Judging Freedom - Alastair Crooke: Russia Flourishes Under US Sanctions

Episode Date: March 31, 2025

Alastair Crooke: Russia Flourishes Under US SanctionsSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

you Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Monday, March 31st, 2025. Alistair Crook will be here with us in just a moment on Russia flourishing under US sanctions. But first this. Markets are at an all-time high, euphoria has set in, the economy seems unstoppable, but the last administration has buried us so deep in debt and deficits it's going to take a lot of digging to get us out of this hole. Are you prepared? Lear Capital specializes in helping people like me and you grow and protect our wealth with gold.

Did you know that during Trump's last presidency, gold rose 54% to a record high? If that happens again, that puts gold at $4,200 an ounce in his next term. Don't wait. Do what I did. Call Lear at 800-511-4620 or go to learjudgenap.com for your free gold ownership kit and special report $4,200 gold ahead. When you call, ask how you can also get up to $15,000 in bonus gold with a qualifying purchase. Call 800-511-4620, 800-511-4620, or go to learjudgenap.com and tell them the judge set you. Al Starr, good day to you, my dear friend, and welcome here. Before we get into the Russian economy flourishing under sanctions and whether

President Trump's threats are having the effect that he intends, who knows what he intends, I want to ask you one or two other questions. Is Europe, is the EU, is NATO without the United States planning or preparing for a war with Russia? Yes, yes they are. I think there's a great sense that the system, the European system, the European financial system is in danger of fracture, of breaking up, of collapsing. And they are now desperately looking for a way to take it forward.

And they're sort of turning in fact paradoxically to what people have called the sort of military, militarized Keynesian module. module, that you can regenerate growth in a flagging economy by, if you like, producing a military industrial complex and producing instead of cars, you switch the production from Volkswagen's to tanks. And that this is going to produce a substantial increase in the short term only of income for these states, albeit one that has to be financed entirely by massive amount of debt. That's another question, but it'll have to be produced by debt.

But of course, you have the same problem that prompted America to start its forever wars. You don't actually go out and buy a tank, most consumers don't buy a tank, or like a washing machine or something like that. So once you've produced your tanks, where's the next orders coming from? From war, that's all, from the destruction of these things that you're producing. It's a crazy scheme. There's no support at the ordinary popular level for a war with Russia. This is entirely the elites thinking that this is a good idea. As the Ukraine thing might be settled, they need something to rally around,

to bring together Europe and to create liquidity. The whole exercise of this is to find a new way of, if you like, issuing bonds so they can flood themselves and liquefy their model, their economies. Because countries like the UK are really close to bankruptcy and they're very desperately short of money. At the same time, they're sending $3 billion a year to Ukraine. They never say that very publicly as they take away welfare payments and payments from the disabled to funders.

They don't say it, make the link very publicly, but that's what's happening in Britain. And these things are not going to, I mean, they're not just, it's a recipe for disaster. The European attempts to try and rescue their economy by creating, if you like, a war machine. If you build a tank, all it can be used for is that is to destroy somebody else's property. If you build a car, you use to generate wealth that takes people from A to B, it gets them from their home to their work and allows them to deliver supplies and goods and services and be paid for. It's economics 101. I mean surely, Starmor, Macron, Van der Leyen understand this. Is there bellicosity, the only way to describe it, Alastair, is there bellicosity rooted in economic woes?

No, I mean it is, I mean the answer to the economic woes is, if you like, militarized industrial production. But it goes back. I mean, one of the things that is so striking, I mean, how many people, I mean, the propaganda about Putin has been so successful. You pick up a European newspaper and every opinion piece is sort of either demonizing him in one way or laughing at him or criticizing him. And Russia has become a subject you can't talk about. People just, you can't have a conversation, and people get very angry if you just raise the question of Ukraine or Russia or Putin. Putin is a hate figure.

Now, I mean, again, I emphasize, if you go out in the streets and talk to people, you don't get that. You get something very different. Certainly, you do in where I live here. But the elites, the liberal elites, this is what they see as a way to sort of for the future. So yes, there is a very strong Russophobic element, and they're using that Russophobic creating it, if you like, inflating it in order to justify a new round of issuing death in order to try and get the money into their system and to liquefy their economies.

Is this extreme Russophobia shared by the people in Germany, Brussels, Great Britain, France, or is it top down? It's top down. I mean, we've seen the elections in Germany, and it's particularly noticeable that all, I mean, all the demographics of the young people in Germany, all were in favor of better relations with Russia, and they were very much opposed to the war in Ukraine. If you take them both together, you're talking just over a third of the electorate, the predominantly in one case the under 45s and the other case the under 25s, both of them have shared common interests in no war in Ukraine and no war against Russia. We want actually good relations with Russia.

Same in most European countries. Has Russia fared economically under the Biden-Trump sanctions? Well, it's a really profound and interesting story because really, you know, if you take the post-war period, the end of the war, the politics, the victors of the war, define the economic structures that we've all had right up until now, the world order, the economic globalist world order. And what Putin announced in a Congress to industrialists and entrepreneurs on the 18th of March, and he said, listen, that world order is gone. industrialists and entrepreneurs on the 18th of March.

And he said, listen, the world over, that world order is gone. It's finished. It's absolutely over. You have to understand that the future, we will have sanctions. Sanctions are not going away. Sanctions are the mean to exert pressure on us, to try and make us subordinated in the geopolitical

structure. They're not going to go away. Don't look to Europe to help. Don't expect that you will get justice in their courts. You won't. The system is rigged. That's, you know, that is what he said to his people and said, look, yeah, this is a problem we have had, we have had sanctions and things. Actually it's not a problem, it's a gain, because what we've done is we've changed the economy and we've made it a sort of internally circulating economy, self-sufficient economy with a small wedge at the top, which is open for trade with our partners and BRICS, etc. But we are going to be increasingly self-sufficient, not reliant on gas or oil.

We are going to move in this way. And that makes us sanction resistance. It also makes us bribe and incentive resistance, because we need nothing from America. We need nothing, and there are threats of more sanctions. We've had every sanction under the book. This is what he said to these industrialists all together. And he said, look, we're going to go on with this model.

The old order is over. The old economic order is over. And he was referring, I won't go into it because the talk we have in time, but it's going back to a 19th century view of the economy, which said that the sort of Adam Smith Anglo model was bound to be self-defeating in the end because it wouldn't provide either enough consumption nor employment for the population and it would ultimately be self-defeating and what's paradoxical is that's exactly what America is finding for itself now. That the people who said that, Friedrich List and Witte in the 19th century, were right.

It has turned out to be self-defeating. This is why Vance is saying that actually the reserve currency status, he said, is actually what we call Denmark, it's a disease, it's a curse. He calls it a curse because it's skewing our whole economy so much, if you like, away from actually making things that we don't have the means now. We don't have a rounded economy and we have an overvalued currency because of the reverse currency, because of the reserve status. And it is a disaster for America and that's why they're looking at sort of the either a new plaza or cord or what they call the Mar-a-Lago pact to try and find a way of devaluing the dollar against other currencies. But all of that needs consent. You can't really force it. And so this is the dilemma that's facing

the United States. I mean, the way the president worships the fact that the dollar is the reserve currency and the way he rants and raves about the imbalance of trade. I often wonder if he understands economics 101. I mean, how does the Kremlin react when Trump threatens more sanctions? Do they just laugh at him behind his back? Well, as I said, Putin said it actively, specifically, to these groups, because these were industrialists and businessmen from across Russia, very important meeting, key people, and he said, look for nothing from the West. Don't expect anything. The sanctions will continue. Whatever happens in our talks with Mr. Trump, the sanctions and we're going into a new vicious cycle of restrictions, trade restrictions and tariffs and things like this. And he said, don't have any illusions. It's coming. The old order

is dying. The West is declining. And we have the right answer. And I would say I was after I wrote that piece, I noticed that the Indian foreign minister who's a very sober character, Jai Shankar, was saying something. He said, listen, you know, India is going to probably re-engage with China. I think everything can be sorted out with China. We're going to de-emphasize our relations with the United States, and we're going to look at things like industrial cooperation with China, restarting the automobile plants and things like this. And you know, this is a huge shift for India, of all countries, which has been absolutely with the United States.

I mean, but they're seeing this new era of economics and that Friedrich List in the 19th century was right. Ultimately, this model we've had, the open economy, the globalist economy, self-defeating. How do you account for Putin's extraordinary patience both with negotiating with Donald Trump and in fighting the war and and will does that patience have a limit right now the window is open for Trump to pass through it so to speak the means to achieve what Russia has said are required for a ceasefire. But might that window close? From Putin's point of view, yes, he was very he was very clear again in this talk to the industrialists, he said afterwards, look, you know, at the moment we've we've set our sights on those four blasts and Crimea, and he says, but you know,

if time goes on, maybe we'll need to move the needle on this, i.e. Crimea, not Crimea, i.e. Odessa, or something else. And he said this just over the weekend when he visited a submarine base in the Arctic. And he said about the way ahead, he said, look, we're close to the point at which we will get them to surrender. He said words to that effect that they will be finished. We are going to finish with them, the Ukrainians. I think this is sort

of upset Putin, upset Trump when he finished his golf round with Lindsey Graham and stabbed the Finnish president who were both telling him you can't trust Putin, you can't trust Putin, he won't keep to the ceasefire. Well, Putin is following the doctrine of Primakov and one part of that is what he called, Primakov called strategic procrastination. And I think that sort of really sums up probably what Putin is doing. Strategic procrastination. And I think that sort of really sums up probably what Putin is doing, strategic procrastination while the military war goes on. And what he said was,

we will soon probably finish them off. And I think that irritated Trump over the weekend. And he made some comments about how, you know, I mean, we'll put on more sanctions on Russia. You know, he's got to treat, he's got to treat, you know, of course, Zelensky is his negotiating partner. He's got to treat him as a negotiating partner, which is of course precisely what Russia will not do, treat him as a serious negotiating partner.

And it doesn't matter what Zelensky says or thinks, because he doesn't make the decisions. It's probably not his decisions to go on firing missiles and rockets deep into Russia. It's the cabal that is behind him, of which he is frightened and cannot make any changes. So he is going to not agree to a ceasefire. And the Europeans are not going to agree to a ceasefire. So for the moment, things are quite stuck. And I'm not quite sure how we we going to see this go forward. Here's President Trump expressing that disappointment in President Putin. Chris, cut number nine.

And I was disappointed in a certain way some of the things that were said over the last day or two having to do with Zelensky because when he considered Zelensky not credible Supposed to be making a deal with him whether you like him or you don't like it. So I wasn't happy with that But I think he's gonna be good And I certainly wouldn't want to put Secondary tariffs on Russia, but if they were put on it would not be very good for that. I would think that the Kremlin's eyes would just glaze over comments like that. I mean, Donald Trump threw, not physically but emotionally, threw Zelensky out of the White House,

and now he's criticizing President Putin for saying Zelensky is not credible and not even lawful, two statements that most of the world accepts. I think first of all that Trump was just venting after his golfing round and being sort of barracked by this Finnish president and Lindsey Graham's about about our un-Brolabelin. And I don't think they'll treat it terribly seriously. I think what, as I say, I think what probably Trump was that over the weekend, Putin said, we're about ready to finish them off, the Ukrainians.

But what it does show when he talks about, you know, he's his, your negotiating partner. Of course, Zelensky isn't a negotiating partner because he has no interest in a ceasefire or in resolving it. His interest is in trying to keep alongside the Europeans and hoping the Europeans will keep the war going with money and putting troops in if there is a ceasefire, but he has no interest in what's more, he's not in charge of this. It's the cabal, the extreme nationalist element that supports it, won't let him make a deal. So, I mean, does Trump see that and understand that Europe is also intent on blocking this

and on undermining Trump's attempt? They do not want to see normalization between America and Russia because they've just embarked on this program, this crazy program, for war with Russia. Europeans re-arming, Germany re-arming, all of them. France, Germany, Britain, all of them are saying,

you know, we're preparing for war with Russia. I mean, it's silly. It's quite impossible to happen. But they're serious about, you know, thinking this way. This is their sort of vision, their tunnel vision that they have, that they're the only way out of their crisis, because the crisis, they see the system breaking up. I mean, fundamentally, then what happens to them? They're out. They're finished. The elites fear that they are finished. And you can see why, because the middle classes of Europe are becoming impoverished.

I mean, it's not just a small proportion of Europeans that are below the poverty line. It's the middle classes now are below the poverty line. It's the middle classes now are below the poverty lines. The newspapers are full of the stories, well, full of them, stories about how they can't afford holidays, they can't afford to go out and eat, it's too expensive, and yet our government's spending all this money on other projects and now want to have a military increase the size of their militaries. There's a real, I mean, growing, if you like, clash coming within Europe between, you know, now it's the 60 to 70 percent that are feeling that they've moved into poverty

and are depressed and are angry and resentful for what's happening. And so they don't know what to do. They have no way out. And they see the only way out from this is to, you know, the only remedy, the old remedy, start a war, get a war going, get people, you know, to go behind the flag and come together and fight a war. And so, you know, we are in deep trouble with

that. Before we go, I'd just like to switch gears for a moment. As you know, raging in the United States as we speak is the issue of free speech. The president has dispatched plainclothes police wearing masks to snatch people off the streets, non-Americans, but people lawfully here because of the speech that they have expressed. It's not a speech calling for violence, it's a speech supporting the Gazans and often supporting a Palestinian state, which of course has been the public policy of the United States, never acted upon, but the stated public policy of the United States since 1948. I think the root cause of this suppression of free speech is the following. Chris, cut number 11. These ignorant demonstrators, who are they demonstrating for? For these murderers, these rapists, these mass killers.

This is a reflection of a deep rot that has pervaded the intellectual hub of free societies. And this vilification of Israel, the Jewish people, and Western values has been propagated by a systemic alliance between the ultra-progressive left and radical Islam. It must be resolutely fought by civilized societies to safeguard their future. This is why we must all commend President Trump's decisive actions against anti-Semitism. And we must pressure other governments to do the same. And we must pressure other governments to do the same, acknowledging the pressure that he and his colleagues have put on President Trump.

So free speech for me, but not for thee. Exactly. Yes. free speech for me but not for the exactly yes and it's very much in Europe free speech is being curved everywhere not only on in terms of antisemitism but I just as one example there was a BBC producer who had some, he was talking on a WhatsApp group to friends about some incident at his child, she's only five I think, at a primary school and he had a dispute about the change in the headmaster and he'd been complaining about this, and he found six policemen on his doorstep the next day, saying, you know, this is unacceptable, this is hate speech, you can't criticize the headmaster of the school.

And they took him away and he ended up in the cell for the day. This is, you know, it's really a serious crackdown, particularly in the UK, on free speech, you know, this it's really a serious crackdown, particularly in the UK on on free speech about anything, whether it's abortion or semitism, no one can really speak out without it becoming what is called a criminal hate speech, which can end up with you spending a long time in prison. So yes, this is coming. Dark and perilous days are coming. Alistair, thank you very much.

Thanks for your time. Thanks for your analysis. Thanks for your great piece on Russia, its economy and the balance of power. Look forward to seeing you next week, my dear friend. Thank you so much. Thank you, Judge. Of course.

Coming up later today, our regular Monday, Ray McGovern at 10 in the morning, Larry Johnson at 11.30 in the morning, and at four this afternoon, I think he's in Beijing, but I'm not sure, Professor Jeffrey Sachs, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. You