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Douglas Macgregor: Russia Destroys Bridges and Will Take Kiev (Transcript)

In this interview, Glenn Diesen speaks with Colonel Douglas Macgregor, former advisor to the US Secretary of Defense, about why Washington’s proxy wars fail to produce lasting peace, from Napoleon’s invasion of Russia to today’s wars with Iran and Russia. Macgregor discusses Russia’s plan to destroy the bridges along the Dnieper and move on Kyiv, the return of General Surovikin, corruption in the Russian military, Europe’s political crisis, and the economic limits of endless American wars. This interview was premiered on October 9, 2026. Read the full transcript of this interview below:

How Do Washington’s Proxy Wars End?

GLENN DIESEN: (00:00:00 – 00:00:38): Welcome back. We are joined today by Colonel Douglas Macgregor, a former advisor to the US Secretary of Defense, a combat veteran, and also an author. And well, one of the articles you authored, the most recent one, has the title “How Do Washington’s Proxy Wars End?” And I thought, yeah, this is a good question, and it deals with the problem of I guess translating battlefield victories into an actual peace, something Historically, it’s been very difficult. I was wondering if you can explain why this is, 2 different things, why it’s difficult to translate these minor victories into a sustainable peace.

Napoleon, Russia, and the Limits of Battlefield Victory

DOUGLAS MACGREGOR: (00:00:39 – 00:06:01): Well, it’s always a difficult task. You can start a war, you can fight a war, you can even win it on the battlefield and still have no peace. And that’s particularly true when you’re dealing with large continental powers. Bonaparte marched into Russia without really understanding, despite his extraordinarily high IQ and remarkable intelligence, he did not understand what he was dealing with.

And his goal made sense, which was destroy the Russian army and then the czar will be compelled to capitulate, which wasn’t far off. Ultimately, if you could destroy the army, then by all means capture the czar.

The problem was that He had been warned by his aide-de-camp, Major General Caulaincourt, that Caulaincourt had ridden over to Vilnius and spoken directly to the Tsar and said, “You realize, sire, that unless you’re willing to end this trade with England, that the Emperor is going to go to war with you.” And he said, “What’s he going to do?” He said, “He’s assembling the largest army ever seen. To march into Russia.” He said, “Well, we’ve been through this before.” He said, “We’ll do what we’ve always done.” And he said, “What’s that?” He said, “We’ll withdraw into the interior and you’ll have to follow us.”

And you’re talking about hundreds and hundreds of miles through very difficult terrain, very few roads. “And by the time you reach us, you may not be in a position to defeat us.” And that, with that, the Tsar said goodbye, got into his carriage, and rode away. And Caulaincourt went back and told Napoleon. Napoleon scoffed, said, “What’s he talking about?” He didn’t understand because he knew very little about Russia.

The other thing is that Napoleon had another problem. He had large numbers of Poles encouraging him to invade. Sound familiar? And they were the largest non-French contingent that he had in his army. And the Poles are very good soldiers and they stayed with him throughout. They stayed with him to the bitter end. But the point is that he was, he made the mistake of listening to the Poles.

Well, you have a similar situation with Trump listening to the Israelis. Like the, excuse me, like the Poles, the Israelis wanted this war with Iran and they wanted us to fight it for them. And he didn’t understand he was dealing with a large continental power. And you could drop as many bombs as you like on it. The probability of success is very low doing that unless you can go in on the ground.

But we have no strategic interest at stake that would justify a massive invasion. We have no army to do it. Our army is a little bit better than what you’ve got on the ground in most of Europe, but it’s a shadow of its former self. It certainly can’t carry the fight very far. You add the Marines to the army, you’ve got about 23,000, 24,000 Marines in infantry regiments. So you put them It’s not going to change the equation very much.

So right now, I think what’s happened is that we’re discovering that, all right, you can sink whatever ships the Iranians have, you can blockade them, you can bomb them, and you can declare victory, which I think Donald Trump has done several times. It’s completely meaningless. What you really want is an end to the war. And by the time Napoleon gets to Moscow, that’s what he wants. He wants to end the war, but he can’t. Doesn’t know how to do it.

Same thing was true with the Wehrmacht, with the Germans in World War II. In fact, when you read the accounts, they’re so similar to Bonaparte’s experience, and what we’re going through is another manifestation of it. It’s astonishing that anybody would have been as stupid as we were to go into war with Iran, but we’ve done it.

And the thing that’s most concerning to me at this point is that we’re going to go back and try again, and when that fails, there are people that are actively promoting the use of nuclear weapons in Washington. And that would change everything. That would be a catastrophe for the world because it would then open the door to the use of nuclear weapons against us and against our friends. That’s something we ought to be smart enough to avoid, but then again, we weren’t smart enough to avoid this to begin with, so I’m a little concerned that we won’t be smart enough to avoid that either.

Iran’s Strategy: Driving the US Out of the Region

Bottom line is that Iran, in order to win this thing, has to drive us out of the region.