"Douglas Macgregor & Kim Iversen: The Russians Have 750.000 Troops Ready to Attack"
Interview by Kim Iversen
The Kim Iversen Show (July 11, 2023)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0rgUwpHX6M

[7:38] Douglas MacGregor: “They [the Russians] needed more forces. So they went on to the defensive. They conducted this as an economy of force mission and let the Ukrainians essentially smash themselves to bits trying to defeat the Russian defenses. That’s why it has taken so long.”

[7:57] Kim Iversen: “The counter-offensive with Ukraine is not going well. In fact, Zelenski even admitted on Wednesday when he was talking to the BBC that the offensive is ‘slower than desired’ and that some people believe this is a Hollywood movie and expect results, but it’s not. . . . From the Ukrainian perspective, how much longer – I mean, even with these cluster munitions – how much longer can they go?”

. . .

[9:02] Douglas MacGregor: “The Ukrainians, as I said, are running out of ammunition, people and equipment. They’re losing everything we send to them faster than they can employ it effectively. You can’t build an army on the fly. You have to have an organization in place, an institution. Those things never existed. So the Ukrainians at this point will continue to try and demonstrate that there is life left in them. But the truth is if the Russians attack, they’ll be swept away. And they know that. They will die in a hail of incredible artillery fire, rocket fire, missile fire; and they’ll be overrun by hundreds of thousands of Russian troops.”

[9:37] “So the question is: What happens in Vilnius at this meeting? Are we finally going to come to terms with reality? Will we negotiate an end to this? Or do we force the Russians to do what they really don’t want to do, which is attack? They’d like to end this war without a terrible bloodbath, beyond what already exists.”

. . .

[10:23] Kim Iversen: Is there a way they can spin that as a loss for Russia so that we can get out of this? Because I don’t know how we’re going to get out of this when they’ve been saying this whole time that Russia cannot win win. We must ensure they lose.”

. . .

[11:45] Douglas MacGregor: “… And we’re now out of ammunition and we don’t have the forces to send in there. The Russians have 300,000 troops in reserve ready to attack. We have nothing like that. ...”

[12:09] “... It’s a little late, you know. We look ridiculous as it is, in my judgment. ... When this began, Russia had a very small army. Now it has an army of at least 750,000 with brand new weapons, ready to strike. The Russians have practically mobilized the country. We’re nowhere near that. It would take us months to catch up. It’s time to be realistic. They have more in this game than we do. What happens in Ukraine is existential for them. For us it’s like Cuba or Mexico. But for them, it’s everything. For us Ukraine is nothing. We want the best for the people. That’s about it.”

. . .

[14:26] Douglas MacGregor: “We have a ruling class that hates Russia, that wants to destroy it, then wants to strip it of its resources, and to exploit it for profit. That’s what it’s about. . . . The rest of the world looks upon us as the aggressor. Most of the world sees what Russia is doing and doesn’t see it in those terms. ...”

...

17:06] Kim Iverson: “... We’re not winning wars. We haven’t won wars in so long and now here we are, another mistake. What is the future for the military for the United States?

[17:14] Douglas MacGregor: “Our military is at a low ebb. We spend more money than anyone else in the world. In fact, more money than the top 10 powers in the world on defense. We believe that if you shove enough money into the Defense Department you’re going to get competence, capability, military power out of if. That’s not true. We have 44 four-star generals on active duty. 44 generals and admirals with four stars. We have 1.12 million people under arms. In 1943, we had 12.2 million under arms. We only had 7 four-star generals and admirals. One wonders how we possibly won the second world war with only 7 four-stars. Aren’t we lucky that we have 44 today? What’s my point? This is a bloated bureaucracy. The number of people who actually deploy and fight are minimal. And now we have destroyed morale. We’re undermining discipline with all this Woke-ism and nonsense. The military has been turned into a social experiment. It’s designed to make people in Washington happy and they think it’s making their constituents happy. We’re living in a fantasy world. The Russians would go right through us. Let’s wake up. They’re serious. We’re not.”

[18:40] So what has to happen? We’ve got to go after this military establishment. It needs to be reduced. And then we need to come to terms with another reality. The defense industries are businesses. It’s in their interests to make as much money as possible. Who’s watching it? Nobody. Nobody is questioning anything because people on the Hill are pocketing a lot of cash by going along with bad programs and bad policies. So the whole military establishment needs to be reduced. You’ve got to get it back down to a lean fighting machine. Then you can begin really reforming it, reorganizing it, and changing the way we command and control it, the way we recruit for it. That is going to take us years. It will take us 5 to 10 years to recover, I would say, from the last 20 years, and certainly from the last two-and-a-half. . . . What are we doing in Ukraine? There is nothing there for us to do. Everything that we need to do is here at home. And most of the world is eminently capable of defending itself. And contrary to popular belief, there are not large armies, navies, and air forces in China and Russia just waiting for the opportunity to invade somebody else. Nothing could be further from the truth.”