Judging Freedom - Prof. Jeffrey Sachs: Is NATO Destroying the EU?

Episode Date: December 3, 2024

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs: Is NATO Destroying the EU?See 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, December 3rd, 2024. Professor Jeffrey Sachs will be with us in just a moment on is NATO destroying the European Union and on other topics. But first this. We're taught to work hard for 35 to 40 years. Save your money, then live off your savings. Unfortunately, there are too many threats undermining the value of our hard-earned dollars. The Fed's massive money printing machine is shrinking your dollar's value.

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So here's what you need to do. Immerse yourself in knowledge and information. The writing is on the wall. Now is the time to consider shifting some of your dollars into gold and silver as your bedrock financial asset. Call my friends at Lear Capital, the leader in precious metals investing for over 27 years. They helped me diversify into gold and silver. They can help you too. Call Lear today at 800-511-4620, 800-511-4620, or go to learjudgenap.com. Professor Sachs, welcome here, my dear friend. Always a pleasure to be with you. Great to be with you. Thank you. Especially when you're back in New York.

It's nice to be home once in a while. Right, right. Which is where, of course, I find myself this morning. Can you give us a background, please, of the conflagration in Syria, starting with whatever President Obama and Secretary Clinton determined to do there about 10 years ago? I think, in fact, the Syrian conflict and the U.S. engagement in it goes back even before 2011, when the United States began an active program to overthrow the government of Syria. This goes back to 2001 or even before. And again, Israel, not surprisingly, features in a significant way. You see, the problem is that Israel, with its government led by Netanyahu, who's been prime minister for 17 of the years since 1996, is dead set against any kind of peace compromise with the Palestinian people,

which would involve a state of Palestine living alongside the state of Israel. And Netanyahu's theory is, well, we can have everything that is Israel. We can control our whole region. We can keep the occupied lands, but there will be resistance. And we have to be prepared to overthrow governments in our region that resist what we're doing. And the Israel lobby in the United States has been engaged in supporting that vision of regional overthrow. Now, we know that after 9-11, a list was made for seven countries to be overthrown in five years of U.S. war and covert action. And that list included Syria, it included Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, and Somalia. So seven countries. And Wesley Clark, who was the former

commander of NATO in Europe, the Supreme Commander, was told at the Pentagon soon after 9-11 that the United States would take out seven governments in five years. He was completely shocked. He's told this story many times and written about it many times. In fact, the Iraq War in 2003 was the first of the seven, and it was supposed to happen quickly and then go on to Syria and then go on to Lebanon, then go on to Iran and so forth. Why Iraq, by the way? Interestingly, because in 1998, Congress and the Clinton administration passed the Iraq Liberation Act, which made it American policy to overthrow the Iraqi government. Absolutely mind-boggling, but true. And actually, there it is in black and white in front of us and available online, iraq liberation act of 1998. now here comes syria what happened is we

went into iraq in 2003 got bogged down there was a an insurgency which killed a lot of american soldiers which tied up american troops so they didn't quite get around to the next war in Syria to overthrow the Syrian government as quickly as they thought. It was Obama's turn in 2011 to take up the next country on the list. And suddenly in 2011, Obama and his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton start saying publicly, it's time for the Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad to go. I thought it was absolutely extraordinary. Here again, America is saying, no, we'll decide who runs your country, not you. And in fact, we know that Obama signed a secret presidential finding, it's called, to instruct the CIA to engage with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and other regional powers to arm and finance an insurrection to overthrow the Syrian government. This is called Operation Timber Sycamore. As is typical of our mainstream

media, it wasn't reported. The New York Times covered it, I believe, three times in 10 years when I last checked on a search of their files. In other words, these basic facts are kept from the American people routinely because that's how the CIA operates. It operates in secrecy and without accountability. few days is yet again another part of this war, probably because Hezbollah was weakened by Israel a couple of weeks ago. Iran is on its back foot. Russia is preoccupied in Ukraine. And so the powers that be in Washington, probably in this case in Istanbul, certainly in Jerusalem, decided this is a good time to stoke up the attempt to overthrow Assad. It's just an ongoing part of an ongoing U.S. region-wide war at Israel's

behest. It's terrible, absolutely terrible. It's accomplished nothing but mayhem for two decades now since the 2003 Iraq ins in Lebanon. It's active in Syria. It is active in Somalia. It is active in Sudan. It's active in Libya. In other words, we've destabilized a vast region. Of course, we don't admit to any U.S. role whatsoever, but that's how the whole game works. It's interesting that President Obama and Secretary Clinton decided to use the CIA. If

they had used the military, of course, they would have had to have reported it publicly under the War Powers Resolution. And Obama did the same thing when he wanted to kill, ultimately slaughter, Colonel Qaddafi, the head of Libya. Do you think it is just a coincidence, I'm being a little silly and naive here, that Syria heated up within 24 hours of the temporary truce between the IDF and Hezbollah? No, of course, this is not a coincidence, nor is it a coincidence that there is unrest. A lot of it's stoked by the United States around Russia's periphery right now. This is a kind of parting shot by the Biden administration. There's unrest in Georgia. There is unrest in Romania. There is talk of new stoked up unrest in Moldova. These are regions on Russia's borders where the U.S. has active covert operations or active engagement through institutions like the National Endowment for Democracy that aim to stir up problems for Russia. So this is a kind of parting shot of

Biden, Sullivan, Blinken, and the deep state. It is a part of Netanyahu's broader plan, which he spelled out already in 1996. And he's at least done us a favor of repeating it in public. But Americans are not really aware of how our country has been used repeatedly by Israel for aims that are not legitimate, not legal, and not working. Surely Syria poses no threat to the national security of the United States, just like Iran poses no such threat. Well, of course not. It never had to do with U.S. national security. These are games. These people think that they're playing the board game risk. They want their pieces on the board. It's a kind of madness. It's extraordinarily dangerous. Is U.S. security really determined by whether NATO is in Ukraine or not? Of course not. But this has been a core American aim of the deep state

going back to 1994. We're in the 30th year of this idea. It's a terrible idea. It's never been explained once by a single president to the American people. and certainly the risks have never been explained once. This is the problem with our political system right now. It is secretive, core, true national security issues, meaning the ones that put us into profound insecurity of the possibility of a nuclear war are not explained at all to the American people. Before I ask you some questions about Prime Minister Netanyahu and the real reasons for his agreeing to the temporary ceasefire in Lebanon, and before I ask you how dangerous NATO has become for the security of the EU. This will bring back memories, Professor Sachs.

Cut number five. But what was going on and why they were doing what they were doing? No, no, no, no. Again, we were misled that there were supposedly protests and then something sprang out of that, an assault sprang out of that. And that was easily ascertained that that was not the fact. And the American people could have known that within days, and they didn't know that. With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans.

Was it because of a protest, or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided they'd go kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it make? There she was attempting to explain what happened in Benghazi at the time. I just thought it would bring back memories to you of that. You know, I've spoken with a leader recently about the invocation of NATO to destroy the government of Libya and Muammar Gaddafi and all of the falsehoods that Hillary Clinton and others put up for that. And this particular leader,

very experienced, said he can't really figure out why. He was perplexed. Was it a grudge of Nicolas Sarkozy? I think it could be simply that Libya was on Netanyahu's list, nothing more than that. But these are not threats to American security. These are not reasons for NATO bombing. These are not reasons to overthrow governments. It's all mysterious, except it's not mysterious. It's just hidden from view. Nothing is honestly discussed. And Hillary Clinton waving her hands and justifying a war doesn't work if we're even minimally rational about it. Have you seen her at any Columbia University faculty meetings? No, I haven't. I have to admit, I've been traveling, so I haven't seen her at a faculty meeting recently. Or Professor Victoria Nuland. All right, all right. I know you don't

run the school. They're blessed to have you, though. Why do you think Netanyahu agreed to the temporary ceasefire in Lebanon? Lebanon, they would like Israelis to move back north without the shelling, if that can be done. So there's nothing disadvantageous for Israel in this. They wanted to shut down one particular front. They think maybe they've weakened Hezbollah enough for this to happen. It's obviously a pretty fragile truce. It's not really an agreement on any peace. And Israel immediately opened up new fronts. So this isn't in any way a move towards peace. It's a move towards annexation of the West Bank and Gaza. There's such vile talk coming out of the Israeli government right now, just the most vile talk of ethnic cleansing, suppression of the Palestinians. despicable extremists saying they'll close down the prayers announced from the mosques because it's noisy for the Israelis and so forth. This is a kind of hubris and lawlessness and murderousness that first explains why Netanyahu is under indictment for crimes against humanity and war crimes by the

International Criminal Court. But all of the bravado comes from the fact that these people think that they run the United States and its military. Maybe they do. We'll see whether we have a government that can say we have national interests not israel's interests switching to um ukraine nato uh and the eu uh i want to play a clip for you from president zielinski uh from late last week and it's very telling chris, cut number six. The fact is that it is a solution to stop the hot stage of the war because we can just give the NATO membership to the part of Ukraine that is under our control. Yes, it could be possible, but no one offered. But the invitation must be given to Ukraine within its internationally recognized border.

You can't give invitation to just one part of a country. Isn't this delusional if he thinks the war would have as its outcome Ukraine membership in NATO? Well, what it is, is a deliberate attempt to engage the United States in World War III. First, Russia obviously would not stop a war basedensky knows that it would do would engage the United States under Article 5 of NATO treaty ostensibly to go to war directly with Russia. So it's madness. It's madness. It's cruel and it's stupidity. It's cruel that our mainstream media take this stuff seriously. It's cruel that you and I have to even talk about such craziness. But that's where we are because one U.S. administration after another has brought us closer and closer to nuclear war because, again, they're playing games.

They've already played games to the extent of about 600,000 Ukrainian dead and maybe hundreds of thousands certainly gravely wounded. For them, it's a game. You don't hear them wringing their hands over this or be or promoting this. They're playing the game of risk. They want the American peace on the board in Ukraine. And they don't understand, yes, when you play the game of risk, which I used to play decades ago as a child, you're playing a world war game. That's what they're doing. Except there are real nuclear weapons around. And we're told, don't worry about that. Just get back to your board game. That's what they're doing. Except there are real nuclear weapons around. And we're told, don't worry about that. Just get back to your board game. Mind your own business.

Here's a far more sober analysis of all this. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov yesterday, cut number two. We are concerned about what we are hearing lately, particularly from the West, in Brussels, London, Paris, and Washington. There is increasing talk about a ceasefire as a way to give Ukraine a break and provide time to arm it with modern, long-range weapons. This approach is certainly not the way forward. Western leaders, it seems, are catering to Zelensky and his demands. Their stance has been, not a word about Ukraine without Ukraine. Yet they have been discussing Russia without Russia for over two years within the framework of Zelensky's proposals. As President Putin pointed out,

Zelensky's Western backers should first compel him to cancel the decree that prohibits negotiations with Putin's government. Russia is ready for negotiations, but they must be based on a comprehensive and legal consideration of the legitimate interests of all parties involved. Your thoughts, Professor Sachs? What is happening and what has been happening now for 30 years is that Russia has said, do not put U.S. military bases, U.S. missile systems, NATO military bases on our border with Ukraine. This has been the point of all of this. There have been U.S.-backed coups and other adventures in order that the United States can pursue its objective of putting its military into Ukraine.

Russia has said no all along. The fact that Zelensky and Western governments and incoming members of the Trump administration say, oh, yes, we could freeze the conflict. Maybe NATO won't be there for 10 years, but then, you know, maybe NATO would be there, shows the campaign trail to their voters, we will make peace. Then they have to understand a basic point, and that is the way to make peace is to say Ukraine will be safe and secure, but not a member of NATO. That's the whole point. Zelensky to this moment is talking, yes, NATO. Starmer is talking, yes, NATO. Biden is talking, yes, NATO. Jake Sullivan is talking, yes, NATO. And there are people incoming in the Trump administration. I don't want to name them by name. Will they actually be confirmed? Is that going to be their position? But they're saying,

yeah, we kind of understand NATO is a bit of a problem, but maybe we'll put it off for 10 years, blah, blah, blah. Well, do we want peace or not? To have peace, we have to understand, put away the risk board game and get real and keep a space between the United States and Russia so that we're not playing World War III. And in that context, Ukraine can be safe. Zelensky is, I don't know whether he's delusional, just a complete pawn, ignorant. I have a feeling he probably knows what's going on, because in March 2022, he said, we will be neutral. And he and Foreign Minister Lavrov, or Ukraine and Russia, I should say more precisely, initialed an agreement of peace based on neutrality. The United States stopped it. So the war went on uselessly. This bloody war, hundreds of thousands of dead because the United

States stopped neutrality in March 2022. Boris Johnson, who was one of the fools of our age, who was prime minister of the UK at the time and went to Kiev as part of the messenger service to tell Zelensky, don't accept neutrality, later said, well, we couldn't because this is a war for preserving Western hegemony yeah it is well that means you're playing the risk board game that's a game what does Western hegemony means it means we get to put our peace on the Ukrainian map uh this is they're playing games they they're they're worse than children If we want peace and we could have peace, you make peace by understanding what the Russians have been saying for 30 years, what the United States promised to the Soviet Union and to Russia 34 years ago that NATO would not move one inch eastward, and you would stop playing games and start getting to real life and start saving the people of Ukraine who are dying at American hands. Now we hear reports that American officials, is it Jake Sullivan? Is it Blinken? Is it Biden? We don't know because we're never told, but American officials are pressing Ukraine to lower the age of mobilization to 18, or is it 17, or is it 16, or is it kill all the kids?

Because they're playing a game. They're not seriously interested in the Ukrainian people. They're playing a board game. Taking you to another part of the world, some breaking news, Professor Sachs. South Korean President Yoon has declared emergency martial law Tuesday, accusing the country's opposition, I'm reading from the Associated Press, accusing the country's opposition of controlling the parliament, sympathizing with North Korea, and paralyzing the government with anti-state activities. I don't know if you know these folks or can give us any information. I do know these folks, but I did not know about these events, so I can't speak to them without looking, but that sounds like a major story, and I don't know the facts about it. I do know that the U.S. has been ratcheting up its pressure and presence in East Asia

as part of what people will not believe, but part of a political campaign to stoke up a war with China by 2027 is the usual mantra in Washington. Mind-boggling. Unbelievable. So I don't know whether this is connected or not, but the tensions in East Asia are high. And again, if we are grownups, the tensions can be reduced. If we act like children or playing a board game, then they will rise. This almost sounds like this fellow's declaring himself a dictator. Quote, through this martial law, I will rebuild and protect the free Republic of Korea, which is falling into the depths of national ruin. The opposition leader, of course, who narrowly lost the presidency to President Yoon two years ago, called this illegal and

unconstitutional. It sounds phenomenal. Of course, Korea was a dictatorship for many decades, and then it democratized, and it's been a very vigorous democracy until now. Again, I have not seen this story, so I can't really comment more on it. Appreciate your time, Professor Sachs. Thank you so much for allowing me to pick your brain. As always, I look forward to seeing you again next week. Fantastic. Great. Thanks a lot. All the best. And coming up later today at noon, Matt Ho at two o'clock, Roger Waters. Yes, that Roger Waters from Pink Floyd, the great peace activist. And at three o'clock, Karen Kwiatkowski, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.