Judging Freedom - COL. Lawrence Wilkerson: Netanyahu's Sabotage

Episode Date: March 4, 2025

COL. Lawrence Wilkerson: Netanyahu's SabotageSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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events of last week in the Oval Office. What is your take, Colonel, on the geopolitical effect of the confrontation between President Trump and President Zelensky in the Oval Office last Friday? The ultimate dissolution of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and possibly even America's breaking, severing, whatever verb you want to use, the transatlantic link. Wow, you're about 10 questions ahead of me and that is a product of your advanced thinking. God bless you. So what will happen if the US leaves NATO? What will happen if Great Britain is no longer, I'm going to go back to George W. Bush and Tony Blair, your era, our poodle? I think Europe will mature, grow up, and form its own security architecture, which the United States might be willing to come into, especially with its nuclear shield and guarantee that architecture in that regard. leadership is brought to bear on the problem, we can have a better situation because we're moving into a multipolar world and NATO is an obsolete vestige of the former world. Worse than that,

it is a current vestige of America's now failed attempt to post-Cold War make it a unipolar world. I mean, shouldn't NATO have gone away in 1991 when the Soviet Union dissolved? Wasn't the purpose of NATO to combat or resist or be aware of or monitor or be there in case of Soviet expansion? The purpose of NATO was very eloquently put by a general officer at the time, I think it was an American general officer, it was to keep the Americans in, the Germans down, and Russia out. None of those things are that relevant today, including keeping the Americans in. Trump often argues that we have an ocean to protect us and the Europeans don't, so they should really pay for their own defenses. Were you, I'm going to guess you weren't,

surprised at the reaction of President Macron of France and Prime Minister Stormer of Great Britain to the conflagration between Presidents Trump and Zelensky. I wasn't that surprised. I thought that was very inartfully handled by the president, if he was indeed the architect of it, and I suspect he was. Much of that, if not all of it, could have happened in a private room where the public would not have been watching such egregious behavior on the part of both sides, really. I should say all actors, really. And you could have gotten the same thing, and you wouldn't have had the embarrassment, and you wouldn't have had the embarrassment and you wouldn't have had probably the almost instant European reaction to it, particularly by Macron and Stalmer. You'd get the same thing ultimately, but you would get it without all the angst and all the poisoning of

the air, which might come back to haunt us as we go on with negotiations. So I think it was very unartfully done. It shouldn't have been done that way. That's not the way one does diplomacy if one's doing it properly. And we just have to see what that is going to mean in terms of additional fallout that really didn't have to accrue to this process. Trump said at the end, this is great TV, isn't it? Makes you wonder if some of it wasn't a stunt, if some of it wasn't staged, if Trump didn't give a signal to Vice President Vance as to when he should become petulant. I think you're right. I think Trump is somewhat of a genius at doing this sort of thing. I think he learned it from the television time he spent on the deal show and such, and he learned it in the real estate practice, especially the way he practices it. And that's what he was doing. That's exactly what he was doing.

And he appealed, and I've said this before. I think it's true here, too. He appealed to that element of the cult that follows him that he wanted to appeal to. His behavior was off-putting to some people. I'm a Republican. It was off-putting to some people in the party that he needs. And that's really not what he should be doing if he wants to maintain his administration and some kind of relevance with Republicans in the Congress and indeed Republicans in the country. I hope he wants to do that. I'm hearing more and more about

putting people in place for a coup. I hope that's not what we're looking at. But if he is looking at a normal administration, he needs to keep as many of these people on his side as he possibly can, particularly when he's doing so many dramatically, apparently anyway, Elon Musk in his hat and civilian clothes standing in a National Security Council meeting, for example. When he's doing things like that, just putting aside the normal routine, if you will, and putting aside the practice of national security decision-making that we've known for so many years, he's got to be careful about how he does it because he's going to alienate some of the people he's going to need in the future for other things. What would Colin Powell have done had he been seated where Marco Rubio was?

First of all, I don't think Colin Powell would have been there in that administration for a lot of the reasons that he occurring, particularly in national security affairs, post-World War II and post-9-11 in particular, because that just accelerated it. We thought we were going to be the world's hegemon. 9-11 gave us a blow to that thought. So we manufactured the post-9-11 actions to try and heal that blow. And we have been suffering from it ever since. And we are not the world hegemon. We are so far from being the world hegemon, it makes me hurt when I think about it. The world is moving rapidly, rapidly, much more rapidly than I thought away from our hegemony. And it's moving away from it in part, large part at times, because of our mistakes. Is Trump coming to embrace, I doubt he knows the phrase, but maybe

does, realism, the recognition of the legitimate sovereignty and security needs of other countries, as opposed to the neocons who are going to make the world safe for democracy and tell everybody else how to live? Yes, I think you're right. I think Colonel McGregor's right in that when he talks to that. I think Colonel McGregor's also right when he talks to the Trump strain from the true path. But I do think he's recognized that. I don't know how he's recognized that. I don't know how he did it intellectually. I don't know how he did it. I don't know how he interprets it and how he plans to put it in action. As I've said before, it's so mercurial right now that he's all over the map. But I do think he basically senses what Mearsheimer, what I, what McGregor, others would call a realistic national security and foreign policy,

rather than this liberal internationalism, as what scholars call it, which is dead. It's dead, and it's dead mostly because neoconservatives in both parties put stakes in its heart. After the event in the Oval Office, President Zelensky flew to London where he met with Prime Minister Starmer. He met with the King. I don't know what he's going to gain by meeting with the King, but they had their photo ops. And then he stayed overnight and European leaders arrived and they had a meeting. And at the end of which Prime Minister Starmer made a statement. Chris, let's play them both back to back. I want your thoughts on this. I think it's ridiculous what he said, but I welcome your thoughts. Cuts, cuts one and two,

Chris. Our starting point must be to put Ukraine in the strongest possible position now, so that they can negotiate from a position of strength. And we are doubling down in our support. Yesterday evening, the UK signed a £2.2 billion loan to provide more military aid to Ukraine, backed not by the British taxpayer, but by the profits from frozen Russian assets. And today I'm announcing a new deal which allows Ukraine to use £1.6 billion of UK export finance to buy more than 5,000 air defence missiles, which will be made in Belfast, creating jobs in our brilliant defence sector.

This will be vital for protecting critical infrastructure now and strengthening Ukraine in securing the peace when it comes. We will go further to develop a coalition of the willing to defend a deal in Ukraine and to guarantee the peace. Not every nation will feel able to contribute, but that can't mean that we sit back. Instead, those willing will intensify planning now with real urgency. The UK is prepared to back this with boots on the ground and planes in the air. Together with others, Europe must do the heavy listing.

But to support peace in our continent and to succeed, this effort must have strong US backing. We're working with the US on this point after my meeting with President Trump last week. And let me be clear, we agree with the president on the urgent need for a durable peace. Now we need to deliver together. Let's start at the end, if we could. How long would British boots on the ground in Ukraine and planes over the skies in Ukraine last? All 20 British aircraft? How many planes does Britain have? Not very many. They have one of the smallest militaries of any power that talks the way Starmer talks,

or for that matter, the way other British prime ministers have talked in the last few years, on the face of the earth. They have fewer puissances, as the French would say, fewer real power to back it up. And what a tone deaf ear to politics, coalition of the willing, doesn't he know we lost with the coalition of the willing? That phrase must have rung a bell for you, Colonel. My goodness, what a disastrous thing to say. He started well and he ended well if you think about he said all those powerful words he uttered would only count if the United States essentially signed the deal and gave him an ironclad commitment. They're not going to do that. everything you just said is a farce, just like before when you said you'd put troops on the ground in Ukraine, but then backed up and said only if the U.S. would guarantee their security. So you're still saying the same thing, and what you're saying is feckless. Now,

let's set up the negotiations, let's get going, and let's quit all the talk about how we're going to do this or do that for Ukraine because the war's over and Russia has won. And you're going to have to reach an agreement whereby, and this is what really worries me about Trump being part of this, he's not going to like this, I don't think, unless he's a bigger man than I think, it's going to largely look like a Russian win. And for all intents and purposes, it probably should, after all. They've been the ones fighting. They've been the ones bleeding. Now, Ukraine's been fighting and bleeding too, and I commend them for that. But it's over. It's finished. And the bigger man won. I often wonder if what Prime Minister Stormer said wasn't for a domestic political audience.

We're going to build missiles in Belfast and that's going to put our people to work. Ritter says, okay, start the missiles today. They'll be ready in 2030. Does he really think that the Ukraine war will still be going on five years from now? I certainly hope not. But he also just, he put his finger right down on one of the principal purposes that Winkin' Blinkin, Nod, Nudge, that's Biden, Blinkin, Sullivan and Victoria Nuland started this whole thing in the first place because it meant the same thing it meant for Bill Clinton when he expanded NATO and started the war in Serbia. It meant big bucks coming back to the United States defense contractors who contributed money to the Congress and to the president. That's one of the biggest reasons we've done all of this is all the money flowing back to the United States. People say, even Donald Trump says, oh, we spent $350 billion. Oh, look at the figures there. Probably at least

75% of that money came back to Lockheed Martin, Grumman, Northrup, you name it, defense contractor or other similar people. U.S. people received much of that money, not Ukrainian people and not Russian people, not any European people. U.S. military contractors received that money. Well, Trump must know that, but he chose to make it sound as if it was an actual giveaway directly to Zelensky. An effort in the House of Representatives by Congressman Thomas Massian in the Senate by his Kentucky colleague, Senator Rand Paul, to attach to the largesse we were giving to Ukraine, this is going back two and a half years now, inspectors general on the ground, so we would know where the military gear was coming from, where it was going to, and where the cash was going to. Neither of those proposals made it to the floor for a vote. Of course not.

I think I told you this story one time before when Joe Boab, our budget man who was a former OMB member, knew the budget process. Cole came in my room, my office, with his hair on fire and said, Chief, Chief, we're going to jail. I said, Joe, sit down. What are we going to jail for? He said, we just sent $16 billion on pallets to Iraq and we don't even have anybody there to watch the money leave the pallets. Sure enough, within about six weeks, the money had pretty much disappeared, much of it to Ahmad Chalabi and his cronies in Iraq. So we do this sort of thing all the time. Did you notice that President Macron of France said we're going to use the interest generated on the 200 billion in frozen Russian assets and European banks? Prime Minister Starmer said we're going to use the 200

billion frozen in European banks. I guess they didn't get their story straight. They both, I guess, are of the belief that if the government steals it, it's not theft. Yeah. Both of them are operating on a sheet of music that I don't think is going to be sung by any choir that is going to matter. And I don't think that in and of itself is all that powerful negotiating tactic. I think that's all it is, really. But if a penny of it gets into Ukraine, it's just going to be utterly wasted, like a lot of this other money. Wasted in the sense that you're causing more and more people to die on both sides, Russians and Ukrainians, but predominantly now on the Ukrainian side and for no purpose whatsoever other than to enrich yourself if some of this money is still coming back to defense contractors in America. And I

suspect strongly it is. And a lot else of that money is going to the oligarchs in Ukraine who are supporting Zelensky and not sending their young daughters and sons to fight on the front lines. Switching over to Israel, Prime Minister Netanyahu announced on Sunday evening that the IDF would block the introduction of food, water, and medicine into Gaza because he believes it's being stolen by bandits. This, of course, is the use of food, water, and medicine as an instrument of war, which is a war crime yet again. But my question to you is, is this an effort to wreck the ceasefire to please the right-wing members of his government? Yes, of course it is, and to please Netanyahu. I'm convinced now that Netanyahu has melded himself, transmogrified is a good word to use, into this ultra-right wing. He is so seized of his purpose and thinks of himself, as he says,

as Joshua, doing that purpose, that he's part of it now. He's an integral part of this rabid Zionist right-wing government, no longer looking to keep a coalition together other than with the glue of his arrogance and his belief himself. And he wants this to happen. He's doubling down on the West Bank right now. He's going to make sure that there are no Palestinians left when he's finished on the West Bank. He's got all the land. He's moving aggressively into Syria. He's almost put an edict out, as it were, over the entire swath that Israel is influencing right now, which is much of the south of Syria, that no one should operate in there because they'll be hit by the IDF if they do. Mike, can't the same Donald Trump, who today closed the spigot of military aid to Ukraine, do the same with Netanyahu? I knew you were going to ask that question,

Judge. It's a question I asked several people last night. I do not understand this dichotomy. We have two theaters of war, one of them being closed down very wisely and realistically, and the other one being augmented to the point where you're going to get the Egyptians in, the Jordanians in, maybe the Iraqis in, the Syrians in, the Lebanese such as they are, and maybe, and this is the big one, Turkey. And you're going to end the existence of the state of Israel in any capacity, Jewish, democratic, apartheid, authoritarian, whatever, because you're going to extinguish it because these people are possessed of the capacity to do that. And if you don't want that to happen, if what I just said happens, happens, the U.S. will have to be wholesalely involved.

Donald, do you want that? I didn't even mention Iran. Yeah. And Colonel McGregor, your colleague, said nearly the same thing yesterday. Is there a resistance building? I guess there is. You just ticked off the countries that would be the resistance. How much longer can Israel keep stealing land from people before the Arabs themselves, people in the streets, rise up and force their governments to do something? I don't see that being the real compulsion. I see the compulsion being enough. Enough is enough. And if the United States want to put

it into it, we will. And if the United States wants to come in, so be it. But I don't think they will. And that might be a positive strategic calculation if you think about it for a moment. Because, Judge, if we were to go into the Middle East whole hog, even if we marshaled everything we've got in the Pacific, everything in Europe, everything elsewhere in the world, and put it there, we would lose. We would lose. And the Pentagon can't be stupid enough that it would not tell Hegseth that. I don't know what Hegseth would then render as an opinion of Trump, but I know what the opinions have been from the Pentagon about just going to war with Iran, just getting America enmeshed on the ground in the Levant. I know what those views have been, and I know what they should be. It's disaster. We wind up using nuclear weapons.

Why did Hegseth fire General Brown? I think they're making their statements. There was absolutely no reason to fire General Brown. He was fully capable, competent, had all the experience necessary for the job, and as far as I could tell, had done a pretty good job up to that point. They're just making examples. I think the same thing with the Navy Chief of Naval Operations as a female, and others that I think are on the chopping block too, eventually, that violate their code, as it were, and that they feel like they have to make examples of. I think that's what we're looking at. Why did we change the name

of Fort Benning again? We had a great name for it. We had the guy that Joe Galloway wrote the book about. We were soldiers once and young, a truly, truly American hero, a soldier of great note. And now we've changed it to someone from World War I, apparently, who won a distinguished cross or something like that, won a high valor award. And the millions of dollars that are going to be spent to change signage, to change books, to change histories. We already spent a lot of money to make the earlier change from the Confederate general to the Vietnam general. Now we're going to spend more money. This is insane. And yet this is what they're doing. This is a large part of what I see Elon Musk doing too, making a colossal mess. This is their message. Colonel Chief Fritz was on the other day, and he claims I kissed you on the top of your head.

Did I do that? I do seem to remember that. I seem to remember turning around and saying, now I can't wash it ever again. It was a very happy event that afternoon. I think it was back in the fall. Colonel, thank you very much for your time. Much appreciated. Thanks for accommodating my schedule.

We'll see you again next week. All the best. Thanks, Judge. Good to see you with a coat and tie on, young man. Hey, I got to go to do a seminar on an inflection point in American history. Wow. Right up your alley. Thank you, Colonel. All the best. Take care. Sure. Coming up at noon, Pepe Escobar at one o'clock, Professor Glenn Deason at two o'clock, excuse me, at three o'clock,

Aaron Maté at four o'clock, Professor mearsheimer judge napolitano for judging freedom Thank you.