Dr. Jeff McCausland Joins Joe Getty

Dr. Jeff McCausland, a retired US Army Colonel who formally served as the Dean of Academics at the US Army War College and CBS News military analyst, joined Joe to talk about the situation in Ukraine. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Let's discuss the situation ian Ukraine and in a greater sense,
the global diplomatic efforts to do something about it with
doctor Jeff mccauslan, CBS News, military consultant, founder and CEO
of Diamond six Leadership and Strategies, LLC, and Senior Fellow
at Stockdale Center for Ethical Leadership at the Naval Academy. Jeff,

(00:23):
it's always a pleasure.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
How are you, Joe, I'm doing very well. Pleasure to
be with you.

Speaker 1 (00:28):
Thank you. So it is absolutely self evident that this
is a marathon and not a sprint. Can do you
get any sense of what direction it's heading in? Is
there a momentum on either side?

Speaker 2 (00:41):
Well, it's totally seems to me that right now, I
would rather talk about initiative in tempo, and I think
initiative in tempo is on the Ukrainian side. Is there
conducting a counter offensive, albeit one this movie more slowly
than they would like than we would like, but still
moving and at the same time the Russians are reacting
to them, and that's what you want to happen in warfare.
You want your opponent reaction to you, as opposed to

(01:03):
the other way around. However, worrying to me is the
war also. I think in many ways it's escalating. It's
escalating in terms of range and the locality of weapons,
it's escalating in terms of the geography. Now certainly the
Black Sea has become a war zone, and it's escalating
in many ways with the narrative, particularly on the Russian side,

(01:24):
and the Ukrainians as well have begun their counter offensive
not only against the land areas occupied by the Russians,
but their counter offensive now includes drone strikes on the
Russian capital Moscow, and they've done that several times over
the last couple of weeks. Now includes naval drones against
Russian ships and the Black Sea, and the drone strikes
against bridges connecting the territory Russian has occupied with Crimea.

(01:48):
So I think an effort by the Ukrainians to isolate that.
But that war in the Black Sea, which is now
unfolding after the Russians pulled out this big grain deal,
really will reverberate across the planet, probably in arising grain
prices which will affect a lot of poor countries, particularly
in Africa and the Middle East, and potentially rising oil
prices since oil is a major Russia is a major

(02:11):
exporter of oil if in fact it slows that export
coming out of those ports down there in the Black
Sea and Sea Ivazo.

Speaker 1 (02:18):
I want to get back to those trade questions in
a minute, but before we do that, I think the
drone attacks on the ships and the bridges are absolutely
defensible and necessary in the rest of it. But I
found myself wondering about the attacks on Moscow in particular,
of the drone attacks, what effect do you think the
Ukrainians are hoping to have and do you think they'll

(02:39):
achieve their goals.

Speaker 2 (02:41):
It's a little clearer though achieving their goal, But the
goal I think certainly is psychological and political, as the
Ukrainians many senior of Clanians think, including Zelenski, have said,
you know, we're going to show the Russians that the
war is coming to that they cannot be immune, they
can't sit in coffee shops in Moscow and still continues
to live their lives pretty quietly while this is happening

(03:03):
in a far distant place. And I think so it's
more psychological than military. They're they're not going to destroy Moscow,
They're not going to overwhelm Moscow. But it's bringing the
war to the Russian people, who in many ways have
largely been a meeting to the conflict, despite the fact
that we know over two hundred thousand Russian casualties have

(03:23):
been suffered in this conflict so far. And you know,
it's interesting Joe, as a senior officer admitted the other day,
was on a telegram I believe in it taken down
very quickly than in his division. About for every soldier
who was for every soldier killed in action, only three
were wounded, which is a pretty bad ratio. Doesn't say
much about Russian medical support. Well, that's true that two

(03:46):
hundred thousand casualies. Now the Russians have suffered seventy to
seventy five thousand dead.

Speaker 1 (03:52):
Wow. So my concern about the attacks on Moscow and
trying to bring it home to the Russian people is
that Putin's narrative from the beginning, which is ridiculous and false,
is that this is a defensive war. We had to
we were threatened. You know, NATO is closing in and
we've got to denazify our neighbors, blah blah blah. I

(04:12):
would think that, you know, the occasional cafe getting bombed
in Moscow would actually reinforce that rhetoric that it's a
defensive war.

Speaker 2 (04:21):
Yeah. In any ways, that's why I said, you know,
the rar is escalating in terms of the narrative, and
that's part of that narrative that Putin is continuing to intensify.
This is now an effort to destroy Russia. The very
existence of Russia's at stake. And so they do an
awful lot to tie what's going on in Ukraine to
the Great Patriotic War, which reverberates really too many Russians,
and that course was World War Two, thirty thirty five

(04:43):
thousand Soviet citizens dying in that particular conflict, in the
glory of the Soviet military in driving back Nazis. That's
why they paint the Ukrainians as being petically Nazis and fascist.
So more as this conflict goes on and on and
he's not successful, I think he does a couple of things. One,
more and more paint that narrative in those terms to

(05:05):
try to maintain support, and second of all, more and
more repression. You can't say too much in Russia about
anything without being arrested and being accused of being against
the Russian military, against the conflict, against the homeland, against
Mother Russia, and those are themes that he is more
and more employed.

Speaker 1 (05:25):
Jeff mccauslin, CBS News, Military consultant on the line, Jeff,
I'm not sure if you've been following the big diplomatic
conference over the weekend. I guess about forty countries met
in Saudi Arabia to talk about the Ukrainian situation. Has
anything come of that, or given what we were discussing before,
the terrible food shortages in Africa that could well be

(05:46):
caused by Russia cracking down on the great exports the
energy markets around the world, is there any chance that
these dozens of nations are going to join forces and
put pressure on either or both sides to get to
the table.

Speaker 2 (06:00):
Well, let me try to. I still think they're going
to be terribly successful. I think this demonstrates a couple
of things. One, I think it demonstrates the Saudi Arabians
once again trying to demonstrate that they are a global power,
as they did when they opened up negotiations and relations
with Iran, and so the Prince Prince Solomon trying to
demonstrate that he is actually a world player. Second of all,

(06:22):
I think it shows that escalation geographically in terms of
the reverberating or the widening effect of the war, particularly
on those African countries which some may say our right
famine if in fact those flu supplies are shut off
coming out of Russia and Ukraine. But I don't see
there having a dramatic effect on the war, except for
again to the narrative Krane was represented there them trying

(06:44):
to convince more and more the countries to get off
the fence and more and more isolate Russia as their
hopes that might bring an end to a conflict. But
again how they're going to do that is beyond me.
In that I think that we see mister Putin doubling
down the conflict, doing things to make it more and
more difficult for a soldier to avoid conscription. They've now

(07:08):
expanded the draft to people in Russia up to the
age of thirty. As a reservist you can be called
back until you're seventy. So they're doing a number of
things to expand the manpower, and based on just internal resources,
it was seen to me that is clear mister Putin
can carry this war on, probably for at least another
year or two. And then, don't forget, he's facing re

(07:28):
election in March next year, and so there's going to
be a constant drumbeat. I think of that narrative of
us being under siege, which will urge people to vote
for him, though the election will be fraudulent, and you
know it's a foregone conclusion even before it begins.

Speaker 1 (07:42):
Jeff McCausland of CBS News, Jeff, so so grateful for
the insights, Thanks for the time, Thank you very much.

Speaker 2 (07:48):
Bye,