Colonel Douglas Macgregor on the Iran conflict, US strategic decline, and the war in Ukraine
Glenn Diesen interviews Colonel Douglas Macgregor, former adviser to the US Secretary of Defense, on the prospect of renewed US-Iran hostilities, the strategic position of the United States in the Middle East, and the escalating situation in Ukraine and the Baltic states.
Summary
Colonel Douglas Macgregor, former adviser to the US Secretary of Defense, joins Glenn Diesen to argue that the United States is strategically trapped in the Middle East — unable to withdraw without appearing defeated, yet unable to win militarily — as renewed conflict with Iran looms and the financial costs of sustaining the war mount., the likelihood of renewed military conflict, and what Macgregor describes as the effective end of US strategic presence in the Middle East. He argues that Netanyahu's reported visit to Washington signals an effort to ensure Trump does not seek a separate peace with Iran, and that Trump is effectively trapped — unable to withdraw without appearing defeated, yet unable to win militarily. The guest also addresses the Ukraine war's escalation through the Baltic states, arguing that US military assets are providing targeting and navigation support for long-range Ukrainian drone strikes, and that Russian patience is nearly exhausted. He warns at length that the conflict is threatening the global food supply by disrupting fertilizer production and effectively reversing the Green Revolution, which he argues underpins the feeding of more than 8 billion people. He closes by welcoming Trump's apparent abandonment of any plan to go to war with China over Taiwan — crediting an unnamed adviser for talking sense into the president, though he is uncertain who that was or when it occurred — describing it as one of the few genuinely wise decisions of the current period.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Opening: The Iran ceasefire and prospects for renewed war
Glenn Diesen: Welcome back. Today is May 21st, 2026, and we have the great privilege of being joined by Colonel Douglas Macgregor, the former adviser to the US Secretary of Defense, a decorated combat veteran and author. Thank you very much for coming back on the program.
Douglas Macgregor: Happy to be here, Glenn.
Glenn Diesen: I've been looking forward to getting your take on what's happening now in Iran. It appears that both sides are rejecting each other's proposals for peace and there doesn't seem to be a clear meeting point anywhere. Do you think it's likely we'll be going back to war?
Douglas Macgregor: I do. On the other hand, I have not been keeping up with the variety of responses we are eliciting from Washington. President Trump said something about a negotiation and there seemed to have been some willingness on the American side to be more flexible — the idea of setting aside the nuclear issue and other things and sorting things out for the Strait. So if you're telling me that everyone has now firmly rejected everyone else's proposal, I believe it. But I haven't seen anything final from Donald Trump. And of course, you never know what you're going to get out of Donald Trump. He seems to negotiate against himself a lot. There's not much evidence that he's really talking to anybody else. So who knows what's real and what isn't.
But I think what's most important right now is the idea that Netanyahu is coming to Washington. That's the latest rumor. I haven't seen it officially announced yet anywhere, but I have it on fairly good authority that he's flying to Washington. The last time he did that, of course, you had the war break out. He visited, he spoke, everyone was in the kissy-face, huggy-buddy mode, and then suddenly he flew back, the war began, and Trump said, "Oh gosh, we need to join the war," and off we went.
So I don't know what's going to happen now, but the fact that he's coming to visit tells me that he wants to make sure that Trump is not losing his grip, that Trump is not weakening, that Trump is not trying to cut a separate deal. All of those things may or may not be true. I have no idea. So at this point, I would expect it to start up again. I just don't know when.
The interesting thing is this overlaps, as you know, with the Hajj in Saudi Arabia, which begins on the 24th and is usually a 10 or 11-day event. So that would mean we would be going to war in the middle of the so-called pilgrimage. Whether or not that's significant, I have no idea.
The other thing is that I'm still unclear on whether or not the Saudis and the Qataris are going to authorize our use of their airspace or for that matter any bases. There's so much — I don't want to say disinformation, but contradictory information — floating around inside the Beltway. It's very hard to know what is real and what isn't. But to go back to your original question: do I think they'll go back to fighting? Yes, I do.
What has changed during the ceasefire — and what the next round will look like
Glenn Diesen: What has changed during this ceasefire, this pause? To what extent has each side been able to replenish their arms, regroup, and prepare for war again? And what would you expect to see different this time around? Would the US go faster up the escalation ladder? I assume Iran would respond in kind. Given that Trump wanted a ceasefire, what do you think is going to be done differently this time around?
Douglas Macgregor: I think the opening will be a sledgehammer by the United States. My impression is that we have brought — let's back up a minute. We talk in military terms in the Army about basic loads of ammunition. Usually you think in terms of three basic loads. There's the first one that is supposed to get you through the first week or so of combat. Then there's the second that is supposed to come in and assure that you can stay there for another week or two weeks. Then there's a third that keeps you in the fight for a month.
I think we have something like that happening right now with our air and naval forces. We are absolutely loaded to the gills with munitions, aircraft, and missiles. No question about it. Everything is ready to go. But in addition to that, this time around I think we have almost the same amount of ammunition in reserve, which means that instead of getting a three or four-day intensive bombardment, you could conceivably keep it going for five to seven days. So I expect this will be much more intense, much more severe, and inflict much more damage.
Now the question is what does that mean for targeting? I don't have access to the targeteer, but if you are limited to air and naval power and you don't have any ground forces that you can use to exploit strikes, then it becomes an exercise in trying to determine which target set is going to be the most useful in terms of compelling the enemy to collapse, disintegrate, or surrender.
I'm sure we'll hit all of the targets we hit previously, because we now know — thanks to the CIA leak to the New York Times — that the Iranians emerged from the last round with virtually 90% of everything intact. Well, if 90% was intact the last time around, that means we're now facing, with almost complete certainty, 100% readiness, because I think that level of replenishment has occurred on the Iranian side.
In addition to that, there are several sources claiming that additional Russian radars for air and missile defense — and some for purely targeting at great distance — have been brought in. And the Chinese have brought in some additional missiles: some of the same ones that have been fired in the past, but also a new class of missile, a well-known but not yet used cruise missile designed to sink ships at sea out to 300-kilometer ranges. So that's roughly 180 miles — that would probably hold everyone quite a distance from the opening to the Persian Gulf.
The other thing is that there's evidence that Russian and Chinese technicians are also on the ground helping to operate these systems. Now, none of that should surprise us, because we've been doing that in Ukraine for the Ukrainians against the Russians for years. But nevertheless, you have people in Washington who say, "Well, this is outrageous. What are these Russians and Chinese doing?" Well, what do you think they're doing? They're doing to us what we've been doing to them.
So I think this is a very serious moment. I think we're going to see far more damage done by both sides to each other. And I think we can bet with virtually 100% certainty that Iran will finish off the oil infrastructure on the west side of the Persian Gulf. I imagine they may well go after the desalination plants that have an enormous impact on Saudi Arabia — not just the Emirates — to the point where if they destroy the one at Al-Shaba, that means Riyadh runs out of drinking water almost instantly, in which case they have to evacuate the capital because they have no other way to provide drinking water.
This is a very serious moment, and I think it reflects — particularly on Donald Trump's side and with Netanyahu — a certain level of desperation. They've got to win this in their minds. Do whatever it takes short of the use of a nuclear weapon. Now some people think the Israelis could actually break that taboo and use a nuclear weapon. I certainly hope not, because that would open up Pandora's box and then anything becomes possible. But assuming that doesn't happen, I think every conceivable form of attack is going to be employed this time around with far more intensity than we saw the first time.
The reported Trump-Netanyahu split and Trump's strategic trap
Glenn Diesen: About this reported split between Trump and Netanyahu — allegedly Trump wants to make peace with the Iranians or at least get a longer pause, and Netanyahu wants to continue to degrade the Iranian military, ideally knock out the government. Do you think there's a lot of substance to this, or is it meant to make the Iranians lower their guard? How are you reading the situation?
Douglas Macgregor: I think the Persian Gulf has turned out to be for Donald Trump the Hotel California. You check in, but you can never check out. He'd like to check out — there's no doubt in my mind that that's the case. But he also has obligations to his Israeli lobby, not just Netanyahu personally and the Israeli state, but to his donors who funded his election. And I think they want the complete and utter annihilation of Iran. And I think he's probably saying, "Well, I understand that, but what if we can't do that?" And their answer is: go back and find another way to do it. In other words, there's no easy exit for Trump from this mess.
So I think the best that he could hope for is what you just described — some sort of pause. And whenever you get a pause, I think he spends a great deal of time trying to figure out how to exploit it to either win or escape. One of the two. And I don't think it's working out very well for him because I don't think there's an easy answer.
I think yes, there's probably a split along those lines. But on the other hand, how much maneuver room has President Trump really left himself? We know from the past that he's very much inclined to exaggerate, and he frequently misrepresents the level of discourse between Iran and the United States, between Iran and Pakistan, between Iran and the Emirates, or the Emirates and Pakistan. So it's very hard to gauge what's real and what isn't. I've really gotten to the point now where I just don't bother trying to figure out what's real and what isn't. It's a waste of time.
So I think he's in the Hotel California. He wants to check out. He can't. That means he's got to restart the war. Now, what happens if he restarts the war and after another three weeks we're nowhere — we're in the same position we were before? Well, then he's humiliated. He has to make an ignominious withdrawal. He has to admit failure. Will he do that? I don't know.
He may say, "Well, there's nothing left now. It'll be another midnight hammer exercise. We've destroyed everything. There's no reason to keep this up. Iran no longer represents a threat to anybody. Iran is impotent. Its neighbors are no longer afraid." Of course, most of its neighbors no longer exist because they've been bombed out of existence in the Persian Gulf region. But he may say that and then say, "I'm going home and I plan to attend the World Cup." Who knows — anything is possible. But what will people at home feel? What will they think?
We can't be certain of that right now because the real effects of the disaster in the Gulf haven't been felt here yet. I think by the end of June, the beginning of July, our strategic petroleum reserve is going to be getting very low — to the point where it's in danger of going dry. That puts us in a difficult position. It's already clear that we can't afford to export all of the crude that people are asking us to export, because we need that as the foundation for our refining industry. We also have a problem with the oil we extract from shale that has to be exported because we don't have the refineries to deal with it, given the difference between shale oil and normal crude.
The financial crisis and the collapse of dollar dominance
Douglas Macgregor: Then in addition to that, we have the financial crisis. I've been watching the bond market for years, simply because everyone I respect — whether it's Alistair Macleod, Ray Dalio, Luke Groman, or Jeffrey Gundlach — brilliant financial analysts — they've always said: look at the 10-year bond. Once the 10-year bond breaks the 5% ceiling in terms of its yield rising, we can't service the debt and everything begins to collapse. So we're inching up toward 5%. What does that mean if that happens during this next round? I think it means we pull out because we can't afford to stay.
And we're already watching as gold replaces the dollar as the world's reserve currency. That's not something that was planned on last year or six months ago or two years ago, but it's happening. It's real. The Chinese have accumulated enormous quantities of gold — nobody knows how much they've got now. To create some liquidity with foreign reserves, the Russians have actually sold some gold. They've got plenty of gold. India has plenty of gold. All of this gold is going to end up backing BRICS. And this is a battle between BRICS and the US-dominated Western financial system.
If the US-Western-dominated financial system suddenly collapses in crisis because of what's happening in the bond markets — not just in the United States but around the world — we're watching everyone who can offload our debt doing so. How do you sustain the war? And I don't think we can.
Perhaps Bessent has some new magic up his sleeve. I have no idea. But I think President Trump is really squeezed at this point. If he doesn't go back in, it looks as though he's been defeated and is giving up. Regardless of how prudent it may be to withdraw, he can't just sail away, fly away, and forget it. He refuses to say what I've been urging him to say — which is: for humanitarian reasons, we've got to get out, because this is no longer just about the United States and Iran or just a few other nations in the region. This is about the world. The entire world is suffering. And if we don't stop this, if we go through with this next round, it may be a decade before the global energy complex really recovers.
We're going to have famine. He's effectively reversing the Green Revolution. The fertilizer doesn't exist. People in the United States don't even know what the Green Revolution means. Most of them don't understand how that's changed things, because in the 1960s we had a little more than 4 billion people living on the planet. Today we've got more than 8 billion. That's not accidental. That's because of the Green Revolution — we've been able to feed all of these people. What happens when we can't?
We'll have problems inside the United States, but they're not as severe as they are in the Global South. And I don't know what happens in Europe. Europe is going to be in very serious trouble when it comes to these things. Look at what the Europeans have done to the Dutch. Look at what the Dutch globalists have done to themselves. The Dutch are the most productive agricultural state in the world. And because of the Ukraine war, we've lost access to vast tracts of farmland that used to produce enormous quantities of food. The whole thing is a disaster.
But politicians in Washington are not thinking in terms of the rest of the world. They're thinking in terms of themselves. And there's also the matter of how much money they have been able to line their pockets with as a result of the Israel lobby and its supporters and all the other lobbyists out there who have no interest whatsoever in anything that happens anywhere but inside the United States. So it's a bad situation. There's no easy solution.
The strategic consequences of US defeat in the Middle East
Glenn Diesen: My assumption with Trump was that the best-case scenario for him was regime change or destroying Iran, and the worst case was that he has to pull back, declare victory, point to how many people have been killed and the navy destroyed — a bit like Yemen — and just go home. But the problem of course is if the Iranians hold the Strait, they can put a higher toll on countries that threaten Iran's economy with sanctions, threaten Iran by hosting US bases, or put extra tolls on countries that trade in the US dollar. So how does the world look if the US is effectively defeated in Iran — defined as the US having to pull back with the Strait firmly under Iranian control, and Iran being able to use that leverage to create its own economic and military security?
Douglas Macgregor: Whatever happens next — whether we attack or we do not attack, whether we try to leave and claim success or not — I think we Americans are finished in the Middle East. And I think that's the greatest concern that Netanyahu has right now. If we cannot break Iran's grip on the Persian Gulf, if we cannot force our way back into the Persian Gulf — and I think it's pretty clear that we cannot — that means we are finished in the region. We will not come back into these bases. There will be nothing to rebuild. It will be a decade before the countries that existed there even recover, if some of them ever recover at all. Because frankly, in that part of the world, there just isn't enough water to support much development.
So I think that's the greatest single problem — not so much for us. And let's be frank: I would argue that we should have withdrawn from most of the overseas bases a long time ago. I've been giving briefings to war college classes, to Army audiences, to any audience that would listen, for the last 15-plus years, that the whole notion of forward military presence is finished. And everybody looks at me and says, "You're crazy." And I kept trying to tell everyone: we have new capabilities today. Whatever you put in a forward presence mode — in bases like the ones in the UAE, bases in Germany, bases in Korea, bases in Thailand, bases in the Philippines — it doesn't matter where you go, you are now a target array waiting to be destroyed. You can be easily identified, easily targeted, and enough theater or tactical ballistic missiles or cruise missiles could be launched to wipe out your forward presence at the beginning of any conflict or crisis.
I've urged that we abandon this forward presence nonsense. Remember that forward presence was justified in the aftermath of World War II — not just by the Cold War, but by the assumption that by being there, we were going to prevent other conflicts from breaking out. Well, that hasn't worked, has it? It hasn't worked largely because we're the ones causing many of the conflicts.
But the bottom line is those days are over. In one sense, this is a blessing insofar as it's going to compel us to pull our forces back and come home. At least we can protect them inside the continental United States if defense becomes the primary focus, because our whole force posture and military thinking since the end of the Second World War has been offensive. The best defense is the offense — that was always the argument. If we're forward, we can attack quickly. We can nip this problem in the bud. Those days are over. Technology has changed. You cannot do that anymore. And if you try, you'll just lose your forces.
That means we've got to come back to the continental United States and figure out how we're going to defend ourselves, because the strategic defense is now superior to any strategic offense. The only thing that is left that we cannot stop are hypersonic missiles in the form of intercontinental ballistic missiles, which means that we live permanently — and the Russians and the Chinese and others who have ICBMs live permanently — under the threat of total destruction if any of those are used. Other than that, which is unchanging, the world is a very different place. We can't operate in the world of the past. It's gone. This is a new world.
I don't think Americans have thought that through. I don't think anyone in Washington has thought it through. They're all very reactionary. "Oh, we can never leave Korea. Oh, we can never leave Japan." Well, wait a minute. We don't live in Korea. We don't live in Japan. They're not part of the United States. What do you mean we can't leave? And now we have governments like the one in South Korea that are effectively telling us, "Listen, we really think you ought to get out." They don't say that publicly, but they do behind closed doors, and they're very polite about it. But it's getting to the point where at some point there will be no more politeness and they'll just say, "Come on, you've got to go."
Why would they want us to go? For the same reason that I don't think anyone's going to invite us back into the Gulf — because we are seen as a catalyst for conflict. We are not indigenous to the region. We're not organic to the international system in that area. Wherever we are as a foreign entity, we have the potential to drag countries with us into conflicts that they would otherwise never fight. We are unwanted.
We have now gone to war with Iran largely as a result of Israel's interests, not our own. And that's the problem. No one wants to be dragged into anything unless it involves them. And the one state among the Emirates that was most interested in the same thing Israel was interested in was the United Arab Emirates — they were effectively aligned with Israel, interested in the destruction of Iran. That has not worked. That's been a disaster for the UAE.
Ukraine, the Baltic states, and the escalation toward Russia
Glenn Diesen: To pivot to another horrific war where allies are also reorienting themselves — it appears that as the US is pulling back a bit from the Ukraine war, at least outsourcing it to the Europeans, the Europeans are seemingly escalating. The Russians are now accusing the Baltic states of either facilitating or tolerating Ukrainian drone strikes through their territory, if not even launching them from their territory. How are you seeing this situation? I'm getting messages from Moscow that this is seen as something they simply cannot accept without responding in some way.
Douglas Macgregor: What I'm going to say is something I'm sure the Russians already know, so I don't think I'm giving anything away. But people need to understand that the flight paths and the targeting for these long-range drone strikes have all been provided by American military capability. You can't fly from where they were launched in Ukraine across the Baltic states and then strike targets just outside of St. Petersburg without US help and assistance. Our surveillance aircraft and our satellites have mapped every refinery, every oil derrick, every airfield, every installation of strategic or operational military importance inside Russia. That information has been gold to the Ukrainians, who have no military capability today other than drones. That's all they've got. They can't launch an offensive on the ground — they'll lose everyone they have in the space of a few hours. They can't move and conquer new territory for any length of time. There's nothing they can do except launch these drones in a series of what I would call revenge strikes.
But these strikes have reached the point where the Russians have had it. Their patience is gone. They're angry. And the Russian population, as much as it supports President Putin, is effectively saying, "This has got to stop. We all understand this is a special military operation, but either crush this or declare war — or both. Get it done. End this." I think we're very close to that.
However, something has always been working in Putin's favor, and that has been the globalist regimes themselves in Western Europe and the policies they've pursued. Their policies have been economically, socially, and culturally destructive. We now have millions of people living inside Europe who under normal circumstances would never be there, because globalist leaders going back to Merkel opened the borders and allowed millions of people into those countries who are now living at great expense to those economies — people who are so fundamentally different that they can never be assimilated and don't want to be assimilated. If anything, large numbers of them have decided they're going to turn Europe into what they want it to be, not what it is.
So things are finally beginning to change. And the place of greatest importance, because it's the most powerful state in Europe, is Germany. Germany is on the edge of exploding like a volcano. They have an opportunity to break the stranglehold that the globalist leadership has had on that country for years. That may happen, and it's probably going to happen. The question is when — next week, next month, later in the year. I don't know. But I think it's coming, because there is a growing readiness to admit that this has all gone too far.
Germany is being turned into what the famous Morgenthau Plan tried to do to it — de-industrialize it, destroy its scientific and industrial might and power, undermine and erode its morale, destroy its sense of self, its national identity. All of this is ending because Alice Weidel has turned out to be a person of extraordinary ability. She is somebody we refer to as a Rocher de Bronze — or Felsen aus Bronze in German — the granite in the fire. She has withstood everything that could be thrown at her and she is telling the truth. And people even in the SPD, even in the CDU and CSU, are beginning to say she is right.
Now, if she takes over, what do we expect to see? Well, the first thing that's going to happen is that I imagine she or her new foreign minister will fly to Moscow and say, "Look, this is it. We want nothing to do with the policies of the past. We didn't like it. We didn't support it. We opposed it. We want to do business." And what is President Putin going to do? Is he going to say, "Well, we don't like you anymore"? Of course not. He's going to do business, and the cheap energy will flow.
For every civilization, cheap energy is vital. It used to be like cheap labor — cheap labor is still good — but cheap energy is a vital necessity. And without it, you don't have cheap credit. If you don't have cheap credit, which is what we've been operating on in this country for decades, everything stops. Right now, KKR, BlackRock, all these multi-billion-dollar private credit firms — they're in trouble. They have no liquidity. They're trying to borrow against the assets they have under management to survive. They're going to go under.
So my point is that that's where Weidel takes Germany. And all this business about "we're going to build the biggest army or the biggest air force" — that's impractical. More importantly, it's not even necessary. And that's what Weidel understands, and I think increasingly the German electorate understands it.
You know, we had this movie years ago — it was a comedy, a great film — about a Russian submarine that has problems and runs aground off the coast of Maine. The Russian crew, the captain, goes ashore looking for support, and eventually the local townspeople help the submarine get back out to sea before the Coast Guard and the Navy and everybody else has a heart attack. It's called The Russians Are Coming. And this has been the mantra for years in Western Europe. We used to joke during the Cold War in the 1970s: "Oh, the Russians are coming. They're on I-95 headed from New York to Philadelphia. News at seven." It was ridiculous. They weren't coming. They're not coming now. No one in their right mind wants to do this.
So I think once Germany stands up and says no more and puts an end to this, it's going to be very hard for everybody else.
Now, the reason I brought up all of this mapping of installations and navigating courses for these drones is because it's all being done through the Baltic states, or it's being done down through Romania and out to the Black Sea, where they've been striking targets all the way out to the Caucasus. This is very dangerous, and the Russians are very frustrated and angry. And again, it's unnecessary. But you've got unbalanced, unreasonable, dangerous people like Kaja Kallas, who is the EU foreign minister. Why in the name of God would you pick an Estonian politician to be the foreign minister for the European Union? It's absurd. It makes no sense. We have more people in New York City, LA, and the top 15 or 20 cities in the United States than exist in these little countries.
Now, do these little countries have a right to exist? Absolutely. Are they in danger of being overwhelmed and destroyed by the Russians? No. But if this nonsense doesn't stop, and they don't get out of the business of aiding in the construction of these long-range drones, and the rest of the Europeans continue to ship the components that can be assembled in Ukraine — because Ukrainians don't need help with the FPV, the first-person drones, those things they can build until the cows come home. But the long-range drones, no, that's a different matter entirely. And if this doesn't stop, then at some point the Russians may lose patience.
So I think it's kind of a race. Does Germany offload this terrible government, which has done so much damage to the country? And the credit for the damage goes not just to the most recent government — you've got to go all the way back to Merkel's arrival. Ever since she took over, Germany has been on the path to hell. That has to stop. If that stops and Germany gets new leadership, then I think the Russians will pull back and wait for the visit from Berlin to Moscow. But if that doesn't happen soon, then the possibility of Russian strikes on the manufacturing facilities or military facilities in the West that are playing a role in this could very definitely happen.
I think that would be unfortunate, because I think Russia is on the verge of winning the peace.
Would the US come to Europe's defense? And the question of NATO's credibility
Glenn Diesen: So Germany either does a regime change, or we might go to war. But if you're a European — who are you going to war with?
Douglas Macgregor: That's nonsense. Go to war to do what? What have you got? There's nothing there. Who are we kidding? This is the joke. "Oh, you've got to load up all your tanks and artillery pieces and troops on the trains, and then run the trains all the way to Poland to the border and disembark and get ready for the big offensive." No — they'll all die on the trains. Everything will be destroyed. Precision-guided weapons will wipe it out before it ever gets there. Stupid.
Glenn Diesen: So what are the Europeans doing? Because while they're doing these things — striking through the Baltic states with US assistance, as you say — they're also building this UK-led naval presence against the Russians. I'm not sure if they're putting pressure on Russia or actually preparing for a war they can't fight. But if they do pick a direct fight, or the Russians decide they have to strike Latvia or Estonia — either using Ukrainian drones they've downed to give themselves some deniability, or doing direct missile strikes — do you think the United States would come to the rescue?
Douglas Macgregor: The United States is not going to use nuclear weapons. The notion that if Article 5 is invoked — let's say by Lithuania, Latvia, or Estonia — the United States will launch nuclear weapons at Russia is absurd. That won't happen. So then the question is, if we're not going to do that, what can we do?
Right now we've gone through about two-thirds or more of our missile arsenal. I don't know the exact numbers. If we launch in the next two days and go into another phase, I think we'll go from two-thirds having been expended down to perhaps less than a fifth on hand. At which point, what can we do? Very little. Because if we're going to get into an attrition conflict involving missiles, we're going to lose it — the Russians can produce more, the Chinese can produce more. And the Chinese are certainly not going to stand by and watch us try to destroy Russia.
I guess the issue is this. Donald Trump was elected to do many things, and people mistook him for being a strong, influential leader who would represent their interests. Well, first of all, he's not representing anybody's interests in the United States any more than Starmer is representing the interests of people in England, Scotland, Wales, or Northern Ireland. Forget it. He's not. That's increasingly obvious. Macron — I'll let others debate that, but I think he's on very fragile territory as well. Meloni has tried to back off, but she hasn't taken the decisive steps she needs to take for Italy.
So what do we expect Donald Trump to do? I wouldn't expect him to do much, because we can't fight two wars at once — not if the wars involve vast numbers of missile exchanges, because most of those are being expended down in CENTCOM, US Central Command, in the Middle East. We have limited numbers.
Trump's China trip and the abandonment of war over Taiwan
Douglas Macgregor: Now, one of the things that Donald Trump said when he returned from his trip to China — which I thought was very good — is that he essentially put an end to the nonsense about going to war to defend Taiwan. He said, "We can't do it." Effectively, he said: Taiwan is 100 miles from China, but we have to travel 6 to 7,000 miles to reach the place. Somebody talked sense to him. I don't know who it was. Whoever it was deserves the Nobel Peace Prize, because the dumbest thing I could imagine is the United States trying to precipitate a war against China.
China is the largest fortress in the world. There's this old expression: a ship's a fool to fight a fort — fleets don't take fortifications ashore. You can always fire more missiles from your magazine ashore than you can from your magazine aboard ship. So he said, "No, that's not going to happen." Thank you, President Trump. God bless you. That's vital and essential. Let's get rid of the stupid nonsense about China and going to war.
Now, other than that, he was embarrassed, because President Xi simply said, "I'm happy to welcome the leader of a declining power to my country. As the leader of a rising power, it is a great pleasure to see you." What a statement. Is he wrong? Not entirely. Is he right? Not entirely. But he's not a fool. He was sending a message.
China is the largest manufacturing base in the world. For every one rocket engine or missile engine we turn out, they can probably turn out 500 to a thousand. It's a simple fact. Go back to World War II — when you ask the Germans how they lost the war, they'll say Lend-Lease right away. Because the Soviet Army wouldn't have gotten 50 miles beyond Stalingrad without all the trucks, all the jeeps, all the steel, all the trains, all the metal — just go down the list. That's what we are facing today with China. China has replaced us as the leading manufacturing power in the world.
So everything that was reported after that trip was irrelevant nonsense. We didn't close any big deals that are going to make us rich, and we didn't take advantage of any Chinese weakness. That's all nonsense. So he's now back in Washington and still stuck in the Hotel California. And it's obvious to him that it's in China's interest that we sit in the Hotel California called the Persian Gulf. The Chinese aren't going to help us get out. The Russians have tried to help us get out, but we don't listen to them. We're not going to change our posture for the reasons we've already cited.
But at least we have offloaded this stupid idea of war with China. That's wonderful. The question is now what? And that brings us back to where we were before. You've got a collision coming. On the one hand, the reality in the Persian Gulf — we don't have the capability or the right force mix to change that equation. They've got it. They're holding it. It's very tough to change that. Then on the other side, we have the American economy and financial system. Which one is going to break first? That's the question. I don't have the answer.
Glenn Diesen: If you could only pull the plug on the Iran war and the war in Ukraine as well, then perhaps we could start the process of rebuilding and stabilizing instead. Anyway, thank you very much for taking the time. As always, very fascinating.
Douglas Macgregor: Thank you, Glenn.