Daniel Davis Deep Dive

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
In right now it's time for the daniel davis deep
dive daniel davis retired lieutenant colonel and he does have
a lot of information lots of resources and comments regularly
on the war situations going on the world post notably
we got the middle east conflict with us and the
iranians as well as russia and ukraine welcome back daniel
davis my friend it's always a pleasure to have you
on the show.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
Always a pleasure to be here brian uh can.

Speaker 1 (00:21):
We start with the russia ukraine situation since apparently uh
president zelensky from uh ukraine is uh at the un
and he is uh talking with Donald Trump about maybe
an energy ceasefire. And I was kind of curious about
this because Donald Trump had asked both the Russians and
the Ukrainians to stop bombing oil infrastructure. We have a global,

(00:43):
I don't know if you know, Daniel Davis, we've got
a global energy crisis. We're kind of short on diesel
and gasoline's through the roof. And so you're aware of that, right? Anyway,
in order to try to not exacerbate the problem, I
thought the parties had sort of at least tenuously agreed that, yeah,
that wouldn't happen. And then wasn't it like one day later,
Zelensky launches all kinds of drones and rockets into Russia
and blows up a diesel facility. Can you make sense

(01:05):
of this for my listeners and most notably me, sir?

Speaker 2 (01:08):
Yeah, I mean, the timing is kind of important on that.
So last week, President Trump puts out a true social
in which he said that both Russia and Ukraine had
agreed to a ceasefire on energy systems, on each other's
energy systems, that they had both agreed and therefore it
was going to stop. About five or six hours later,

(01:30):
Zelensky posts something and says, that's an interesting concept, and
we're willing to give it some consideration, as long as
Russia doesn't this whole laundry list of other things, which,
of course, Russia is never going to do. And then
three hours after that, then Zelensky attacks a specific refining
capacity or facility in Russia that reprocesses both jet fuel supplies.

(01:54):
and diesel. I mean, it was like a direct in-your-face
repudiation to what President Trump said. The Russians, by the way,
that day never made any comment. The next morning, their
Kremlin spokesman said, well, it's an interesting idea. We'll give
it some consideration. Never went anywhere from it. So it's
interesting that now Zelensky wants to go back to what
President Trump claimed was already on the table, but the

(02:15):
Russians are going to have none of it because For
whatever is being hit on the Russian side, the Russians
are hitting probably 10 times that much on the Ukraine side.
So they're coming out on the less of it. So
Russia's not going to stop doing something that is painful
to them. They would like it to stop on them,
but the pain that they're inflicting on their opponent is
far greater. so it would actually help Ukraine more than

(02:36):
it would Russia. Therefore, Russia is not going to agree
to it.

Speaker 1 (02:39):
Well, if you could explain the military strategy or thinking
behind the Ukrainian regular drone strikes, I just get the
impression that they're endeavoring to wear down the will of
the Russian people, although noting that, gee, shocking, Putin won
the election the other day. I don't know if you
consider that a fair election or not, sir, but it
was one election. But Do the Russian people really have

(03:01):
any say whatsoever, absent Putin's military advisors or folks that
surround him that might, I don't know, do a coup
d'etat or otherwise disappear him? I mean, Putin's the guy
in charge, and he's not going anywhere. And the Ukrainians
bombing Russian infrastructure hasn't weakened Putin's will. So what do

(03:21):
you see being accomplished by this, I guess?

Speaker 2 (03:24):
Yeah, I think that's important to point out. I think
that we in the West get a lot of comfort
or we want to get comfort from this belief that, well,
the Russian people have no freedoms and they are not
for Putin and they're suppressed and kept down and their
elections aren't free and fair. All evidence I can see
independently from the European Union and other places are that

(03:45):
the elections are completely free and fair. And in fact,
the President Putin's political party won a pretty big majority,
bigger than they had before, and it's about 55%. So
it's not like, you know, 98.1% or something like that's
obviously nonsense like they do in North Korea. But it
was a fair election, and the other parties won their,

(04:06):
you know, percentages or whatever. But that matches what the
polls are showing, that the people are behind President Putin.
Because these strikes, I know, again, the idea is, well,
let's wear them down and then they'll quit. But that
shows a gross misunderstanding of what it looks like inside
of Russia. They see this as an existential attack, not

(04:27):
by Ukraine, by the entire cumulative West. And we brag
all the time about how the entire West is behind it,
that Germany, France, Britain are helping long-range strikes hit inside
of Russia. We're helping with intelligence attacks. targeting support, etc.,
so they feel the world is against them, so they
will never, never give up. And these strikes just say,

(04:48):
if anything, the complaint against Putin is not that, why
are you fighting this war? We should stop. It's, why
are you not fighting it harder and going further and
hitting the Western Europeans who are striking us with these
long-range strikes? So it's only going to have a solidifying
effect on the Russians. It's not going to wear them down.

Speaker 1 (05:08):
Do you see Putin going in that direction and going
after targets further in and maybe even attacking one of
the NATO countries? We've got defense agreements with the NATO countries,
so that really worries me from a World War III perspective.
We do.

Speaker 2 (05:20):
But yes, Russia has openly talked about that. Putin has.
Lavrov has. They say they don't want to, but they say, listen,
our patience is not limited. You cannot continue to use, basically,
like with some of the British storm shadows, they're doing
everything except pulling the trigger. It is Britain firing into
Russia and hitting some of these oil refineries, etc. And

(05:42):
so the people are saying, why are we just forever
going to allow another country to attack us through the
proxy of Ukraine? And do nothing to that other country.
So there's lots of pressure on that, but there is
Article 5. But here's the thing. Russia is calculating, and militarily,
it's not without some credibility that we can't, the NATO side,

(06:02):
cannot fight a war against Russia because it doesn't matter
what your GDP is or how many planes and tanks,
it matters how much ammunition you have. Offensive missiles and,
most importantly, defensive missiles, we have almost none because we've
given them all the way to Israel. We've given them
all the way to Ukraine. We've used them ourselves in
the Middle East. There's just hardly any available. And Russia

(06:24):
has new categories of weapons that the PAK-3s and the
THAADs won't even stop, so it doesn't even matter. If
we get into a conventional fight with Russia, we are
going to get pounded, and many in Russia are saying
it's worth it to finally stop these attacks. So far, Putin,
who has been very cautious, has said, no, let's keep
going with the slow, methodical Anakonda deal, and eventually we'll

(06:47):
strangle Ukraine and we'll have it successfully accomplished. But there
are those who say our patience is not unlimited, and
I think we're playing with fire to see how far
we can push them.

Speaker 1 (06:58):
And at this juncture, no hope for a resolution, even
if it involves Ukraine giving up land?

Speaker 2 (07:05):
There is, actually, yeah. Russia continues to say their diplomacy
is on the table, but it's those ugly terms from
June 2024 which haven't changed, which is all of the
four oblasts, Demilitarization, denazification, no NATO neutrality status, all those
same kinds of things that we've rejected in the past,
but it's still on the table.

Speaker 1 (07:24):
Sounds like parallels can be drawn with the situation in
the Mideast. And talk about proxies. The Houthis really came
out strong in bombing Saudi Arabia from their presence in Yemen.
That's sort of a new development. I read someplace, this
isn't a thought of my own, a suggestion that the
Houthis attacking Saudi Arabia, targets in Saudi Arabia, even if

(07:45):
they're our military bases, might serve to drive Saudi Arabia
into the Abraham Accords?

Speaker 2 (07:51):
No, I don't think it's going to drive them into
the Abraham Accords because the Abraham Accords are predicated on
Israel having a Palestinian state. And there's no evidence that
Israel has any possibility or willingness to do that. And
the Saudi Arabian side... would have a revolt of their
people if they suddenly gave in on that. And the

(08:12):
only way that they would even contemplate that is if
all of a sudden Israel was going to join militarily,
so they had a pretty big quid pro quo, which
Israel's not going to do. So now then you have the,
obviously the United States has not been willing to help
Saudi Arabia. So UK did. UK said, hey, you know what,
we'll give you some aerial resupport. We'll give you a

(08:32):
little bit of help, but that's not going to be
the big problem because aerial power is not going to
bring the Houthis to their knees as we have seen
since 2015. And everybody has tried. Saudi Arabia, U.S., the
Biden administration, Trump administration, the Israelis, Everybody has tried. Nobody
has succeeded. We won't now either. So we're going to
have to find another way out of that one.

Speaker 1 (08:52):
Well, and Donald Trump occasionally will pop up and talk
about bombing the Iranians into the Stone Age. But going
back to your earlier point about munition shortages, that same
problem exists over there. If we're going to start a
bombing campaign, we better have the munitions to engage in
the bombing campaign. Not that I believe it's necessarily a
good idea.

Speaker 2 (09:10):
100%. I mean, and this target set is nearly the same. Yemen,
the part where the Houthis are, alhamdulillah, is smaller, obviously,
than Iran, but it's the same kind of terrain. They
have the same mountains issues. They have the same facilities,
what we call missile cities underground. They have the same thing.

(09:30):
The same problem is why the Biden administration didn't succeed,
the Trump administration didn't succeed in 2025, the Israelis didn't succeed.
You can blow up lots of targets on the surface,
But it's underneath the surface where their ballistic missile factories
and launch points are, and we can't get at them.
So it's the exact same problem, just a smaller version
of it.

Speaker 1 (09:50):
Well, someday, Daniel Davis, someday. You and I are going
to end this conversation with some great news reporting. There's
peace around the world. We're all going to be celebrating,
but that day is not yet. here. Any just sort
of concluding observations, Daniel, the direction this is all going?
I mean, do you see like down the road where
you think this might end up? I hate to have
to press you on that, but I mean, I just

(10:11):
feel like I'm in desperation mode at this juncture. The
frustrating part is there are diplomatic solutions for both of these.
They're ugly from our perspective, but they're effective.

Speaker 2 (10:22):
We can just choose to say, all right, we're going
to acknowledge reality. That's the key point. You have to
start with, I'm going to acknowledge reality. We cannot defeat
Russia militarily no matter what we do. Everything else we
could try would only expand it and possibly draw us
into it. Don't go there. Do something closer than June 2025.
And on the other case here... We just have to say, look,

(10:44):
we're willing to live with Iran. Just declare victory, whatever
you want to say, and then leave. The strait will
open up because Iran has incentive to do so. They're
going to charge a fee. That's just the cost of
doing business. We shouldn't have started this war because we
can't militarily win it, but we can leave without causing
any more trouble, and we can start rebuilding our assets.
That's where we should go. That's where we can go.

Speaker 1 (11:06):
All right, maybe a hard pill to swallow or a
bitter pill to swallow, but if that's the answer, maybe
we are in a better place if we just go
down that road.

Speaker 2 (11:13):
Can you imagine two years from now, no one would
remember the hard bitter pill, but we won't be losing
any more troops. We won't be losing any more missiles.

Speaker 1 (11:20):
We'll be rebuilding.

Speaker 2 (11:21):
It is the best path.

Speaker 1 (11:22):
Huh. Yeah, we did get over the situation from, what, Korea, Vietnam.
I mean, I could go on. Daniel, you know the
whole litany. Daniel Davis Deep Dive.

Speaker 2 (11:31):
That's a good analogy.

Speaker 1 (11:32):
Find your podcast wherever you get it. Find Daniel Davis
Deep Dive wherever you get your podcasts and tune in
every week at 830 here on 55KRC Talk Station. We'll
do it again next week, Daniel. Take care, my friend.
Get in. It's 840 right now, 55KRC Talk Station, where
we get some sound advice on cancer developments and cancer
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