Judging Freedom - Alastair Crooke: European Elites In Trouble

Episode Date: March 10, 2025

Alastair Crooke: European Elites In TroubleSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

you Hi everyone, welcome to Judging Freedom. Judge Andrew Napolitano here coming to you live from Moscow. Alistair Crook is here with us today. Alistair, always a pleasure. Today is Monday, March 10th, 2025. I appreciate your accommodating my schedule, my dear friend. You have written recently a fascinating piece about the inability of the Europeans to cope with the major shift that is coming. How major is this shift in foreign affairs,

and of what does it consist besides a new relationship between the United States and Russia? Well, if it turns out well, and of course, there is always an if in geopolitics of this sort, we're talking about a major reset of the global order, a big reset of the global order. And already it's had the effect because in terms of the United States wishing to normalize with Russia, in terms of the United States' attempt to normalize with Russia, it's already undone European foreign policy. And what I think they are so frightened of and what they have seen is that this, if you like, right would buy in the United States,

which is worldwide now, and is moving at breakneck speed across the globe. This also is intended to undo the West's, if you like, liberal globalist policy as well, Europe's globalist international policy. So they are very frightened about it and they don't know how to react and they are therefore in a frenzy about it, and you hear all sorts of news. And the papers in Europe are just full of anti-Russian narratives, completely packed with anti-Russian stories and narratives. So they see, if you like, themselves at war

with the United States. This is really what is frightening them, that they are at war with the United States. And this threatens basically their financial and their political ambitions. What do I mean by their financial ambitions? What I mean is that in NATO, and they can see the writing on the wall,

NATO is already fragmented and falling to bits. You can see this by the language. The language they use now is about a coalition of the willing. It's not if you like, it's quite evidently. Whenever you hear a coalition of the willing, you know someone is bypassing either UN Security Council or international law or in this case the European institutional structures. Because there is differences of opinion in Europe, so now it is already fractured into a coalition of the willing

about Ukraine, about, if you like, peacekeepers in Ukraine. Next Europe will have a coalition of the willing against Hungary or against net zero. We don't know, but this is what fragmentation looks like. But what I'm talking about is really also that it is completely, we are seeing the fact that all its debt breaks, its debt structures are being put aside. Why? Seeing NATO, the writing on the wall for NATO, they're desperate to invent a new NATO because NATO is rather like USAID has been,

if you like, a sort of slush fund for all sorts of regime change, for other factors. NATO has also been a slush fund, a European slush fund more than an American one, but providing training for police forces, providing conferences, providing a rest home for retiring generals. I mean, it is a really big slush fund. And so now they're desperately trying to find the finances, but Europe doesn't have that capacity. There's already a rebellion taking place against Dahmer

because of the backbenchers, the members of parliament and his government are saying, we won't tolerate any more cuts to welfare payments. And they haven't got any money to fund either Ukraine or a new defensive structure for Europe. So they're inventing ways of trying to get around it by issuing massive, unsecured debt. The Europeans do not have assets

on their balance sheets anymore. So they have to get debt and they have to get debt by going to sort of off balance sheet vehicles and other contrivances and issue manifest massive debt in this way. And we all know what happens when you do this. Right. Have they given up the ghost on trying to change the mind of President Trump? Remember those two sort of meaningless meetings at the White House between President Trump and Prime Minister Stammer? when Sir Keir handed him a letter from the king, and President Trump and President Macron, no one really remembers anything from that meeting. Are they still going to try and lobby him,

or have they given up the ghost on changing his mind? No, they haven't given it up. And in fact, they just done another exercise in it. it up. In fact, they just done another exercise in it. The national security advisor of Stommer, who is Jonathan Powell, you may recall him, he was the sort of the closest person. He's part of the Blair Empire, which still is part of the Blair Empire, as well as being the national security advisor to Stoma, has just been to give talking to prepare Zelensky for this meeting in Saudi Arabia. I'm not sure whether Zelensky is part of this Ukrainian U.S. meeting, whether he's going to try and become part of it. But so, Stoma has just sent his aides, his sort of, if you like, his security structure aides

to tell Zelensky basically that he ought to try and behave better with Trump. But the aim is to try and get intelligence sharing back. This is what it's all about. Both the British and the French are determined to try and restore intelligence sharing back to the Ukrainians. So, I mean, this is aimed at poking, you know, the Trump in the eye, because he's cut off if intelligence sharing clearly, deliberately in order to push the Ukrainians into these talks

and to be constructive in the talks. And Europe and Stama and Macron are desperately now struggling to get him, that is to get Trump to say, yes, I'll restore all the intelligence sharing, which is the ability to, if you like, fire missiles into Russia proper, long distance missiles into Russia, and even shorter ones like high miles need this intelligence sharing.

In fact, just recently, they fired missiles towards an oil facility near St. Petersburg, not far from St. Petersburg, not far from St. Petersburg. And to do that, someone must have passed some intelligence from America. I gather there's a big rumpus about that. Who in Europe passed five hours intelligence to the Ukrainians? And there's now a leading article,

I'm not sure what it's standing is, but in the mail newspaper in Britain suggesting that Europe must now move to four eyes and exclude America. Tell me about MI6 and CIA. My understanding, and maybe it's not CIA, maybe it's DIA, Defense Intelligence Agency. My understanding of US Intel, whoever it is, is that the US has the satellites which are able to inform the Ukrainian military of the location of Russian targets. And while MI6 is helpful on the ground and helpful with signals intelligence, capturing emails and phone calls,

it does not have access to those satellites. If that is correct, and please correct me if I'm wrong, wouldn't that be crippling to the Ukraine military if they no longer have satellite guidance as to where the Russians are and where they can be attacked? You have it absolutely correct. Those satellite support is absolutely crucial to the targeting mechanisms

and they are controlled by NATO officials. Yes, the West is able to fly some intelligence gathering airplanes along the coast of the Black Sea, but they have nothing comparable to the systematic intelligence that America is able to gain. And what happened was when this started, you know, the operational screens in Ukraine went blank. They went dark because there was no feed coming in from the United States. So to make it clear, cut backing on, if you like, munitions, which Trump has also ordered, that is taking some time to have effect because there are stockpiles in Ukraine of shells

and weapons and others. But when it comes to the intelligence, then they are completely blinded by it. They go blind. So that is why, if you like, Jonathan Powell, the right-hand man of Blair and Stammer, is sent really on behalf of the probably as much as anything of what remains of the American deep state, the meta state, to try and preserve Ukraine and to try and preserve its assets in Ukraine

because most of the police and military and security people all were put into place by both the British and American deep state in the aftermath of the Maidan coup. So they have the structure right inside Ukraine that cooperates with Britain and France and of course with parts of the United States which haven't yet been dismantled by Trump. But the old, if you like, the remains of the Biden administration, is still anxious to pursue the conflict against Russia. And Europe is, because as I've said, for them, defeating Russia and hurting Russia

is more important than peace. They want to continue the conflict against Russia because their political standing depends on it. They want to, if you like, pose as global leaders, as great leaders. And so what you have is Prime Minister Stammer essentially trying to copy Churchill. He's there trying to lure America into the Second World War as it was then. Churchill was trying to lure the American president to join in the Second World War and making all sorts of presentations. And of course the language was exactly the same. The essential need to inflict a complete defeat on Germany. Now it's a complete defeat on Russia.

But so there are, I mean, this is not secret. This is openly discussed because Parma is in such difficulties, because Macron is in such difficulties economically, because both states, if you like, are financially bankrupt that they can't issue loans. Because of that, they want to pose as global leaders. It's the only way to restore their standing in their own society, the only way to go ahead. And Stammer wants to pose as a leader of Europe as well as a leader in the global stage.

And so therefore they are pushing and pushing to try and find a way of persuading Trump back into this conflict. And my point I keep trying to make is they don't understand, they don't grasp or if they understand they willfully ignore it, that Trump, Ukraine isn't the big issue. The big issue is a great reset. He wants, if you like, he wants to get past Ukraine so that he can actually now move and talk to Russia about other things, not only business deals, but about the Middle East, about energy, about the Arctic, about nuclear weapons, and about some form of treaty

and understanding about a strategic balance between the two states. So I think they just refuse to accept that because that relegates them. If you like to a minor role, they can no longer pose as actors on the state once this normalization stage, whence this normalization between the United States and Russia. They cannot pose in that way. And also they cannot find any way to restart their economies, except this is the last refuge is trying to start them. If you like a military industrial complex in Europe, which they hope will be the engine of growth, because all the other engines of growth in Europe have sputtered and stalled.

So they need a new engine of growth. It was originally going to be the Green Deal, and that's now failed. So now they are turning to, if you like, re-arming Europe as a means to try and, if you like, stimulate some sort of economic growth because the European economies are in a downward spiral and this is the only way they can see to get them out of it and therefore they've got to demonize Russia all the time and say we're going to war with Russia. Hasn't the chancellor in waiting of Germany, Frederick Mertz, added a complex level or layer to this by saying over the weekend he's going to propose once he becomes Chancellor a sort of joint ownership of nuclear

weapons by the EU whereby Germany a non-nuclear country would have access to the nuclear weapons of Great Britain and France. I mean I can't imagine this coming to pass but yet he's asking for it. Well, it's unrealistic. It's unrealistic on two counts. The first one is simply that the British nuclear arsenal is joint key with the United States. In other words, it requires, because it's American technology, it requires American permission.

So it's not an independent nuclear structure at all. And the Trident submarines have to return to the United States for kitting out and for maintenance every so often. And so it's not independent. France is independent, but I think France will never accept to empower German militarism. It's just culturally not possible for France to see Germany arise as a military state. And I think that Mertz, when he's doing this, you know, some of the money is for, you notice that when he talks about 800 billion

or something, you know, grandly, actually 500 of million, billion of it is for investing in other things, other infrastructure, other projects. In other words, to keep the money, it's rather like, in American terms, like the Inflation Reduction Act. A huge sum of money going to sort of NGOs and institutions that were friendly to the government. In other words, they want, you know, if NATO is going to go, they want a new sort of financial to liquefy the economy, to be able to push money into sort of the sectors that are favourable to their party,

to CDU and to those that support the CDU and the Centrist. the CDU and the centrist. I just finished a two-hour briefing with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, which is the reason I'm in Mexico and they don't want us to quote anything until the Foreign Ministry posts the official transcript, the official version of it, but we can certainly discuss impressions. And one of the impressions you wrote about, this is a decided animosity toward President Macron of France.

And in your piece that came out over the weekend, you refer or reference France calling for a weakened Russia. Why would France want a weakened Russia as opposed to a commercially vibrant Russia that can trade with the French after Trump and Putin make their grand new deal? Because Europe would be, if you like, you know, a spare wheel in the structure. The main deal would be between, if you like, Russia and the United States.

What does that leave Europe? It leaves Europe as an adjunct to Eurasia. I mean, that isn't so surprising because after all, what was Europe? Always it was just a stop on the Great Silk Road. I mean, the Great Silk Road ended up in Venice and Italy and Europe became rich from that trading. Where does it leave France and Britain particularly? Out of the limb, not part of the great structures that are taking place in Eurasia, they just become periphery islands.

I have to correct myself, I said a few minutes ago the reason I'm in Mexico, of course, I'm about as far from Mexico as you can get them in Moscow. This is what happens when you're a little bit sleep deprived. But Alistair, thank you very much. Thank you for your time. Thank you for that great piece over the weekend. We look forward to seeing you next week. Usual place and time. I'll be back in New York. Thank you, my dear friend. Have a good trip back. Have a good trip back. Have a safe journey back. Thank you. Thank you so much. Coming up next, Larry Johnson, who is here in Moscow with me,

his impressions and mine on our briefing with Sergei Lavrov. And can Ukraine survive without US Intel? Justin Napolitano for Judging Freedom. You