Judging Freedom - COL. Lawrence Wilkerson : Does Trump Want War With China?

Episode Date: December 11, 2025

COL. Lawrence Wilkerson : Does Trump Want War With China?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Thank you. Thank you. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, December 11th, 2025. Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson joins us now. Colonel Larry, always a pleasure. My dear friend, thank you for being here. I do want to talk to you about the government's preparations for war with China, a subject I know about which you were interested and familiar, and whether or not the feds are you, the administration is using the statements of the Japanese prime minister as a stalking horse or a battering ram. But before we get there, is NATO nearing its end?

It's there, as far as I'm concerned. I think it's been there. Really, ever since we tried to force the alliance into out-of-area operations, including Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere, and tried to make it go well beyond its original purpose, and it just wasn't fit for that. And that started tension, and then Ukraine came and erased that tension and put it back in its original vogue, if you will. But even that didn't make any sense

because Russia had no intention of attacking NATO. Wasn't their talk, you know, I just mentioned Japan in connection with China. Wasn't there talk about Japan joining NATO? Japan joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization? At one time, I don't know this is the actual time you're talking about, but at one time, in my experience in the military, because we could not get ASEAN to agree to a security component,

we couldn't in effect build a NATO East or NATO West, however you want to look at it, out in the Pacific. So we did explore the possibility of bringing NATO mantle over other alliances to include the then Australian, New Zealand, American alliance, and Korea and Japan. You know what really was an impediment to that? The Japanese and the Koreans didn't get along at all at that time. They didn't want to be in the same alliance under any circumstances. Right, right.

We're fortunate for that adversity. When the Kremlin departed and then eventually dissolved the Warsaw Pact, Why didn't the U.S. leave NATO? We essentially suggested in the Bush administration that what we wanted in the future was a wider alliance. We actually called it a new security architecture from the Urals to the Atlantic. And that would include Russia as a viable principal member of both the political and the military alliance that at that time we were calling NATO. We even talked about what we might change the name to. But at any rate, we were going to bring Russia in.

And what happened when Russia asked to join NATO? And I don't remember under whose, you'll know this, under whose presidency they asked. Well, as I understand it, it was under Clintons, and it was also under the administration that followed Clinton, except it wasn't the same kind of request. The one that came to us to the George W. Bush administration was couched in terms that, weren't as palatable as the original conception. That's to say, Russia was making demands. And all we wanted in the original conception was to bring Russia for the first time in its history, really, viably into Europe, at least the Russia from the Urals forward. And I think we got tacit agreement from Gorbachev and we got agreement from when he was sober, Boris Yeltsch.

But Bill Clinton ruined that. His inexperience in the first year turned a deaf ear to it. And that didn't help. And then he wound up being captured by defense contractors and also by his fear of Colin Powell being the one who would limit him to one term. Because Powell was very much in the fray all the way up to November 95 when he went to the Lomata Inn in Alexandria and said, no, I'm not running. And Clinton was very much afraid of him.

him as well he should have been because both parties were recruiting him, including Clinton's own Democratic Party. Where was Colin Powell at the time? Was he a general? Yes, he was, he had left the chairmanship. He'd sold his book for $6.5 million. He was doing fairly well. And he was chairman of America's promise, the Alliance for Youth, which was a youth group. Well, switching gears, do the Russians take seriously? seriously diplomacy negotiated by two real estate agents?

I think so. I think they understand Trump. I think Lava and Putin in particular understand Trump. And they understand that the not completely, of course, if they did, they probably run the other way, the difficulties that Trump is under with the administration that he selected and arrayed around himself. And so they look at those people as representing Donald Trump pure and simple, and not the neoconservatives, globalists, and others with whom they have some bones to pick as well they should. Well, do Marco Rubio and his neoconservative and globalist buddies want the war in Ukraine to end? No, but I think Marco Rubio, at least, has got his eyes so plastered on this hemisphere, particularly the southern part of it, that he's willing to accept

Ukraine for full attention to that problem, as he would put it. What do you mean? I mean, if you've got to back off Ukraine, go ahead, Mr. President. What you've got to give me in exchange for that is full concentration on South America and Central America in that order. So our mutual friend and colleague, dear wonderful person, Ray McGovern, has imagined or fantasized which. Marco Rubio saying to the president, well, I'm going to talk to Putin next week. No, you're not. I'm sending Jared and Steve. Okay, I'm going to Geneva to meet the foreign ministers of NATO. No, you're not. I'm sending the Secretary of the Army. I mean, these things, I don't know if the conversations happen, but the ultimate outcomes happened. But then came, now I'm going to Panama City. I'm going to talk about getting the canal back and then things south of that. Wow. I mean, that's what Rubio wants. That's what he's all.

So it's almost like he's the Secretary of State for Latin America. You got it. Bingo, he should move to Miami because this is the capital of Latin America. Wow. Wow. Did you see where Trump let those two absolute criminals, in my mind, out of Romania, and they're headed for Florida, and the governor of Florida said he didn't want them? Oh, the two sexual... These are sexual assaults, right? Oh, man, they are porn purveyors par excellence.

Probably no one outside of Jeffrey Epstein has ever turned porn into money the way they have. Wow. Trump has an unusual affinity for weird people. I mean, the president of Honduras, or the former president of Honduras, according to the prosecutor in the case, and I will identify him in a minute, if you don't know who he is, participated in and orchestrated

the largest exportation of cocaine to the United States in the history of this cocaine coming in from Latin America. It was 400 tons. That's according to the prosecutor. You know what that prosecutor was? One of Trump's personal lawyers, Amel Beauvais, now a judge of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia.

I did not know that. Trump didn't care. Trump didn't care. Obviously didn't consult him. Release the guy. He can't go home because the Attorney General of Honduras has gotten an arrest warrant for him. I'm sure. Maybe some other countries, too.

Well, now these creeps that want to go into Florida, the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, will arrest them. before he allows them into that state, or at least will bar their entry. I suspect so. I hear he's talking about activity like that against these two brothers. Wow. Well, recently a British soldier was killed in Ukraine. It happened in a public event, which is why it's made the news.

According to Colonel McGregor, your colleague, many British soldiers have been killed, in MI6, but we just don't know about it. But this one has caused a bit of a kerfuffle because it's been public. Here's Maria Zakaroba, my friend, well, I've interviewed her three times, commenting about it earlier today. The presence of British military personnel in Ukraine should be no secret to anyone. This is the first time that the British authorities have publicly confirmed the death of one of their active duty soldiers during the Ukrainian conflict.

At the same time, the head of the British cabinet pompously declared that this very fellow, supposedly, was helping Ukraine in its fight for freedom. We would like to hear more details from them, and those details will undoubtedly emerge. But London should honestly admit what exactly this fellow of theirs was doing there. It gives the impression that perhaps someone over there, in Britain, has started, you know, carefully preparing their country's public opinion. public opinion in Britain regarding the military losses in Ukraine which will be impossible to simply hide or continue hiding our position is well known

any foreign contingents in Ukraine will be considered legitimate targets for the armed forces of the Russian Federation right isn't she yes I'm sure I'm not sure but I'm fairly confident she could make similar comments about Poland about Germany and perhaps about

France and maybe even some other countries in Europe and certainly other countries in the world because we know there are all kinds of mercenaries there, including Israelis. Israeli mercenaries, not IDF. I don't think they're IDF. I just think they're, well, you know, you take off a uniform and you become a wildcatter. Wow, wow. But why would Kira whoever makes these decisions for the British government put British troops on the ground? I mean, that exposes so many British assets to Russian attack. Well, I'm sure they didn't put that much thought into it, really, Judge, especially England. And I'm sure that they were specialized in particular areas.

They needed them for this or that function that the Ukrainians couldn't perform or be trained to in time. And they were limited in that regard. So they didn't think that there would be any casualties amongst them. And if there were, it'd be so limited that they could hide them. When they obviously can't hide this one, we don't know how many others they've hidden. All right, moving on, I want to ask you about Germany. I heard you say this or I read something you wrote. I know you send me so much to read, and I'm grateful for all of it,

but I don't remember where I saw it. And if I'm misquoting you, please tell me. How do you explain the super, Uber-Zion? of the German government, notwithstanding Israeli genocide. I think the article that I sent that comment to you from was very explicit in the way it discussed it. You almost have this phenomenon of real, genuine, moral guilt, if you will, ethical guilt at the close of the war, of course. and for obvious reasons, the German people felt that way. And the political apparatus actually politicized that moral guilt

and vested it with Horizon de Sta if you will, reasons of state and made it a piece of the actual decision-making apparatus of the German chancellor and the German people so that you never can get away from it. And that means, among other things, that all the country that you feel the guilt about has to do is tweak you. And you're on their side and you're shipping them arms and you're giving them money and you ask no questions. And that's where they've come to at this point. And what I was comparing it to was Russophobia in this country.

That's what we have done since George Bush was thwarted in his effort to bring Russia into NATO and to give Russia and Europe a new future that would, include Russia as a viable partner. We have developed Russophobia as a Rasson de Taa, a reason of state, a purpose for making national security decisions. Our hatred for Russia, like Germany's hatred for those people that did what they did, reprehensible as it truly was, but generations later should hardly be blamed for it. We've weaponized these two things, Russophobia in America, in their case holocaust love for the holocaust if you will is is chancellor mertz jewish i don't think so i don't think so but the fact well i won't say that that would be an anti-semitic remark of me all right all right but um your your argument is that whereas in america the zionists

have bought and paid for have the best government they could pay for in germany they don't have to pay for it it's a collective guilt for the nazi years that still animates this, the Israelis can have anything they want attitude. Do I have that right? Yeah, you got it exactly right, except for the one thing about us. I think the Russophobia is a reason of national security decision making, just like Ted Cruz says the Old Testament is, because we've made it so pervasive. And it's just as false.

It's just as false. Why do we meet Russia? Yeah. Should Mike Hockaby be fired? Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, he's a traitor. He's a traitor in the most official capacity one can have to be a traitor, an ambassador representing the United States of America in a foreign country, charged by the president to so be. I can't think of anything more traitorous. Wow. Chris just did some quick research. Mertz's Roman Catholic. Oh, that makes sense. That makes sense. But I didn't want to embarrass my wife.

to heaven. We won't go there. Is the Netanyahu government, in your view, Colonel Wilkerson, planning a false flag attack on one of its own embassies in Europe so that it can blame it on Hamas? I think they have shifted their focus from Hezbollah, which they did this with regard to for years in South America, in Britain, and elsewhere, and now they're doing it to Hamas. And it's the same people, the same tactics, the same layout, Hamas will be the new carrier of terrorism worldwide and therefore needs to be taken out, therefore buttressing Israel's case in Palestine. Has Israel engaged in false flags before?

That is, has it attacked its own assets and made it look like? it was a foreign attack. Yes, it did in London. It did in Buenos Aires. London is almost a shut and dry case, cut and dry case. In Buenos Aires, I think there's still some speculation. And the speculation is mainly caused by the fact that they actually kill people in Buenos Aires. What happened in London? They just blew up a, as I recall, it was a bank. And people were going in and out of the bank. and the car drove up and exploded an ordinance in the bank foyer, but it didn't hurt anybody. It may have wounded one or two people, but didn't hurt anybody badly. It didn't kill anybody.

Whereas in Buenos Aires, it actually killed two or three people. Wow. Let's go over to China. What's going on in the South China Sea as we speak? The greatest ocean commerce on the face of the earth. it has become the shipping lanes of what you might call the commerce that China produces out of its specific coast ports and elsewhere is just voluminous now and it's become the principal C for that commerce to get out and for exchange to come in that's being changed I don't know if it'll alter the density of shipping traffic so much but it is being changed by these railroads China has built. We now have four or five of these railroads that go from the Pacific ports

all the way the southern part of Iran up the Persian Gulf, two of them going through Russia and one of them through the central part of Europe. And these railroads are going to reduce the amount of time to get Pacific Coast Chinese produce to Europe and elsewhere in the world by two and a half days to 18 hours. Wow. going to reduce the cost remarkably. This is the same thing that happened when the Eastern empires, this is my theory, you know, the Eastern empires began to collapse and push the power to the West, and the West grabbed that power and ran with it.

And America was the ultimate product of that. Now it's turning around the other way. And one of the ways that it's turning around kind of counterintuitively is China is stealing a march on everyone in terms of reducing the cost of shipping, and their shipping is the dominant shipping in the world. Is the United States of a mind to disrupt that somehow? Absolutely. And one of the things we want to do is knock out that one

that's falling out the Persian Gulf and into the southern belly of the Caucasus. We'd love to knock the others out, too. Incidentally, one of them was going to debauch into Ukraine. But as I understand it now, it is functioning. The tracks are laid and everything. and what it's going to do is go around through Belarusia and maybe come out somewhere around Berlin and onto the Atlantic coast.

I don't know that that's the case, but I've heard that because of the war in Ukraine, they've decided to shift focus a little bit on that central railroad. Here's Newsweek reporting two days ago on December 9th. The U.S. Navy says it has recovered an F.A. 18F. Super Hornet and an MH-60R Seahawk lost from the USS Nimitz in two separate incidents in the South China Sea back in October. The U.S. Navy recovered the aircraft in the sea

before Beijing could assess their sensitive technology. I don't know if you believe that or not. The South China Sea remains a hotspot as U.S. and Allied forces conduct exercises near the contested Spratly Islands where Chinese warships maintain a close presence. Judge, we said the same thing about the EP3 that was forced down on Hinen Island in April of 2001

when Powell saved us from a real confrontation. Nonetheless, the EP3 was down on one of the most highly militarized positions in China, and it was down for about 48 to 96 hours, as I recall. And the crew did not get to place all their thermite grenades and destroy the equipment on that airplane. So there's no question in my mind that they got intelligence from that airplane. Has the U.S., whether this is Marco Rubio or somebody else, used the Japanese Prime Minister as a stalking horse to antagonize or provoke China?

I don't think they have to use her. I think she is. I'm really worried about it. Frankly, Japan is one of my long, lifelong studies and workmates and alliance mates, you name it, been in and out of Japan many times, and I'm really alarmed at what's happening in Japan right now. Is the United States preparing to engage in military conflagrations with China over Taiwan? I don't think so.

I think this strategy tells you a lot. strategy hides its real purpose. It doesn't hide it very well from someone who knows what they're reading. What we said is we are retrenching to fight China. We are going to clean up the Western hemisphere, which means cleaning China out of it. All of the South American countries now, their major trade partner is China. That's scaring the bejesus out of us. Pretty soon, it'll be everybody in the hemisphere, but us major trade partner will be China. And we're we would be too if it weren't for all these tariffs and all the massinations between the two countries. But we're very frightened about that. And in some ways, we should be. It's our own fault

in many respects, but we do have a reason to be frightened. They're taking over everything. So first thing is to clean up the hemisphere, push all the leaders out who are dealing with China, therefore push China out and then go after China. That's what this strategy says. My goodness. This lady that's the Prime Minister, whom Forbes, I never heard of her before a month ago. Forbes magazine said as the third most powerful woman in the world. I don't know who the first and second are. But she basically threatened China over Taiwan. And then she was forced by her own deep state or her own colleagues, you know, the prime minister is elected by the legislature to recant. But I don't think the recantation was heartfelt.

I think we could force a situation on China where they would use military force or coercion, let's put it that way. But they don't want to, and they certainly don't want a war with us. They want to beat us without a war. And they're doing it very well right now, which we have come to realize. And that's okay with them if we just keep going on the present track. We are contesting that track rather than accommodated it, rather than building an apparatus that could deal with this monumental shift of power that's taking place from the west to the east, where it originally came from, we are contesting it. And no imperial entity in human history has ever contested successfully this sort of volcanic shift in economic, military,

psychological, cultural, you name it, power in history. And that's what scares me because no empire going through this experience has ever had nuclear weapons. So we will come down to the point where we will retrench and refurbish, and we will then have a war with China, which we will inevitably lose the opening stages of. And then it's Katie Barr the door. Then we go to nuclear weapons.

switching gears before we finish, my dear friend, was the American seizure of a Venezuelan vessel, an enormous vessel loaded with a lot of oil, an active piracy on the high seas? It depends on how you look at it. We were prepared to do the same thing with regard to plutonium, and we fast-stroke down on a number of ships, mainly Japanese, going to France, because Japan supplies the world. Plutonium and France was the biggest fire during the aftermath of 9-11 because we were afraid a terrorist was going to get his hands on that plutonium. So this is not unprecedented.

What is unprecedented about it is that there is no global war on terror declared by the President of the United States and targets identified and so forth. And Congress, more or less, acquiescent. We forget, for example, that even though we didn't get the second UN resolution, The president did have an act of Congress that called for official policy of the United States to be regime change in both Iraq and Iran. Geez, I didn't know that we still had a Congress. They didn't make sarcastic.

Clinton got him to pass that. And I said at the time when it was passed that we would regret it. So did Byrd. Bird was the one senator who stepped forward and said, this is not smart. We're giving the president authority to go to war sometime in the first. far distant future. Suppose that, I don't know how much it was, how much oil it was carrying. Trump claims it was the largest tanker in the world.

It might be true. Suppose it was destined for China. So what? Well, wouldn't we have a problem on our hand, stealing a billion gallons of oil from China? We would, but it won't be acted on because China will feel that loss of oil about like I would feel a tick falling off my knee. It's an act that shows how desperate we are. And that's not something you want to show, especially if you're in the position we're in right now with regard to the economy. We're just waiting, Judge, for the hammer to fall. And one of the reasons we want the

300 billion known barrels of oil in Venezuela is to arrest the most dramatic moment in this collapse, which would be, if we don't get our hands on that oil, we will have no leverage in the world oil market to say to people, you must continue to dominate oil sales globally in the dollar. So it'll shift to a basket of other currencies. And when that happens, our debt will murder us almost overnight. Close to murdering us already. Your colleague, Colonel McGregor, was on not to worry. long ago and argues that

an empire cannot be a debtor. Not this kind, that's for sure. Right. If you're Rome and you can go to France, you know, and dig for some silver and send it back to Rome, you're in a different set of circumstances. Well, we have the inverse of that. All of our colonies drain us.

They don't support us. Yes, especially that little pipsqueak over there at the end of the Mediterranean. Correct, correct. You know, Trump recently said, I've got to find the phrase I used it for Phil Giraldi, that he plans to ban killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies from the United States. Do you think he had Netanyahu in mind? Well, why did he just let Hernandez out of jail and these two brothers come back from Romania

because they're the biggest freaking leeches on earth? Correct. correct he doesn't always think when he says these things and we both know that and as does everybody watching us now colonel always a pleasure my dear friend no judge your comment there is a very very very good one i'm getting worried about it every time i see him he looks worse he doesn't look good i agree i agree you know we were personal friends for many years i haven't been in his personal physical presence since 2016, but prior to that, I was with him many times. And I recently saw a picture of him at 2016.

Wow. Different. He's aged 30 years in nine years. You know, I watched George W. Bush age 15 in four. Yeah. It was remarkable. The job is just, it bears on you 24-7. Right, right.

Colonel, great chatting with you, my dear friend. Have a great weekend. We'll look forward to chatting with you next week. Thank you. You too. Thank you. Coming up at 3 o'clock, I think he's still in Italy, but wherever he is, Chris will find him, Pepe Escobar. And at 4 o'clock, Scott Ritter, Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.

Thank you.