 This is American Issues Take Two, and we have our regular co-host, Tim Apachella. We have our regular contributor, Stephanie Stull Dalton. And we have our special elite guest, Tarjad Shackli-Refetro and Maui. So thank you all for showing up today. Thank you for the time. We're going to talk today about, you know, what else can America do for Ukraine? And what can the government—what can the government and you do about Ukraine at this point? How important is it? So I guess the big news which just came out this morning is that after a little bit of resistance from isolationists in the Senate, 11 of them, the Senate did pass the $40 billion aid package that the administration proposed for Ukraine. So, Tim, let me ask you to start. What does that mean? How important is that and, you know, does it change the game? It continues the game—oh, by the way, thank you, Jay, good morning—it continues the game. And that is to say that Ukraine has held in their tough because they've already had weapons from England and from the United States and training. And as we discussed before this show is that their sense of battle or their armies were kind of reorganized to mimic some of the Western-style abilities of armies to operate in the field, which is to say you have battlefield command that you can have the autonomy to make decisions as situations change in the battlefield. And Russia doesn't have that. They have a top-down kind of style of command and control. And I think that's really a big part of why Ukraine is doing so well. And so now this $40 billion I just learned that it's, you know, part of it's going to be for military weaponry and then the other part for humanitarian purposes. But it's critical that the Ukrainians get these high-tech anti-tank, you know, stingers and javelins, but also the traditional, in the field, long-range, distant, you know, weaponry like cannons and anti-aircraft. So this $40 billion comes at a very good time. And now the key is to make sure it's implemented quickly and get those weapons in the field to the Ukrainians as soon as possible. But it is a game changer. $40 billion is nothing to sneeze at. Yeah, Shackley, you know, you've had time in the service. You've been observing the way the military works for a long time. So I give you, on a given Thursday morning, I give you $40 billion. How would you spend it? How would you leverage the best way possible? Well, I'm not a battlefield commander, but it seems to me that unless the Ukrainians are willing to accept the Russian ownership of their, the southern part of their country along the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea, they're going to have to become more offensive. And they're going to need offensive weaponry to do that, such as tanks and armored vehicles and probably aircraft. And so I understand that I saw something on YouTube that the government is trying to mobilize a million Ukrainian men to rebuild their or expand their military forces and they're going to need enormous amounts of equipment. But some of it has to be offensive, but they're going to retake ground. Well, if I asked you to round up a million men and probably some women too, where would you get them from? Well, they have a country of what, 40, 44 million people, less a few million refugees now. So there must be a huge and also they prohibited men from what, 18 to 50 from leaving the country, I think, once the war started. So they have a huge, I guess, a huge manpower pool that they could draw upon. And they certainly have a lot of a spree to core in terms of wanting to remain an independent country and fight the Russians. So it seems that they probably could do that if they had the resources to organize all that. And that may be what the humanitarian assistance is partially for as an addition to weaponry. You know, we learned a few days ago, Shackley, that American intelligence was feeding information regarding the Moscow ship there in Black Sea, regarding the number of Russian generals and so forth. And it could be just a view through the keyhole into how much intelligence, how much support the United States is providing to Ukrainian government and military. Because I don't think we're hearing it all. And in fact, there was resistance about that issue about how much intelligence we should be providing. But I would guess, and I wonder what your thought is, I would guess that we're providing a lot of support, moral support, you know, non-kinetics support, but nevertheless, people giving advice and counseling and intelligence through the Ukrainian military and government. Don't you agree we must have a much greater presence than appears on the surface? Yeah, I think, well, that's my view. I think we have to recognize that we are for all intents and purposes into a World War III, undeclared World War III. If you look at all the nations that are lined up providing support for Ukraine, it's about the same number as we're on the allied side of World War II. And there's tremendous amounts of obvious effort being put into supporting Ukraine and making them effective militarily to fight the Russians. And all this, the regime of sanctions that have been imposed upon the Russians. Sooner or later, that's going to have a real strong tell on their economy. So I think that we have to recognize that we're, that's where we're at and step it up. It's also a great opportunity to degrade the conventional military capability of Russia so that we can keep them in a box and they won't get ideas about Poland and the Baltic states and Moldova, for instance. Yeah, yeah, well, that's a great concern. And it's funny that a week or two ago, seems to me, maybe it's subjective, but I was more concerned about that then than I am now. And therefore, I believe this 40 billion is a great moral support, not only for the Ukrainian government and military, but for all of Western Europe anyway. Stephanie, are you worried about Vladimir Putin moving west, digging his heels in, continuing a war of attrition, continuing to do this hybrid thing he does with the countries in the Baltics and the Balkans? What's your level of concern about the Russian, his ability, his will to keep on pushing? My worry is very high about that. I have absolutely no confusion about where his trail is marked to go. And of course, we're the end of it. But all of the actions of Finland and Sweden are very, very knowledgeable with the history that they've had with Russia over the centuries. And certainly, the little guys to Lithuania and all the rest of them are at great risk. And so we'll see how that goes now. And the question about the intelligence out of Ukraine is an interesting one because the embassy is going in or has gone in or is eminently going in. But they raised the flag yesterday. That's right. He raised the flag yesterday. And so they're putting state department people in there. And I guess USAID, which will be helpful, is from the humanitarian point of view. But the question is, then, does that mean there's intelligence going on there? I would think that it does, even though there's no security yet. And that's a very risky business to be in that position for duty. There's no cover. There's no cover at that embassy. Yeah. And one missile, and it's all done. Yeah. Well, yeah. So let's see what happens. Because if he's not provoked, if Mr. Putin is not provoked by this, as we've been worried, I think, Biden has said he's worried about Putin being provoked by all of this aid, that that could be on his screen as a whole, you know, you're going. Well, do you think the 40 billion makes him more dangerous? No, less because there's some defense that it increases the defensive capability of the Ukrainians. But I mean, he could certainly wipe it out, as you say, with one missile. But will he do that? And it looks like Biden's, but he's not. And it goes back to my other concern, which is that the military of the Russians has stopped in very impressive and keep on stumbling and falling back and doing just awful things. So why do we think their nuclear arsenal is all locked up in gorgeous condition? I now question whether he's got that. You know, a rusting nuclear bomb is not effective. It does sometimes. But anyway, those are the questions. So yes, it's still very dangerous. But I think Biden's getting very aggressive and has a lot of confidence that we're not going to get whacked back. But that going in with the embassy and the 40 billion, those are big moves. Big moves. Let's see if we will swallow that. Well, you know, we got some strange things going on in Turkey and in Hungary. The question, they're trying to block the efforts of Finland and Sweden to join NATO and try to block the action by NATO to accept them. How concerned are you about that, Tim? Well, you need an unanimous decision. Obviously, Turkey is leveraging. What exactly they're leveraging for remains to be seen. Obviously, they're stating that they want the PKK or the PPK out of Finland or Sweden. They want those folks handed over. Like they wanted people in the United States handed over when Erdogan said that the ringleader of the failed coup d'etat was sitting in the United States and he wanted them. Well, you never got them. So, Turkey will come over. They'll get a concession here or there, but they'll bend and this will occur. Okay, I take that point. They'll get Finland and they'll get Sweden to come into NATO. Well, I take that point. I agree with that, I think. And I think that the 40 billion from the U.S. encourages NATO to do that. It's kind of a morale booster. As a second part though, the 40 billion, really, if you think about it, it's just a down payment. So if you look at the title, what can be done to help Ukraine is Americans need to get behind this. They're going to have to recognize that GOP and the Democrats for the first time are going to have to cooperate over a shared interest. And if that means the Americans have to call their congressmen or their senators and say, hey, good job, but don't stop at 40 billion and let the senators and representatives know that they have the backing of their constituents. That's a vital portion of where we go from here into the future. I want to get into that. Putin playing a war of attrition wants to anyway. And indeed, over time, you have a deterioration because just as the Russian economy is suffering, the European economy is suffering in many countries, including Germany. And people, these are democracies and people get a little unhappy when they see the inflation, when they see the price of oil going up, when they see the troubles caused by the war. And that's so in the US and you get a fatigue factor that creeps in after a while. And some say that the longer Putin can make a war of attrition, the attrition is not only the attrition of the Ukrainian troops fighting with him, but it's the whole coalition in Europe. And it's our government and actually beyond the government, our people, there's a certain isolationist strain in the American sensibility, which may pull the other way. So I mean, how concerned are you about that? Because it depends on which is moving faster, the success in the Ukraine, or the fatigue in Western Europe and the US. Well, yesterday on my show, I mentioned a CNN poll about where the voters were for the midterms. And you reacted quite strongly to when I said their interest is 59% of the economy, 30% to social issues, and 3% to foreign policy. And that was disconcerting because Ukraine certainly is, whether we like to admit it or not, a national foreign policy. And that is funding them through taxpayer dollars. So I think the interest the United States will still continue, the American public is still behind it, but it can't be taken for granted. And that means there's going to be, and that's up to our commander in chief to keep interest rolling as the dollars keep being spent. Now, there's so many issues, you know, sucking the air, competing for top attention in the newspapers and the media. Yes, Shackley. I have a question. Do you have any sense of how much the NETO and other other allies in this effort are putting forward like our $40 billion? Is anybody matching that? I would guess this, but it's only a guess. I would guess that they're spending more than they thought they would spend by far. But they're not turning upside down over it. And I think there's a certain level of concern in all of the countries of Western Europe that they cannot afford to spend all that much. And I agree with your implication, namely that they're relying on the U.S. to bear the brunt. Yeah, I think my own feeling is a substantial effort needs to be put up to organize that support from the NATO countries and the other allies to stay in the game. And right now it looks good. But as you say, interest will wane once the perceived danger maybe decreases. But Germany and oil and gas from Russia, Italy is now talking about paying rubles for oil and gas from Russia. And I think there are other ways that we can support those countries so that they don't go back to their sweetheart deals with Russia because easier to do that. I don't think we want them going back there. And if that means producing more oil and gas here, then that's what we ought to do. Well, you know that there's two pipelines of gas going from Russia to Germany, which is a really important player here, Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2. They stopped Nord Stream 2 early on in the sanctions. And Nord Stream 1 is still functioning at 200 million euros per day paid to Russia by Germany. That one's still functioning. On the other hand, the United States is building out infrastructure to deliver LNG to Germany and replace that. Problem is, and this is really an important element of our discussion, the problem is to get its act together. It's going to take two, three years, maybe close into three, to build that infrastructure out so Germany can reliably have that supply of gas from the U.S. to replace the Russian gas. And so, and I'm asking it as a question, do we have that much time? Or will this deterioration intervene before we are ready to help them? Well, I think it's going to last for a while, because I think the wake-up call was pretty strong. Germany had made a lot of deals with Russia under Angela Merkel, and other countries had received benefits from Russia. And now they're realizing that they've compromised themselves by doing that, and what compromise can lead to. And so I think it'll last a while, but it needs to be carefully managed, this one, I guess I'm getting at. And we need to pay attention to it. Well, you know, Shafi, you've been talking about the Russian economy, and there's an article in the paper, or two or three articles in the paper every day about the problems in the Russian economy. And likewise, the problems of understated protest, or sometimes visible protest by Russians, despite the state television. Russians in Russia and outside of Russia saying it's a bad war. So do you see as a possibility, it's really a social political question, a political science question, do you see as a possibility that Putin will have to stop, that the Russian people will make him stop, that he will run out of support, and that will happen suddenly, say, within two or three years? Well, you know, I'm worried that TikTok here too, because right, Mr. Putin may be thinking he's got a last ditch effort that could really turn things around for him, and that's called the winter is coming. So Europe with no oil and gas is not going to be in good shape for the kind of things that are on the weather horizon. So I think that that's very, very concerning, and that might be a part of his game plan. And if it is, that means that's a long time from now. We're talking about months and months, if he thinks he can drag on there in Ukraine, and get to that point where he'll really have another Trump, he'll literally took a card to play, a big one, because they're not going to be able to sustain the reduced energy getting into December and January. So I mean, and the other point that's important to make is that Mr. McConnell came out yesterday or in the news anyway. And he made the point that we need to think about how much support this is that we're giving them. And that we, what's important about it is that it's a much better thing to do that now than to not give them any support. So think about what would happen if we don't give them support and what the circumstances can be. And of course those, and I want just one more point on the grit of these Ukrainian people. You know, you see the bombs coming in and the rockets hitting the buildings, and meanwhile all these old men and women are out there with their broom, like sweeping it all up. The story about this woman who paints flowers around bullet holes, she goes from the bullet hole to bullet hole bullet, is something out of the flower children of the 60s. Well, it's truly impressive that they, and I think the Germans are kind of like that too, but they were really raised to the ground. But in this case, even though their damage is just tremendous, they're in there. In fact, I look at what they're sweeping around, and it's just like nothing left, but they're still cleaning it up. So hey, it's just another salute to the stamina and the courage of these people. It's a tremendous asset for their effort in the war. Tim, one very interesting thing is there was a book that came out on Lawrence O'Donnell last night at MSNBC called Betrayal by Ira Shapiro, the journalist, and it's all about Mitch McConnell. And it talks about all the back and field things that he's done over the past few years and how he has not served the American people or any issue, including climate change. He's opposed everything on climate change, for example. But we know that he's changed his mind a few times now. He went to Ukraine mysteriously last week. And he claimed in the newspaper that he was going to argue with Rand Paul about the isolationist position of deferring the $40 billion aid package this morning. And he apparently succeeded, according to his own aspiration in the matter. He may change his mind. And the 11 people in the Senate who opposed the aid package were motivated by Trump. And Trump stands a fair chance of becoming the Republican candidate for president in 2024 and even winning, getting back into power. Now, I don't know if this is going to happen or not. Anything could intervene. But this has to affect the drama. It has to affect the way Putin sees the future of this. If he can wait until Trump is back in power, he's in much better shape. And Europe would worry about it. And for that matter, we might not expect the same kind of support from Congress anymore. What are your thoughts about that? Where does that play in planning and providing more aid and other support to Ukraine right now? Well, I think Shackley hit this one right on the head. And that was his comment or question about what are the European countries contributing for the assistance to Ukraine. Because if you remember Donald Trump's first declarative statements as a candidate was, NATO is not paying its fair share. Therefore, we should question our involvement with NATO. And so Europe has to recognize that if Donald Trump is the nominee, this issue may once rise to the surface of Donald Trump looking at what their contributions are to Ukraine versus what the United States is paying. And I think that they need to be proactive to make sure that per capita or their GMP, that they're providing a certain percentage of assistance, not just nominal dollar amounts. And that way we keep Donald Trump at bay at least on this particular issue. Shouldn't he become the nominee? So I think pre-planning and being proactive in that effort will, well, if you will, foil any kind of criticisms about how we fund our involvement with Ukraine. Shackley, I'm looking at everything we talked about this morning and I'm thinking that we stand a better chance of solving this problem, of stopping this war, of having Putin withdraw or lose power in Russia if we move with speed. And that is that we have the $40 billion, or at least 20 of it, for military affairs. And we should take aggressive steps now. The more aggressive, the better in order to get him out of there. Get him out of there before the attrition takes hold, before we get into political issues in this country, before there's a deterioration of the coalition, and before he has a chance to use his hybrid, you know, kinetic and non-kinetic, you know, tricks to change public opinion through hacking and propaganda, what have you. So don't you agree that if we are going to, if we have this money, and we have a timeline that requires, you know, quick action, that we should take quick action? You know, time is definitely of the essence here. But sustainment is also important too. I mean, if you're thinking that Mr. Putin would withdraw at some point, like he did from Kiev, that he's has to be convinced of the deterrence that our support and NATO support for the Ukrainian people provides. And then it has to be real deterrence, and it's going to be there for as long as it takes. But, you know, there are some questions about that because of our history. But what about, you know, you and I have talked about this, what about the no-fly zone? You know, in the beginning, Joe Biden was pretty tentative about everything, worried we'd have a nuclear war and all this, you know, didn't want to take these steps or that step, didn't want to provide certain kinds of weapons, wanted to keep it very, very low key, and no-fly zone was out, and, you know, the government must have said that a hundred times. You know, but we're in a different place now. Russia's in a different place now. He's already revealed his war crimes approach to things. Do you think we could be more aggressive? Should we be more aggressive? You mean in actually involving our troops? No. In organizing, for example, no-fly zone. Well, that would involve our airplanes, right? Not necessarily. They don't know how to fly our airplanes. And so it would have to be MiGs, but they're all MiGs in various, you know, Eastern European countries that could be used. Well, I've actually heard, I understand Israel is going to provide Iron Dome to Ukraine and some of their resources, which are very high quality. It seems to me that the airplanes that the Poles had should go there. I don't, and I think that we can provide enough anti-aircraft capability to pretty much achieve a no-fly zone. As I understand it right now, a lot of the Russian aircraft are actually not leaving Belarusian or Russian airspace to in their sororities, although some are, of course. So I don't know what else to add. I don't think we ought to be flying F-15s in there. No, that would be war. Yeah, but it seems to me we could achieve pretty much a no-fly zone through anti-aircraft capability. Stephanie, you know, one of the elements that we should discuss is what can we do about it? What can you and Tim and Shackley and me do about it? You know, I mean, there's all this political stuff going on in the country, and I get requests for money every six minutes on my internet and my mail, and they're all asking me to support this, that, and the other thing. We have a sort of a national public opinion poll on everything. And query, you know, and they all have a different way that I can help them, even though I don't know who they are or what state they come from or what their positions are, I get requests. But this is an overarching, and my question to you is, what can the average citizen do to make sure that Joe Biden hangs in there? Well, I think that we can talk up more what it is that Joe Biden is doing. And I think that he's really operating at a meta level. And he's been, and even at the same time that he's doing, he's not getting much credit for this, but he's, you know, we've sneaked into Russia and taken out that base that was the pie and stuff. And now all this money's going over. And now you all are thinking that maybe he'd even be willing to put a plane in the air, which Zelensky had asked for, but that everybody kind of shot down is really actually a warlike act that Putin would respond to. But all of these things that Biden is doing, I think we ought to take a look at it, really think about them and see them for what they are, which is masterful for handling this. How's his rhetoric? Is it strong enough? And it's red because the Democrats don't take any credit for anything. His rhetoric. How is Joe Biden's rhetoric? Oh, the rhetoric, yeah, pretty good. Yeah, I think he's saying stuff like it is. And coming out with the McDonald saying what he says, I think that is educating the population to understand this is serious. There are consequences for us if we don't get something to happen here. So I just think the individual people to not tolerate all this sniping and criticizing Biden about to look at what it is that he is doing. I think he's going to come out of this at the end. If Putin doesn't go crazy and push the button, I think, and Biden's walking that line, but where he knows the guy's over there with his finger on the button. So he keeps creeping up a little bit more. So I think there's some real strategy going on here. Exactly. Should we be worried about crossing the line? Should we be worried about provoking Putin? How worried should we be? Well, if we're going to provide deterrence against him, then it has to be deterrence. I think we should do less ringing our hands about threats from Putin and more telling him that if he crosses a certain line, he and a lot of his friends may die. On the other hand, he makes ostensibly credible threats that we and a lot of our friends may die. Can you wake up in the morning wondering and accepting that? Well, I'm hoping that our leaders are a lot more clever than I am and we'll figure out some way around that. But deterrence has to mean deterrence. Otherwise, we have a situation like we're living with right now. Yeah, absolutely. He wasn't deterred. Right. It's hard to deal with a pathological leader like that because he's good. I mean, as Trump said some time ago, he's a smart guy. He's good. And we're seeing the problem is that he's not that good. I don't feel it was smart. I know he did exactly the same thing. So, Tim, trying to get a handle on all of this, how important is all of this? How important is the liberal world order? How important is it that we support Ukraine? How important is it that we make sure that they have a good chance of winning this thing? Well, Jay, it's not just a matter of supporting Ukraine. Although they're not a NATO country, there's the principles that might doesn't make right that Putin could come in, a very strong nation, a very strong as far as weapons and military force, and pick on someone, bully them. And so it's critical that the democracies of Europe and of the world come together and say, this shall not stand. So it's a principle beyond the formation of NATO and the NATO countries. It's a principle about autocracies and two-bit dictators trying to run the world and democracies saying, no, you won't. To you, Shackley, we're almost out of time, but this plays a role in history, for sure. And we are at an inflection point, for sure. I don't think anybody would argue that. The world has changed. The world has changed big time. Yeah. And I ask you the ghost of Christmas future question. Suppose we fail. Suppose we can't keep the coalition together. Suppose we can't get public opinion support, necessary funding and military assistance. And we lose this. And Zelensky loses it. And Eastern Europe loses it. What happens? Well, we're back to the Cold War, Soviet versus West. What does that look like now? Well, it looks like it would have did then. We were worried that we were going to be attacked and we had huge forces in Europe to try to prevent that. Although a lot of people felt that they would roll through to the Atlantic coast anytime they wanted to. So it was a great deal of fear at that time, if you recall. And that's why it went on so long. You say Cold War, but wouldn't the failure of Ukraine, of Zelensky, the failure of the country, have an effect on the ostensible emergence of autocracy in so many places? Which is butting autographs everywhere, it seems like. Wouldn't that encourage them? And thus change the balance of democracy, Colin? It could well do that. I mean, Stephen Kotkin of Yale was making that point the other day that Russia feels that it has a right to influence all these countries of Eastern Europe. And we feel just the opposite that we should have the right to deal with them as individuals. And as long as that difference of opinion persists, we're never going to be able to make deals with Russia. And so the people of Eastern Europe are going to have to constantly keep in mind that this mindset exists in Moscow and deal with it accordingly. Right now they're doing fine because they all want to join NATO and that's very helpful, but that could change. Yeah. And one thing to add to that is, it's very interesting to see these quote, I put them in quotes, peace talks, a truce talks, if you will, between Russia and the Ukrainian, going nowhere. And I think a good part of that, I would favor the Ukrainian view of it, is that you can't trust the Russians. You can't trust them in any discussion leading to peace because they simply don't mean it. It's all just a tool. Yes, I agree. And I hope we don't force the Ukrainians to sell out and leave the Russians in control of the southern coast of Ukraine. Yeah, amen to that. Okay, we're almost out of time. Stephanie, you go first. Final comments. Oh, I think the stalling in the peace talks, Zelensky has said he's given no inch, not an inch of any of the dirt over there that's called Ukraine. So probably this is going to be a real headbanger. So I think that if we don't win this, or if the worst happens over there, that Biden's going to take that hit and he's going to go down. And for us, it's just going to be a disaster because we're going to get Trump back in blowing his horn about how he can fix it. We're going to get him back in and we're over. We're living a new life in that condition. It's nice. I'm very, you know, I'm very worried about it. Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, the thing about the world order is it can change quickly and it can change your life quickly. Jacqueline, your last thoughts about this? Well, it's World War Three. We have to stay the course and win. Simple. There you go. And Tim, your wisdom, please. You know, I'm reminded of what Ronald Reagan said. Countless times to Michel Gorbachev. He dove in the proven eye. Trust but verify. However, I agree with you, Jay. There is no trust with the Russians. And it was a fool's errand in the late 1990s to think that Russia could come into the world stage as a Democratic country and interact with the rest of the world as a team player with democracy. They've shown their hand and the hand is obvious. Or to put them on the Security Council in the United Nations where they have, you know, completely neutralized the United Nations. Well, thank you very much, Shackley. Thank you for coming around. Thank you for making the time. Thank you, Stephanie. And thank you, Tim, for being my co-host and organizing this. And we'll go to, what is it, American Issues Take One on next Wednesday and number two, American Issues Take Two on next Thursday. And we'll keep it going. And Shackley, I hope you come back and talk to us again soon. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Yeah, thanks to me. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.