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Nov. 14, 2024 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
32:50
The Case For Radical Changes In US National Defense, With Guest Col. Douglas Macgregor

Col. Douglas Macgregor (ret.) is one of the most innovative thinkers of our time. In today's Liberty Report he explains his recently-published detailed blueprint for a less expensive - and better - US military and a safer America.

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New Strategy for Defense 00:04:49
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With us today, we have Daniel McAdams, our co-host.
Daniel, good to see you today.
Good morning, Dr. Paul.
How are you this morning?
Very good, and we have a very special guest today.
And I'm looking forward to this.
Very appropriate because he probably knows everything what's going to happen now since there's been an election.
But the name of our guest is well known from our viewers, and that's Doug McGregor.
And we consider him an expert on foreign policy and national security and defense.
And that's saying a lot because we have a lot of so-called experts, and they've been around a long time.
And I've run into them for most of my life, thinking about it.
But Doug, is something special?
And Doug, I want to welcome you to the program.
Thank you very much for coming on.
Oh, thank you.
Happy to be here.
Good.
And you've worked hard on trying to develop a strategy and change things, you know, in a reasonable way where you have a goal, is the way I understand it.
And the goal should conform with a goal for peace and also with consideration of what the Constitution is all about and not runaway spending, not runaway intervention, and all these things.
So we're delighted to have you on here.
And tell us a little bit more about some of the strategies you've been working on, because, of course, you talked about that four years ago and further behind.
But hopefully we get a lot more attention this go around with the new administration.
Doug?
Oh, sure.
A few months ago, actually before the election, RFK Jr.'s supporters, his original campaign pack, asked me to put together a paper on taming the warfare state.
What can we do?
This is a juncture in time where we have the opportunity to do new things.
And so I put this together.
It turned out it started off to be a relatively short read, and it grew and grew like Topsy, and it's a very long paper.
But the argument is fairly straightforward, and it's one that you're familiar with, Doctor, and I think Dan is too.
It's first and foremost with this new administration, we need a new strategy, a new military strategy that connects ends and means and also recognizes that the world has changed.
And so I outline a new strategy, and it's an America-first strategy.
It says we defend America.
We're back to hemispheric defense.
We reorient our thinking to defense.
We've been in the business of offensive operations and interventions all over the world, and we have built this giant hegemonic military structure with 44 four-star generals and admirals to manage this force of 1.18 million people and effectively stand ready to meddle in other people's affairs all over the world.
And we all agreed, at least RFK Jr. and his staff agreed, this has got to stop.
So what I do in the paper is I say you've got to do two things.
You have to have a new strategy that is absolutely America first strategy.
And then it acknowledges that we needed a no-first use strategy on the nuclear level.
And instead of building and building and building wasteful expenditures on things we'll probably never use, we need to figure out just what it is we do need to defend ourselves as opposed to invade someone else's country.
And then, of course, the question is, what do you do about all these senior officers who've grown up in this imperial environment?
because that's really what we're talking about, an empire.
And the answer to that is that you alter the structure.
And so you go, according to what I've written into the paper, you go from 43 or 44, four stars down to 11.
And then you contract the numbers of regional unified commands and supporting commands.
In other words, you do what any reasonable person would do in the private sector when they had a bloated overhead left over from the industrial age when they were producing widgets by the millions.
The same thing applies in the military.
Dramatically cut back on the overhead, and you end up offering early retirements to large numbers of three and four star generals who, in all likelihood, will eagerly take it.
And then you begin fashioning a new structure with this new strategy that is not designed to wage offensive warfare.
It's designed to defend the United States, its people, and its interests.
Very good.
Dan.
Yeah, do we have that JPEG?
We can put it up because I think, if I'm not mistaken, we're the first to publish it in public.
And that is on the Ron Paul Institute website.
We put it up this morning.
Russia, Iran, and Middle East Concerns 00:11:45
I don't know.
Do we have that JPEG we can throw up so people can go to RonPaulInstitute.org.
Do we have that back there?
I do not see the JPEG.
Okay.
We don't have it, but we'll send it over here.
But anyway, it's a fascinating article.
I read it again this morning.
It's called Navigating the Fiscal Storm, a New Course for U.S. National Defense.
And there's a lot in there, Doug.
I mean, it is heavy duty.
Neither Dr. Paul nor I are experts in military strategy.
That's why so many people need to rely on you.
But what I really like about it in the beginning is your discussion of the need to change the mission.
So it almost seems from reading it, change the mission, and then everything else will follow logically from that.
And that seems so important that it's missing in so much discussion of how to reform the military.
I mean, I've been wondering when we were going to hear about a new national military strategy.
And thus far, all we've heard is that the agenda is to unconditionally support Israel in its war for regional supremacy, the Greater Israel Project, and we're prepared to take on anybody and everybody that is opposed to Israel.
We've talked about peace in Ukraine, but then we attach all sorts of conditions to it at a point in time where the war is effectively over.
The Russians have won.
They'll continue to advance until they're tired of doing so.
And instead of recognizing Russia's legitimate security interests and also acknowledging the fact that, frankly, strategically, eastern Ukraine has never been an issue for us and will never be in the future, likely, we continue to say, oh, well, we'll have to have a conflict freeze along contact lines.
Well, that's what was done under the Minsk Accords, and the Russians are completely disinterested in that.
What they want and what we should want is a neutral Ukraine, whatever that remaining Ukraine turns out to be.
And tragically, that state's down to about 18 million from almost 40 million.
And this war has utterly and completely destroyed the country.
And I don't know how it will be rebuilt.
I'm sure Larry Fink at Blackwater has some ideas, but I wonder what the Europeans think.
You know, Doug, looking at what came about in Ukraine, and we know there's a war going on and people are die and all the problems and it might go for years.
Just think of what happened in Afghanistan.
But I always say, let's quit, let's stop it.
And you're talking about strategy, and I think your goals are the same as ours.
Why do we get involved with it?
It's a lot harder getting out once you get involved.
And all the special interests, you know, come out of the woodwork.
But I think that the whole thing about starting these wars, how does, you know, I argued and hid behind what I thought was proper when we were going to war in the Middle East.
This is a war, isn't it?
Oh, no, this isn't a war.
And, you know, Trump says it's a police action, all this stuff.
So I think definitions and words are so important.
And what is it?
When does it become a war?
When does the Constitution apply to not fighting a war because we're not supposed to have a war without a lot more permission from the people and from the Congress?
Well, we have two problems, as you know, Dr. Pohl.
One is that we have a population of people who, frankly speaking, pay no attention to what happens beyond America's borders.
And that's not surprising.
You know, as a Spanish general staff officer told me many years ago when I was at Supreme Headquarters of Light Powers Europe, he said, America is not a country, it's a planet.
Well, that's not far from the truth.
We tend to live on our own planet.
And what has happened is a minority of activist persons with powerful financial backers have managed to get control of the apparatus that shapes foreign and defense policy.
The government, for all intents and purposes, has been hijacked.
And they have an agenda that is completely divorced from the interests of the American people.
The American people, as you know, Dr. Paul, have never really been interested in fighting anywhere outside of the United States.
They've always been quite willing to defend our borders, defend the country, and fight someone who was trying to invade us.
But there's no interest in traveling overseas and imposing new regimes on people we don't even know.
That's utterly, completely false.
But this is what we've been doing.
Now we want to stop.
And I think the people that voted for President Trump wanted to stop.
I think he said on more than one occasion, World War III is not going to be begun under my watch.
Well, I hope it's not going to be begun under his watch.
But right now, that looks like we're headed on a path to something very much like that.
You know, when these wars get started, and I call them wars because they are, I always assume that it'll come to an end for some financial reasons.
And sometimes the people at home get disgusted, like they are getting right now.
Why are we spending money in Ukraine and people are needing help here at home?
And Vietnam, I was in the service for five years in the 60s, and that tragedy had a big impact on me.
But Vietnam stopped when the people started demonstrating and going to their Congress.
But once again, the point I make there is why do we have to wait that long?
We have to be as precise as we can about the sending out of the troops.
But what happens, you describe, you know, in the background how these things really get started, some people who have more power and common sense than they should.
But they're the ones who, you know, they set it up and then it has to be financed.
But the Congress then, in essence, does, sort of goes along.
That was one of the arguments against me when I said, don't declare war and this sort of thing.
And they say, it's a declaration of war as long as the Congress sends the money.
And I guess in a way, there's some truth to that.
What do you think about that?
No, I think that's the mentality.
And when I talk to people now, I had someone call me the other day who a retired four-star who seemed to think I was going to be on the Trump team and might be Secretary of Defense.
And I told him, no, that's not going to happen.
Didn't bother to go into any discussion as to why.
But then he said, well, when you get in there, we have to double the defense budget.
This is a historic turning point in the history of the world.
Trump is a world historical figure.
He can win all these wars in the Middle East.
He can have a grand bargain with Russia on and on.
You know, it's just fantasy land.
There's no understanding that the world has changed.
And Americans, Dr. Paul, I do think, are beginning to pay more attention.
But unfortunately, as long as the printing press runs off new dollars and we have what is effectively a shrinking volunteer force, as we call it, because it's not truly professional in the sense of a profession, and Americans are not dying in great numbers, no one will pay attention.
Now, if we get into this war with Iran, which I think is just about inevitable at this point, that will draw us into conflict with Russia.
All the states and countries in the Middle East, they've all coalesced into a united front against Israel.
So we'll be fighting them as well as Russia, and potentially the Chinese will come in simply because they want to keep the Straits of Hormuz open, because they depend very heavily on the oil and natural gas.
So the bottom line is then people may pay attention because we may take losses.
In fact, I predict that we will.
And this is not going to be some hapless group of Arabs in the middle of the desert without air defense, without an army, without anything.
We're now talking about Iran, which is a country of almost 100 million, a major power.
We're not going to overwhelm Iran in a night, which effectively is what the Air Force thinks.
It's not going to happen.
Plus, all you have to do is look at the geography and realize how difficult that would be.
I was going to ask, I mean, what do you think inside the Pentagon, how many people do you think understand the reality?
There have to be some smart people in there.
Understand the reality of what you just said.
How many people do you think get that?
And what would their rank be in the military?
You know, so low-level people or mid-level or if there are any.
There are people, Dan, as you know, there are people in the intelligence services as well as in the military, in the Department of Defense, who know exactly what I'm talking about.
And they're acutely sensitive to it.
But their warnings and their comments and observations are not welcome.
Now, you say, what rank are they?
Well, they range from lieutenant colonel up through, I think, some two stars.
But, you know, you don't reach the top in this current environment unless you've signed on for the agenda.
The agenda right now is that Russia is evil.
We may come to some sort of arrangement in Ukraine, but we're not going to surrender Ukraine, you know, whatever that means.
And we're going to continue the pressure on Russia.
And by the way, we're going to beat Iran into submission, and anybody who gets in the way will be forced to submit as well.
We go through this business of, as Dr. Paul has pointed out on more than one occasion, we either bribe or bully people to get them to do what we want.
But they're there, but they're not going to be heard.
So it doesn't make any difference what they think or what they argue for.
But look, we don't have the capacity right now to fight a major regional war anywhere.
That's the truth.
We've got this thing we call the U.S. Army strung up along the borders of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, down to Romania.
It's absurd.
For what purpose?
They sit there and they wait around to be fed.
This is crazy.
We need to get them out of there and bring them home.
Europeans aren't arming up to invade Russia.
That's not going to happen.
These governments are all going to go away because they failed miserably.
We have severe economic problems at home.
How do we deal with all the needs and consequences?
And on top of this, the president talks about, I want to secure the border, and I don't think he understands really what that entails.
That's not easy because once you cut off the money in great quantities that the drug cartels are used to acquiring, we're going to have wars inside the United States because the cartels are all over our country.
We're going to have a war with criminality.
Where are the forces to fight this?
How do we do this?
And then he wants to pick up and deport people.
Well, I have no objections to that, but what's the plan?
How do you go about it?
And again, this demands enormous quantities of manpower.
That has to come from the Army and the National Guard and ultimately the Marines because we can't treat the Marines as some sort of 9-11 force because it's not.
It has no mission anymore.
There is no amphibious warfare for them.
They're part of the ground force, and we're going to need them.
So, you know, we're a mess, let's put it this way.
We're a complete mess.
And all of this sounds great, but there is, as far as I can tell, no plan.
Yeah.
A Mess, Indeed 00:14:29
I really was interested in the part where you talked about combining, why do we have these, you know, four, five, six different branches of service and why not combine them.
But be and certainly speak to that if you wish, but I do want to bring up one issue.
Now, you handled the issue of too many four-stars in your paper, and you had your own idea about how to deal with the fact that we have too many general officers.
Now, we've heard some floating of some plans in the Trump administration.
They seem to have the same goal of getting rid of too many of these high-ranking officers, but they seem to have a different approach.
Maybe you can explain to our viewers how your approach differs from theirs and why you think yours would be more successful.
Well, I think President Trump has been told to appoint a board, and I presume that people on the board will be either political figures and/or retired four-stars themselves from the various services, and then cull the ranks to eliminate people who are ideologically opposed to Trump and his new administration.
I don't think this is going to work worth a damn.
It's ridiculous.
It'll fail miserably.
You know, Teddy Roosevelt had a problem in the Philippine insurrection.
They had a general over there with the extraordinary name of Smith, and he was responsible for massive crimes against humanity.
He was urging his troops to burn, murder, rape, kill, destroy.
You know, we killed almost a quarter of a million Filipinos in that ridiculous insurrection that we never needed to fight.
To make a long story short, the word got back to newspapers.
Teddy Roosevelt was furious and angry at what had happened.
And so, what did he do?
He appointed a board, and it was a board of generals to determine whether General Smith was really a war criminal.
And guess what happened?
General Smith was acquitted of all charges.
Of course, he wasn't a war criminal.
At that point, Teddy Roosevelt realized what a big mistake he'd made.
He disbanded the board and retired General Smith in disgrace.
The point is, these people can't reform themselves.
The key is not a board.
The key is a structure.
You simply say we don't need any more than, as I point out, 11 four-stars.
We'll decide who those 11 will be, but in the meantime, everybody who has three years on station is eligible to retire.
Please send us your papers.
You're retiring.
And then you turn around to the three-stars, and you have a decision to make there.
Perhaps it would be best if most of you retired.
You go through and you do a study and you say, well, where did all of these four and three-star billets come from?
Well, it comes out of the Cold War and the massive growth since Goldwater Nichols and the numbers of commands and general officer slots, this huge bureaucracy.
It's the enemy of effectiveness.
It's the enemy of efficiency.
But instead of picking out individuals and say, we don't like you because you don't agree with this, it's a blanket thing.
We also have too many senior executive service types all over the place that are equally overpaid and are not really needed.
So you've got to get the whole, the only way to get at this is through structural change.
And of course, structural change is something of no interest to politicians, particularly the ones that are coming into office right now, I suspect, because they don't understand it.
But if there's no general officer slot for a four-star, then the four-star is gone.
You know, General Marshall said it best during the war.
He had all sorts of senators and congressmen coming to him and they said, well, we want you to promote another four-star.
Can't you promote our friend General so-and-so to four-star and so forth.
And we only had seven four-stars, admirals and generals, for a force of 12 million men for most of the war.
We promoted people at the end of the war, but those promotions were honorifics.
They weren't tied to any bureaucratic power structure.
And he said to the senators and congress, look, gentlemen, I don't have time to argue.
I've got to fight and win the war.
I've got enough four-stars as it is.
He was right.
You know, every four-star thinks he's God's gift.
You know, that he has this, you know, what is it, divine right to focus all the assets, all the resources, and everybody on his little piece of the globe.
We've got to get out of this business.
The other thing is we've got to restore diplomacy to its rightful place.
Everybody treats the State Department now with little attention.
Everything is focused on the Pentagon and through the Department of Defense.
That's not a good thing.
You know, what you describe, what comes to my mind is it's difficult to handle this because I think we're dealing with an empire.
And nobody recognizes that, and people don't want to admit it.
But, you know, profits and power are powerful motivators.
You know, that brings up the subject of the military-industrial complex.
It isn't like there's 12 or 10 or 5 of them that get together and have monthly meetings.
I don't think that probably it works.
But the big guys do coordinate.
And we, and when Daniel was working with me in Washington, he was on the receiving end and I was of the lobbyists.
But they didn't give us much trouble because after a while, they didn't bother coming to see us.
But the military and industrial complex is a bunch of lobbyists coming in and they're looking for higher profits and a lot more power.
So we have to be careful and say, well, you can't lobby because they have, you know, to many degrees, you know, a right to talk to their members of Congress.
But the lobbyists are powerful.
But I think what we have to have, and I think you're very much aware of this, we need people in there that are willing to resist it, you know, to stand up to these people.
And that's why I think the bigger picture of what kind of a foreign policy are we having?
And what are we supposed to do?
Do we have an empire right now?
If you don't support the empire, I was on the receiving end of that on several occasions because I didn't want to go along with those Middle Eastern wars.
But there's too many people who picture this as very, very necessary.
And I think the superpatriotism, if you don't do exactly what it is, then you don't support the troops.
That, to me, was very frustrating.
I don't know what you had to say about that.
Yeah, well, listen, you're right.
First of all, we've got to get rid of these things like Africa Command, Indo-Pacific Command, European Command.
Just think about it.
That's your empire, Dr. Paul.
Those things need to go away, and you end up with four regional unified commands that are focused on defending the United States and North America.
One for the North, one for the South, one for the East, and one for the West.
That's it.
And we can handle ourselves that way.
So, again, structure is the answer.
You kill this monstrous structure that has no value.
You know, you reminded me of something else.
I grew up during the Vietnam War, and of course, you were in it in the sense that you were on active duty briefly with the Air Forces, I recall.
And my grandfather had fought in the First World War.
And he was one of these people that went from private to second lieutenant in six months.
You know how bad things were.
We had no real military at that time.
But he came back from it convinced it had been a terrible mistake, that we never needed to fight it.
And so every time my mother would say, well, we have to support the troops in Vietnam, he would say, if you support the troops, bring them home.
There you go.
That's the answer.
I did have one question, but I just wanted to go back to one point you made because I think it needs remarked upon, which was a great point, which is that you said that most of these people in these positions don't really know very much about the world outside the United States.
And I think that's true of most Americans as well.
And you referenced specifically Israel and Ukraine.
And I think that's such a good point because we get, it seems to me at least, and it's driven by, you know, DC and special interests, what have you, but we seem to adopt the country.
You know, we've adopted Israel and we're going to do everything we can according to what we think they need.
The same is true with Ukraine.
But look what's happened to these countries that they've adopted.
They're in shambles.
We can talk about the Israeli economy is a disaster.
They're losing troops hand over foot.
They're in a terrible situation.
They're surrounded by people that hate their guts now, way worse than before.
The same in spades can be said about Ukraine.
So maybe we should stop adopting countries that are not our own because we don't know how to run them, obviously.
Whose side are we really on?
Wasn't it Henry Kissinger who said the only thing worse than being an enemy of the United States is to be a friend?
Yeah, that's probably true.
And he had a point.
No, Dan, you're right.
And sadly, we know from history that at some point in the timeframe, what we treated like the 51st state, whether it was Vietnam or Iraq or Afghanistan or anywhere else, suddenly doesn't matter anymore.
And the truth is, it never did.
You know, this is the stupidity of arguing about Taiwan.
Who in their right mind wants to travel 6,000 miles to defend this island that is right off the coast of China that has immense strategic importance to China, just as we pay attention to what happens in Cuba.
I mean, it's just absurd.
You know, we don't want to go to war with somebody over an island.
That's their business and other people that live in the region.
We're unwilling to let it alone.
We forget that before we were around for several thousand years, the world got along pretty well without us.
For sure.
I did want to go into the weeds a little bit more, pardon me, because I think there's one part of it that was really quite interesting, and it addresses a problem that we have, I think, at least to me in a very unique way.
You addressed the problem we have of recruitment and force retention in the military, and I think you have some interesting solutions.
We're getting a little close to our time, but if you can maybe tell our audience a couple of those ideas you've had, because I think they're excellent.
Well, one of them, of course, is I think we need to regionally recruit.
We need a stationing plan.
We need to bring most of our troops back to the United States.
And then people can operate around and live around garrisons.
These garrisons become home bases.
So wherever they go for training or deployment, they know they're always going to come back to the same place.
And you're not moving tens of thousands of people every day.
Another example is the Marines guarding embassies.
There are about 32 to 33,000 Marines in transit all the time moving to and from embassies.
These are young men, for the most part, 18, 19, 20 years of age.
They're infantrymen.
They belong in infantry formations.
And today, we have to have specialists with specialized technology to defend the embassies that we have.
And they're much better off doing that than pulling Marines into this.
I know the Marines love this duty, but it's counterproductive.
You know, when we recruit, we need to recruit people based on a standard.
If people say to me all the time, well, we can't find enough people to meet the standard, then let's get smaller.
We'll get better.
People will respect us.
That's number one.
Number two, for every three years of honorable service, whether you stay for three years, nine years, 21 years, 33 years, whatever it turns out to be, for every three years of honorable service, you get one year tax-free, federal and state.
Wow.
That's important.
You know, then suddenly people that are actually ambitious, that want to build their own businesses, they want to start a new life.
They say, listen, I'm going to serve in the armed forces for three years or six years.
That gives me one or two years of no taxes where I can build up my business and be very successful.
I mean, we want people like that.
We don't expect everyone to stay forever.
The second thing is we need to also think carefully about the composition.
Let's think carefully about who we want in the force to do what.
We're dealing with an old World War II dinosaur.
It doesn't make any sense.
It hasn't made sense for years.
So we need a new way to recruit and organize.
People talk about, well, we need more women to do what?
We've got a lot of women right now.
They have huge problems, medical problems, deployment problems.
But there are things that women are ideally suited to do.
Right now, you could put women to run all of the unmanned aerial vehicles all over the place.
They're brilliant pilots.
They're better as pilots, by the way, for physiological reasons than men are.
So what's wrong with that?
But don't force them into combat roles where they're a drag, a burden on the unit.
They can't keep up.
And there's no reason why they should be compelled to keep up.
In other words, let's be smart about what we're doing.
And we're not.
So those are the kinds of things that we need to think about.
And then you have the service academies.
And Lord knows I love Virginia Military Institute in West Point.
But these places have changed dramatically.
Today, West Point is just a place where boys and girls wear uniforms and go to class.
You know, do we really want these 19th or 18th century cadet schools to turn out officers anymore?
Don't we want to re-examine how we train, educate, organize, develop officers?
Nobody wants to go there.
I think it's time to do that.
There are a lot of questions about education right now, as you know, Dr. Polvo.
I think I've heard you speak about it.
What does the four-year education give you now?
Is that really what we want to do in the future with service academies?
I don't have all the answers, but we need to start changing the way we look at things.
Doug, we're going to be signing off.
And in a minute, I want to give you a chance to give us our final statement.
And we always are looking for a little bit of uplifting.
Prosperity's Destructive Shadow 00:01:28
Give us a positive thing about how everything is going to be perfect next week.
Just kidding, of course, but I want to first really thank you for participating, not only today, but over the years, because it's been very helpful.
And it just turns out that our audience likes to hear from you.
And I'm sure we will have a very good response from our program today.
So thank you very much for helping the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.
And of course, that's Daniel's baby.
He's the one that has all his idea.
And I said, well, I guess I could go along with this.
So once again, Staley, thank you very much.
Give us a final word.
We need a strategy that recognizes that war is something to be avoided.
War is not profitable.
War is wasteful and destructive.
Our forces are worn out, overstretched, and anachronistic.
So let's cut the war business and understand that prosperity, economic prosperity, and a healthy society are the foundation of our real power in this country.
So avoiding war is critical.
That should be the organizing imperative of our strategy.
Boy, that's a wonderful statement.
And I want to thank our viewers for tuning in today, as you do on a daily basis.
And our numbers are going up, which we like because we depend on word of mouth and the spreading of a message.
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