Judging Freedom - Prof. Glenn Diesen: Putin's Endgame in Ukraine

Episode Date: March 4, 2025

Prof. Glenn Diesen: Putin's Endgame in UkraineSee 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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gentle guidance and encouragement to create these incredible changes for yourself and see what good can come from them. Trust me, listening on Audible can help you reach the goals you set for yourself. Start listening today when you sign up for a free 30-day trial at audible.com slash wonderyca. That's audible.com slash wonderyca. That's audible.com slash wonderyca. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, March 4th, 2025. Professor Glenn Deason joins us now. Professor, always a pleasure. Thank you very much for your time. office on Friday, of course, has reverberated around the world. And with the notable exceptions of Hungary and Italy, much of the European leadership seems to have doubled down on the side of President Zelensky. Can you put your finger on the pulse of the public? Is there a consensus amongst the public? Zelensky was foolish. Zelensky was strong. Trump was crude. It's about time Trump spoke that way. Is there a consensus one way or another about this rather extraordinary televised live event? Well, in Europe, it seems like much of the media selected specific clips which made it sound as if just or seem as if Vance and Trump were just pounding on Zelensky.

And much of the focus was on what was considered undiplomatic behavior as opposed to the core of the conflict. I think it was also too much focus on the minerals, suggesting that they were almost beating him up because they wanted the minerals. But I think what was left out of much of the media coverage here in Europe would be that what Trump and Vance were pushing for was for Zelensky to accept negotiations, that is to start to bring this war to an end. And we saw again that Zelensky more or less said no. He continued to argue that there's no reason to negotiate with Putin. It doesn't work. And of course, all this rhetoric that the Russians are evil, they're terrorists.

So all of this translates into the idea that you can't negotiate with evil effectively. And I was also told that Trump might have reacted poorly to the way he was dressed. Now, I haven't gotten this confirmed, but I was told that the Trump administration asked him to wear a suit because he took off his suit and put on his war costume once Russia invaded and they thought it would be a powerful signal if he would then return to the suit and begin to talk about diplomacy and negotiations and again he did

quite the opposite, not only did he double down on the idea that this war will continue but he also spoke, talked very much rudely back to Vance and you know, times rolled his eyes. So I think, yeah, but this is something that was largely left from the media coverage in Europe.

It's interesting how the, is the media in Europe, forgive my ignorance, is it mostly government-owned or government-controlled? Well, it's both, but it's some of government-owned but much private-owned, but it's some of government-owned, but much private-owned. But there's a very strong narrative control that is very few that deviates from the narrative. So we create all these narratives from the beginning that, for example, this was an unprovoked invasion. This is very important because once it's unprovoked, it means that the Russians are just opportunistic.

They were just looking for a territory and now it's dangerous to have negotiations because we'll just reward this. So everyone kind of has to fall in line with the narrative irrespective of being government or private. Otherwise, they will be accused of being puppets of the Kremlin. Were you surprised at the gathering, the immediate gathering in London the Sunday afterwards convened by Prime Minister Starmer and the near unanimous, as I said, we'll leave out Italy and we'll leave out Hungary and we'll leave out the neutrals, Switzerland and Austria,

but the near unanimous condemnation of Putin and at least stated, I don't know if it's real, willingness to provide security support for Ukraine. Did any of that surprise you? No, they've been saying this for three years. They say they stand with Ukraine, but in this instance it means to prolong the war, even though the majority of Ukrainians want negotiations. So it's a very war hawkish, a lot of war enthusiasm, but it's always dressed up in benign rhetoric about helping Ukrainians.

But we said we helped Ukrainians all along since, you know, we toppled the government in 2014 against the will of the majority of Ukrainians. But we said we helped Ukrainians all along since we toppled the government in 2014 against the will of the majority of Ukrainians. So when we sabotaged the Minsk agreement, which most Ukrainians wanted implemented, when we sabotaged the Istanbul agreement. So time and time again, we always frame it as helping. So this helps to shape the narrative. But I wasn't surprised by the statement. But again, it's very superficial because there's nothing to back this up. They just come together, they take a photo, and they say how great this is, that we stand strongly with Ukraine.

But there's nothing behind it. They don't have the weapons that Americans have, the logistics, the intelligence, the satellites. So there's not much that can be done without Americans. And I also don't think the Europeans recognize that by saying that they will make up for the American weapons, they're effectively threatening to sabotage Trump's peace. Because the whole idea of Trump is, we're going to stop sending weapons. And now this will force Zelensky to the table. And the Europeans are saying, well, we're going to prevent this. This is, you know, I think Trump could put similar pressure on the Europeans in the future. Do you think these European heads of state or elites, however you want to characterize them, so I'll throw in the people that run the media as well, and I appreciate very much your

characterization of them. Do you think they go to bed at night wondering and worrying if Putin's going to attack them, attack their countries? Well, it's hard to say. We have this very strange way we look at the Russians. Either they're always hopelessly backwards or they can't take a single village. Or at the same time, sometimes they're also overwhelmingly powerful and they can roll across Europe at any time. So I'm not sure if they're ignorant or deceitful, but either way, I'm leaning towards deceitful because if they really believe that Russia threatens to invade Poland

or the rest of Europe, then surely this would have been reflected in the military budgets. There hasn't been much efforts to arm Europe. So I don't think it's serious. I think it's more a narrative used to prolong the war, because most of the narratives which are thrown in the media, they all have the same purpose, which is to prolong the war. Now, if you say that the Russians are hopeless, then they can be defeated on the battlefield. So this is a long war. And if you say that they're an overwhelming threat, they can invade all of Europe. This also advocates for not ending the war.

So sometimes we throw in all of these narratives at the same time, even though they contradict each other. I'm going to play a clip from Prime Minister Starmer on Sunday afternoon. So this is after he met with President Zelensky, after President Zelensky met with the king, after President Zelensky met with the European leaders that were willing to fly to London to give up their Sunday afternoon. I thought what he said was absurd, but I invite your comments. Chris, cut number one. Our starting point must be to put Ukraine in the strongest possible position now so that they can negotiate from a position of strength. And we are doubling down in our support. fel y gallant drafod o safbwynt llwyr, ac rydym yn cymryd cymorth yn ein cefnogi.

Ystod diwrnod, fe wnaeth y DU ymgyrch 2,2 miliwn o arian i ddarparu mwy o arian ar gyfer y llyfrgell i Wcraniaid, a'i gynnal, nid gan y cyflogwr Brydeinig, ond gan y cyfrifoedd o asedau Rwydwaith wedi'u llwyr. by the profits from frozen Russian assets. And today I am announcing a new deal which allows Ukraine to use £1.6 billion of UK export finance to buy more than 5,000 air defence missiles, which will be made in Belfast, creating jobs in our brilliant defence sector. This will be vital for protecting critical infrastructure now and strengthen Ukraine in securing the peace when it comes. I think this is domestic political claptrap. Those missiles wouldn't be ready, according to Scott Ritter and Colonel McGregor, until 2030. Yeah, no, this is nonsense.

The weapons aren't there. They're talking about money they don't have to build weapons which don't exist and won't exist for many years. You can't just print this. This has to... The arming process, getting the skills, getting the factories, increasing the industrial capacity, it can't be done this fast. Indeed, if it could be, we would have done it over the past three years. So no, this is nonsense.

But also this idea that all we have to do is make sure that we send more weapons and Ukraine can negotiate from a position of strength. This is what we said three years ago. Keep in mind that three years ago, the EU made this statement. And over the past three years, they never did anything. They never negotiated from a position of strength.

They refused to do any diplomacy. They put a full boycott on diplomacy with the Russians. They would do no negotiations. And there's still no one's calling the Kremlin. So this is nonsense. This is the same as continuing what has already been done for three years, which is more weapons, more weapons, arguing that this is somehow going to change the tide.

But obviously it is nonsense because every day we see that the Ukrainians get weaker and weaker, the Russians get stronger and stronger. So, yeah, I think this is more about the British rebuilding their post-Brexit role in Europe as one of their main military powers. How can he say with a straight face from the interest generated by frozen Russian deposits? That doesn't belong to Great Britain or to Europe. It belongs to whoever the depositor is, either the government of Russia or some Russian industry that had the misfortune of having their assets in a European bank

when Joe Biden persuaded everybody to freeze it all. It's theft, whether the government takes it or not. No, it's a huge, it's a very obvious theft. I meant to say it's theft whether the government calls it theft or not. They're taking somebody else's money. Yeah, but again, it's all narratives here. We're already decoupled from reality. So the narrative being sold now is that, well,

if we steal all of the funds of the Russian central bank and their sovereign funds, then yes, it's theft. But if we just take the proceeds, then it's going to be fine. It's not a problem. But again, we moved so far away from any common sense. And if we can just comment very quickly on what they achieved in Paris, because this was supposed to be the peace summit as an alternative to what Trump was doing. It was a debacle. They can't come together.

It doesn't matter. They don't have the military equipment. They don't have the money, but also they don't have any consensus. At the end, the whole thing ended up in Paris with Macron saying, let's have a one-month limited ceasefire. That is no more air attacks, naval attacks, attacks on energy infrastructure.

So all the areas where Russia dominates, we're going to stop doing this. You can still fight on the ground, but without air support. And if you can do this for one month, then we'll negotiate. And the purpose of the whole thing was for Putin to be able to prove to us that it's coming in good faith. And even the British thought, no, this is a bit giving Russia too much. And Zelensky also thought it was dangerous to start talk about a ceasefire. So it's nothing. They can't agree on anything. It's just along the war,

continue the war and sell it as peace. It's, yeah. In the past hour, the Washington Post reports that President Zelensky has jumped on board that rather absurd suggestion. So the limited peace fire would ban, forgive me for looking down, I want to make sure I get this correctly, long range attacks, attacks on civilian and energy infrastructure, areas where the Russians dominate. Now, a ceasefire requires an agreement. An agreement requires parties to agree. It is inconceivable to me, and I'm going to guess to you, that President Putin would agree to something like that.

No, of course they're not. And they even made this point clearly many times. And we might have realized this in Europe if we actually had diplomacy and we talked to the Russians. But again, anything that implies a ceasefire without a political solution is not going to be acceptable simply because we did this before we had the minsk agreement in 2015 we was very clearly stated that that kiev would offer some autonomy to donbass and but instead of implementing this we simply bought time bought as much time as possible simply to arm the ukrainian army to the extent they could ignore the actual peace agreement. Now, both the French and the Germans who negotiated this deal have admitted as well that they were just in for buying time, not actually aiming to implement it. So why would the Russians go along with this again? They're at the cusp of victory.

They see the Ukrainian armyian army as uh well as essentially being on its uh last leg and now uh as the ukrainian army looks like it's gonna collapse uh russia should accept some ceasefire which the west europeans have been very honest about they would use this time to rearm ukraine but but why what is the possible peace agreement and I think this is what the Europeans ignore that this deal that Trump is coming with that is no NATO except territorial concessions and no security guarantees it's a terrible deal for Ukraine but it's still the best possible deal it can get if we don't take the American deal on this one Ukrainian army will collapse and we can then either escalate by sending in

our own troops and go to world war three or we can watch it collapse and russia can do exactly what it wants so it's um no it's i don't know it's not much rationality left and i wish i could make sense of it but debates in our media either it's just about how awful Trump is and how we're standing with Ukraine. So tonight at 9 o'clock Eastern Time, U.S. Eastern Time, President Trump will address a joint session of Congress. What happens if Europe wakes up eight or nine hours later in the morning in European time, and finds that the United States has withdrawn from NATO, what will the reaction be? Well, it's hard to say. I think actually NATO has some of the fault in this

because over the years, by being part of NATO, NATO is pretty much the United States, and NATO has resulted in Europeans effectively outsourcing a lot of their strategic thinking to the United States, which is why you're seeing now the Europeans running around like headless chickens because they don't really know anymore what to do. But, of course, there will be full panic because, well, we were pretty much engaged in a proxy war against

our huge neighbor, the world's largest nuclear power, and we were trying to pressure the United States into doing what we want. If the US would then pull out of NATO, even threaten to pull out of NATO to put pressure on the Europeans,

I'm hoping that the Europeans would fold to the American demands. But if America actually pulls out of NATO, Europe would have to reinvent itself because, again, this has been 80 years now of complete security dependence on the United States. So I think, yeah, there's already panic. But if there is no fear of a Russian invasion,

what is the reason for such a security backup by the United States? Well, other than enhancing the arms industry? Well, this is the great fear that if the war ends, America will not just leave Ukraine, it will also leave Europe. If the United States leave Europe, Europe will become geopolitically even less significant because this is the main trend of the United States. The world is becoming multipolar, which means America has relatively few resources and it will prioritize them differently.

So the United States will look more towards the Western Hemisphere. They will look more towards Asia. So Europe is going to be less of a priority, maybe even less so than the Middle East. And this is not great for the Europeans. Throughout the Cold War, they enjoyed not just the security provided by the United States, which allowed the Europeans to spend a lot less on military, but it also translated

into more favorable trade agreements and preferential treatment and, again, strengthened the West as this one political entity. So I think it's going to be, yeah, there's more the geopolitical irrelevance of Europe. Their place in the world will diminish significantly. So here's what Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov had to say about all of this yesterday. Chris, cut number 13. After Joe Biden, new people have come into power who are guided by common sense. They say outright that they want to end all wars. They want peace.

Who demands a continuation of the war? Europe. The new people in the American government want peace and Europe wants a continuation of the war. I think that that is a fair, adequate and accurate description of where we stand today. Do you agree with Foreign Minister Lavrov, Professor Giesen? Yeah, well, you can take it even further. That is, the United States want peace. Interestingly enough, the former advisor of Zelensky, Arastovich,

who made the point a year ago that seemingly at that time only the Russians wanted peace because they also want to end the war. So the US wants to end the war, the Russians want to end the war. Most of the world wants to end the war. The majority of Ukrainians wants to end the war. They've been willing to accept territorial concessions to end the war. The only ones still standing there calling for the war to continue is now the Europeans and Zelensky. And I think this is why the American pressure will now go towards

Zelensky by essentially challenging his legitimacy if it doesn't change course. And it will also mount more pressure, I think, on the Europeans. It's only today that Vice President Vance was mocking the Europeans, saying, you know, if you don't take our deal, what will you do? What are you going to do, have 20,000 troops from a country that hasn't seen war in 40 years? Yeah, so he mocked the whole concept. And I think this kind of pressure will also mount on the Europeans

because it's not just Zelensky, it's the Europeans who are backing him, encouraging to go against Trump on this. Well, it was British Prime Minister Boris Johnson who is largely responsible for dissuading President Zelensky from signing a treaty that his people and the Russians had negotiated before the war started. Later on in the clip that we ran of Prime Minister Starmer, he says that the British are offering to put boots on the ground and planes in the air. Does anybody take that seriously? It's hard to say. I've been disappointed many a time. So it's possible they believe it, but I hope not because this be destroyed. They wouldn't last very long.

And the Russians could, the British army isn't that big. They would be shot down and destroyed very quickly. And it would be very humiliating as well. And very little that could be done. And so unless the Americans are there, I think this is just, yeah, at the moment, big talk. Perhaps it's aimed for their domestic audience. Perhaps it meant for the European audience to assert their leadership in Europe. Perhaps it's meant for the Americans to suggest that as a threat, that is, if you don't follow us, we'll

learn to live without you. It's really unclear, but at least what I do know for certain is that this cannot happen. There's no chance that somehow Britain can follow through on what it's saying. Professor Glenn Deason, a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for your insight on your European friends and neighbors, and I hope you'll visit us again soon. Thank you, my friend. Thank you, Josh. Sure. And coming up later today at three o'clock Eastern, Aaron Maté, and at four o'clock Eastern, this is a long day, but worth waiting for, Professor John Mearsheimer, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. I'm out.