Gingrich on Ukraine: “We Should Avoid Using American Forces”

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Published: March 17, 2022 | Date of Source Audio: March 17, 2022

Transcribed and modified for publication from the original audio program

Charlie Kirk talks with former Speaker Newt Gingrich about the problems and politics of war

Charlie Kirk: With us right now, as someone who always tends to make sense of confusing times, he is so clear and so wise, and it's an honor to have him back on our program, Speaker Newt Gingrich. Mr. Speaker, welcome back to the program.

Gingrich: It's great to be with you, as always.

Kirk: So Mr. Speaker, yesterday President Zelensky gave a moving address to the Congress. Give us your reaction. What would your response to that be if you were speaker of the House of Representatives, and what should the Republican response be after hearing that address?

Gingrich: Well, I think I would draw a very sharp line between giving the Ukrainians as much help as we can to defeat the Russian invasion but not committing America to any kind of war. I think that if we provide enough equipment and we provide enough training, which could be done outside of Ukraine, I think there's a very high likelihood they're going to defeat the Russians.

And part of it's because, you know, dying for Putin is not a particularly exciting idea, whereas defending your own country is a very exciting idea. I think many of these so-called analysts, including our own intelligence services and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, were just plain wrong. They all assumed if you just looked at the numbers, that the Russians would roll over Ukraine, that the Ukrainians would collapse. Well, the Ukrainians stood up for freedom.

I think there are two practical reasons for helping them. One is specifically to help people who want to be free and who are prepared to risk their lives to be free. But the other is to send a signal to dictators around the world that you can't just go and basically attack your neighbor.

This is very similar psychologically to the rise in violent crime in the United States, where we elected a series of George Soros-financed district attorneys, who basically said, you know, you can steal, you can rob, we're going to put you back on the street, in some of these cities we're not going to have bail no matter how often you do things. And so you end up with some guy with 16 different crimes on his record killing a 24-year-old college student while she's working at a store, or you end up with a person who's clearly mentally deranged stabbing two people at a museum.

And I think similarly, you have a very similar pattern in international relations. If it was easy for Putin to take Ukraine, the chance of Xi Jinping deciding to occupy Taiwan would go up dramatically. Now I do believe we should avoid using American forces. We should avoid getting involved in the war. …

Kirk: … And so Mr. Speaker, my one concern though, and I share some of the reluctance to want to send American troops into another combat theater. My concern, though, is does our military currently have the ability or the capacity to pull this off? Let's say even lethal aid assistance. After Afghanistan, after we left 85 billion in the country and the debacle that ensued, I don't know if I have a vote of confidence for Mark Milley and Lloyd Austin. Do you think that should factor into our calculus when we entertain intervention in this conflict?

“I think Milley’s the worst chairman of the joint chiefs in American history.”

Gingrich: Well, you know, I have not heard the Secretary of Defense Austin be quite as totally wrong as Milley. I mean, I think Milley's the worst chairman of the joint chiefs in American history. I think he should be fired, today preferably. But if you ask at the lower levels – and I just spent time with about a dozen major generals last week at Maxwell Air Force Base talking about these kinds of ideas – when you get down to the lower levels that have not yet been totally politicized, that we're still extraordinarily competent. And again, I would emphasize delivering the weapons, for example, to Poland, Romania, Moldova, having the Ukrainians pick them up there and taking them into Ukraine, training Ukrainians in Poland, Moldova, Romania, not in Ukraine. I think there, we still have a very great capacity to get things done.

I do believe the whole effort to create a woke American military is crazy. I hope if the Republicans take over the House and Senate next year, that they will hold very tough hearings and they will rewrite appropriations bills to kill a bunch of this stuff and simply say, you can't spend any money on it – something they should be doing right now about the Iranian negotiations, which are, I think, stunningly dangerous for America and for Israel. But I don't want to get involved in a war because it could get very uncontrollable. And I don't want to rely on the Russians showing self-restraint if they're directly fighting.

“We better rethink the military and the intelligence community.”

Remember, we contained them from 1946 to 1991 when they collapsed without having to fight a major war. That's a remarkable achievement. It's the sort of goal we ought to have again, to say we can, in fact, protect a country like Ukraine that's willing to fight for itself by giving it the weapons and the training.

And we can, in fact, find ways to coerce the Russians. I mean, it starts with the simplest thing where again, it's not because they're dumb. It's not because they're incompetent. There's a deliberate act of policy. Joe Biden hates the American oil and gas industry. He just gave a speech to the Democratic National Committee fundraiser and in the entire speech, he has one sentence about Ukraine and Russia. And that sentence basically says, boy, if we had enough green technology, things would be much better. He said nothing in entire speech on the 14th of March about this huge fight that’s underway, the role of NATO, the importance to the United States. And frankly, you look at Russia, you look at North Korea, you look at China – we better rethink the military and the intelligence community.

And the other point I'd make, having once helped found the Military Reform Caucus under Reagan, the degree to which our intelligence services are just plain wrong is an argument for dramatically overhauling them. There are 17 intelligence agencies, they are extraordinarily bureaucratic and they're just wrong. They were wrong about Afghanistan. Now they've been wrong about Ukraine and I think we ought to really look at – are we really making policies based on an intelligence system that’s this out of touch with the real world? It's very sobering.