Judging Freedom - Col. Lawrence Wilkerson: Who Will Use Nukes First?

Episode Date: March 1, 2024

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson: Who Will Use Nukes First?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 Friday, March 1st, 2024. Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson joins us now. Colonel, a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you for your time and for your thoughts. We have some very hot topics to discuss today, certainly Gaza, but I want to start on Ukraine. And I want to bring you to statements made by two heads of state in NATO, first President Emmanuel Macron of France, and then Chancellor Scholz of Germany. And then I will ask you for your comments on them. Let's do President Macron first and then we'll talk about him. There is no consensus today to send ground troops in an official, endorsed and sanctioned manner. But in dynamic terms, nothing should be ruled out.

An official, endorsed and sanctioned matter. I suppose that's diplomat speak, with which you're familiar from your years running the State Department, to we can do anything we want with special forces, we're just not going to get a declaration of war from the National Assembly, Francis Parliament, and not going to announce troops in uniform, or am I wrong? I like to think that what we're hearing right now, not just from Macron, but from others too, is very studied, if you will, positioning to make negotiations more palatable to the West.

But I'm not in any way, fashion, or form assured that that's it, because I have seen so much blind stupidity and so much what I would call just stark insanity from these leaders from London to Paris to Berlin to Washington, that I don't credit them with that much skill to try and build ground upon which Putin is, you know, trembling a little bit before they go to negotiations. So I've got to take it for what it's worth. But are his words at the end telling us that he might do it anyway? He's not ruling it out. I can't imagine he would be that much of an egotist, that arrogant, that much inclined to say, well, I'm the leader of NATO now. All the rest of you go to hell or follow me.

I'm going into the cave. Follow me. I'm going into the cave. Follow me. I just can't believe he would be that audacious and that stupid. Was he put up to it by us? That's a possibility. Was he put up to it by a trombone of Berlin, London, and Washington? That's a possibility. I don't know.

I really don't. I can't crawl into his head. But as I said somewhere else today, the famous French nuclear deterrent, which they used to call the frappe de puissance or something like that, they now call the frappe de dissuasion, the dissuasive power, would get lost in one of Putin's silos. Here's Chancellor Scholz of Germany saying the opposite the next day, and I'll elicit your comments, but it makes one wonder if the Germans didn't feel the need to negate the impression given out by the clip we just saw from President Macron. Here's the Chancellor. NATO is not and will not be party to the war. That remains the case. We do not want Russia's war against Ukraine to become a war between Russia and NATO. We agree on this with all our allies. This also means no German participation in the war. To put it bluntly, as German Chancellor,

I will not be sending any members of the German armed forces to Ukraine. Our soldiers can count on that. And you too can count on that. Ah, but might he send German special forces to blow up the Crimean bridge? Good question. I think his comment is strictly based on his perilous position within his domestic political context. And Macron gave him a chance, if he was in on the conversations about who will say what when in order to put Putin on the quivibe for the negotiations coming up, if that's really what they're doing, trying to

position and make the ground a little more palatable for the West, then he's the odd character out. But it's an odd character out based on his political context. The social Democrats are slipping majorly. And the elections are not too far away. And at any moment, his government could become untenable, especially with the alternative for Germany pushing the polls up the way they are. Do the heads of state of the major countries in Western Europe, Italy, Spain, France, Germany, Great Britain, understand that Vladimir Putin doesn't have the slightest interest in conquering Ukraine or in proceeding to any countries thereafter?

The propaganda from the United States notwithstanding. And the propaganda from their own representative, if you will, Chen Stoltenberg at NATO. And I'm told most of the NATO flags in Brussels. Our creation is coming back to haunt us. But what we're seeing too, and I've been talking about this for a couple of years now, what we're seeing now is the beginnings, the tatters around the edges of the dissolution of NATO. This alliance is so unwieldy now with yet 32 countries. I was reminded this morning I've been saying 31, they have 32 now. Right.

32 countries, they are colossally unwieldy. There's no way you would ever get a concert of views on the use of force, the most difficult thing to do. We saw in the Balkans, you couldn't get a concert there. And you couldn't even get the three or four most powerful countries in NATO to have a concert of opinion with regard to the Balkans, which is why Bill Clinton had to do what he did. As stupid as I think what he did was. But you cannot have an alliance that is so top heavy, side heavy, backwards, full of members, from the Poles to the Albanians to the Montenegrins to the Latvians to this. You cannot have an alliance like that and expect something like Article 5, the very cohesive cement of NATO, to be applicable. And if it's not applicable, and if it begins to fall apart around your ears, your alliance goes with it. Howell talked about this in 1989. We had long talks with people like

George Kennan and Brent Scowcroft and other capable strategists, which I must say there is a total void of in the United States government right now. I don't even think there's a map in the White House. Of course, there are maps, but I don't think there's a single person at Foggy Bottom or in the White House that ever looks at a map. If they did, they'd understand some of the dimensions of the mess they've walked themselves into. And so I have to conclude that they don't. They don't do geography, in other words. Right.

This is insanity what we're doing with regard to NATO and expecting it to stay together. Putin made a strategic error. Had he waited? I know why he did what he did. Mearsheimer and others have been crystal clear on that, and they're right. But I know had he waited, it wouldn't have been very long. The alliance would fall apart of its own weight. What happens if Donald Trump is elected president and pulls the U.S. out of NATO?

Well, then it happens even faster, even faster. And it happens under an extremely negative connotation rather than the kind of fallout that I would think would happen where he'd go from 32 to 16 to 15 to eight, sort of the way it grew and then finally disappear. We predicted on the joint staff in private talks, and we were talking with Gorbachev and Shevardnadze at the time too, when we were talking about forming some new structure in the world, the New World Order, H.W. Bush called it, we started putting some real work into the analysis of what that might look like. As we did that, we concluded that the alliance, the alliances, plural, would not last past 2050. Some of us thought it would be 2030,

2035, that they just were disintegrated. And we looked at history. No alliance lasts very long, and certainly not a modern one. And we were trying to figure out how to replace them, how to create a new structure in the world, the new world order, that would do what we wanted to do, but at the same time, be collaborative, communicative. It would be a condominium of power, if you would, more or less stitched between Tokyo, Washington. We didn't even include London. It would go to Moscow and to Beijing and maybe Delhi. And then people will be added, countries, states would be added to it as necessary. This would be an economic condominium of strategic competition, of course, not absolute economic cooperation, but it would also be a condominium that would look after the world. It would reform the UN or get rid of the UN and create a new organization. At minimum,

it would revise and revamp the UN Security Council and do away with the single nation veto. All manner of things were talked about. And H.W. Bush was the last president and Brent Scowcroft, the last national security advisor, who thought strategically and even grand strategically. We haven't had one since. We have had neophytes since. Colonel, I am ignorant of this history. I don't know if it's even public, but this is fascinating, fascinating stuff. Reforming the UN Security Council, even radically reforming the UN. Thank you for sharing it. In the same week that President Macron and Chancellor Scholz said what we just ran, this is number 12 coming up, Chris, President Putin said the following.

They should eventually understand that we also have weapons, and they know it. I just said it now myself, weapons that can hit targets on their territory. Everything that the West is coming up with now, what they threaten the world with, it can result in a conflict with the use of nuclear weapons and therefore the destruction of civilization. Was he wise to say that? Was it appropriate for him to make that threat?

I'm not so sure it was a threat so much as it was his own way of positioning the ground for negotiations. I keep being hopeful in that regard that these people will finally wake up. Right. And on the other hand, it was the absolute truth. It's the unvarnished truth. And as I've said elsewhere, and you probably know it the way you monitor things, I think the starter of the nuclear conflict will be my country

because we have not had bombs falling on American citizens, bombs, arguably since 1864 and 1865. We have not had a war, not even Vietnam, where the casualties were 50,000 people a week. That's what we're talking about. When that happens, when three aircraft carriers go down almost simultaneously, 15,000 sailors in the water and whatever escort ship complements are with them, when we start losing that badly, guess who's going to go to nuclear weapons? Are you suggesting that the probability of this is vis-a-vis Ukraine or Israel and Gaza? I'm suggesting that what we're playing with right now is dynamite. And that dynamite includes Beijing and Taiwan. It includes Gaza and Israel. Look at what Erdogan is doing now. The only really astute

statesman I can spy in the world. He just concluded an agreement with El Sisi in Egypt. He has more or less purchased the port of Alexandria, Egypt. Look at where Alexandria is. Highway 40 runs from Alexandria. Actually, it runs all the way from El Alamein and westward to Alexandria over to Rafa. Highway 40. It's about 286 miles, roughly 400 kilometers or so, from Alexandria to Rafa. He also purchased from Sisi, for some billions, I assume, land at the southern end of the Sinai. If you're familiar with the geography, you know, the Gulf of Akron's up from the Red Sea and then the Gulf of Suez. Well, that tip is Eilat. That's the Israeli recreation place. It's a beautiful place. Up above it is Ovdah, a very important Israeli airfield.

He's just purchased land cheek and jowl with that. On top of that, he's finally got what he wanted in the new cockpit of strategic competition, the Red Sea. He wanted Djibouti, wanted to get in Djibouti with the Japanese, the Chinese, the Americans, the British, the French, but there's no more land there. What did he do? He went to Eritrea, Ethiopia, Sudan. He couldn't get a deal. He just got a deal with Somalia. And I'll guarantee you that deal gives him access to the Red Sea and the coastline of Somalia. Erdogan is surrounding them. So Israel has about 100 nuclear weapons.

We all know that. No American official is going to acknowledge it because it might trigger federal laws that would prevent Joe Biden from funding genocide. You think it is more likely that the United States would use a nuclear weapon than Israel. What will Israel do if surrounded by Turkey, Egypt, and Hezbollah, and it cannot adequately or effectively fend off assaults intended either to prevent its slaughter in Gaza or to destroy it as a state? Of course, you always have to take into consideration that possibility. And with Israel, it is a distinct possibility. But here's where I think the partnership, and it is a distinct partnership as everybody knows now, I hope, it's tighter than the alliance. I like to call Israel the 51st state

and I would call it the most important state in the union right now. That situation will mean that the United States is watching this very, very closely. It will be even more closely than we watched in the 1973 war when the Egyptian Third Army looked like it might eventually destroy Israel. And so we thought maybe they were moving nuclear weapons and maybe even were contemplating dropping one on the Egyptian Third Army. It's much closer than that now. I think if it came to the point where we thought they were going to use a nuclear weapon, we would probably jump on them unless we wanted that weapon to be used. And I know that's a horrible thing to say, but I have learned some new things in these

last four months about the U.S.-Israeli relationship. I thought I knew it quite well. I didn't know it with Biden, Blinken, Nuland, Sullivan linked up with it. The clip that we just saw was Presidents Erdogan and al-Sisi in Cairo. It was actually President al-Sisi greeting President Erdogan as he arrived in Cairo. The State Department leaked to the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal just a couple of minutes before we came on air this afternoon, Colonel, that it is going to commence airdrops of humanitarian aid over the Eastern Mediterranean intended for the people in Gaza. Why don't they just tell Bibi to lay low for a couple of months and send truckloads in? There will be a hell of a lot more efficient. I think they're worried about getting killed.

If you saw what happened the other day, what, 48 hours ago or so? Yes. They had such a mess that they were shooting people all around the food convoy. Do you think Israel, the IDF, would shoot at American soldiers that were there bringing aid? I don't think you'd put American soldiers in there bringing aid. I think it's too tenuous a situation to put American soldiers in. My point is, how can, and I don't expect you to psychoanalyze poor Joe Biden, but how can the same mentality that is funding genocide also purport to fund the victims of genocide by providing them with the food and water, when that mentality could stop the genocide like that? I want to say that it's because they

have great pain over, on the one hand, supporting their ally Israel, and on the other hand, what Israel is doing. And so they're having great difficulty squaring those two polar opposites and making decisions in the middle that make sense. But I think what it is, is Biden realizes how many Democrats he's losing in terms of the upcoming elections, won't vote for Trump, but just won't vote. And what that's doing to his domestic chance of being reelected and to the Democratic Party's chance of staying in power. And so he's walking that fine line because of that. He won't do anything quite hard enough to stop the thing. And yet he won't do anything that is untoward towards what he might be doing to himself politically, domestically. Colonel, are there American or French or German

or British troops on the ground in Ukraine, either fighting or assisting Ukrainian forces to fight, either in uniform or out? I think there was a panoply of such people over there, officially or unofficially, volunteer, mercenary, or otherwise. But from what I'm hearing now, they're leaving because they understand it's done, it's toast, and they don't want to get killed in the dunning in the end. And so they're losing the foreign mercenaries and help, if you will, that they were getting from other countries, whomever it might have been, very rapidly, almost as fast as I think we're looking at immigration from Israel. And if Netanyahu does expand the war to Hezbollah,

I think there's a distinct chance of happening, even though Iran and Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, don't want it. I think it's a distinct chance because Netanyahu is going to try to divert attention during this period up to Ramadan when he doesn't make progress. And if he goes after Hezbollah, then it's going to be just like this. Okay, you're squeezing more and more Israelis. And guess who leaves when that happens? The rich people leave.

The upstanding citizens leave. The talent leaves. Already got immigration going on. You might have masses immigration going on. You might lose a third, a quarter to a third of your population. But that's what Netanyahu's desperation might bring about in the end. We know how desperate he is because we have a good handle on what will likely happen to him politically and legally and even physically once the war is over. But wouldn't it be crazy for him to pick a fight with Hezbollah? He can't

even degrade Hamas. How's he going to defeat Hezbollah? He's always wanted to. And those kinds of things haunt you when you're looking at a possibility and you also need an escape route. And if Netanyahu does anything at all, it is escape often into even bigger problems than he was escaping from. And so I don't put anything past him at this point. And I don't put it past him to widen this conflict and expect Big Daddy to get him out of it or to rescue him from it and to bring about his ultimate dream, which has been since he was finance minister, and that is to get the United States to deal with Iran for him, to deal with them forcefully, internally to Iran, to bomb the bejes Prime Minister Netanyahu on one of the talk shows, I think it was Face the Nation last weekend, do we have it, where he makes that same mantra attempting to compare the number of deaths on October 7th, extrapolated as if the same thing

had happened in the U.S. and how many Americans would be dead and how radically America would react. It's his same standard drumbeat, in my view, irrational defense, but I'd like your comments on it, Colonel, if you can stop. What would America do, Margaret, if you faced the equivalent of 29-11s, 50,000 Americans slaughtered in one day, 10,000 Americans, including mothers and children, held hostage, would you not be doing what Israel is doing? You'd be doing a hell of a lot more. And all Americans that I talk to nearly all say that. So Israel has gone to extraordinary lengths, calling up people, civilians, Palestinians in Gaza,

telling them, leave your home, sending pamphlets. We have done that effort. Hamas tries to keep them at gunpoint. We'll clear them out of harm's way. We'll complete the job and achieve total victory, which is necessary to give a secure future for Israel, a better future for Gaza, a better future for the Middle East, and a setback for the Iran terror axis. That's in all our interest. It's in America's interest, too.

Perhaps the most disingenuous I've ever seen them in public. Clear them out of harm's way. They just slaughtered 100 people waiting on line to get flour and water. The better future for Gaza he's talking about is Israelis because Motrich and Ben Gavir and others, they're just waiting, waiting to go. In fact, I'm told that part of the problem with that massive killing of civilians going after food was that there were protesters there. And I said, protesters, what about the hostages? And my source said, no, it's protesters that they won't get out of the way so they can start digging and building settlements and doing all the things that they've been doing in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

That's who was messing the situation up, and the Israeli Defense Force didn't know what to do about it because it had all these settlers in there, in addition to a few protesters about the hostage situation. We want to make sure I understand this. Israeli settlers in Gaza preparing to build? Already there. Already there. And he's acting as if he doesn't know about it. Yes, he's going to do the same thing in Gaza. If he doesn't know about it, it's because his extreme right wing

hasn't told him anything, but I don't believe that for a minute. He's going to do the same thing in Gaza with a stepped up pace that he's been doing in the West Bank for 15 plus years and just started doing in East Jerusalem and has picked up the pace for. He's been doing in the West Bank for 15 plus years and just started doing in East Jerusalem and picked up the pace for, he's going to settle the land. Now, here's what I would say

to his remarks that you displayed. When Bali was hit right after 9-11, Bali, the really beautiful vacation place in Indonesia, lots of Australians were there. I was a desk officer in the Pacific Command for Australia, New Zealand, and Papua New Guinea, so I had a lot of contacts in Australia. One of the things the government began to say was they put this together too. They got their slide rule out and they said, we lost more citizens in Bali than you lost on 9-11. But they didn't go off their rockers and start hunting the world for people to kill. It's not a very good analogy at all. And in particular, the way he used it, it's not a good analogy.

Because if we were to do the same thing he's doing on the very same proportions he's using to justify it, how many people will we have to kill? Colonel, this has been one of the most informative interviews I have ever conducted. I am deeply and profoundly grateful for your insight and your personal courage. I know we both make enemies with former friends when we speak what we honestly believe is the truth, but you are becoming the gold standard here, Colonel, and I thank you so much. Thank you for having me and giving me a voice. I'm going to be in the Vatican next week at a conference on natural law, which I'm privileged to give one of the presentations, the loss of natural law and natural

rights in Western jurisprudence. I don't know if we'll be able to get together, but if we don't, I'll miss you and see you the following week. If we do, it'd be my pleasure to see you again soon. Well, please say hello to the first Pope in a long time who makes me happy. All right. We won't go there, But thank you, Colonel. All the best. Have a great weekend, my friend. Take care. Of course. Wow.

Dynamite. Terrific. Profound courage and insight. Coming up shortly at 4 o'clock Eastern, your favorite, my favorite, the roundtable. We will sort of summarize everything that we've learned this week with Larry Johnson and Ray McGovern. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thank you.