Judging Freedom - Alastair Crooke : Trump's Different Imperial Model.

Episode Date: December 15, 2025

Alastair Crooke : Trump's Different Imperial Model.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 Monday, December 15th, 2025. Alster Crook will be here with us in a minute. Is Donald Trump rejecting the neocons? But first this. History tells us every market eventually falls. Currencies collapse.

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Alastair, good day to you, my friend. You have a great piece out analyzing the Trump administration's national security strategy, and I'd like to spend some time exploring your analysis of it. The president proclaims the United States will pursue regions of influence rather than hegemony. What's the difference? What's the difference is that he's pursuing the so-called transactional business strategy. And so what he wants to do is to draw in and to focus America's efforts on South America, Latin America, from the tip of Argentina right to the north of the Arctic. And he wants to focus on that.

That is to be America's sphere of imports. And in that sphere, they will not allow the infrastructure of competitors to take place, namely China. Because if you look at a map of Latin America, South America, you look at a map of it, which shows you trade surpluses with China. It's almost red, if you like, mark that as red. That's almost the whole map except for Colombia and one other state. So all of it is nearly under the influence of the Chinese model of an economy, which is clearly at odds with what Trump wants to see. And he says in the NSS, it says, we will drive out the infrastructure of the opposing

architecture and model for the incoming world, their economy. And this is what's going on in Venezuela. Of course, it's about this. In fact, we see very clearly that Venezuela has been opting for the Chinese model. It makes sense. It makes much great deal of sense for them. It's about supply lines, it's about loans, it's about different forms of payment, it's about corridors of commodities, and it doesn't require them to, you know, sign on to Chinese foreign policy. No requirements are made in that respect.

No one's going to quiz them about what sort of structure they have at home. It is a straightforward economic proposal. And so I think this is, in fact, a very dangerous moment because this is the first war, really, the first phase of this new war, which I think the new war is to determine which incoming global system and architecture is going to prevail in the world. It's a new geopolitics, too, because it's less about, I think it's going to be less about military, symbolic military might, aircraft carriers, hundreds of aircraft, and more about this model of incoming model of the economy. Isn't it true that the alliances developed between China and Latin American countries while Trump's predecessor, and the White House were looking the other way, have enriched those countries and China, but have not, as you just said,

imbued military or intelligence, Chinese military or intelligence or politics into those countries. So if it's been mutually beneficial economically, Trump wants to disrupt that? Precisely. He wants, it says that in the NSS, this is the whole paragraph devoted In those regions, the Western Hemisphere is clearly defined as America's sphere of entrance and its region.

In those regions, we will drive out the infrastructure of any competitive. It has to be sole America competition in that one party, one negotiating structure in that area, and that has to be America. no one else can come in it's exclusively an american zone so you know we're talking really i mean is this the end of uh american if you like hegemony as many people who have proclaimed no he's just defining it in a different way um it is not over it's defined in a different way in a business way so right rest of the world becomes franchises and has to pay america the fee for having a franchise franchise in Europe, franchise and the Middle East, their proxies, American proxies, will operate franchises in these different areas. It's a way of, if you like, focusing resources. It makes

sense in that America is overextended militarily and certainly economically. So it's going to pull in to focus on the homes, if you like, the American region and all its resources going up to the Arctic. And the rest will be taken care of proxies on a franchise base basis, which means they've got to pay in and they've got to pay in and support industry coming back, reshoring of industry into the United States. So that's the aim, but it contains pretty well fatal flaws, contradictions that mean that it's unlikely to really work. I mean, particularly in that aspect of the financial side.

I mean, put very basically, the United States can either bring in if you like, direct investments to shore up its manufacturing base, or it can bring in capital to support the bond market. But it can't do both at the same time, because if money is all coming in to build new factories and new manufacturing in the United States, that money is not gonna be available for supporting the bond market,

which means that the dollar is going to devalue, most likely. So the NSS proclaims that the United States can no longer shoulder the burdens of empire. And at the same time, it proclaims that we're building a military base in Syria, a military base in Gaza, and the Congress just appropriated another one trillion for the next year's Defense Department budget, which according to our friend and colleague Matthew Ho, doesn't even, even count another half trillion that goes to defense-related matters through other budgets. So how can he have it both ways? Well, it's the same thing again.

You can't have it both ways. What are you going to do? What are your objectives? Is it to make AI predominant, in which case you need trillions more invested in the American way? of AI. Don't forget the Chinese AI is quite different. But really, you know, that's almost unwinnable. Just to take one example, we all know how much electricity AI takes. I mean, these mega centers take huge amounts of energy. Well, the cost of, if you like, nuclear-produced energy in China is one-sixth of a gigawatt of energy produced in the United States.

So in order to become competitive, order to become competitive on AI or in even manufacturing, you'd have to devalue the dollar by a huge amount, compensate for that price inequality. That's what I mean by contradictions. And yes, it's full of contradictions. Because, I mean, look at the, I mean, one of the contradictions is that they, it's very clear Whitkoff and Kushner have been, be, have sold to the Trump or Trump is sold to them. The idea that really the problem in Ukraine is, is one of spreading the money around sufficiently, you know, business wise. We've got to make sure that all the stakeholders get some sort of compensation. That's why BlackRock is coming now to be part of the team.

So everyone has to get some compensation, including the Europeans, so they'll all agree to the plan. So it's really like a New York real estate deal. You've got most of the property you want, but there's a bit missing, so you've got to pay off that stakeholder. Give him a share of the cake, if you like, when it's built, and he gets some sort of share of the Cape. And that's how they're sort of trying to sell this to Russia.

Russia is playing this very cleverly to back to America by saying, yeah, let's do this in the Antarctic. We can be partners to exploit that there. But America wants to do it in the reconstruction. We'll take some of the European money. We'll put that into reconstructing Ukraine. But there's a fundamental flaw in this, too. You know, who are these people?

You've got Kushner, who's a son-in-law, and you've got Whitko. Do any of them have a mandate to negotiate on behalf of the United States? Do any of them have an actual function, a job? Are they members of the administration? I don't think any of us really know. I don't know if Russia knows. But here we have these two people trying to sort of split the proceeds in different ways, the reconstruction funds, which they hope will be paid

out of the frozen assets of Russia. So a little bit here, a little bit there, but it doesn't work because, you know, Russia doesn't want this sort of deal. I mean, Putin doesn't want that. I mean, he actually wants a properly written legal treaty. We've been through this several times before with Russia, I mean, at the end of the war, you know, after the reunification of Germany, not an inch further, not an inch further. Oh, where was that written down? Remind me where that we, we America wrote that down. Right. I don't recall we said that at all. So he doesn't want a deal. He wants Lavrov, makes the point. Lavrov must be the one to write it and the Secretary of State must be his counterpart. Rubio must be it. It's not... Why is... Why is other than because

he can be gracious and diplomatic, why does Putin spend five hours with two real estate agents who have no mandate from the American government? They're just, you know, one is the President's Senate law. Maybe he's his APAC handler, as one of our chatter suggested. The other is this former business colleague, neither than knows anything about Russian history or geopolitical diplomacy. Well, I think we're getting an idea of what Putin's objectives are. I don't think he has the slightest sense that a deal is coming out of this, and certainly not a legal document that would deal with the, you know, their fundamental root causes. And he keeps saying, you know, we can't just address symptoms all the times.

We have to go to the root causes. But what he's trying to do, I think, he believes that as the era that we're in now becomes less and less stable, as America also experiences for economic instability and to a degree political stability right at the top, he believes it's important

and so does China, so does President Xi believe that it's important to be able to have some form of engagement with the United States. I mean serious engagement, not just contacts, proper engagement with people, you know, who have standing, who have weight in the American system. So I think he's trying to do that because he can see that this thing can all go badly wrong. very quickly. He looks at what's happening in America. And I noticed this very much when I was in Moscow. You know, they keep looking at what the Europeans are saying and saying, you know, this doesn't make any sense. What's going on in Europe? And what are they trying to do? And I say to them, look, you know, there's no way Europe can go to war with Russia. It hasn't the money. It hasn't men and it doesn't have the weapons, the armory is bare. But what they're trying to do is really to

try and find some sort of provocation, some sort of terrible incident, perhaps along in the Baltics or in the Black Sea, where we've just seen attacks on tankers, in order to try and, you know, to do a Pearl Harbor, pull America into the war. Can you spell force flag? How can the United States be an empire and a debtor? Or can any country long remain an empire and a debtor? Well, this is, I mean, this is the denial of reality that is going on because, you know, I said to you, you remember from Beijing and I was saying, you know, China has become so competitive. I gave you the sort of the differential in terms of the electricity cost,

but the sheer competitiveness. And so America has really no way of competing with China, as things stand, even on AI, unless there was a massive devaluation of the dollar that would make it competitive, on, you know, world terms. But he doesn't want that. Trump doesn't want that.

He wants, basically, he wants to resure manufacturing to America without inflation. He wants to keep the debt low and he wants to get interest rates down, but without actually collapsing the debt market. I mean, these things are all, I mean, really contradictory objectives

to pursue. at the same time. So this is, I think, you know, yes, I mean, there is a denial. And why I'm saying this is, I mean, with Venezuela, with Ukraine, we're coming to a point where the United States has either got to come to terms and manage this reality. Manage the reality that the United States cannot direct. directly reshore its industry at present dollar levels and inequalities of capability, competition,

of competitiveness at this level. It can't do that. So is this going to become a hot competition or is it going to be managed? And I think that is going to be the real question. And that's why Putin and she want to have, if you like, some degree of communication and some degree of managing this. And that's what they're going to offer. They will say, it's my prediction, but there are signs. I think they will say, look, stop trying to sort of, you know, remove China from Venezuela, because this is going to end up escalating into some nasty conflict. Because, you know, I mean, China has offered Venezuela an amazing contract for the future

to not only to buy their oil, but to manage their oil fields and to invest a billion dollars. It was made in November. And Maduro offered Trump everything. He said to Trump, you can be a partner. This was back in the summer. You can be a partner in mining projects, in the gold mining, in the oil and gas exploration. You can have a partnership. American companies can come in and be four partners, all of us.

And Trump said no. No, you remember he said that. Yes, they did offer us everything. But I said, no. Why? Because he doesn't want China in the picture. He doesn't want China in South America. That's our patch, he says effectively. That's our patch.

And we want all their cheap loans, their different forms of payment. No, no, no. We wanted this back under the American rules-based order. We want Latin America to be subject to the dollar hegemony to the IMF, to the World Bank, under our control. This is our backyard. Don't forget this is a message that he is giving. So he said no.

So it's set up for a confrontation. He set it up for a confrontation with China. The first aspect was seizing that tanker that was going to deliver oil to Cuba, which Cuba would then probably. send on to China because Cuba needs a foreign exchange so they would reset it on to China probably even at a discount but Cuba needs that foreign exchange so part one is to isolate Cuba and part two is to mount a siege on Venezuela so that it can't interact with this new Chinese model and what they're offering

ports, communications, corridors. I know there's no effective means of enforcing international law anymore, but the seizure of that tanker was an act of piracy. Oh, yeah. Now, we're in this new world. I mean, you know, the Israelis are glad on it. He can kill whoever he wants in the Caribbean, and he can steal whatever he wants.

months from the Caribbean. Yeah, he just designated people, sanctions them as terrorists. And therefore, once they're terrorists, then they are sort of somehow a sovereign. They are only non-state actors, but they're somehow sovereign. And so we're going to war with them

and it's all right to kill them without qualms, extrajudition. And, you know, this is, I mean, this is being used. I mean, the threat of now making the Muslim Brotherhood, if you like, say it's a terrorist organization. I mean, this is really to put pressures on, you know, many Middle East states. I mean, Qatar is a, is a patron of the Muslim Brotherhood as is Turkey. I mean, this is, you know, saying, well, we can go for them.

We'll take them. And Egypt has said, well, if you do that in Egypt, we are going to war with Israel. So, you know, it's a very dangerous model that is coming out. It might sound superficially appealing, you know, a business model. Everyone benefits, commerce, you know, ends conflicts. It doesn't. It can just start conflicts. I was very disappointed in reading the, and I want to change the subject for our last topic, but I want to get this thought in, very disappointed in reading the NSS, the National Security Strategy, to see the name of Alexander Hamilton in there, the father of big government in America.

I would rather have seen Adam Smith, the father of free trade, but Trump does not have consistent ideology. I don't think, just to say, I don't think, you know, it's not possible to go back to the Alexander Hamilton model, the American model. It would take 20 years. It would mean, you know, rooting everything. He only likes it because of the tariffs. The 450 years, America used tariffs. Yes. Not because he's serious about it.

Fully agreed on the history and the economics. Where are the Europeans going? Maloney has just promised the Prime Minister of Italy, 100 million to Ukraine. The other three, Macron, Starmer, and Mertz that just keep meeting and meeting and meeting with Zelensky, they don't have a nickel to give him. Where are the Europeans going to be in a year or two? Well, I don't know, but whatever it is is going to be a catastrophe. What type of catastrophe we wait and have to wait and see?

I mean, it is becoming demonic. I mean, the procedures being instituted through the European Union are clearly illegal under the terms of the treaty, and they're not caring. They're adopting this, you know, the Trump manifest. We have the power. We'll do it. You know, don't ask me if it's legal. Don't ask me if it's appropriate.

you know, I have the part, so I'll do it. And that's what von der Leyen is saying. We're going to force us through, and we're just going to ignore the rules about unanimity on decision-making. And already, of course, it's resulted in a fraction of the European Union. There are now seven states that are going to vote against providing this funding to Ukraine. Seven states altogether, including Italy, are going to vote against this procedure. They say, we don't know, because all that voting took place in secret in the corpora system.

So it was sealed votes, and no one knows what actually happened there. And now she's going to ram it through, I suspect, despite the protest vote against it, she's going to again say, no, we're going to go, we're in an economic emergency. That's what she's declaring under an article of the treaty that there is emergency in Europe. What is the emergency? Only the emergency that they themselves have caused. But there's no other emergency other than their actions

which have brought Europe into this state. And now he's going to say, well, now this is an emergency, we're going to have to go to the special voting. The special voting, by the way, is not just a majority. It's a weighted majority, a weighted majority causing to the size of the population of your state. So, of course, the big states like Germany, France, and Italy, but the big states are the ones that count. So the seven people opposing it probably won't stop it, and the money has now been frozen. indefinitely illegally and they are going to probably find the means

illegally to send it off to Zelensky in Kiev to keep the war going and to thumb their nose that Trump and his Whitkoff and Kushner plan for trying to resolve it by giving up bigger portions of the cake because they don't can't accept they can't live with the idea of russian as a major part they cannot accept it and they won't accept it they want it humiliated and defeated and broken up and they will do what they can it is actually maniacal in their determination it's demented to try and push through whatever they can, you can hear them. It's really led by a small group, a trio of, you know,

Macron and Merckx and Stama, not in Europe, but I've cited, and the Poles. I mean, and of course the Baltic states. I mean, it's just led, but it's become quite, you know, and demand. And really paranoid. God, no, you can't. ask me, you know, what is the strategic, what is the sort of rationale behind it? It has none.

This is just insane. Alasda, thank you, my dear friend. Thank you for letting me take you from Venezuela to the heart of Europe and all these other topics in between. Thank you for your terrific analysis. Have a great week. We'll look forward to seeing you next week. All the best, my friend. Thank you very much. Thank you. Bye-bye. Coming up later today, at 10 this morning, Ray McGovern at 1130 this morning, Larry Johnson,

at 4 o'clock this afternoon, Professor Jeffrey Sachs. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.