Daniel Davis Deep Dive: w/ Col Douglas Macgregor on Trump at DAVOS (Transcript)

We have agreements on space, we have agreements at sea. This should be similar. This militarization of everything doesn’t make any sense. I don’t see that it’s necessary.

But I’m sure someone will say, I think it was Howard Lutnick that said no one who’s ever occupied this office has the strategic intuition of Donald Trump. And it may not be clear now, but six months from now, a year from now, it’ll be very clear why this was brilliant and so necessary.

DANIEL DAVIS: Okay, well, I eagerly wait forward to that day of clarity. In the meantime, all we can go by is what we see and what we can observe. And the second half of what he claimed in there was that, hey, look, this is good for you, too, Europe. This will enhance alliance security. How do you see that?

NATO’s Future and European Security

DOUGLAS MACGREGOR: No evidence for it. I mean, their security is already intact. If you take seriously our military commitment to defend northern Canada, Alaska and Greenland. I mean, we’ve been there since the end of the Second World War. We’ve got 80 years up there. I mean, didn’t you see the movie, the Thing? I mean, remember that?

DANIEL DAVIS: Great documentary? Yeah. How could I, how could people have missed that?

DOUGLAS MACGREGOR: And I’m getting to the point now where I’ve been over this so many times with so many different people, I’m ready to flip a coin and say, okay, maybe it was this or maybe it was that. I don’t see any problem, and I don’t see any reason for the discussion to even occur.

But look, maybe the other alternative that you can consider is that he wants to accelerate the dissolution of NATO, or certainly our leadership of it. If that’s the case, this is a good way to do it. NATO is already on its last legs. And again, back in January of 2022, I said that if we got involved in this crisis in Ukraine with Russia, NATO would fall apart. It would disintegrate. It would not exist afterwards. I think that’s where we’re headed. Maybe that’s the brilliance in all of this, that he’s finally going to compel the Europeans to become responsible for their own defense.

DANIEL DAVIS: Yeah. And actually do want to talk about that in just a second because there’s some other things I want to connect to that, because I think that is a very, very important aspect to discuss about all of this. But the one thing he said today that everybody was looking for and was wondering, would he use force to take Greenland? He actually…

VIDEO CLIP BEGINS:

DONALD TRUMP: We never asked for anything and we never got anything. We probably won’t get anything unless I decide to use excessive strength and force where we would be, frankly, unstoppable. But I won’t do that. Okay. Now everyone’s saying, oh, good. That’s probably the biggest statement I made because people thought I would use force. I don’t have to use force. I don’t want to use force. I won’t use force.

VIDEO CLIP ENDS:

The Contradictions in Trump’s Statements

DANIEL DAVIS: Okay, that’s almost contradictory within the confines of the single sentence because he starts off by saying, I probably won’t get it unless I use force, which I definitely could, but I won’t. And he previously said he wants to have these negotiations. Well, tell me if I’m wrong, Doug, but it sounds like he literally just gave all the permission in the world for Greenland and Denmark and Europe to just say, okay, then no, if you’re not going to use force, we’re definitely not going to agree to it. So you won’t get it.

DOUGLAS MACGREGOR: I have to raise another question. Is there any particular reason why what President Trump says today will necessarily be true tomorrow? I think we have a lot of experience now with the president. He changes his mind sometimes. He contradicts himself without even realizing it. So ultimately, at this stage, I wouldn’t exclude any possibility.

But I think he knows, if you look at the internal polling in the United States, that people are not particularly excited about using military power to seize control of Greenland. I mean, you don’t need to be a genius to figure out that this is a very cold place. In fact, I was involved in a discussion earlier today with some people and said, well, can’t we go to somewhere else? Let’s pick another island. There are other islands. Why don’t we seize Malta? Let’s go to the Lesser Antilles. Let’s not go to Greenland and freeze to death. I mean, it was meant humorously, but it’s about as silly, quite frankly, at this stage of the game. This just doesn’t merit serious attention any longer.

But there is always a possibility that he changes his mind and decides that we’re going to put some people on Greenland that are not already there and expand that and put up the flag and declare victory. It’s not impossible.

The Possibility of Military Occupation

DANIEL DAVIS: And I guess that would not, I think that Europe would not actually go to war. Stephen Miller from the White House, in an interview a week or so ago, mocked the idea that anyone would actually fight the US over Greenland. So if the push comes to shove, he believes that Europe would, even though they sent some small contingents of tripwire type forces over there, right now, no one’s actually going to engage anybody in the United States.

So if we send some forces over there to occupy something, there probably would not be any kind of a clash. I agree with that. But it could put both sides in a really uncomfortable position. If we just occupy with force and there’s some other troops there, then where is the control issue? I mean, do you see it could get to a situation where you could literally have US and other NATO troops on the ground just nervously looking at each other, wondering what’s going to happen next?

DOUGLAS MACGREGOR: Yeah, they’re probably going to ask each other how to stay warm. I’m sure that that’s a possibility. I would not write anything off at this stage. Anything is possible. And remember that when President Trump commits himself to something publicly, he feels obligated to carry through on it.

And look at Venezuela. What have you heard about that lately? Well, we sold a half a billion dollars worth of oil from Venezuela. The oil, I guess the money or the proceeds from it is sitting in Qatar. Interesting place to park the money. And then suddenly we’re willing to do business with the government in Caracas. We think we can work with them. When we were characterizing everything that went on in the country as criminality, deceit, communism, socialism, dictatorship, go down the list, all of a sudden now, well, maybe not. Maybe we can work something out.

And I think Venezuela is quietly leaving the stage because somebody figured out we can’t go in there. If we go in there, we’ll regret it. We can’t fix the place. We can’t afford to do any of it. And maybe we can sort of hold them hostage to future problems unless they give us a good deal on whatever oil they pull out. I don’t know. But it hasn’t amounted to anything. I think Greenland won’t amount to anything either, hopefully.

American Power and Global Perceptions

DANIEL DAVIS: You know, it’s interesting you make that issue about the Venezuelan thing. One of the things that Trump mentioned in that speech is that people can see what we did in Venezuela, and they see that we have the power to do anything. And he’s talked about writ large on the global stage. And I think that that kind of illuminates what I have some concerns is that Trump actually believes some of his press, because many in America do believe that. They think what happened in Venezuela, Secretary of War Hegseth actually made this direct point that what we did there, we can kick everybody’s ass and we could do anything anywhere. Right.

Well, one of the other things that Trump said in here is that really we are keeping the whole world afloat.

VIDEO CLIP BEGINS:

DONALD TRUMP: The United States is keeping the whole world afloat. Many places. I could give you six, seven places just in the people in this little area. I know every one of them. They’re sort of, they’re looking down. They don’t want to see me and…

VIDEO CLIP ENDS:

Trump’s Davos Address and Global Economic Realignment

DOUGLAS MACGREGOR: They don’t want to stare me in the eyes. But they’re taking advantage of everybody, took advantage of the United States. But I’ve been very fair and I gave them a tariff and it was fine. But I realized that without us, it’s not Switzerland anymore. Without us, it’s not any of the countries that are represented here. We want to work with the countries. We want to work with them. We’re not looking to destroy them. I could have said 39, 40%. I could have said I want a 70% tariff. Then we make money with Switzerland. But Switzerland would have been probably destroyed, financially destroyed.

DANIEL DAVIS: I don’t want to do that. But we should be paying the lowest interest rate of everybody. You know, Doug, we used to, especially during some of our liberal administrations, we used to call ourselves the indispensable nation and we’re the most important, et cetera, out there. And Trump almost seems to be bringing that back up and saying that the whole world is tough to float by us. If it’s not for us, everyone would cease to exist. Do you have any concerns that he may actually believe that and think that we are recalling all the shots?

DOUGLAS MACGREGOR: Well, I think he does believe it. When he speaks this way, I think he’s quite serious. I also think he’s not right. He gets some things correct, others, not so much. The point is that if you have to state these things publicly and repeat them to people in a way that is guaranteed to offend everybody in the audience, you probably don’t have the power and influence that you think you do.

But having said that, a lot of people are sitting there listening and saying, well, I guess the only solution is to disengage from this bankrupt financial system that the United States controls. It’s time for us to join BRICS. It’s time for us to get out from under the United States. We now understand that thanks to President Trump, with one keystroke, bankers sitting in New York City can eliminate savings, can eliminate vast quantities of wealth that we have accumulated, whether we’re Russians or Germans, Italians, Arabs, doesn’t make any difference. If he doesn’t like us, if he doesn’t like what we do, if we don’t agree with him, then we can be punished in all sorts of ways.

So why would you want to be part of that existing financial system? So I think the first thing you’re going to see, and I think it’s well underway now, is that people are going to sell off our debt. Overnight, the Swedes sold billions and billions and billions of U.S. treasuries. We’re watching as Japan prepares to sell off close to a trillion in U.S. debt. I think that’s just the beginning of a tide that’s going to sweep across us, is going to have terrible consequences for our financial system.

And when people sell those things off and they disengage from you and they decide, well, we don’t really need that supply chain, we’ll build another one and we’ll do business elsewhere, we’ll do business with China. I mean, if you’re sitting in Australia and you think this could happen to you, you have many options. You don’t have to be wedded to us. And I think that’s really what’s going to happen as a result of the current administration. People are just going to say we don’t want to end up like the Russians with $300 billion that the United States or its allies decide to steal. We don’t want to end up being constantly the target of tariffs that are hurtful and harmful to our economy because the president doesn’t happen to like us or what we say. I see nothing good coming out of those statements.

The Shift Away from U.S. Debt

DANIEL DAVIS: Well, and neither do I. You mentioned some of this, what Japan may be trying to do. In the past year, China has sold off 10% of its holding of U.S. debt, some significant number of billions of dollars. And every evidence suggests that that trend is going to continue on here into 2026. And that’s going to have some implications there.

But you mentioned that some people are finally getting tired of that. Well, one of the folks that is getting tired of that is Canada’s Mark Carney. And I think that he even considers himself a middling power. So he didn’t consider himself a great power. But he’s starting to stand up. That was noticed. And I’m going to show you a couple of soundboards from what he said at Davos yesterday. But Trump actually addressed Carney in his speech today.

VIDEO CLIP BEGINS:

DONALD TRUMP: We’re building the golden dome that’s going to, just by its very nature, going to be defending Canada. Canada gets a lot of freebies from us, by the way. They should be grateful also, but they’re not. I watch your prime minister yesterday. He wasn’t so grateful that they should be grateful to us, Canada. Canada lives because of the United States. Remember that, Mark, the next time you make your statements.

VIDEO CLIP ENDS:

DANIEL DAVIS: So if you think that you’re keeping the world afloat and how dare this country not recognize my greatness and be grateful for what they’re doing and have the audacity to have their own way. I mean, it seems to me, Doug, and before I even show you what Carney said, what he was referring to, this idea that you’re mocking and denigrating anybody who’s thinking about going their own way, do you think that’s going to cow other people not to do that or make them more inclined to push back?

DOUGLAS MACGREGOR: Well, that’s obvious. I think more and more countries are going to end up migrating in the direction of BRICS. That was my point. The Chinese, whether you like them or not, are not inclined to impose any restrictions on the people that they lend money to or do business with. They want to be paid. They want to do business on a basis that is profitable for them as well as hopefully for the business partner. But they’re not interested in changing anybody’s government. They’re not interested in pushing them into a position of subordination.

So I think what is happening in Canada, you’re going to see elsewhere. Brazil is already with BRICS, obviously. I think we’ll see more Latin American states that will migrate in that direction. And I think Africa certainly will. And Africa is full of all the minerals and resources that the world could ever possibly want. You can fit the United States and several other countries into the continent of Africa. It’s so huge.

But he’s not thinking in those terms. And I think unfortunately some of what he says goes down well with some of the base that like to hear that. But then again, they’re the same crowd that is part of what I call the Bombs Away club. Oh, we bombed somebody yesterday. That’s great. We’re great. We’re wonderful. We bombed them. But I think the majority of Americans are not really very impressed with that approach.

Mark Carney’s Warning on Economic Weaponization

DANIEL DAVIS: Well, and it does appear that Prime Minister Carney does seem to agree with your assessment about where things are going. And he took the very public opportunity yesterday at Davos to make this statement.

VIDEO CLIP BEGINS:

MARK CARNEY: Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition. Over the past two decades, a series of crises in finance, health, energy and geopolitics have laid bare the risks of extreme global integration. But more recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited. You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination.

VIDEO CLIP ENDS:

DANIEL DAVIS: Now, Doug, you’ve mentioned many times over years that a lot of this globalist integration stuff, which was always touted as being something that everybody benefits from, you’ve always warned that there are dangers. It sounds like Canada has come to the same conclusion and are ready to take action against it.

DOUGLAS MACGREGOR: Well, two things very quickly. First, if your national security depends on a phone call to New York City and staying friendly to Washington, you don’t have a Treasury, you have a subscription service that Washington can cancel at will. So I think that’s part of what he’s saying.

Second piece is this, this golden dome that is a snowball’s chance in hell of ever working. You know, we can’t effectively engage, track and shoot down hypersonic missiles. All of your intercontinental ballistic missiles are hypersonic. Nobody seems to understand that. They’re operating at 7,000 miles per second. And this is beyond belief. You know, 186,000 miles per second is light speed. So you’re not at that point.

But my argument is very simply, all the physicists looking at this are shaking their heads because the only thing that you can do is bankrupt yourself by transferring vast quantities of cash to the firms that are either principal or subcontractors on the project. But you’re not going to save the United States or anybody else in North America if you decide to build this thing and think that you’re going to be invulnerable, invincible when it comes to incoming ballistic missiles. It won’t work.

I think what we see Mr. Carney doing is essentially he’s developing an extension cord and he’s plugging into China. I mean, that’s the way I would put it. In other words, he wants to build a future with electricity and minerals and fuel and so forth and a very long extension cord that plugs into China. Now is that a perfect answer for Canada? No. Canada and we need to get along, we need to cooperate. There’s no question about it.

But then there’s another feature too, that it was unmentioned, but it’s part of this problem, and that’s the dollar. The dollar becomes a transaction currency, useful for trade, somewhat necessary for oil, and dominant in daily commerce. But otherwise gold becomes a settlement currency and that’s where we’re headed. And I think the Canadians know that. They have gold mines, they have silver mines, they’re sitting on a lot of resources. They can do business in that kind of environment. So I think people are now looking at gold as insurance against the dollar-based system which is being used or weaponized against them.

Canada’s Strategic Pivot

DANIEL DAVIS: Now, you mentioned about Canada wanting to have an extension cord into China. Mark Carney actually went to China to work on some business deals just a matter of days ago. So before this, it was all very fresh and he brought that very issue up during his speech.

VIDEO CLIP BEGINS:

MARK CARNEY: Canada was amongst the first to hear the wake-up call leading us to fundamentally shift our strategic posture. Canadians know that our old comfortable assumptions that our geography and alliance memberships automatically conferred prosperity and security, that assumption is no longer valid. We have signed 12 other trade and security deals on four continents in six months. The past few days we’ve concluded new strategic partnerships with China and Qatar. We’re negotiating free trade pacts with India, ASEAN, Thailand, Philippines and Mercosur. We’re doing something else to help solve global problems. We’re pursuing variable geometry, in other words, different coalitions for different issues based on common values and interests.

VIDEO CLIP ENDS:

DANIEL DAVIS: So he sounds like he is taking active—it’s not just to China, but he’s actually going around the world. And one wonders the, to what extent will other countries who have been filial to the United States and have been subordinate, have been just saying, “Yes, sir,” whenever we tell them something to do, may start thinking, hey, maybe we can do the same thing as Canada.

Because Canada has always been pretty much a poodle that follows behind whatever the U.S. says. And now Carney’s making a lot of physical actions to diversify and to lower his risk of retaliatory threats from the United States. Do you see this as a template that others may follow?

The Future of Global Finance and NATO’s Decline

DOUGLAS MACGREGOR: Oh, I don’t think there’s any question about it now. How far will they all go? That’s something that we can’t answer at this stage. Much is going to depend on what happens inside our own financial system. What happens to our economy? We have serious problems here at home.

Remember, one of the things that President Trump talked about was the need to reduce spending, to create limits to how much we would borrow. In other words, to bring things in line with some sort of logical program that would avoid complete collapse, which is the direction in which we’re currently headed economically as a result of the financial system.

Now, I can’t predict the future, but I think right now Carney is expressing the views that are much more widely held than anybody in the United States would care to admit. I think it’s unfortunate, but it’s probably inevitable. Is it a permanent end state? Not necessarily.

In other words, you know, when you mine an ounce of gold in Canada, in Russia, in China, in Saudi Arabia, wherever it is, you don’t extract that in a state where you’re dependent on Washington’s good behavior. In other words, gold. Enough of it means that you don’t have to depend on Washington’s goodwill. It’s not a commodity. That’s a lifeboat. And that’s what everybody is trying to build right now.

They’re in the ocean and you have a giant, you know, whale, you know, a giant sperm whale or something like that, a Moby Dick that’s, you know, just wreaking havoc wherever it swims. And so you say, I need a lifeboat. How do I get a lifeboat? Well, you go into gold backed currency, you start trading with other people, you start steering clear of the big whale. You hope the whale grows up and behaves, or you hope the whale dies and goes away, whatever. But right now the whale is a danger and people don’t want to be swamped.

So they’re climbing into lifeboats and they’re paddling as fast as they can away from us. This is why I said that, you know, for several months now that if you’re sitting in Asia where stability is everything and certainty is everything, remember stability in prices, stability and supply, these things are absolutely vital and essential to successful international commerce and business in Asia.

People are openly referring to us in economic terms as patient zero. We’re at the end of the hallway in the hospital. We have an incurable disease. It could spread like smallpox. And so we’re being kept in isolation. That’s kind of the way the Koreans, the Japanese, the Chinese, Vietnamese and others view us, as patient zero.

Now what you’re seeing in Europe, as Europeans are saying our expectations were very different. We thought America was something else other than what it is now. Again, the good side of this is that perhaps the Europeans will come to terms with Russia and their other neighbors and stop this nonsense of permanent hostility because they’re going to have to live with their neighbors.

One of the downsides of the NATO alliance was that we enabled a lot of behavior that many of these small nations could never have engaged in because we backed them unconditionally. Well, if that ends, they’ve got to get along on their own. And that means that they’ve got to treat the people they live with. Well, that’s a good thing.

The bad side of this is that they may discover that’s a better life and a better way forward in the, in world history than the one that they’ve been on. I think it probably is. But that’s not going to help us.

The Dollar’s Declining Stability

DANIEL DAVIS: Very much economically and you know, Doug, you mentioned the issue with the dollar. One of the reasons why the dollar, once we took it off of the gold standard, has continued to be quite powerful is because of the impression of stability that we have generated over these decades. If you subtract that out of the equation, then all of a sudden there’s reason for them to find alternatives.

And I think that is just going to hasten the movement away from that which is going to cause all kinds of financial problems primarily for us first. And then that will have cascading effects as well.

One of the things where that kind of, I guess there’s sort of a nexus between all these issues that you mentioned a little bit earlier. I want to get back to now. And that’s this issue of NATO, because with Carney taking this action economically, others worried about those national security issues of potential Trump could change his mind this afternoon and decide to use force on Greenland, et cetera, definitely has.

And I’ve heard this from some of my European friends behind the scenes, that there’s a lot of these European folks are panicking and they are actively looking at alternatives to American hegemony and even in the national security sphere. And that, of course, centers on NATO.

Now, you posted something on X a couple of days ago, or maybe it was even yesterday about some of your concern. You had posted something that Lavrov said on NATO. Actually, that was today, wasn’t yesterday. Lavrov said something about what he thought was NATO. And you said the failure of the proxy war in Russia is directly responsible for this.

First of all, let people see what Lavrov said. NATO and the OSC are Euro Atlantic entities and they feel a dire crisis of NATO. Currently, there are discussions ongoing within NATO whether it’s time to shut it down because one NATO member intends to attack another NATO member, but that’s a different story. So he’s like, yeah, we’ll worry about that later.

But you say it’s not just the Greenland issue, which he was kind of referring to there, but also the disagreements about the war in Ukraine at all. What do you see happening to NATO?

NATO’s Disintegration

DOUGLAS MACGREGOR: I think NATO is crumbling and it will eventually disintegrate. I don’t know that there will be a formal funeral where everybody goes to Brussels and stands outside the big building, quietly folds up the flags, they sing a final song together, get on the train and leave. That I don’t know. But NATO is, is on the skids. It’s finished. It’s being abused. We abused it.

We have been weaponizing NATO for things that have nothing to do with NATO. We weaponized NATO in Bosnia Herzegovina and then again in Kosovo, and we made war with NATO on another European state, which is something that everybody in NATO thought would never, ever happen. I know that sounds strange to Americans, but most Europeans saw NATO as creating the stability that would prevent any future war between NATO states, between European states. It would prevent another world war from breaking out in Europe.

But we weaponize it, we use it against former Yugoslavia, then Serbia. Those wounds have never healed in the Balkans. They’re still very deep. That’s another crisis that we created long term that will not go away. And the solution is not to go in and bomb the living daylights out of Serbia or anybody else. Those issues are going to have to be settled by the people that live in the Balkans.

In Europe, we have weaponized the Europeans inside NATO to go to Afghanistan, to go to Iraq, to even serve in Syria. Now, the old colonial powers like Britain and France and the Netherlands have been only too pleased to show up and join these things. But a lot of other NATO states have joined us. Not because they thought it was a good idea, not because they really supported what we were doing, but they wanted to maintain our goodwill, our friendship.

I mean, I sat with many Polish officers and they flat out said, you know, well, we’re here to bleed with you. And I said, why? Well, we’ve got to bleed with you in order to cement the friendship with Poland. And I tried to tell them, you know, I understand the theory behind that, but we live a long way from Poland. And if you think you’re going to be rescued by us against future enemies in the region or people you don’t like, whether they’re Russians or Germans, Hungarians or anybody else, I think you’re delusional. I don’t think that will happen.

And I think to some extent, all of NATO is caught up in this. They’re caught up in the illusion that they are much like Poland in 1939, and they say, well, we don’t like the Russians, we don’t like the Germans. We’re not going to make peace with anybody. We’re going to be everybody’s enemy. And the reason we’re going to do that is because the British promised they’d help us. You know, it’s the same mentality. We can go back to the Americans and they’ll help us.

We have no interest in that. We never did. We don’t now. We will not in the future. The age of moving millions of men around the world to rescue, liberate whatever you want to call it other countries for themselves or their enemies is over. NATO is over. These are legacies of a past that has gone away.

But you’ve got to get people to understand that we live in a different world now, that military power is not the principal instrument with which you advance your interests, and that economic power is vital. Without it, you are nothing. You can be as large as Brazil, as large as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and it doesn’t make any difference unless it’s productive. In other words, you can’t translate it into productivity that results in real prosperity and economic strength. And if you can’t do those things, you’re not going to maintain the military for very long.

So the world has changed. We have to change with it. But every time I turn on, you know, the YouTube or something else, there’s another retired four star NATO must be preserved. It’s the oldest alliance in the world. It’s never been more. Oh, give me a break. You know, that’s nonsense. In other words, we’re going to cling to this past that is no longer relevant forever.

Instead of saying, well, you know, Russia is not the Soviet Union, right? And China is not the communist giant that threatens the world that you say it is. And you know, you’re dealing with a nutcase when the first thing somebody says is the Communist Party of China is behind us. You know, aren’t very many communists in China. I haven’t met any. They are brilliant business people. They’re the best capitalists I’ve ever seen. And they’re state capitalists. It’s a different form of capitalism. It’s state capitalism, just as there were forms of state socialism.

You know, this whole thing, the whole world has changed. We are not changing, not in our minds, not in our thinking. Max Planck said that, what is it, physics evolves with each successive funeral? Because you had all these physicists that absolutely refused to come to terms with the thinking of Einstein or Planck or Heisenberg or a whole range of other people are fear me. They. In other words, these people actually had to die off for bad ideas to go away.

I think it’s almost that bad right now because President Trump doesn’t seem to want to kill the bad ideas. You know, he’s got his own set of bad ideas. He could have gone into NATO and said, listen, this is over. The United States will not support war with Russia. We want to normalize our relations with Russia. We want to do business with Russia. Russia is not interested in conquering Europe. So sit down, shut up, and get on board with us. And if you’re not going to get on board with us, that’s fine, then get on another ship because we’re not sailing the war. He could have done that.

DANIEL DAVIS: Yeah.

DOUGLAS MACGREGOR: Has he done it? No, he hasn’t. And, and then he looks. Look at a place like Kiev under this man, Zelensky. Zelensky is a defeated regime. Ukraine has been defeated, if not destroyed. Shut up. We’re going to sort this out and you’re going to live with what we come up with.

People had common sense 100, 200 years ago when they settled these wars. They took that position. But again, when did they do that? They did it after the Napoleonic wars because they’d seen millions of people die, they’d seen cities and towns destroyed. They didn’t want that anymore. It took 100 years to forget it and go back to war again in 1914. But in the interim, at least, people were more reasonable in terms of saying, I’m sorry, this is the way it is. The most important thing is to stop the war, to contain the conflict, to halt the destruction. We don’t have people thinking like that.

DANIEL DAVIS: We don’t. And because life of horse vacuum. If NATO goes away, I can’t imagine that the European states are just going to say, okay, we’ll all go it independently. Now, I’m sure something would would survive that or rise from those ashes. What do you think would happen just within Europe if NATO itself does what you suggest?

The Regional Nature of European Security

DOUGLAS MACGREGOR: Yeah, Europe is composed of regions. It’s a remarkably small area. I mean, remember, all of Western Europe would fit into Iran. So Europe is regional in its outlook. If you’re in Berlin or Stockholm or Helsinki, chances are, Copenhagen, chances are that you’re going to view things in a similar way. When you look east, when you look west, when you look north or south, if you are in Italy, if you are in Spain, if you’re in Greece, you’re going to look south, you’re going to look east and west, and your views are going to be similar.

In other words, I think we’ll see new, what I would call security zones emerge. And these security zones will overlap with culture. You know, culture is something that we Americans tend on the whole to ignore at our peril. We don’t understand how people think. We don’t bother to learn what they think and why they think the way they do. We don’t study their history. We don’t study the geography.

When you begin to do these things, then you begin to make sense of what new kinds of arrangements might emerge. I can’t predict them with certainty, but I think the Russians understand this. And if you go back to the December 2021 proposals that they put together, there’s a lot of that in there, because the Russians are trying to explain their interests, they’re trying to understand the interests in the West. But again, you need a new generation of leadership that is not looking for confrontation, but is principally interested in avoiding confrontation and doing business.

The Future of the Transatlantic Alliance

DANIEL DAVIS: And that would certainly be the way to go about it. And I think it’s going to naturally come across, come out that way, because I agree with you. I’m just looking at the fundamentals. I just can’t see the transatlantic alliance as it has been perpetuating much longer. It’ll probably be an ugly death, and it’ll go in different directions, but I don’t think it’s going to survive any much further.

Last, before we let you go here, I want to look at one other issue which is also really pressing, and that is the potential for war with Iran. Yesterday on Kudlow, Jack Keane went on and was very emphatic saying what he expects the Trump administration is about to do.

Jack Keane’s Warning on Iran

VIDEO CLIP BEGINS:

JACK KEANE: I am expecting military action, for sure.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Oh, oh, okay.

JACK KEANE: And then there’s no doubt about it. I mean, we’re bringing these resources to bear, and it’s likely because we had to expand the target set. And why are we expanding it? Because we have to consider what is Iran going to do in retaliation? Our bases are vulnerable. What are they going to do about Israel? They’re going to attack Israel, likely, and they’re vulnerable. And what are we going to do about their ballistic missiles? Are we going to take them down before they fire them at our bases and also at Israel?

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Likely.

JACK KEANE: Are we going to kill leaders? Certainly IRGC members, the people that are oppressing the people? Absolutely. So I think the target set is expanded. Resources are being brought in to deal with an expanded target set, which is what we do.

VIDEO CLIP ENDS:

DANIEL DAVIS: And Doug, that’s just what we do, as he said. And you certainly know Lindsey Graham is an even more emphatic advocate of this. He’s been trying to lobby Trump to do this for a long time. We do see combat power moving in. So there’s evidence that what he says is going to happen.

But, Doug, look what he described there. Kill political leaders, kill military leaders, destroy infrastructure. Those are things of an outright war. He’s talking about starting a war, and there is no declaration of war. There is no congressional authorization. This sounds like an autocrat who’s using the military as his personal militia to do what he wants. I mean, to me, this is an even bigger issue than just the military issue. But I wonder if you can address both of those.

The Path to War with Iran

DOUGLAS MACGREGOR: Well, a couple of things. First of all, I think that General Keane gave you a very accurate picture of what we’re likely to see. We don’t know when. I mean, frankly, it could start in a few days, it could start in another two weeks. We just don’t know. But I think the picture he painted is a very accurate one.

Now, why are we getting to this point? I think there were people in Washington who were the victims of wishful thinking and self delusion. I think they really believed that they could piggyback on some demonstrations that were not related to overthrow of the government, but were really genuine expressions of frustration and anger about the economy and the fall in the standard of living, the uncontrolled inflation and the destruction of the Iranian currency. Those were legitimate reasons to be in the streets.

But then the introduction from the Mossad, the CIA and MI6 of 40,000 Starlight terminals and lots of provocateurs who were there to encourage people to kill policemen, to precipitate incidents that ultimately they hoped would bring down the regime by inducing the regime to overreact, didn’t work. It didn’t work at all. And the Russians and the Chinese both chipped in and helped the Iranians jam the Starlight terminals. They helped them deal with what was being done to them on the ground over there by informing them through their intelligence channels of what was up.

So then we turned to this notion of, well, these people are killing people that are just good demonstrators, they don’t deserve this kind of nonsense. And ultimately they rounded up the fifth columnists. A lot of these were Iranians that had been paid a lot of money by the Mossad and others to participate in these actions. And if you’re dealing with the kind of widespread discontent and economic frustration that you have in Iran, you shouldn’t be surprised when you have people that take money and say, sure, I’ll go out and throw a brick at the fire truck, I’ll throw a brick at the police car. You know, if you want me to, I’ll take a shot.

And so those people have been rounded up and I think they’re being executed. And frankly, that’s what you would do if you were at war. If that happened in our country, we would round these people up and execute them if we were in a state of war. Iran is in a state of war. Nobody in Iran is delusional. They know what’s coming. They know the Israelis and the United States are going to attack them. There’s no question in their minds. The only question is, how does it begin? What triggers it? That nobody can say with absolute certainty.

Remember the last time around, they showed up for talks with us and negotiations, and in the midst of it, the Israelis launched a surprise assault. Well, the Israelis can’t launch surprise assaults because they’re permanent victims. Remember, they’re always the victims. But that’s not true. Once you leave the United States and Israel, the rest of the world doesn’t see it that way.

Iran’s Preparations and Military Realities

This time around, I think the Iranians are going to be very prepared for all these possibilities. Now, there’s something else that he said. He said, you know, you had to bring in all this firepower. Yeah. Because they thought they could get away with less. They thought they might be able to assist the forces on the ground trying to overthrow the government, and that would not require as much military muscle. Well, that all fell apart.

I don’t think that the people in Washington recognized the extent to which they were delusional in their expectations, but now they’ve come around to understanding you need a lot of firepower, so you’ve got a lot more naval and air power involved. I’m sure we have some special ops on the ground, but I don’t think the special ops will be put at risk inside Iran in the way that we did it in Venezuela, because Iranians have a higher state of technology with which to defend themselves and alert themselves, and was the case in Venezuela, but still, you’ll have some of that. Again, the only question is one of timing.

Now, what is this going to produce? Is this going to cause Iran to be destroyed? Well, certainly within certain limitations, yes, they want to destroy Iran. Most of all, they want to destroy the government. They want to split the country into smaller regions and parts. They want to encourage Kurds, for instance, to come in, as they did a week or two ago, and try to incite trouble, incite rebellions. They’ll go into the Azeri areas again, I’m sure, and try to do that. Don’t think it’ll work. I think the Iranian state will weather all of that, but I don’t know how they’ll weather everything else.

The International Response Question

That brings us to the next question, which is probably the most important. Is everybody going to stand around and watch us utterly annihilate and pulverize Iran without interfering? I know that the Turks were involved in alerting the Iranians to the Kurdish group of fighters that tried, about 400 of them trying to infiltrate into Iran a week and a half ago. I think the Turks have decided that while they may not like the Shia and the Iranian Shiites, nevertheless they have no interest in seeing Iran be destroyed.

What does that mean? Does that translate into anything? I don’t know. Remember, Mr. Erdogan wants to be on all sides of every issue and straddle every fence he can. But then you have Russia very concerned about its southern flank. Is Russia willing to let this go down without interference? What about China? If this turns out to be as horrendous an attack as I expect, then I would think the Straits of Hormuz would be closed. The Chinese import about a third of their oil from the Persian Gulf. If that’s closed, the Chinese cannot stand around and twiddle their thumbs.

So we don’t know what precisely will happen. These are not going to be automatic responses, but at some point decisions will have to be made about how much damage they’re willing to allow to be inflicted on Iran.

DANIEL DAVIS: And what, Doug, would you imagine the range of possibilities are for the Iranian regime? And if they started getting this level, not just a one off, 20 minute strike by the United States, but it’s actually a sustained attack by the US and Israel, what are the range of possibilities that they may do in retaliation?

Iran’s Retaliatory Capabilities

DOUGLAS MACGREGOR: Well, I think the Iranians are, whether or not this is justified, that’s another question. I don’t have access to the intelligence who would help me know in detail, but I think the Iranians are comfortable with their ability to deal with Israel. And that means that if they’re compelled to do so, they’ll level the place. Very little doubt in my mind about that.

The problem is us. The Iranians don’t think they can handle us. Now they’ll try, but the quantum leap from Iranian military power to American military power is just too great. So that raises the issue, if they can’t deal with us, they can’t survive us. If we commit everything that I think we’re prepared to commit, will they get help? And where will that help come from? And I think that help could come from Russia and potentially China. But when, under what circumstances? It’s hard to tell.

DANIEL DAVIS: And what should the United States do right here if we’re actually interested in American national security, interest in doing what’s good for America first? Given all that’s happened and where things are right now, even in this 11th hour, what should the President do?

Trump’s Limited Options

DOUGLAS MACGREGOR: Well, I think the President should make it abundantly clear to the world and to Israel that he’s not going to support a massive strike on Iran. But I don’t think he has that flexibility. I think he is hostage to Mr. Netanyahu. You have to go back and revisit the election. How was he elected the way he was? How did he get the support that he got and the money that he got? Keep in mind that his personal wealth, I’m told, has tripled over the last 12 months. What I’m trying to tell you is that the financial powers backing him also control him. In this connection, I don’t think he has the option of refusing to participate.

DANIEL DAVIS: Fascinating. Not encouraging, but fascinating, because my limited—

DOUGLAS MACGREGOR: Exposure to him, this is not something he wants to do. This is not what he wants. But sometimes he ends up in a corner and he has to do what he otherwise would never do. I think that’s what’s the problem here on this occasion. I just think it’s going to be very dangerous.

My greatest fear has always been that the Israelis would use a nuclear weapon, because they’re the ones who’ve made it abundantly clear, you know, you push us hard enough, that’s what we’ll do. And they don’t give a damn what anybody else says, does or thinks. And they’ll treat anybody that opposes that as an enemy.

The Nuclear Question

DANIEL DAVIS: And would you imagine that that’s part of their calculus already? Because they certainly would have to know, and one would imagine this might have been discussed by Netanyahu on December 28 when he came to Mar a Lago to talk with President Trump, that if they take this action against Iran, that is likely that Iran would strike even harder than they did in June of last year, as you just mentioned, that it well known that Iran can deal significant damage to the Israeli side. To what extent do you think it’s possible that Netanyahu is okay with that and might use that as justification to use a nuclear weapon?

DOUGLAS MACGREGOR: I don’t think he’s necessarily okay with it, but I think his expectation is that we will do much more damage this time around than we did the last time. In other words, we’ll be fully engaged from the outset.

DANIEL DAVIS: And that’s from what I’ve talked to sources in the region, that’s what they had hoped to happen in June, and when it didn’t, that’s one of the reasons why they decided to accept the ceasefire issue that President Trump is pushing. But you’re suggesting maybe this time, if they get what they didn’t get in June then it could just be a new ballgame.

DOUGLAS MACGREGOR: Yeah, I think that’s the viewpoint and I think this will be a different ballgame. This will be much, much more violent and much more damaging and much worse than anything we saw back in June.

Regional Stability and Arab Regimes

DANIEL DAVIS: And let me ask you just kind of a final question here. There’s a lot of reports that many, if not even all of the Arab regimes in the region don’t want this attack. They don’t. Many of them don’t like Iran at all. But they value regional stability above everything else and feel like they can contain Iran.

They don’t need this and they worry that this could cause lots of ripple over effect. What do you think that the regions, the regimes of the region are going to think and how would they react to a strike of this size?

DOUGLAS MACGREGOR: Well, I’m sure you’re right and I’m sure that they have expressed those views. But what can they do? These are very weak regimes. They are all sitting atop unruly societies that under the right circumstances would eagerly remove them.

That’s particularly true, I think, in the Arabian Peninsula for many of them. It’s certainly true in North Africa, Sudan and Egypt. So I think, you know, the problems at home and the weaknesses that they have make it very unlikely that they will put themselves at risk over a war between Israel and Iran.

DANIEL DAVIS: So Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, you think they would literally do nothing? They would say strongly worded letters, but that’s about all they would do.

DOUGLAS MACGREGOR: Yeah. The only state that will participate in the sense that it will oppose us in anything we do with Israelis is Iraq. Iraq is de facto ally of Iran. And you know that from having been over there.

That was one of the great achievements of the serpent to put Iran in total control of Iraq. But that was the only way to get order and that was important for Bush’s re-election. And so that’s what happened. Yes.

Timeline and Logistics

DANIEL DAVIS: Yes. Well, I guess we’ll just have to be like everybody else. We’ll have to wait and see how this turns out. I doubt it’s going away anytime soon. From what I’ve seen from some folks who have some understanding of the logistics and the deployment capabilities, somewhere around the 25th or 26th of this month is when a window could first open, when it will be passed through, anyone can say.

But apparently, you know, there’s still another four or five days before we would get to that danger zone and then I guess anything is possible.

DOUGLAS MACGREGOR: I think that’s true. And you’re right. The logistical infrastructure and support structure has to be fully staffed and ready to go. It’s not, but it’s getting closer. And that’s why you heard General King say what he did about the movement of forces, not just forces. You’ve got to move a lot of supplies and ammunition and medical support, all these things.

Constitutional Concerns and Domestic Impact

DANIEL DAVIS: And let me ask you as a last question here about the United States. This is in complete violation of the Constitution. And one may reasonably argue, as I do often, that the separation of powers has now vanished and there’s no rule of law.

There’s nothing that would constrain the President from doing this because it is categorically against articles 1 and 2 of the Constitution for the President to just choose to go to war with another country that’s not already attacked us or is even threatening us. Do you see this have or better question, what reaction and result do you think this would have domestically in the United States, if any?

DOUGLAS MACGREGOR: Well, remember that Thomas Massie, in many respects is the object lesson. If you speak up and express opposition to this kind of activity, this action, particularly in alignment with Israel, then the President of the United States calls you an anti-Semite and a loser.

And a war fund is raised to $100 million plus to support anybody but Massie, because that’s what’s important. To have 100% with AIPAC on the Hill that guarantees, no questions asked, an immediate response. I think that’s where we are. So we can recite the Constitution all you like. I think money has drowned out that chorus.

DANIEL DAVIS: And in the event that things go south, if like this doesn’t result in a clean victory and it does cost the United States, do you think that could change the calculation at home?

DOUGLAS MACGREGOR: Yes, I think it could. But I also think that it would have to coincide with what I think is coming now anyway, which is the financial crisis and the internal economic upheaval that that will create. This is not like 2008. We smothered that particular fire with cash, remember?

DANIEL DAVIS: Yeah.

DOUGLAS MACGREGOR: Everybody out.

DANIEL DAVIS: That’s quantitative easing and all that.

The Coming Financial Crisis

DOUGLAS MACGREGOR: Yeah. So I think if the two coincide roughly, and they may, then I think the American people will begin to say, wait a minute, this is wrong, enough’s enough. But it’s back to something else you and I have discussed. Americans tend to underestimate or not even understand what war means, because the last time we had a war in our country on our soil was the Civil War.

And most people no longer have a memory of the Second World War. You know, I grew up in an era where everybody’s dad including my own had been in the Second World War, and a lot of them had gone back again for the Korean War. And then a lot of the people that I grew up with ended up going to Vietnam.

So that’s over with. There’s very little memory of that. There’s no real understanding of it. And so until it gets very bad, no one will pay attention.

DANIEL DAVIS: Yeah, I can’t argue with that. That’s historically the way it’s happened, and I think the pain is going to be required to reteach us that lesson. We just have to hope that it’s not a catastrophic lesson.

But as always, Doug, we’re very grateful to have you on because even though you say a lot of the things that a lot of people don’t want to hear, it is vital that we hear the truth, the unintimidated and uncompromised truth, so that we know exactly what we’re facing.

And especially if these things start materializing, people can point back to this and say, yeah, this guy was right. Let’s start taking his actions now before it gets too bad. That’s our hope that this can lead to something and mitigate some problems in the future. So thank you for your clarity.

DOUGLAS MACGREGOR: Okay, thank you and appreciate you guys, too.

DANIEL DAVIS: Be sure and like and subscribe if you haven’t on this. Patrick Henningson will be with us at 2:00 o’clock today. We’re going to talk about some different aspects of what you saw in Davos. And as always, he’s got a very unique take on some of these things. You don’t want to miss that.

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And that’s going to be the case also this afternoon with Patrick Henningson. We’ll look forward to seeing you then. Thanks, folks. See you tomorrow or later on on the Daniel Davis Deep Dive. You know, we don’t have sponsors because we hate to hit you over the head with ads. I don’t like them. So show a little love back, subscribe like, and send this to somebody you care about.

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