Judging Freedom - Pepe Escobar: SCO Summit a Geopolitical Game Changer

Episode Date: July 9, 2024

Pepe Escobar: SCO Summit a Geopolitical Game ChangerSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Save $80 with code SPACE80 at Talkspace.com. To be continued... Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, July 9th, 2024. Pepe Escobar is here on something you probably didn't even see in the Western press. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization is a game changer. But first this. You all know that I am a paid spokesperson for Lear Capital, but I'm also a customer, a very satisfied customer. About a year ago, I bought gold and it's now increased in value 23%. So $100 invested in gold a year ago is now worth $123. If you have $100 in the bank, it still shows $100, but $100 in the bank is now worth 24% less. Inflation has reduced all of your savings, all of your buying power and mine by 24%. And gold is largely immune from that. If you want to learn how gold will soon hit $3,200 an ounce,

call Lear Capital. 800-511-4620 or go to learjudsnap.com. Get your free gold report. Same experts who predicted the 23% rise that I've enjoyed have predicted this $3,200 an ounce gold. Learn about how to transfer this to an IRA. Protect your savings. 800-511-4620, learjudgesnap.com. Tell them the judge sent you. My friend, Pepe, welcome back to the show. Always a pleasure to have you on and to be able to pick your brain. You've characterized the Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting last week as a game changer. There was barely a peep about it in the Western press. Are you surprised that the West ignored it? Second question, what happened there that it's a game changer? Well, first of all, Judge, greetings from Southeast Asia, Thailand,

after sunset, the coolest part of the world. All right, this is the hottest part of the world. The sun is coming up. It's going to be 95 degrees Fahrenheit here in a few hours. Well, here is always 28 to 32 Celsius the whole year. Wow. Okay. Very, very important.

I was not surprised by the non-coverage of the SCO summit in Astana, Kazakhstan, in Western media. Not only in the US, but across Europe as well. First of all, because the collective West does not understand what the SCO is. The SCO was founded a few months before 9-11, in fact, as the Shanghai Five. It was Russia, China, and three Central Asian stands, essentially as an anti-terrorist, anti-separatist, anti-extremist organization. And all these years they have developed as an economic operation organization. And now they are one of the key nodes of the multi-nodal world, which is a better definition of the multipolar world.

Different nodes, they are interconnected. And this was more than clear at the summit last week in Astana. We had the nine members of the SCO, which include, by the way, India, Pakistan, and Iran, and the 10th, Belarus. So now it's the SCO 10. And this is very, very important because we have on the same table,

Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Iran, Belarus, and four Central Asian stands. That's a great deal of Eurasia, in fact. Is it fair to say that that is about 80% of Eurasia and probably about 40% of the world's population? Absolutely correct, George. Absolutely correct. So which makes it even more extraordinary,

the fact that the SCO, well, has always been ignored by the West. Years ago, when I was writing about the SCOs, some of the sessions and roundtables at different forums across Eurasia, even the people at Asia Times, I used to work with Asia Times based in Hong Kong, they had no clue what I was talking about. And readers, they didn't know, especially readers across the West, they had no idea. And now, we can more or less say that it's the sister organization

of BRICS10. So organization of BRICS-10. So we have BRICS-10 and SCO-10. And don't forget that three very important members, four, sorry, very important members are members of both Russia, China, India, and Iran. All nuclear powers, no? Apart from Iran, George. Iran, I guess you're kidding. I beg to differ, because of course there are lots of completely unfounded assertions that Iran is a nuclear power or on the brink of being a nuclear power. That's not correct at all.

And as far as we know, the latest from Ayatollah Khamenei himself, the Supreme Leader, a nuclear weapon is un-Islamic and Iran will not pursue a nuclear weapon. Very interesting. will not pursue a nuclear weapon. This is sad. In your article about this being a game changer, you have a lot of very interesting points, one of which is the BRICS, the SCO view that the West is ignoring international law, that the West can't be relied upon to comply with the rule-based order that the West attempted to establish.

Absolutely correct. And that's why one of the key discussion points in Astana was something that President Putin, in fact, the notion was officially introduced last month in June at a meeting of Putin with the Kremlin of Russian diplomats, the notion of new Eurasia-wide security architecture, which is essentially the content of those letters that Russia sent to Washington and Brussels in December 2021, talking about indivisibility of security. It's exactly the same thing. Basically, the Russians are saying, and the Chinese agree, and the Indians also agree. More subdued, but they also agree.

Look, the rules-based international order based essentially on NATO being a sort of Robocop of the whole planet doesn't apply anymore. It's Western-centric, NATO-centric, and Eurasia is completely ignored. We propose the Eurasia-wide indivisibility of security system, where countries from NATO and Europe are also welcome. Don't forget that if we look at the map, basically Europe is the western extremity of Eurasia or a peninsula in the wider Eurasia continent. So this cannot possibly dictate security to the whole, let's say, the big Eurasian panda from Turkey all the way to Vladivostok. And it makes sense that security for the big powers in Eurasia should be inextricably linked to the security of Europe as well.

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Exactly. So we have a NATO member, theoretically the most important NATO army apart from Ukraine, which is not NATO, but for all practical purposes, it is NATO as well. At the SCO Summit, visibly interested in this concept of Eurasia-wide security architecture. He had a bilateral with Putin on the sidelines of the meeting. He was in all the main sessions as a dialogue partner. Azerbaijan was there as well. Very, very important. And with the observers, including in the observers also extremely important, Afghanistan, because the SCO wants to bring Afghanistan as a full member as soon as it's feasible, let's say within the next two years or so, because then the

normalization of Afghanistan and the stabilization of Afghanistan is going to be an Eurasia-wide movement. This is something absolutely extraordinary, which I had the chance to discuss in Moscow, but also when I met the Taliban delegation in Doha less than two months ago. And they are very much interested in normalizing Afghanistan inside the SCO. And at the St. Petersburg Forum, on top of it, guess what? There was a Taliban delegation, which was, you know, the Russians were working the room, by the way, full room. They were introducing the Taliban to virtually everybody. The Ministry of Labor of the Taliban was there.

He was on the same table with Sergei Glazev talking about Eurasian integration, something that we would never imagine would happen. So this is how fast the whole thing is evolving. And one of the main points of discussion, once again, very important, is which everybody, all the all the SEO 10 agree and the dialogue Partners also agree we need a new indivisibility of security system uh all from Europe to the whole of Eurasia okay so tell me what that, indivisibility security architecture for all of Asia. Look at that.

Look at that landmass. Absolutely, the landmass. We can see on the map this goes literally from Lisbon to Vladivostok or from Lisbon to the Koreas. This is the whole of Eurasia. And you have the Rimland as well. From the southern tip of India to the Arctic Circle. You're absolutely right. And where I am here, Southeast Asia, it's part of the RIM land. India is part of the RIM land as well. Southern Iran, the Persian Gulf, is part of the RIM land. Yemen is in the RIM land as well. So if the US and NATO don't wake up, which probably they won't, right, they run the risk of losing not only the whole of Eurasia,

but also significant parts of the Rimland as well. The Heartland and the Rimland at the same time within the next few years. Because the way Eurasia is being united under the edges of these different multilateral organizations, Brixton, SCO10, the Chinese Belt and Road Projects, the Eurasia Economic Union, the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank, all of that together, they're going to the same place, which is, let's say, a unified Eurasia. This visit of Modi to Russia yesterday and today, it's part of that as well.

Yes, go ahead, please. As we speak, NATO leaders, heads of state and foreign ministers are arriving in Washington. Washington, of course, is a mess. It's a swirl with the Democrats telling President Biden to withdraw from the campaign and Democrats supporting him and him insisting he's not leaving. So this is obviously foremost on his mind. But do you think these leaders in the West, and one of them, I guess, is at both. That is, Erdogan was at Shanghai, and now Erdogan's going to be in D.C. Do you think they grasp what is happening between BRICS and SCO? No, they don't, judge. And you can tell by reading think tank reports or my inbox is full of this crap every day.

And for professional reasons, I have to know what they're thinking or what they're publishing. They have no idea. For instance, this morning I was reading an article by Carl Bildt, former prime minister of Sweden, foreign minister of Sweden as well, talking about Russia in terms of Russia is the aggressor in Ukraine and you cannot allow Russia to win because then Putin is going to reconstitute his empire and invade Europe. So this is as far as they go. They cannot see all these different Eurasian powers uniting and in different multilateralter and International Rule of Law, which is the complete opposite of the rules-based international order. Yes, that's the photo of the 10 plus some extras as well.

But Erdogan is in the picture. Yes, yes, yes. Where is SCO on Palestine? In their official statement at the end, very weighty, they condemned, they didn't use the word genocide, of course. That's too Latin. But they affirmed the absolute necessity of a Palestinian state. Well, this is the official position of all of them, in fact. Some of them don't express it so bluntly.

But, for instance, Russia, Iran, China, they do. And even Turkey, which is an associate partner. So it's very important because they see what's happening against Palestine and the genocide as a whole as an extension of the rules-based international order, because it's twisted by the empire to justify the genocide. So this is completely against the UN Charter and completely against the rule of international law. You write that among the goals of SCO is the gradual phase-out of external powers in Eurasia. Exactly.

Correct. You know exactly who that means. You also write that I'm sort of projecting now that SCO and BRICS will become one because the purpose of this is to provide alternatives to Western controlled economic mechanisms. That's BRICS and SCO, no? There's a strong possibility, Judge. We cannot say that they are going to merge. Lukashenko, which is now a member of the SCO10, he has been saying that since last year. No, it's inevitable that the BRICS and the SCO will merge.

If we follow the speed of how they are interacting and the fact that we have four top powers as members of both organizations, it's more or less inevitable that they will sit on the same table within the next, let's say, two to three years. Would BRICS and SCO consider military action to abate the slaughter in Gaza and the contemplated slaughter in Lebanon? No. No, because they are not structured as military organizations. They are not NATO.

People who don't understand the SCO in the West, they say, ah, this is the Asian NATO. No, it's not a military organization. It started as an anti-terror, separatism, and extremism of all kinds organization and evolved into a geo-economic, economic cooperation organization, which is what it is today. And for instance, they spent a lot of time in Astana discussing transportation corridors, which is

essential for all of them. This is geoeconomics, essentially. Do you think that MI6, CIA, and Mossad were there last week? You know why they were? Because they are very active in Kazakhstan. My last time in Kazakhstan was in December, only a few months ago. And we know...

It's very touchy for a foreigner to discuss with Kazakhs about Western agencies influencing Kazakhstan. But in a very polite, indirect way, they pass the message that, yes, of course, they are here and we know what they are doing. And not only they are in Almaty, which is the business capital of Kazakhstan, but they have their cells in Astana as well, the center of power. And they are following very closely the internal political disputes in Kazakhstan. And the fact that Kazakhstan's neighbor, Kyrgyzstan, is very volatile, much smaller, very volatile. And Kyrgyzstan, you find a lot of working for MI6 extremists. It's an extremely complex and volatile region. And part of the super objective of the SCO is exactly we have to control these supported by CIA, supported by MI6 terror networks,

or this, let's say, foreign legion of terror across Central Asia, especially Kyrgyzstan because of the Fergana Valley and Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan. Tajikistan is very, very fragile, and the border with Afghanistan. So, you know, to remind everyone once again, the terrorists that perpetrated the Krakow attack in Moscow a few months ago, they were Tajiks recruited online by a preacher in Tajikistan. Wow. So that's why the SCO has to pay attention to all these permutations of terror. I want to ask you, before we go, some questions about the latest in Ukraine.

But before we do, another last question on SCO. If you had been there last week and you could have asked the leaders what is their opinion of Pax Americana, what would they have said? We know what the Russians and the Chinese would say. We are working in our comprehensive strategic partnership to end Pax Americana. India is more nuanced because, for instance, Modi didn't go to Astana because Modi was preparing his trip to Moscow Monday and Tuesday this week. So he sent Jaishankar, the foreign minister, which is an extremely well-prepared guy. He would have said not that India is interested in the end of Pax Americana, but India is interested in

a multipolar system of international relations. That would be the diplomatic answer. And the Central Asians would ally with Russia and China with nuance as well. Kazakhstan is a very complicated judge because there's a lot of

American investment in Kazakhstan, especially in the energy business. And Kazakhstan is, they try to be a sort of messenger between East and West. They have very good relations with China because they are part of Belt and Road programs everywhere. The very sensitive Kazakh border with Xinjiang is something extraordinary. I was there a few years ago. It's amazing. You have three different borders for trains, for passengers, for buses, you know, and this is where everything that leaves Xinjiang crosses Central Asia to go to other parts of Eurasia and to the West as well. So they need very good

relations with China. Tokayev, the prime minister, he speaks fluent Mandarin. Wow. So there's a lot of integration. At the same time, they need to pay attention to Chevron. They need to pay attention to American energy companies. They need to pay attention to the fact that a lot of American business are in Almaty. So it's equilibrium. Got it. Got it. The American newspapers this morning are filled with speculation about whether Joe Biden will stay in the race

for re-election. The other major story is what the Western press is portraying as a Russian attack on a children's hospital in Kiev. Do you have an understanding of what truly happened there at the hospital? Well, the Russians were attacking the Artem factory, which is very close to the hospital. The Ukrainian air defense sent a missile, and guess what? It landed on the hospital. It's an AIM-120AD missile, Ukrainian. And obviously, Zelensky, he said, I'm quoting him,

In Ukraine today, 37 people were killed, three of whom were children, and 170 were injured, including 13 children. That was the result of Russia's brutal missile strike. No, it is already confirmed that this is a Ukrainian missile. The Russians never attack civilian installations. And this from the beginning of the SMO. And this is widely documented and even documented by Ukrainian dissidents as well. Do you have any intel on Russian plans to respond to the attack on the beach on Sevastopol three Sundays ago? We don't judge. This is national security.

This is state secret, and especially foreigners, we don't have access to that at all. There's a lot of speculation going on in Moscow, and there's going to be an asymmetrical response. This means long-term, term not immediate not in the next few days maybe not even the next few weeks but they are uh they are improving their intel on where these missiles are located they already intercepted storm shadows and scopes, and they are doing reverse engineering of storm shadows and scopes. And they are getting much better in terms of their aerial intelligence network in locating where the missiles are. So it's the Russian way.

It's always fascinating. There is never a tit for tat response. Only when there's an enormous public clamor that we have to do this now. But usually it's asymmetrical, takes time, and they study the possibilities. And the fact that there are less American drones over the Black Sea in this past two to three weeks, it's already telling part of the story. That means that the conversation that Foreign Minister Lavrov had with the American ambassador to Russia was passed on to the right people in Washington and they acted upon it. Got it.

It's always a pleasure, my dear friend. I'll be off the next two weeks for my summer vacation, but we'll look forward to seeing you at the very end of July or the very early part of August. God love you, my dear man. You're going to Italy. I am, yes, yes. The right place to go. Italy and Southeast Asia, the best places. All right. Escobar in Southeast Asia, Napolitano in Italy. Thank you, my dear. Thank you so much. Thank you.

And coming up later to a great man. I love these conversations And I can see from your comments How many of you love him also Not only a brilliant intellect But such an attractive personality At 9.30 this morning All Times Eastern, of course Professor Jeffrey Sachs at 10.15 Ambassador Charles Freeman

At 2 o'clock, Matt Ho. At 3 o'clock, Karen Kwiatkowski. And at 4.30, Scott Ritter. Justin Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thanks for watching!