Judging Freedom - Dr. Gilbert Doctorow: Who Runs US Foreign Policy?

Episode Date: October 10, 2024

Dr. Gilbert Doctorow: Who Runs US Foreign Policy?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 Thursday, October 11th, 2024. Professor Gilbert Doctorow joins us now. Professor Doctorow, a pleasure, my dear friend, and thank you very much for joining us. Has the EU viewed the conflict in the Middle East. How has the EU viewed the conflict in the Middle East, given its almost universal support for American financing of the Ukrainians in their military conflagration against Russia? That's the way it started. However, as the level of violence has moved on from Gaza, where it continues, into Lebanon, where it was initiated a couple of weeks ago, and as civilian deaths are reported in Lebanon, as Christians are being killed in Lebanon,

the view within the EU is changing very quickly and very sharply. I think the lead to this change was taken by the man who always likes to get the microphone, Emmanuel Macron, when he said a couple of days ago that France would be imposing a limitation on arms or an embargo on arms to Israel because of what it is now doing. And there you see that Europe is changing its position. Now, Europe is very divided on most foreign policy issues today, as we can probably get into later when we talk about Ukraine. But with respect to the Middle East, the Lebanon escapade of Israel

has turned minds. Let's remember that Lebanon has a special relationship with Europe or the other way around. And Europeans are particularly sympathetic to Lebanon. Although the majority of the population may be Palestinian and therefore Muslim, there is a significant Christian minority, a very large minority in fact, and that split between these two ethnic groups and religious groups has been fault-lined in Lebanese history for as long as we can trace it back, trace back the history of Lebanon as a modern state, and has caused civil wars, nonetheless. But all the population of Lebanon is now under attack by Israel, and Europeans, particularly those who have a long relationship with Lebanon,

like France, are very uncomfortable. Is their level of discomfort enough to cause them to become involved? I mean, is the movement of the IDF into Lebanon likely to draw in European forces or European cash or European hardware? I don't think so. But let's not be critical when speaking of rhetoric only, rather than men or money or arms going into the region, if Europe or European states should become supportive of the Lebanese government and people. I don't think that that is necessary. What is necessary is an embargo. An embargo on Israel would crush Israel, particularly arms,

which is a very sensitive issue. Although the United States is the major supplier of arms to Israel for all of its rampage in the Middle East, there are significant other weapon systems coming from other countries. And if they stop supplying, Israel will find itself in a difficult situation, military. So Europe doesn't have to do anything by putting boots on the grounds or whatever. Just stop shipping arms. And that will already put Israel under great pressure and sober the country up. Yet again, you have a very interesting and

tantalizing view of all this. I wonder if the American neocons, who never met a war they didn't want somebody else to fight, have considered that the IDF invasion of Lebanon could provoke this kind of a response from the EU, which is basically NATO, but I realize the difference between the two. Well, I think the Christian component of Lebanon is a decisive factor. I don't think the Europeans would be so uncomfortable with a move against Iran. They would be nervous because of the implications of this escalating to something that could even reach a nuclear exchange. But that is a kind of abstract nervousness. The level of discomfort with respect to Lebanon is the traditional historic relations between European countries and the Christian population of Lebanon.

It's interesting you mention nuclear. We have a fascinating clip from a young man, a young journalist, grilling the rather foolish, I sometimes feel sorry for this kid, he never gets good, the PR spokesperson for the State Department, Matt Miller, but he brings a lot of it on himself. The young man asks a long question, which made me think of you because it intertwines Russia, the Middle East, nuclear weapons, and American foreign policy all in one. I'd like to play the question for you. There is no answer, which is part of the problem here. The State Department spokesperson, Matt Miller, doesn't want to answer it. But the question is very, very telling, particularly his comments at the end. Chris, cut number seven.

So Israel is still poised to strike Iran. And in July, Blinken said that Iran was one to two weeks away from developing a nuclear weapon. So I guess for all we know, they might have one by now. And meanwhile, in Ukraine, they've struck deep within Russian territory several times, as deep as 300 miles from the border. And in that case, we don't have to guess. We know that Russia has the largest nuclear arsenal on the planet, as many as 6,000 warheads. And so one of the risks of arming militaries that are striking in the territories of nuclear powers is that one of those gets deployed and then it could escalate very quickly from there. So it's rarely discussed, but it's important to address that the nuclear risk is real and it could very abruptly mean the end of what humans have worked for thousands of years to collectively achieve. And us today are very lucky to live in with the fruits of that achievement. And I feel like we're

treating the risks kind of brazenly. So my question for you is, you know, we often hear in response to these concerns that, well, Putin, Khomeini, you know, they're war criminals, they're terrorists, as if they're too inherently evil or immoral for us to negotiate with. But meanwhile, this administration has financed a genocide in Gaza for the last year, and every day you're up there denying accountability for it. So, I mean, what gives you the right to lecture other countries on their moral? So, if you have a policy question for me, I'm happy to take it. If you want to give a speech, there are plenty of places in Washington where you can give a speech. Yeah, but people are sick of the bullshit in here. I mean,

it is a genocide. I'm go on another question and you are risking nuclear war in ukraine for this places give a speech go ahead and you are risking nuclear war in ukraine for this proxy war that was the last statement he made while mr miller was speaking over him your thoughts on this uh interesting analysis, Professor Doctorow? I've seen the script. I didn't see it on BBC. I didn't see it on your news. I saw it on Russian state television, Mr. Program, The Great Game yesterday. They follow very closely what's going on and they present them to the Russian public. Very good, long excerpts such as you just produced that they allow the audience to decide for himself whether the people involved are really correct. This is the kind of question that no presenter would want to receive because it's clearly not a question it's a speech

as he identified of course the that is encouraging to see that people journalists even journalists in the states are so attentive to these obvious facts of the general public is not aware because the newspaper editors keep this off the pages. Interesting. What is the status of the military conflagration in Ukraine now? How advanced have the Russians become? How dreadful is the situation for the Ukrainians in Kursk? Well, the Ukrainians in Kurs of course it's a mop-up operation now and you can see it in the figures the casualty figures until a few days ago the

russians were claiming to have killed or maimed 400 ukrainians in kursk a day well ukrainians and and their foreign advisors uh yesterday was 100. And what does this mean? The Russians are less effective? No, it means there are fewer Ukrainians left to catch and kill. The numbers have gone down. The Times of India, which is following very closely and putting up on the internet every few hours the latest news from Russia or about Russia,

it says the Russians have killed 21,000 Ukrainians in Kursk and 136 tanks were destroyed. So we're speaking about the last days of Ukrainians in Kursk. It's coming to an end. The Russians, as I said a few days ago, they were very busy sealing off the border, destroying everything on the Ukrainian side of the border, which might be used to infiltrate Kursk and give encouragement and vital supplies to those Ukrainians who are stuck in Kursk. Now they've started moving across the border into their own territory, the Suja. This is the only town, you can call it a town, in the Kursk territory that the Ukrainians seized, and they are now approaching that town. This is the town with the pipelines nexus important for supplying Western Europe from Russian gas flowing through Ukraine. It is now being approached. So this is a mop-up

operation that's going on, which has not at all distracted the Russian army from the daily substantial progress it's making in Donbass, in particular in Donetsk. Approaching the two critical towns, well, that is, Pokrovsk, it will be the last seriously fortified town that the Ukrainians have in Donetsk Oblast. And that is being approached.

We know it's less than five kilometers from the town that they are now. And once they get past that, it'll be open plains and towns that have great significance, I'd say iconic significance, because they were the redoubts of the last hour of the Alamo in 2014, when this area of central Donetsk was liberated in the Russian Spring, as they call it, and held out for 80 days in Slavyansk against superior Ukrainian military. These iconic towns will be approached and broached, and then you've got just the Dnieper, which is what Russians will reach, I suppose, in a month or less. I suppose when Viktor Orbán challenged the EU this morning, and I'll be happy to hear your description of it, and then we'll play the clip. He knew, as well as anybody in that room, that Ukraine is on its last leg and it's time to talk about peace because with every tick of the clock, more people are dying.

What happened earlier today in the European Union Parliament? Well, I think it was yesterday actually. What happened was that Mr. Urbeng in Strasbourg, remember the European Union has two capitals so to speak, where they do all of their preparation of legislative work, the European Parliament, and where the European Commission sits, and where the European Council sits, the second head is like a hydra, two heads, two executive heads of the European institutions, the Commission, which Ursula von der Leyen chairs, and the council, which is the collection of heads of government in the 27 member states, which has a rotating presidency. And Mr. Orban, for six months, from July 1st to December 31st, is the president of the European Council. That is where these leaders meet and try to set policy.

The European Commission is supposed to be an implementer. And what happened yesterday when Mr. Orban came to make his president's address, president of council, to the parliament, to the legislature of European institutions, he made a very, let's say, neutral statement of what he hoped to achieve during the Hungarian presidency, or which questions of great importance to European member states, Hungary was focusing attention, such as the need for an industrial policy that Draghi called out when he described Europe as a failing region of the world in his competition

with its peers, China and the United States. Anyway, Mr. Orban called out the need for various reforms to improve the competitiveness of the European Union. He called out the migration issue as one that is as serious as it was in 2015 and needs to be addressed. Various things like this. They're not very exciting issues, but they are of great importance for the European Union going forward. And that's all.

However, his speech was followed by a vicious attack on him personally and on Hungary in general by Ursula von der Leyen and by one or two of her close colleagues in the Commission. And then as a result of that, Mr. Orbán delivered a speech extemporaneously. I note he wasn't reading from notes and he was as good in producing facts and figures in support of his position as Mr. Putin is, by the way. They don't need souffleurs, anyone whispering in their ear. He delivered facts and figures contradicting entirely all the slander, personal and against his country, that van der Leyen and her immediate colleagues delivered attacking him. Starting with the point, which I won't go into all the details,

it's available on video, but starting with the point that van der Leyen was doing something that no previous commission president had dared to do because it's a violation of what the commission is all about. He said the commission's mission is to be a protector of the constitution of the European Union and not a partisan participant in politics. And this is just what she was doing in attacking him and Hungary. She was engaging in partisan politics. And no one had done that before because they were acting under the constitutional definition of their responsibilities.

And as everyone knows, this was a contentious issue when von der Leyen was put up again for reelection. But she has vastly exceeded the powers entrusted to the Commission President by its constitution. So there you had it. And then he went on to all the specific issues, particularly as relates to trading with Russia or having Russian workers in his country. Just by way of example, he was denounced, they have denounced the relaxed visa rules that Hungary is introducing

for Russians. And she, Vantolayen, denounced him, Orbán, for weakening the security of Hungary and also weakening the security of the whole European Union by letting these Ruskies into his country. And he said, look, we have 7,000 registered Russians with work permits in Hungary. You in Germany have 300,000. France has 60,000. Spain has 100,000. And you dare to denounce us for having anything. What happened that resulted in this song singing, this mass

singing of an anti-fascist song by the members of the parliament? Well, the leftist members of the parliament, that was precisely called out by Orban later. It's interesting you mention this because there was so little coverage of Orban's presidential speech. In fact, as I have just written, when I turned on the Euronews yesterday morning, and it was about 9.30, and I came on live broadcast of Orban in Strasbourg, it was in Hungarian. Ordinarily, Euronews has either a voiceover or a text below one of these, like a ticker tape, with the simultaneous translation. There was no translation. They didn't want the public to hear what he had to say. It is incredible how biased and anti-democratic Frau von der Leyen is and gets away with it.

Here's about a minute of what he said in the retort, that is, without notes, commenting on how foolish it is not to be negotiating a ceasefire in Ukraine because it's just going to result in the deaths of more people. Chris, cut number 12. The European Union has a mistaken policy when it comes to this war. If we want to win, then we need to change this losing strategy that we are currently implementing.

It was a poorly planned and poorly implemented strategy. If we continue on that route, we're going to lose. If we don't want Ukraine to lose, then we need to change strategy. And I think that you should consider that. In every war, there needs to be diplomatic work. We need to have communication, direct and indirect contacts. If we don't do that, then we will go even deeper into war, and the situation will be even more desperate.

More and more people will die. Hundreds of thousands of people are dying while we're talking here now. And with this strategy, we won't find any solution in the battlefield. So I think we need to stand up for peace. We need to focus on a ceasefire and create a different strategy because otherwise we will all lose. He's 100% correct. Not exactly.

Just remember his interview with Tucker Carlson. He made it pretty clear that he's not a student of Putin. And behind his proposal for a ceasefire, the Russians will not accept it on his terms. They are not just going to lay down their arms. I understand that, but he's arguing that it is futile to have no communication between the disputing parties and just to be pouring cash and ammunition into Ukraine. That is all very positive. I'd like to just call out that Mr. Orban is probably the most courageous statesman in Europe. He's certainly the most experienced and certainly one of the most intelligent.

But courage is his first virtue. Look, the only other person among the leading statesmen in Europe who adopted a similar position is fitzo in slovakia and he was nearly assassinated right mr orban has braved assassins they would be assassins bullets i take my hat off to him i salute him the man is magnificent and uh and a voice of of courage and morality in our otherwise depraved Europe. Last time you were on, you stirred an academic, intellectual, ideological pot by arguing that, and I'm paraphrasing you, I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, and please feel free to correct me, that just as the United States uses Ukraine as a proxy with which to batter Putin, the United States uses Israel as a proxy with which to batter Arabs, which it's been killing for generations. This, of course, brought a lot of resistance and some acceptance by the highly regarded,

I think you regard them highly, colleagues of yours who appear on this show. Do you want to address this any further? I mean, you can say no. I don't think you're going to say no, but you're free to say what you wish. My point was not to prove myself right and others wrong. Maybe I'm partially wrong. That isn't the issue. The issue is that matters like this, questions like this, have to be aired publicly. We in the alternative media are no better than people in the dominant media.

When it comes to freedom of speech and freedom of opinion, there is a mistaken belief that if we all lock arms, then we will be strong. But if we're locking arms behind mistakes or seriously wrong policies, then we're all weak. It's the notion of an agora for ideas and for public discussion has lost its strength even in the opposition, with a capital O.

Justice has lost its strength in the dominant forces, the major media and government propagandists who don't want to hear divergent or distant opinions. You know, I cut my teeth on all of this, so to speak, as an undergraduate at Princeton University during the Vietnam War years, and I have no recollection of anybody trying to silence either side. The debate was rigorous and vigorous. I mean, I once moderated a debate between William F. Buckley, Jr. and Ralph Nader, two very, very opposite people at the time. Buckley has since passed on. Ralph is still

stirring the pot in his own unique way. There were 3,000 people at that debate. The audience was overwhelmingly on Ralph's side, but it was civil, intellectual, academic, and fearless. Nobody tried to silence the other side. And yet today we hear of efforts on college campuses from Hillary Clinton, from John Kerry, even from Donald Trump, about silencing certain political speech. This is about as dangerous as it can get. Well, some years ago, in the period that you're talking about, the word debate still was respectable. As politics became more viciously partisan,

the word debate fell into disuse, and we spoke about roundtable discussions, which is not what a debate is about. A debate is supposed to be a sharp and direct confrontation of ideas. Round table discussions are kind of where everybody's world is together and we can talk about the little things and not the big things. And now that even that is bypassed and people don't want to discuss in an intellectual way the the matters that can be resolved only by such discussion, the weakest policies come out of no discussion. And that's where we are today.

Professor Doctorow, you're always welcome here. Thank you for letting me pick your brain. It's a pleasure and a privilege. I hope you'll come back and join us next week. Thanks so much. Thank you very much. Coming up later today at 3 o'clock Eastern, Colonel Larry Wilkerson at 4 o'clock Eastern, even though today is Thursday, the Intelligence Community Roundtable at 5 o'clock Eastern

from midnight in Moscow, the always worth waiting for Pepe Escobar. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. I'm out.