 When we're on the air again with another edition of Patience on the News, tonight we have somebody who is very knowledgeable about a topic that's in everybody's mind today, Ukraine, and the military situation in Ukraine, how it happened, where it might go. Our guest tonight is a four-star, retired four-star Navy admiral. He was the commander in chief at one time of Allied forces in southern Europe. He was the commander of the U.S. Navy in Europe. He was the commander for you Navy people who know all about the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean. He was the commander of the Sixth Fleet. His name is Gregory Johnson. He's from Westmanland, Maine in Erustic County, a graduate of Caribou High School, a graduate of the University of Maine, and then he learned to fly Navy jets on aircraft carriers and enjoyed it. Enjoyed it immensely. Welcome, Admiral Johnson. Well, thank you, Harold. It's a pleasure to be with you again. And I think most of the country is consumed by this situation that we've gotten ourselves into. And hopefully we'll have a nice discussion about it as the evening goes on. So I'd just like to talk briefly about your military career, because it isn't often that people from this state go into the military and rise up either to four-star general or four-star admiral. You did. You were one of the top admirals in the United States Navy. You were a commander of NATO South, which is southern Europe. And you know something about this part of the world, Eastern Europe. And you know something about the Russian military. You paid a lot of attention to that at one time, didn't you? Yes, I have. And had many trips to Russia, both as a military officer, but also working as an executive assistant to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Powell, for two years, and then working as a military assistant to the Secretary of Defense, William Cohen. I neglected to point that out. It's important that General Powell was this guy's boss and friend, and they know each other, knew each other very well. And when Bill Cohen, the former senator from Maine, was Secretary of Defense in the Pentagon, his aide was Admiral Johnson. So he's been around this business for a long time. You've been to Russia several times, you say? Yeah. You ever met Putin? We did. In 2000, when he had just become president, he was appointed Prime Minister for, well, he was head of FBS, appointed FBS by Yeltsin, I think it was in 98. What's FBS? Spy Agency? Spy Agency. The guy is, that's his profession, spy, right? And then he became the heir apparent. Yeltsin picked him out of nowhere. And he was then, I've elevated it to become the Prime Minister. And then when Yeltsin suddenly resigned in December of 1999, he became the acting president. And then they had elections in May of 2000, and he became elected as the president, served two terms, then served another term as Prime Minister, 08 to 12. And then he became, I think, president for life in 2012. And we met him, it was the summer of 2002, he had just become, it was after the election, he had just become the president. And we were there on Nunn-Lugar, United States, was spending money, providing money to- Nunn-Lugar, two senators, it was- Yeah. It was disarmament denuclearization fund, and we were helping them actually get rid of their initial tranche of nuclear-powered submarines. The ballistic missile submarines and some of their attack submarines, because they didn't have the money to properly decommission them. So they didn't have the money to decommission them, but what about your American military people? You still had nuclear weapons on submarines. Yeah. Well, they did too. I mean, they still had, most of them were tied up at the pier, but they still had ballistic missile submarines, and they certainly had missile silos all over the former Soviet Union. One of the lessons that I think we need to be aware of is that in 1994, three years after the end of the split up of the Soviet Union, there was a thing called the Budapest Memorandum, signed by Bill Clinton and Yeltsin, and the first prime minister of Ukraine, because at that time, the third largest country with the third most amount of strategic ballistic missiles was Ukraine, left over from their days as part of the Soviet Union, and they worked out an agreement that pledged non-aggression and economic support for ever and ever an eternity for Ukraine in exchange for Ukraine returning all those weapons to Russia. There were also some in Belarus, they were tactical nuclear weapons, not strategic, and they were returned, and there were also some in Kazakhstan, these were ballistic missiles that were returned to Russia. So those three former Soviet republics that at the end of the Soviet Union happened to have nuclear weapons, all of them were denuclearized and those weapons were returned to Russia, but the lesson being, look what's happened to Ukraine, they gave up their nuclear weapons. Kind of a message you think that is to Iran, to North Korea, and to the other pretenders who may think they should have them. I think we're going to have a real problem with nuclear proliferation here in the not too distant future, it's going to be upon us very, very quickly. And the Ukraine, having given them up, is an example for these folks. Correct, a good example, a good example. If you're Iran or North Korea, it's a very good example, and we just need to be mindful of that. Incidentally, I want to go back a step. Now here we are, we're talking about global relations, we're talking about NATO six-fleet all the things that you've done. When you were growing up in a rooster, did you grow up in a farm? Yeah. Did you imagine a career for yourself? I think I'll go make a career in the United States Navy and get to be an admiral. Is that something that was in the forefront of your mind? No, but I think there's a link. Let me just finish up on the thing about Putin. We didn't, in that visit, we went up to Murmansk, but we came to Moscow first, we met with the Minister of Defense, and we had a call on this new president. And we went to the Kremlin, and of course he made his wait, wait, wait, wait. And then he finally came out to this outer room where we were sitting with the Secretary Cohen and his small entourage, and Putin came out. And all I remember, he was very short. He had no affectation. I mean, it was just a blank face and piercing blue eyes. And he just shook everybody. I don't think he shook anybody's hand. And then they went in. I didn't go into the actual meeting, but I did meet him. But it was just, you could not discern anything from that. He was just totally nondescript. He did not a moat whatsoever. Like a good professional spy. Yeah, I just remember that about him. And by coming back to growing up in Arusta County, you don't know whatever gets into your mind. But back in those days, civil defense was a big thing. From where I grew up in Westmanland, about 15 miles outside of Caribou, we were about 20 miles as the crow flies from lowering Air Force Base just to do west of it. And back in those days, they had very active civil defense. We practiced it in school. I don't know what good crawling on your desk did, but we'd do all those things in my little one room schoolhouse. And my parents went to these different meetings over at the base. They actively, and I remember them getting recognition manuals of all Russian bombers and stuff because they were coming over the polar ice cap and they would bomb lowering it because it was a sack base. And looking at those books and looking, I'd go out in this hill across from the house, stand there and look and say, I'm going to be the one to find, seize them if they come. But you know, just as a six year old kid. But those things went on in my mind. And then many years later, with the year I was a graduate in from college, of course, 1960. At Arno. At Arno. And all deferments ended. I was going to go to law school, but that didn't last. And through a law and securities route, a friend, a fraternity brother who had graduated a couple years ahead of me, when I was told I was going to be drafted and I wasn't going to go to law school, he happened to, he had just got his wings. He actually went into the Navy to a program called Aviation Officer Candice School and had gotten his wings and was headed for Vietnam. And they would send them back to recruit because they needed more pilots. And he happened to walk into my fraternity house when this was all going on. The Army and the Marine Corps wanted you. They needed second lieutenants in Vietnam. And I could get into the Army and the Marine Corps, I didn't know if I wanted to be an infantry second lieutenant. And he just showed up. And I said, he was in the uniform, I said, Bagley, what are you doing? He said, I am a naval aviator. The light bulb came on, I said, how do you become a naval aviator? And he said, just take this test, that's what I'm here for. So I took this test and that's how I ended up in the Navy. And you signed up and off you went to ... I went to see Dean Godfrey. He said, well, that's happening to a lot of your classmates. Just go do your minimum time and come back to law school. But I ended up staying for 36 years. Because you liked it. Because I liked it. You liked flying airplanes. Yeah, but it was bigger than that. After I went to the war college, which I did as a lieutenant, it was a special program. I was maybe a little dissatisfied with what I saw. There's a lot ... People loved the fly, but there has to be a higher purpose for spending billions of dollars on aircraft carriers so people can fill up their logbook with a lot of flight time and traps on a carrier. And the year at the war college really changed my mind. By there I began to realize that I was in a profession, not to fill up my logbook, but I was in the profession of peace. And that was my job and that was the output and one of the most important outputs, if you can create a peaceful world, is so freedom and democracy can flourish. Did you fly bombers or fighter planes? Well, they were tactical jets. The first ones I flew were primarily attack airplanes, the A-7. I flew that most of my life, but then they were replaced by the F-18, which was a multi-mission. They could do fighter at a multi-mission radar and they could do air to air and air to ground. And towards the end of my career I flew mostly in them. And of course, I would assume in the beginning of your career before you reached captain and commander, maybe, you mostly, when you went to sea, you weren't on aircraft carriers all the time. And so you made a lot of aircraft carrier landings. Yeah, I spent a lot of time at sea and got a lot of hours and all of that. But again, flying was not an end in itself to me. It was a means towards an end. And it was a very important part of our toolkit, National Security Toolkit, that includes much more than the Navy and much more than the Department of Defense, Department of State, includes the all, and the ultimate power of the United States of America is our economic power and the power of our democracy. To influence people. To influence people in positive, constructive ways. So I thought that was a pretty important business to be involved in. And so I was very proud to continue to serve. We have people that say, you know, why do we worry about public diplomacy? Why do we worry about programs to make friends abroad? But as a person who's been involved in strategic matters for our country, you think that it's important that we do things with respect to other people and try to influence them, that we're the good guys? Yeah, I think it's profoundly important. And, you know, we're still in the process of forming a more perfect union. We're not the best. We still have things to do. We still have blemishes. But I think it's the best that's ever been created, this wonderful experiment that started, what, 246 years ago. But it needs pruning. You got to work in that vineyard every single day. And sometimes I think we're forgetting that. And the best thing that you can have, I think, to make sure that the light of freedom and democracy continues to shine brightly throughout the world is for the United States of America to be engaged. And when we draw back our European allies, again, the EU is a roughly comparable size of America. But it's in terms of economics. And if you aggregated everything else that they have. But it's, you know, 20-something different countries. It's not as a cohesive thing as the United States. And so I think they need our leadership. And but we continue to make mistakes. We denigrated NATO. NATO is profoundly important. We had the TPP well along, the Trans-Pacific Partnership. And the first day of the Trump administration, he pulled us out of it. It was a huge mistake. So then every Pacific Rim country had to now, they couldn't count on the United States. Plus by then we had done several other things that we backed out of. So the idea that you could count on America to support you as an ally became very suspect. And it continues to be very suspect to this day. When you were the commander of NATO South, your staff were from various countries. Isn't that correct? On the NATO staff? On the NATO staff. So you commanded an international group of people. And did you have deputies that were from other countries? Yeah, when I first got there, my deputy was a three-star Greek general. And the rotation had been, you have one for two years as Greek and then you have one as a Turk for two years. And so my second one was a Turkish Air Force three-star who unfortunately in 2016, along with almost all the senior officers I knew in the Turkish military were put in jail by Erdogan. Really? Because he didn't want them to get too much pressure? Yeah, because they were, you know, aditurks. So he put many of them in jail. My J-5, the two-star Army general who was head of my plans and policy, is now this minister of defense. In Turkey? He survived, survived the coup and stayed on Erdogan's side. He was the head of the military by then. You had close relationships with these folks. I mean, I'd go to his house for dinner. He was very political. I was the commander. He was a two-star, but he would always invite me to his house and it was always a huge affair. And he became, he went back and was head of their military college. And the last time I saw him, he was there and he hosted me for a lunch when I was about to retire. And then he became the head of the Army, he became head of the armed forces. And when the coup attempt happened, he was head of the armed forces. And the people who ran the coup, they tried to get him to turn on Erdogan. He didn't. So Erdogan kept him as head of the military, although most of the service chiefs and senior officers were put in jail. And then he became the minister of defense. And to this day he's the minister of defense in Turkey. So let's turn a little bit to the Ukraine and how we got here. Yeah. And maybe you could comment on your view of how we arrived at where we are today with this war going on in the Ukraine. Well, I have pretty strong feelings about it. And of course I'm viewing it from the advantage, the retrospective view. And of course you always have 20-20 vision when you're looking at things retrospectively. So it might be a little bit unfair. But when you aggregate all that and look at it, I call it 20 years of fecklessness. And that may be a bit harsh, but I think it's absolutely true, you know, through the Bush administration, Obama administration, Trump administration, and into this administration. But it wasn't just us. It was NATO. It was Europe. It was the EU. And all like-minded nations throughout the world. We kind of believed that this was the end of history and this was a new... We couldn't imagine that we would be dealing with someone like a Putin, the Putin that we see now. And we were hoping and hopes never a good plan. But I guess somehow we thought he really was, had wool all over him and was a sheep and he wasn't really a wolf. But I think if you studied Russian history and listened to him, he told us exactly what he was going to do in 2007 at the Munich Defense Conference, Security Conference. And he went on and on and he started with Kosovo, the war, and then the treachery of NATO continuing to move, bringing in the former Warsaw Pact countries, first Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. And then we brought in seven more a few years later, 2004, I think it was, or 2007. We brought in the Baltics, the three Baltics, Slovakia, Slovenia. All the countries that surround Russia. Bulgaria and Romania. And then this is now February of 2007. In April of 2008, it was the annual NATO summit. I believe it was in Budapest. And again, the Bush administration was deeply involved in Afghanistan and Iraq. But President Bush, and rightly so in some ways, was pushing this democracy theme. And so they went into the summit. He was getting towards the end of his term. And they went into that summit, pushing for offering the opportunity for Ukraine and Georgia to come into NATO. They didn't give an actual path for them to come in, but they hung the carrot out there. And by the summer of 2008, Mr. Putin was sending troops into two of the provinces that had a considerable Russian population in Georgia. And we didn't do anything. We just let them do it. And we didn't respond in any way. And then we had the red line in Syria. By the way, they had to leave the Middle East when they ran out of money. And they shut down their bases in Syria. And what have you. You're talking about the Russians. The Russians did. And so then we said the red line was the use of chemical weapons. And they used them. And we were all ready to strike. But the night before we were going to strike, we backed away from it. You mean the carriers were loaded? Everybody was loaded. It was, you know, a significant effort to knock out all of their anything related to their chemical weapons. And we could we have done that? We had the capability. Well, we would have heard it to be able to get every bit of it. And you never have 100% efficacy in any strike. You know, it's never it's never going to go perfect. But it was a pretty robust. I don't know exactly what it was. I wasn't on active duty then. But I know we'd done the planning. And if they were down to within 24 hours of execution, there was a lot of granularity in that thing. And the forces were in place to be able to execute this. And then we came up with the idea. The Russians said, oh, well, we can help you. We'll help you get rid of all of this chemical weapons. And we bought off on it. We did it. The Russians said that we can get rid of the chemical weapons in Syria. Yeah, yeah. So they helped us because they didn't get rid of all of them. But that got them back in. And then they, you know, when Putin first came in in 99 and 2000, they were dealing with Checha. And they leveled that place. But much smaller than Ukraine and only, I don't know, a little over a million people. And then they came to Syria and they leveled Aleppo. They surrounded it, just basic medieval siege warfare. Cut off the water, cut off the electricity, cut off the food, and then bomb them into submission. And tried out a lot of their new weapons and what have you. And they were back into the Middle East. And they're still there. And so then, you know, then they had the overthrow of the friendly president in 2014. Ned Van Vyl, what up? Yeah. No, no, it was started with a Y. I can't remember his name. Oh, in the Ukraine? Ukraine, not working in the Ukraine. Yeah. And that was right when the Olympics were. Yeah. And they overthrew him and he had to seek safety in Russia. And they got a new president that was much more friendly to the West and was back on, wanting to become a member of EU and NATO and what have you. And so that's when he decided to go into Crimea. Right as soon as the Olympics were over, he went into Crimea. And then he started his campaign in the Donbass. And they've been fighting there ever since. But again, we didn't really do anything after he took Crimea. And we've helped them a little bit, but begrudgingly for the last eight years on providing weapons for them to fight the Russians in the Donbass region. And we've been mute on Crimea. And of course, in Putin's mind, you know, there's no question about Crimea. Because that was when the Soviet Union decided to come up with these Soviet Socialist Republics, which Putin thinks is a horrible idea, because I gave them some geographic identity and they were long ethnic lines. Independent of Russia. Yeah. Well, they were part of the Soviet Socialist Republic. And by far the dominant republic was Russia. Right. And Crimea was part of Russia. But then this guy came along in the late 50s named Khrushchev, who was a Ukrainian. And he decided, since I'm in charge here now, it would be really nice if we made Crimea part of Ukraine. And so by fiat, I don't know exactly what the process was, he decided to take Crimea and make it part of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine as opposed to the Soviet Socialist Republic of Russia. And that's how. And so in Putin's mind, he's just writing a horrible wrong done by the communists. And of course, he does not consider himself to be a communist. He's not a communist. Oh, yeah, yeah. He's a Russian of Catherine the Great and Peter the Great. And that's the world that he's trying to bring back. And he brought back the Orthodox Church and what have you against the decadence and increasing weakness of the West. And so in that speech he gave where he talked about the West, all they want is their foie gras and oysters. And the Munich conference where he made that? No, this just isn't his more recent comments. And then he talks and they spend all their time worrying about all the options for sexual orientation or something, which he considers an example of the weakness and decadence of the West. And so all of this stuff is just, I mean, he really does have a vision. We may think it's warped and crazy, but he really does, I believe, have this messianic vision. And he fully intends, because every signal he has is that we are weak. Democracies and freedom are in decline. And I think that's unarguably freedom house. Every indication you have, that's the case. And autocracy is on the rise. So it's not just Ukraine versus Russia. We are, I think, a much larger kind of battle going on. And those, China, India, Turkey? Nationalism is on the rise. Nationalism is on the rise. So we have, in the 1930s, we have good examples of nationalism, Germany, Japan, Italy, all nationalistic countries. And nationalism has great appeal. You know, this is a little bit off point. But it has appeal in this country, too. When we, it appeals to human beings. Their tribe is being aggressive and doing things. That's my tribe. And they take great pride in their tribe, some kind of self-identification for people. And I remember when in 2003, when we invaded Iraq in the fall of 2003, that winter, I was down. I visited some people in Vero Beach, Florida. And I'd never been to Vero Beach before. And if we think back, and a lot of people will remember this, cars were flying after the invasion. Cars were flying the American flag. Everybody had a flag. And when I went to Vero Beach, people were hanging American flags out their windows. So this jingoism, I call it, or others call it, and nationalism has great appeal in this country, too. And when a demagogue can say, hey, look, we're going to be the most powerful, we don't care about everybody else, and they're all on their own. America for America, and the hell with those other people, that's a form of nationalism. And a lot of people have died in the name of nationalism. Thank you for allowing me to make my little speech. No, I totally agree with you. I think it's very dangerous. And any politician that's pretty keen on making sure they can get reelected, if they want to, use that weapon. And they're very good at it. And that's part of what I'm trying to say about this. If the flame of democracy and freedom begins to flicker anywhere in the world, it's not just that local area, but it's all of us who believe in this. And again, that comes back to why I found serving in the military such a compelling profession, because that's what I thought I was doing, trying to protect that flame and keep that flame burning in as many places around the world as possible, and that we were, and maybe slightly imperfect, but as good an example of where the human spirit and the capacity of each individual, they have the best opportunity to fully actualize what they can bring to their particular country, to their particular state, to their particular town, to their family, and that is the best way for our country and for our state, and our communities to succeed is the best way for the world to succeed is the best way where we can work at all the many problems we have throughout the world. So that's kind of my fundamental belief. I am pleased that you said that, and I'm happy that my audience got to hear a senior American military man say the things that you said because politicians don't often say it. Maybe, I don't know, maybe military people don't often say it, you did. I think I would like to think that the people I serve would believe that. General Powell, you think he believed it? Oh yeah, I mean, he profoundly believed that America, I mean, his life was an example of that. I had an opportunity, and I took full advantage of it, and it richly blessed me. I mean, yesterday I was up at the University of Maine, and for the Cohen lecture, and Secretary Cohen was there, and the guest speaker was General Mattis. I call him General Mattis, but Secretary Mattis, and the youngest. Did you know Mattis when you were there? Yeah, we worked together for Secretary Cohen. He was Colonel Mattis then. He was the executive secretary. Marine Colonel, huh? Marine Colonel then. So we go back to the time we were together as part of the Cohen OSD Office of Secretary of Defense family. It was a great group, some wonderful people. That's great. So now let me direct the discussion a little to the Ukraine, because you are a military man, and all of us thought with this big, monstrous military machine, Russia, they're going to invade the Ukraine, and it's gonna be in Kiev in three days, and it's gonna be over. And I really believe that. What happened to this massive military machine? Well, you know, we're all still wondering. We're still gonna have to, you know, see what the postscript is about all of it, but I believe that we're into it. We've worked ourselves into a stalemate, and we don't have any good options now. We didn't have very many good options when it started, because of what I call the 20 years of fecklessness. We worked ourselves kind of into a box canyon, decreased our deterrent capacity, and we never called Putin's bluff over the last 20 years, or didn't do it enough, and emphatically enough, and so he thought he had free hand. But now we're where we are, and the Russians, I think, greatly underestimated the Ukrainians. I think they were guilty of something that empires throughout history have been guilty of, you know, for lack of a better expression drinking your own bathwater. I mean, he really believed it, and he believed that, you know, anybody that had anything to do with the West was weak and decadent and in decline, and that they would truly welcome him. And, of course, using the term Nazis is very important to him, because that was the great patriotic war, and they believed that that society of the 30s in Berlin was decadent, and it was, so, you know, this is a big part of their, every country has their story and their legend, and that's a huge part of the Russians. Ironically, the Ukrainians were in the midst of the great patriotic war, and they think Putin's a Nazi. He's babes like Hitler. So they got ground up then, and they're getting ground up now. And so, every side has a plan. When you go into a war like World War I, you know, the French were gonna attack on the East and it was gonna be quick and over, and the Germans had the Sheffelin plan. They were gonna come through Belgium and be in Paris in one day, and it was gonna be all over. And they ended up in French warfare for four years slaughtering each other, and it was never a definitive one way or the other. And I think that's kind of where we are now. The Russian plan was, you know, they just had to drive into Kiev and they were gonna surrender and put in a puppet government, and it was gonna be all over. And it didn't work out that way. They made huge mistakes. Then the biggest one is underestimating their enemy, and it's much different when you have a conscript army that hasn't been told what they were gonna do, hasn't been trained for what they were gonna do, and they aren't, they're fighting their fellow Slavs, but the Ukrainians were fighting for their own country, and the level of passion, and then the, just so many tactical mistakes they made. That makes a difference, doesn't it, when you're fighting for your own country? We found that out in Vietnam. Yeah, we did. Same thing. Yeah, we've learned, we've had to learn that in lots of places. We learned it, not quite, maybe, we learned it in Korea. Yeah. And, or we identified that, whether we learned it or not, I don't know. I hope we did. I hope it sticks with us. The lesson was there. The lesson was there, to be learned. And so, you know, they made a big mistake. The Ukrainians were hoping that with their strong will, which they knew was underestimated, they had come together as a coherent, I think, national identity, and they fought surprisingly well, very effectively. It isn't interesting. What Putin has done has really enhanced the national identity of the Ukrainians. Those who might have been on the fence a little, well, I'm kind of like a Russian. Now they'll see these dead people in the streets, and they hate Russians. Here they are, they're basically, you know, the same Slavic ancestors. Brought NATO back together, brought the EU, starting to spend money on defense, realizing this is really serious stuff. So it's done all the things that he wanted to prevent, and he thought he could drive a wedge, and he thought he had the Germans in his pocket, I think. Because of the gas. Yeah, and I mean, look, they're former prime minister. I mean, Chancellor is on the board of the two biggest fossil fuel companies, and I mean, I can't quite understand that, but he still is, Schroeder, and so that didn't work. And then the Ukrainians thought, well, they're gonna fight well, they're gonna stop them, and then the sanctions will kick in. Well, the sanctions aren't kicking in. The ruble is almost back to where it was when this thing started. It will, I think, over time, but it's gonna take six months or a year. So how, so the Ukrainian plan, shall we say, with the support of the West, that plan didn't work either. It failed, the Russian plan failed. So now we're, I think they're retreating and they're gonna just continue with their siege mentality in the Donbass area, and they're gonna try to take all of the south so that the Ukrainians don't have any ports. Like Odessa. And make them, yeah, Odessa's the last big place to fall. And then they'll have a land bridge all the way from the Donbass down to Ukraine, and then really all the way to the Moldova and Romanian border. So what does that do for your former compatriots in NATO, particularly the newer NATO countries on the Eastern frontiers in the direction of Russia? You think this is gonna focus them like lasers on building their military capability? Well, I think it already has. And but a particular concern of the Baltics, and no matter how much they spend on defense, they'll never have enough to alone, nationally defend themselves. I mean, it's the strategic depth they have. It's like Israel, they don't have any strategic depth. And Russia can stomp through there fairly quickly. But if that happens. But we need to put a deterrent force in there. Okay, I'm gonna get to the deterrent force. So they're in NATO, so an attack on the Baltic Republic is an attack on the United States. And then we will fight. There will be boots on the ground, right? Well, it's gonna take political leadership of the United States of America, both in the executive and legislative branches, going to the American people and explaining to them that they have to make this sacrifice and we have to do that. I would like to think that we will honor our Article V obligation, and I have no doubt that we will. But it is not a eventuality that I think the American public has been properly conditioned for in a reality that could very well happen. I think one of the good things that's coming, come out of the failed plan on the Russian side and the failure on the Ukrainian West side to hurt him bad enough where he can come to the table with a serious intent of some kind of a off ramp is that his military has been proven to be a bit of a Potemkin military, and right now he doesn't have the capacity, at least conventionally, and I don't think he would use nuclear means of going to the Baltics. I think at this point, he just doesn't have any forces left. The only things he can use to plug are more conscripts who even- He's a big Navy though, doesn't he? He has, and they're pounding away at you, Dessa, but they did sink one of their ships, and I don't know how effective they are. They said one of the Russian ships, yeah. But do they have, can they land troops like the US? They did. They've been landing some Marines and stuff and all along the Sea of Oz off and down into the part of Ukraine that's on the south or slightly to the west of Crimea that goes around where Odessa is that butts into Romania and then, because Modova's totally landlocked, so it doesn't have any coast at all, but Romania has a coast that comes up into that north-west corner of the Black Sea and they have a co-border there with Ukraine as they do way up north on the other side of Modova, up near Poland. So could the United States, to put more pressure on, could the United States, of course this would be an act of war too, I guess, a US act of war, block access to the Black Sea for Russian naval vessels to traverse the Bosporus and gain access to the Mediterranean? Well, the Montreux Convention, the power to do that rests with the Turkish government and I believe, it may be wrong, but I think they have said that they aren't gonna allow any more Russian combatants ships from the Baltic Fleet or the Northern Fleet, but the Russians did bring around from the Baltic Fleet and from the North Sea Fleet quite a few naval ships. Then they're up into the Black Sea? They're already in there before hostilities began. I don't know exactly how many, I don't know what their order about it is. Do the Russians have naval bases? Yeah, they do. The Black Sea Fleet was based in Sevastopol and when I was a six-fleet commander, I took my flagship up there and it was been the summer of 2001 and I visited Sevastopol and visited the Ukraine. You were the commander of the six-fleet? Yeah, I visited the commander of the Ukrainian Navy. He hosted me in Sevastopol. Then, but two-thirds of that naval base was owned by the Russians and they had many more ships than the Ukrainians did. And then my next stop was with the Russian Black Sea Fleet commander, but he got his flagship underway, steamed it right past ours, we were at anchor and went over to Novostiysk where they didn't even have any piers or anything, he anchored his flagship and hosted me ashore in a hotel. Well, why? Because he wasn't gonna host me in Sevastopol. Oh, really? Because that, you know, that was... Why? The Ukrainians owned it at that time. Oh, because it was the Ukrainians. So he went over to Novostiysk and that's where he hosted you. And that's where you went to visit him? Yeah, and we spent most of the time looking at all these incredible dioramas they have everywhere of the Great Patriotic War. Yeah. And then, but he hosted me at a... But you know, that Black Sea Fleet commander, and I don't know whatever happened to him, the night we had a formal dinner in a, like in a restaurant that, yeah, it was part of a hotel. It wasn't very fancy, I will say, but it was the best they could do at that time. But he gave a toast at that dinner that still, I cannot believe, he thanked me because he got the toast first, because he was the host and then I returned the toast. And he was incredibly gracious and thanked me for coming to visit. These were hard times for Russia. This is now over a year into the Putin reign and it was, I believe, it was after the submarine sunk, blew up in the, up in the Barents Sea in the Northern Fleet. And he said, I want to tell you, I admire your country. He said I admire your, the Russian, he was an Admiral, right? And what your country does and what it stands for. And he said, and he said, and you come here in the name of peace and friendship. And it was a beautiful, actually, toast. We had it, it was given in Russian and he, you know, had an interpreter, but I think it was, I believe it was kind of. Well, because he's not a politician. He's a military man, he's not a politician. So, anyway, it was kind of interesting, but, you know. You mentioned something about the Russian, so Kosovo. What did, what did the Russians do? I thought that was the Serbs and then the US trying to get the Serbs to ease up on Kosovo and you were in charge. I mean, this was part of your bailiwick, right? Well, the Kosovo war started in 99. Yeah. And Cohen was the Secretary of Defense. And I became his military assistant in May of 1999. And the, Cohen had been at his son's graduation, his youngest son's graduation at the University of Maine. I think it was on the 9th or 10th of May, 1999. And he gets this message from the security team or the communicators that were with him. And he was in, I guess, the Collins Center at the graduation saying, you gotta call a Pentagon right now. And that's when we had dropped an, not an air and bomb, but a target that we thought was a warehouse, was actually a Chinese embassy. Where was it? In Belgrade? Belgrade, yeah. And they had to go back to Washington. And then the war ended and that was a real rough patch with the Chinese, as you can well imagine. And because we went to China in 2001 and I remember that. And you heard about it? We heard about it, yes. But so the war ended. And by then we had the S-4 in Bosnia-Herzegovina. And we, in part of partnership for peace and the effort that we had to try to work with the Russians, they had a sector in Bosnia. And they had a, I don't think they had a full brigade, but they had a couple of battalions there. Who had the? The Russians did. Part of S-4, this stabilization force in Bosnia-Herzegovina. What's the difference between that and I-4? I-4 was the predecessor to S-4. Okay. And then during the night, when we were ready to have a truce in Kosovo and set up the NATO peacekeeping force called K-4. It was gonna be in Kosovo. They road marched. It wasn't much more than a company plus. It wasn't a full battalion. They went across the river up in Tuzla into Serbia, down through Serbia, and then through the northern part of Kosovo, the Serbian part, or the Slavic part. Were you at NATO then? I was with Cohen then. I was a military assistant. And showed up at the airport and closed the runways. And so then Cohen was, we had to, we flew to, then, so we were at this impasse of how to set up the NATO forces and all the NATO countries were offering up forces. And of course, Greece, they wanted to be in the Serbian parts and protect the monasteries. And everybody had their different. And the French wanted to be near the Croats and the Croatians. You know, it was quite a process to figure out how we're gonna do this whole thing. And then you had the Russians sitting there at the airport, which you needed. It was key to the logistics of the whole thing. So Secretary Cohen was charged with going to negotiate with the Russian Defense Minister in Helsinki in the presidential palace there. And we went there for three days and back and forth, back and forth. So you were in those talks? Yeah, I was in those talks. And they would come in and we'd have these. And we had our red lines. They had their red lines. And it was always, yep, and they'd storm out, go get in their zil limousines. And we'd watch them as they go. The road went past the presidential palace. They'd leave there in a huff. And the road, like it was a block or two away. And if you turn one way, you were headed for the airport. If you turn the other way, you're headed back to the Russian embassy. They always turned towards the Russian embassy. So we knew, okay, we just came to say. They weren't leaving town. They weren't leaving town. So we said, at two o'clock in the morning or something, they decided they wanted to talk again. So you go back and start negotiating again. This went on for three days. Theater. Yeah, theater. And we finally came up with something. And then Secretary Albright flew in and Ivanov, I believe was the foreign minister then. He came over and so he had the two minister of defense and the secretary of defense and the secretary of state and the minister of foreign affairs and worked out this agreement with how we would include the Russians in K-4. And then later I ended up in Sixth Fleet and then I ended up being at the Allied Forces Southern Europe where K-4 commander was a subordinate commander. And so I spent a lot of time. I'd go visit the Russian folks. They were in charge of like snow removal and keeping the runway open, but we control the tower. Isn't that it? So you say they can stay, but here's what you were gonna be doing with it. Yeah, we worked it out. Yeah. And so yeah, it was an interesting time. When we bombed Serbia, did we, those planes come off of aircraft carriers? Some did, but most of them were Air Force ones. We had Air Force and Aviano in different places. In Italy. Yeah. And they were NATO. The French were involved, the Italians, other countries were involved. And the big chaos, combined air operation center was in Vicenza, Italy. So are these NATO forces effective? They're all different countries and everything. How do they work together? They have a common command. I mean, how do they function as a single unit when they represent 20 different countries? Well, it's an elaborate process. But they went with us, at great political expense to many of these countries. We didn't have much trouble getting them to be part of our effort in Afghanistan, but it was a hard slog to get them to be part of the effort in Iraq. And of course, some of them never did. And they posed us strongly like the French. Yeah. And, but they mostly did. And even back in those days, I remember helping the Hungarians, helping, particularly the Warsaw Pact countries wanted to be able to put something into the effort. What do you mean by helping the Hungarians? Well, they would have a transportation unit. The Poles were made a big contribution in Iraq. They were down, I visited a Polish unit. By then, I was a commander in Naples and we were starting up the NATO training mission. And NATO under its auspices got involved in Iraq, you know, in the training and education side and what have you. And they were involved in combat operations in Afghanistan, a lot of the NATO countries. You know, that one, I can't figure out. What was NATO's interest? I know, were NATO's interest in Iraq? Yeah, but they were NATO countries. They were NATO's countries, but I mean... They weren't there as NATO. Oh, they weren't there as NATO? No, no, no, no. But they were, so the command and control process and the exercises that we have done all over the years that facilitated being able to work with them, they still go back to their National Command Authority. You know, ideally when the big one comes, if it ever does, they're going to be working for a NATO commander who is the head of U.S. forces in Europe, but he is also the Supreme Allied Commander, Europe. And that's always an American. And so how effectively in a real, serious war that is going to be dynamic and changing and every war plan, no matter how good it is, as soon as the first shot is fired, it becomes how good is a force in being able to adapt and innovate in the changing battlefield because it'll never go down the way that you have planned. That's the point. Never go as planned. No, and so that's another reason why the Russians, there's no trust. They don't trust their people. And so when that war started going wrong in Ukraine, I think that's part of the reason. I think they've confirmed at least six or seven general officers and these aren't like two stars been killed. A captain that's ahead of a company of armor or a company of artillery or a company of infantry doesn't dare to do anything. He doesn't have, they haven't given him authority to do anything. He has one little plan. He's told to go down this road and go to point A or point B. So he does that. And in the US military, we diffuse that authority more we spread it out. You have commander's intent. Like the commander's intent for Desert Shield and Desert Storm under George H.W. Bush was, this was the General Schwarzkopf. It was something like two sentences. It was expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait and set the conditions for the return of the sovereign government of Kuwait. That was the. So if you're a company commander and everybody above you, the colonels killed and all of that and you're a company commander. There's usually a commander's intent and there's some kind of a statement about end state. And that gets sent out to the field commanders. That's at the strategic level. But that gets down to the operational level commanders. And then it gets down to the tactical units. They know what that commander's intent is. And then they have lines of operations. They plan what their armor's going to do. They're all of this stuff and coordinate with the Air Force and the Navy. But it's never going to go like what the plan is. And so you're going to have to segue or you're going to have to improvise off the main plan. And we command by negation. What's that mean? We've given you what the plan is, set the conditions for the return of the sovereign government. And you go off and do God's work and do this. Well, if you're really screwing up, they are going to reach down. They're going to negate from above. But until you show them. You're in charge. You're in charge. And I think you really have to screw up. The first CO I ever had as a Lieutenant Junior grade in A7 Squadron in Cecilfield, Florida. And in the summer when you're on the weekend, you'd always get the weekend duty. And your biggest thing was thunderstorms and stuff and real wind. You had to put extra tie down chains on the airplanes so they didn't get blown around it. You said, OK, you're going to be the duty officer. You're going to be out here all by yourself. And you're just going to have a fire watch and a couple of other people here with you. And if something happens, I want you to address that issue and do something. Even if you do the wrong thing, I'll back you. But if you don't do anything, I'm going to fire you. And I think that level of trust. And you said they don't have that in the rest of the military? I don't think so. They just don't trust their people. Now, I don't know, I can get off on a tangent, but it's an incredibly telling story. I don't know how we're doing on time. We've got about two more minutes. Oh, God. Three more. Tell it. Well, this is at the end of the Cold War, when Admiral Crowe was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and he had his Russian counterpart there. He visited Washington, DC. And they visited all the stuff in Washington, DC, and all the memorials. And he took them to a VA hospital, too. And they couldn't believe what we did for our veterans. But then they took them down to Norfolk, and he took them out on a carrier. And if you've ever been to Norfolk, where all our carriers are, the largest naval base in the world, and there's huge parking lots. Because when the carrier gets underway, all the sailors come in, park their cars. And so they flew out to the carrier when it was at sea off the coast of Virginia. And then they rode the carrier in it at the end of the day. They did flight ops and all this stuff. And they landed. The carrier peered aside, and he got in a car and took them over to visit. And as they were driving off the pier, you go through this kind of valley with parking lots on both sides, full of cars. So Groschev said, why are all those cars? He said, well, that's where the sailors park. And he says, you let sailors have cars? He said, they could drive away. It wouldn't come back. And the other thing he said, he watched all the people on the flight deck, all these brown shirts and green shirts and yellow shirts. And he said, well, that guy, he's 19 years old. He just came from someplace. And he's been in the Navy two years. And he's attaching the aircraft to the catapult. And the guy says, you're lying to me. You would never entrust a listed person to do that in our armed forces. Wow. So that tells you a little bit about some of the challenge that they have when things don't go quite right. That is really interesting. And I think that talks about why I thought I was in the military. Freedom, democracy, bringing people, giving them an environment where they can show they can be the best that they can be. And I think the sons and daughters that serve our military for the most part have an opportunity to be the best that they can be. And that's why, for the most part, at least at the tactical level, we do pretty darn well. That's a great way to end this discussion. Really good way to end it. Thank you very much. My pleasure. Thank you for what you said throughout, in particular.