War, Peace, and Politics with Victor Davis Hanson | GoodFellows

[Music] it's friday may 20th 2022 and welcome back to goodfellows the hoover institution broadcast examining social economic political and geopolitical concerns i'm bill whelan i'm a hoover distinguished policy fellow i'll be your moderator today happy report that we have a full complement of good fellows joining us today that would include the historian neil ferguson the economist john cochran geo strategy slash historian h.r mcmaster that's not enough fire power for you we have one more guest for you today that is our friend and colleague victor davis hanson victor is of course the martin ely anderson uh senior fellow here at the hoover institution he is a historian and a classicist a prolific author and columnist and in his spare time he somehow manages to run a family farm he is a multi-generational farmer in california in the san joaquin valley victor thanks for joining us today thank you all for having me well victor i think since uh you're talking to four california transplants and you literally are rooted in the california soil let's talk about one very pernicious issue for california and that would be the drought it is going to be a very long a very hot a very dry summer in california and for those not familiar with california the drought is a multifaceted problem we have a governor who is encouraging people to voluntarily restrict their water use of course california's have turned around and increased their water use we have environmentalists who do their best to block any and all efforts to add water storage uh you have angelenos who just do not want to have their lawns turned brown and their cars unwashed on top of that victor the less water we have in our dams less hydropower which means we're looking at the very distinct possibility of uh rolling blackouts this summer so victor you look at california all the time you need water not just to have a very fertile front yard because it actually matters to your crops explain the drought in california and how it ties into the larger issue of california just not able to address its problems well two-thirds of californians live where one-third the pres precipitation the opposite is true one-third live where it was two-thirds so our ancestors i.e in the 1960s in the california water project and the federal central valley project had this huge transference and we finished the projects except the tertiary reservoirs which would have given us about 10 to 15 million acre feet temperance flat sites los banos grandes what that meant was this december we had the wettest december on record in snow and rain and we filled some of the reservoirs but we let most of that water go out there was not enough storage and because of fish concerns environmental concerns oxygenation in the delta we're letting water to the as i speak go out to the pacific ocean and not go into say san luis reservoir so it's thought partly that we're in a drought we have now since december we've been we've had some record low months as far as precipitation we had a pretty good may but it wasn't enough and so what's happening now is all over the state people are drawing water pumping and they're not getting any irrigation deliveries whatsoever the california water project that started out as agricultural uh for the most part is now and almost entirely municipal so when you go by i-5 and you see that aqueduct it's going to san jose it's going to santa barbara it's going to uh san luis obispo then it goes over into pyramid lake to l.a but there's not anything being diverted for agriculture which means they're pumping which means they're growing down on the water table my well out here uh the water table if we had this conversation five years ago was 49 feet today it's 95 feet and that meant i had an old well 60 feet i got had one 120 and then i finally gave up and drilled 450 feet so and our my two ag wells have been going non-stop since uh i don't know may 1st 24 hours a day and they pump about 900 gallons a minute for so that's what everybody's doing the person with the longest straw wins i guess and it's very expensive because we're paying 27 cents now kilowatt hour on ag rates so it's not sustainable almond prices are historical lows it's part of the general malaise as you pointed out eight miles over there is high speed rail 15 billion dollars not one uh foot of track laid yet stonehenge yeah stonehenge that would have paid for all the tertiary reservoirs we could have had 10 million acre feet of storage for that they're talking in about maybe stopping the dismantling of diablo canyon the huge gives us 10 of our clean all of our energy 10 of our injury but clean it's a nuclear power plant that's been pretty good near san luis obispo um so i don't see any way out of it because we are driven by ideology and not empiricism and the ideological framework is fueled by six trillion dollars in silicon valley market capitalization so they're immune from criticism they're immune from worries about their own lives they have enough money to insulate them from the consequences of their own ideology can i let me uh i do see some sparks of hope for example around real estate and sooner or later perhaps uh this will come to uh to water uh california has not built a single dam since 1955 as you mentioned the whole project we've built some population since then what we do have goes out though our real problem is not so much uh where the water is but when the water is california has plenty of water certainly compared to say israel or australia uh we but if you have the water comes in the winter and you have to store it uh now one possible i'm curious on your thoughts on replenishing groundwater that's a place it's possible to store it uh i'm also curious on your thoughts of uh um how does the water market work my understanding as an economist is that it works pretty well in australia and it's a disaster here if you as an almond farmer if as you said the price of almonds is really low if you want to sell your water to los angeles my understanding is you can't do it and that that certainly is one key to at least using the water we have in a reasonable uh and productive way yeah well there's this new field of subterranean storage and one of our hoover donors jim jamison has a company where they will go out and put cisterns underneath the ground and then in periods in january or february pump that down or drain it down into there force that water in and then draw it back out and it has the advantage of avoiding evaporation from the surface and that's a new field and it's starting what you said is applicable say before two years ago by that i mean those water contracts say western's water district at 40 to 50 dollars an acre foot and the market price is probably 600 those were still maybe 10 percent of those contracts are being honored and then people were selling them but that's over with there's no i think they got zero allotments so almost every there is no surface what i'm trying to say is right now they're from my point of view from what when i read the newsletters every day there isn't really no surface water being sold but there is a free market that's starting the problem is that when you have almonds which are 1.4 million acres and they get down to 1.53 and you're paying 500 per acre foot you're losing money so what's happening is that whole corridor the 5 million acres along the coast range the so-called west side that has no ground water it's it's 1500 feet deep and it's too it's prohibited to pump what i mean by that is here if i turn on a pump at 90 feet uh for two dollars an hour i can get as i said eight or 900 gallons a minute you you get 200 gallons a minute for 200 an hour over there so it doesn't make sense at the price so i think what we're going to witness is all of that land on the side uh east of i-5 as you go from the bay area to la is going to go revert back to row crop whether that's cotton or wheat and that would mean that each year if there's not water then they won't plant this problem now is if there's not water they lose twenty thousand dollars an acre in investment the trees will die and i think they're gonna if you go by there in certain places you'll see whole blocks of almonds they're either dead or they're being ground up and removed or there'll be orchards where they'll say you know what this is the most productive part of the i'll put all my water over here and cut off over there so the market is is reacting and there is no more subsidized water and deliveries that i know of and mike my irrigation is a repair it's a local irrigation from district consolidated irrigation from the sierra nevada we haven't had a delivery in two years so everybody is pumping neal the sacramento right now the state is running a 97 billion dollar surplus to put that in context apple last year its net profit was 93 billion dollars uh about two thirds of that money neo comes from about one half of one percent of the state population wealthy people and yet the state at the same time seems to do his best to try to drive wealthy people out of the state there's a distinct possibility neil the bear market approaching and perhaps a lengthy recession that california could soon be going from black to red are you going to be surprised if that happens well i sometimes think california is aspiring to be the argentina of the 21st century argentina at the beginning of the 20th century was one of the world's rich economies and then it spent the rest of the century committing a variety of forms of financial and monetary suicide mainly because of the the power of of the different interest groups that came to dominate argentine politics and california seems a very similar case its potential is perhaps the greatest of any comparably sized region on earth and yet its political economy has a sort of death wish quality to it we have a one-party state there isn't effective uh opposition by the republican party the party the democratic party in california can survive more than survive live high on the hog with donations from the wealthy elite and the result is kind of multi-layered craziness uh at the state level uh all the way down to the local level to the level of public schools as well as the craziness that california exports in the form of its politicians uh nancy pelosi uh kamala harris and so we're witnessing kind of super argentina uh that is in fact at some point either going to self-correct at some point californians are either going to say to themselves this craziness has to stop we need we need to clean up california politically if if it's to have an economic future or if that doesn't happen then california is going to become a place uh where the wealthy elite don't want to live anymore uh and then you're left with that that enormous uh red ink scenario that you just hinted at bill but we're not quite there yet but the exodus is easy to exaggerate because a few big names get the headlines in truth i don't think we've really seen a big enough drain of wealth from the state uh to meaningfully hurt the finances when times are good but as the economy heads towards quite likely recession maybe later this year more likely next year that that may change and the finances may start to to look rockier but i i can't in the end figure out which it's going to be and this is what's hard about doing history in real time is is it actually capable of correcting itself the united states collectively has tremendous powers of self-repair i'm sitting here in new york as you may possibly have worked out and new york when i first came here which was back in 1981 when i was but a lad was a pretty messed up city and it kept being messed up for much of the the the rest of the decade but but it got its act together even although it somehow slipped back it's a reminder that you can you can go quite low and and turn things around maybe california can do that maybe san francisco can do it because we haven't talked about the urban disaster of california we've only really talked about the agricultural rural disaster but i don't know i'm kind of i i'm not certain it can self repair i i wonder whether it's actually just going to be argentina in the end let me put in that two two words uh and and i'll feel channel hr a little bit for hope and then we'll turn to hr for hope it's not so much the wealthy elite their pockets of california will remain nice retirement communities you know look at carmel there will always be rich people there uh it is the productive elite that are are leaving fast and taking their businesses with them because as as about a place it is it's a fine place to live if you have money but it's not a great place to run the business and that ultimately is i think what is going to really hurt uh california in the near term uh the stock market is going down and what's going down fastest are all the tech and green darlings located in california and a large amount of that uh budget surplus comes from capital gains taxes so uh don't that really just to emphasize the mechanism for what neil was talking about uh that that could uh the stock market continue going down especially the tech and green stocks and california will be uh will discover the limits of its finances soon but the real problem isn't so much a bankrupt state government that can't print its own money we're not we don't have inflation as a way out like argentina did well we only have default as a way out uh but i really worry about the productive uh uh people leaving um a question for you john and i don't know the answer and you may cap capital gains tax is a big part of uh what is keeping gavin newsom rolling in uh in dollars uh for the reason that you've just given that party's over those huge capital gains that we've seen in and around silicon valley uh really over a sustained 20-year period are disappearing in a puff of bearish smoke right yeah not so much bearish uh puff of high interest rate smoke um it's very natural what's going on in the stock market you re as as real interest rates go up prices of assets go down and that's houses and that's stocks and especially prices of long duration assets something where the cash flows are uh perhaps imaginary but certainly long delayed is going to be more hit by interest rate rises it's perfectly natural what's happening and that suggests it's not going to go away reverse itself anytime soon it's not about sort of a recession coming or something of the sort and just one final economics question because we're on economics um and the the democratic party's response to the problem of inflation which of course is what's caused the rates to be uh put up by the fed is hand people money to offset higher prices that doesn't sound like something you would teach in in an econ course no no this is absolutely hilarious the inflation was caused almost certainly even you know left and right are realizing the inflation was caused by the government handing people money so what do we do about it we hand people more money printed money and borrowed money especially now this is not just a democratic party most of europe is doing the same thing and we especially hand people money to buy energy which we have made artificially uh expensive in all sorts of ways uh it's been that now here i'll turn it over to you historians it's been from even from my amateur historian economic historian point of view it's been hilarious to see all the excuses and bogeymen and and witch hunts about inflation that i'm sure diocletian came up with with his inflation what was it the sixth century it's the hoarders it's the profiteers it's greed it's collusion the chicken farmers have gotten together oh it's putin's price hike it's not my fault the dog ate my homework jeff business we are we're gonna have price controls it's we are replaying the 1970s as farce i hear there's a good crosby stills and nash concert coming this weekend uh you know elizabeth warren wants price controls on on energy especially uh you know bring back the gas lines and i hope you have a good uh 1970s cruiser that you can go park in front of the gas station the argentina analogy works for the all that too john subsidizing things in the price controls right absolutely yeah hr i'm sitting in charleston south carolina mount pleasant south carolina actually in this state is governed by a chap named h d mcmaster now relax i'm not nominating you to run for governor of california i like you and not dare do that to you but it does beg this question you were talking about a state of 40 million people it needs a leader it needs a general to lead the army but can you lead an army of 40 million people hr well it you have to have certain leadership qualities right you have to you have to be able to to frame complex problems and come up with real solutions instead of non-solutions based on ideology which is what we're talking about here uh and so i just as we bridge from economics you know into into politics i'd like to ask you bill and victor those who follow state politics what you think the prospect is for correction you know i you see an inkling of it uh in in san francisco by voting out the school board you know for example you see people like michael schellenberger who wrote the book san francisco you know running for governor you see rick caruso in la saying okay enough of this lawlessness and you know the narrative about defunding police when you know when when his this many of the stores that he was owned were being systematically you know looted uh by criminal gangs so so i i you know let's not forget our own lanny chen let's not forget oh yeah of course yeah absolutely absolutely so our our own lady chen uh so so it could be the the state what is the title is it controller controller controller so you know okay guys you tell us what are the prospects i mean i think you have to educate the population you have to galvanize people i think a part of the california population that probably doesn't buy into all this nonsense are recent immigrant citizens right who's you know they don't share the values and the ideology of of the people who are you know who are destroying our school system and trying to rename abraham lincoln you know high school you know or uh or defunding the police or or you know the the various degrees of social justice warriors who are actually inflicting harm with these nonsensical policies on energy and water and so forth so all right if i can if i can just put in another you know an optimistic note here too i mean a very large number of of californians volunteer to serve in our military and they serve with great distinction and then come back to their communities as veterans i mean a statistic that i saw over the last couple of years that that may surprise you is that one out of nine of every uh of the service men and women who have given their lives to defend our nation since the mass murder attacks of september 11 2001 or californians so those those californian veterans come back uh with a sense of duty to their country and make tremendous contributions in the state hoover institution has a veterans fellowship which i'm really proud of hoover for having and what they do is they they br they take proposals from veterans who want to make a difference in their communities and in this country and and then give them the opportunity to have access to the resources of hoover and more broadly at stanford to mature that project and then roll it out at the end of that that fellowship year two of those fellows worked on on on california uh live fires and and you'll see you can probably find a seminar on that after today i think it comes out today uh but it's just one example of of really a bottom-up you know citizens of the state saying okay enough of this let's roll up our sleeves and get and get to work it is impressive so california goes to the polls on june the 7th and we'll see what message the voters send and victory meanwhile other states around america have been voting um i'm trying to read the results have been as have been john and neil in hr and i'm a little baffled on the one hand if you're looking at this from donald trump's perspective the glass is half full you've got jd vance winning the senate primary in ohio on the other hand the glass is half empty uh brian kemp the incumbent governor in georgia is going to probably win uh his primary next week and if the polls are correct he's going to win by 30 points victor which is a slap in trump's face so you watch these elections as do we what are what are your thoughts on this yeah i think i agree with you i i think it's hard because there were so many i mean uh kemp trump didn't i mean by every standard kent follows the mega agenda i think he didn't get the endorsement because of an in he had a vendetta against him and there was no way in the world purdue was going to win that and i think he endorsed purdue because he was angry at kim but on every issue kemp followed what trump otherwise would approve of there's a couple of things though i think basically it's a confirmation of the trump agenda that would be deregulation low taxes energy everything opposite of what's going on now and a populist inclusive party that's not the old uh republican silk stalking party however i think people are starting to think that they can have the trump agenda with someone you know not necessarily trump and i don't know if that's desantis i think he comes out a winner of this because i think people because if some of what you said is it was a mixed bag and i think he's waiting in the wings to see what's going to happen the second thing is there were far more and i'm just reading some things by henry olsen and others seemed like republican turnout was much greater than in a percentage-wise than than past elections than was democratic so it shows you there's more enthusiasm but all in all i think we're headed to i think a historic correction in the midterms in november and it'll be interesting to see what i'm not sure trump is going to run again i think he's worried about his age i think he's worried about health issues i think he's he's gonna wait and put his finger in the wind and see how things are but it's there's something out there i can't quite put my finger on it's not anti-trump it's just thank you trump for refashioning the republican party in a more inclusive fashion with issues that matter but maybe we can have somebody younger without the chaos i think that's the message to be the be to be the leader neil what are your thoughts i agree with victor i think we're seeing clearly that the trump and trumpism can exist separately from one another i don't think you could look at these results and say trump's endorsement is the secret source of success uh it's kind of patchy how his interventions have have played out with jd vance uh maybe the only really clear cut beneficiary uh and you know jd vance's other important backers trump is not the only big player in republican politics you could argue that peter thiel's just a bigger part of jd vance's success may be bigger i think victor's right and i also hope he's right because i think there's a good reason why only on one previous occasion in american history uh has a president served two non-consecutive terms grover cleveland back in the late 19th century i don't think the u.s electorate by and large likes uh people to have second acts uh and my sense is that a candidate who's younger who has perhaps a little bit more experience as a governor uh can do much better in 2024 one final point in a way the issue landscape has changed and we saw that already uh in virginia uh education has become a huge part of the revulsion against progressivism because where are progressives doing the harm that is most lasting and most troubling they're doing it in public schools as well as of course in private schools where the ideology of progressivism is just as rampant that's not a great donald trump issue let's be honest whereas other uh i think other figures particularly ron desantis know exactly how to play these issues and to to appeal to a really broad range of uh of voters including hispanic and african-american voters so my sense is that this is indeed good news for uh for team desantis i was talking to a very experienced observer of american politics far more experienced than i am who said you know what it could be desantis newsome in 2024 just to segue from our last uh conversation uh and and that would appear that would be an interesting a contest and i doubt very much that any democratic candidate is gonna stand much chance in 2024 but let's not underestimate newsome's ability uh to to perform uh he certainly would be a far more formidable opponent for desantis than president biden or vice president harris right you chime in um but some of the commentaries i've seen was has been interesting uh trump is is in some ways following his base as he always has that was his great talent is figuring out quickly what what people wanted but he's not really anointing kings he's trying to follow who the kings are and you can kind of see that results i think that everyone is tired of the great steel of 2020 and that's not happening and i think people recognize that they're as a result of trump's actions between the election and january uh 20th he simply is not electable and people want to win uh and i think that is you know people are making that shift from person to policy for a reason fact perhaps we should be more upset about 2016 than 2020 uh given the way things are going but i want to challenge uh to challenge you all a little bit on on the wonders of trump uh policy um a lot of it was great uh some of our own senior fellows uh kevin hassett for example was working at the council of economic advisers and doing some wonderful deregulatory stuff behind the scenes uh but there are some yeah you know there is an isolationism in the trump populism uh big tariff barriers which are now causing us troubles with things like infant formula uh and of course uh uh the uh you know pulling out of afghanistan was not joe biden's idea it was joe biden's catastrophe uh but it was trump's idea and i i sense a big uh a big worry about where are we going in ukraine um and and that's going to be i think that's going to be a difficult issue for a populist neo-isolationist party going forward so i'm not it's not so obvious that you just take the edit copy uh policies of uh 2020 uh 2019 and edit paste them into 2024 and have a coherent agenda that everybody's going for i would just we'll reply to that i think the public whereas uh trump was probably going to get out of afghanistan or leave us very tiny irrelevant residual force the public blames joe biden for the manner in which that happened that was at the beginning and and correctly so correctly and then i would also say that um in addition to that ukraine uh everybody i think supports the idea of helping ukraine but there is a golden mean there when you're just eliminating debate basically and rushing through 40 billion dollars and you have people like colonel venman talking about offensive operations inside russia people are forgetting that this is the first land war in history in which a nuclear power is directly involved on the european continents never happened before and the idea that we have some zealots that want you know no-fly zones so there's there's going to be a situation where at some point the ukrainians i think because of their they're drawing on a billion person nato and it's you know a lot of resources and weaponry and for some reason thank god the russians are not hitting those supply lines as they come across the border they're not able to or they're not doing it but as ukraine gets small uh stronger and stronger and there's internal divisions inside russia that i think are going to start to appear they're going to have an existential question about these border predominantly russian-speaking borderlands that were illegally acquired by putin they're probably at some point be able to to do make some pretty good progress and then they're going to have a problem and that is they keep going across the border and saying god did this or something and attack russia and how and what do you do i mean what is the idea so victor why are you portraying ukraine as an aggressor i mean they're defining their government i know you said what you said they're going across the border i mean you're living inside russia they have to hit inside russia yeah right okay they have to hit i agree but i'm saying i didn't say they were an aggressor i said they did operations inside a nuclear power i'm not talking about morality or anything else i'm just talking about real politic if you've got a a nuclear power involved in a land war controlled by somebody who is pretty ill and you're conducting operations to limit his aggression but inside russian territory and you're doing it through us intelligence and you have people in the u.s intelligence community that are leaking that they're bragging about taking out an assassinating general then you're sit you're getting to a situation in which you're really upping the ante we've never been in that situation before i mean nobody i don't care who they are knows what the consequences of that is going to be i would say i would say victor you know who upped the ante is vladimir putin he update he up to annie in 2003 when he poisoned a presidential candidate he upped the ante when he conducted a sustained campaign of political subversion that sparked the modern revolution then he invaded the country in 2014 you know he continued to to to prosecute the war nobody in this context he's the one who's rattling the the nuclear saber and you know i've just got to say i mean he has to know that first of all i don't think nuclear weapons are usable in ukraine right the winds blow to the east you know and and what is the viable target is going to commit mass murder with one of the most destructive weapons on earth against slavic peoples i mean what is what is going to be what would be the military advantage he would gain from doing so because what he would i think he has to recognize that it's a suicide weapon for him you know and and so i i just think that whereas you were pointing out i think some some you know some idiocy on the part of people in our government you know who leaked you know this intelligence you want it to look big you know when they're talking reporters and you're right about all that but i think the overall context is the person who is escalating this is vladimir putin and actually though you know from he has the most to lose uh if this if this conflict were to expand into the black sea for example but it wasn't logical given the status of the russian military to think they could have a shock and awe take out kiev in four days and and that was crazy to begin with and people had advised him and that was crazy and yet he did it and he did it probably because you know we had asked him to pump oil or we had told him not to hit these uh cyber targets but these cyber attacks were okay or we we put a temporary hold on offensive weapons again but whatever the problem is he's not acting rational and i'm not saying that's an excuse that you don't yourself be rational i'm all for pushing him out of ukraine i'm just suggesting that when you have a lot of people talking about cross-border operations under mother russia on its land whatever the justified pretext then you're you have escalated whether that's the right word or not you're in a new situation and i don't know what he's going to do i don't think he knows what he's i don't think he's i don't think he knows what he's going to do okay let's get neal on this before john asks his question i want to agree with victor but but to to slightly change the focus i don't think the nucleus scenario is as likely as it was a few weeks ago because i don't think that the russian military would carry out the order uh if putin were together and that he he would need their compliance it's a two-key system effect but i think there are other aspects of our strategy that are risky that aren't getting as much attention so if you think about the the explicit strategy of weakening russia if you think about where we're going with this i think it's into pretty dangerous um unknown territory earlier today i was speculating on another call about the point at which we would make uh missiles available to the ukrainians to sink uh more of russia's black sea fleet within minutes the story broke on reuters that that's exactly what we're thinking of doing to end the blockade of odessa so the escalation of this war not just in terms of the tens of billions of dollars that the u.s has now committed to the ukrainian war effort but in terms of the quality and scale of weaponry we're making available to kiev i think is is leading us into somewhat uh unknown territory what do we mean by weakening russia are we clear in our minds that regime change is in fact a desirable objective uh it seems to to me that the by administration is quite open to that and i don't think biden's warsaw speech was a slip of the tongue the entire speech was in fact a call for another 1989 to happen but but this is actually very risky and by the standards of cold war one uh it's almost done fathomably risky uh at the time of the first cold war no american president would have called for the overthrow of the russian leader i also think we we have to ask ourselves what the the grand strategy is here and this is a question i'd like to throw at victor and hr are we fundamentally using ukraine uh as a proxy war to signal to china keep your hands off taiwan there are certainly people in the administration who think that way it is not an accident that joe biden is off to asia visiting u.s allies in asia i think part of what is driving the armament of ukraine is in fact a strategy that is mainly concerned with china but one consequence of this is of course to drive russia entirely into the arms of china and ensure that the russian resources will be available at bargain basement prices to the chinese government so my sense is it's not so much the nuclear threat i'm less worried about that than i was a few weeks ago it's more that i'm not quite sure where this takes us but you're absolutely right victor to emphasize that that it's a risky strategy that's being pursued here and i must say when i hear the french president and the german chancellor say we should really be trying to get a ceasefire now i'm inclined actually to agree with that i i i don't like where we're going here because i think it's fraught with with risk well i i want to disagree with that strongly uh this is our last chance for people to believe what we say in 1994 we said we guarantee the territorial integrity of ukraine if you give up your nukes and that means crimea that means the dawn bus since then where have we been we have been one line in the sand in syria we sold out the kurds uh you know we pulled out of afghanistan after a trillion dollars not tens of billions of dollars uh and now that what worries me the only respectable and i can see is the territorial integrity of ukraine including crimean donbass and no ceasefire permanent war permanent division if anyone's going to believe us again which you know the middle east they why are they not not on america's side because they've seen that we don't mean anything we say that's what i think was was worst about the statements that our new our new war aims are to permanently weaken russia and regime change in russia is that that's that is in incredibly dangerous for just that reason it what we needed was saddam hussein number two we're going uh we're gonna roll back every single inch of the territory of ukraine and stop at the border and make it absolutely clear this stops at the border that's you know what does russia get for her nuclear arms that's that this stops at the border now there is this problem of course that supplies come to russia so the ukrainians are going to be they're going to be attacking supplies that come through russia but they're not going to be invading russian territory now that that's where i wanted to go go a little bit to my historical question um we how can we need this has to be won by the west meaning ukraine fills out its territory other otherwise you know we don't mean any otherwise the message to xi jinping is we invade and then we'll have some negotiated settlement and divide something in sanctions and so forth uh this we either this time we actually mean it or else we're never going to mean it ever again but how does russia lose this is we've had this we've welcomed by the way victor to our weekly conversation on how does russia lose and it did occur to me going back to saddam hussein was a useful one because he was a dictator and he lost a war and we've been worried about the scenario we've been worried about is is a dictator loses a war uh a dictator can't afford to lose a war and so we'll lob nuclear weapons because his alternative is not very pleasant he's not going to wake up the next morning internally yet saddam hussein managed to lose a war and nonetheless remain as dictator the limited war that was very clear would stop right at the borders so um back to you guys uh can dictators lose a war this is i think the real danger uh we have to win we and ukraine have to win this war meaning russia is out of all the borders of ukraine how can russia lose that war without needing without inevitably meaning what biden has said it is now means which is the overthrow of vladimir putin which is going to lead to all sorts of risky unpredictable behavior it seems putin could stay in charge but i want to hear from you guys about that especially why does anybody think that the russian people don't support the idea that and i disagree with him but why would they think that they would go to war and then lose not only the war but they would lose the area that they seized and when we talk about crimea i understand it's ukraine and everything but there is some notice i mean in world war ii the 100 000 russians were killed in van manstein's siege of sebastopol they have this i mean there's graves all over that area they have some history there so the idea that we're going to expel them all over great it sounds great on for it but that's going to require a commitment that's well beyond what we have now and neil pointed out about i think rightly so offensive you're going to have to stop all supply by seed to the crimea and that means you're going to have to take out a lot of russian ships supply ships warships you're gonna have to sync with them right they can't get through they they can't get through uh the straits now so they're not they're not supplying but i see they're fighting by sea with but i mean you're gonna have to say that nobody can get into the ukraine by sea or land to pursue supply them world war ii over the freedom of poland look how well that turned out no we didn't fight it that's the issue we didn't fight in 1939. well it was a pony war england started fighting in 1939. branson's in britain you're assuming you can get a president that's non-compos mintes with 39 approval rating to unite the country to up its commitment beyond 40 billion because that's what it's going to take to get every russian off of the pre-latest war get them out of ukraine get them out of all the russian dogs i think i think we're i think we're going to extremes here right i think these are these are sort of red herrings right so i what i like to do is just comment i think on four fundamental misunderstandings that i think are you know that are maybe undermining our ability to understand what we have to do next the first is the word escalate right how is it an escalation to provide ukraine with weapons that it needs to defend its own territorial integrity right or to take back its territory i do not see that as escalatory i see that as correcting the policy of restraint that essentially greenlighted the invasion the re-invasion on february 23rd of not providing defensive weapons that's a that's a bit that's a legalism because what you're talking about is each month the number of weapons whether you define it by dollars or material quantities is going to increase it's going to have to and it's going to increase increase increase increase and you can say that's a correction we should always but the policy of the united states has never been to give infusions of 40 billion dollars to ukraine so now we are and we're going to have to keep going if we want to expel every last russian from the soil you can say it's not escalation but it's it's going to be an increase then it's not it's not an escalation of the war to give the ukrainians uh the capabilities they need to stop russia from committing mass homicide against their civilians with the indiscriminate bombardment of residential areas i don't see that as an escalation it's going to try to it's that's going to require the destruction of the russian black sea fleet which i think would probably take about 30 minutes victor if it came down to it and i think russia knows that i think he had a couple more points well the second point is it's not a proxy war what are you talking about proxy war a proxy war so we're using a force for our own ends the ukrainians are defending their people their territory that is not a proxy war if it's not a proxy war then why is the secretary of defense announcing to the nation that we are helping ukraine so we can weaken russia that's my third point that's my third point right i think he i think he i think he he did not speak in a precise manner what our objective should be is to to to constrain russia's war-making machine economically and financially that should be the goal by you know by what we've put in place in terms of sanctions you know by what we're doing uh in terms of going after russia's international criminal enterprise that is part of their war making capabilities uh yeah and uh export controls you know everything that we're putting in place financially that's what he should have said right is that we want to reduce the resources available to russia so so it can no longer sustain its war-making machine that's what i think you should have said and then finally on on on neil's point on a cease-fire a cease-fire neil i mean come on i mean you know i you know and macron i mean i can't believe your sliding would be growing a ceasefire so what did we have the last ceasefire right 2014 how did that work out minsk agreement what did the minsk agreement do it just basically locked into status quo and allowed russia to consolidate gains in donetsk and luhansk the time for the ukrainians to push the russians out of the south and the east is right now because if it doesn't happen right now the russians are going to consolidate those gains and it's going to become more and more difficult and more and more costly and by the way there's no off ramp for putin when putin takes the off ramp he's just looking for the next on-ramp and what the control of that southern coast allows him to do is to just slowly choke ukraine out which is what his plan is going to be so you know i just think that you know a ceasefire ought to be if there's a ceasefire let the ukrainians decide right i think us dictate you advocating for a ceasefire right now is is ludicrous after the ukrainians have suffered so much how about let you know let zelinski decide that and provide him with all the capabilities we can to see if they can generate enough combat power to reverse the gains at least the gains that have been made since february 23rd and and i think that that is a realistic approach and then hey when whenever you know whenever the russians want to sue for peace or the ukrainians want to accede to some kind of negotiations let them do let them figure it out on their own terms okay hr but very quickly good great idea but then let's not have the president united states say that the purpose of this war is to remove putin from power which he said say he said he wanted putin out of power and we had the secretary of defense said the purpose of this war is to weaken the ability of russia basically well you know again we're getting from the top people who are saying that we have an agenda okay that's fine but i'm saying to fulfill that agenda it requires a level of means that is not there and i don't think that the american people are willing to i don't know that's like that's like president of obama's saying assad must go right with it without having the right i agree with victor i agree with you i agree with you on that a lot of times we get most adamant in our discussions victor and i when we agree with each other hey the last thing i'll say though is hey this war of course is having a worldwide effect i mean we talked we talked with larry summers about farmageddon on the horizon it's happening now so under the under the theme of what more can we do i think instead of a no-fly zone i think we should open up a maritime humanitarian quarter to odessa to provide humanitarian assistance but also to export uh grain to import fertilizer to you know to to mitigate uh the you know the the uh the catastrophe that's happening you know we should all victor you and i have our offices on you know on on in in the hoover tower uh and and it's you and i and herbert hoover up there you know on the on that on that floor and and you know it makes me think of what hoover did after world war one of world war ii we're gonna need a relief effort internationally that's analogous uh to to the efforts that herbert hoover ran h.r you're saying to me that the troika of joe biden and lloyd austin and mark milley are going to oversee an armed u.s naval escort through the black sea to crimea and then protect this huge lift and then be stalwart and supportive no matter what because if they do that and after what we saw in afghanistan and i just don't think that is a very wise thing to do at all you know i'll tell you i guess i guess it's just a question of how many people you want to watch starve to death right i mean i you know it's it's there's you know we're no it's how many people i don't want to see dead well the other way of achieving this would in fact be to stop the fighting and end the war and this is precisely why i'm sympathetic to the idea of our doing that rather than continuing to pursue the policy which i think has been the policy of the administration from the get-go of letting this war just keep going in 1973 a comparable outbreak of conflict in the middle east had enormous inflationary consequences for the world not just in terms of the price of oil but the price of food and we're re-running that history with the difference that in 1973 henry kissinger fought very hard to end the fighting and prevent israel from overreaching which it might well have given that israel was well supplied with u.s arms kissinger made sure that the israelis didn't humiliate the egyptians and the other arab states and and that's not what we're doing now in fact we're driving uh the ukrainians to humiliate russia uh conventional forces and hr with you think we're driving ukraine this is a highly risky thing to do he's experiencing really taking a big risk in allowing the what i think is going to be overreach look there are ukrainian special forces already operating in on russian territory you don't think these it's passersby who are blowing up uh russian uh fuel deposits uh this is this is escalating in meaningful ways far beyond uh the uh the initial goal so far better to allow those logistics to continue to resupply the artillery units that are that are bombarding residential i mean during the vietnam war russia brought in right into the harbors of hyphong cargo ships with munitions what we did not do was bomb russian ships should we have done it in vietnam well hey i'll tell you victor they also had 7 000 russian soldiers operating the entire north vietnamese air defense system right they provided them with all of their armored capabilities for the offensive that that that they launched uh that resulted in the fall of saigon in 1975 and the failed easter offensive in 1972. so you know i'm victor what i'm saying is what i'm saying is you know it is not an escalation to provide the ukrainians with the with the arms necessary to keep their civilian population from being murdered by the russians and and actually starting to sink the black sea fleet which was where which is where we're now apparently going that is escalation no it's not escalation look at that look at the territory that they've gained along the sea of oz off on the black sea why would we not give them the capabilities to defend their own territory i mean i i don't understand it neil i mean but ships are operating uh against ukraine against ukraine and actually by the way lobbying shells in the kiev and into la viv well where are we going hr why not hit the ports where this black seas depart from in russia then why not just have the american fleet go in there and say you know what this is a no sea zone and we're going to sink any russian ship that leaves its port headed to our desert i mean at some point you have to tell them okay you're raising these hypotheticals right that are on in the extreme as a way to to argue against what is completely you know i think a reasoned and and appropriate uh response i mean i think short of ship missiles are appropriate because russia is using those ships to bombard population centers hypothetical here because we're actively discussing supplying uh harpoon missiles to ukraine to target russian warships in the black sea and you're telling me that that's not escalation you defend their coast of course that's not as good we should have done it in 2014. well they should have had harpoon missiles actually made all the defense available even last year we might have deterred putin but now there's a a shooting war going on well hang what i don't get why are you against any diplomatic effort to end the fighting and end the killing listen listen neil i mean while i'm not against any diplomatic effort except you know we had a great diplomatic effort in afghanistan didn't we you know when we surrendered when we surrendered to the taliban in february of 2020 that's a diplomatic effort the key the key is you mean you want a diplomatic effort to be consistent with what you've been able to achieve militarily the diplomatic effort was the minsk agreement what the minsk agreement did is it just locked in the status quo in 2014. is that appropriate now for ukraine are the ukrainians ready to see most of the southern coast they have a ceasefire proposal you know so i'll just go back to gk chesterton right war is not the best way of settling differences but it's the only way to ensure they're not settled for you and they may be settled ultimately with it with a you know some kind of a negotiated agreement but but you know that negotiated agreement should be negotiated from a position of strength right george schultz who was with us until you know until uh just over a year ago um said that you know negotiation is a euphemism for capitulation unless the shadow of power is cast across the bargaining table right i agree with you but we're at that point the russians have failed the battle of kyiv was lost and the donbass offensive has failed they're actually losing territory at this point the question i'm asking hr is do you now use the leverage that the united states has on both sides and no other power has this leverage we we are supplying the weapons but to the ukrainians and we impose the sanctions on the russians we have the leverage are you saying take no advantage of that leverage what are the terms neil what what are the terms what are the terms the precision ukrainians come up with the terms they should come up with the terms the terms that zelensky has already made fairly clear would be acceptable would be a return to the status quo ante not a few months ago not on february 23rd or anti-2014 yes not to undo i mean in other words zelensky has not requested explicitly the return of crimea or of luhansk and he said those would be issues for years later right exactly but let's face it this will no but this the diplomacy that resolves the territorial settlement may take years the argument i'm making is that it would be prudent at this point when the russians are so clearly in a weakening position to end the fighting to achieve a ceasefire rather than to take the risk that the escalation scenarios that victor and i have talked about occur and i don't make i don't say likely that there should be serious consideration to diplomatic efforts now because i don't see why we're not doing that why let this play out why take the risk of sinking russian warships of letting ukrainian forces cross into russian territory which as i've said they've already done are we going back to victor's early point are we sure that we wanted to go this far army ukraine to this point at which they in fact inflict defeat and humiliation on russia so in this in this discussion seem to want that to happen you're making it sound let me hr ask you the opposite question is it acceptable for us to freeze this content we promised ukraine territorial integrity as we promised all sorts of things is it can so where we are i think what we can now agree is forget uh uh unfortunate statements by our leaders the question is do we allow the ukrainians to win the ukrainians want to win given the means uh allowed to have the means they will win they will push the russians back and the question is do we join macro in saying no you must stop accept the division of your country and and let our wonderful diplomats go at this for the next 20 years uh throwing away all sorts of promises we made or do we let the ukrainians win and in your vision of a of a diplomatic solution which means continued war really for the next uh god knows how long uh you know where does the u.s come out of that is that an acceptable answer to you especially as we look forward to china well we began this conversation talking about amongst other things the serious problem of inflation which is not simply a problem in california it's a global problem that problem will get worse if this war continues and the entire ukrainian harvest is lost no this is this is that is i gotta go that is not inflation doesn't come from harvests inflation comes from from fiscal policy and if we would stop using our corn to make ethanol there would be plenty of food going around john the reason that african there is already the beginning of a famine in the horn of africa because africa relies so heavily on russian and ukrainian wheat imports we're not talking here about just a bump in the consumer price index in the us we're talking here about a major crisis of the sort that we saw in the 70s when food prices rocketed in just the way that they've rocketed this year there are really strong arguments for reaching a diplomatic resolution rather than allowing this to be resolved on the battlefield by ukrainians using nato weapons and without any clearly specified war aims at this point we don't know what the war into the united states are in iraq the russians the ukrainians were aims which is the russians back to where we promised them their country was period and that's the end of the border and so what you're saying is we we give up basically on on the west because we don't want the prices no john all neil is saying is that to satisfy this goal i think it's a noble goal to expel every russian from what was uh originally ukrainian soil ukraine has redefined that message as they have to go into russian territory to achieve that goal or they have to sink major capital ships of the black sea or they're not going to get which they've already done they've already done yes yes but they're going to have to increase that at an arithmetic rate but if they're going to really get every russian out they're going to have to go across the border and destroy supply depots i know planning depots you're not going to invade and hold territory no they're going to go they're going to go into mother russia and they're going to have to sink russian ships in international waters okay and every time we know historically every time the russian army goes beyond its borders whether into finland or into poland it doesn't do very well and every time anybody goes inside mother russia whether it's the swedes or napoleon or the nazis you name it they don't do well if you want to you're not invading and seizing territory if you want to get the russian people galvanized and you want to get them really galvanized then the best way to do it is to sink the black sea pride of the russian fleet and to start blowing up even more depots inside russia and you will get a russia who sees this as the great patriotic war i guarantee you that whereas anthony the secretary of state should be saying publicly or privately here is a peace deal or a ceasefire deal russia withdraws its forces to the borders of pre-february 24th and if the russians say no then fine then they have it coming to them but i'm not sure they would say no at this point you don't think the russians know that already neil do they get what they took in two countries i mean i don't think they know that that if they wanted to end this they just had to start they could just withdraw back to february 23rd and sue for peace they know that i mean they have to be i think you know winning in war okay if this if winning if we're defining winning as as russia out of all territory uh that it's taken since february 23rd then what that requires is convincing the russians that they've been defeated and you can't do that at the bargaining table with the with with the status quo so i think we're setting up a false dilemma here you know victor's talking about like the ukrainian army marching on moscow i mean that's not going to happen i mean but you know i mean it's no no i'm saying what the russians what a russians envisioned or the counterfeit no the russian people don't consider that a great i'm just saying what the russian people will change on a dime if you have systematic attacks inside even if it's close to the border russian territory and you sink their black fleet then i guarantee you they will look at this war in a very different light than they do now well you know the russians the russians can preserve the fleet just generally off gentlemen gentlemen we have to stop at this point i'm getting the signal we have to go ahead we can't bill we can't we can't i'm only joking okay go ahead thank you governor mcmaster okay uh let's let's uh let's close that with a very quick uh question around the horn just 30 seconds less if you can uh we look at u.s policy toward ukraine uh three options here gentlemen status quo escalate give them more lethal weapons or de-escalate the diplomacy option uh victor why don't you go first i would uh do a status quo and see what happens i would not escalate i wouldn't yank support we'll see what happens but i would try i agree pretty much with neil that we we give them the ability to deter russia from going and force them back to considering uh the february 24th status and if they don't want to do that then that's their problem i agree pretty much with what neil said john conquer an escalate de-escalate status so i i like i'm sure hr is going to do i'm going to refuse the uh that giving them more weapons is equal to escalating we're going to give them the weapons they need um i i think the again the historical analogy that i always started this whole thing with was saddam hussein in the first iraq war i think we need a loud uh retrenchment of our warriors the aim the we are going to support ukraine in its aim to go back to what we promised and russia promised and germany promised and france promised in 1994 the territorial integrity of ukraine and not one inch further and we're going to let the ukrainians do it because that's where we are now do we let the ukrainians do that or do we try to stop them from it hr yeah i'll just say it's not an escalation to give the ukrainians the capabilities that that that allow them to stop the indiscriminate murder of their civilians and and if that's if that's shorter ship missiles if that's medium air defense if that's artillery systems if it's radars if it's drones okay that i don't see that as an escalation and then i think it's it's necessary uh to help the ukrainians achieve what they need to achieve militarily such that they can determine the you know the the contours of the piece uh on their own terms okay and neil you get the last word the united states has has played two roles uh over the past century to be the arsenal of democracy which is the role that it's playing now uh but also it has been a peacemaker and my argument is simple given that we have the power to deliver more and more weaponry which in glasgow is called escalation don't know what you mean when you say increased weaponry is not escalation i'll i'll i'll definitely have to have that explained to me lethal weapons let's just make it clear to the russians here's the choice here is a peace plan and it's a peace plan that takes us back to the status quo ante and it must be very clear that if you don't accept this if you don't accept withdrawal of troops if you don't accept a true ceasefire withdrawal of troops from kerson for example then the war goes on but we cannot simply be an arsenal of democracy with an open-ended commitment uh to this war and no uh explicit aims let's declare what peace looks like and and tell the russians and the ukrainians of whom we have leveraged to this is what peace looks like do you accept it that's the that is the proper role for the united states and i don't understand why we're not trying to play that role okay well gentlemen thank you for such a dull dispassionate conversation today please really start showing your opinions uh that's it for this episode of goodfellas a housekeeping note uh we'll be back in the first week of june and our guest will be the director of the hoover institution condoleezza rice so look for us then and one way to make sure you don't miss good fellows subscribe to us can you subscribe to us also review us leave some comments for it as well on behalf of the good fellows neil ferguson h.r mcmaster john cochran our special guest today victor davis hanson we hope you enjoyed the conversation take care [Music] if you enjoyed this show and are interested in watching more content featuring h.r mcmaster watch battlegrounds also available at hoover.org you

Channel: Hoover Institution

Views: 279,646

Keywords: Victor Davis Hanson, California, drought, water, agriculture, almonds, budget surplus, capital gains, Trump, MAGA, J. D. Vance, Peter Thiel, DeSantis, Brian Kemp, Republicans, Ukraine, Putin, arms shipments, Macron, peace talks, Kyiv, Black Sea, Odessa

Id: ilqKqh-J1hk

Length: 66min 8sec (3968 seconds)

Published: Tue May 24 2022