Judging Freedom - Prof. Glenn Diesen: What Is Europe Afraid Of?

Episode Date: April 16, 2025

Prof. Glenn Diesen: What Is Europe Afraid Of?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

You know when you're really stressed, or not feeling so great about your life, or about yourself? Talking to someone who understands can really help. But who is that person? How do you find them? Where do you even start? Talkspace. Talkspace makes it easy to get the support you need.

With Talkspace, you can go online, answer a few questions about your preferences, and be matched with a therapist. And because you'll meet your therapist online, you don't have to take time off work or arrange childcare. You'll meet on your schedule, wherever you feel most at ease. If you're depressed, stressed, struggling with a relationship, or if you want some counseling for you and your partner, or just need a little extra one-on-one support, Talkspace is here for you. Plus, Talkspace works with most major insurers, and most insured members have a zero dollar copay. No insurance?

No problem. Now get $80 off of your first month with promo code SPACE80 when you go to Talkspace.com. Match with a licensed therapist today at Talkspace.com. Save $80 with code SPACE80 at Talkspace.com. game. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Wednesday, April 16th, 2025. Professor Glenn Deason from the University of Southeastern Norway will be with us in a moment on just what are the Europeans afraid of? But first this.

While the markets are giving us whiplash, have you seen the price of gold? It's soaring! In the past 12 months, gold has risen to more than $3,000 an ounce. I'm so glad I bought my gold, it's not too late for you to buy yours. The same experts that predicted gold at $3,200 an ounce now predict gold at $4,500 or more in the next year. What's driving the price higher? Paper currencies. All around the world they are falling in value. Big money is in panic as falling currencies shrink the value of their paper wealth. That's why big banks and billionaires are buying gold in record amounts. As long as paper money keeps

falling they'll keep buying and gold will keep rising. So do what I did. Call my friends at Lear Capital. You'll have a great conversation and they'll send you very helpful information. Learn how you can store gold in your IRA, tax and penalty free, or have it sent directly to your doorstep. There's zero pressure to buy

and you have a 100% risk-free purchase guarantee. It's time to see if gold is right for you. Call 800-511-4620. 800-511-4620 or go to learjudgenap.com and tell them your friend the judge sent you. Professor Deason, welcome here, my friend. I deeply appreciate your time and your accommodation of my schedule. From your position in Europe and maybe with your fellow Europeans, is there a perception of a division in the Donald Trump foreign

policy team between the neocons on one hand, maybe represented by Secretary Rubio, Secretary Hegseth, General Kellogg, and the America firsters who want to reset the relationship with Russia, perhaps represented by Mr. Witkoff, Vice President Vance and Intel Director Gabbard. Do you see that division or is this something just created by the media? No, I think there's a very clear division. You saw this in terms of attack on Yemen but also in the approach towards Russia. And this I think was very clear if you saw the negotiations taking place over the past weeks because you had two proposals now for how to end the war in Ukraine. First you have Witkoff which recognizes that the foundation of any peace agreement has

to meet Russia's core demands as it's winning the war which would be restoring Ukraine's neutrality and also recognizing the territorial changes or that Ukraine have to make some... Kelo argued that more or less we had to do a temporary division of Ukraine similar to what was done with Germany after World War II. Now this would mean was done with Germany after World War II. Now this would mean European troops, which are from NATO countries, in Ukraine and they wouldn't, and so this would not be a neutral Ukraine and also it wouldn't accept the loss of any territories either. So none of the key demands would be met. So there's two completely uncompeting perspectives. So my question is why this is. The optimist in me would like to think that there's some order in this system. That is Trump

perhaps, you know, he doesn't want to give away the whole house, but he still has to negotiate with the Russians. So he's giving one offer with Witkoff like this is what we're willing to give you, but you have to meet us halfway. Otherwise you're going to end up with the Kellogg approach. This could be an explanation. Alternatively, it's just a very deep division within the Trump administration where they're pulling it in two different directions. Now, I would like to believe it's the former, but I suspect it's the latter. The Kellogg approach has been met, including on this program,

with a lot of derision here in the United States. I mean, how did Europeans make this approach? Do they really want to participate militarily and politically in monitoring or governing or securing whatever word you want to use a section of Ukraine as was done with the city of Berlin and as was done with actually all of Germany from 1945 to 1989? Well I suspect not. I don't think they have the ability. Do they have the money for this? I don't think they have the ability to do that. I mean, do they have the money for this?

No, and this is part of the problem now. The Europeans are going deeply into debt at the same time as the economies are, well, let's just call it slowing down at least. So in Europe, they need to do the exact opposite. It should be a new party looking at industrialization. Instead, they're moving towards some military Keynesianism, where they assume if they just print a lot of new money and spend it on the military, then somehow this

is going to get all in the industrialization going and the economies will prosper again. So I think this is all wrong. But I think it would also be a way of constructing a new Europe. The irony, of course, is that the ideal of the European Union was to never have another World War II. So it was for the Germans and the French primarily to come together after World War II and, again, trade and not end up in military conflict anymore. This is why many people advocated for doing the same with Russia. That is, it should be brought into the European security architecture after the Cold War.

Of course, this was never done. Now, the irony again is that Europe now is looking for a new purpose. They're looking at a, they're calling a geopolitical Europe. They're looking at perhaps if they have a strong enough Russian bogeyman that this is something that can unite because the continent will go through huge changes. That is, the United States will play less of a role as it has different priorities and the Europeans are already recognizing that the American pacifier, the one preventing us from recognizing our competing interests is pulling away. So I

think they're looking for something new to unite them and a war, you know, why let a good crisis go to waste. Wow. As any government official, President Macron, Prime Minister Stammer, Mrs. Vanderlijn, come out in support of or expressed any even mild interest in General Kellogg's approach? No, well, for them Kellogg is too extreme for them. They want Russia to pull back completely. They want essentially a peace agreement after this Russian victory. They want a peace agreement to effectively look like a Russian capitulation. So in European capitals now they're speaking of restoring the 1991 borders in Ukraine. Russia should

pay reparation. You had the Kayakalas, the EU foreign policy chief, are talking about setting up a tribunal to go after the Russian political leadership. So, you know, well, it's, they, the Europeans, they unite under what they consider to be common values, which are, you know, some kind of moral trap. They frame something as being good and all other alternatives as being evil. So if you say that the war was unprovoked, Russia's evil were good, then the only possible solution, if negotiation is appeasement, the only solution is complete defeat of Russia. And anyone who disagrees, they effectively want to reward Putin and they're setting the stage for what they believe is a new Hitler, which will invade Paris next to No. So it's very

easy to get consensus when the alternative to your virtue is evil and appeasement. But what are they afraid of? Do they go to bed at night fearing that Putin will invade, literally invade Paris or Berlin? I truly hope not, but there is some radicalism, I would say, but it's worth putting into context exactly what has happened, what the Ukraine War represented. In my opinion, it represented a shift in world order because after the Cold War, the main objective became for the duo of US and the EU to form this new political West, well, not new, and they would lay the foundation for global primacy to dominate the world. However, it would be

a benign hegemon because the US and the EU, we will be a force for good as the future of liberal democracy would depend on our perpetual hegemony. And so it became more or less a new civilizing mission in the world, something again, a benign dominance. But over the past 30 years, you saw all the political leaders in Europe growing up into this belief, this conviction, this became their policy. And NATO expansionism was, you know, they recognized that this would create conflicts with Russia and many warnings came forth. But this was the price they're willing to pay for this, you know, Fukuyama's end of history thesis. So, and if Russia would be defeated, we could go back to the 1990s. This is why many people speak of it

in the terms of world order. But instead we see now the Russians are winning, which means the multipolarity. Suddenly Russia, we shouldn't have a voice in Europe at all, now becomes a huge power. And the Americans, of course, in a multipolar world, they will seek to focus on the Western Hemisphere, on Asia. So suddenly the future for Europe doesn't look that great anymore.

Do the European elites want the war not to end? Yeah, no, sadly, because they, well, they would like it to end, but they would like to end on the European terms, which is a capitulation of Russia. But that is not realistic. In fact, it's not even conceivable other than in a hypothetical way. Yeah, and this is, I think, the problem where they detached themselves from reality. This assumption that your good intentions make your actions moral. But this is the whole idea. If the policies you're pushing will lead to disaster, then it isn't moral. So for example,

in the years up to the Russian invasion, they kept saying over and over again, Ukraine will be a part of NATO, we will expand, Russia shouldn't have a voice, it doesn't have a veto. It sounds just awfully virtuous because it's implied that if we don't expand NATO, that means that Russia should have a say over Ukrainian foreign policy. So it all sounds very moral, but in reality what it meant was that we were making war more or less unavoidable. It would be again like putting a Russian bases in Mexico, we can make all moral arguments, but if the actual consequence is the destruction of the country, there's no moral there. But

again, the Europeans, they tend to get stuck in how they think the world should be as opposed to how it actually is. And often they convince themselves that by recognizing the world as it is that this is somehow immoral. And that's what you see now. I think they are sabotaging because when the Europeans are saying, well, we will help a peace agreement, we're going to send troops into Ukraine to make sure that it's upheld. But what that really means is that they're sabotaging it because there's no way Russia can accept a ceasefire if the Europeans are going to put their troops in as soon as the guns go silent. Right. Here's a portion of the transcript of the famous conversation that Secretary James Baker had

conversation that Secretary James Baker had with Mikhail Gorbachev. And the last point, NATO is the mechanism for securing the US presence in Europe. If NATO was liquidated, there would be no such mechanism in Europe. We understand that not only for the Soviet Union, but for other European countries as well, it is important to have guarantees that if the United States keeps its presence in Germany within the framework of NATO, not an inch of NATO's present military jurisdiction will spread in an eastern direction. This is the line, this is the quote that Foreign Minister Lavrov and President Putin keep harping on, and the West wants to ignore as if it was never stated. Yeah, no, well again, the archives are open and this is confirmed over and over again. And if you go through all the documents, it's not

as if it was one time only with Baker. This was repeated many times. And again, in these days, we have to argue that it's somehow controversial to suggest that NATO expansion led to this. But again, from in the 90s, if we look back, a lot of the American leaders said this. So William Perry, George Kennan, Jack Matlock, the list goes on. You had protest letters being written first by 30 American political leaders, then 50. It was also understood what this would lead to. And it's not just this promise which was given to Gorbachev, but even in 1990, we signed this agreement for what a new Europe should be like, which was based on the Helsinki Accords. It was called the Charter of Paris for a New Europe.

The language goes on about a Europe without dividing lines. It argues that the security has to be indivisible, suggesting that one side should not enhance its security at the expense of others. This is also what we agreed in 94. But then, when NATO expanded, this was essentially a recognition that, well, we don't need indivisible security. Why do we have to take into consideration Russia at all? They're weak. And this was the main, this is why the Secretary of Defense William Perry considered even quitting his position in the Clinton administration, exactly because

he knew that this was a mistake, but it was a mistake they were willing to make since Russia was weak. I'm going to play a clip for you from President Trump, and I'm going to tell you now what I'm going to ask you after we listen to the clip. It's his last public statement on the Ukraine War. It's just three nights ago, a Sunday night, Palm Sunday night, when he was flying from his home in Florida back to Washington, D.C. The question I'm going to ask you is, is this now Donald, is the war in Ukraine now Donald Trump's war? But before you answer, here he is on Palm Sunday. Chris, cut number one. Do you have a reaction to is on Palm Sunday. Chris, cut number one. Do you have a reaction to Russia's Palm Sunday attack on Ukraine?

I think it was terrible and I was told they made a mistake, but I think it's a horrible thing. I think the whole war is a horrible thing. I think the war is, for that war to have started, is an abuse of power. You said they made a mistake. You were told they made a mistake. You mean it was unintentional? They made a mistake. You were told they made a mistake. Do you mean it was unintentional?

They made a mistake. I believe it was. Look, you're going to ask them. This is Biden's war. This is not my war. I've been here for a very short period of time. This is a war that was under Biden. He gave him billions and billions of dollars.

He should have never allowed, if he had any brain, which he didn't have and doesn't have and now it's being proven, he wouldn't have allowed that war to start. I would have absolutely not. That war would never have taken place. But remember this, this is Biden's war. I'm just trying to get it stopped so that we can save a lot of lives. They happen to be Ukrainian and Russian lives. But all I want to do is get it stopped. Trump too has delivered billions in military hardware since January 20th. The American legislation for the delivery of this aid all says both the cash and the military hardware subject to the discretion of the president. So, Professor Deason, is this now Donald Trump's war? Yeah, I think it is. It's becoming his war at least.

It's fair enough to put it on Biden's shoulders given that Russia invaded under his presidency. But as you said, Trump continues to send weapons, he continues to provide logistics, he gives the intelligence. So the United States is still very deeply involved in the war against Russia. And as we learned from this recent New York Times article, it's hardly even a proxy war anymore. We see what happens since 2022. It's hardly even a proxy war anymore. If we see what's happened since 2022, it's been very directed by the United States out of Germany to major all the details. So we see... That New York Times article is correct and no one has denied it.

We are a co-belligerent. In fact, we are the lead belligerent, not in human deaths, but in the execution of the war, intel and strategy. And exactly, and this is why I think it's important because the US as well as its NATO partners has now been behind the killing of tens of thousands of Russians. And the problem is we can look the other way, but then we only

delude ourselves because the Russians now, they know what's being done and they will again look at a way of retaliating at some point in order to present a balance. And if you follow Sergey Lavrov, he gave a comment recently about the strike on Sumy and he made the point that, well, we struck Ukrainian military leaders as well as trainers from NATO, which we knew were there, which is why we struck it. Now, I'm not sure if there were NATO troops there or not, but the fact that they're now saying, well, we know there's NATO soldiers and that's why we're striking it, this is very interesting because now they're signaling that they will focus on targeting NATO and one can look at this in the context of Europeans of course.

Your colleague, Professor Jeffrey Sachs, says this should be called America's War because Trump is continuing what Biden started, uninterrupted, unimpeded. Yeah, but I must say, to only give it away to Biden, it's not necessarily fair. Now, don't get me wrong, Biden has been deeply involved since 2014. But again, the first, the toppling of the government in Ukraine was the Orange Revolution in 2004. And then of course, under Bush in 2008, it was quite important. And this is when NATO offered future membership to Ukraine which put it on the path to war. Obama was president when the western

countries backed the coup in Ukraine in 2014. Trump himself under his first administration was sending javelins and weapons which Obama didn't want because he recognized it would be too much of an escalation which could lead, put the country further on the path to war. So it's very tempting often to find a date when a conflict begins because then you can set the whole narrative. We do the same with Israel, we do the same in Ukraine. Once you set the date when the conflict began, it's a good way of throwing away all responsibility. Before we go, is President Macron preparing to recognize a Palestinian state? It could be. These days it's very hard to read any of the leaders. I think all the rules of the past have been thrown out. So I don't think I could answer that question. What I can say though

in Europe at least, they're all scrambling to find new roles and new structures of what should hold Europe together. So Macron has always been the, he's not just doing what he thinks is right to solve a conflict, he's also looking at how to create a French leadership within the European Union. So he's always been this Napoleon nobody wants to follow. But if you have military conflict, then under economically powerful Europe, then leadership was with the Germans. Now, once the Germans are now broken and we have more of a militarized EU, then leadership naturally gravitates towards the French.

But then, of course, the British also want to say, so that's why they're also quite belligerent in their language. So it's hard to say. It depends on many things what they see as resolving the conflict, but also how they can enhance their own role in Europe and try to find a new foundation for making solidarity between the states. who is the director of Russian foreign intelligence, so the rough equivalent of the head of the American CIA, commenting about NATO border activity and the French in particular. Cut number 12. Before the State Security Committee of the Republic of Belarus and before the Foreign Intelligence Service of Russia,

we see difficult and specific tasks of ensuring the security of our countries by counteracting aggressive aspirations of unfriendly countries and their threats against our states. Quite a lot has already been done in this Germany, have increased the level of escalation around the Ukrainian conflict. So we need to and must act preemptively. Listen, I hope the president Macron does recognize the Palestinian state, but he doesn't know what he's doing by poking the bear like this. You know who this fellow is. He's saying what Vladimir Putin is thinking.

No, I agree. And but this is the problem, I think, especially in Europe now, the political leadership has trapped themselves into these narratives which they believe in. And well, listen to now the incoming Chancellor of Germany, Mertz, he's talking about using terrorist missiles to strike Russia. Germany's gonna go down this path again. But they see it as being simply helping Ukraine. It's completely legitimate. They don't see any They see it as being simply helping Ukraine. It's completely legitimate. They don't see any why it should be that controversial. But it just shows, again, any opposition

can be dismissed as being put in talking points. But keep in mind that only in the beginning of the Russian invasion, you have people like Biden who said that sending F-16s would mean World War III. They were quite critical about sending artillery, but they kind of got used to this idea. So at this point, we just escalated it so far and normalized it. So it's not really understood that the Russians also actually have a right to retaliate. And indeed,

imagine if, going back to that New York Times article, a similar article would have come out where we now know that the Russians have been striking our cities. They've been hitting, they've been doing military planning, they've been doing the targeting, they've been supplying the weapons, they've been offering the logistics and even operating the weapons, which are used to kill thousands of, well, for example, American troops. How would we respond? Would we consider that we have a right to retaliate? So as they now see the Europeans ramping up, given that Ukraine is collapsing now, if the Europeans are ramping up, I think the Russians will strike back,

because they're not going to, I don't think they're going to take this anymore. And this should be obvious, but everyone's looking the other way. It's a very strange, irrational path we're on. It's very dangerous. Professor Deason, thank you for your time. Deeply appreciate it.

Happy Easter to you and your family. We look forward to seeing you next week. Happy Easter, Judge. Thank you for your time deeply appreciated. Happy Easter to you and your family. We look forward to seeing you next week Happy Easter judge. Thank you and coming up later today at 215 this afternoon Aaron Maté and at 3 o'clock Phil Girardi judge Napolitano for judging freedom MUSIC