Judging Freedom - AMB. Chas Freeman : Trump and US Hegemony.

Episode Date: December 16, 2025

AMB. Chas Freeman : Trump and US Hegemony.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 Tuesday, December 16th, 2025. Ambassador, Chas Freeman, joins us now. Ambassador, I want to talk to you at some length on President Trump's views of hegemony and what he has attempted to renounce and attempted to embrace in his national security strategy. but a lot of other subjects before we get there. Do we know if media reports that the Ukrainian government is willing to renounce its plans to join NATO are true?

And if the renunciation is just sort of another path to NATO security without calling it NATO? Well, no, I think it is true. It's not really Ukraine giving up anything at all because it's perfect. obviously. After four years of warfare, that NATO is not prepared to apply Article 5 to Ukraine. I don't believe it's going to be able to do that indirectly. But, I mean, the real requirement for Ukrainian security is peace with Russia. And Ukraine continues to fail to participate. pursue that, it's still refusing to acknowledge what has happened on the battlefield. It does not appear to have any plan for lifting the restrictions that imposed on Russian

literature, Russian language, Russian culture, Russian church. And it's not showing any evidence of willingness to deal with the terms that that I'm sorry to say are essential to end this conflict. That is the terms that the Russians have held to from the very beginning. Zelensky and his European colleagues are meeting on Thursday. What can they give him?

I don't think they can give him very much. You know, they don't have any money. They're all pretty broke financing their government activities like us by issuing debt rather than collecting tax revenue. So they don't have any disposable income to dispense. Their military production is inadequate for their own purposes, let alone Ukraine's. The United States is willing to sell them stuff which they can then transfer to Ukraine, but our own military industrial. capabilities are severely limited so I guess what they can do is provide a measure of wishful thinking that will continue to enable Ukraine to be in denial about what has happened to it

and what its prospects are here's some wishful thinking between Vladimir Zelensky and Chancellor MERS yesterday in Berlin. Chris cut number two. It would have been clear how NATO membership could have worked for Ukraine anyway, but from the U.S. side, we have now heard that there will be security guarantees from the U.S. that are similar to NATO's collective defense pledge, Article 5. The question of territory is an extremely painful issue for us. I mean, Russia has its own list of wishes. The first time since the 24th of February, 2021, we see a real opportunity to pave the way towards peace.

So it's just down to Russia whether or not we manage to achieve a ceasefire by Christmas or not. Let me start at the very end, managed to seek to achieve a ceasefire by Christmas or not. Is he ignorant of what Vladimir, of what Sergei Lavrov has said a dozen times? The Russians are not interested in a ceasefire. They're interested in a resolution of the entire problem. Well, I think this is political posturing for the benefit of the company he's keeping. The Europeans are quite happy to have Ukraine continue to fight. the Russians and hurt the Russians as long as there are Ukrainians left to do that.

So this is very unrealistic. I think the Article 5 guarantee, as I said, is very unlikely. I don't see why the United States would mortgage our security to the belligerence of Ukraine against Russia. I think we too should want a neutral Ukraine that's a bridge in a buffer between Russia and the rest of Europe. A democratic Ukraine, one that is at peace with its neighbors and at peace domestically by conferring on those of its non-Ukrainian native speakers, the rights that the European Union and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe both require. How about a Ukraine where the Americans and the British don't overthrow the government

because they don't like what the popularly elected president has said? Well, there wouldn't have been a war if two things had not happened. That was one. That is the 2014 Maidan coup, which we spent a lot of money to engineer, $5 billion were told from the National Endowment of Democracy, for Democracy, which replaced CIA covert action in an earlier period as the means of regime change. But the other factor, of course, is it wouldn't have happened if, as the Russians constantly warned, it would, if we had not, if Joe Biden had not embraced George W. Bush in insisting on the membership of Ukraine in NATO, which, you know, would not have contributed at all to NATO's self-defense capability. It is supposed to be a defensive alliance. but would have been would have created a provocation and in fact it did and so we're now left with the results or rather the Ukrainians are left with the results it hasn't really hurt us very much it's heard them fatally are the polls the Polish is the Polish government becoming more militaristic as the German government is sounding it is becoming if it's an

awkward question, but I think you know where I'm going. Well, the Poles have a good reason to be concerned about both the Russians and the Ukrainians, and they're between them. The polls have a long history of themselves of invading Russia. They've been invaded by Russia when it was part of Hitler's empire in Eastern Europe at their end. Stalin actually divided it between them. So they've been a victim of both Germans and Russians. Ukrainians, the Stepan van dermer,

who's now the national hero and founding father of contemporary Ukraine, was an ally of the Nazis and his followers, people who are the forerunners of the ultra-nationalist Ukrainians in Western Ukraine killed 150,000 Poles in addition to 250,000 Jews. So there's a lot of history here, and there are good geopolitical reasons for Poland to have done what it has done, which is to become most heavily armed country in Europe in terms of defense expenditures, at least, and to be wary. I don't think the polls like the idea of German doubling of defense spending, given the history between them and the Germans.

I don't think they like what they've seen in Ukraine from the Russians. So they are in a precarious position in reacting probably rationally, despite the Russophobia in in Russia, in Poland, and their animosity toward the Banderite government in Kiev. Apparently, as Zelensky speaking in the Hague, just a few minutes ago, has said, Russia must accept that there are rules and at the same time he's pushing to have a U release to him,

which is another way of saying steal the frozen Russian assets. I don't know what rules he's talking about because he's in the same breath asking for the violation of the most basic rules of human property, which is you don't steal somebody else's. Well, it's the basic principle of banking now that a bank does not misappropriate the funds that have been entrusted to it. And those reserves have been entrusted to bank in Belgium and elsewhere. And I think the risk is that the entire global banking system will lose credibility. Why would anybody deposit money reserves in a bank? that has a history of just taking them when it feels that it's necessary to do so.

So that is wrong. But the broader issue is that the rules, the UN Charter international law, the rules that we erected after World War II have all been disregarded, not just by the Russians who illegally invaded. invaded Ukraine, but by us. We are engaged in multiple violations of international law at the present time and never referred to it. So I agree with Zelensky that there should be rules.

They should be derived from consensus among nations, not imposed by individual nations on a hegemonic basis, and they should enable all of us to live in a predictable world of peace. that's not where we are yesterday the Israeli military murdered a Hamas leader in Gaza and has released to international media outlets a video of the assassination I thought there was a ceasefire in Gaza that had been negotiated by Whitkoff and Kushner and President Trump will play the clip in just a minute, boasted yesterday that there is legitimate peace in the Middle East for the first time in 3,000 years.

Well, I would say there is a peace that over there is a ceasefire in Palestine between the Israelis and Palestinians in the same sense that there was a peace process going on for the preceding 25 years. There was no peace process. It was all the fiction of the imagination. It was served a useful purpose of allowing low-level depredations to go on with impunity. I mean, the issue here is Israeli impunity. Israelis violate agreements.

Pay no attention to them with complete abandon because they're confident that the United States has their back and will save them from the consequences. And that is exactly what is going on. The genocide continues. It is continuing in a quieter, less evident manner. But it continues. There is no ceasefire despite the claim that there is.

There is no peace in the Middle East. And of course, the Israeli-Palestinian issue is not the product of the 3,000 years of conflict. It is the product of 120 years of Zionism. The Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, blamed the murders on a beach in Australia over the weekend on anti-Semitism, as if he had nothing to do with anti-Semitism. Well, he is the greatest promulgator, uh, promoter. creator of anti-Semitism the world has ever seen.

It is not a surprise that when Netanyahu and his government continue to carry out absolutely unspeakable acts of violence against innocent civilians, that there will be a reaction. And to the extent that Jewish communities around the world appear to be supportive of those of genocide and mass murder, assassinations, violations of international law, it is also not surprising that you get a reaction. There is, of course, a real problem with anti-Semitism. Jews in many societies are regarded as privileged. They tend to be wealthy, better educated than the average population, very successful, and therefore they are the object of envy. but they are not regarded as victims of the societies in which they have prospered.

They have no such valid claim to the extent that they appear to be supporting other Jews or people who claim to be Jews but are really Jewish national Zionists in Israel, they add to the problem. And so I'm sorry to say that what we just saw on Bondi Beach in Sydney, is very likely to be a pattern we'll see more frequently in future. As long as Israel continues to do what it's doing, there will be violent reactions to that. And finally, I guess I would say that it's really remarkable, 15 people tragically, absolutely horribly died on Bondi Beach.

At the same time, how many Palestinians suffered a similar fate? Does anybody pay attention to them? Not in the mainstream media, that's for sure, Ambassador. The President's national security strategy, which thumbs its nose at the European globalists and the neocon mentality that promulgated the war in Ukraine seems to embrace the war in Ukraine, to embrace a hegemony in the Western Hemisphere. So in the same stroke, he's saying we're going to leave Europe alone.

He's saying we're going to change the regime in Venezuela. What's the difference? Hegemony is hegemony. He rejects the sovereign right of other nations to exist and rejects their legitimate sovereign security needs. Well, of course, the so-called strategy really. isn't a strategy. It's a series of self-contradictory, often attitudinal statements. And one of the attitude toward the Western Hemisphere is we're in charge and everybody should bow down to us and

follow our direction. And they have a responsibility to respect our sovereignty. We have no comparable responsibility to respect theirs. But even in the case of Europe. While we demand exemption under the Monroe Doctrine from European interference in our hemisphere and in our internal affairs, the so-called strategy demands the right to interfere in European politics and boost the prospects of populist nationalist forces. In various countries, it accuses the Europeans of anti-democratic tendencies and trends when they rule rightening movements out of order. I think they have a point that the Trump administration has a point there, but you can't have it both ways. You can't say we demand exemption from your interference, but we reserve the right to interfere in your politics and have any

credibility at all, still less any appeal. I think this attitude and the strategy document that's been issued is probably the death now for the transatlantic relationship. As we've known it, it'll take a while. But, you know, we saw the European leaders sit like schoolboys in front of the headmaster in the Oval Office as in front of Trump's desk, the only one who appeared to understand how humiliating and improper that arrangement was, that was Georgia Milano of Italy.

But I think the others there are also coming to the conclusion that the United States is not a country under this administration with which they wish to follow. Well, has the United States truly rejected the concept of American hegemony, we can take over and regulate any country we want, or is it just changed targets? It's changed targets, basically. No, there's no change except that, if you will,

the hypocrisy that we evidenced before it's gone. Now there's just a naked statement of our determination to be in charge everywhere. Even in, I say the democracy is gone. Actually, it isn't there two positive developments, neither of which has much credibility. One is that we proposed a normalized relations with Russia. That would be a good thing for the Russians, for Europe, for Ukraine, and for us.

The other is that we propose to downplay our military rivalry with China over the Taiwan issue and focus on economic and technological competition. But it's very hard to believe that that is anything but disingeness. genuine, given what else we're trying to do in terms of increasing defense spending, or I should say war spending, and doubling down on efforts to develop weapons that can strike China, even if they field weapons that are very effectively designed to counter us. So we are still in a military contest with the Chinese, whatever we say, and it may be that after April when our president gets the celebrations of his grandeur that he seeks in Beijing with a visit

there, some of the hypocrisy will disappear. Fascinating. Here is Trump yesterday. This may bring us back to Israel, but he was asked, why do we have troops in Syria? Chris cut number 12. On Syria, Mr. President. On the U.S. troops killed in Syria over the weekend. And why do we have troops in Syria? Because we're trying to make sure that there's going to be and remain peace in the Middle East. And Syria is a big part of it. The new leader is a strong person.

And that's what you need. This is a rough part of the world. And we've, it's been amazing what's taken place in Syria. We got rid of Assad. We got rid of other people that were really bad people. and that we're in the way of peace in the Middle East. You know, we have legitimate peace in the Middle East, first time in 3,000 years,

and we have 59 countries backing it. And we'll see what happens with Hamas. We'll see what happens with Hezbollah. But regardless, I mean, we have countries that want to go in and clean that out if we want them to do it. What the hell is he talking about? It's all delusional the same time he was issuing those states.

statements, 164 countries in the General Assembly of the United Nations voted for Palestinian self-determination, eight voted against it, including us, in Argentina, and six, Paraguay, and five other many states in the Pacific. There's an international consensus behind freedom for Palestine. Palestine is governed tyrannically. by Israel. Israel is a democracy. It is a democracy that is operating a tyranny, not only over the Palestinians, but over its neighbors. And when he says that we're in Syria to create peace, actually we're in Syria to combat the remnants of the Islamic State, supposedly, but in fact, to support the Kurds who refuse to integrate into the Syrian National Army.

And we are inadvertently, perhaps I don't know, maybe deliberately serving the Israeli agenda of fragmenting Syria, preventing the Druids and Kurds from being part of the national identity. And so what he said was, frankly, delusional. Ambassador Freeman, thank you very much for your time. Appreciate it, as always. We'll look forward to seeing you next week. Have a great day. Thanks.

You too. Coming up later today at 11 this morning, Scott Ritter at 1 this afternoon, Aaron Mote, at 2 this afternoon. Matt Ho at three this afternoon, Karen Kutkowski, and tomorrow at 11 in the morning, the best known media figure in the world joins Judging Freedom, my friend and former Fox colleague, Tucker Carlson. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.