were so far behind. They were

getting their asses handed to them. And that's why the Meiji Restoration happened and they disposed of the shogunate and restored the emperor and all this other kind of stuff. It was because isolationism just doesn't.

because they didn't a year ago. So I don't understand how one could go shift your entire geopolitical view of the world, whether the US should be and shouldn't be, that that dramatically that quick without anything other than events like the invasion of Ukraine happening, right, the expansion of Chinese influence around the world withdraw of US foreign assistants

being made up by our adversaries, especially China. I mean, one of the things that came out of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization was that they're going to come up with the Developmental Bank collectively, right, what is that going to do?

a different level. Is our NATO allies the people that are on the front lines, whether it's Romania, Poland or whoever, are they more worried about like shooting down a Russian jet that breaches airspace for twelve minutes? As like are they worried about escalation wearing compared to when Turkey shot them down, like they you know, didn't do shit.

were shaping the environment. I mean had you had adults who understood the rules of geopolitics and understood where the Russians were back down. You had guys like you know, I'm not blaming the current Sencom commander, but you had guys like a Hotel then who had sent kam who was able to to craft shape the decision making so that with the Russians across the red line, everyone from the President downwards was on board with a rapid response,

and the Russians backpedaled rapidly after that. They never did it again. They lost some two hundred and fifty and by the way, it wasn't just contractors. They lost a few other active duty guys too. Grass him Off, who was the general in Syria, admitted to that too. So you know, it was if you're talking about escalation, killing Russians, not just mercenaries, but but members of that military. You would think would bring them to the point of escalation,

but it did not. And I think the difference is just because the guys involved in the decision making and shaping the president's view on this had years of national security experience behind them and Russia and understood Russian mentality. We're talking, we're talking for Hotel, we're talking Thomas who had so calm McMaster moulroy, Nick mcmulroy exactly.

NATO assets on the border every time, every time? Right, So what do they and what do they look for? They look for weaknesses? What's weakness? We just talked about it's how we started the podcast, right, So we just withdrew from the Balkan Security Initiative or some of the funding. Why so it's going to send a Russia message to Russia. Great, keep doing what we're doing, right, because these guys are

backing down. But every time they do an incursion, NATO should do something different that Russia doesn't like, doesn't like. That's what that's the only thing they get some attention they don't care about. We can compliment them all day, we can appease them all day. All that does is inspire them to go further. That's what they're looking for, you know. So bayonet cliche that I'm sure our audience is tired of hearing, but we need to.

send a message to Russia they're not escalatory. What are we gonna wait until drones to it to you know, to include those that might be carrying payloads, explosive payloads. Are we going to wait they cross that border or are we going to announce our intentions beforehand and say, hey, listen, if they cross such and such line and they're heading towards NATO territory, we're going to make the assumption that they are they're going to violate NATO airspace and we'll

engage them early. We make that announcement early and then we follow through. I mean, what is Russia going to do?

We've learned about, you know, because the Russians have absolutely within a period of weeks found counters to all those systems as we trip fed them to the Ukrainians, and just barely enough quantities, not enough quantities to change the direction of the war, but enough for the Russians to adapt and come up with countermeasures. But we've learned about that, We've learned how ineffective a lot of these weapons are

in an incredibly intense EW environment. The Russians have massive EW systems every ten kilometers along the front, and it

has changed. You know, We've talked a lot about drones here, but it's not so much drones themselves, it's how they're used and the contin continuous adaptive cycle which is less than thirty days, thirty days of where either the Russians Ukrainians will adapt to a new tactic and then adjust their industry to be able to produce a platform with the technology that is already that is already the next step. I mean, we can't do that. I mean we should

be learning so much from that. And now the Ukrainians, remember we talked about this a lot, and there were a fair amount. You know, when the Marines got rid of their tanks, it was such a hugely emotional decision, blah blah blah. Well it was a little premature. But the era of the man tank is now over because the Ukrainians have come up with a non man tank that operates with AI systems. I mean, it's incredibly sophisticated.

And they said they were going to do this a couple of years ago, and the Russians were losing, you know at that time, Russians. I don't know what the

toll is. Now, if the Russians lost like two thousand, two thousand tanks, you know a lot of them too, handheld weapons systems, and and so the question was our tank's really obsolutely what the man tank is? And the Ukrainians now have moved to to the next generation of tank. It's not y M one A four. It is an unmanned, much smaller version. Because you start putting human beings in the thing. Now you've got a cater for them, and you make that you make that platform more expensive, lower,

more vulnerable. But the Ukrainians now have a rolling gun platform, highly capable with both missile and UH and and and guns. It can do everything that a tank can do. It's less vulnerable, and of course it's it's relatively expendable. I mean, it's a lot of money, but it's not you don't have human beings inside. So these are all things that we should be learning from and thanking the Ukrainians.

happening now. But the question is and who's going to find it? It's already there, and the question is who's going to embrace it? Because we have so many legacy weapons systems and thoughts on warfare that it's almost like holding us back. Not that we need to develop it,

because it's being developed, it's already there. It's whether we embrace it or not that's going to really determine whether the United States has that offset, and the offset being that we advance beyond our adversaries, or whether we actually lag behind, which should be the first time ever in a significant issue.

who are not the best, the most adaptive when it comes to this new technology. And we don't have that integration with civilian companies that exist in other countries, you know, from Ukraine, Israel, China. We don't. It's almost an a a serial relationship with with the big civilian tech companies.

Think about Google, think about Amazon. You know they're not they're not They're not meshed in with with DoD and those are things that we should be concerned about, not you know, the poultry amount of money that we're spending on Baltic air defense. Because when I'm talking about really is going to have repercussions for ability to defend ourselves, not against Venezuelan fishing boats, I mean against against real threats.

And and last thing I'll say the you know this, this cliche topic of asymmetry, Things are about to get more asymmetric than they ever have been before. You know, we're having we're having glimpses of this, and we we talk all the time about swarms of drones blah blah blah.

We still don't have a credible short range air defense capability against such things, especially when you think about now that they are programmed with AI, they're resistant to e W. We're we're far behind the power cove and those are things that our defense department I think should be really worried about. Yeah, I'll take him off mute.

because I'm a dummy, I don't know anything about like how NATO works in terms of like decision structure. Now let's say this happens again, they breach airspace and stuff. Who makes the decision to be like scramble jets make take it out if you need to. You know who, like is the US involved in that decision?

mean moral support. We've always and I always viewed it as a military response, but there's now plenty of people making the argument that it is not as ironclads, you know, you know, analyst has made it out to be, which is even more worrisome and sounds great to Russia whenever they hear US debating things.

kind of hesitant to help keep supporting Ukraine. If you're China, who's like our nearest peer rival, what are you thinking, I mean, are you thinking, hey, maybe now's the time or in the next eighteen months is the time to go into.

they can defend themselves. So obviously cutting off military assistance would be directly contrary to the law that we actually passed and imposed. So I think it's I don't think it's going to change Chinese view of whatever it is. They're going to negotiate economic security wise with the US,

so it's not going to have the diviired defect. I think it's going to that taken with our lukewarm support of Ukraine against Russia, is making it more likely that China would do something toward Taiwan, even if it wasn't a full out invasion of Mapel blockade or something like that. If we stop providing support and we show somewhat of indifference to our other ally that's under attack, it only inspires China more. And it is the opposite of competing with.

over in twenty four hours. The first twenty four to forty eight hours will be pretty ugly, I think, but there's going to be a period of time where China is going to be lobbing ballistic missiles and doing airstrikes and hitting them with electronic warfare, and then at some point the amphibious landing is going to come and we don't know is that a week in, is it two weeks in, is it a month in? We don't know, but it's you know, either way, they're both incredibly dangerous scenarios.

We could essentially win militarily against China's attempt to invade if we went all in, but we would lose a lot. I don't think the US popular. I don't think the US is willing to send men and women to die for this, so that's another issue. It's a political issue. But either way, everybody loses and the world economy is substantially affected negatively.

Japan itself, the actual country was devastated.

global economy is just completely devastated. So I think you can google it. I would assume it was it was the most recent one. But the US should pay close attention to that. And so what is the alternative, Well, it's the alternative is to put up such a united front that China doesn't try it. We want to avoid war, right, You avoid war by being strong and appearing strong, And that's I think what the US should do, not only

in Europe but also in the Indo Pacific. Pulling back only makes war more likely that that we'd have to then join later after it's already started and have a lot to make up for.

cognizanti here, we know probably not. But the whole point about this, the terrence is the ambiguity. You don't admit that. You don't have to have a government say hey, we

wouldn't really use all this ship because you just undermined terrence. Right, You keep the Chinese guessing whether or not people agree with you or not, whether or not ninety five percent of the American public goes, no, we don't want to go to war with that. You, regardless Democrat or Republican, never tell the Chinese that will never give indications to the Chinese that you are not one hundred percent prepared to go to war with them if they go off to Taiwan.

sink that ship, let me tell you something. That's going to be the next to nine to eleven type event for Americans. And the New States are going to play or they're going to show the pictures of every soldier that died on that ship. There's going to be memorials. But people, and look, we were Americans. We know this country and we know what Americans are like. America will flip the fuck out over that. They will absolutely lose it and they will fight a war over that. There's no doubt in my mind.

Editorializing for a second, I have it to agree. Uh, what are they looking to get out of here? They said, there's about three or four Thousandjmask guys in and around Gaza City. What is what's going on? Guys? You guys tell me. I don't know. I get too emotional with this.

to take four or five six months, maybe hopefully. I mean, I'm all for every Hamas person being stomped out, But there's a massive and we talk about a lot in this podcast, but I'm sure everybody knows it a massive humanitarian crisis and it's only getting worse. There should be around four hundred food to present points for the two million people. There's four and they're all in the south, so it's a it's an effort to move the population

to the south. Whether they'll meet their objectives, I'm not even I mean, you can even look with the IDF statement, it's not even sure what the objectives are. Any you never stop a mess out. There'll always be some you know, person who joins an ideology but they've seriously degraded their military capacity to harm Israel. I would say, I'm positive, and then the last thing it's say on So as far as the UN declaration of genocide, it's important to point out that wasn't a vote of one hundred and

ninety three members. It wasn't a vote of a forty seven members of the Human Rights Council. It was a commission of three people. Okay, it's an Australian, South African and Canadian Canadian, so with three individuals that decided that. So it's a I'm not saying that it didn't happen. They did. But it's also important to point out that's

three people who've determined it. It's not the United Nations, even though they say, you know, Tonited Nations commission, but when you dig into it, it's three people it will have an effect in the sense that, you know, the ic J and the ICC will use it, you know, and they're investigation.

a fan of Hamas and they should get clipped. But at what course is it at the cost of one hundred thousand civilians And at what cost is it like another thirty thousand fucking extremists. It can rebrand that, you know, and they're still gonna go after Israel. Bro If I was born in Palestine, in Gaza and I've been getting bombed my whole fucking life, I'm not a fan of Israel, point blank, end the story. And I'm probably fighting against them. Sorry,

I'm getting fucking it. I'm getting fucking worked up. So I was like, Nick, I mean, you're totally right in terms of like the rational way of doing this, and it's like, it's completely irrational what goes on there. It's completely irrational. The IDF doesn't even believe in this shit. Mussa doesn't even believe in this shit. It's only that war cabinet. Andy, what do you got thoughts and comments? Yeah?

about the upcoming Campaig. And these were guys, in fact there was a marine Tusar and that they've been involved in the campaign as was I. Not that I'm you know, pounding my chest here, involved in supporting iraqis offt going into Mosul, right, And so they were there just to kind of talk them through what an amazingly complex operations

was going to be. I know that's over used, but that even when you are trying your hardest to minimize civilian casualties, you're going to cause a lot of civilian casualties of course, they had no idea that the number of civilian casualties were going to be on the scale that have occurring guards and Mozill was nothing like that.

And Mozill was you know, the Islamic State arguably were a harder target, harder proposition than Hamas dug In as they were into Mosil, you know, a city of some say seven hundred and fifty thousand, but it was two million, you know, certainly at the outset of the wall. But anyway, my point is this. I saw in one of these guys when he got back, and he just he said, you know, we explained all this, and the Israelis were like, we don't care. You know, it's a different frame of rere.

We just don't care. They civilian countualties not an issue for us. We're concerned about protecting our guys. And that's that's been their mentality. From the outset, Israeli casualties, military casualties and GAZA have been incredibly low, all right, And yet you know, and I'm using you know, guys, no, I'm writing a book and this doesn't make me an expert, but I'm using sources among the IDF as well as sources objective observers. You know, one of the problems here

is that we talked about this on the show. The IDF falls short. Their infantry doesn't operate well at all. They're not well trained. They don't fight at night. They do not fight at night. Let me repeat that, they do not fight at night. They don't train at night. Now they're special operations do, but they don't. They don't clear and hold, they're not trained to clear and hold. None of these are excuses. I'm trying to explain, though, that there are a number of reasons behind the high

number of civilian casualties. One is absolutely, absolutely one is a mentality of vengeance. We will show them, and you know, the head of Israeli intelligence, in military intelligence, caught on tape saying we will kill you know, and in fact they've killed more than that, but we will kill fifty at Palestinians. Forevery Israeli that died, and he said, and he's quoted as saying, I don't care if they're children.

So this was a very widespread, this feeling of vengeance, coupled with the knowledge that their own infantry, their own military, were not good. They checkpoint soldiers, they've been operating in the West Bank. That's the only operation that they've focused in. And this is a niche just saying this, getting this from Israelis. They don't zero their weapons, they don't train at night. They pull back into these farbs every single day. That's why they have to go back and clear again.

And when they clear again, they lead with fire always, so they're clearing the same area over and over again and flattening those areas. And you have civilians who have come back into those areas, perhaps overnight to retrieve things or whatever, thinking they're safe, and they are not. So there's a lot of things going on that may not be purposeful, but it certainly kind of from our point

of view, targeting negligence. And then you have certainly an undercurrent of feeling that they're not dealing with real human beings, and that is prevalent a lot of people you talk to. It's amazing people who otherwise seem cultured and compassionate, and yet when they talk about Palestinians, it's at a different, different level, and it's a very much kind of a nuss and then mentality. Now, so that targeting methodology is

different than ours. Their acceptance of collateral damage is off to charts different than ours in number of people that they are within their rules of engagement allowed to kill, to kill like a Hermas going after a her mass leader. You know, a hundred civilians And I'm throwing numbers around here, but one hundred civilians can die if you're going after well those that that formula. Two things have happened to it.

The number of civilians accepted at every level of mass do that they kill has gone up, and and the decisions on who can make that the the threshold and who can make those decisions has been pushed down to battalion and brigade level, And so you get this mentality of I don't care how many guys die as long as I protect my soldiers. And frankly, I've seen that in US officers too, but it's not you know, and

it's reprehensible whatever you see it. So you've got all that, and then I would say, yes, you've got you've got and I couldn't put a number on it. But you have purposeful war crimes sort of that have gone on, and there's enough evidence melting off that I'm talking about

snipers shooting people in their head. You know, clearly unarmed and more than anecdotal weather, it's that children being brought in the hospitals with headshots, you know, from a distance, so it was a sniper through a scope, and there's no way they could have been mistaken for there is enough of that going on not being investigated. Ostensibly, there is a process that the IDF will tell you, because remember a lot of my sources coming from the IDF, they will tell you here, we have a process to

investigate every time this stuff happens. That is true, but they haven't come up with a single conviction yet of a single soldier. And part of the reason is that the process works so slowly they can't find witnesses, et cetera, et cetera. So you know, the last thing, I'll say,

a lot of there's a lot of discussion. Make this all you know, this will resonance something we're writing, but a lot of discussion about the role of artificial intelligence and targeting, and the Guardian road a an article on it. There's a good West Point think Tank article on this too. They use a couple of systems. Lavender is one that's known. Another one is Gospel. Well, use of those artificial intelligence systems by themselves don't constitute a war crime. They are

essentially I mean, it's very low level AI. It's the really decision point, a decision support mechanisms to narrow the field down when you're making a decision to pull the trigger or not. The problem is this, it's not in

use of those employment of the systems. It's that the human being, that the human judgment in how those systems are being implemented has gradually got less and less, so that people are making targeting decisions based purely on what this decision support matrix is providing them without you know, without all the stuff that we put into it with you do we have do we have sufficient reason all right to go after this particular individual as an example. So you've got a lot of a lot of factors there.

And I said that was the last piece of the last piece I'll say is when when it comes to starving civilians and the Israelis will tell you this is not a deliberate policy of ours from the idea point of view, that is true. From the idea point of view, this is about population control.

back and forth back into free fire zones inadvertently. All kinds of things have gone wrong so that civilians are afraid to move, They're afraid to find food, they're afraid to move from sector to sector. So all of these things are combining, you know, to create what has happened. And then at the same time you have a government that is quite frightening in its in some of it's you know, the the thing, it's official comments that it's made.

And you take guys, I know everyone wants to talked about Ben Gavier and Small Dridge, but when you have a photograph taken of yourself, you know, with the thumbs up in front of graffiti that says death to Arabs,

and you are the you know, whatever Small Ridge is ben Gavier and you're the minister, you're you're a cabinet member. What message is that sending? And we've seen the way Ben Gavier has treated cases of police or security forces on the West Bank, reported for turning a blind eye when when Palestinian villages are getting burnt to the ground. So there's all all these factors at play, and it's it's a tragedy for Israel. They may be winning in

the short term. They may you know, they've they performed well on the global stage as far as disabling Hisbolla, going after Iran, calling Iran's bluff, and as you guys have pointed out, reducing the threat from Hamas. But what about the long term strategic effect on the state of Israel.

It can't it can't be good, you know. I mean, as we talked about, for every every Palestinian killed, there's a family, and there's there's you know, young men who are going to grow up and with a tremendous amount of antipathy to it. So they're creating I would argue, problems down the line that no one seems to really be paying attention to. You can't wipe out an entire population such that you never have to worry about them again. Surely that it's a lesson of history.

the Biden and the Trump administration for making us complacent or complicit, I should say, with it make anything.

have the Geneva Convention. I mean, it was one of the first things that was discussed when we talked at the end of World War two we saw eighty million people killed or two, right, was the first thing is you can't starve civilians. Certainly women, children, elderly were a military objective. So the extent that that's happening again, you

can see it. People can make their own determination, but that needs to be investigated, and if that was in fact the case, there should be some people helped responssible. So I think you can both support Israel as I do. And it's also important to point out, I mean people act like Israel's homogeneous. There's huge differences of opinion inside Israel right now, and there's a lot of people don't support the continuation of this war, including in the Israeli

defense forces all the way to the top. So it would be really good if this could come to an end.

left a residual force. Obviously tried to keep our troops out of harms way as much as possible, but it wasn't just the counter terrorism effort. It was the strategic importance. Where it is so now to be talking about paying up with some a billion dollars to the Taliban to go back, I think validates my point then and now. I don't think it's going to happen. I don't think

of Taliban will allow it. But that the last I heard is that they're saying a billion dollars a month, which is basically saying, now, why we're talking about this out loud?

three hundred meters. Uh, you know, do dumbbell lunges, sprint another three hundred meters and do the road at whatever, and it goes.