Judging Freedom - Dr. Gilbert Doctorow : Putin’s Peace Plan Panned

Episode Date: June 20, 2024

Dr. Gilbert Doctorow : Putin’s Peace Plan PannedSee 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 Thursday, June 20th, 2024. From Brussels, Dr. Gilbert Doctorow, one of the world's foremost authorities on Russian culture, politics, and military behavior, joins us now. Professor Doctorow, it's a pleasure. Thank you for joining us. Good to be with you. Thank you. So we have two subject matters to discuss. One is President Putin's trip to North Korea, what was accomplished by it, and the Western reaction. And the other is President Putin's peace offering. Let's start with the older of the two, the peace offering. What is your analysis of the Western response to this rather share the consensus evaluation of what Mr. Putin

was doing, as opposed to what the alternative narrative people are saying. And in that regard, I start with remarks made on your show by Jeffrey Sachs, for whom I have the greatest regard, but whose evaluation of what Mr. Putin did, I think, was incorrect. The consensus in the West was that he was imposing a defeat on Ukraine, which they haven't yet entirely suffered, and that he was making demands which were similar in kind to Mr. Zelensky's demands on him, namely that he withdraw, that the other side withdraw all of their troops from contested territory before negotiations begin. And this was a small detail that Jeffrey Sachs overlooked.

The Russians, after all, are not bunny rabbits. And we may be the big bad wolf, but that doesn't mean that they are bunny rabbits. And Mr. Putin's remarks were quite tough to take if you were on the Ukrainian side. They were demanding a surrender, essentially. You surrender, and then we will enter into negotiations. If the Ukrainians withdraw all of their troops from the Donbas for the negotiations to begin, that is a mirror image of what Zelensky was saying, we will begin negotiations with the Russians at once, as soon as they take all the troops out of Ukraine. Right. So what was the reason? Obviously, what you have said, President Putin and his advisors understand. What was the reason for his making those comments at the time he made them? Was it to sort of, as we say in America, to Bigfoot, to steal the thunder from President Zelensky's so-called peace conference in

Switzerland? It was directly written and delivered for the purpose of reaching the ears of all of those 90 countries that were represented at the peace conference. Yes, that is the case. Among the Russians, they called what he said a diplomatic torpedo. What is a diplomatic torpedo amongst countries that have no diplomatic relationships? Not directed at Kiev, but directed at the countries who were present to shake them up. And I think the Russians achieved that objective. They were applying maximum pressure to the countries who had not heeded their advice not to come

and were present in Switzerland. And they were telling them that you cannot say that we, the Russians, are opposed to negotiations. We are. Here are our terms. And let's sit down and talk. He was presenting himself as reasonable, but steely and determined. He was, of course, always also keeping an eye on his own compatriots, who have charged him with being too soft, too diplomatic, too nice, and so leading them down the road to an escalation that cannot

end well. He was being tough, and the tough is the new Russian line, and that will be the connection between our first topic, that is the Putin olive branch, so to speak, and the second topic is what he achieved in Pyongyang. All right. Before we get to Pyongyang, I know you're anxious to get there, and I am as well, and the viewers are anxious to hear what you have to say about it. Talk to us, please, about the pressure on President Putin, I'm going to use an American phrase, from his right, from those who want him to be tougher, from those who are saying enough is enough. You speculated the last time on this show,

and it was a great, great speculation coming from you, that the Russians might level Kiev. They might do something dramatic and irreversible to bring an end to this. What kind of pressure is there on President Putin to end the special military operation slash war in Ukraine? Well, just to put it in proper context, the notion of leveling Kiev was not something that I arrived at by myself. And it was not a notion that came out of anything that President Putin has said. It was coming out of the chattering classes. And I have said various times that I follow closely the talk shows. The most authoritative of them is the one that's called The Great Game. The second most authoritative, which is the one I follow most closely, because it's the one that's easily accessible in the West, being on the Russian internet channel. That is Vladimir Solovyov, his evening shows.

And that is where this question of leveling Kiev came out. I don't necessarily think he meant level the whole city, the civilian residential areas to the ground, but to level all of the decision-making centers. That is, the Rada, the presidential offices, the ministries. That is what they would level, and they can do it that way. This doesn't require nuclear weapons. It is entirely feasible with using the hypersonic

missiles they have, which are quite precise. That was a threat that was discussed on the Soloviov show. It never came out of the presidential administration. But it had a certain appeal to it, and that is time to get tough. Enough having these tourists from Western Europe coming to shake hands and embrace Mr. Zelensky, let them understand that they'll be blasted to bits if they try that. Wow. Is President Putin comfortable with his own, I'm going to call it temperate, moderate execution of the war?

I think he is. It's very much in character. He's a very prudent man, a very cautious man, a very legalistic man, I can say. Yes. In that sense, he has a lot in common with those who occupy the positions of power within the State Department, the U.S. State Department,

which has always been inhabited by lawyers, essentially. And this comes out even in the document that was announced, assigned to Pyongyang. It was written precisely to avoid falling into the trap of violating sanctions. And he did this with a lawyer's prudence. This is his nature. He is a religious man.

He does not want to be as the president of the United States in the wonderful, as Dr. Strangelove was saying, the one who caused 50 million people to die. So this dictates his conduct, and he risks looking soft, which is what his critics say. And of course, the biggest critic, and the one who quite surprisingly was allowed to deliver his criticism face to face to Vladimir Putin during the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, that is Sergei Karaganov, who for more than a year has been demanding something that will shake the West from its complacency, bring them back

to the fear of God and the fear of the nuclear weapon, and stop the escalation by briefly escalating above and beyond what anyone expects and delivering the tactical nuclear weapon on some target in Western Europe. In President Putin's statement, he used the word negotiations three times. With whom would he negotiate? He's already said he won't negotiate with Vladimir Zelensky. He's quite correct. Vladimir Zelensky is no longer the head of state. It's just some sort of a carryover. And Zelensky has said he won't negotiate with Putin. So is there some serious entertainment in the mind of Vladimir Putin about negotiations? Well, their choice, given the fact that he is driven by legal considerations and what is in fact constitutional within Ukraine,

his first preference is to do what the Ukrainian constitution states, to deal with the successor to the president when his time has run out and there's been no election, and that is to deal with the president of the parliament, the Rada. The Russians are perfectly ready to do that. If that is impossible, then I think since the essence of the Russian negotiating points, so to speak, are surrender, that he would accept a surrender document by the head of the Ukrainian armed forces. Well, that's not really a negotiation. I mean, let's take President Zelensky out of it. If it were up to, I don't remember the name of the commander-in-chief of the military now, whoever replaced General Zeluzhny, I understand Zeluzhny is still around. If it were up to whoever is running the military, would there be negotiations if President Zelensky were out of the picture for whatever reason?

Well, I don't quite agree with you. There's nothing to negotiate. There's a lot to negotiate. How, in fact, would denazification be carried out? How would demilitarization be carried out? They negotiated some of these points for the March 22 peace treaty that was initialed or actually signed by the Ukrainian side. And this is how many tanks will you be allowed to have, how many this and that. Those are negotiating points. Would the head of the military, knowing that his troops have been decimated and are about to suffer greater losses, no matter what the U.S. and the West send there, if President Zelensky were out of the picture, negotiate with some counterpart on the Russian side? I think he would be obliged to, and I think his ratings would probably rise dramatically because the consensus of people on the street is they don't want any more men sent off to slaughter. Even the Financial Times, which for months was saying that these allegations of men being dragged off into the streets of Kiev to be mobilized, even they this past week have

acknowledged precisely that's what's going on. And it's understandable. The Ukrainian side are losing more than 2,000 men a day. This is completely unsustainable. How popular does the war remain, if at all, among the Russian public? Not the elites and not the people that are around President Putin, not the person who criticized him to his face, but the average Russian. Well, I won't say that I'm properly informed about that. I don't know who is. Yes, we have friends, and none is enthusiastic about the war. People are afraid.

People are afraid for their lives. Russians. Yes, Russians. So we have friends who are now in the Crimea who are very happy that their town has not been subjected to drone attacks as it was last year. But of course they're nervous. I don't know of people who are fiercely pro-war. The war is accepted as a necessity, as something that has been foisted on the Russians by an aggressive West. And so it is a necessity. It is not in itself something they're enthusiastic about. Paul Jay

Okay. What is the significance in your view of President Putin's trip to North Korea this week? He changed the world. I think he did a lot to save all of our necks. Because regardless of how it's being played by the mainstream media, there are people, surely, in the Pentagon who understood this, as I understand it. The game is up. I say the media.

I just read the Financial Times this morning, their lead article dealing with the conclusion. And you wouldn't know that anything in particular happened in Pyongyang. Yes, they rolled off the red carpet. Yes, they sang songs. They sang Russian patriotic songs and so on and so forth. But as to the substance of what was signed, very little was described in the Financial

Times. And I picked up our lead French-speaking newspaper here in Belgium, Le Soir. And they had an article appraising what was accomplished or not. And they said, well, at least we can breathe easy. There was no military alliance concluded. But my friends,

that's exactly what they did conclude. And it's not my estimation. On Russian news last night, still in Pyongyang, they gave the microphone to Sergei Lavrov. And Lavrov said, yes, the term isn't there,

but the substance, the reality is this is a military alliance. We are allies. End of story. What did you mean in your initial answer to my question, he saved the world? Please explain, Professor Doctorow. I think he's made it impossible for the neocons who run the show in the State Department and in the Biden administration more broadly

to carry out what they thought was an easy shot. They have got the Russians in a corner and the corner is in the southwest, in the western part of Europe. Russia is in a morass, that it will be stuck in that morass for years to come, and the United States could proceed with its preferred scenario of how to maintain its global dominance by taming the Chinese. That scenario you can put paid to. And I'm telling you now something that is not my personal insight, but something I picked

up again in extensive Russian commentary last night, that from some people, these are professors and they're also attached to think tanks, that Russia by this, reasserted its presence in the Pacific and reminded the world that Western Europe and NATO is dealing with a peninsula of the Eurasian continent. A peninsula. And that the land mass east of the NATO countries is vast. The populations are vast. 1.5 billion in India, 1.4 billion in China, and so forth. And they put the whole thing, what the Americans have been cooking up for the whole

Biden administration before, in its proper perspective. As kind of petty, the August is finished as a means of containing China. I'm sorry, I didn't hear what you said. The what is finished? The Australian-New Zealand deal to give submarines to Australia so they can counter better the Chinese presence in the South China Sea and the rest of it.

The recent currying or appealing to Japan and South Korea to beef up their positions against China, all of that has turned out to be a Maginot Line. And Mr. Putin in Pyongyang

ran around the end of it, the same way the Germans did at the start of World War II. Paul Jay Why wasn't President Xi there with them? He might as well have been, according to what you're saying, no? Peter Robinson No. Well, yes and no. Of course he was there.

He was there because he was consulted on this. There were discussions of this a month ago when Putin was in Beijing. There's no question that the delicacy of these relations are such that there would have been extensive discussion between the Russians and the Chinese prior to Putin's visiting Pyongyang. So the point is that the Chinese are much more cautious.

They do not have a strategic partnership, but not a military alliance with the Russians or anyone else. The Chinese, like the Vietnamese, as it comes up in today's discussion of Putin's visit, not going to sacrifice their position in between all the parties for the sake of their own economy and balance in the world. The Chinese will not do that. What the commonality between the Russians and the North Koreans is they both have nothing to lose. And they have nothing to lose because of the obtuse policy of the Biden administration, which has pressed them to the limits and expects them just to roll over and die. Well, they don't. They come back with a vengeance. And that's what we saw with the signing of this agreement.

As I read it, the two countries in their Article 4 have framed what NATO has in its Article 5. One for all and all for one. Wow. Professor Doctorow, does the State Department understand what you've just said to us in the last 20 minutes? I'm not sure about the State Department, but I can be certain that the Pentagon does. There are no fools there. Oh, maybe a few of them. But there are some very clever and very intelligent people there who can read between the lines, who also know Russian and will understand what I said. My point about why our necks are saved is because the escalation through F-16s to attack on Russia is now unthinkable.

What the Russians have done is they have removed the proxy from the war. The center of attention now, should the United States do anything via the cat's paw of Ukraine to attack the Russian heartland is that they will expose themselves to a direct confrontation with Russia, a US-Russian confrontation. Why? Because this attack triggers Article 4. The South, The North Koreans come in. And at that point, since the moving force in the Pacific is not NATO, the moving force of opposition to North Korea and to the Russian presence and the Chinese presence in the Pacific is purely the United States. And so the protective screen that Washington has used in all of its military campaigns over the last 20 years is stripped away, and the United States will be face-to-face with Russia. The image of North Korea offensive weaponry painted by the Western press is a bunch of duds that land in

the Sea of Japan or land in the Pacific Ocean. Is that accurate? Or does North Korea possess offensive weaponry, serious weaponry, that can reach the western coast of the United States? Well, again, I have no opinion on this based on my personal expertise, which is nil. I listen to people who do have expertise and who your audience does not listen to because they are Russian experts and imprecisely orientalists, specialists in the Far East who speak the languages. And what they were saying yesterday is that, yes, the North Koreans have had a series of duds. And the extraordinary thing about Kim is that he has admitted this to his people. He said, and he's told them something that was coming out of an American business playbook,

that these failures, we learn from our failures. And they have. Within six months of the first missile launch of a satellite, which had Western or world observers present and failed, within six months of that, the Chinese succeeded in launching an object into space, into orbit. They have failed and they have learned. The Russians point to several pieces, particularly artillery pieces, where the North Koreans have blazed new trails. They also point to the fact that they have an ICBM which has on top of it a hypersonic missile to deliver payload. Hey, that is their own development. They didn't get

this from the Russians or the Chinese or anybody else. So they have devoted enormous assets to missiles, not to Navy, not to Air Force. They have neither other than submarines, but they do have missiles. And the relevance of this is for the general posture in their region. But the fact of the matter is they have had for maybe 20 years or more, thanks to their artillery and long range artillery, by the way.

What do we mean by long-range? 60 kilometers. From the North Korean border to Seoul, most of the distance is 60 kilometers. And with their artillery, they can destroy Seoul, completely destroy Seoul. Three million, population of three million or whatever it is. Can they reach Los Angeles?

Not with artillery. No, I know. Can they reach Los Angeles? Not with artillery. No, not with artillery, obviously, but with missiles. Probably, yes. The question, of course, that's raised is, will the Russians give them either the weapons or the technology to improve their long-range missiles so that they can reach not just Los Angeles but Chicago and any other point in the States. I'm not sure about that.

I'm not sure if it's needed. The point is, with this agreement, the North Koreans don't need it. The Russians step in. Right. the Russians step in. If this is a two-way, it's a mutual defense pact, if the United States strikes North Korea, the Russians are saying they will step in, and not to supply 155-millimeter artillery shells, but one can imagine that they can do some serious damage

to whomever attacked North Korea. Before I let you go, just a little bit of breaking news in the international sphere. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, I'm not sure how you pronounce this, R-U-T-T-E, is now set to be the next Secretary General of NATO. Tweedledee and Tweedledum, or is there any significance to this? Well, I think that as an intellect, as a politician, he is a much more significant personality than Stoltenberg has been. He has kept together coalitions that were presenting enormous challenges

so as a politician I think he's a higher grade person in the job than we've had till now with Stoltenberg he is, to put him in comparison with the Estonian Prime Minister Kalas who is also being discussed or with Ursula von der Leyen as candidates for this job. Sayruta is head and shoulders above the others who were presented. I think he'll be the perfect

person to supervise the destruction or the deconstruction of NATO as its utter uselessness becomes apparent. We all agree on its uselessness except the American State Department. Is Prime Minister, soon to be Secretary General, Rutte, how do you pronounce his last name in English? Well, Rutte. Rutte. A tool of the American State Department or a foil for the American State Department? Well, it's too early to say how they'll play it. He wouldn't get the job if he weren't agreeing to most everything that Washington wants to hear. But how long that will stay the case before he becomes his own man, if he ever becomes his own man, is difficult to predict. But I say

because he's a superior intellect and a superior politician, I think he will do a better job of defending European interests than the other candidates would have done. Okay. Professor Doctorow, another fascinating, fascinating conversation with you. I will give your regards and your comments to our mutual friend whom we both admire, Professor Jeffrey Sachs. But I appreciate it. My team appreciates it. And our audience very much appreciates your time. I hope you'll come back with us when there's breaking news in this end of the world, or next week, whichever happens sooner.

All right. Thanks for the invitation. All the best to you, Professor. Thank you. A fascinating conversation, which I know so many of you have appreciated. Coming up later today, actually pretty quickly, Lieutenant Colonel Tony Schaefer, nine o'clock this morning, Eastern 11 o'clock this morning, Eastern Scott Ritter four o'clock this afternoon. I inadvertently said four in the morning yesterday for Max Blumenthal. And many of you wrote and said, judge, you're going to get max up at four in the morning. No, I'm not at four o'clock this afternoon, Max Blumenthal, Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thank you.