Judging Freedom - NOKO Kim Jong Un may meet Putin - Changing the World's Stage? w/Ray McGovern

Episode Date: September 5, 2023

NOKO Kim Jong Un may meet Putin - Changing the World's Stage? w/Ray McGovernSee 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, September 5th, 2023. 2023, over the long Labor Day weekend, Russia and North Korea announced that Kim Jong-un, the leader of North Korea, will soon be visiting President Putin in Moscow very publicly. What is that all about? Does that pose any danger to the United States or to Japan or to South Korea? We will discuss all that and how it's connected to Ukraine with Ray McGovern in just a minute, but first this. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Lear Capital. You all know that I am a paid spokesperson for Lear Capital because it's the right thing to do because the government is regulating too much and printing too much money and reducing the value of everything you earn and everything you own.

And the best hedge against this is gold and silver. That's what I've done. I know the folks at Lear. I trust the folks at Lear. I've worked with the folks at Lear, and I use their advice when it comes to my investing in gold and silver. You should do the same. Call them at 800-511-4620 or go to learjudgenap.com. You'll have a very nice conversation with a very knowledgeable person who will send you literature to read, which you can review with your spouse and your financial advisor.

And then you can call them back and decide what you want to do. Why Lear? Lear has 25 years experience and thousands of five-star reviews and a 24-hour risk-free guarantee. And when you have this conversation with a Lear representative, you'll find out if you can qualify for a $15,000 gold bonus. So call Lear now, 800-511-4620 or learjudgenap.com. So Ray, over the weekend, this announcement was made that Kim Jong-un is going to visit President Putin. How significant is this with respect to the United States, China, even the war in Ukraine? Well, Judge, it's very significant, but actually pales in significance to the main story

that the media has completely missed so far. What's that? And that is that the Russians have made a great departure from their earlier kinds of cautious policy. They have given North Korea a very advanced intercontinental ballistic missile, ICBM, which the Russians call Topol-M. The Koreans, of course, call it something else. It was most recently tested on July 12th, two weeks before Defense Minister Choi Gu from Russia showed up in Pyongyang. And now we have Putin and Kim Jong-un meeting in Vladivostok at a meeting of Asia economic people. And that's going to happen in just five days.

So am I surprised at this? Yes. Was I surprised that Putin sent his forces into Ukraine? Yes, I admit that. How do I figure out why I was surprised? China, pure and simple. This is a two-front situation. Xi and Putin have realized this from the start, and I imagine reach, how powerful are and what is the reach of these ICBMs that Russia either gave or sold to North Korea? Can they reach the United States? Yes, it can reach the East Coast. It can reach Washington, where you are, anywhere. It can also reach all of the NATO capitals. That's big.

Then it can certainly reach the countries most nervous about the crazy person in North Korea, Japan and South Korea. Yeah, that's the rub, Judge. It's a deterrent sort of situation. But you know, when Japan and South Korea looks at this and they see this new deterrent by people not quite so rational as the Chinese or the Russians, they worry about this guarantee under their bilateral treaties with the United States. How strong is that guarantee, given now that another country, sort of crazy country, North Korea, has an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of defeating any ABM system

that the U.S. has right now? What would North Korea have given Russia in return for these missiles? Why would Russia give something so powerful to a person as unstable as Kim Jong-un? And could any of this happen without President Xi of China agreeing? Correct me if I'm wrong. China and North Korea have some sort of a mutual defense pact, don't they? That's correct, Judge. And those are all good questions. Number one, I believe, and most of the experts whose opinion I trust, believe that China and Russia are so joined at the hip now that Putin would not dare do this kind of thing without full consultation with Xi Jinping. Why was I surprised that Russia sent its forces into Ukraine? Because I did not calculate what happened just three weeks before when Xi Jinping and Putin met in Beijing. And very clearly, Xi Jinping said, all right, we give you an exception to our visceral opposition to violating

the Treaty of Australia. Yeah, go ahead, do what you have to do. It's a core interest. That was on the 4th of February. On the 24th, of course, Putin went in. Now, the next big juncture was 31 March and 1 April. Now, 31 March, the Ukrainians came together with the Russians, initialed a treaty that would have ended the fighting, okay. Now, the US and Britain nixed that and persuaded Zelensky not to sign that thing. That gave Russia and China a clear view of what this game was all about in Ukraine. It had nothing to do with Ukraine. It had to do with defeating Russia first. Paul Jay Do we know, do we know, I hate to take you off the track that your thought process is on, because I know you're answering the questions I threw out, but this intrigues me.

Do we know what the terms of that treaty were? Surely it did not call for the Russians to vacate eastern Ukraine or Crimea. The agreement between Russia and China, that was the Strategic Cooperation Agreement signed on the 4th of February 2002? Paul Jay Yes. Paul Jay It's not a treaty, it was a strategic document which showed that there was no end to their cooperation, no end to their solidarity. Robert R. Reilly No, no, no. The treaty you said that was initialed involving Ukraine. Did I mishear you? Let's see. Oh, yeah. I was talking about March 31, 2000. Yes. What were the terms of that agreement which the United States and Britain next. Okay. It would involve neutrality for Ukraine. It would involve

dispositions agreed upon, military dispositions on both sides. It would involve no entry into NATO. Putin held that treaty up for African leaders to see about three weeks ago, initial. So there's no doubt that it was initial. It was agreed upon. The reason I make this point is because if not by then, by then certainly the Russians and the Chinese realized, look, these guys are not out for a settlement in Ukraine. They don't give a rat's patootie about whether Ukraine joins NATO or not. What they're after is us. And us means Russia first, China second.

Now, that's in our strategic documents. So, you know, the Chinese and the Russians read those strategic documents. So what I'm saying here, Judge, is this is a real marked departure from the caution that Putin has always exercised, and Xi as well. And I traced the decision back to the 4th of February, when Xi and Putin were together in Beijing, they could talk about this stuff confidentially. And then if they hadn't decided by March 31st, when it became clear that Ukraine was about much more than Ukraine, then I think they decided then. And that would leave plenty of months for the Russians and the North Koreans to get together and say, all right,

we're going to give you this Topol-M ballistic missile, and the tests show and the analysis shows that what the North Koreans have fired off now on the 12th of July is exactly the Topol missile with a couple of different writings on it. And two weeks later, Shoigu shows up. The defense minister shows up in Pyongyang, and now we have Putin and Kim Jong-un probably meeting in Vladivostok in about five days. And what does Russia get in return for these Topol missiles, which it shipped to North Korea? In strategic terms, it gets an added deterrent to U.S. facing into Russia and China together. On the ground, it gets probably ammunition, the kinds of military material that North Korea has a surfeit of.

Whether the Russians really need that or not, I'm not sure. They have an indigenous capability to produce all this stuff. But I can see where the North Koreans may have sprung for some of this stuff. But the real situation is a strategic one and how to explain why the Russians did this. And I see this as a really marked departure from their earlier caution on these things, you know, I'm very surprised that they would decide together with China, in my view, to give somebody who's not quite as temperate, somebody who's a little not controllable, like Kim Jong-un, this weapon. But the proof is in the pudding, Judge.

So if Kim Jong-un strikes South Korea and South Korea strikes North Korea, China has to come to North Korea's defense. China is putting itself and its military at risk by consenting to this intemperate decision by President Putin. Did North Korea sell or give ammunition to Russia? Does North Korea have an industrial base that it can produce the type of ammunition Russia needs? Why would Russia buy anything from North Korea when it can probably produce whatever it wants and whatever it needs within its own borders? Well, those are good questions. And I would entertain the notion that they are getting some of that stuff from North Korea, but I don't really see it as a quid pro quo. I see this as a strategic move here. When we talk about the Topol-M Russian missile in North Korea, that's a deterrent, okay? It doesn't mean that the North Koreans are any more capable of

striking South Korea or Japan. This gives them the capability of striking the United States and NATO capitals with impunity. That's big. And that would give the South Koreans and the Japanese and maybe some of the NATO members some thought about, you know, it's the old question, would the U.S. sacrifice Washington for Berlin? It's the question of how steadfast you can expect the U.S. to be if they have this additional threat from a country that's not all that stable and not all that controllable. All right, let's move into your former profession. Would the CIA have known in advance that this was going to happen and have advised the State Department and the White House? Or was this stuff just sprung as a surprise on the West?

You can sneak this stuff in. It's not all that long or oddly shaped. It could go in by rail, it can go in at night. There are very few signals attached to it in this mode. So it's an open question as to whether my CIA folks detected it beforehand. The question is, they know about it now. Why haven't they gone to the media and said, oh, those dastardly Russians, look what they've done now. And the reason I would give is they haven't got their ducks in a row now. They don't really know how to consult with South Korea and Japan and make this less of a noxious thing than it already is. All right. These ICBMs, do they come with the means to deliver them? Does North Korea, I mean, an ICBM is a bullet, very, very sophisticated bullet. You need the gun out of which to shoot it. Does North Korea have the guns out of which to shoot these ICBMs with proficiency and accuracy? Yes, they come with the guns. They come with the equipment.

They have all the information that goes together with this missile. And of course, they have consultations with the Russians at the same time. So they've tested it now. They've tested it in a mode where it would be feasible for them to use it. But most experts say they'd like to test it to full range first. And there's a chance the U.S. could prevent it by firing anti-missile missiles at its preliminary stage before it leaves the area right outside of New York. All right. So that was my next question. Do we have a shield, so to speak? Do we have the means to shoot these down before they reach Tokyo or before they reach Honolulu or before they reach, God forbid, before they reach Los Angeles? Not now. And that's definitive. Okay. And what we have now is a Marginal line, just as effective as the Marginal line. Okay. It's this ABM system that we have that will not work, will never work because of decoys and because of highly sophisticated countermeasures, okay?

That's what we have now. What Ted Postol, the MIT Professor Emeritus of Physics and Special Advisor to the Chief of Naval Operations a couple of years ago, what he says is that, you know, what will happen here is that there's a way to prevent this. If it's introduced in the waters around North Korea, those missiles could be intercepted at their early stage, but you have to build a kind of fleet that can do that. That takes time. So, yeah, they can be defeated, but not by virtue of the ABM systems that we have protecting Los Angeles and the rest of the West Coast. So what do you think is going on diplomatically

between North Korea, Japan, London, Washington, and maybe even Berlin. Well, they all know that. And Brussels. Let me throw Brussels in there, too, even though they probably don't care about what goes on in the Far East. They can't afford to have the United States concerned with a two-front war. Go ahead, please. They can care, and they should care now because of the range of these missiles. But the answer to the question is, what are they doing? Go ahead, please. They can care and they should care now because of the range of these missiles.

But the answer to the question is what are they doing? They're wringing their hands. In other words, how do they react to this without throwing doubt on the U.S. ability, the U.S. steadiness in honoring treaties that already exist. So what they're doing, in my view, is keeping silent right now, ignoring this good work that's already published by the CSIS, the Center for Strategic and International Studies. There's a pure establishment body, okay? It's been out there for six weeks. They've ignored it. Why?

Because they want to figure out how do we do about this and how do we explain it to the populace in South Korea, Japan, and, you know, in Brussels as well. Can the United States afford to be involved in two vassal state wars? Can the United States afford to use Ukraine as a battering ram against Russia and Japan as a battering ram against Russia and North Korea and Japan as a battering ram against China at the same time and in the same respect. Judge, I would refer to the adolescents who are advising Biden, and the answer is they think they can. Now, they're not only adolescents. They're arrogant. And I refer back to what Vladimir Putin said last fall when he was asked this question. The question was, after a long speech and a long Q&A, how do you understand, Mr. President,

how the U.S. has decided to take on China as well as Russia in Ukraine. And what Putin said is, I used to think that there was some subtle logic to this, but I no longer think so. I think they're crazy, his word. I think it's attributed to arrogance and a feeling of impunity, period, end quote. Now, George, as I've said before, I agree with that assessment, but it doesn't matter what McGovern thinks. It matters what Vladimir Putin thinks. Right, but look, the salvation of the world, at least temporal salvation, is almost in the hands of a crazy person. Because North Korea has a treaty with China. Japan has a treaty with the United States. South Korea has a treaty with the United States. If Kim Jong-un uses one of these missiles to attack Japan or North Korea,

then China and the United States are in a war with each other at the same time that the United States and Russia are in a proxy war over Ukraine. That's correct. And that's why it's really hard to understand why Russia, with Chinese blessing, would give this kind of weapon to North Korea. But remember, North Korea has no incentive to strike Japan. It's a deterrent, a deterrent. And a deterrent can be very powerful in a strategic equation. And of course, following you are our friends, Tony Schaefer, Larry Johnson and Colonel Doug McGregor with much, much food for thought, even though it is tasteless food. It is much food for thought. Thank you very much, my dear friend. Most welcome. OK, Judge Napolitano, for judging freedom. This is really stirring the pot and we'll see where it goes.

And by the way, did you see this on the front page of the New York Times or the Washington Post or the Wall Street Journal or with my friends and former colleagues on Fox and Friends this morning? No, you did not. You saw it here. While Labor Day came and went,

we did not reach our goal. We did reach 194,000. So we're very close to the 200,000. We'll reach it soon. I'm talking about YouTube subscriptions on our channel. Our next goal is 250,000 by Christmas. Christmas, it's 95 degrees out here today. I know Christmas seems a long distance away, but it'll be here before we know it. And also we'll be here, Tony Schaefer at 11 Eastern, Larry Johnson at 1 o'clock Eastern, and Colonel Douglas McGregor at 2 o'clock Eastern. And then I'll be on Newsmax at 3 o'clock Eastern. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thanks for watching!