Judging Freedom - Alastair Crooke: America’s False Dawn

Episode Date: April 29, 2024

Alastair Crooke: America’s False DawnSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Thank you. Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Monday, April 29th, 2024. Alistair Crook is here with us just back from two weeks in Moscow with his observations on America's false dawn. But first this. How do you really feel about your financial future right now today? Stable or uncertain? Despite all the happy talk that the Fed and the banks want you to buy into, I believe that 2024 is going to be a very unstable year, politically and financially. That's one of the reasons I decided to buy physical gold and silver, and I suggest you should do the same and do it now. Why? Because throughout times of economic uncertainty, gold and silver have rightly earned a reputation for stability.

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get into your latest piece and your observations about Israel and the United States and Ukraine, you just spent two weeks in Russia speaking to a lot of interesting people from across the spectrum. What was the message you delivered and what did you perceive back? Well, it was very interesting. And this is a sort of generalized view taken from various diverse sources in a way. Russia, as Russians themselves suggest, has a reputation for often waiting till the last before it does something, that it somehow doesn't do it till it has to, until it's almost, you know, the 11th hour. And they all say that this, you know, is a characteristic of Russia, that it does not do that. But they added and explained that, you know,

at the end of the Gorbachev period, the perestroika in Russia, most Russians were really disorientated. And there were factions and there were fragmentation. And then actually it is Ukraine that awakened Russia and sort of brought it to its senses and created the opportunity or created this new identity, Russia being itself again, finding itself, finding what it is to be Russia again. And it was Ukraine that actually sort of animated and brought this into being. And it's created something very positive, determined amongst the Russian people. No one has any doubt that Russia is prevailing in Ukraine. There's no one there that thinks, you know,

that it's not going to happen like that. And so there's a great sort of support. The economy is doing well. A new middle class is emerging from this new economy and if you look further i mean the place is humming there are plans being created for the whole of this vast region siberia a source of great technical scientific research institutions springing up there, economic things are developed. I mean, in other words, really, it's like a sort of awakened powerhouse. Very impressive. Very interesting observations.

I hadn't intended to go right to Ukraine, but since you mentioned it, our friend and colleague, Colonel McGregor, reports that the Ukrainians lost 8,000 troops last week, and the Russians have arrived with 100,000 new troops. Can America's $61 billion, two-thirds of which stays here in the U.S., possibly rescue the Ukrainians from odds that extreme? Oh, clearly not. The front line is collapsing. We have extraordinary things going on.

There's a small town village almost called Ocheretino in these last few days. And in that town, first of all, the battalion that was occupying it just quit. I mean, they just disobeyed instructions and left the town. Immediately then the command in Kiev then instructed another battalion,

one with right-wing groups, right sector, principally right sector. They arrived. They said, we're not having any of this. We're not going to take up positions in this small village. So they went away. Then another battalion came and they said, no, we're not going to do this either because we're due rest and recreation and we're going to go and take that. I mean, you know, and some of them are now being prosecuted for desertion or insubordination or what have you. But this is a morale. I mean, you know, many of these, I mean,

there are villages falling into Russian control every day. It seems maybe to the outside world that this is just sort of tactical advantages here and there. It's not. It's really panic in setting in amongst the Ukrainian forces on the front line and the potential for a real collapse of morale. As this goes, more people are circled. And as you say, Colonel McGregor reported huge losses.

Well, there are other encirclements taking place where Ukrainians are going to have to decide either to evacuate their positions or risk them being all taken prisoner or killed in the process. So there's a big shift. just to make it clear to your viewers what the view is from Moscow, from the defence ministry, as people have declared, is that with this panic in the frontline, Russia is determined to keep the momentum, to use this dynamic. In other words, they're advancing and they're accelerating the process in Ukraine and they're going to use it and push this situation of sort of near panic in the front as much as they can during the fun coming days as I say, this period, I mean, I made the general point, but particularly after what happened in Crocus, whatever the background to that event, I mean, it has made Russians as a whole very, very determined, but very confident. Surely, the summary of events that you've just

described is known to the American intelligence community, to the Defense Department, and to the State Department. And still, they must have misled the Speaker of the House and the Republicans in the House of Representatives to scare them into voting for this $61 billion, which is an utter and total waste and merely a postponement of the inevitable. Totally so. And indeed, I mean, they actually seem to have sent many. We know that many of the things that were in the package just voted on by Congress have actually already been sent. I don't know whether that's legal or not. That's for people over there to decide. But they've sent them, particularly the attack hands, and are using these attack

hands so far, never very successfully. But I would just underline, we're actually moving to a very sensitive point in terms of the relationship between the United States and its proxies in Ukraine and Russia. By what I mean is the Orthodox Easter is coming up shortly at the beginning of next month. Then on the 7th of May, there's the inauguration of President Putin. And then on the 8th is Victory Day, where they celebrate the victory in the Great Patriotic War, which killed so many Russians. A huge parade. They were rehearsing it while I was still there in Moscow in this last week.

Now, why is this important is the attack camps are just not being very effective. And they shot down, I think, five over Crimea or near Crimea in the last days. I don't have the exact numbers on that, but it's about five. So they're obviously intercepting them and elsewhere. But what I think is expected is, and it's been advertised by Britain and by American and defense officials, that they would like to hit the bridge, the Kerch Bridge, linking Ukraine, or Crimea rather, with mainland Russia. And, you know, there's

no military point to this because there's an alternative land route with rail and road land route for logistics. No logistics go over the bridge anymore. It's entirely another one of these, if you like, so-called asymmetrical PR plans, which are led by the UK. You'll recall the German senior military officers spoke about it and said, oh, well, it's going to take lots of terrorist missiles to destroy that bridge, maybe 20 because of its construction. But, I mean, it's being well advertised by the West that, you know, they can't do anything to sort of halt the front, the failure in the front. But let's have another.

I won't say, because perhaps it's a wrong analysis, but, you know, wrong symmetry to draw. But, you know, the crocus, I think, was conceived by someone somewhere as going to be a huge, if you like, PR disaster for Russia in the lead up to the presidential elections. Now we have the presidential inauguration coming up. Now we have Victory Day following it really hours later. Why not have something dramatic like something like an attack on the bridge? But I think the message I would say to you very clearly coming out of Moscow is take Putin's words seriously. Take them seriously. It's not a bluff.

He's absolutely serious. And I think that you may find if there is an attempt to disrupt the Easter, the inauguration and the victory parade, you may see things happen. We'll see. We may have played this for you. And if we did, I apologize, but it's very relevant to what you just said.

This is Foreign Minister Lavrov immediately after the Congress voted the 61 billion in aid to Ukraine, old cut number one. Currently, the United States and its NATO allies persist in their fixation on dealing a decisive blow to Russia. They seem prepared to keep opposing our nation, using Ukraine as their last stand, so to speak. Simultaneously, Western nations are precariously teetering towards a direct military confrontation involving nuclear powers carrying potential catastrophic outcomes. Well, just think of that last statement, Western nations are precariously teetering towards a direct military confrontation involving nuclear

powers carrying potential catastrophic outcomes. Sounds pretty serious to me. Take it seriously. What he said is very serious. I don't think you, I mean, this is the message, as I said, that I would come and say. I mean, they're very serious about this. And all these crazy talk coming from Macron and other European leaders about how putting troops on the ground or doing some sort of big gesture to humiliate Russia

just before the inauguration and the victory parade is very dangerous because it may find we have gone up another step up an escalatory ladder in this process and where this will take us and with the West in this sort of strange mood of talking militarism all the time. It's always, you know, defense expenditure, military expenditure. We're talking all of this. It may lead us into a whirlpool that would take us to war, to the Third World War. You know, this isn't sort of talk coming out of Russia.

Like Lavrov is a very serious person, very much a low-key speaker. When he says that, my advice is to, you know, European political leaders and others, pay attention. Why are we going down this path? For what particular purpose? Last question on Ukraine. Is President Zelensky's term over tomorrow, wasn't there a presidential election scheduled for a new term of his or someone else's to begin on Wednesday, and he canceled those elections? Yes, that's true. But I think his term actually ends during the next month. I mean, I think the elections are supposed to be held, but like in the United States, you have the elections in November in the office.

The new president, whoever's elected, takes over in January with his confirmation. I think it's in May. I can't remember if it's the 30th of May or before, but I think it's a bit later on in the process. But lots happening in Kiev. And there's, you know, where is Zalushin? Is he, I don't think, I haven't seen any sign of him in London.

He's supposed to be the ambassador in London, they say. But he's, I don't think he's there. Other people say he's under house arrest. Then we have all of these battalions just disobeying orders, deserting, coming back, and some of their leaders. And I mean, what you read, I mean, it's terrible, you know, about complaining about their leaders and the command. They just say they're, you know, sending messages back home, saying, if you get this message, you know, I'm dead because our commander is determined to send us a suicide attack. I mean, I can't believe that there isn't huge turmoil, especially with these high casualties

and losing village after village. Now there may be villages, but together it amounts to really something strategic. Right. One of our viewers writes that Zelensky's term ends on May 20th, which is three weeks from tomorrow. We appreciate that, Michael, for sending that in. Switching gears, Alistair, did it really cost the Israelis between $2 and $3 billion just to shoot down the drones

that Iran sent over there in retaliation for the Israeli destruction of the Iranian consulate in Damascus. Yes, it did. It did cost. That is the estimate produced by the Hebrew press. I mean, not a, you know, if you like, a pro-Iranian side at all. And they said it's between two and three billion. And people, I don't think, have understood the import of this. It is huge. It's not only that, you know, and most of this was expended, by the way, by the United States using their sidewinder missiles.

They had something like 154 aircraft up at one time. And yet still Iranian ballistic missiles were able to get through. Yes, the drones were down. They were meant to be. The Iranians were collecting information about the capacities of Israel's air defense system. So they were expendable. But nine, and I've had that confirmed to me by authoritative persons, that it was nine that landed, some of them hypersonic, 30 kilometers from Dimona, the Israeli nuclear center. And it shows that Israel didn't have, if you like, the air defense to stop that, that they got through.

They demonstrated the capability of being able to land. They were not intended to cause damage or to kill people. It was a message, not an assault that was being sent. And so, yes, but the other thing is, who's got these sort of weapons? Who has that sort of air defense in that quantity? I mean, most of those were Americans. But we all know that what Biden really wants to do is to provide air defense to Ukraine.

So what happens? That's why I think we've got such a low-key reaction by Israel. Because the U.S. can't go on spending $2 to $3 billion on air defenses for saving Israel. And at the same time time find that it's not effective even, that they're still vulnerable. And that's a message, by the way, too, for the Arab states. I know Lincoln is in Saudi Arabia at the moment saying, oh, of course, we can think about an air defense treaty, NATO-style treaty with Saudi Arabia

and with you other Gulf states. But look what's just happened. If America can't provide 100% security to Israel, do they imagine that they're going to have 154 planes up and spend $2.3 billion each time they get in trouble with Iran? They didn't do that in 2019 when the Abqaiq Saudi Aramco fuel facility was hit by missiles in a pattern that suggested that they were accurate and had a precision to a few meters. All of the cooling towers had a nice hole, neat hole

through all of them. Of course, no one has claimed or been proven to be responsible, but we can guess who it might be. And so, you know, it undoes the whole paradigm of it, not only that, but the whole answer, if you like, to what's going on in Saudi Arabia at the moment, because the basic pillars of the Biden administration proposal for ending the tension is, first of all, to persuade Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states to move to some sort of wider defense pact. But it's just failed. I know all the publicity and all the PR is now saying, oh well, you know, Iran didn't do very well, it couldn't get through, it didn't... Anyone who knows, which is, you know, certainly people in Moscow will have known exactly what the outcome was, that it showed that actually American air defenses are not very effective. We knew that anyway from Ukraine.

It's not a great surprise. Is Israel's so-called Iron Dome then just a myth? Well, if it was Well, it was. I mean, if it was used, it was not effective. It doesn't seem to have been effective. We've seen no sign that it has been effective. It's a derivative, I think, of the Patriot system. And you know the Patriot system was unable to protect Aramco in 2019 when that was attacked,

the oil installation plant there of Aramco. And no, it didn't protect Israel. And there's a huge propaganda effort to say, oh, it was, you know, Iran did this, but it wasn't effective and it wasn't significant. It's hugely significant for that, for Ukraine and for our economies as a whole, because not only, I mean, does it mean that, you know, there aren't, the West actually does not have that sort of effective air defenses at the moment.

And that's pretty obvious anyway from what we're seeing in Ukraine. But there aren't enough of them. The cupboard's bare, almost bare. Certainly Europe doesn't have any air defenses to give to Ukraine. understanding the iron grip that the Netanyahu government has on the American government due to the influence of the donor class here in the U.S., does the Israeli government understand that the American government is effectively not able to defend it? You know, the people in the know know. Yes, of course. I mean, you know, it's plain. They know it.

But the propaganda, because as I say, if they don't say that, it could undermine this whole strategy of the Biden administration, which is to tell Saudi Arabia, oh, we can give you protection. Well, that protection is not going to be boots on the ground. It's going to be air defense systems. And, you know, they just, the US and Europe does not have air defense systems in sufficient quantity. than it does for Iran or for Russia to produce the missiles that are ballistic and hypersonic missiles that are incoming. So I don't think, you know, I mean, it undermines that whole paradigm and it undermines the

sense. And this is why you see the sudden switch. What do we have? Suddenly Iran is not talking, Israel is not, Netanyahu is not talking about Iran and the great threat from Iran. It's suddenly back to rougher. And also, I think we see the hawks within the Israeli government now wanting to look at Lebanon. And what they're saying, they're saying this is the ideal opportunity this is the moment to strike Hezbollah a crippling blow we can drive them up and

we drive them north and then we can have a buffer force rather like this is the Gaza model again you know the northern northern Gaza would be the buffer now it's going to be up to the Litani in Lebanon. This will be the buffer. We'll drive Hezbollah north. Well, you know, this is, you know, I don't know. There isn't around the world at the moment this extraordinary sort of stupidity. I mean, can they not understand that, you know, Hezbollah follows a military model of Iran?

Their missiles are buried deep underground, the same as Israel's. They are operated autonomously. They are precision. They're not the ones we're seeing at the moment. Hezbollah is keeping them in reserve for when things get worse. It's so obvious that if they take on Hezbollah, and I heard Colonel McGregor say, do they really know what they're going to do? But there seems to be this sort of zest for this sort of military confrontation and victory.

If the Netanyahu government does not invade Rafah, or if the Netanyahu government does not take on Hezbollah, will the government collapse? Will the right-wingers in the government leave the government and Netanyahu in the midst of a war and a series of personal legal and political crises be forced to call an election? These are all possibilities because things are very much in flux in Israel and there are sort of, I mean, there's a contentious argument going on about what to do in the next round of hostage negotiation. And there's a lot of deception going on. They've now cut out Doha and are giving it all to the Egyptians and telling the Egyptians to put massive pressure on. And so the Egyptians are saying to Hamas, well, if you don't do this, give if you like. It's not an end to the war, which Hamas is asking for.

It's not an end of withdrawal. In fact, Israel is making it quite clear that, you know, that actually even if there's a hostage deal that comes up, the operation in Rafah will still take place, but after six weeks or a few months. It's not an end. It's just saying, we'll give you a little breathing space if you want, and if you give up all the hostages, you can have a little breathing space, but then we'll come back into Rafah. And they made this mistake already once before, because the Israelis were convinced Hamas

was based, its leadership was based in Khan Yunus, in the center of Iraq. Now they say, no, perhaps we got that wrong. We know it's all sitting in Rafah in the south. But this is, you know, they've been so led astray by that lavender AI system that they replaced real intelligence gathering, hard intelligence gathering, with this AI-derived system, which is entirely focused on the surface. And they have no idea, you know,

how many people have been lost from Hamas, which is sitting well underground and not showing its face. It comes up in small numbers, doesn't attack, and goes down in the tunnels again. So, you know, it's not very convincing. And in fact, you know, if they go into Rafah, they may lose a lot more men, because I'm sure that Hamas is prepared for it. And whether they can get a hostage deal, it doesn't look that likely because I don't see, I mean, we don't know the internals of what's going on. But yes, the cabinet is divided on this, deeply divided on this. Gantz and Eisenkot are determined to try and get a hostage release, but they won't get it easily.

I mean, Hamas are not feeling under pressure. They can continue this conflict for it. It was planned from the beginning. It could be able to sustain at least a year's conflict. As I say, this is the resistance strategy is to have longer breath, if you like, a longer ability to persist than the opposition, Israel in this case and the United States. What did you mean when you wrote a few days ago about America or the West's false dawn? It is this. It's pretty obvious, I think, to anyone looking at Ukraine, anyone looking at the present situation, that the West simply does not have the manufacturing capability to produce air defense systems or even 155 millimeter shells. And why is that? Because it happened, we had this wonderful false dawn that as we were getting rid of

our manufacturing capacity, America and Europe both offshoring it to Asia, sending it away. We had this sort of false dawn of seeing these financial products, not manufactured products, not manufacturing, but coming out of the banking system and Wall Street, these derivatives, these financial products, and they made a lot of money. They made more money than simply producing shells for artillery systems. Much more money. Made billionaires every week, and it seemed to be a wonderful thing.

Except now, suddenly, they've come to the understanding, and they're talking that now the West has to re-industrialize. We've got to re-industrialize and we've got to build a defense system. Well, at least in America, you have one. In Europe, there's a few remnants of a defense system. But the structural change to move from a services economy to change to a manufacturing economy.

This is a huge structural change. Are we culturally able to do that? Do we have the trillions that would be necessary to do that? Would it work? Would the American military industrial complex allow Europe to do this anyway? But this is what they're proposing in Europe. You're definitely proposing what they call a political defense-linked economic structure to replace the existing one.

But you don't see Europeans sort of all longing to line up and get a job at the tank factory in Europe. I don't want to make a moral judgment on it, but culturally the world has changed, and it's quite hard to reinvent it. And we're uncompetitive anyway. I mean, this is what's happened. The West, the result of this need for a structural change in the economy comes because of what Janet Yellen said in China.

Please curb your over-competition, your over-capacity in China because it's hurting all our economies. Yes, because we're uncompetitive, price uncompetitive, uncompetitive with China. They can turn up in six months, equivalent to the whole inventory of American cruise missiles, can produce an electric car every 14 seconds. It has changed its manufacturing capacity radically during this period. We are left uncompetitive in that way and have no ability. And now we have suddenly this new brainwave from Macron and from the ECB and the European leaders. Okay, so what we need is a new defense industry and we can pretend we're going to war with Russia and therefore we're going to war with Russia. And therefore, we're going to

divert the whole of the European economy to becoming one dependent on defense manufacturing. But that'll take us a decade, two decades. I mean, that's what Russia has been doing over two decades, and it's not finished yet. I mean, it's not going to save us. Very gloomy picture indeed, Alistair. Thank you very much for your time, for your analysis, and thank you for hopping on the show within hours of your return from your long trip east. We'll see you next week. All the best, my friend.

Thank you very much. We have a very interesting day coming up for you today at 11, excuse me, at 10 o'clock this morning, Ray McGovern at 11 o'clock this morning, All Times Eastern US, Larry Johnson at 3 o'clock this afternoon, Anya Parampol, and at 4.30 this afternoon, Scott Ritter. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Altyazı M.K.