Judging Freedom - LtCol. Karen Kwiatkowski : How NATO Moved Eastward

Episode Date: August 6, 2024

LtCol. Karen Kwiatkowski: How NATO Moved EastwardSee 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 Tuesday, August 6, 2024. Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski joins us now. Colonel Karen, always a pleasure. Thank you very much for your time. I want to talk to you, well, about Israel and Ukraine, but I want to start on Ukraine. up to what you have characterized as a very bad decision by Donald Trump, animated by the neocons in his State Department and in his National Security Council to scuttle the INF Treaty. But take us back to the promises made by George H.W. Bush and broken by Bill Clinton. Yeah. A lot of the stuff that we're doing to push NATO, we own NATO, NATO is us, NATO is the U.S. There's no real separation between the two in terms of their strategy. And we use it to push Russia and to contain Russia in really kind of a warped containment strategy. So there's that. And the treaties that we had, certainly the INF Treaty that we abandoned, the Russians had still held to it. Of course, after we left,

there's no treaty. Part of this had to do with a movement within Defense Department and the manufacturers to upgrade a lot of our older equipment, our older missiles. And also, of course, our excuses, the Russians were doing this, the Chinese were doing this, Koreans were doing that. Everybody's upgrading their missile technology, and we wanted to get in on that too. And the INF Treaty was in our way. So instead of renegotiating it, you know, like, oh, the Russians violated it, we said, and we're out. And of course, we were already violating it, much to the same extent or more than they were. But yeah, this is an arms race. Unfortunately, when we talk about these long-range and intermediate-range missiles, we're talking nuclear. It's a nuclear arms race. And we're playing in that. We're spending, you know,

billions and billions and billions of dollars. And we don't hear about it so much, but that's what we're doing. And we're doing it to fight Russia, to reduce Russia to a fraction of what it currently is. I think there's no argument that the United States envisions control and economic exploitation of Russia's natural resources. You know, it's a vast land with a small population. It should be an easy target. So in the in the, you know, the books, the strategy books, the neocons use, this would be an easy one. And of course, as we see in Ukraine, not so easy, but they don't have a lot of real world experience and they have very short term.

They think they have a long term strategy, but they really think short term. They think we do this and this happens. And it's not that way. There are factors they never consider, which, of course, is why we're in this mess. Was there a time when the treaty worked, when both sides were honoring it? Correct me if I'm wrong, Karen. This is a Reagan-era treaty. This is one of the things he was very proud of that he negotiated at the tail end of his second term, probably with Mikhail Gorbachev. And he really believed that it would tamp down the arms race. And he was right about that. And it did tamp it down. And it also preserved some very needed sense of security for Europe, because the reduction of these intermediate range missiles would really it was the reduction of those missiles in Europe, which were most threatening to Russia, of course. So Russia was interested in getting them moved out, but also the Europeans were interested because they didn't want to be targets, which is kind of funny because it's exactly what they are going into now.

But no, it not only was a serious reduction on both sides of these missiles, and I mean destruction. We had inspections, not just of the missile destruction, but we had inspections. The Russians came here. I actually carpooled and he lived four houses down from me, a guy who was part of the INF inspection team, an Air Force guy. And he traveled to Russia a number of times and to do to actually conduct these inspections to see if the letter of the agreement was being followed. And I asked him when he came back a couple, three times, you know, how was it? He says, fine. Are they doing what they're supposed to? Yes, they are. And of course, the Russians had their teams inspecting in the United States. And so when you think about what that means, to have Russians here looking at this and complying with an agreed upon treaty, an agreement. Same

with the U.S. people in Russia doing this. In many ways, it builds trust. And you know how Reagan always said, trust but verify. Well, that's exactly what it was. And that's what that treaty was. Now, without a treaty, which, of course, we haven't had one for, I guess, five years now, to get to the point of trust but verify, which would be a nice place to be. We're not there. We abandoned that. But to get to that place, you can't do that tomorrow. It can't be done in 24 hours. The work to build an agreement, the work of building trust between nuclear powers takes time. It takes leadership. It takes faith. It takes energy. It takes adulthood. We have very little of that in our government today. So even getting back to where we were 30 years ago when Reagan negotiated this deal and his staff

negotiated this deal, it will take, I mean, I don't know how we will ever get back to that. So we're in a very dangerous time because of it. So not only the neocons in the Defense Department and the State Department, but the arms manufacturers themselves persuaded the billionaire in the White House, Donald Trump, this is 2019, correct me if I'm wrong, to withdraw from the treaty. And he did. And as a result, the arms race heated up. Did the Russians abide the treaty after we left? Or since we were gone, there was no treaty.

There was nothing for them to abide by. They did for a short period of time where they said they did. Of course, we accused them of violating the treaty. It's not clear that they really did. But they did abide Of course, we accused them of violating the treaty. It's not clear that they really did. But they did abide by it. They continued, I guess, maybe in hopes that we would come back to it. But then after they witnessed, see, when we got out of that treaty, we were already developing those new types of weapons, the new intermediate nuclear capable missile systems. We were already working on this. So again, Trump didn't wake up one morning and somebody talked to him and

neocon said, let's do this. No, this it takes years to abandon a treaty, really. I mean, especially one that was working as well as that one had been. There was a lot of incentive to upgrade on both sides. And so once we backed out or abandoned it and actively, we were already actively doing research and doing some, I'm sure, testing and production, not so much testing that they could see. But once we're not in that treaty, we're free to proceed at pace, which we did. The Russians see this. And of course, they're like, yeah, well, OK. Now, the bad thing is,

to me, 30 years ago, our technology was way better than what the Russians or the Chinese had. Way better. And they in those intervening years and prior to that had been copying a lot of what the United States was designing and testing and creating. OK, and now it's 30, 30 years later. Well, guess what? We need to find somebody to copy because they are ahead of us, both the Chinese and the Russians, in terms of a lot of their technology. So, you know, and I'm sure this kind of argument was made to Donald Trump and his conclusion was, oh, my gosh, we need to, you know, shut them out and start competing. You know, he's thinking of it in terms of, you know, a business competition.

There's a new hotel coming in. It's going to threaten my business. What do we do? And that's a good argument to convince Donald Trump, I'm sure. But the neocons were very cynical in this because this has long been planned. In fact, as you recall, under Reagan, he had a core of neocons, Wolfowitz, a whole bunch of these guys in his National Security Council advising him. And they were very, very upset at the INF Treaty, as they were with almost any type of peaceful and nuclear descaling that Reagan was interested in doing, very much opposed to that. So we're dealing in this country with a very long-term effort to militarize, to dominate, and to retain top dog status so that we can set the rules for the entire world and enforce those rules with nuclear weapons. That's been their goal forever,

and it has not really changed. And, you know, Trump was, it's sad to say, you know, he didn't talk this way when he got elected in 2020. But, of course, he hired neocons. He listened to neocons. He, you know, consulted with the neocons, what should we do? And they told him and he did it. So it'll be interesting to see if he can prevail, if he's learned anything from that, because otherwise we are in a serious nuclear arms race and they don't end well. What has the termination of this treaty done to Europe and what has it done for NATO? Well, the termination of the treaty initially, I'm sure it aggravated the European neocons to some extent, and it fired them up.

Those that are very rabidly anti-Russian, they go, oh, we need to get out of this and compete. But now, this year, as we are talking about, not talking about, it's going to happen, I mean, unless Trump stops it or Kamala stops it, we're going to put intermediate range nuclear missiles back in Europe, in Germany and some of these other countries, probably in Poland, all over the place, pointed where else but Russia, you know, maybe a couple at Iran, but we're going to put them in Eastern Europe. We're going to put them in Central Europe. And by doing that, Russia is gonna have these missiles pointed at it,

where are they gonna, they're gonna adjust their targeting. And so now we've created a whole bunch of new nuclear target, not conventional arms targets, but potentially nuclear targets in Europe that did not exist for the many years of the INF Treaty. Because the big success of the INF Treaty was we pulled all of those missiles out of there and we eliminated those European targets, which if you're in Europe, that makes your life a little bit better, or at least your sense of the future.

That's all changed. And so it's going back to a much more dangerous time. Chris, do we have the clip of President Putin responding to all of this? We declared in 2019 that we would neither manufacture nor deploy these missiles until the United States does so in certain parts of the world. It is understood today that the United States not only manufactures these missile systems, but has also transported them to Europe for drills, specifically to Denmark. Recently, it was announced that they have arrived in the Philippines. It remains unclear if they've removed these missiles. We need to respond to this situation and determine our next action steps. It appears that today we will be discussing the Russian Federation's next moves concerning a one-sided halt on deploying land-based intermediate range and

shorter range missiles. So he sees what's going on and he knows that he has to respond to it. And because of this ill-advised decision of Donald Trump, pressed upon him, no doubt, by Mike Pompeo and John Bolton and Robert O'Brien and that crowd that advised him, as well as his buddies in the arms manufacturing business. We are spending more money. They are spending more money. And now we're installing missiles in Western Europe for what?

To terrify the Russians? They're going to do the same thing to us. What are they going to do, put them in Mexico and Havana? Yeah, well, actually, I think, you know, not too long ago, a couple weeks ago or less, the Russians sent some warships to Cuba and some subs, which we, of course, followed with our worships and our subs to make sure they weren't going to mess with us. So, I mean, yeah, our foreign policy would be so much better if we would simply every once in a while, not every single day, I don't demand that, every once in

a while, if we would sit back and imagine what this appears to the other side. How would we respond if they did to us what we are doing on a daily basis to them? And we don't think that way. And you make a good point with what is the ultimate goal beyond the U.S. investment and tax dollar and the borrowed money that goes into these newer weapons systems, certainly the nuclear overhaul that is ongoing in our country. There's a lot of money to be made there, and there's certainly that. But what is the long-term objective? You know, if you truly, if you got the right answer or a straight answer from the neocons, it would be what they have publicly said before, the destruction of Russia as a federation, the breaking up of Russia into small countries like, for example, Ukraine,

where you can manipulate governments, where you can exploit resources, where you can use them as forward military operating bases for other activities that you may want to do. I mean, the neocons see the world as their planet, you know, and that they're in charge of it. And of course, that's not true. It's never been true. But that goal, we should debate that goal, because I think most Americans don't feel that way. But we don't get a voice. We don't get a vote in how our foreign policy evolves. But the goal, the long-term goal beyond making money is world domination. It sounds crazy, oh, world domination, but that's what it looks like. And also, Putin mentioned it in the cut there, but we are doing the same intermediate nuclear-capable missile deployment in the Pacific, aimed to help Taiwan, defend Japan,

defend South Korea, fight and control China in some ways. So why? And where's the discussion in Washington about this foreign policy? Well, there doesn't seem to be a discussion, Karen. These seem to be just decisions that are made either by the president or given his mental deficiencies by the people around him. Here's another cut from President Putin, more direct than the first one americans the europeans are pushing and pushing the ukrainians towards paying any price let me emphasize that they to pay any price to try and push our troops our soldiers out towards our border and they want to present that as some kind of a major success of 2024 uh given that uh giving the upcoming NATO Summit and then the presidential election in the United

States we'll see what happens we'll see what happens in In the recent months, the United States, Germany and Great Britain have sent 40-year-old, 40-year-old F-16s to President Zelensky. Initially, he was crowing about it. Now he says the situation is very dangerous. Cut 16, Chris. I can't for today give you details with the missions. I think you will see, maybe not all of them, but you will see the results. We will decide to comment if it was the result with F-16 or not. It's not, I mean, it's not the moment for this. I think it's very dangerous for today. We need to do all the security measures we've been discussing with our partners about using F-16s. Well, where does he stand today? I think he's probably on his last leg, whether he has these 20, 40-year-old F-16s or not. Yeah, no, these are just targets, and many of them won't, they'll be sitting targets because they're not going to be shot down in the sky. They'll be shot down where they park,

or they'll break down, won't be able to be repaired. So this is a disposal operation, both on the United States part in getting rid of our older aircraft. And that allows us to justify, it allows us to do two things, justify new purchases. And also when you don't have the old models like these are to repair, you can kind of wipe away the cost that you had, which really wasn't that profitable anymore in maintaining these aging aircraft. So it's a win-win in that regard for the Americans. It's not a win-win or even a single win for Ukraine. In fact, I don't think we've trained enough pilots of Ukrainian origin to even fly the F-16s that are promised. Now, that's not a problem because they'll use other

NATO pilots. They have plenty of NATO help and NATO will fly these if they intend to fly them, but highly vulnerable, not very effective. And also, it's an interesting thing if we can sit back and look at the military strategy here. There is no military strategy. OK, this is a war of attrition. It is a war of drones. gradual westward movement of Russian forces, gradual taking of Ukrainian, former Ukrainian villages and towns, moving slowly inexorably to the west towards Kiev and towards the other cities there and the Polish border, if they don't stop it's where it'll end up, I'm sure. So that kind of war, and certainly with the drones and the high tech that we have in these 40-year-old airplanes with maybe 30-year-old

avionics, okay, maybe they've been upgraded over time, not going to be a factor. That's not how you win a war like this. The way that Ukraine can win a war like this, there is no way, okay, because they don't have the people, they don no way, okay? Because they don't have the people, they don't have the trained soldiers, they don't have the leadership, and they don't have the logistics. And they don't even have the electrical power sources, you know? They don't have the energy, literal energy, to fight the kind of war that's being waged upon them. And it's been like this kind of from the beginning. So when we send them F-16s, we are saying, well, this is the way Americans fight wars with guys that can't really shoot too good. OK, little small countries. This is the way the great American military fights wars against small countries that don't have air forces.

I don't know, like Iraq was the two times we went in there. No Air Force at all to speak of. So a little bit of old Soviet air defenses. And we go in massively. Oh, what a great success this is. Well, that's fine for back then. You know, if you want to believe that, if you want to, you know, wave that flag, that's fine. But that is not working. It will not work and it can't work in Ukraine. That's not the same strategic tactical situation that they have. So this is just this is just eye candy. That's not the same strategic tactical situation that they have. So this is just eye candy. That's all it is. You know, it's a head scratcher because on one point, President Zelensky said today the situation is very dangerous. Yesterday, he was crowing about the F-16s in the skies. But in reality, if the United States and if NATO really think that they can use Ukraine as a battering ram with which to drive Vladimir Putin from office, it seems absurd. But this was Victoria Nuland's goal. Why are they sending junk over there? Why are they sending 40-year-old single-seat jets that nobody uses anymore? All right, before you answer, here's President Zelensky yesterday crowing that the F-16s are in the skies.

Cut number two. We had hundreds of meetings and talks to strengthen the capabilities of our aviation, to strengthen the capabilities of our air defense system, of our defense forces. We often heard, it is impossible, as an answer, but we still made our ambition, our defensive need possible. Now this is reality, reality in our skies. F-16s are in Ukraine. Of what value are they, Mr. President? I'm not sure he understands, although in the second clip,

which is made today after that one, he says the situation is dangerous. How much longer can Ukraine last, Karen? I don't think it's lasting. I don't think it's, I think it's already a done deal. I think it's over with. This is, we're in mop-up operations in terms of Ukraine. Let's hurry up and get rid of the last of our useless offensive, it's not defense, F-16 is not defensive. It's an offensive weapon in an environment where it is not going to be able to do even the least of what its mission is designed for. So this whole thing is lost. But in terms of I had to predict a month, I actually predicted a long time ago, like last I thought last fall it would be over with, and it wasn't. So I think even Zelensky understands that when the U.S. changes leadership, and that doesn't matter if it's Trump or Kamala, I think that this will be, he knows the writing's on the wall, that we're not going to support it anymore. You know, he's not paying his debts right now.

He's already said, as effective, I think, 1 August, or he's going to, he's defaulting, in effect. He's a slow rolling the default of Ukraine. And you know how many billions we've given to him. Some of it has been in cash. Lord knows where it is, but he's defaulting. So this is a government under, he's not even the currently legitimately elected leader. You know, he's kind of extra constitutionally running the country. It's the end. We're living through, we are watching the end right now. Now, could it end before while Biden is still, quote unquote, the president? It might. It might, because the Biden people may want to claim this as a win. And the question is, how do you sell that? I think the longer it goes on, the more people understand the truth about what's happening over there.

I don't see any more Ukrainian flags on my Facebook feeds anymore. You know, it's over. We don't like being losers. So how will they spin it as a win and tuck it away? Before we part ways, here's an oldie but goodie. It's a montage of a Joe Biden company saying Putin has already lost. Watch this. Win.

Yes. Putin has failed and he continues to fail. Putin has already lost. Putin's already lost the war. Putin has already lost this war. I want to say that and I want to say it loudly. Putin has already lost in terms of what he was trying to achieve. In many ways, Putin has already lost. And that is Russia has already lost this war.

In short, Russia has lost. They've lost strategically, operationally and tactically. That's the nonsense that the American government fed the American people when everybody thought that Joe Biden was compass mentis. And now, of course, we all know better just for a couple of laughs. Thank you, Karen. Thanks for your analysis. Much appreciated. Thanks for that great interview you did with the Sputnik people on the INF, scuttling the INF treaty. We'll see you next week. All the best, my friend. Okay, sure enough. Thanks, Judge. Thank you.

Coming up at 4 o'clock Eastern, Professor Jeffrey Sachs. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. I'm out.