Judging Freedom - Alastair Crooke: Imperial Hubris in Syria.

Episode Date: January 2, 2025

Alastair Crooke: Imperial Hubris in Syria.See 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 Thursday, January 2nd, 2025. Happy New Year to everyone. Apology for the late start, some gremlins. It took us a while to find them and chase them away. Alistair Crook will be here with us in just a moment on the imperial hubris of the demise of Syria. But first this. We're taught to work hard for 35 to 40 years, save your money, then live off your savings. Unfortunately, there are too many threats undermining the value of our hard-earned dollars.

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and happy new year to you and your family. Thank you, as always, for joining us. Before we get into what you have recently published on the imperial hubris over Syria, I just want to ask a couple of, I want to pick your brain a little bit. What is your take on Russia today, its economy, its political stability, its reputation in the international community, its likely triumph in Ukraine? I think all of what you said about Russia is so. It's got a thriving economy. If there's a problem, it's just that it's humming very fast. I'm not talking about energy, but if you go to Siberia or any of those provinces, I mean, it's just buzzing with activity. There's a middle class that is now becoming consumers, and so it's becoming a sort of wider economy.

It's settled. It's not, it's very pragmatic. It's looking about what it is to be Russian. It's a complex issue. It really goes back to Byzantium to really understand what Russians mean by Russia. But that is taking place and shape. So I would say it's stronger than it's ever been. I think what's facing them and the challenge that they see ahead is basically the challenge of how to deal with the United States

in this coming period when Trump will become president and will seek a discussion with Russia and with Putin. And I think, why is it difficult? I think it's going to be difficult. And I've said that before, because firstly, I don't think there is a deep understanding, perhaps a misbriefing of some of the envoys about what Russia sees as the solution to Ukraine. It's very clear what Russia thinks about Ukraine. It's not interested in a ceasefire, frozen conflict, any of those things. What it is interested in is a permanent solution to Ukraine. By that, they mean a wider, a big-picture talk with Trump, a big picture, not just the minutiae of Ukraine,

but how to come to some sort of understanding between, if you like, Central Asia, the heartland of Asia, and with the Western Atlanticist group of companies. Where does it stop? Where does this whole process, the expansion of NATO that was promised at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall, would never move forward? How far does it move forward? Do they really have the right to say it's none of anybody's business where we take NATO? We can put it on your doorstep and you can't complain because we have that right.

It's a discussion about that and about missiles that needs to be had. But I think that the problem, if I put it like this, is more acute because I don't think America, indeed the West, is prepared for this. They're not prepared to see a strong Russia emerge. They've been conditioned to see it as being weak. They're conditioned to seeing it, if you like, as a sort of backward state,

heavily conditioned for a long time. And I think also there's another aspect that makes this so difficult for there to be an agreement. It is really also because I don't think that they understand Russia and what's happened, and because partly because the united states has if you like um given up it's if you like its national values not completely of course not there is an american culture but that american culture is if you like has been suppressed and has been replaced um in the 70s, where they swapped out national values, the traditional values of America, for identity politics. And they did that because they wanted to move us away

from what was a democracy at the time. They wanted to move us towards, if you like, technocracy. A technocracy that, if you like, is the corporate, multinational corporates, multinational energy, multinational bankers, as the experts. These are the only people that can make a serious decision about our future and design our future and it's uh brzezinski civic brzezinski who is a security a national security advisor to carter at that time wrote this book forecasting the technocratic era and saying that man humanity needs to be leave the nation-state concept, get rid of the nation-state concept, and accept the sort of technocracy that would manage and would create

a sort of sphere of identity which would be controlled and manipulated for the purpose of serving, if you like, the new corporatist future that he foresaw for America. And that this has great consequences for doing a deal on Ukraine because this identity politics has been used in Ukraine to try and present Ukraine, or at least the west of Ukraine, west of the Dnieper River, as Europe, and that the other part is Slav,

and to create a cultural conflict, if you like, between European Ukraine, based on its identity that it's somehow more European than Slav, against Asia and the values of Asia. And, of course, the European Union jumped on this. They were delighted to find this sort of this new tool of unity that they could use because their own unity was fraying quickly. And Ukraine suddenly became the pole of unity around which Europe could try and gather and recreate, if you like, Europe as a powerful actor on the stage. And I think what you're seeing and coming, you know,

turning a bit to Syria, look at the world. Everywhere there is upheaval taking place. Everywhere there is crisis. It's not just France. It's not just Germany. It's Romania. It's Moldova. It's even South Korea. So everywhere we see this. And what is going on, I think, is finally the sort of pushback against that corporatist vision, that identitarian politics that eventually became wokeism, that Brzezinski was pursuing in his book about the technocratic era

to come, the pushback against that, because the world is just fed up with Western nihilism do you they want to find something that has meaning they want to find something that has value in life and and to get back to their own values civilizational values and the problem is that i don't think in in the team around trump probably understands what russia means by that it sees itself as a civilizational state and not just as another nation state. And that's what's important to them. And it has to be negotiated on those sort of understandings and not simply about, shall we freeze this here? Shall we freeze it there? No no they want a permanent solution which means a new security

architecture um for um central asian and for europe that puts frontiers puts limits on behavior puts limits on missiles do you think that the elites in Europe and the neocons in the State Department and the people around Trump understand the Russian mentality, the Russian vitality, the Russian self-perception, and that their grand experiment, I'm not talking about the people around Trump, but the elites in Europe now and the neocons in the State Department, their grand experiment in Ukraine has been a colossal failure. A complete failure. And of course, this is part of the difficulties that Russia is having to cope with because how do you negotiate with Trump

in such a way that he can present this as a success? The last thing, Trump stands for, you know, making America great, America's leadership, all of these things. And what Russia is trying to do is to usher him slowly along the path of multi-polar world, where America will be an important state amongst equals, amongst a concert of powers, but not the hegemon dictating to the world what it believes and what its vision for the future is. That's what's been

rejected almost across the globe. But it's a very difficult thing to understand. How can Trump do it? And I believe the only way he can do it, really, is by actually going up the, if you like, metaphysical stairs with Russia and saying, let's do a big deal. Let's talk about how Russia and China and Iran interact with the West and how we can manage that. What are the guardrails? How we can do that. And do you know what? That is a victory, because what I'm doing is saving America from the Third World War. Because otherwise, we would go on forever. If we go on as we're going, we walk this sort of delicate cusp of escalation, of possible escalation. If we don't get a specific agreement on Ukraine, then things may escalate. And escalate, who knows, to nuclear

war or whatever. I'm going to save you from that. The problem is that, you know, I don't think America's really been prepared for the sense of, if you like, that decision to change to being a multipolar power rather than a hegemon. And so it's trying to find a way of getting victory out of a failure. And that's not easy. And I think that's why, you know, maybe he can conceive it and he can reconfigure it in a way which is more important. How do we finally solve all these problems so that we actually put a World War III, that we don't walk along that precipice of potential escalation that could lead anywhere at any time? And that's why I think the only way to do this is actually go big picture,

not little picture. And I think that maybe, you know, I think Trump has sent signals that he can do this. I'm not sure that the people around him understand it as well. Very interesting series of observations. Switching over to the events in Syria at the tail end of last year. Who or what was the prime mover in the demise of President Assad's regime? Well, it's connected with what we were just talking about, because the other thing that Ruzhinsky produced, going back to the turmoil of the 70s in the United States when America sort of gave up its traditional values in favor of identity politics. It was Brzezinski that took

identitarian politics and weaponized it. First of all, in Afghanistan, which I recall, where he tried to use Islamist, jihadist fighters to overthrowist identities against secular states ever since. And of course, that's just what we've done in Syria. We've used, if you like, HTS and ISIS rebrand in order to create a coup d'etat in Syria. Now, what's it all about? You ask, what is it all about? Well, I think it's very clear what this coup is about. It is essentially, what do they say? What does Jolani al-Sharah say? He says, look, I'm open to business coming here and investing. I'm open to oil companies, energy companies coming here. I'm open to all of it.

And you know what? I want to normalize with Israel. So I think, you know, he's saying it so clearly that this is another process of normalization, trying to normalize the field for Israel. The kings, the emirs of the Gulf, normalized long ago. They are all stuck to their Bloomberg terminals and are thoroughly sort of, if you like, normalized. But the resistance axis wasn't.

And so now, Kureta has been mounted using the same tools that Brzezinski was outlining in his Grand Chess Book and using that to undermine it but to create normalization. And this has been an ongoing project, and Turkey was a part of it, but the West has been trying to find a way of creating, and what do they call it? Technocratic Salafism. It tells you everything. I mean, it was part of the technocratic plan

that Brzezinski was outlining for the future of America, the future, you know, to get rid of the values. And here you have a state, the values of Syria, 5,000-year-old values on a diffuse, well-entrenched society. for a technocratic government that is aligned with corporate businesses of the world, of corporate enterprises, the oligarchs, the energy, the banking cartels. And it's entirely in line with, if you like, that form. And that's why I called it Imperial hubris because it has a double meaning. Yes, it's hubris by Turkey, Ottoman-esque, Ottoman hubris, but being used by the imperial forces are using Turkish hubris to bring about a sort of, if you like, a corporatist structure that will normalize that part of the region with Israel.

This has been planned for about 40 years from the clean break strategy, how to normalize the whole of the region with Israel. And part of this plan is unfolding with Israel pursuing what I call the Leviathan, a total war, war to disrupt the Middle East and make it subservient to Israel. And that is proceeding. Now we're talking about, if you like, we're talking about Yemen as well as Syria, as well as Lebanon, as well as Gaza, all being destroyed, massive destruction. For what purpose? The destruction is the purpose.

And that is, I think this is on course. It contains the seeds of its own self-destruction, I believe, because the Leviathan is, if you like, an irrational process as such. So that is, I think, what we're seeing unfolding in Syria and who's behind it and what is behind it. It's the normalization of the region. And I think one of the great dangers, I said earlier we were talking about Ukraine and how to try and allow President Trump, which he will be then, to present whatever is agreed with Putin as a triumph, as a victory that he hasn't conceded American greatness,

he hasn't conceded American leadership of the world. Well, unfortunately, I think the only one way of balancing it out might be the one advocated by some of his, if you like, aides and allies, which would be to bomb Iran and show American virility by, if you like, annihilating the Iranian state. I hope that won't happen, but it's a possibility. This is a fascinating, fascinating analysis. You mentioned Jalani. We're going to play two clips. You'll see him and hear him with an English translation, of course, looking and sounding very much like a Western diplomat. Chris, run cut number one and then immediately cut number two.

Russia is an important country and is considered the second most powerful country in the world. And there are deep strategic interests between Syria and Russia. There are deep strategic interests between Syria and Russia. Syrian weapons are all Russian. Many of the power plants are Russian with Russian expertise, and there are great cultural ties between Syria and Russia. We do not want Russia to exit Syria, as some would like. Syria cannot continue without relations with a large regional country like Iran, but they must be based on diplomatic relations, respect for the sovereignty of the two countries,

non-interference in internal affairs, and only relations that are compatible with the interests of the two countries without interfering in the matters of sectarian hatreds. We hope that the new American administration will not follow in the same approach as the previous administration in continuing these sanctions and will lift them without entering into negotiations or bargaining. Hard to believe that three months ago he was butchering, figuratively and literally, his opponents in a public square.

Years ago, when I was quite young and naive, probably still am, but I went to Washington from Afghanistan, and I gave a talk to policymakers there. And I said, watch out for al-Qaeda which is just shaping there and not so much Al-Qaeda it was Gulbuddin Hekmatyar who was the most sinister and I said you've got to discriminate you've got to understand these groups some of them are going to be very dangerous um to to muslims to other people and you will end up with bombs in your cities and i remember being taken by senior american senator who sort of condescendingly put his arm around my shoulders and he said listen those people you warn us against, they sure kick communist ass.

And, you know, I'm sure they're saying, listen, Alistair, those people you're warning us against, the Jolanis, now in a suit, now saying all the right normalization words towards Israel. Listen, he does exactly, this is exactly what we want. He's kicking out the resistance. He's kicking the resistance backside, and he's going to normalize with Israel. Isn't that a success? Well, Alistair, fascinating, fascinating stuff. Very much appreciate you coming on with us today. It's not your usual day. Today seems like a Monday, but it's a Thursday because of midweek holidays.

We'll see you next week, next Monday at your regular time and place. Thank you very much, my dear friend. Thank you. Thank you, Judge. Of course. A pleasure. What a pleasure to open up the new year with the brilliance of Alistair Crook. Coming up later today at nine this morning, Professor Jeffrey Sachs. At 1030 this morning, Professor Gilbert Doctorow at one this afternoon, Scott Ritter at three this afternoon,

Professor John Mearsheimer at five this afternoon, Max Blumenthal. A full day for you to start off this brand new year. Justin Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.