Judging Freedom - Ian Proud : Those Warmongering Europeans

Episode Date: August 20, 2025

Ian Proud : Those Warmongering EuropeansSee 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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Today is Wednesday, August 20th, 2025. Our friend Ian Proud will be here in just a moment on those war-mongering Europeans. What are we going to do about them? But first, this. My friends, if you care about your liberty and your right to control your own future, you need to hear about this. From October 10th to 12th, Mikkel Thorpe, host of the Expat Money Show, is bringing together top experts from around the world for the expat money online summit and it's

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That's expatmoneysummit.com, promo code judge. Ian, welcome here. You heard my introduction to you right before we ran the commercial clip. Am I right or am I wrong to call them those warmongering Europeans? I speak, of course, of the folks that met with President Trump yesterday.

I think you're right, Judge. I think you absolutely right, particularly the president of that military titan state, Finland, who referred to the Russians as the Hun in his kind of back room comments with Trump, apparently, widely reported in the press of that referencing the fact that actually Finland allied with Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union in World War II, let's gloss over that fact. But it does seem to be the case that the Europeans are invested in making the war continue.

And I think if a deal can't be struck soon, the war will continue. into 2026 and at the cost of European taxpayers. Are you able to let us know what the mood in the UK is today, two days after Secure Stormers meeting with the President and even of the United States and even what the mood in the EU is? When I say mood, I'm talking about elites as well as average folks. Well, if I take the mood back briefly to, to President Trump's summit with President Putin in Alaska.

The mood, certainly on the state-owned BBC News channel, I watched the, you know, I forced myself to watch the whole coverage was a bit like an extended funeral. People were in despair that the red carpet has been laid out. US soldiers were laying the red carpet out for an indicted war criminal. Fast forward to today, and the mood feels largely the same. People worry that Trump is trying to get a quick, deal and sell out the Ukrainians in the process and that's the mood across i think frankly most

of the main tree media channels in certainly in the uk and i sense also across europe too and is there any concern uh that the british taxpayers simply cannot afford to replace the american taxpayers in ukraine that debate is never entertained in fact it's never surfaced People never really talk about the cost on top of the... There is Parliament on this. Suppose Sir Kier asks Parliament for 100 billion pounds or some other extraordinary number to purchase military equipment or to replace military equipment that he wants to send to Ukraine.

How would the House of Commons react to that? Well, I'll tell you something, Judge. Quite recently, Parliament voted down efforts to slash 5 billion pounds a year from disability going to benefits. But that debate about the actual, I think, is 89 billion pounds extra that we'll have to pay by 2035 to meet this 5% Native commitment. The debate is just never happening in Parliament. Parliament has been completely subjugated to the executive and no longer plays a challenge

role at all in our liberal democracy. Sounds like what's happening over here with Congress being subjugated to the will the president, we don't need to get into all of his constitutional excesses, but Congress never seems to assert its own constitutional prerogatives. I mean, for example, tariffs, a tariff is a tax. You've studied the American Constitution, and you know that the first power granted to Congress and Congress alone is the power to tax, and yet Donald Trump imposes these taxes on his own, not a peep from Congress. I say not a peep. Thomas Massey, the modern day Ron Paul, is about the only one who complains about these constitutional violations. The BBC, I guess we

shouldn't be surprised that it's mouthing, if not the words, at least the values of the government. Well, as far as I can see it, it's just an arm of the government. It's funded by a tax something that's also tax cause that called the tv license fee that people are forced to pay so it's therefore a tax uh in my view it's an arm of the state and it never departs it seems to me from the government narrative on ukraine that we need to keep fighting to last ukrainian so you have to pay a tax to fund the bbc whether you watch it or not well if you own a tv oh i see you pay a license you pay a license you pay a license you fee when you own a TV, the license fee goes to the BBC.

If you don't own a TV, obviously you don't have to pay the license. It's a tax. If you want to watch Monty Python, but you hate the BBC, you still have to pay for the BBC. Is that right? I'd soon have John Cleese in charge of government policy on Ukraine. It's a Keir Stama, but that's another discussion altogether, Judge, perhaps over a warm pint perhaps over a warm pint they still drink beer warm in great britain i gather i shouldn't say still we still drink it cold in the u.s

refrigeration came sooner to you yeah the EU uh elites i mean what do they want did they want this proxy war to continue and before you answer our dear friend and colleague, Colonel Douglas McGregor, reported, and he tells me he has a very reputable source that the Ukrainian military loss is now 1.7 million dead or missing. That is an unbelievable number. And the EU elites, the UK elites, still want this war to continue? yeah they do seem to and one of the reasons of course is that it delays the kind of much bigger for europe at least challenge of ukraine's membership of the EU that's now being put on ice it's put on ice after um Zelensky's attempt to kind of hijack and undermine the anti-corruption

bodies in ukraine but of course the longer the war goes on the further into the kind of far horizon ukraine's nightmare membership of the EU will will be shocked and And, of course, Europe can't afford to incorporate Ukraine as a fully-fledged member of the EU. So war just, you know, pushes that back onto the, you know, onto the back burners. What's your take on what happened in Russia? Who won, who lost, was it a draw? How did President Trump come off? How did President Putin come off from your perspective?

Now, your perspective is unique because you're a former diplomat. You were a resident in Moscow. you referred to yourself as a misfit because you worked for people who we would call over here at neocons, but give me your analysis, Ian Proud's analysis of what happened in Alaska. Well, nobody's been talking to Putin since the start of the war. A lot of people haven't been talking to Putin since 2014.

And I have always said that it was an important step that President Trump actually engaged in direct dialogue with the Russians, Vladimir Putin will have welcomed that simply because the Russians are very focused on the form of diplomacy as well as the substance. They want to be seen to be taken seriously, and that was an important step in that process. Now, I got the impression from the outcomes of that meeting, as far as we know them, that actually the Russians were prepared to make some concessions on security guarantees, you know, for Ukraine, something that hitherto would have been really problematic.

you know, for them, but some things were still off the table. In fact, the things that we'd known about all along and things which President Trump had been talking about since he came to office in January. They were that Ukraine wouldn't join NATO. President Trump has been clear on that from the start of his administration, you know, and that Russia was not going to be able to get back Crimea. I mean, when I was in Moscow at the British embassy,

we were talking about the impossibility of Ukraine getting back Crimea in 2014. You know, so this is not a new thing. But I think actually that, you know, the Russians were kind of trying to make some concessions by saying, well, actually, we'll be more flexible on security guarantees so long as there's no possibility that Ukraine will join NATO, and that has been the source from the beginning. What are security guarantees? I mean, there is a so-called security guarantee in the Austrian Treaty in 1955, and it provides for an official from the Soviet Union to be a resident member of the. Austrian National Security Council to secure not its safety, but its neutrality. And that has worked out, as you British folks would say, splendidly. It's a happy place. They don't have a big military and they're prosperous and they're neutral.

And nobody bothers them and they don't bother anybody else. Do you foresee that in Ukraine? Well, I don't see a Russian on the Ukrainian Security Council. But what I think security guarantees, means is that actually if peace breaks out Russia starts to normalize its relations with Europe which I earnestly hope that it will

if the Europeans will allow that to happen that should Russia then decide at a later time with NATO having been taken off the table for Ukraine to invade Ukraine the security guarantees would mean a direct military intervention in that conflict by European powers with their support by the US now that is my understanding of security guarantee

No, why would Vladimir Putin agree to that as a condition of peace? I mean, Sergei Lavrov has said, you know, if troops show up, no matter what flag they're under, no matter what they call themselves, they can be from separate countries, they can be called themselves, the EU, they can call themselves NATO, whatever it is, it's not acceptable. No, I agree with that. But, I mean, peace implies that there would be no boots on the ground by any Western nation. Or boots in the air.

I don't want to sound ridiculous, but Trump said American air support. American air support means American intel on the ground, telling them what to do when they're in the air. Why would the Russians agree to that? I mean, that that already happens. But I mean, there are boots in the air already through, you know, the patrols over Estone in the Baltic states already. So what security guarantees mean is that there would be no military personnel inside of Ukraine

on the territory of Ukraine or in the air above Ukraine while peace was in place and I think that would meet Russian requirements but in the event that Russia decided to go toward a later date for no reason that there would be a direct military response I think that is that it's not about fudging it in the short term saying we'll have peace but will station NATO troops in Ukraine clearly the Russians will never accept that

Isn't the Ukraine military, whether Colonel McGregor's numbers are precisely correct or approximately correct, isn't the Ukraine military on its last legs? No, it isn't. It's got one million people. They beat up young men in the streets and force them into buses and drive them to the training centers and then to the front line. I don't believe the hype that the Ukrainian military is falling apart. One of the reasons they've been able to hold on to or slow the Russian advance for so long is because they have so many men, many of them forced into action on the front line. Of course, drone technology has helped as well. But that is not a sophisticated military taking a kid out of a bar and putting them on the front lines. That's not a sophisticated military.

That's just fodder for the Russian cannons. Yeah, of course it is. and hence the 1.7 million people who've been killed or injured since the war started. I mean, you know, nobody seems to care about that and that if the war goes on into next year, that several hundred thousand more young kids beaten up from bars and shoved into minibuses will be killed too. But, I mean, you know, the Europeans are determined,

you know, Zelensky doesn't want to leave office. What's in it for him to end the war? Nothing. So I worry that, you know, they will invest in keeping the war going on. Does Secure Starrmer, does President, President Macron, does Ursula van der Leyen want to end the war? I don't believe that they do. Because I think ending the war on the basis of the contours that President Trump has outlined,

you know, that Ukraine will be neutral, it won't join NATO, won't militarily be able to get by Crimea, will have to accept the line of control and possible concessions on territory in the Donbass. The Europeans are never going to sign up to that. So they're going to keep plugging away. They're going to keep smiling, meeting Trumps, telling him what a great president he is, being nice to President Trump. But in the background, just saying, well, let's not cut a deal, folks, because this guy's deranged and, you know, our money's on, you know, little Vlad Zelensky.

Was this Cirqueer portrayed in the British press along with Macron and von der Leyen and this character from Finland as being humiliated by President Trump. I mean, at one point, he put them out of the Oval Office, and they just stood around and stared at each other for 45 minutes while he supposedly spoke with Vladimir Putin on the phone. We don't even know if the phone call took place. And then they came back in, and instead of sitting around a table where they all were positioned equally,

they sat in front of Trump's desk, like schoolchildren, being called to the principal's office. I mean, does that resonate with the British press? Does that get under the skin of Secure? Or is that not the subject of mockery the way it is on this side of the Atlantic? Well, a phone call did take place because you, Eushikov actually confirmed on the Kremlin website. But if I told you, Judge, that ahead of the White House meeting, the BBC, the state-run BBC or Britain today, perhaps it should be called, was talking about Kirstama's star quality and how he would make the difference.

you know, the Whitehall meeting with Trump. So, no, it didn't talk about him being treated like a schoolboy at prep school in front of the head teacher. Wow. If the war ends by some means, what will the Europeans do? Let me make it easier for you and more likely. If the United States stops providing aid to Ukraine, military aid to Ukraine, what will the European countries do? Well, in the short term, I'll keep paying for arms until their electorates can rise up against them and force them out of office and choose governments that want to actually live in peace with Russia. I don't see the war would stop immediately.

And unfortunately, President Trump hasn't been sufficiently unequivocal about sort of cutting supplies. He's flip-flopped on that. But, I mean, if it happened, I don't think he is likely to happen because U.S. defense contractors are benefiting so much from what's happening right now. The Europeans will carry on paying until they went out to money and political support. The British have a very small army. Can you see any of them? We'll go back to that phrase, boots on the ground. No, I can't. When he spoke about a reassurance force back in March after the kind of Lancaster House Summit with Zelensky, then, you know, they rode back on that. At that time, it's only 20,000 troops. It dropped down to 10,000 troops. And they said, well, actually, we can't really send any troops. So, I mean, I don't really see that changing. Our army is 73,000, you know, people. It shrunk by 2,000 personal over the past two years. What's the size of the British Army?

73,000 people. Wow. That really is small. I think the U.S. Marine Corps is bigger, I believe. Yes, the U.S. Marine Corps is about 200,000. How about the French? Can you foresee them being crazy enough to put boots on the ground in Ukraine if Trump stops the American aid? You know, at some point the American aid will stop because there's no appetite in the Congress to authorize more money. Lindsay Graham, notwithstanding. And the Joe Biden funds, we don't know where the number is, but they can't last forever. No, I don't actually see any scenario in which declared, as opposed to undeclared, French or British troops are actually in Ukraine. Because I think actually Trump, for his many faults and foibles, he does appear to be trying to force some sort of deal through.

Possibly it's because he wants an Nobel Peace Prize, whatever. I mean, I think if he's trying to bring peace to Ukraine, then I think that's a good thing. But I think, you know, the pressure's on to do it and actually it's not going to happen overnight. The Europeans are going to keep fighting this, I suspect, for the next kind of few months. I don't see any European troops on the ground,

Because, you know, Russia has 600,000 troops in Ukraine, we're offering at most 10,000 troops. I mean, what are we going to do? Right, right. But what does Ursula von der Leyen want besides to be commander-in-chief of a European military? Well, she's grown the powers of the European state, the European institutions that are not elected.

So she's just centralizing power. she's making herself this kind of supranational president of europe if you like with her henchwoman kaya callas the woolmonger in chief building her powers too so i mean her her objectives appear to me about self-aggrandizement and the accretion of power i have a dear friend who's a professor of political philosophy at the university of milan who was in grad school with the callous. Tells me she was at the bottom of the class. No surprise. Switching over to the Middle East, why did Sir Keir announce support for a Palestinian state? Why didn't he do something more substantive?

Like arrest Netanyahu if he comes to Great Britain. Well, because the pressure's been going within the UK for a long time about this dreadful support or tacit support, at least that we've provided to Israel and its kind of terrible actions in Gaza and other places. And, you know, foreign policy always comes down to domestic politics. The domestic political pressure is built on Stama, including within his own political party and the opposition conservative party and protests on the streets and all those sorts of things to such an extent

that he can no longer ignore the political will of, you know, the communities of the UK. Now, we have Muslim communities in the UK, we have Jewish communities in the UK. This isn't really about picking sides with either of those. This is about stopping this absolutely atrocious policy driven by, you know, Netanyahu in Tel Aviv. And we just need to kind of say that and actually step away from the U.S. position with which I personally are not aligned at all. And how much longer will Sarkir be in office in your view? well unfortunately bad prime ministers have this habit of staying around for a long time Theresa may was a was a dead donkey kind of a prime minister too

but she's clung on until 2019 for three years so we don't assume he's going to be gone he's got a big majority in parliament Labour can still muster a majority for votes in the commons I see him seeing you know at least an exclature or three years through if not the whole term I don't see anything that's going to force force that change got it got it Ian thank you very much thanks for joining us thanks for continuing to send those great pieces to me to read which you publish on the substack that every single one of them is insightful and formative and gives me

more ideas about questions to ask you we hope you come back and join us again soon thanks judge good to see you again bye for now see you all the best thank you my friend and coming up at 2 o'clock we're not sure he is we think he might still be in Paris. Pepe Escobar, and at 3 o'clock, our old buddy Phil Giraldi, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.