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Dec. 14, 2022 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
29:10
US Patriot Missiles To Ukraine: Game Changer Or Nuclear War?

Yesterday CNN reported that the Biden administration has decided on a significant escalation in Ukraine: providing Kiev with the most advanced US missile defense system, the Patriot Missile system. The missiles have a longer range and a much higher price tag. Russia has vowed to take them out if deployed in Ukraine. Will NATO troops be operating the complex systems? If so...then what?

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Patriot Missiles and Escalation 00:14:47
Hello, everybody.
Thank you for tuning into the Liberty Report.
With us today is Daniel McAdams, our co-host.
Daniel, good to see you.
How are you this morning, Dr. Paul?
I am doing fine, radio and rearing to go.
You know, during the early part of this century, when we were working hard, I always kept thinking, we're trying to stop a war.
You know, this is serious business.
And we failed.
They still had their war.
It lasted for 20 years, and we're still at the same business.
But I guess that's a characteristic of most history and most countries.
There's always seemed to be a war out there.
But there certainly has been periods of times when nations have lived with peace.
And I don't think it's impossible where we wouldn't spend our time doing this.
But right now, we've been trying to prevent the escalation of the war in Ukraine.
And we've been concerned about it for a long time, but we've got very concerned about it.
We've been talking about it incessantly.
And that is since 2014, when the coup occurred, when the Russian leading government elected in Ukraine was removed by you-know-who.
The United States had a coup and the British were involved.
And really, it was NATO.
And you know, one thing I've noticed in the paper recently, Daniel, has been that they've taken, they tell me, well, this is going to ratchet up, or this is a war between NATO and Russia, Russia and NATO.
And before it was always just Russian aggression, and they still do that.
But I think they've nailed it down there.
It's Russia and NATO.
But what we want to do is our viewers to be concerned about and look at what part of NATO is U.S. government.
Of course, we think we are it, and that's how we carry out our foreign policy.
But we've talked about it now for these last several months, the last year, about the potential escalation talking, which sometimes stirs up a lot of trouble.
But it was the financing that we thought has been crazy because it always leads to more, and it always leads to more threats, and there's always a cost.
And in this case, so far, we're fortunate that Americans aren't dying, but the Americans are paying for it, and a lot of other people are dying.
And right now, we see the ratcheting up where the Patriot missile, it's symbolic, but it's also very militaristic.
And it looks like they will be sent.
They cost a couple bucks.
And also, they say a defensive weapon.
Don't worry.
American people, we just do defensive stuff.
But I think it's a mini mutual assured destruction program where if Russia does anything more, we have to know how to destroy them.
So we're going to put weapons in Ukraine that can reach into Russia.
I see it nothing but negative.
And we could probably list, if we decide right now, today we're going to list our five worst things that's happening in Ukraine.
We probably could come up with five worst things.
But the number one thing is the escalation, the escalation of the war there and getting it out of control.
And even the planners for war, those individuals who run the military industrial complex, They may be warmongers, but maybe there's still a few in that business aren't purposely saying, well, tomorrow I hope the war starts.
Matter of fact, sometimes we say that when there's a setback and the Ukrainians lose a lot of weapons, they say the military into the complex, hey, that's good.
That gives us another, you know, another opportunity to produce more weapons.
But anyway, this was announced.
It's probably not going to come up overnight, but it looks like it'll come up soon.
But this is a bit of a shift in the process.
It's intervention.
That remains.
But it's escalating just as we have worried about.
Yeah, and let's put up that first clip because this is a significant escalation.
The Biden administration has denied this for quite some time that it's going to send in Patriot missile batteries to Ukraine.
But it was noted, and I think CNN broke the story, late yesterday, that there has been a decision.
Of course, unnamed sources, so we don't know, but that there has been a decision.
And I could only guess that because nothing else has worked thus far, the Hymars have not been the game changer that they were promised to be.
They're routinely being shot down.
So nothing else has been working to defend against Russian-used Iranian-designed drones and other missiles into Ukraine.
So they're sending in their flagship missile defense system, which is the Patriot missile system.
You can definitely see it as an escalation for a number of reasons.
First of all, it is our flagship.
It is the top-notch of what we produce here in the U.S.
And if you look at that next clip, you'll find out who produces it, of course.
This is from that same AP article.
Ground-based air defense systems such as Raytheon Technology Corps Patriot.
Of course, our defense secretary is from Raytheon, so I'm sure he'll get a thank you from his former colleagues.
But the issue of this is that it's the top missile that we have.
We're sending it in, but there are a number of other things about it that are important.
And the first of all, I would say, is the money.
And you mentioned how much money is going in.
Well, here's a tweet from Kim.com, who's very, very good on this, a brilliant guy, and put this up if you can, because he's making this point, and it's been made elsewhere too.
The issue, of course, when money is not an object, is one thing, and for us, apparently, it's not an object.
But he points out Ukraine now gets U.S. Patriot missiles that cost the U.S. taxpayer $3 million per missile to shoot down $30,000 Russian drones.
Some would argue that maybe they're less than that.
The Russians can fire 100 drones for each U.S. Patriot missile.
The Pentagon strategists call this unbalancing Russia.
So the idea is if it's just money, it's just our money.
$3 million a POP, we're sending the missiles over to shoot down basically $10,000 drones.
You know, in a way, I get amazed at times about how well the current government and people in the government who have power and clout and the military-industrial complex.
It seems like they coordinate things fairly well.
But I keep thinking, did the government, the bad people, the hawks and government, create Raytheon?
Or did Raytheon, you know, all of a sudden, you know, get powerful enough that the government goes along with their lobbyists?
And I've decided it isn't one or the other.
It must be the individuals talk to each other.
We know that because the way the big arms manufacturers do it, they talk through the members of Congress.
And there was a couple times they tried to get in my office.
And you were my protector.
You say, no, we're not for sale.
So they couldn't get in the door.
But it is a symbiosis there, and there is a lot of money made.
And some of them are convinced.
They don't want to think about the money, even though the evidence is pretty strong.
They have to come up with another reason.
So every war that we get involved in, whether it's Syria, whether it's Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Ukraine, it's always for national security purposes.
We have to protect our liberties and we have to protect our Constitution and our freedoms.
Can you think of anything more challenging to our constitutional way of life than our foreign policy?
I can't because the foreign policy is that flawed and the American people are too complacent.
They go along with it and they certainly didn't get, I don't even think the word was mentioned hardly in the last election.
And the Congress was up for grabs.
So it's an issue that we work real hard at trying to present to the people because I remember so well and I've said the Vietnam War.
It took a while for demonstrations and killing and dying for the people in Congress finally say, enough is enough.
And they went out and there's still, even today, you could find somebody in Washington and said, well, the main problem with Vietnam was we didn't stay there and win the war.
So there are the diehards.
And then they're patriots when they take it.
That's it.
You're not a patriot if you say, oh, no, we've got to protect the profits of Raytheon.
No, you're not allowed to say that.
But you're preserving our liberties.
Then people are supposed to roll over and accept it.
Yeah, you know, there are a few things about these Patriot missiles.
First of all, they're not plug-and-play.
You don't just drop them off, you plug it in, and you go ahead and shoot down Russian missiles.
They're very, very complicated, very complex weapon systems.
You have to train for months upon months.
They cost about a billion dollars per battery.
So each one of those batteries was full of $3 million missiles costs a billion dollars.
Most of that, from what I understand, is in the computer and the software, the targeting capabilities that they have.
So it raises a couple questions, Dr. Paul.
First of all, have Ukrainian soldiers been secretly training with NATO on how to operate Patriot missile systems?
Now, that is a possibility, and it raises all sorts of questions.
Are they training in Germany?
Where are they training to run these if it's the case?
If it's not the case, will NATO soldiers be brought in to operate these systems from within Ukraine?
And if they're not training right now and they announce that we're sending the Patriot missiles over, there's going to be a lag time of several months before they become operational, unless, of course, we have been training, or unless NATO troops will be going in there to operate them from within Ukraine.
And that raises the next point, which is the chairman of the National Security, the Deputy Chairman of the National Security Council of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev, who is a former president, we can put on this next script, he's made it very clear.
He posted the following warning statement directed at the U.S. in his Telegram channel.
He says, if Stoltenberg hinted, if as Stoltenberg hinted, NATO supplies Kiev fanatics with Patriot complexes along with NATO personnel, they will immediately become a legitimate target of our armed forces.
I hope the Atlantean impotents understand this.
So he's making it very clear, if you put in NATO troops to operate these Patriot missiles inside Ukraine, we will target them.
We will kill NATO troops.
That is the real significant escalation, in my opinion, not just the arrival of these Patriots.
Yet, it looks to me like our foreign policy experts just totally ignore it.
They don't believe it.
And they rationalize it.
Yet, to me, that's the most significant thing, that they've been blunt.
They've said that what do you do?
And why should they say that if they're not willing to do it?
So this whole argument and the number of missiles has to do with miles, because we have Patriot missiles in Poland, but they're not quite far enough to reach into Russia.
They don't want to do that.
But it's a distance, and this one would reach in.
And if you told the Patriots in the Congress, pseudo-Patriots in the Congress, they would say, well, you bunch of people you don't believe in any defense.
They've been, you know, like they told me once a long time ago, they're attacking us.
They're shooting at our bombs.
But so they say, but the Russians are already bombing Iran.
I mean, Iran.
Ukraine.
They're already bombing them, and they're sending them over there.
So that's the justification.
If you don't do it, you're a wimp.
But this is significant, and yet they will have answers to satisfy the hawks because we still hear, especially in the Republican Party, but they're in the Democratic Party too, but more so than it was when we were there.
We could find allies more in the Democratic Party than the Republican Party.
But let's hope that changes.
Yeah.
And it's going to be an issue if NATO soldiers who are overtly operating in Ukraine start coming home in body bags.
There's going to be, to this point, there's been little interest.
And we've noted in this show many times, there's a waning interest, certainly among the American population, and I would say in Europe as well.
There's a waning interest in Ukraine.
People are sick of it.
They call it Ukraine fatigue.
But if you start seeing soldiers coming home in body bags, I think that might change the calculation.
We already know that thousands of Poles have been killed.
We know that from mainstream press reporting of cemeteries on the border of Poland in Ukraine and people in local villages being irritated that these cemeteries are full of Polish soldiers now.
So if they're operated by known NATO troops and NATO troops are killed in Ukraine operating these Patriot systems, the question is what does NATO do next?
I think what does the Biden administration do next?
Did they declare a no-fly zone, which is essentially a declaration of World War III?
And will the Russians respond with an invasion from Belarus?
You know, there's several hundred thousand troops over there that can cut off the supply lines, go down through Lvov, and cut off the supply lines coming from Poland.
That, of course, would be a big escalation.
So there are a lot of questions about it.
But there are also a lot of questions, and I've listened to a few and read a few military analysts, of which I am not one, so I defer to their expertise.
But they've said that, Dr. Paul, that these really are a limited strategic use.
Now, these missiles are pretty good.
They're not junk.
But at best, they can maybe protect Kiev, maybe Odessa, maybe Lvov.
They have a limited range of where they can protect.
The strategic situation in Ukraine is such that it won't make an overall difference.
And the other question is, how good are they really?
You know, we know that the Houthis a few years ago, remember, they took out the Aramco oil fields in Saudi Arabia, which were defended by Patriots.
Limited Strategic Use 00:03:39
And that was a big blow.
So interestingly enough and ironically, when you talk about unintended consequences, this could actually be devastating for the U.S. military industrial complex because if we send these patriots over and they're not very good, then Raytheon has got to go, no one's going to buy our missiles.
I'd still worry about it.
They send them over and they build them and they don't work, which we build a lot of weapons that don't work.
They might just say, well, we just need more time.
This was a cost overrun.
We do it.
Bring it back.
More money.
Like the F-35.
You know, forever.
Money's no problem.
But you mentioned the whole issue that might wake up the American people and NATO people will be body bags.
And that's true.
But there are a lot of body bags already.
We've been able to sterilize that to the American people if they don't see it.
See, the Vietnam War ended up on the television, but what we're doing over there, the damage being done isn't there.
That's why they should work.
There's a little bit of it with the Republicans, the few that are against endless spending in Ukraine, is that they have to tie that in because it's deficits, it's big, it's growing.
They just spent past the military budget, and it's going up, and people have to pay for it.
And that's why it's hurting the American taxpayer if they want it on their lap.
Because it seems like they have worked it out where we have no moral responsibility, you know, the average person in this country, moral responsibility for the body bags shared by a lot of innocent people who are into crossfires, Russians and Ukrainians.
I don't think everybody, because there's some resistance we hear.
I mean, you have to be patriotic just like in this country because you look like Obama if you don't go along with it.
So there's a lot of that.
But I would say, I'll bet you there's a lot of Russians that would like to see this just go away and Ukrainians as well.
And they were sort of doing that.
That's why I thought things would work out better after the end of the Cold War.
But I think symbolically, we would say the hopes for that were killed in 2014 with the coup.
Yeah.
And you're absolutely right.
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Sanders And The Vote 00:05:33
Dr. Paul, we want to go on to the next topic, which is our favorite anti-war senator, Senator Sanders.
Don't be cynical.
That's not nice.
No, there were times when I was always crossed my fingers and hoped we could work with more of the progressives.
And on a rare occasion, I was able to get something that I could support with Sanders.
But lately, he's gotten much worse, especially since he toes the line and he's willing to listen to Biden.
But you don't listen to Biden because I don't think people know what he's saying.
He doesn't know what he's saying.
So Sanders had a resolution, and you and I talked about it.
We would have, and I would have voted for it because it calls attention to this idiotic war that we support with the Saudis against the Yemenis, you know, with the Yemen war.
All Sanders wants to do is call attention to that, remove the so-called authority, which was not authority for us really to do it, but that's what they hide behind.
So it was at least to get a vote on it.
And they were almost ready to vote.
And all of a sudden, the message came down and said you can't do it.
Pull it off.
The president says so.
And boom, it was gone.
So it has to do with, well, then it gets very, very political.
In a way, you say, well, that's good.
Maybe a few less people would be dying.
But there's no end to this because this was a vote that said that we were absolutely going to protect politically and I guess financially and weaponry the Saudi government because they're the ones who have been attacking Yemen.
So that was hailed as a victory for Saudi Arabia.
And I think that it's a shame that we can't really build on this because the likelihood that this thing would have had much resistance in the Republican Party, my guess would be they wouldn't have gotten a whole lot of votes.
Yeah.
And it's interesting.
I mean, there is a lot to unpack in this whole chapter.
You know, there is some political cowardice, I think, that's evident in Sanders, and it has been for quite some time.
He's not the maverick he likes to put himself up to be.
But, you know, this issue came up a lot, as you know, Dr. Paul, when you were on the Hill with the Iraq War.
And there were several of these special war powers resolution acts.
And the way it's complicated, I won't spend a lot of time talking about it, but it essentially almost guarantees you a floor vote.
And you and Representative Kucinich did this many times, despite your misgivings over the fact that it cites as authority an act that you think is unconstitutional, the war powers resolution.
So it's problematic, but you always decided that the benefit of essentially drawing attention to the war was worth the cost of doing something that wasn't completely kosher.
Maybe.
So here we have Sanders ready to burnish his anti-war credentials and bring this to the floor of the Senate when, as you point out, Biden gives him a phone call and says, What are you doing?
Are you insane?
Don't you understand that my green agenda has destroyed our economy?
We won't drill for oil.
We won't, you know, we won't put any drilling anywhere.
We are dependent on Mohammed bin Salman for everything.
And if we irritate him, I'm going to be toast.
So wake up and smell the coffee.
And Bernie, of course, says, yes, sir, and takes it off the floor.
And he might have added, and Venezuela, we're looking forward to a happy relationship with Venezuela.
We don't want to drill up here and ruin our green environment here.
But Venezuela, we'll go down there.
And you know what?
We have a few business people that's willing to invest.
And all I can think of is colonization.
Once again, we're recolonizing.
They're desperate.
But it's so ironic that Biden can get away with destroying the whole system.
Of course, the economic crisis comes from the bigger picture of the Fed and all.
But when it comes to energy, he did really add fuel to the fire.
I mean, the Fed was a menace, and they still are a menace, but the greenies are a real menace, too.
And that to me is just amazing that he could go even to Venezuela and restore that.
And not much is said about it.
But it just doesn't make any sense.
The only way I can ever get around to just trying to understand this, that their purpose isn't to use common sense.
Their purpose is to cause chaos.
The purpose is to destroy our cities, destroy our country, bankrupt our country, because cultural Marxism teaches that we have to rebuild from the beginning.
We have to destroy what we have.
And that philosophy has been around since Marx was alive, you know.
And they're doing a pretty good job there.
I mean, things are not getting better on the streets.
And I think it's only really beginning.
I think that, you know, the handwriting on the wall is what we see in San Francisco and these other cities.
And the country could end up like that.
People say, well, no, that's not possible.
We have gated communities and we will be protected.
But ultimately, it's very, very dangerous for us here because there will be breakdown of law and order.
And that, to me, is a scary thing.
Closing Thoughts on Inflation 00:04:52
Indeed.
We're going to close with a graphic.
It's funny because when we were talking about the show, we were deciding, do we have a little closure?
I said, I didn't have one.
I didn't have one.
But then I remember that I have a really good one.
And this is an excellent graphic representation of the money that the U.S. government, our money that the U.S. government is sending to Ukraine, if we can queue up that Vimeo video, and we're only going to play a part of it.
Let me set it up before you start playing it.
Each one of these dots, Dr. Paul, represents $100,000 U.S. tax dollars sent to Ukraine.
Now, they're color-coded.
The red is military.
The blue is for the Ukrainian government.
And the orange is for humanitarian aid.
So if you watch this, this video goes on for two solid minutes.
Think about it.
Each one of these dots represents $100,000, which would be considered, I think, an excellent salary for a person, for a family in the United States.
Let's go ahead and just watch it for 15 or so seconds.
Look at this, Dr. Paul.
Each one of those is $100,000.
And this goes on and on and on and on for two solid minutes.
That's a real graphic representation of what the Biden administration and its supporters among Republicans are doing to the American economy and the American taxpayers.
And I am going to close with a brief comment about the meeting today, the Fed's meeting, and the rumors are, and the consensus is that the Fed will lower interest rates by 0.5 instead of 0.75.
But they have led us to believe, or trying to get us to believe, that the Fed believes that an inflation rate next year will be 2%.
And it's so crazy because that's always been the goal for years and years.
If we could only get it up to 2%, because the way markets work, the response is not predictable with a computer.
So I was always making fun of that.
And I said, wait till they get, wait till we get 2%.
You better look quickly because it's not going to last long.
And then all of a sudden, it's up to 8 and 9 and 10%.
They say 7%.
And the one thing the Fed is, you know, when they're willing to admit the truth, they're a little bit baffled because they've raised the interest rates from zero to four.
But if the real price inflation rate is eight or ten, it's not even close.
It's not going to solve the problem.
And they're expressing confusion.
They say, we've been doing this and all.
So we're confused because there's not been a response yet.
But next year it's going to be a response.
But in the meantime, have they changed their policy of still working on this old-fashioned Keynesian viewpoint?
You keep raising interest rates until you really destroy the economy, then prices will drop.
It is so stupid.
And yet, that's the kind of nonsense that's taught in our university.
How many people do you think we met in Washington that were congresspeople that knew much about the Austrian school and sound money school?
I think I know it's less than five.
There was one member who read Mises on the Beach.
Remember that?
Oh, yeah, that's for sure.
But anyway, there'll be an announcement later today.
Gold may go sharply up or sharply down.
These are accurate predictions.
The gold is either going to go up sharply or sharply down.
Stock market is going to go either up sharply or down or stay the same.
And tomorrow, things will not be any better because the statistics will be fudged and rigged and deceived because you can't even believe the figures of when we get, if it does exactly what the government says, they're not going to give you those figures.
You know, if the inflation rate is 12, do you think they're going to put that on the television endlessly?
The people know.
For some people, it's 12 and 15 percent.
So it's not all the same for the same people.
But anyway, that's in addition because it's related to this foreign policy and this spending that's endless in Ukraine is the fact we don't have a penny in the bank.
So we borrow the money from somebody.
And of course, we can't even keep up with paying the interest on the stuff we're borrowing, so we have to borrow more money to pay on the interest on the money we already borrowed.
So that's why I get a little bit pessimistic about what we're doing.
But I'm not pessimistic about what would happen if we accepted a much better economic system and talked about sound money.
There's no reason to be pessimistic then.
But right now, it's up for grabs.
But we're here and we're going to constantly, you know, try to get this message out of peace and prosperity because I believe sincerely that's what people would enjoy.
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