Judging Freedom - How Europe sees the Ukraine War Now - Alastair Crooke fmr Brit Ambassador

Episode Date: June 2, 2023

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Resolve to earn your degree in the new year in the Bay with WGU. WGU is an online accredited university that specializes in personalized learning. With courses available 24-7 and monthly start dates, you can earn your degree on your schedule. You may even be able to graduate sooner than you think by demonstrating mastery of the material you know. Make 2025 the year you focus on your future. Learn more at wgu.edu. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Friday, June 2nd, 2023. It's nine o'clock in the morning here on the East Coast of the United States,

three o'clock in the afternoon in Rome, from which our dear friend and valued guest Alistair Crook joins us now. Alistair, it is, of course, always a pleasure. Since last we were on together when you were in Rome and I was in Zurich, some drones exploded in a residential neighborhood in Moscow, not far from President Putin's official address. He doesn't always live there, and he apparently wasn't there at the time. This happened after I returned home from my trip to Europe last week. What is your take and what is your finger on the pulse of European opinion about this development? Well, that drone strike, which I think has got a lot of attention as people, I mean, the damage was minimal. The damage, I mean, most of the drones were stopped. I've seen the pictures and I've spoken to someone who lives near me.

I've spoken to someone who lives very close to that block of flats. And they say all that transpired was a couple of people had a scratch and no one went to hospital or anything like that and most of the drones stopped now i think people have this backwards in fact people are asking the question what's the effect on russia i believe actually the ukrainians are doing this to keep morale up inside Ukraine as much as undermine morale in Russia, because the Ukrainians have had a lot of reversals. I mean, the nightly air attacks, Bakhmut falling, all of these things falling. And so I think partly this is to keep up morale of Ukrainians. You know, this is a spectacular. It does nothing strategically.

It's an irritant, but it's nothing strategic. But I think it's partly designed to keep up Ukraine. Say, look, we're still fighting. We're still able to do things, even if they're optical illusions. Is morale dissipating amongst the Ukrainian people, elites, political class, and importantly, military? Oh, yes. Oh, it's on the floor. Of course it's down. I mean, there's also the economic stresses. And of course, you've got those two tier society with the elites living the great life, you know, cabaret time in Kiev for some, and the rest barely scraping by. I mean, the inflation is high, some people are not getting paid,

so you've got a complete division and a lot of unhappiness in Kiev. You recently wrote a piece, the essence of which is the endless bitter antagonism to Putin and Russia. What is the reason for the Western-generated, America-promulgated, endless bitter antagonism to Putin and Russia. You know, there are deep roots, so we can't go too far back.

But I think basically it was because, you know, America thought it had Russia in the palm of its hands in the Yeltsin years. The Harvard boys were there and they were just buying and stealing most of the resources of Russia at that time. That was up until about 99. And then in comes Putin and he slowly puts an end to the project completely. And I think Obama and the team never forgave him for that because they really, during that Yeltsin period, and they thought they were going to have another Yeltsin and that Russia would have been completely appropriated by Wall Street and by the energy companies,

which is what they had wanted, basically dismembered and taken apart. And that was happening. And there was starvation in russia i mean it was a disaster in russia at that time and putin came in and he started dealing with it he started cutting the oligarchs down to size he started nationalizing back again taking into state ownership um the the resources of russia and has built the economy, a self-sufficient economy,

which is different from the one that Yeltsin had. But I think, you know, the West cannot get it out of its head. That was a period when the Russian economy was very volatile. It was being run by Wall Street. And so they could do what they wanted with the economy. Is the root of this, Alasdair, American hubris?

Oh, sure. Rather than America willing to recognize a major economic power with which we could trade at an appropriate level and a rising tide, to quote JFK, would lift all ships? You know, it's a Western hubris of thinking that they can reappropriate, you know, Western triumphalism. But the reality is, and this is what I think the elites find it very hard to get their heads around, we're living at the tail end of a cycle that has benefited us. I call it the sort of tailwinds pushing us along. It was the end of the colonial imperial cycle, whereby we profited from the periphery and all the wealth came to the center, to the United States and Europe. And we had a very prosperous few decades that time,

not particularly merited by our own work, but they did come. And during that time, we made the mistake of turning our economies away from having a real economy, a manufacturing base, to just being a service consumer economies. And now the tide has turned. And the economies that were the peripheral economy are now economically the most rapidly growing. And it's the West that is in decline. So we are much weaker economically and as a society than we think us to be. And so the hubris is very strong. Oh no, we were very rich. I mean, we've been doing so well during this period. I mean, of course we

can prevail. Of course we can win. It's a mistake. So there's two problems here. One is hubris. The other is the failure to recognize the harm that comes from hubris. You write of a U.S.-led rules ideology, capital R in rules. What do you mean by that? I mean, this is what they call the new global order, the rules order, the American rules-based order, American-led rules-based order, the rules order, the American rules-based order, American-led rules-based order, which isn't really that at all, but it is what we describe as a form of hegemony that is taking place over this period, a Western hegemony, not just American.

But the point is that's yet coming to the end of that era. It's not the beginning of a new era. The new era, it's changed, the tipping point. And what worries me is how few people, either in Europe or in America, see and just observe the huge changes taking place in the Middle East, in Asia, in the global south, where people are moving away and, if you like, giving up the dollar as a sign of their desire for autonomy and for sovereignty. And look at the G7 reaction to the fall of Bakhmut. Let's send them F-16 fighter planes, something which President Biden himself warned against a year ago

when he whispered into a microphone, whispered for effect, that's World War III, guys, doing the very thing now, post-Bakhmut, post-G7, which he warned against a little more than a year ago. Surprising to you? No, no, unfortunately not,

because I don't see really any much signs that apart from a few people like Colonel McGregor and others who obviously very clearly see the situation, I mean, for 99% of the population, they've fed something completely different. And even the elites, you know, I think the elites have enjoyed this privilege of having complete mainstream media, observance of the rules, that they feel they don't have to argue the case anymore because mainstream media will just support whatever they say more than that they can lie because no one's going to hold them to account i mean they can say these things because the

mainstream media will just stick to the messaging rigorously so it's given them, made them very lazy. I don't think they bother ready to find out what's going on so much. If Joe Biden were intellectually honest and capable of expressing that intellectual honesty and you were to ask him, Mr. President, to what end are we doing all this? How would you expect he'd answer? I'll win in 24. He wants to run for re-election as a wartime president like his hero, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Roosevelt, of course, had a moral crusade behind him. There's no reason to reinvent or even examine the history,

but there's really no comparison. The American hubris condescends to Russia. Russia is the boogeyman. The government preaches hatred of Putin. Antony Blinken this morning gave a speech saying Ukraine is winning. I mean, this is simply preposterous, just from the observations of a non-military, non-diplomatic person whose background is in the field of law, but in the news business for the past 30 years. This is absurd for him to make a statement like that, and no one's really challenging it except people like you and Colonel McGregor and Larry Johnson and the folks that appear on judging freedom. What do the Europeans think when the American Secretary of State says Ukraine is winning the war after the fall of Bakhmut to the Russians? They want to keep a united front at all costs. They're terrified of getting out of line with the United States and, if you

like, losing their career prospects as a whole. It's very, very clear they don't have the ability to say these things and they don't want to hear it, actually. I think the striking thing is, you know, that at one, you can talk and intellectually, they can get some of the arguments. And then at another level, somehow, you know, the West, but the West was triumphant, isn't it? I mean, it'll be all right. We'll get there in the end. I mean, we, it's only Russia, we could stand up. So I think there's a dichotomy. war, the destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline, not worked, they've had the opposite effect. Is there a recognition of that among Western elites in Europe? Off the record, of course. You know, the British newspaper led almost an opinion piece this morning saying sanctions

have been working. It's a great success of the West. And what is more, Putin has got no weapons. He's got no technological capacity. He can't win this war. And this is a sort of lead story from their economics editor. And I have a friend just back from spending two months in Moscow. And he said, you can't believe it. You don't even know there's a war in Moscow everything is just completely normal I fear it may be too normal because I think Russia is going to have to transition soon and maybe even mobilize more and he'll they'll have to sort of start preparing the Russian public um for for for a shift there but he says said, I mean, he was talking to businessmen and everyone. If anything, they had a complaint.

If they had a complaint, it was that Russia let too many of its red lines pass without doing anything. And that they didn't really, they felt that escalation was coming and Russia needed really to prepare. This is similar to what Brykosian has been saying in some respects. You know, the need to start recognizing escalation is coming. We need to be ready too for that. How far west into Ukraine does Putin need to go in order to declare victory?

I mean, if you listen to Dmitry Medved, you have he's got to go all the way to the Polish border. I don't think that's realistic, but that's just me. No, I think it depends on two things. One is the psychology of the West. I mean, will it change as facts on the ground become apparent, i.e. that Russia is prevailing clearly and that the Ukrainian entity is collapsing? And secondly, can they stand up in Ukraine, something resembling some form of transitional government that is able to keep

some sort of order. I think that Russia will probably go to the first stage, down to the Dnieper River, perhaps, and then it will see what's the psychological mood in Europe. Is Europe still in a war fever, as they seem to be at the moment, or is it now prepared? I mean, you know, because Macron's saying, oh, well, it must join NATO.

Ukraine must now be allowed to join NATO with arrangements, something not quite Israel, but not quite full joint membership either. I mean, did you say did you say President Macron said this? Yes. The same President Macron who famously, and of course he suffered politically in the short run, said on his flight from Beijing to Paris, we have to reject, quote, the American rhythm of war, close quote. He now wants Ukraine to be a member of NATO. Does he think that that would be tolerated for a minute in Moscow? He probably knows that, but nonetheless he says that, and he also said at this conference at Bratislava, and he said very clearly, we now have to prepare our people, European people, for prolonged conflict, for a conflict of high or medium intensity,

which sounds as if he has changed. Before, he was talking about not humiliating Russia and that it was Russia that needed the security guarantees. You remember Russia actually wrote some treaties, draft treaties in December 21, and saying the key issue, the thing that started the war was the expansion of NATO. And what do we have yesterday? We have Biden deliberately provokes him, pokes the bear in the eye and says, no, we're going to expand it again. Right. I promise you, he said, I promise you it will be done. We're going to expand it.

He rarely says, I promise you, but every once in a while he does like to use that phrase. What is NATO today? Is it a peace organization? Is it captured by the Greens in Northern Europe? Is it a serious military organization? Theoretically, and there may have been some NATO officers killed in a Ukrainian bunker the other day, there isn't even a single troop from a NATO country, except America and Great Britain, on the ground. Yeah, I think there may have been some British in that bunker that was damaged together with Americans. About 20 NATO people is what I hear. It may be right or wrong. I don't know. The answer to this is yes, a strange metamorphosis overtook Europe during the Kosovo War, the war on the bombing of Belgrade in Yugoslavia, where people began to see NATO as a sort of instrument for human rights,

for progressing, changing entities, right to protect, all of these things. And they saw it now as a sort of humanitarian venture. And that's been taken up. It split the Greens. But the ones that went with that are the people like Annalena Baerbock, the German foreign minister, and the Greens in Germany, who do see NATO as now an instrument for pursuing, if you like, global justice and global order. And so they see it.

And this was also said by the Europeans. They said, you know, we're going to be a soft empire, using it against international, ignoring international law, ignoring states that have got a government and where it's necessary, setting our own protectorate governments into these states. That was a senior European. This was a whole idea of Europe becoming this great venture for establishing justice and equity and virtue.

Here's Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban in an interview with a British television anchor, giving what I think is some of the more, maybe the most thoughtful comments I've heard from any leader in the West. It's a little bit longer than a minute. It's worth watching. The very last two or three sentences he uses, in my view, are profound. I'd like your thoughts, Alistair. You made a great deal about 1956 and fighting for freedom. You have a neighbor who was invaded by Russia, the

very country, you know, you brought with pictures of tanks going into Budapest. Why are you opposing the European aid? No, no, it's emotionally, it's tragic. So, all of our heart is with the Ukrainians. We understand how much they suffer. But I'm speaking here as a politician who should save lives. So the most important thing for the international political communities to save lives, especially when you are convinced, as I do, that there is no chance to win this war. So therefore, what we should do far more energy invest

into, to convince everybody that the only solution is ceasefire. And then after the ceasefire, peace talks should start. And then we put back to your point, yeah? But do you really think there is no chance of Ukraine winning? Surely the main

surely they stand very little chance of winning without the aid which you are currently blocking. My position is that looking at the reality, looking at the figures, looking at the surroundings, looking at the fact that NATO is not ready to send troops, it's obvious that there is no victory for poor Ukrainians on the battlefield. Looking at the fact that NATO is unwilling to send troops, it is obviously that there's no belief in Ukrainian victory on the battlefield. I think I've quoted him accurately. What did you think of his nuance and his courage?

Admiral, but actually it is even more than that. I mean, and this is what doesn't get through. Russia has won the financial war. They're actually putting Europe into attrition. We talk about attrition in Bakhmut, but it's Europe going into economic attrition of our own accord, our own making. They've won the war of numbers. They've won the war of diplomacy. Most of the world stands with Ukraine, with Russia, I mean, in this, and doesn't support the sanctions on Russia. They have the numbers on the ground. Ukraine does not. Russia has the weapons.

They have control, more or less, of most of the airspace. They control the electromagnetic sphere above Ukraine. I mean, what more do you want to look at the numbers to see that, of course, Ukraine can't prevail. In fact, Ukraine is breaking down. And as an entity, it is crumbling. I mean, you know, we talk about those missiles, those drones that came over and landed in Russia.

But it distracts from the fact that all these last few days, serial days, Russia has been bombing ammunition bases, fuel bases, logistics, troop collections. I mean, it's been degrading. I really don't think, I'm not sure that an offensive is going to be possible at all now. And this is why I think, you know, escalation is actually paradoxically becoming more likely because that the, I mean, apart from attacking into Russia with these sort of spectacular things that achieve nothing, the Ukrainians face a certain tragic failure. And to quote our mutual friend Tom Luongo, allowing the West to keep thinking they can win is the ultimate form of grinding out a superior opponent. Exactly. Alstair, always a pleasure, my dear friend.

The weather's beautiful in Italy. I hope you have a fine weekend coming. We'll look forward to chatting with you next week. Thank you so much. Same toitter. Scott, where have you been? You'll be surprised and I think interested to hear where he has been and what he has been up to. More of course as we get it. If you like this, tell your friends. Who could not like Alistair Crook? Judge Napolitano

for judging freedom. Resolve to earn your degree in the new year in the Bay with WGU. With courses available online 24-7 and monthly start dates, WGU offers maximum flexibility so you can focus on your future. Learn more at wgu.edu.