10/17/25 Daniel Davis on Ukraine, Gaza, the Taliban and Venezuela

·47 min·3 clips

Davis compares Trump to LBJ, who said 'I can't be the first president to lose a war' and lost anyway.

1. Scott Horton interviews retired Army Lt. Col. Daniel Davis, who now hosts the Daniel Davis Deep Dive, about Ukraine, Gaza, and Afghanistan-Pakistan. 2. Davis is a Bronze Star recipient whom Horton previously named anti-war hero of 2012 for challenging David Petraeus's claims of success in Afghanistan. 3. The episode's throughline is that repeated US and allied strategies in Ukraine, Gaza, and Afghanistan-style conflicts keep producing more enemies and prolonged wars rather than resolution. 4. Davis recounts how Trump floated giving Ukraine Tomahawk cruise missiles, then reversed after a call with Putin, leaving Zelensky visibly blindsided during a tense joint appearance. 5. He argues the Tomahawks would not have changed the battlefield and carried real escalation risk, since their radar signature is identical whether they carry conventional or nuclear warheads. 6. He says Putin, per Russian readouts, warned Trump the missiles would not change the war's outcome but would badly damage US-Russia relations. 7. Davis says Russia's stated demands, demilitarization, denazification, and constitutional neutrality for Ukraine, make a negotiated deal at only the administrative borders of four regions unlikely without a real US normalization offer. 8. He and Horton debate whether Russia would ultimately push all the way to the Dnieper River if talks fail, citing retired Colonel Doug McGregor's view. 9. Davis compares Trump's political trap to Lyndon Johnson's Vietnam-era line 'I can't be the first president to lose a war', arguing continued support for Ukraine risks repeating LBJ's outcome of more deaths and defeat anyway. 10. He references his book 'Fool's Errand' and its origin in a conversation with Horton about how even 500,000 well-led US troops in Afghanistan would have just created more enemies. 11. Turning to Gaza, Davis says he predicted in October 2023 that Israel's overwhelming-force response to October 7 would repeat America's Afghanistan mistakes by generating more enemies. 12. He cites Emmanuel Macron telling Trump that there are as many Hamas fighters today as when the war began, because continued killing keeps recreating them. 13. Davis says he supports the ceasefire completely but argues it cannot hold without a legitimate political future and hope for Palestinians, or the cycle will restart. 14. He and Horton discuss John Mearsheimer's warning that Netanyahu will restart the war once ready and use the Israel lobby against Trump if challenged. 15. Davis says rebuilding Gaza would require both a change in Israeli government control over the strip and major capital investment, most plausibly from the UAE or Saudi Arabia. 16. On Afghanistan and Pakistan, Davis explains the historical role reversal: Pakistan once hosted Afghan Taliban safe havens, but Pakistan now accuses Afghanistan of harboring Pakistan Taliban fighters. 17. He says Pakistan expelled roughly 2 million Afghan refugees and is now suffering over 2,500 terrorism deaths in 2024 alone, a toll already exceeded in 2025. 18. The tone is a fast-moving, detail-dense two-person interview between two longtime collaborators covering multiple active conflicts in one sitting. 19. Best suited to listeners wanting current, granular analysis of Ukraine, Gaza, and Afghanistan-Pakistan developments from an anti-interventionist perspective. 20. Not for listeners seeking a single-topic deep dive or a mainstream US foreign policy framing.

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