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Hey friends, it's me Sharon McMahon, host of Here's Where It Gets Interesting. We've been working hard on a new documentary series called Resilience that explores the incarceration of Japanese Americans in the United States during World War II. So join me as I talk with experts and share first-hand accounts that detailed the resilience shown by 120,000 Japanese Americans who endured wartime imprisonment right here in America. And on October 24th we conclude our series with a special episode. Actor George Takedes hits down with me to talk about his family's experience behind the barbed wire fences of an incarceration camp. Don't miss it because here's Where It Gets Interesting. Acast helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com Hello and welcome back to another episode of Battleground for Ukraine with me Patrick Bishop and Sue David. Well it seems that the tempo on the actual battlefield has slowed a bit in recent days compared to the hectic pace of the last few weeks and instead the focus of violence is shifted to Ukraine's cities as Russia switched at least for the time being to a strategy upon barding them with missiles and drones in an attempt to destroy vital infrastructure and demoralize the population. Yeah, various cities, Kiev, Kakeev, Deneepro, Mikhailyev and also cities further to the west like Zidamiya have all been hit. Mercerfully, Ukraine's existing air defenses have been able to knock down some of the incoming rocket tree but civilian areas have suffered and civilians of course are dying. The government is saying that 30% of the country's power stations have been taken out and this of course is just as winter sets in. We'll be discussing all of that but in this episode we're also taking a longer view of the war. So I guess this week who'll be talking to after the break is Professor Matthias Strun who's visiting Professor of Military Studies at the University of Buckingham. He's also chief analyst at the Center for Historical Analysis and Conflict Research bit of a mouthful that which is the British Army's strategic think tank and if that wasn't enough he's also a reserve left-hand colonel in the German army. He's going to be telling us all about the German response to the crisis and also what steps NATO is likely to take as the war progresses. But let's start off with these missile and drone attacks. Do you think this is a viable long-term strategy? No, I don't think it's viable in the long term for two reasons. First of all, very strong indications that Russia is running out of long-range precision missiles. We're hearing that they're tapping up their solid ally Iran to provide new longer-range missiles. How accurate they'll be we'll see. But also of course, as you mentioned at the beginning, these drone attacks and hundreds if not thousands have come from also supplied by Iran. They are much less effective of course than the cruise missiles. They are terror weapon as you say Patrick and terror tends to produce the opposite effect. It's actually making the Ukrainians I suspect more steadfast. Having said all of that, there is a material effect on the infrastructure and these are worrying signs as we head into the winter. The possibility of combating the drones has been discussed in Washington this week, apparently between our defense secretary Ben Wallace and of course his American counterparts. And they seem to have agreed to be supplying more anti-dron kits, I mean effectively air defense systems and also beginning indications from NATO that they're doing the same thing. So the effectiveness of these weapons I suspect will fall away as more kit arrives in Ukraine. Yeah, there does seem to be a definite connect between the appointment of Svhevolikin and this new strategy, so-called General Armageddon. He's aided in the better now of course by Iranian revolutionary guards who turned up to train them in the use of the drone, the Shahid Shahid means martyr in Persia and indeed in Arabic. They actually look quite like the old doodle mugs of V1s that started raining down on London the week after D-Day. I think that's quite interesting historical parallel because of course this was the V1, the V stands for the Geltrumsvapha which means vengeance, vengeance weapon. So this is not really a kind of serious attempt to change the strategic picture. It's basically an act of frustration I would say. And of course you know as you rightly say that this had been a bit depressing to think that the war's kind of coming to a close and yet we're still being bombarded. This is the view of London that I'm talking about but it certainly didn't do anything to actually damage their resolve. I think it's going to be pretty tough for the civilians in Ukraine. That's another statement. This winter this is where humanitarian aid comes in. I don't know what the picture is on energy whether there's any way of actually importing sending energy in it to make up for those losses. But you know from what we hear from the morale of Ukrainian people they are raised for this and they will get through it. There's another interesting comment piece on Sirovikin from Hamish de Brechen Gordon who was the former chief of Britain's biological and chemical warfare capability. Now he saw Sirovikin up close in Syria and said we've got very good reason to be concerned. Sirovikin is apparently an expert in what de Brechen Gordon calls unconventional warfare and we can see where this is leading of course. In other words attacks on civilians and also civilian infrastructure. He did exactly the same thing in Syria. He targeted hospitals. He targeted anything frankly that civilians need to survive more than a thousand medics were killed according to de Brechen Gordon. But even more alarming than that Sirovikin was very happy to use chemical weapons and this is what de Brechen Gordon's particularly concerned about. Either Russia not Russia using tactical nuclear battlefield weapons but either using a nuclear plant like a Zaparitsya for example and making sure that there's some kind of leak from there that's going to cause chaos or the actual use of chemical weapons and his response to all of this and we've been discussing it last few weeks of course Patrick is he writes the West must prepare and demonstrate the ability to execute an overwhelming and devastating response if it looks like Putin is planning to use devastating unconventional weapons. Yeah well that's something we'll be hearing about from Matthias later on. It's the pictures actually kind of shifting the whole time isn't it? I mean we hear different signals coming out of Washington about what this overwhelming conventional response in the event of Russia's going nuclear is likely to be but we haven't got any detail and Professor Ström will be giving us a few more thoughts if very interesting thoughts on that later on. Now actually on the battlefield itself the Russians appear to be pushing back a wee bit. There was a limited ground attack up in the North in the Karkiv oblast a few days ago just inside the Ukrainian border but it seems to me to be more of a gesture really than a serious counter attack and apparently it was actually repelled. I just don't think they've really got the where with all of them especially as this new mobilization is ongoing and troops are only just arriving in theatre and then of course you know under resource and under trained but having said that we normally hear if there are Ukrainian gains they're very keen to trump at them and we don't on the propaganda front we don't have much in the way of reporting from the front line but suggests that the impetus that the Ukrainians certainly had a few weeks back is necessary being retained. Instead we're hearing something very interesting from President Zelensky he's urging the army to capture more prisoners, presumably as opposed to killing them and this is in order to get more Ukrainians back in prisoner swaps. Kiev and Moscow have just carried out largest prisoner exchange to date and that says to me so that Ukraine is really beginning to feel the imbalance in Manpeur. Yeah potentially and of course there is you know it's very real on the subject of Russian gains and the use of these new recruits that you know effectively are being sent to Ukraine at the point of a gun. There's an interesting brief by a Western official presumably intelligence of some type who suggests that and this is a direct quote thousands of these new recruits are already casualties killed and wounded so it seems if this report is accurate this brief is accurate that they are actually sending them into the front line and they are dying. Now on the other hand Patrick you talk about Ukrainian gains and you're quite right it's been relatively quiet over the last week but there is just a tiny hint that something might be up well two hints actually first of all there's a news blackout in the south of Ukraine which might indicate a push is about to start and on the other hand the Russian command that we were already named checked him to Rovakin General Armageddon has acknowledged that they might need to move civilians out of Kesson and this you know Kiev is basically suggesting this is preparing the ground for withdrawal of Russian troops from Kesson as well. Well that would be a real game changer wouldn't it because that would give them that territory right up to the Deneepro River which is a huge territorial and strategic gain so it looks like there may be something brewing there. Now the Belarus situation they're still making sort of illiterate noises or Lukashenko is and they're definitely providing territory and airspace to support these missile and drone attacks but I think that the picture remains the same in terms of the likelihood of Russian troops actually mounting an attack from the north really going back to square one where they were in February. Now eight months go remember this war is going to be a long war but I think that the chances of that happening or indeed of Lukashenko putting his own men directly into battle is very unlikely he's just doing what he's been doing all along which is trying to demonstrate his support to Putin rather than offer any serious military aid. He's a strange man Lukashenko I mean he looks like a brute he isn't brute but he's thinking is pretty unpleasant as well he's an admirer of Hitler he's an anti-seemite and this seems to me to be very strange indeed given that Hitler's troops killed about 30% of the Belarusian population of the second world war destroyed three quarters of the terms and villages but there are some very strange mentalities of work on this conflict. Yeah I agree with you I think it's very unlikely an attack is going to come from Belarus it has a relatively small army 50,000 strong almost certainly there would be protests at home and of course Russia the one of the reasons Russia so closely are allied with Belarus is because Russian troops have been used in the past to help well domestic unrest but if you think about it from a strategic point of view what they're really doing is threatening something in the north in the hope I suspect that it'll draw Ukrainian troops away from the real business which is in the east and the south and that is probably happening to a certain extent because I'm sure that the Ukrainians can't take the chance that there's going to be another advance on Kiev but whether them really is likely to be I like you doubted yeah if Lukashenko did do that and they were protest I don't think Putin would be in any position to actually offer him any help to put them down he's he needs all the internal repression resources he's got to put this so called partial mobilization into place we're hearing reports that there's widespread anger among ethnic groups who feel with a lot of justification that they're bearing the brunt of all this while the rich Russians and and Russian Russians if you like are being spared there was an interesting incident a few days back at in Belgorod Oblast with a training camp there 11 trainee soldiers were killed apparently by two ethnically Tejik Russian citizens who have been forcefully mobilized this seems to be an indication of a real deep anger there yeah last bit of interesting news this week more evidence is emerging that the cutting of the Nord Stream pipelines which we mentioned in an earlier episode in the Baltic was the result of Russian sabotage they've got underwater pictures now that clearly show the pipelines have been cut by some type of explosion and they are pretty convinced Russia's involved Russia of course is denying this as it would and saying why would we cut our own pipelines but an equally valid question to ask is why would any of the west be cutting those pipelines too but it seems to be pretty clear that Russia is involved in all of this okay well in part two we'll be talking to professor Mati Astron will be back very soon welcome back well i've known Matthias drawn for many years when we taught together at the University of Buckingham and he's in a great position to tell us something about a vital aspect of the war the attitude of Germany because he is of course currently a reserve kernel in the Bundeswehr the German army now Germany not so long ago fought a Titanic war against Russia and therefore we might be able to get some kind of insight from Matthias about the current conflict as a German military story and soldier he brings a unique perspective he's also an expert on NATO and has been thinking deeply about where he is positioned as the war deepens this is what he told us since Russia's invasion of Ukraine earlier this year the Chancellor of Germany has committed to spending more than a hundred billion euros to modernize and improve Germany's armed forces can you tell us a little bit about the current capability of the Bundeswehr and whether this sum in your view is enough well that in itself is a huge question and well at the moment the German military on the whole is completely underfunded it's been cashing in on the peace dividend the so-called peace dividend for well over 20 years now and the German military where that's the army the air force or the navy is basically lacking in pretty much everything when you look at how these hundred billion are going to be spent you can see that this is not going to be enough to be enough to get the the German armed forces to where they need to be in all it to be a first-rate military player so it's really a big big ask and they're very big still ongoing discussions in the German military and also in the political circles about how this money is going to be spent and about how much more money is going to be needed can you tell us a little bit about why Germany's armed forces have been under resourced for so long and you talked of course about the peace dividend we we get that they you know the fall of the iron curtain frankly has made a big difference but Germany's armed forces are pretty effective up to that point so why is it fallen off so badly well I think there are two reasons for this the first one is you've already mentioned the early end of the cold war so suddenly for the first time as people in Germany started saying in the early 1990s Germany for the first time in its history has been surrounded by friends and all enemies so that your mind say took the pressure off a little bit the second thing that you find is up to the end of the cold war both in West Germany and in East Germany there was a general understanding as to why you needed to have these armies why you need to have these large forces so this whole question about deterrence once this all goes away there is on debt for armed forces basically disappeared and there was a big discussion in Germany for about 10-15 years as to why the Germans actually needed armed forces and this two degree then went away again when you started into going into place like like like the Balkans and in particular of course I've kind of start which remained an extremely unpopular deployment for the Germans and the armed forces and I think there is another reason a more underlying reason to that perhaps it's psychological reason so the Germans having lost two world wars you might say to put it quite flippantly I've done with fighting there is not a lot of appetite in Germany in German society for anything to do with the military you could see that in the numbers of people who were not joining the army when we still have conscription and decided to do social service instead you could actually see it in and some of the professional soldiers and multi-personer refusing to go on operations because they say well we didn't sign up for this one so we signed up for completely different scenario like it turns but not extra fighting in particular if you take the German armed forces out of areas they call it outside of native territory I mean one of the big changes we've noticed in the British armed forces in recent years particularly the British army is that people go into it with a you know proper kind of sense of career the brightest and the best in many cases have gone into the British armed forces certainly more so than you might have suggested in historical terms so I'm guessing almost the opposite of that has happened in Germany and it's not considered to be a viable career opportunity of course I have to be slightly careful away the German uniform myself every now and then to say that well they're all very well stupid people are totally the military but but no in a nutshell I think you're absolutely right see wearing a German uniform is not seen anymore is something that you aspire to something that you want to do it doesn't have the social status that it used to have and for many people quite often these days it's just seen as a very stable job because you're joined the army and if you do it right and if you do it well you've got a full career that takes you all the way up to retirement and so this I think for many people at the moment is more important than the underlying special needs and specialties as to why you should or why you could join the army and like for example in the British case to give you one example perhaps it's quite striking when you compare the numbers of people going into the army and the British army you can normally see that the numbers of people wanting to join the army they go up when the army is in operations and at war in the German case it's the exact opposite it's very interesting I mean we we can see that Germany realizes politically and of course effectively in a military sense it it things are changing now in Europe Europe's becoming a much scarier place the the possibility of conflict edging ever closer to Germany is there and therefore there's a hundred billion that it's prepared to spend and yet still since the start of the conflict or at least since the start of of Russia's invasion this year Germany and France in particular have been pretty reluctant and certainly more reluctant in the US and the UK to provide Ukraine with the type of weapons that it needs to defend itself um why do you think this is given that you know the uh profess spend on military is changing why is there still this caution in relation to Russia I think it's the um the underlying psychological issue that I mentioned earlier so everything to do with with war getting killed and war killing people is something that German society still shies away from and that is very very clear and you can see that in the in the wider discussions and of course the politicians they know that they understand that um and that's why they're not particularly going home when it comes to supporting the Ukrainians having said that when you look at the actualist which is available online of what Germany has supplied by now it's quite an impressive list including military capabilities they don't really like to boast too much about it for internal reasons you might say and of course there are other other things the Germans have done and that is also very much a German tradition since since 1945 and that is humanitarian aid so Germany has now taken on I would have to check the other latest figures but I think we're looking at about a million refugees from the Ukraine so there's a lot of that going on but yes there is the general reluctance to do with anything military in German society can I just ask a question there Mattias about the air defense systems which are meant to be coming from the US and from Germany they're obviously very sorely needed now can you tell us why there was this delay and what capacity they would actually deliver when they're deployed and how long that's likely to take but they've already sent some anti air capability and that is the so-called Gepard so it's the what we would call a tank and anti and anti aircraft tank but again you can see there an awful lot of internal issues and problems so the German armed forces don't use them anymore so the anti air cap badge which used to exist was faced out about 15 years ago so that completely disappeared and this is a problem that all Western armies have at the moment so having gone through operations like Afghanistan where you really didn't have to think about control of the air because was just to give them so all armies took their eyes off that one a little bit and so so the Germans sent some of the old basically outdated Gepard tanks to to the Ukraine the interesting thing of course and here again you can see how all these things how complicated all these things are so the Germans didn't have enough ammunition to send with it so they had to find someone to produce the ammunition for them the ammunition for the Gepard was produced even in the old days in Switzerland Switzerland of course has a very very strict rule of neutrality so initially the Germans could send the anti aircraft or we equal to as I said tanks but they couldn't send enough ammunition so they sent about 20 I think with about 50,000 rounds of ammunition which of course is not enough at all they're now looking at at other options but all this is to proving quite difficult. Matthias this Russia suffers more of setbacks on the battlefield the situation generally gets more dangerous the big danger of course is that Putin might resort to using a tactical nuclear weapon if he does or at least it looks like he's about to what are NATO's options. Well first of all of course as far as we know and as far as I can take from the open source material there is no move on the Russian side to do that which is for good news I would say. Should the Russians decide to use technical nuclear weapons I personally would argue that the the options that NATO or the West whoever that might be could use would be fairly limited and you just have to look at what President Macron the French president said only a few days ago and he said even if the the Russians were to use tactical nuclear weapons the French would not retaliate they would not use their own their own nuclear weapons in order to retaliate and he said the reason why there's very clear because the the French doctrine that is pretty much applicable to to all nuclear powers say that you should only use nuclear weapons if and when your own state your own territory is threatened and this would not be really the case if the Russians decide to drop some sort of tactical nuclear weapon on on the Ukraine so it's yeah it's a tricky one. In effect then you're confirming what we've heard from various other sources and various other commentators which is that the only viable option either as a preemptive strike or in literally in retaliation is to use conventional weapons which of course would discourage potentially a nuclear escalation do we have the sort of conventional capability that Russia should be concerned about? Well there are conventional capabilities of course there are the problem is if you decide to use all of these and if you for example want to prevent a tactical nuclear strike from happening you would have to make sure that you hit all the launch pads that you that you manage to knock out the entire tactical nuclear weapon base of the Russian army and that would be extremely extremely difficult and of course the other pub slightly bigger and wider question here is even if we know that this is going to happen what the West be willing to use the the normal capabilities conventional capabilities because that's a very very clear escalation that would mean that the West's slashenator again however you want to define this would be at war with Russia and that would completely change the entire game. So it sounds as if you're saying that it's a very distant prospect that this conventional response which which has been positive before would take place and that the I suppose there's another risk of course that if you do take out significant infrastructure and severely weaken Russian capability they then got no choice but to go to the next stage which is nuclear. Ah there is a possibility and of course the moment you start engaging quite overtly on Russian soil and on Russian tertiary the Russians can then turn around and say well of course now our own territory has been threatened it's a completely and fundamentally different story if the Russians were to take for example the Baltic states as as NATO tertiary that of course again would be completely changed there are of course other things that the West and NATO could be doing and this is all to do with the grey zone of activity and you can see that all Western militaries and governments are working far more in this area so just below the threshold of proper war which is basically what the West have said now for a number of years what the Russians have been doing very very effectively and so there is something that can be done in that respect you could for example use just give you an example cyber there's more that could be done in this particular area and everyone's quite surprised that the Russians haven't done more in this area actually but that they tried to decide to go very conventional right from right from the beginning of this particular operation so there are areas and aspects that you can look at but a conventional militar operation against Russia is I would argue at least at the moment unlikely. Do you think there is this capacity in this grey area as you put it that could actually significantly increase Ukraine's ability to win the war? Well there would probably rather decrease Russia's ability to win or at least fight the stalemate because if you go for this grey zone activity you would do it covertly in the enemy's territory so indirectly yes you increase your craze chance of winning the this particular conflict. You got the examples of what sort of thing you have in mind. You can for example as I said sim is at the moment of course is the core one you can support dissident groups you can take out infrastructure there's an awful lot of what goes on and a lot of it is because it is it's covert you might perhaps say it's not it's not open now openly visible but you're using some sort of some times you might even go to some sort of part direction like the the Russians themselves or the Soviets used to conduct during World War II and this is all Daphne's isn't new it just seems that we in the west have lost sight of this a little bit there is for example very interesting piece by George F. Kenan just after the Second World War which he talks about exactly this and he calls it political warfare and he says that there are two nations who are extremely good at conducting this political warfare and he says it's the Soviets because they've read their clouds of it's and then he says it's the British Empire he says the way to run the British Empire was by conducting as I said he calls a political warfare and he said the Americans are extremely better at this it seems that for some reasons we in the west have forgotten about all this but the Russians are doing slightly better. Okay final question Matthias however we get there that is the end game to this conflict do you think it's important for the future security of Europe that Putin suffers a demonstrable defeat in this war and by that of course I mean the loss of all the territories taken from Ukraine not just since the beginning of this year but including Crimea. Well probably a simple answer to that at least to the loss of Turkey would be yes because what you can argue about is in a shape and any shape or form you want and can make this argument that the Crimea is traditionally Russian all these arguments that we have heard well the bottom line is that's where you've got the Ukraine as a country with established borders and so if you violate these well that's that basically says it all doesn't it the problem that you find and this is of course something that you now find in the in the debates in the west and also in Europe is how much damage do you want how much harm do you want to do to Russia because let's not forget that well at the end of the day Russia as a country is still going to be there and history has shown that unless you can really really inflict an absolute crushing defeat like for example on Germany after the Second World War unless you're not willing to do this or not able to do this you will have to make some sort of arrangement with this country because the country and its people are still going to be there once this conflict is over and and once Putin is gone so it's a bit like Stalin saying after the end of the Second World War well the Hitler's come and go but Germany's a country will always remain well that was fascinating it was interesting to hear that despite all the money that's been thrown at the problem the German armed forces is still a long way from being a first class military power I thought it was also very frank about the way that so going into the army in Germany is seen as really a kind of you know very low-grade aspiration and that socially speaking given the contrast with the 20th century being a soldier and officer particularly put you very much at the political of the social scale that is very far from being the case now yeah it was very honest of Matthias wasn't it I mean he's still a serving well a reserve soldier in the Bundeswehr as we said and he's also on the reserve list of military attachers so he's very much attached to the German establishment but he's very clear-eyed about this too I suppose you could say having lived in the UK for a long time and married to a spaniard I think that he has a much more sort of pan-European NATO view about all of this but he is aware of what's going on with the German army he makes the point that the air defenses are are going in soon but they don't sound like they're going to make a huge difference in the next few days or even weeks which is slightly depressing a bit more encouraging for me was to hear his skepticism that Russia really is seriously considering the use of tactical nuclear weapons we already mentioned on the program the possibility that there are alternatives with General Sirovikin but it's always there isn't it it's always there in the background Patrick and his response as to what we can do about it if they do was also slightly concerning yeah but going back to the air defenses very telling I think that how short term is to a lot of military thinking is so the fact that in the wars it fought so far in the or that the west of war so far in the 21st century these asymmetric wars as they're called against people enemies who have very limited resources they're fighting in flip flops and carrying collection of cops and RPGs and we've got all the 21st century tech kit you could wish for and we rather took our eye off the ball and thought we would never actually have to face conventional airpower in the way that you know cold war thinking had positive but there we are but then coming into what does NATO actually do this grey zone he was talking about absolutely fascinating this is something I'm sure it's occurred to everyone is that do we have a superiority in when it comes to cyber warfare one would have thought that with the you know huge advantages that the American high tech industries have that we would actually be in a very good position to strike decisive blows in cyberspace that the Russians would find it very hard to counter yeah and that final question I asked you know what ultimately it is an ideal scenario to prevent this sort of thing happening again and his response was interesting from a german of course you know the in the second world war Germany was utterly crushed it was understood its defeat and it's been a better place let's not get ourselves patriotic since then as a result of that I mean you could argue it's been too pacifist as a as a result of the experience of the second world war but I don't think he really seriously considers that a viable option with Russia we are going to have to live with Russia in the long term and the idea of crushing it in the way that of course we heard from Colonel Kazan last last week probably is not an option therefore you've got to find some kind of solution at some point yeah as long as we're not existentially threatened I didn't really foresee any scenario where we would actually take a view the kind of pattern view if you like in general patterns view in 1945 that okay we beat the Germans now it's not time to go on and destroy the commuters looking back he wasn't such a terrible act yet perhaps but it didn't happen and then it's not going to happen in these circumstances needless to say we've been getting a few questions from listeners coming through on Twitter one or two to my personal email so we're going to try and be a bit more organized about this and we've actually set up a battleground Ukraine email accounts it is battleground Ukraine at gmail.com that is battleground Ukraine all one word at gmail.com and if you have any questions please send them through to that email account and we'll try and respond to them in future episodes well that's all we've got time for next week we're going to be talking to some at Hastings and now we've burned in the word legendary about a bit with our guests and I would say with some justification well Max is a legend legend I was really been the fault and served if that's the right word under him when he was editor of the telegraph he's just written a book about the Cuban Missile Crisis exactly 60 years ago who would have thought that the shadow of a nuclear conflict would ever darken the global political landscape again but here we are and Max will be sharing his loads with us do join us then goodbye Hey cast powers the world's best podcast here's a show that we recommend Hey friends it's me Sharon McMahon host of here's where it gets interesting and we've been working hard on a new documentary series called resilience that explores the incarceration of Japanese Americans in the United States during World War II so join me as I talk with experts and share first-hand accounts that detailed the resilience shown by 120,000 Japanese Americans and endured wartime imprisonment right here in America and on October 24th we conclude our series with a special episode after George to Case it's down with me to talk about his family's experience behind the barbed wire fences of an incarceration camp don't miss it because here's where it gets interesting hey cast helps creators launch grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere acs.com