Judging Freedom - Matthew Hoh: Only Negotiations with Teeth End War

Episode Date: March 12, 2024

Matthew Hoh: Only Negotiations with Teeth End WarSee 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, March 12th, 2024. Matt Ho joins us now. Matt, always a pleasure. Thank you very much for coming back on with us. I want to start a little bit off the beaten path, if I might. I'm sure you have opinions on this. She's been the beast in the night for those of us who believe in peace and negotiation, but Victoria Nuland is gone from the State Department. Is it your view that she jumped or she was pushed? I'm not sure, Judge. I could see arguments both ways, and I haven't seen anything that leads me to think one or the other. You know, certainly in the last month, the last year of a presidency, top officials will move on to other things. And so maybe that's part of this for her. But also with the appointment

of Kurt Campbell, with Victoria Nuland not becoming the number two at the State Department, even though she put in decades, decades of hard work, if we can call it that, in terms of assuring that she would be in that position someday, she wasn't. So I think there's there's, you know, an argument to be made that she left voluntarily. There's also argument made that that her side has lost out, that she has put this country, the West and the entire world into a precarious and increasingly unstable and dangerous position because of her policies of the last two decades. I think any objective analysis of what she stood for, what she advocated, and what she put in motion will come to any, again, detached observer as saying, wow, this is not just reckless and dangerous, but has proven incredibly counterproductive. And that, of course, goes back to whether it was her pushing for the Iraq war when she was Dick Cheney's deputy chief of staff,

or these last years, particularly these last 10 years or so, since she pushed for and saw put into place a coup and then a puppet government in Ukraine. And then, of course, 10 years of provocation or eight years of provocations that led up to Russia's invasion in 2022. So I think there's an argument made that this may have been a mixture of both, that it was clear she had to move on, and also she wanted to move on. And the opportunities for her will be there. I think, as you've noted already, Judge, she's moved on to Columbia University.

And of course, there will be no shortage of board seats at banks, at arms firms, at media companies that will be all too happy to have her as a board member. You know, I was in the Vatican last week, as we were talking about before we started, and I was with our colleague Jeff Sachs, who is, of course, a tenured professor at Columbia University and had been traveling and did not know she was going there. I can't even tell you Jeff's reaction when I told him, except to say that he has no say in matters like this he did tell me that he was certain certain that she got the job through the uh influence of her friend who teaches at columbia

who is very unpopular with grad students who are expecting a real professor and not just war stories you know of whom i speak right right and i've heard that I've heard that criticism of other former officials. And also I hear that a lot about generals and admirals. Yes. Yes. You know, that they tend just to their interest is not their interest is not, of course, educating. They have no interest in other people. They have no desire to help other people. The position is simply there. How does improve my position, my stature? I think Victoria Nuland is someone we will hear from again. I think she's only about 62 years old.

So there's plenty of life left in her. And Judge, I wouldn't be surprised if we saw her in the Trump administration. I know there's that discontent there. There's that never-Trumper spirit among a lot of people like i can tell you where she's where she's lauded because i'm a graduate of the same educational institution i am hated there and she has sam alito is hated there she is loved there at princeton university

i mean i see her praised in so many emails and Princeton publications all the time, but Mrs. Clinton probably got her a good gig just like she has. And I think you're right. She'll probably be back. I mean, she's not a Democrat. No, she's not. She started out under Republicans. But let me ask you this, and you can broaden your answer. It doesn't have to pertain just to her, Matt. Do the neocons ever admit they were wrong? No, no, no. You answer it so quickly and so certainly. Like, Judge, it just doesn't happen.

It just doesn't happen, Judge. It just doesn't. That's who these people are. And if they find any fault or any failure, it's that they weren't enough, right? They weren't neocons. They weren't being as much neocons as they could be, right? So the failure is always not enough money. The failure is not enough resources. The failure is that we didn't put enough troops on the ground. The failure is we didn't stay there long enough. You know, the failure is that we just didn't have the spirit. We were too war weary, you know, and of course, whatever I'm saying can apply to all the wars the United States has participated in, you know, through my adult lifetime.

Those are the arguments for the neoconservatives, many of whom who come out of that movement that think that the Vietnam War could have been won if only it had just been done better or there had been more time allotted or there was more money. These are people who ascribe to fantasies. They are fantasists. They are fabulous. And many of them are fools. So the idea that somehow they would recognize that they are doing something wrong or that there is something inherently incorrect in their thesis and in their theories is just something that they're incapable of. And they, of course, where they're buoyed by, Judge, you know, why they're able to where their confirmation comes from, that they are correct, where they're validated is because

they have the arms industry behind them. They have the military industrial complex behind them. So of course, you're going to feel emboldened. Of course, you're going to feel that you are on the right side of history, that your ideas are accurate when you have an entire complex that has created a whole ecosystem in this country, whether it be in think tanks, whether it be at universities, whether it be through the media, whether it be through the close relationship the military industrial complex has with, say, the banks, with the technology sector, with the fossil fuel industry. Of course, you're going to feel like you are correct when you have that degree of support behind you, and that's your foundation, when what you're going to feel like you are correct when you have that degree of support behind you.

And that's your foundation. When what you're saying and how you're acting is being underwritten. And of course, you are you are representing the viewpoints that the empire as a living organism, the empire itself wants said most. It's of the most benefit to the empire. This helps the empire maintain itself. It helps expand it, right? So you see all these reasons why they would never admit that they're wrong and also explains how they become in their positions because it becomes a self-reinforcing cycle.

This is all self-selecting. Victoria Nuland gets to her positions because of who she is and what she believes in. Someone like you or I would never be in those positions because those positions inherently, in those institutions, inherently exclude people who have the moral or intellectual decency to have honesty about such things. I mean, do they ever jump off a sinking ship? I mean, there is a theory that she recognizes that Ukraine is lost and maybe she doesn't want to be there on the day we leave Kiev like nobody wanted to be there the day we left Kabul. I don't mean physically there. She's not physically there.

But you want to understand what I'm talking about. She doesn't want this on her plate. She doesn't want to have a plate when Zelensky is either killed or flees to Miami or Paris or wherever he has a home. Right. But, you know, I think, Judge, they are very adept. They're very capable at putting the blame on others. So this was never going to be her fault. Again, this was

because the American people weren't behind it enough. This is because Ukraine, NATO, and the U.S. were stabbed in the back by Speaker Mike Johnson and the Republicans who are holding up these billions of dollars. I mean, so the idea isn't that this was an unwinnable war to begin with, that this was always going to end in this type of tragedy. The notion that somehow if you build a house of cards, it's not going to collapse, it's lost on these people because they are so convinced, they're so certain of their own righteousness that what Victoria Nuland, again, whether she's being pushed out or whether she's leaving voluntarily, she sees this as

a result of being stabbed in the back herself. Right. So, right. She is someone who had on the knight's armor. She was wearing a white hat. And here now she is the one who has become a victim when all she was trying to do was continue with the arc of justice and righteousness that she believes the United States exudes through its empire, you know, globally. You have written that if the 61 billion passes, about 40 billion of it stays right here, goes right to the U.S. and $20 billion is in either cash or equipment that's a surplus that we have that we can send over there. And you also mentioned Mike Johnson. I'm of the view that the Speaker of the House will cave and will permit a vote on the floor of the House and the $61 billion will pass. I don't think it's in his constitution to keep his finger in the dike, so to speak.

And if you watch him, we'll play a clip for you in a minute. If you watch him at President Biden's State of the Union, when President Biden was talking about, we can't leave Ukraine, we can't desert Ukraine, Vice President Harris stands up and applauds. Mike Johnson's not going to stand up and applaud, but he's going like this. He's nodding his head as if there is some agreement. As we saw, if you didn't know beforehand, as we saw during the State of the Union,

the Speaker does not have the best poker face that we've seen sit behind the President before. Let's watch. Here he is saying Ukraine can stop Putin. There are no Americans, soldiers at war who are in Ukraine. I'll ask you about this in a minute. Sonia, cut number five. Ukraine can stop Putin if we stand with Ukraine and provide the weapons that needs to defend itself. That is all. That is all Ukraine is asking.

They're not asking for American soldiers. In fact, there are no American soldiers in the war in Ukraine, and I'm determined to keep it that way. Okay, so we saw Mike Johnson nodding his head. He doesn't have a poker face. Kevin McCarthy was better at that. It's also hard. It's hard just to get back to that money.

Again, $61 billion, about $40 billion will go to the arms companies. And this information comes from Stephen Semler, who was the Security Reform Policy Institute. But it's hard to imagine the weapons companies not getting that money. Right. You know, I mean, that's the political setup we have. And so the pressure on the speaker for a number of different reasons, but also to the fact that the weapons company and then they, by association, the banks are not going to get that money. And when you look at the whole, that whole foreign war supplemental, that whole money for Taiwan, for Israel, and for Ukraine, you're talking about $95 billion. So that total that

would actually go to the American weapons companies, plus the banks as well, you're talking about $60 billion, actually. So it's hard to see how the American military industrial complex is not going to get that money with everything we know about how it's operated since World War II. Mike, you have written about this better than anybody and know far more about it than I do. But that money will go from the federal treasury to the military industrial complex. The executives of the military industrial complex are handsomely compensated, and they'll put millions into Republican PACs. They'll also put millions into Democratic PACs.

So they all sort of feed each other. Mike Johnson knows that if he dries up money for Republican PACs, political action conferences, he won't be speaker much longer. He'll just be Congressman Mike Johnson from somewhere in Louisiana. That's right. And the amount of money, just as defend the U.S. from Russia. Right. I mean, so, yeah, I mean, the levels of all this. And then you see it in other ways, too, where this money just spreads out. So Victoria Nuland, of course, is going to Columbia University. Columbia, like pretty much every major university in the United States, receives millions upon millions of dollars every year from the Pentagon. They're a part of this military industrial complex just as much as General Dynamics or Northrop is. But then also too, Victoria Nuland will be part of, just say, or maybe she will join,

an organization like West Exec Advisors, which was Tony Blinken's firm that goes around selling weapons. I mean, so there's all kinds of opportunities here for the loyal servants, those who did well for the military industrial complex, to be rewarded just as there's opportunities for those who don't go along with it to be rewarded just as there's opportunities for those who don't go along with it to be punished. So the political pressure here is very real. And this is what keeps the war machine rolling. And as people probably saw, this is why next year, the budget for the Pentagon is going to be at a minimum $895 billion. So $900 billion, essentially, I'm saying at a minimum because what the Pentagon

does when they put forward their budget, just to get in the weeds a little bit about this, when you see this budget and it says, well, they're not getting as much money as they want or they need. Where they cut the money from, they cut it from buying things like submarines and F-35s so that when this budget request gets to Congress, the Congress people say, well, we can't have that. The tires for the F-35 are made in my district. I have to, right? So we need more F-35s. So we're going to see a budget well over $900 billion this year for the Pentagon. And this is how it all keeps going. As we used to say in the Marine Corps, you know, these people are riding the gravy train with biscuit wheels. All right. I want to ask you about what the president

could possibly have meant when he said there are no American war soldiers who are in Ukraine, but there is some breaking news and it is right exactly what we're talking about, Matt. This will not surprise you. The Defense Department just found $300 million. It just found $300 million. It just found $300 million on Tuesday afternoon. That's today. This is five minutes old. After months of saying there's no money left, and officials are shipping this stuff right out to Ukraine.

The new package includes artillery, ammunition, anti-aircraft missiles, and anti-armor systems. How could the federal government just have found $300 million in military equipment, Matthew? Who could take this seriously? Well, I guess, Judge, you know what? In some ways, we can take it seriously because the Pentagon has never passed an audit. Just this past year, the Marine Corps became the first branch to ever pass an audit. So it's just not the entire DOD that doesn't know where their money is. The branches themselves don't know where their money is.

Not just their money. They don't even know where their buildings are. It's not even like talk about the ships and the planes. We thought there were 50 planes here, but there's 40 over here. No, they don't even know where their buildings are. I mean, so the fact that they found this money, okay, I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt because they are, it is so screwed up. It is so corrupt. It is so rotten. It is so incompetent that yeah, I believe that the money goes missing, you know, never, you know, for reasons of both

incompetence and negligence and of course corruption. But the timing, of course, Judge, the timing is just impeccable. It's perfect. And, yeah, I mean, the idea that we're supposed to just take this and understand it as just a simple, honest mistake, you know, this is the ghastliness of it. This is the horror of it because that $300 million that was just found, that's going to prolong a war that is unwinnable, that is seeing entire, you know, just the suffering, the destruction, the horror of it. So you look at this and you say, my God, the ghastliness of it all.

And where is this going towards? You know, what is this propelling us towards? It's propelling us to, you know, a less certain, more unstable, very risky future where the dangers of escalation, of course, are something we talk about quite a bit because we should, because the dangers of escalation are very severe and very real. Sonia, play cut number five again. And Matt, I want you to listen to carefully what the president says at the at the end about soldiers of war. And then I'm going to ask you what that is. Ukraine can stop Putin if we stand with Ukraine and provide the weapons that needs to defend itself. That is all. That is all Ukraine is asking. They're not asking for American soldiers.

In fact, there are no American soldiers in war in Ukraine, and I'm determined to keep it that way. What is he talking about when he says soldiers of war? Are there soldiers there out of uniform, not subject to a chain of command, but they're on-duty soldiers of the Marine Corps or the United States Army on the ground? Yes, there are. We know this from the Discord leaks last year. We know this because the Polish foreign minister, Sikorski, just said this just yesterday, that there are NATO troops in the U.S. And so, I mean, there's various types of armed forces that are there, of people participating in the war on behalf of Ukraine from the U.S., from the U.K., from Europe.

And some of them are special operations and CIA. So they don't count. They're not acknowledged. They are they're clandestine in a sense that they're never to be acknowledged, never to be known about. And some of them, I believe, are actually quite close to the fighting. I don't think they're pulling triggers, but they're certainly involved in directing Ukrainian operations. Then there's then there's a contingent of NATO troops, including Americans that are undoubtedly there, who are there to advise, who are there to coordinate logistics, who are there to do training.

And then the big thing, though, in addition, you have the contractors, mercenaries, vendors, whatever you want to call them. That's the biggest component here. And that's the one that's least talked about. The United States and NATO provided many different types of weapons systems to Ukraine that Ukraine cannot operate without the assistance of these contractors. The contractors are needed to maintain the systems. They're needed to help operate the systems. They're needed to train Ukrainians how to operate and maintain the

systems. So there's a very large contingent of Western forces, NATO troops, US troops, contractors, special operations, and intelligence service folks who are there, who are enabling the Ukrainian army to fight in a way that if they weren't there, it would cause a severe, the Ukrainians would be even further on their back foot than they are now. And this is the method, this is the way of American warfare. There are 7,000 American soldiers, troops killed in the Iraq and Afghan wars. What most people don't realize is that there are 8,000 contractors killed in those wars. And those contractors were all men and women, many of them Americans, who were killed doing jobs in those wars that in any previous American war,

they would have been wearing an American military uniform. So this is one of the ways that both in our direct wars and our proxy wars, the United States hides not just the cost of the war, but also the overall size of it, its commitment, how much it's contributing to. So certainly there are U.S. forces there, whether they're recognized or not, and they're not recognized, obviously. But in terms of what's to come, though, and the beating of the drum that we've seen, Judge, these last couple of weeks, whether it's coming from the French, from the polls, you know, in terms of sending troops directly to pay attention to it because just like we saw with all these weapon systems and they all kind of got phased in all these wonder weapons, whether it was the HIMARS and then it was the Abrams tanks and the F-16s, there's always an escalation to this, right? So you have contractors there and then that's not enough. So you have contractors there and that's not enough. So you have troops in western Ukraine doing maintenance, doing logistics, performing liaison roles, and that's not enough.

So then you go, you move them forward and fire support roles. Right. I mean, you can see how this grows, how this how this you know, the phrase from the U.S. military is mission creep, how just day by day it expands because of the inertia of what you're involved with here. And I think it's a good time to remind everybody, everyone who thinks that they are somehow going to make war their agent, history usually shows that war makes those types of people its agent, right? And so you think you can control this force of war, and what becomes is you become the agent of the war, and the war exists for its own purposes and just continues to expand, chewing up more and more and more. So how much longer do you think the Ukraine war

can go on? First, without the additional $60 billion, $40 of which is going to stay in the U.S. And second, if Mike Johnson develops a backbone and the Ukrainians don't get it. Ritter and Larry Johnson think it's over by Labor Day if no additional aid arrives, because really what they need are human beings. Right. I'm not going to find them where they can keep drafting all the 17 year olds and 60 year olds they want. That's not a fighting force. Yeah. I think we have to remember, Judge, that it's not Putin's goal. It's not Russia's goal to conquer all of Ukraine. Correct. Right. I mean, so his goal, he's practically there. Exactly.

Exactly. So the idea that you're going to, unless there is some type of collapse, and unless there's some type of change in the Russian thinking on this, you're not going to see Russian troops sweeping into Kiev. That would be a huge mistake, and it's not something that they want. So I think that if the money doesn't show up, though, what you have, because so much of this money is not just purposed for providing ammunition, for providing weapon systems, right, for supporting the actual battles, the war effort. So much of the money is also purposed for keeping the government afloat, keeping the economy from collapsing. So the United States and Europe, along with other

nations like Japan, are the ones that are keeping this balloon inflated. And so if this $60 billion does not show up, what you have, and it's not even a sentence, Judge, of that the money doesn't arrive and the bank accounts eventually go to dry and they're unable to pay their bills and that precipitates the collapse. It's just even if this bill is not a pass, if this money is not put forward by the Congress, there's a very real chance that you could have a panic in Ukraine, right? Just like a bank run, right? Where you have this panic where this house of cards is starting collapse. And it's such a corrupt system.

This also is another aspect of the American way of warfare, right? Create these house of cards in the most corrupt places we can find, like Afghanistan or Iraq. You know what I mean? So in Ukraine, which is the most corrupt nation in Europe. So you have basically a system that's a patronage network, a corrupt pyramid. If the money starts coming in from the top, well, the money doesn't start, the money does not continue to go, you know, trickle down below. People start to panic. And then you start seeing things like people like, say, Zelensky going to his condo in Miami. Right. Right. I mean, so you have the danger is his panic. And so you could have potentially this type of thing happen sooner than Labor Day. I also think, though, I mean, my opinion is that if nothing changes, if they get their money, which I think they will for the reasons we explained earlier, that year from now, you and I are going to be having this same conversation,

right? Because I think the war is at a point where, again, the Russians don't want to advance much further. They don't have the desire to conquer Ukraine in a World War II style manner, you're right, where you've completely subjugated a country, completely defeated it, taken over all its territory, raised your flag over its capital. That's not what their intent is. So I think that this time next year, if the Ukrainians get their money, we will be in more or less the same position. Now, of course, there's things that could intercede on that. The Ukrainians could continue to make these incredibly stupid strategic decisions, whether it's things, you know, like defending Bakhmut like they did

last year, whether it's launching the counteroffensive like they did last year, whether it's like, as we discussed like a week or two ago, Judge, not building the necessary defensive lines, not having the fortifications that any competent military. So Ukraine continues to do those types of operational, strategic, be negligent in the manner they have been. That's one thing. Another thing could be the U.S. presidential election, you know, and whether or not a Trump presidency would see an end to this thing.

I don't know. I mean, I'm really agnostic on that. But I think, Judge, yeah, you know, all that said, if they don't get the money, they're in very, very dangerous places. And it's not anything – this is what's so terrible about it all. This is not anything that we can cheer on because if they don't get the money, they collapse. And that collapse then means a lot more refugees coming out of Ukraine. Ukraine truly is a failed and broken state. And then you have also the dangers of, okay, now does Poland and

Romania push into Ukraine? I mean, so the idea of the Ukraine government collapsing is a nightmare as much as any other aspect of this war is a nightmare. And this is what people like Victoria Nuland, Tony Blinken, Joe Biden have put us in. These are the options that they've given the world, basically. Matt Ho, thank you very much. A great analysis, my dear friend. We'll keep monitoring this. But what is most precious to me in the past 30 minutes is the look on your face when I announced that the Defense Department found 300 million bucks. And the equipment is already on its way.

You can't make this stuff up. Only in America. We'll chat with you next week. All the best. All right. Thanks, George. Of course. Coming up at 3 o'clock Eastern today,

Karen Kwiatkowski on some thoughts on American involvement in genocide. Justin Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.