Ep. 442: What is Putin’s End Game?
Guest: John Stufflebeem, US Navy ret.
The one-year mark of the invasion of Ukraine has come and we’ve sailed past it with no end in sight.
Vice Admiral (Ret) of the US Navy John Stufflebeem says, “Putin continues to ramp up pressure by withdrawing from the New START treaty, implying he's getting closer to going nuclear.”
Stufflebeem says, “For as long as Putin remains in power, he will continue his ‘military operation’ of defending Russia and use it to work to exhaust and destroy American and NATO resolve and weapons.” Stufflebeem goes on to say, “The Russian leader is throwing many more bodies at the front than the allied forces have bullets to shoot back with.”
As a result, Stufflebeem says, “There are two threats at work. First: Putin’s goal of breaking up NATO, which has the Polish government so nervous they will be next, that they’re offering to build a substantial US military base in Poland.” The second threat, Stufflebeem says, is in Asia: “Premier Xi of China is fully aware of the depletion of American armaments and he is calculating what the US resolve will be, should he move to annex Taiwan.”
We invited retired Vice-Admiral and military historian John Stufflebeem to join us for a Conversation That Matters about the tense and fluid conflict in Ukraine that is slowly drawing the major powers into a proxy war between Western and Eastern centres of influence.
