Judging Freedom - Is it China & Russia against the US in Ukraine_ - Scott Ritter

Episode Date: March 23, 2023

Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here with Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, March 24, 2023. It's about five minutes after 11 in the morning here on the East Coast of the United States. Scott Ritter joins us today. Scott, as always, a pleasure. Thanks for coming on the show. Since last we were together, President Xi very ostentatiously spent three days in Moscow with President Putin, and President Xi very ostentatiously suggested a ceasefire. It's hard for me to believe that he would have made a suggestion like that in Moscow, in the presence

of his host, in the Kremlin, without his people having run that past Vladimir Putin ahead of time. What do you think? No, you're 100% correct. Heads of state and diplomats at that level don't waltz into a meeting of this magnitude, this profile, not prepared. You don't walk in and say something and upset the cart. This was something that had been negotiated in advance. The text had been agreed upon. And so it's clear the Russians were willing to accept this. It's also clear that the Chinese weren't going to push the point. I think this was something the Chinese had to do because of their Westphalian principles about sovereignty. And they needed to suggest a ceasefire.

And the Russians had to graciously accept the fact that the Chinese will push forward with that. But this isn't something China's going to go to the mattresses for. I believe there will be a phone call between Xi and Zelensky, and Zelensky will be given one opportunity to agree to whatever conditions the Chinese and the Russians agree to. And if Zelensky hesitates, if the West hiccups, it's done. Let's look at the Russian side of the Xi Putin coin.

Does Putin want a ceasefire? I mean, what would Putin do if Zelensky said yes? Well, that's the key. I mean, the bottom line is whatever they've agreed upon, Putin has already said if he says yes i i've agreed to this and we know that the russians have been seeking an end to this conflict from the very beginning remember they're the only ones who wanted the mintska courts to work it was the french the germans and the ukrainians who said it was a sham russia didn't view it as a sham and russia when they went to war that first month wasn't about defeating ukraine it's about getting getting Ukraine to the negotiating table.

And it was Russia that was willing to sit down in Istanbul and bring it into this conflict. It's the Ukrainian pressure by the West that backed out. And at that time, the terms of that conflict termination would have been Ukraine got to keep their army. Zelensky got to stay in government. So if Russia was willing to accept that last April, a year ago, I would imagine that if you could bring it into a conflict that met some strict terms, it's not like he's going to give away the farm to Zelensky, but if you could bring it into this conflict, Putin would accept that. I honestly believe he would accept it. But to think that there could have been a ceasefire a year ago, 200,000 dead human beings would still be alive. I'm estimating the number of military losses on both sides, and that's probably a low estimate.

It's a very low estimate, Your Honor. I would tell you that the Ukrainians have probably lost upwards of 320,000 dead. And that's a realistic number. So, yeah, we're talking, you know, 400,000 lives would have been saved had this conflict been ended on 1 April. And again, it's not Russia's fault. So President Xi wants a ceasefire. President Putin has said, yeah, go ahead, ask for it. And if Zelensky says yes, I'll comply with it.

Here's somebody else who doesn't want a ceasefire. Admiral Kirby. We'd be concerned if coming out of this meeting, there was some sort of call for a ceasefire. Because right now, while a ceasefire sounds good, it actually ratifies Russia's gains on the ground. It actually serves Russia's purpose for a ceasefire to basically call a stop right now without any acknowledgement that Russia is illegally inside Ukraine. So United States will be against the ceasefire because this principle issue or because it was proposed by China? I think I've been very clear. It's about

the principle of a ceasefire called for right now, which would essentially just ratify Russia's gains. Now, Admiral Kirby is, of course, the official spokesperson for the President's National Security Council. Scott, you probably know this, but I have to underscore it. That interview took place before President Xi visited Moscow and made his statement. The United States had the temerity to say, forget about it. We're rejecting the offer before the offer is made. And of course, the offer wasn't made to the U.S. Take the ball and run with it. You can't make this up oh i mean this is this look with all due respect to mr kirby i'm not

going to give him the rank of admiral anymore i know he's retired and he earned the rank and all that he's down to mr kirby actually that's a promotion let's go back to admiral um is that the way the marines feel about the navy well i'm just saying i you know rank is rank is earned but respected you know you get the rank but respect has to be earned and i don't respect him what did he just say listen to what he just said the audacity of a man who is the spokesperson of a white house who wanted this war remember it's the president united states that rejected every offer that putin made to resolve this conflict before this conflict remember it's the president united states that rejected every offer that putin made to resolve this conflict before this conflict happened it's the president united

states that turned his nose up against uh proposals that russia put forward in december of 2021 that would would have prevented this war from happening it's the president united states that prevented closure on this conflict on one april and now 400,000 people are dead, and John Kirby's saying, we don't want a ceasefire? What a lunatic this man is. And what is, because Russia's going to what, solidify its gains? Hey, John, let me give you a pro tip. Russia won the war, dude. You lost. You know, your side lost. And right now, terminating this conflict is the best deal you're ever going to get, because if they don't do this, Russia's going to win everything best deal you're ever going to get because if they don't do this, Russia's going to win everything and you're going to lose everything. But maybe Admiral Kirby hasn't quite woken up to that reality yet, but he will. He will. If they don't, if this peace

doesn't come, there'll be another. And believe me, the second half of this war is going to be worse than the first half. The Ukrainians are going to suffer another 300, 400,000 dead. And that's on Admiral Kirby. That's on Joe Biden. That's on the United States government. Does the United States government actually believe that it and its allies can expel the Russian military from eastern Ukraine and from Crimea? Do they? That's implied in what Kirby said. No, what this is, is actually if you go back and take a totality of what Kirby's

been doing, he's been denigrating the Chinese. The whole idea here is to drive a wedge between China and Russia. There's no way the United States believes they're going to win this conflict. The fact is they know they're not going to win this conflict. But what they don't want is China and Russia coming together. Well, they have failed because China and Russia are together like they've never been together. And it's a whole new world. And Kirby's going to have to wake up and understand he's got to change his talking points. The other day, Judging Freedom interviewed Ed Rollins, not a military guy, a political guy. Ed managed both of Ronald Reagan's campaigns for president. I've known Ed personally, also

managed campaigns here in New Jersey. I worked with him at Fox. I would call him a patriotic, conservative Republican with substantial libertarian leanings. He's now deeply involved in Governor DeSantis's campaign for the Republican nomination for president, and is largely responsible for talking Governor DeSantis into taking a position similar to yours, Colonel McGregor's, and mine on Ukraine. But here is Ed Rollins. I want you to comment on this, on the likely outcome of this conflagration. I don't think Russia is going to win. What I think Russia is going to do is try and solidify what they've already captured. They're not going to conquer Ukraine. And I think Ukraine would love to go fight and do some damage to Russia. That isn't

going to happen. I think you're going to get into tactical nuclear weapons. I don't care who you are. I'm not a military leader, but that's just what's going to happen. I understand human nature. And Putin is not going to be the man who's going to lose Russia. And he now thinks Russia includes the provinces they've already taken. And it'll go on for another year with a lot more bloodshed and a lot more resources. Ukraine doesn't have the resources. I think China will give Russia the resources that they need. And the other allies, Iran and the others that are dangerous allies to us, will all unify around Russia.

So there you have a major Republican leader saying Russia can't lose and Putin's not going to lose Russia. It's a statement of reality. And you notice when he said it, he didn't say it with any glee in his voice. This is this is not the outcome he wants. So he's not there, you know, speaking on, you know, in a way that says, you know, he's not saying we need to be friends with Russia. We need to be friends. I know we need to be friends with Iran. He's not saying that. What he's saying is what's happening here is reality. We have to deal with this reality and try and push back on it. He said the right thing. It means nuclear weapons.

That's suicide. So he's advising, in this case, DeSantis, that you need to come up with a realistic foreign policy. So sometimes when you're presented with nothing but bad options, pick the one that's least bad for you. And in this case, early termination of this conflict is the best, worst outcome there is. That if this thing drags on, only worse things can happen. How close are we to the serious consideration of nuclear weapons by President Putin? Oh, no. Putin, it's not even on his menu. I mean, he's brought it up a couple of times just to remind the United States that, you know, don't put boots on the ground.

There will be consequences that a direct NATO-Russian conflict, you know, then we have these weapons over here and now they come onto the table. But as long as you leave the menu reading Ukraine only, there's no nuclear weapons. There will never be a nuclear weapon dropped on Ukraine, used against Ukraine by Russia. What the West does, different story. But Russia's happy to leave this conflict as a Ukraine only conflict, and that's it. If NATO wants to make it something bigger, then Russia keeps reminding them that we've got additional ingredients we can throw into the stew, and you're not going to like it. What is the kerfuffle now over uranium-depleted ammunition, which the Brits have announced publicly they're sending to Ukraine. What is uranium depleted? I mean, it sounds like it's nuclear-ish, and it's caused President Putin

personally to attack this and say there'll be repercussions. How dangerous is this? Is this some sort of an escalation in the quality of ammunition? Well, I mean, look, depleted uranium rounds, very dense. And when you turn them into a penetrating rod and you put them in a sabot, it becomes a really good anti-tank round. And we use them in our M1 Abrams. The British use them in their Challenger II tanks. I think the Germans may have one time used them in their Leopard tanks. The Russians, the Soviets used to have them too because they're very good tank killers.

But the Russians, again, if you were gonna go sky you keep talking like the russians are the good guys on this one they are because around 2000 the russians look around they said we see what's happened when the nato used 30 000 80 uranium rounds in kosovo high levels of uh leukemia people are starting to get cancer because they've been exposed to depleted uranium. We see what happened in Iraq, where kids are deformed. Thousands of kids are deformed. So the Russians banned depleted uranium. They said, we will no longer make depleted uranium rounds because we understand it is poison to our troops, to the civilians, to the soil. And they're 100% correct. The United States and Great Britain, they suppress this data and they say, there's nothing wrong with this. Now, what the Russians said is you guys can have it. Don't introduce it in Ukraine.

We don't want that poison on Slavic soil. We don't want that poison infecting our troops, the Ukrainian people, anybody. Keep it out of here. And now what the British have done with their 14, I think they've up to 28 Challenger II tanks, is they said they're coming in equipped with depleted uranium anti-tank rounds. Is this going to be a game changer on the battlefield? No. All it means is that the poor Ukrainian soldiers who are in a tank now with depleted uranium rounds are going to die because as soon as those 28 tanks show up, the Russians will

kill all 28 of them and all the depleted uranium rounds in there will burn up with the tank. One or two may be fired, but that's it. But it's a total disrespect for the russians a total disregard for you know what they've said is an environmental issue and um the russians are just putting the market down is putin going to escalate nuclear no he's just saying we're angry here and there will be ramifications because if they do fire those rounds and the and civilians become infected russia will have a case to say, it's on you guys. You're the one who brought that poison into this conflict. All right. So are you telling me that

under President Clinton, the United States used these weapons in Bosnia, knowing that it would cause leukemia even to the people they were trying to defend? Absolutely. Because in the Gulf War, this issue was raised. In the Gulf War, we had force on force issues where M1 Abrams fired depleted uranium rings into an M1 Abrams with depleted uranium armor. And when those hit, you know, it vaporized. It got into the bloodstream of our veterans and our veterans are very sick and they pass it on to their wives and they have deformed children.

This is a fact. The VA isn't allowed to say this because the United States, second we say that clean uranium is a poison, infects people, then we're in trouble for continuing to use it. So we've been suppressing this data forever. But we use it in Bosnia, knowing this. But then we turned around and used it in Fallujah in 2004. And we have, this is under George W. Bush, and we have condemned tens of thousands of Iraqi children to deaths where, I mean, they're born horrifically deformed, their mothers get cancer, the fathers get cancer, people get cancer. We know this is the case, but we don't want to talk about

it because it's a matter of money. It's cheaper to make this round than it is to use a tungsten penetrator. Is the U.S. supplying these leukemia-causing rounds to the Ukrainians, or is it just the Brits? So far, just the Brits. The United States, the Pentagon has come out and said that we will not be providing depleted uranium rounds to, but now that the Brits have, to the Ukrainians, but now that the Brits have broken this, you have people in the Pentagon saying, well, we're going to reconsider this now. Because it's not just the M1A1 Abrams tank that uses this. DU rounds, depleted uranium rounds can be used on the 25 millimeter Bushmasters. That'll be on the Stryker vehicles, on the Bradleys.

And so, you know, there's a lot of DU that can be out there. And if we start providing it, we are going to be poisoning Ukraine. There's no doubt about it. Here's another clip from the interview with Ed Rollins in which he basically says, this is not our fight. There are 30 nations in NATO. Russia is not on our border. Ukraine is not on our border. There's a humanitarian effort that you always want to go in and see some bullying stopped.

But we're the only ones in there. We're the only ones paying the price. And every time another country puts weapons in, we have to go replace those weapons. And I think the American public now sees a lot more priorities and doesn't see an endgame here. As long as Putin is there, Putin's going to stay in this war as long as possible. He doesn't care how many men it takes to wipe out. At the end of the day, he's still got all the nukes. We have nukes. Ukraine has no nukes. And sooner or later, he's not going to lose Russia and he's not going to lose the ends of Ukraine that they've captured. So my sense is, building his allies with China. I sit here and I watch all these news guys basically talk about, well, what war is China ever won? Why are we worried about China? As I recall my history, which I am a historian,

they did a pretty effective job on us in Vietnam, pretty effective job on us in Korea. And the Chinese army today has far greater military than it was way back when. Is the Chinese military greater and stronger than the American? Well, it's bigger. I'll tell you, the United States cannot defeat China in a ground war. But we'd have to go there because China's not coming here. The Chinese Navy needs some improvement, but they've got some long range missiles that are very accurate, hypersonic warheads that would sink our carrier battle groups if they got near Taiwan. If we leave China alone, it's not a threat to us at all.

Not at all. That's the key. But we don't. We continue to double down on stupid and we continue to think that we're back in the Second World War and we can protect our power any way we want. The world's changed. It's not that way anymore. And China right now has a very, very credible military force that if we decided to pick a fight with them,

may teach us a thing or two about modern warfare. How insane would it be for Joe Biden to state publicly, as he has, that we will defend Taiwan against any military efforts by China. About as crazy as me saying that I'd be happy to meet Mike Tyson in the back alley during his prime. It's about as stupid as that. What is the status of things on the ground today in ukraine it seems like bakhmut is taking forever to fall or to be fortified well ukraine's are throwing everything into bakhmut to hold on and they're fighting like you know cats and dogs in there that's uh again anybody thinks war is easy just look at bakhmut there's nothing nothing easy about this conflict. The Russians are making gains. They're killing a lot of Ukrainians. But remember, we talked before, people keep saying, when are the Russians going to start their offensive? Well,

Your Honor, they've been doing their offensive. They've been saying this for some time. The Russians have been pressing Ukrainians along the totality of the line of contact. And Bakhmut's not the only potential encirclement. Others have broken out. Advika, further north. The Russians are now threatening to encircle a large number of Ukrainians there. Severus, even further north. Why? Because Ukraine's putting everything into the Bakhmut fight, which means they're thinning out their ranks. And as they thin out their ranks, the Russians are taking advantage of it. What we're seeing here is the beginning of the collapse of the Ukrainian defense, the lack of cohesion, the lack of reserves. Now, the Ukrainians appear to be

holding on to some of these reserves, the ones with the leopard tanks, as they come in, they're not committing to the battle in hopes that they can, you know, launch some sort of counteroffensive. But the key to this counteroffensive isn't just these troops, but it's artillery. And the Ukrainians, in order to do this battle in Bakhmut and elsewhere, are using up all of their artillery ammunition. And the United States, everybody's saying, whoa, slow down, guys. We don't have any left to give you. And once you use this, there won't be anything left for this counterattack you're planning. But it doesn't matter because if the Ukrainians stop using this artillery in Bakhmut, Bakhmut falls.

The front collapses and it doesn't matter. So they're just they're literally stuck between a rock and a hard place. There's no good option for the Ukrainians. It's called losing the war. I want to go back to China for a minute. A military leader whom you have criticized, and a lot of us share that criticism, General Petraeus, sat down with a comedian, longtime friend of mine, John Stewart. You tell me who is the more rational of the two in this clip. The security challenges that face us right now are more complex and actually greater than any that we have faced actually during the post-Cold War era. It's just hard to see the evidence of a learning curve manifest.

It still feels like our foreign policy is everything, everywhere, all at once. Well, I think the argument there is going to be that, look, if we don't do it, someone else will. If you think of us as the guy in the circus who puts a plate on the stick and gets it spinning, the biggest plate, I think bigger than all the others together, is China. It's the U.S. relationship with China, the U.S. with our allies and partners. They help us keep some of these plates spinning. But then you have still North Korea with its nuclear program. But perhaps maybe the issue is we're not going to solve.

And maybe it's American understanding. Just keep the plate spinning. Can you understand what the general was talking about? Well, you get that America's a joke. We're a circus. We're a three-wing circus. Look, this is the man, with all due respect to General Petraeus, this is the man who sat before Congress for many, many years

and lied through his teeth about Afghanistan and Iraq. He lied. He's a liar. I'm not getting into any of the other stuff. I'm just saying that this is a man when he wore the uniform, sat before the Congress of the United States and straight up lied about how we were winning, how we could win, just getting more troops. We can do it. He's a man who is about perpetuating conflict. And that's what he was saying there. It doesn't matter. We just got to keep the plate spinning. We got to keep the

conflict going because that's what keeps him in business well General the paycheck isn't being paid by you it's being paid by the people who are dying and right now keeping that little plate spinning for General Petraeus to be entertained in his three-week circuit is costing hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian lives I hope the Ukrainian people were listening to this and I hope someday praise is walking down the street he gets confronted by the widows of all the soldiers who died and they hold him to account. Scott Ritter, always a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having me.

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