Judging Freedom - New Alliances Shaping Our World w/Matthew Hoh fmr State Dept

Episode Date: September 6, 2023

New Alliances Shaping Our World w/Matthew Hoh fmr State DeptSee 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 Wednesday, September 6th. Where does the summer go? 2023. Matthew Ho joins us now. Matt, always a pleasure. Thank you for coming back to the show. A number of things happened over the Labor Day weekend. The Russians and the North Koreans announced that Chairman Kim Jong-un will meet President Putin in a very public meeting in Vladivostok, Russia later this month. The Russians revealed the nature of $100 billion, with a B, in cash and armaments from the United States alone, whose government is notoriously corrupt, not a peep about his firing, and is being replaced by a financial guy with no military experience. What's your take on this, Matthew?

I don't think it's good to see you, Judge, and thanks for having me back on. I don't think many people are surprised that they fired him and that he's resigning, however the spin is going to be about why he's leaving. The thing to me that's surprising, and maybe it shouldn't be surprising, maybe I should be more cynical, right, is that the dots aren't being connected in any type of glaring way. This is a smoking gun, if you will. You have the defense minister of a country that the United States has provided over $100 billion of weapons, material, money to for its proxy war. They have just gone.

They're now entering the fourth month of a campaign, of offensive that has failed to live up to all its promises, the predictions, the hype, as well as this is a country, Ukraine, that has been awash in corruption since it's become a country. And it is the graft, the deal making, the American secretary of state, shows up in Ukraine to give a billion dollars to another billion dollars to Ukraine. And this is not being made more of a deal of that. Again, lights aren't going off. Horns aren't sounding. You know, I certainly remember when when Donald Rumsfeld, say, was forced to resign following the 2006 midterms. I mean, there were I mean, the commentary on it was extensive about how this proves the failure of Bush's policies. This proves where the American public wants the nation to go, et cetera, et cetera. You don't see that type of commentary. I looked in The New York Times today about Blinken's visit,

and there's two sentences dedicated to this. As we speak, Secretary Blinken is in Kiev publicly and symbolically handing President Zelensky a check for a billion dollars. How do you think this comes off in Moscow. Right. I mean, I think I guess if you're searching for if you're searching to spin this, you would say that this is a billion dollars being provided on the condition that this firing took place, that we're not going to give you any more money unless you start cleaning house. And I'd like to think that. But both you and I know that's not what happened here. And the extent, again, that the American media, the chattering classes, the punditry are not saying, look, you know, this reminds me of The Wizard of Oz. Pay no attention to the man behind right behind the door, behind the screen, because we don't want to see, we don't want to talk about what's really going on here. And I think how it then plays in Moscow, of course, is that further reinforces Moscow's understanding of this war, understanding that, one, the American media is

going to go along with whatever's in the best interest of the pro-war narrative, but then also, too, understanding that the American government is going to continue to turn a blind eye, not just turn a blind eye, continue to throw billions of dollars into this war, regardless of what occurs in Ukraine, rather on the political front or on the military front. Is anybody, with the exception of the Wall Street Journal, which has one source for its claim that the Ukrainians have breached the first of the three Russian rings of defense, and no one else is going for this. But does anyone believe that the spring and summer offenses were successful at all? Is anybody in the West still saying that Ukraine is going to win and the offenses were successful,

the offensive movements were successful? You see this drumbeat, this construction and sustaining of the narrative that the war was successful or war is being successful in Ukraine. And I'll refer back to an interview you did a few days ago with Scott Horton, where Scott talks about how the White House has made the decision that we can't lose this war before the election. And I think whereas a month or two ago, we saw commentary about negotiations, about how this thing is failing, how there needs to be a plan B, how there may be a frozen conflict, all those how we can't how we can't predict the future, how we're not going to handicap the war. I think I'm quoting or paraphrasing Jake Sullivan. Go ahead. Exactly right. And that's all seemingly

disappeared. It seems as if the White House has made a decision that this is a war that they want to keep going through the elections for their in their political calculation. It's better to be fighting this war than being being called losers or being considered weak or being deemed incompetent. So I think what you're seeing is this drumbeat. And in that New York Times article I just referenced about Tony Blinken arriving in Kyiv, well before you get to the point about Reznikov being fired, you have a whole section there about how successful the counteroffensive has become and how they're making steady progress. And I believe it was on Saturday I read a Wall Street Journal story as well

that described the last three months. It's been more than three months now. This offensive started June 4th of how it's been steady progress, you know, as if this is, you know, the imagery, the illusion being that, you know, something is being hammered out here. It's just continual pressure that eventually the Russians will crack. And we see no signs of that. And at best, we can understand if they have reached the first line, they've reached it, that this has been done by infantry, not by their mechanized forces. It's very limited. It's in one small area along the 600 mile long front. The breach is probably less than a kilometer along that, you know, 900 kilometer front. So, you know, the idea that this is somehow an indicator of success. Is it better than no gains?

Is the fact that they've gained 10 kilometers better than no kilometers? Sure. But at this point, you're, you know, the the the arguments for it are really just putting your head in the sand. You know, the typical arrogance you see, you know, and I would refer people to Scott Ritter's sub stack where he just posted recently a debate between him and a former American official on status of arms control. And the title is really the title was Who, who's to blame for the failure of arms control over the last decades, Russia or the US. And Scott gets into a very historical evidence-based approach. And his opponent in the debate is a former American official,

who is just the exact figure of what it's like talking to people in Washington, D.C. The arrogance, the hubris, if something is not in line with their way of view or their way of the world or their view of the world, they just choose to ignore it. If you present something that's uncomfortable to them, they accuse you of having some type of agenda, of being sponsored by a foreign power, of not being serious, et cetera, et cetera. And I refer people to that article by Scott because it really shows the mouthpiece for CIA and MI6 and various other intelligence agencies. But here's somebody who sees right through this. Here's Dmitry Peskov, President, Putin's spokesperson. Earlier today, I will read this.

We have the English translation. We have heard repeated statements that Americans intend to continue to help Kiev for as long as it takes. Now, he said this while Tony Blinken was there in Kiev. In other words, they are going to continue to support Ukraine in a state of war and to wage this war to the last Ukrainian, sparing no money for this. That's how we perceive it. We know it. It's not going to affect the course of the special military operation. Surprised that they know exactly what's going on? You know, one of the best sources of intelligence is open source intelligence, right? And I've known plenty of people in the intelligence community who say, you know, reading the newspapers is probably the best way of learning what's going on,

as long as you're approaching it in a, you know, not with confirmation bias and like a cogent matter, you're reading all kinds of different sources. But, you know, this understanding of who we are as a nation and how we are waging this proxy war is clear to everyone who wants to accept it. The only people who don't accept it are those who want to believe in some fantasy that this is some kind of morality tale, that this is some kind of Manicheven battle of good versus evil. And I think what Peskov is saying here is that, look, we see what you're doing. We understand what you're doing. What you do shapes what we do, just as how what we do should shape what you do. Right. And that's the problem we have is that the Russians at least

are understanding and accepting the American position and then adjusting accordingly, while the Americans can't seem to do that. We can't seem to accept anything the Russians do if it's not in line with our own preconceived notions. Here's someone who understands what's going on. My friend and former colleague, Tucker Carlson, recently interviewed Viktor Orban, the prime minister of Hungary. And here he is saying everybody knows, everybody who knows what's going on knows that Russia will win this war. In the United States, the view is that Ukraine is winning this war. It doesn't sound like that's true. No, it's a lie.

It's not just a misunderstanding. It's a lie. It's not just a misunderstanding. It's a lie. It's impossible. Everybody who's in politics and understand the logic, the figures, the data, no way. Why is it impossible? Because that way, the poor Ukrainians die every day. Yes.

Hundreds and thousands, you know. So my heart is with them. It's tragedy for Ukraine. But they will run out earlier from the soldiers, number of soldiers, than the Russians. What finally will count is boots on the ground. And the Russians are far stronger, far numerous, more numerous than the Ukrainians. There is more of them, many more.

So this strategy that we are just supporting is a bad engineering of the strategy. I happen to think there are people in the West who agree with him, but very few of them say that. Well, I think, you know, last time I checked, Hungary is a member of NATO. Correct. Right. Hungary is a member of NATO. He's two hours from where this stuff is going on. Right. You know, again, the wanting to cling to the fantasy of it.

But again, everything comes back to the politics. And what's important here is the the idea that the United States is it is the same messaging that we saw all through Afghanistan, the same messaging that we saw all through Iraq, the same messaging that we saw all through Vietnam. You know, this idea that progress is being made. We just need more time, some more troops, some more money, and then victory will be at hand. And, you know, the idea of shaping a policy, though, however, around actual American interests. I mean, I think that's what, you know, I listened to Orban talking. And of course, he's getting to the point about, look, you got to just look at what the basic math is here. And you can see that it's not possible for Ukraine to win. But again, too, what's underlying that, to me, is a sense of where are our interests in this? What is the interest in

this slaughter for the United States? What is the interest in seeing a half million dead and killed, a country ruined, 13 million refugees, mass environmental harm? And at best, at best, we're talking about a frozen conflict that has us living on a knife's edge under the nuclear sword of Damocles in a way that, you know, 30 years ago when the Cold War ended, we had hoped we would be past this thing. And now we've actually put ourselves into a position that is much worse than anything we were under before the Cold War. Because the neocons who love to see other people bleed have taken over the foreign policy establishment. And because Joe Biden has bet his reelection on how many Russians we can slaughter, this is reprehensible from a moral, legal, constitutional, and geopolitical point of view.

I want to talk to you about North Korea and Russia. But before we do, I want to run another clip of Viktor Orban explaining how Russia is so different from the West in its culture and in that for which its people yearn. To understand the Russians, it's a difficult thing. So when we speak about politics, I mean Westerners, what is the focus point of our conversation? The focus point is freedom. How to provide more and more freedom to the people. When you speak on politics in Russia, this is not the number one issue. The number one issue is how to keep together the country. That generates a different kind of culture and understanding of politics.

That creates a kind of military approach. Always on security, safety, buffer zone, geopolitical approaches. But we have to understand that we cannot beat them as we do just now. It's impossible. They will not kill their leader. They will never give it up. They will keep together the country and they will defend it. We finance more, they will invest more. If we send more technical equipments, they will produce more. So don't misunderstand the Russians. So they're not going to get sick of Putin and throw him out. Come on. It's a joke. It's a joke. And yet that's the goal of Mrs. Newland and her colleagues in the

State Department to use Ukraine. And after this, we'll go to North Korea in a second, to use Ukraine as a battering ramp to drive President Putin, immensely popular over a prosperous country, to drive him from office? Yeah, that was certainly what was quite prominently said 18 months ago. There weren't very many shy voices in that. Secretary of State Clinton, Former Secretary of State Clinton, of course, being one of the most prominent, this idea that we did it to Russia in Afghanistan, we're going to do it to them again, with that whole dissonance of, well, do you recall what

happened to the U.S. in Afghanistan, as well as the emergence of Al-Qaeda and everything else? But these are people that, again, are politicians. And this is the most important thing to them, is winning in the moment, is winning in the short term. And they have populated D.C. with these neoconservatives, both Democrats and Republicans, who are ideologues. And they are, of course, sustained by the defense industry, which gets hundreds of billions of dollars a year. And this is all in defense of the empire, right? This is all in terms of either maintaining or expanding the empire. And so we shouldn't be shocked when we have people putting forth these ideas that are just completely incongruent to the reality of the situation in Russia, as Orban just described,

the way he said that you don't understand us at all. And I can say that for myself in the sense of my own experiences at war in Iraq and Afghanistan, we had no capacity because of who we are as a nation, our institutions, our leaders, to begin to understand the idea that somehow the Iraqis will be fighting us because we are occupying them was a foreign idea, and it was verboten, it was forbidden, it was blasphemous, because that goes against the whole idea of the American empire, right? Every time we occupy a country, they welcome us. Let's go to the other side of the world. We only have a few minutes left. Also over the Labor Day weekend is this ostentatious showing of friendship and alliance between North Korea and Russia. Chairman Kim Jong-un going to

Vladivostok later this month to meet President Putin publicly. The Russians revealing that they've delivered ICBMs to North Korea, which are capable of reaching the American mainland. The North Koreans revealing that they've delivered, I guess, selling ammunition rounds to the Russians. Are you surprised by this, Matt? No, no one should be surprised by this. The idea that we are pushing other nations, and not only that they're pushing back, but that they are seeking help, and that they're seeing other nations that are pushed, and they're saying, look, we need to cooperate here. The idea that escalation brings further escalation in indirect ways as well is something that is lost on most people in the U.S. media and the U.S. political classes. I'm reminded, Judge, if you remember going back 40 years, there's a film called My Bodyguard.

I remember seeing as a kid where a kid's getting bullied in school. So he hires a bodyguard. But what then does the other kid do? He hires a bodyguard as well. So the escalation of this, but also too, this idea that somehow these nations aren't going to cooperate, and further, the fact that we're pushing these nations, we're trying to isolate them, which causes them to work together, but it also causes them to be self-reliant. I was thinking this morning about how surprised about a year ago, so many American commentators seem to be that Iran was supplying thousands of drones to Russia, good drones. This idea that somehow 40 years of sanctions on Iran wouldn't have led them to create their own industrial base, particularly their own defense industrial base. So the mental incompetency that exists among our leadership and among our

commentators is just really quite exquisite. And so again, this shock, this surprise is how dare they response to this Russia-North Korea cooperation is typical. This is what should have been expected. What did you think they were going to do? You think they were just going to say, oh, you know what? The U.S. is right. We're just going to fall underneath their hematonic umbrella and just let them lead

and just let our nations be exploited, et cetera, et cetera. No, of course not. Matt Ho, always a pleasure, my dear friend. No matter what we talk about, thank you for joining us. Thank you for the clarity with which you speak. I can tell from the comments how much the fans appreciate it and you know how much I do. All the best to you. Thanks, Josh. More as we get it, of course. If you like what you see and what you hear, help us spread the message. Like, subscribe, tell a friend. We did not reach 200,000 subscriptions by Labor Day. We're a little north of 194,000, but our next goal is a quarter of a million by Christmas. That's about 3,500 a month.

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