Judging Freedom - Matt Hoh: US Is a Dying Empire

Episode Date: July 2, 2024

Matt Hoh: US Is a Dying EmpireSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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. so Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, July 2nd, 2024. Matt Ho joins us now. Matt, a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you for joining us as always. In your view, does the Kremlin truly believe that the deaths of Russian innocents on a beach in Sevastopol was caused by the United States?

Well, thanks for having me on, Judge. First, congratulations. I just saw that the banner there, 400,000 subscribers on YouTube, that's absolutely fantastic. And you're making a lot of people upset in the political world and the corporate media because you're allowing people like me and the great stable you have of folks who can come on here and speak freely, speak openly, and speak in a manner that goes against the narrative of the empire. So I have a great team to work with. We expanded that stable today, and you may know the person with whom we expanded it. Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, former U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Charles Freeman. Oh, good God.

Yes, absolutely. Great. Absolutely fabulous. When I mentioned his name to Ritter, Ritter reacted like you basically said, what took you so long? Yo, Chad. Chris found Ambassador Freeman. Turns out he's been watching the show. He knows almost all of you and gave an unbelievable analysis of the problems that the Israelis have. Nearly all of them self-inflicted. Yeah, Chas Friedman is absolutely terrific. His record, his accomplishment,

the work he has done post-government career, just the way he articulates and explains things is only matched in the honor that he does sell. Right. So what a great addition, Judge. Congratulations. That's really terrific. With with regards to so going back to the question you asked. Yeah. Yeah. Well, they certainly are saying that they certainly are saying that they have have made it very clear that they view the United States as being the ones who are responsible for those deaths on that beach in Crimea, including of children. I don't think they are going to do something rash or reckless or stupid as maybe we would do in the United States, but they are ratcheting it up a level. And what that looks like is, I think we've already seen in the sense that the Kremlin announced that their

moratorium on intermediate nuclear missiles has come to an end. So if we go back to the Trump administration, when the United States unilaterally abandons the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Agreement on just false reasons, the Russians respond by saying, well, we are still going to, we're not going to proceed with this. We're going to have a moratorium on our intermediate nuclear weapons, even as the United States goes forward with theirs. The United States has. We have sent those weapons to Denmark. We have sent those weapons to the Philippines. The Marine Corps now actually possesses those weapons, ground-based launch Tomahawk cruise missiles, right? running throughout the American imperial machine, if you will, if the Marines are in possession of these types of weapons now. But the Kremlin, the Russians said, we're not going to do anything with this. And for five years, they've held off. And now just one example of how this has taken a

step forward. This conflict, this war between the U.S. and Russia has taken a step forward. And we keep saying it every week, Judge. We keep saying the same thing to each other. This is not the place we want to be. This is what we've been arguing against. This is what we've been calling for us to avoid. So why did Mike Pompeo talk Donald Trump into abrogating the treaty in 2019? Because they didn't trust the Russians when it turns out we

were the ones violating it? Well, it has to do with their just general disdain for arms control. There's just general disdain for any type of international treaties in general. Another factor is, of course, the military industrial complex that wants to build more of these weapons, wants to sell more of these weapons. Certainly, United States will not be the only ones who possess these weapons. This will expand to other nations that are part of the military arm of our empire. But when you look at who really was this geared towards, this was not geared so much towards the Russians, this desire for new and improved and better intermediate range nuclear weapons by the U.S. It was geared towards the Chinese.

So this is why the Marines have them, because they want the Marines to have the ability to fire these Tomahawks from northern Philippines, say, which is where they've been based already, into the southern parts of China, the eastern parts of China against Chinese targets, say, in and around Taiwan or Chinese facilities that would be supporting you. So listen to this. This is President Putin. We're going to play the clip who talks about these missiles being in Denmark, aimed at Russia, and in the Philippines aimed at China.

My question is going to be, are the Americans crazy? Chris, cut number one. 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. I would imagine President Xi is making similar comments, though, knowing the Chinese not in public. Right. Yeah. I mean, if this all sounds familiar to people, it should be. This was the basis of the Cuban Missile Crisis. You know, Judge, you can have Jeff Sachs or Ray McGovern talk to this, you know, talk about this much better than literally almost anyone else in the world. But, you know, this this was the genesis of this was the foundation of that near nuclear war that happened, you know, 62 years ago. This idea that the United States put intermediate range nuclear weapons into Turkey, and the Russians responded, the Soviets responded by putting them into Cuba. And I mean, it's essentially what Vladimir Putin is saying here, what the Russians

are saying. We are going to begin production of our newest intermediate range weapons, and we will put them in places that endanger the United States and its interests. And now we have to remember as well that we have what just two or three weeks ago, Vladimir Putin and his folks. You know, I mean, we say this all the time. We talk about Russia as if Putin is the only person. He is certainly at the top there, Russia. He is in command. But there are certainly many other people involved in all this. But, you know, you have throughout the Russian hierarchy this insistence that, OK, you know, from statements a few weeks ago, that we are now going to be providing weapons to those who the United States is fighting and its allies are fighting around the world. So at what point do we get to this point where you start seeing, say, the easiest idea being, of course, the Yemenis, the Houthis,

Ansar Allah, in possession of some of the newest Russian missile systems, missile systems that have been proven in Ukraine that are able to defeat the Western defenses arrayed against them. So how long until the American Navy, which has been wasting about a billion dollars in missiles and bombs, trying to defeat the Yemenis in the Red Sea, failing because Red Sea's traffic is still only a quarter of what it was 10 months ago? At what point do we see the Houthis then have, uh, the, these missile systems that can defeat American naval defenses and we lose a frigate, we lose a destroyer, we lose our, one of our carriers, 5,000 young men and women into the Red Sea. At what point do we see that? And then of course, that is then this point that we are at where you can imagine what the American response could be.

So this is why we keep saying this, you know, do everything you can, do everything we can to avert this. Now, what the really horrible thing as an American is, is that we are sitting here betting that the Russians, the Chinese eventually, because again, this is this whole intermediate nuclear weapons experience that we're going through right now is predicated on Trump's antipathy against the Chinese, right? But we are betting essentially that the Russians, the Chinese, whoever, have the strategic patience, they have the wisdom, they have the maturity not to react in a way that is going to make things worse. There's some, I am a bit confident in that because these are men who have come to power in ways that are different than the

way our politicians have come to power. We have men and women in charge in the West who have come to power through corrupt and rigged elections, right? So, you know, through corrupt and rigged political systems, electoral systems that are essentially legalized bribery. Those are the men and women we have in charge. So their decision making is already compromised. They are corrupted individuals regardless. So here we are as Americans coming up on the 4th of July, of course, sitting here hoping that our adversaries have the maturity, the wisdom, the forethought not to act as our leaders will. Is the United States a dying empire? Oh, absolutely. There's a poll, Judge. There is a poll of the youngest Americans,

Gen Z and millennials, done a month or so ago. And I forget which polling firm it was. But the pollster who put together this poll, what he came away with, what his talking point was, was that younger American generations view the United States as a dying empire led by bad people. I mean, you couldn't come up with a better explanation for the United States that we are living and breathing in today. And we are a dying empire. And a dying empire is incredibly dangerous. You know, I may have said to you last week or before, I was reminded of the phrase, a dying mule kicks hardest, right? And that's what I am afraid of with the American empire, that as the American empire crumbles,

as it devolves, as things slip away from it, it will react desperately. It will react in fits of rage. It will go into incredibly reckless and risky gambits to preserve the empire ad, to maintain its status quo, to hold on to what it's losing. And of course, no American president can ever lose something again. I mean, certainly we lost 55,000 young men in Vietnam because Lyndon Johnson didn't want to be accused of losing Vietnam the way that China was lost, supposedly, in the 40s, right? I mean, so you have this history. We can look back and see what decisions we've made when our empire has been strong or empire has not been threatened. And we see the kind of decision making the empire makes then. Now we look at and see how it's going

to, what are we up against? What are we looking forward to in a dying empire? And I'm very, very afraid of what's to come. and partially take control of 12 military bases in Finland, right along the Finnish-Russian border. I mean, imagine if the Russians were in Guadalajara, I mean, in Mexico, aimed at Dallas or Chicago. How would we expect them to react? How would we react? One of those bases is 20 miles from the Russian border. And I spoke with a friend of mine in Finland who lives not far from that border just about a week and a half ago. And he's been there for, you know, he's married to a Finnish woman. He's been there for a very, very long time. And he has seen the change.

I mean, when I was I was lost in Finland in 2011. And there was that idea of Finland joining NATO. And there was that segment of the population and those in political power who saw to their advantage this getting good with the American empire. But in the last several years, a fever has gripped that population there that when Finland joined NATO, just as Sweden did, the support for them joining was nearly unanimous within their parliaments. I mean, there is a war fever, a dementia that has been stoked deliberately in these countries to cause people to lose sight of rationality, of reason, and to see a boogeyman on the other side of their border. So, I mean, essentially, the history is there to allow for that narrative to hold, history within living experience still, actually, living history. But I mean, certainly where we are at now, where you had essentially a demilitarized, there is a fence there, there are border guards. It wasn't an open border

between Finland and Russia, though I think there are parts to allow for the indigenous people to go through. But while you had a reasonable border between the two countries. Now you have in Europe an 800 mile long militarized border. And the Russians are responding by increasing their military presence on that border. I believe they're essentially putting a core of troops up there. So essentially two to three divisions of mechanized infantry and armor along the border. You had, of course, now this this as we were just talking about before, this increase or the resumption of Russian production of intermediate nuclear nuclear missiles, intermediate range nuclear missiles. continues this escalatory trajectory we're on, is to be terrifying to everybody. And cheering that we have militarized the border that wasn't militarized, that we have opened up 12 or 15 or how many bases in previously neutral Finland may be seen as a whim for the empire, but where does

that get us? What does that bring next? How do the Russians respond? And building these camps, you know, bringing in what few nations remaining that will join us into our empire at the expense of losing the rest of the world, as we have seen continuously over, you know, over this century, you know, we're now almost a quarter way through this century, Judge. So where does this go? What possible good can come out of this? This idea of a militarized border with Finland and Russia, the best possible circumstance you're looking at is Cold War II. That's the best. And anyone who wants to go back to that needs to have their head examined. Who has the stronger military, Russia or the United States? Well, certainly the Russians have a military force that has been proven in battle now,

that's been tested, experienced in the most severe and serious conventional war of the last 80 years. We have seen that the Russians have issues with corruption. We have seen that they have issues with their command staff. Certainly, we saw a year or so ago the mutiny by the Wagner forces. I mean, there are issues and troubles there. But what people should also look at has been the Russian response. So the ability of the Russians to correct their issues, the ability of the Russians to correct their deficiencies. In the contrast, you look at the way that the American response, say, to the Ukraine war has been to reward corruption in Ukraine. It's been to not correct the deficiencies in Ukrainian combat leadership, but again, to reward those deficiencies, just to send in one piece of equipment,

one piece of kit, one weapon system after another that doesn't live up to its hype, and then not do anything about it, just ratchet it up and say, okay, this bigger, longer ranged, more powerful weapon is the solution. And then that of course fizzles and doesn't produce the, it's not the wonder weapon we were told it would be. It's okay, now it's going to be something else. So we've all seen that, right? We've seen the Abrams tanks, the HIMARS, the ATAKOMs, now it's the F-16s are going to win the war. That has been the American leadership in this war. So when you want to talk about comparing and contrasting Russian military versus the American military, you have

to look at who are the men and women in charge? How are they making decisions? What decisions have they made over the last several years? And how do they then adjust to the reality on the ground? And when you look at it that way, you know, I don't have the knowledge. I mean, Scott or Doug McGregor certainly can talk about it better in terms of the actual weapon systems than I can. But if you look at the leadership involved here, including the political leadership, you would have to say my money would be on Russia, even though the Americans on paper should, of course, dominate Russia just by the size of everything. Russia and China. If you were Senator Ho from North Carolina, in my dreams, but maybe it'll happen, would you vote in favor of the $886 billion National Defense Authorization Act?

My arm would get so tired from like giving a thumbs down. I mean, just I would end up having like some type of issue with my wrist and my thumb, you know, kind of reverse of what the video gamers get. So what becomes of $886 billion in peacetime when other countries are spending a fraction of that and their military is their militaries are more efficient? That's that's what you look at too, right? So we talked about the leadership and then you look at the, say that the, well, there's all kinds of ways we can go down this path comparing the two, but say with the economics, the finances of it, one, we're of course, putting ourselves into an incredible amount of debt that I don't think anyone's ever, ever conceived would be possible. So even if that

doesn't have a real consequence on the economy, the consequence it has on our minds, how we envision things, how we understand things is all that matters. Our perception is reality and living as a nation in $34 trillion in debt, regardless of the real economic consequences, that's enough, just the perception, understanding of that debt. So that alone puts us in a place where how do we go to war with another nation like Russia? But our economic, the economics, the military industrial complex, it's so corrupt. We are spending hundreds and hundreds of billion dollars on weapon systems that fail, that don't deliver what they're exposed to, that don't perform. You look at, say, the F-35, which is going to cost

almost $2 trillion over its lifetime, about, well, about $100 million per plane. And on a daily basis, half of them could not work in combat. If you use a more stringer requirement, full mission capability, you're looking at the Air Force's version being at about 35% readiness, the Marine Corps version being about 19% in readiness, and the Navy's readiness rate for their F-35, their full mission capability rate, is 14%. Oh, my God. And what do those babies cost each? About $100 million. And only-

I mean, so I mean, so now here's one example. We could talk about the Army, its weapon systems, how they, in 40 years, they've been unable to produce a successor to the Apache helicopter, the Blackhawk helicopter, to the Abrams tank, to the Bradley. I mean, like we can go on. There's no self-propelled artillery. There's some rocket systems. But I mean, like the whole idea of, you know, what is actually our military and the industrial base, the military industrial complex that supports it,

able to do in real terms and actually a war. When you look at it, my God, we wouldn't make it a week or two before we ran out of our own stores, our own inventory, and we have no industrial base to produce more, let alone weapon systems that will actually work in combat, as we have seen in Ukraine over and over again. I mean, you have an issue where the United States drones, these switchblade drones, which was one of the first drones that were supposed to win the war, were first weapon systems that were supposed to win the war for Ukraine. The switchblades cost $50,000 or $75,000 a piece. They don't work. The Ukrainians stopped using them.

They basically said, don't send us any more of these. And roughly half of the Ukrainian drones that are being used in combat against Russia come from China. I mean, so the Ukrainians are and you can argue one of the key things that's keeping Ukraine in the war is their drones, are their ability to use drones in a way that hinders Russia's ability to mass forces, right, to do any type of mobile warfare. And half of that drone fleet is coming from China. And people here are saying we're going to fight a war not just against Russia, but also China and win. And we're going to help Israel defeat Iran as well. I mean, these are the people. This is not just people talking on the Internet, Judge. These are people who are in power. These are people in the U.S. Senate. These are people in the Pentagon. These are people in the White House. This is John Bolton and Lindsey Graham.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And it's both sides. This is Nikki Haley and Tom Cotton, two people who are very likely to be in the Donald Trump administration, right, in positions regarding the military or intelligence or foreign policy. I mean, this is the thought that's out there, the United States can win these wars. The president himself has said it over and over again, hey, we're the United States. Of course we can win this war. I mean, so this type of thinking is what's the most dangerous idea, the reason why we would lose in a conflict in Russia and China. And I'm so certain we would lose is because you can next time you have Larry Wilkerson on, Judge, ask Larry, because Larry still takes part in war games. He's still involved in that. And we lose that. Thank God that someone like him, they actually still bring in. I don't know why, but they still bring them in.

And Larry will tell you, Judge, that in these war games, it almost always goes nuclear. So it doesn't matter. It really doesn't matter because decision-making is such that it leads down a pathway where it becomes nuclear. But this idea of a war against China, against Russia, when we can't even recruit enough troops in peacetime, when we can't build enough ships, let alone if we could build those ships, we don't have the sailors to man them. I mean, so this idea is just absolute

fantasy. And this is something that, you know, one of my favorite political commentators, you know, modern American philosophers, or he was a social scientist, I guess, a guy named C. Wright Mills, who was in the 50s and who really was one of the first to stand up against the Cold War and say this was madness. You know, C. Wright Mills called these people crackpot realists. And that's essentially what they are. They're crackpots claiming that their their understanding of reality, which is completely absurd and upside down, is the reality to which we should be responding. Matt, you're a great man, and your analysis is extraordinary, and we could go on and on and on.

We'll continue the conversation next week. Happy Independence Day to you. It means we are independent from Great Britain, but we're not independent from Washington. No, no. Which is worse, to be ruled by one tyrant 3,000 miles away or 3,000 tyrants a mile away? Yeah. The American Revolution.

We're stuck with it. Yeah, that idea of, well, at least he's our tyrant. That really doesn't sit that well, right? But happy Fourth of July to you, Judge, to Chris and Sonja, to everyone watching. Please, watching and listening, please be safe. And yeah, and to our friends in England, enjoy work on Thursday. Right. And vote it. It doesn't matter who you vote for. Yes. Tweedledee and Tweedledum. But if you're in there, if you're in there, if you're in their districts or whatever they call them, vote for Galloway, vote for Murray.

Uh, you know, uh, you know, there are these are these they've got some they've got some really great people who might be able to make a difference over there george galloway craig murray being at the top of that list they they will certainly drive the new prime minister crazy or give him give him pause from now now and again thank you matt all the best to you my friend thanks judge okay great conversation even though the subject matter is dreadful. Three o'clock, Karen Kwiatkowski. A full day tomorrow. I'll go through it at the end of Karen's segment. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. We'll see you next time. 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.