Judging Freedom - Prof. Jeffrey Sachs: Neocons and World Dominance

Episode Date: September 10, 2024

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs: Neocons and World DominanceSee 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 10th, 2024. and 24. Professor Jeffrey Sachs will be with us in just a moment on the latest in Israel, the latest in Ukraine, and neocon dominance of the world. But first this. A divisive presidential election is upon us, and the winner is gold. Let me tell you what I mean. Since 2016, our national debt has grown a staggering 70% and gold has increased by 60%. Do you own gold? I do. I bought my gold in February 2023 and it has risen 33%. You've heard me talk about Lear Capital, the company I trust. Let me tell you why. Recently, Kevin DeMeritt, who is the founder and CEO of Lear, assisted the FBI in discovering a nationwide gold theft ring. And because of Kevin's good work,

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You have a fascinating piece. And for those of us who have followed your work, it is a summary of much of what you have been teaching us. But it's a gift to have it right in front of our eyes on neocons choosing dominance over Russia rather than helping to save Russia and your own integral part in efforts to save Russia financially at the time of the demise of the Soviet Union. I want to get to it, but before that, there are new events in Israel and there are new events in Ukraine, and I need to pick your brain on them.

We'll start in Israel, where over the weekend, Prime Minister Netanyahu announced publicly. This is the third time he's announced it, but he announced publicly that he has ordered the IDF to prepare for a major invasion of Lebanon. Why would he do such a thing? Why would he make such an announcement? Well, Israel is being attacked by Hezbollah. Hezbollah is attacking because Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza. Israel doesn't want to stop its war in Gaza, I should say, the Netanyahu government. And so Israel finds itself in the north under attack. Israel wants it all. It wants to be able to dominate Gaza. It wants to dominate the West Bank. It wants to prevent a Palestinian state. It finds itself unable to do so with a brutal war in Gaza that it is not winning, it's destroying. It is killing people, but it's not winning the war against Hamas. It finds itself in a very brutal war

with Hezbollah, which has 150,000 missiles, 200,000 missiles. Take your pick of what analysts say. And Israel's Iron Dome cannot protect Israel from that. so Israel's had to evacuate a lot of the north. Israel finds itself in an increasing war in the West Bank. Of course, it commits massive crimes against the Palestinian people there, but there is unrest increasingly there. It finds itself close to a war with Iran. Now, what is Netanyahu's goal? It's clear. It's to bring the United States even more into this. Israel cannot win these wars. It cannot win even the war in Gaza against Hamas. It's not winning. It's destroying, as I emphasized, but it is not defeating Hamas as a military force. It cannot win the war against Hezbollah. It can't even protect Israel against Hezbollah's missiles.

It could not win the war against Iran, which has hypersonic missiles, which can penetrate Israeli airspace. But Netanyahu believes for Israel to have everything it wants, in other words, for this greater Israel, which is his fundamental objective and the coalition government's fundamental objective, all it has to do is bring the United States in. This itself is a, first of all, a horrible idea, and everything we do should be for the United States to stay out of this. Second, it's also a profound miscalculation because just like in Ukraine, even if the United States comes in, this would just be an escalating regional war that the United States is not going to win also. Iran has allies. It's got Russia as an ally.

Iran is part of the BRICS, which means that it has China as a friend. Well, and by the way, Zelensky, the same way in Ukraine. They just want escalation for their own narrow and I would say, extreme purposes, and they want the United States to escalate to World War III. No thank you. Yesterday, the Israelis destroyed a refugee camp. When the dust had settled, the crater was 40 feet deep, and there was no sign of humanity. The human beings had just been vaporized.

They don't even know how many people died. There's no remnant of their bodies. I guess this vicious bellicosity under the guise of searching for a Hamas leader will continue, notwithstanding what you've just described, notwithstanding the abject failure of the Israelis to eradicate Hamas, notwithstanding Prime Minister Netanyahu's feigned favoring of ceasefire negotiations. Yeah, it's not even feigned, I would say. I don't even think it's feigned. I think they don't want a ceasefire. He faces huge protests inside Israel who want the remaining Israeli hostages to come home. Netanyahu does not want peace because peace would mean having to face politics. What do I mean by politics? I mean the

fact that millions of Palestinians are going to have their political rights, and this is what Israel is denying, and it expects the United States to go to World War III for Israel to be able to deny this. Well, it's not going to happen. No, thank you. And Israel cannot defeat Hamas, Hezbollah, especially if there's a direct war with Iran. It cannot defeat these forces with all its high repute. It's going to face massive internal destruction and loss of life. But that now counts on the United States joining in. No, thanks. If we had any, well, I think by the way, behind the scenes, the U.S. is trying actually not to get pulled into this war. But of course, with the semi-functioning presidency at this point, with these waninganing days with the Israel lobby, Netanyahu

thinks he can still pull the levers and pull the U.S. in. Late last week, the IDF murdered an American woman by putting a bullet in her head. She was peacefully demonstrating in the West Bank. The Secretary of State admonished Israel. I mean, he could stop all this, as we know, with a phone call. Do you see anything coming of this? Or maybe I should ask it in a more humane way. Are you surprised at all that the IDF would murder an American by putting a bullet in her head? Well, I don't think that they necessarily knew she was an American, but they do murder with impunity. This is not new. The idea of Israeli forces is to terrorize, to, when we talk about the hundreds of Israeli hostages, there are tens of thousands of Palestinians that, in a sense, who are routinely rounded up.

So this is a regime that thinks that it can govern, even Netanyahu, of course, has said it repeatedly, by mowing the lawn. What does mowing the lawn mean? Mowing the lawn means every few years going in and killing hundreds or thousands of people to have a kind of reign of fear, if not a reign of outright terror. And so the IDF shooting people in cold blood, well, duh, this is what they do. And it's absolutely disgusting, but it's been more or less kept from the American awareness until the events of the past year. Now Americans are seeing it. They're distraught about it. They didn't understand how much American politics is in the hands of the Israel lobby. Now they see that clearly as well. This is not

a U.S. policy that is backed by the American people. It is a U.S. policy that is backed by a narrow group of influential people. This is the problem. Here's Secretary Blinken in London on this very topic, Professor Sachs, earlier today, cut number 15. In our judgment, Israeli security forces need to make some fundamental changes in the way that they operate in the West Bank, including changes to their rules of engagement. We've long seen reports of the security forces looking the other way when extremist settlers use violence against Palestinians. We've seen reports of excessive force by Israeli security forces against Palestinians.

And now we have the second American citizen killed at the hands of Israeli security forces. It's not acceptable. It has to change. And we'll be making that clear to the senior-most members of the Israeli government. Now, we're looking carefully at the results of this investigation, but even on an initial read and even accepting it at face value, it's clear that there are serious issues that need to be dealt with, and we will insist that they be dealt with. Is this credible or hogwash?

It's just pathetic. I mean, it's fine. It's, yeah, dealt with, well, this has been going on for years, for decades. Now it's in full view. Of course, Blinken always speaks like he's some instructor someplace or academic looking on, wringing his hands, corner of his eye, a tear. He's the Secretary of State of the United States, which funds and arms Israel for these operations. So this could stop today. The fact that it doesn't stop is because of our domestic politics. Right. So this is our problem. Standing next to him at the time was Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who announced he's going to be visiting the White House at the end of the week, supposedly for Joe Biden to try and talk him out of some holdback that the Brits announced with respect to the weapons and ammunition they're sending to Israel. Is this hold back

a moral one, a legal one? Is it significant or is it just politics? Well, I think that the revulsion worldwide in what Israel is doing and the realization, which I think is at the core, that what Israel is doing is in the service of a political agenda. This is the most important thing to keep in mind. Wars come from politics. The Israeli politics right now is an extremist politics, which says Israel will rule over the Palestinian people, those who are not expelled or those who are not killed. So this is so-called greater Israel. It's a disaster, Israel. But that's the politics. The politics is completely unacceptable. It's completely illegal. It's completely unsustainable. But that's what the

war is about. Rather than having a political solution, Israel thinks that it can do this by war. It can't. It can only do this by war if the United States is completely complicit in this. So when you ask, does the UK mean it? All over the world, the publics want this fighting to stop. This is dangerous for everybody. It's murderous when it comes to the Palestinians, but it's dangerous for the whole world. Everybody wants, after all these decades, stop the damn fighting, stop the killing,

because you're threatening global peace. You're threatening an escalation to world war. And we're not going to stand there and do this so that Israel can have an apartheid regime or commit ethnic cleansing or commit genocide in Gaza. No. So this is what's happening country by country. The United States is the last holdout. If the United States took an active policy for peace, peace would come because the United States would say with the rest of the world, this is how it's going to be. International law, two states, 4th of June, 1967 borders, state of Palestine, 194th UN member state, capital in East Jerusalem. It's all there, the solution on the table. The U.S. is the last holdout. Some of the phrases that you just used, stop the fighting, this will lead to a significant

regional war. In your reference to the Israelis in Gaza could also be applied to America's proxy Ukraine. Last night, the Ukrainians sent drones to Moscow. Most of them got shot down. One of them got through, hit a lady's house, and killed her in a Moscow suburb. Last week, the Russian military sent two intercontinental ballistic missiles to destroy a Russian military academy. The death toll is now up to over 700, making it the most significant loss of life in one action. Ukrainian academy. Ukrainian academy, right. Some of the dead were Polish and Swedish instructors. The American military claims that at the same time

that the military academy was struck, an American lieutenant colonel and instructor in surveillance died of a heart attack in Poland. Who knows if he was there and they just moved his body out. My point is, it was a tremendous response by the Russian military. What is your take on all of this? Again, let's understand the underlying politics. Let's remember von Clausewitz, the German war theorist who in the 1830s said, war is the continuation of politics with other means. What are the politics of the Ukraine war?

This is actually a US-led provocation. It started in 1992. It was really confirmed under Clinton in 1994. It was reaffirmed under Bush. It was reaffirmed under Obama. It was continued by Trump, and it was doubled down by Biden to expand the U.S. military reach to Ukraine. Ukraine borders Russia. The word Ukraine means border, borderland in both Ukrainian and Russian language. So Ukraine borders Russia, and the United States took a decision in 1992 that Russia is so weak. Well, we can have it all. We should surround Russia. We should push Russia effectively out of the Black Sea, which is, by the way, an idea that goes back to the British Empire

in the 19th century and was the reason for what was then called the Crimean War between 1853 and 1856. So the United States said, we're the dominant power. We can go where we want. Bill Clinton already approved in the 1990s a plan to expand NATO. That means U.S. military bases to expand NATO to Ukraine and even to Georgia, which is not a North Atlantic country. It's a country in the Caucasus region near the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea. So this is what this is about. The Russians said, no, we don't want you on our border. Just like the United States and the Monroe Doctrine said 200 years ago, we don't want

anyone near our border. We don't want the Soviet Union in Cuba. We almost went to World War over it. Well, this war has been going on since then. What happens when you have a war like this, based on these phony, false, dangerous pretenses, is you install a regime like the regime that came to Ukraine in a coup that the United States participated in in February 2014, that then starts pulling the U.S. into the risk of full-blown world war, just like Israel is doing. So Zelensky and his regime, they won't stop at anything. And they have some friends in the region

that won't stop at anything right now. And the British, who are just historically the most belligerent and now the most irresponsible because they play so little role, but they're the biggest cheerleaders of war. Well, they want escalation. But this is crazy. Ukraine is losing on the battlefield. It's lost 600,000 dead by many credible estimates at this point. It is losing every day 1,000 to 2,000 dead and wounded on the battlefield right now. And what does Zelensky, who's a de facto leader, he's not a constitutional leader anymore, what does he say? Well, of course, escalate, escalate. What's the risk? And then we had this unbelievably irresponsible statement by our CIA director, William Burns, who absolutely knows better because Burns wrote the memo in 2009 or 2008, sorry, that said, stay out of Ukraine. The whole Russian leadership, not just Putin, the whole Russian political leadership says, Nyet means Nyet. Don't come close to Ukraine.

Burns knows this. Then he says, oh, don't worry about nuclear arms. God damn it. I'm sorry to say it. We got children. We have grandchildren. Of course we have to worry about this. This is a country, Russia, that has 6,000 nuclear warheads. We have 6,000 nuclear warheads. We got plenty of generals who game every day nuclear war. Stop saying not to worry. Of course we need to worry. A little prudence.

We don't want World War III. We don't want attacks on Moscow. We don't want long-range missiles hitting inside Russia. We don't want more escalation. Of course we should worry. Over the weekend, and this is in part what you were talking about, the Financial Times publication you and I read daily, held a public conference. I don't know how they got this to happen, but they did. Sir Peter Moore, the head of MI6,

sat in an auditorium next to Bill Burns, the head of CIA, and they took public questions. This has never happened in 75 years by these fellows or their predecessors. Much of what they said, in my view, I suspect in yours, was absurd. They were more concerned about the narrative of Ukraine versus Russia than the actual reality on the ground. But I'll let you evaluate this. First, Sir Peter and Bill Burns, and then Sir Peter Moore saying that Putin has failed. So, Chris, run them together. Cut nine and then cut 10. Typically audacious and bold on the part of the Ukrainians to try and change the game in a way. And I think they have, to a degree, changed the narrative around this. The Kursk offensive is a significant tactical achievement. It's not only been a boost in Ukrainian morale,

it has exposed some of the vulnerabilities of Putin's Russia and of his military. And it's important to remember how this started in this phase with Putin mounting a war of aggression in February 2022. And two and a half years later, that failed. It continues to fail. The Ukrainians will continue to fight. We will continue to help them to fight. And it's difficult. Ignorant of reality and profoundly ignorant of history. Not ignorant. They're lying through their teeth. They're lying through their smirks. This is not ignorance. When Pompeo was head of the CIA or after he went to talk to some students in Texas and he laughed, he said, you know, what did we do there? We taught them to be above the law, to be beyond the law, to be beyond accountability. And one of the ways to do that is to lie. What you just heard

were utter lies. I thought Moore had a smirk on his face. I don't think he was doing a great job lying. I know Burns knows better. He's a smart guy. He's one of our most able diplomats. But put him on top of the CIA and, well, they lie, they cheat, they steal. This is not true. By the way, the Kursk offensive is by all accounts a blunder and a disaster because the real frontline in the Donbas region where the Ukrainians are either going to retreat or going to be killed where they are because there was no military or strategic significance behind the Kursk offensive. And both of those people know that full well. That's not their job. Their job is to lie, to cheat, to steal, to be unaccountable, to be beyond the law. We shouldn't have such organizations in the United States. We should be a law-based society that doesn't lie, cheat and steal.

Over the weekend, the queen of the neocons, Victoria Nuland, now a colleague of yours on the Columbia faculty. Indeed. Thank you. I couldn't remember that. Now I remember that. But of course she resigned recently within the past year as Deputy Secretary of State for Political Affairs, admitted that the United States and Great Britain undermined the peace negotiations in Istanbul in 2022. I was surprised to hear that. But that is a segue into the fabulous piece that you have written, dated September 4th, called How the Neocons Chose Hegemony Over Peace, beginning in the early 1990s. For anybody that wants to read it,

it is typically Jeff Sachs. It is brilliant, easy to follow, almost a chronology of what the neocons did to start all these wars, about which Sir Peter and Bill Burns were obviously lying. I was surprised she made that admission, but it does show how disastrous the neocon urge for dominance has been. A refusal to provide the old Soviet Union, once it became Russia, with a nickel of financial assistance and insistence that NATO subjugate Russia, a willingness to use coups and violence in order to bring that about. Take it from there, Jeff. Basically, the more we understand, the more we see, the more we learn. The Cold War never stopped in the eyes of the Cold Warriors and the CIA, I should add.

The Cold War itself dates back to 1945. It, too, was avoidable. This is an interesting fact. I won't divert us. Maybe we could talk about it at some other date. But the whole idea that we were in an inevitable clash with the Soviet Union was false. But in any event, we had 45 years of Cold War, very dangerous, near nuclear war on several occasions, most famously the Cuban Missile Crisis. Then Gorbachev, a man of peace, said, we want peace. We want cooperation.

We want a common European home. We want a common economic space that stretches from Rotterdam on the Atlantic to Vladivostok on the Pacific across Eurasia. My God, the chance for peace. I was asked at that time to help advise a number of governments in the region, including Gorbachev's Soviet Union, towards the end when they needed economic help. President Yeltsin in Russia in 1992 and 1993, but also several other countries, including Ukraine, President Kuchma in 2004, including Poland in 1989 to 91, including Estonia in 1991- 92, including Slovenia, many countries. So I know the region. We had a chance for peace. We didn't want peace. We wanted victory. Victory. We wanted dominance. We wanted NATO everywhere. We wanted to surround Russia so it's a second-rate power. We wanted to tell them,

we decide, you don't decide. Partnership? Not a partnership. This is our unipolar world. That's the mindset of Victoria Nuland and the neocons. And what's fascinating and important for people to understand, we sometimes pretend we have the Democrats versus the Republicans, the Republicans versus the Democrats. Give me a break. This has been a consistent policy from George W. Bush Sr., Bill Clinton, George W. Bush Jr., Obama, Trump, and Biden. This has been what we call the deep state or the security state. This has been a consistent, laid-out policy.

Decisions were made already in 1992 when Cheney was the Secretary of Defense. Then when Clinton came in, he had Victoria Nuland as senior official in the State Department on Russian affairs. So that Russia team turned down every constructive proposal to actually help Russia to stabilize. Well, that was the Clinton administration. Clinton decided in 1994, after a pretty fierce internal battle with his own diplomats and leaders, like his defense secretary, yeah, NATO's going to expand. He went with the hard line of the neoconservatives. That was Victoria Nuland there under Clinton too. Then comes George W. Bush. And where is Victoria Nuland? Also in government. Now she's the deputy national security advisor of Vice PresidentS. ambassador to NATO. In 2008, she leads the way in the Bucharest NATO summit to press for Ukraine and Georgia to become part of NATO. line of Russia, which Bill Burns, now our CIA director, knew so well that he wrote a famous memo, leaked, that everybody can find online, that I mentioned, called Nyet means Nyet, explaining the whole Russian political classes against that.

He was ambassador to Russia. He was U.S. ambassador to Russia. Then in 2014, Victoria Nuland, under Obama, under Obama now, is assistant secretary of state. She's the point person for the Maidan violent overthrow of the neutral president, Viktor Yanukovych. Then in 2021, Biden says, Newland is now the undersecretary of state for political affairs, overseeing this war that evolves. So my point is, it doesn't matter whether it's Clinton or Bush or Obama or Biden in this case, She's been there in all the administrations because this is a deep state idea. This is something that goes back to 1992. And really, by the way, back to 1945, we're going to defeat them. And it's not even about communism, which was the claim

from 1945 to 1990. There's no communism there. This has nothing to do with that. This is the idea, America decides everything. You know what? It's going to get us destroyed if we continue with this arrogance. This is what this is about. And this is why the parties, that's not really the point. The point is war or peace. We need people who stand up for peace, who say enough is enough. We don't need nuclear war. We don't need deep strikes against Russia. We don't need further escalation. The British will never say it. They've been gung-ho Russophobes since 1840, thank you very much. That's the whole British mentality. No thank you. But we have to have some sense to keep ourselves out of disaster, ourselves, for our own security. Zelensky should not determine whether we survive

or go to a nuclear war, nor should Bibi Netanyahu. We should have U.S. security. We don't want World War III. Thank you, Professor Sachs, for another brilliant and gifted analysis. And my apologies for getting you a little angry, but you're fabulous when you're passionate. I know you're traveling. We're deeply appreciative for all your time, as always. We'll look forward to seeing you again next week thank you so much bye bye in my view a terrific interview with many wonderful soliloquies from the great Professor Sachs coming up later today

2 o'clock Eastern Matt Ho 3 o'clock Eastern Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski 4 o'clock Eastern the always worth waiting for Pepe Escobar from Moscow. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.