Judging Freedom - Prof. Jeffrey Sachs: The Urgency of Diplomacy

Episode Date: March 26, 2024

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs: The Urgency of DiplomacySee 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, March 26, 2024. Professor Sachs is with us now. Apologies for the late start. Gremlins, gremlins everywhere. Professor Sachs, always a pleasure, my dear friend. And thank you for joining us. We have a lot to talk about, not the least of which is your recent piece on the utter breakdown of diplomacy between the United States and Russia and the consequences of that. But first, I would like to explore your thoughts on the evidence available to us thus far on the tragic assault of the concert hall

outside of Moscow. Are you able to give us any insight about what CIA, MI6, Assad, Ukrainian intelligence, what any of them knew about before this tragedy unfolded? Well, it's clear that there's a lot more to this story than the US is letting on right now. It's also clear that the Russian government's going to find out a lot about this because, of course, they not only captured the four perpetrators, but a widening group that was obviously involved in this, including links to a network in Turkey and lots of suggestions of links to this network in Ukraine so the big question of course is whether the Ukrainian government in one way or another was involved in this. And there are lots of reasons to believe the answer could well be yes.

The Ukrainian government itself has been involved in many terrorist attacks inside Russia. So limiting terrorism has not been high on the Ukrainian priority list. They've been blowing up people, assassinating people, engaging in terrorist attacks. We know that the perpetrators were fleeing to Ukraine. This is perhaps the most notable concrete fact that we certainly know at this stage. And President Putin said that in his guarded remarks, he said that there was some kind of window for these perpetrators. They were obviously fleeing in a particular direction that they knew and they were expected to be received inside Ukraine. We've heard in the last 24 hours of the number of, quote, ISIS-related jihadists or whatever, or activists or those operating under that name, living in Ukraine, false passports, linkages that put some group

inside Ukraine. And we know, quite frankly, that the United States has been running jihadists for more than uh 45 years actually uh this goes back to Zbigniew Brzezinski uh bringing in jihadists from the Middle East to fight in Afghanistan as a trap to bring the Soviet Union into Afghanistan in 1979, something that Brzezinski explained in a famous interview in Le Nouveau Observateur in 1998, that the U.S., yes, used jihadists for this purpose. And after that, the U.S. continued to recruit al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, links and others in many places in the world. In Syria, when Obama sent the CIA in to overthrow Assad, who did he arm? Jihadists. Well, how credible is the United States government claim within 55 minutes of the report of the attack that this was done by ISIS-K? A, how credible is that? And B, what is, in your view, ISIS-K? nothing the united states says about this has any credibility

whatsoever because the united states lies about everything repeatedly especially about all issues of this sort so it could be true but the fact the United States said it so quickly after the attack and so authoritatively makes it less likely to be true than more likely to be true. It did not say we will work with the Russians to uncover the perpetrators of this horrible crime. It said within basically minutes, this was not Ukraine. This was ISIS-K. We know how this was done. Now, this raises a great many questions, many more questions than are answered by such a statement. But we know that the United States engages in jihadist linked terror and has done so for decades in the

Balkans. It has done so in the Middle East. It has done so in its client uh could have done so uh in uh in ukraine so nothing the united states says about this uh proves anything in fact in my view it has no weight or uh adverse weight But what we do and should expect some nasty surprises and this tragedy at the concert hall on Friday evening? Of course. Of course, it may not refer to this, but it very well could have referred to this. Nothing about the U.S. action should be taken for face value. That is the first principle of understanding U.S. foreign policy, which is that there is a deep and very often dark side to this. Victoria Nuland was always part of that. Nasty surprises. What did she mean? Well, it could have been using American cluster munitions against civilian populations in Russia. That has been going on now for the last two weeks. going to be some kind of terrorist attack that they roughly knew about or explicitly knew about. Who knows? We will not be told the truth by the United States about any of this. But it doesn't

mean we won't learn the truth, because with Russia having captured the perpetrators alive and now apparently with the further information developed with Turkey or so were explained in the last 24 hours, I'm sure that we're going to hear a lot more about this. do hear from uh russian uh observers close to the government is a pretty continuing uh drumbeat that there are links with ukraine and this could be based on real information that will come forward to us. It could be based on surmise. At this stage, we don't know, but I would not take anything for face value. And we are learning lots of details that point towards Ukraine, at least, though they do not in any way dispositively prove that this is the case yet. Yesterday, the United Nations Security Council, after five tries, three vetoed by the U.S. and Great Britain, one by the U.S., quite properly vetoed by Russia and China because it really didn't say anything of substance. The fifth with the U.S. abstaining and Great Britain and all others voting in favor, calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. A, were you surprised at the U.S. vote?

And B, what, if anything, will be the effect of this Security Council resolution, Professor Sachs? This podcast is sponsored by Talkspace. 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 $0 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. Well, I was surprised at the vote, but then I was surprised at what we've learned since then, that the U.S. government is going out of its way. Now, apparently by the hour and by the spokesman to emphasize this is non-binding. I don't even know what this means. I've never heard anything like this. But the U.Ss is going out of its way to distance itself from its own abstention and from this resolution so again i'm sorry to say it but nothing of this administration makes sense and we don't hear the truth about almost anything this is not a non-binding resolution. That even makes no sense at all. I don't want to raise your blood pressure, but I'm going to play a brief montage

of the American ambassador, Israeli ambassador, and Palestinian ambassador sitting on the Security Council. You'll be very unhappy with the American ambassador and Israeli, but I'll let you comment on it after we hear it. It's just about a minute long. Cut 14, Chris. We fully support some of the critical objectives in this non-binding resolution, and we believe it was important for the Council to speak out and make clear that our ceasefire must, any ceasefire, must come with the release of all hostages. The resolution just voted upon makes it seem as if the war started by itself. Well, let me set the record straight. Israel did not start this war, nor did Israel want this war. This must be a turning point.

This must lead to saving lives on the ground. This must signal the end of this assault of atrocities against our people. A nation is being murdered. A nation is being dispossessed. Does the UN Security Council as it is obliged to do, then it absolutely has the ability under the UN Charter and under international law to enforce its own agreements. By the way, the United States can enforce it straightforwardly by stopping the arming of this genocidal attack by Israel on the people of Gaza. So the United States by itself

can stop this assault and should. But the Security Council together can put in sanctions, can put in peacekeepers, can enforce its own resolutions. There's nothing about this resolution that is, quote, non-binding. I don't even know how they dream up these things in the State Department, except to basically prevaricate and undermine any semblance of international law after having this vote, 14 to nothing, in the Security Council call for an immediate ceasefire. So while this was happening, the Israeli Defense Minister Galant was in the Pentagon. Ron Dermer and other civilian high-ranking members of Prime Minister Netanyahu's government were about to board a plane

for Washington to go to the State Department and the White House, Prime Minister Netanyahu turned them around. They hadn't actually left, but he said, you're not going. Is this a legitimate diplomatic response, or what is it? Because as you pointed out, notwithstanding Joe Biden's language, notwithstanding Ambassador Thomas's vote, we're still sending spare parts and ammunition and weapons to them on a daily, to the Israelis on a daily basis. And Netanyahu says on a daily basis that Israel is going to attack in Rafah, the southern city where the two million people of Gaza are now packed because they were told to go there for safety. And the Biden administration goes out of its way every day to say we're against that, but there are no red lines to the use of our munitions and is therefore absolutely complicit in all that is happening now with the 33,000 deaths to date and with hundreds of

thousands of people on the brink of starvation and deaths from starvation occurring every day and emaciated children dying in the few still functioning hospitals in Gaza. and the United States continues to support this. This is the real truth. It's shocking. It's absolutely against the will of the American people. It's absolutely against international law. And it is the ongoing policy of President Joe Biden. Here's Admiral Kirby cautioning again. Don't make me look at him, but it's okay. We'll do it again.

I apologize, but here's Admiral Kirby. No, it's okay. It's part of our job. Right, right. Cautioning against this ground invasion. The ground invasion of Rafah is as reprehensible as anything the IDF has done for the reasons you just explained. The Israelis said, go south because we're bombing north. Everybody goes south. There were a quarter of a million people there. Now there's close to two million people where a quarter of a million once lived, and they're going to invade it. I don't think Kirby's words mean a damn thing, and I don't think we can ever believe him, but here he is.

Is there any circumstance that the U.S. would support a RAFA operation in the future? Are you ruling it out entirely, or are you ruling it out perfectly? We've been very clear. We don't believe that a major ground operation in RAFA is the right course of action, particularly when you have a million and a half people there seeking refuge and no conceived plan, no verifiable plan to take care of them. We've been very consistent on that. The Netanyahu government doesn't give a damn about the civilians in Rafah.

I missed, it didn't come through on my side, but it is absolutely clear that the Netanyahu government doesn't give a damn about the civilians of Gaza or of Palestine. That's absolutely clear because they have been slaughtering them and they have been starving them. And now they're threatening an invasion to the very spot where people were supposed to go to flee for their safety under Israel's instruction you can't make this stuff up this is so vulgar so clear so unambiguous and with so much American complicity because we are arming Israel to do exactly this. And all of the hand-wringing that we have heard, all of the mumbles, all of the excuses mean nothing because our government doesn't act. And Netanyahu taunts the government. He says, who's really in charge of the U.S. government, you or I? I'm in charge. That's what he says. And so far, he's proven to be right. He's in charge. And he has our president

and our secretary of state wringing their hands, but doing Netanyahu's bidding. I think you quoted in one of your recent pieces a confrontation between a younger Prime Minister Netanyahu and Bill Clinton, expressing outrage that Netanyahu was basically saying to Clinton, he's in charge of the U.S. government. Now you're talking about 30 years ago when clinton was in the white house look we we we really have a situation here that i've not seen before of course we knew the israel lobby is powerful but i've never seen this kind of weakness by a u.s president about u.s policy you know it's not a matter by the way even of the united states telling israel what to do it's about us what are we doing we you know what israel says they're going to do it with or without us okay they do it without us without our weapons without our munitions now try it for a day

Israel there's nothing there you can't do it Israel depends on the continued flow of American munitions period if Biden wants to stop this he can can stop it. That's actually his job. He's president of the United States. He doesn't have to be prime minister of Israel. He doesn't even have to tell Israel what to do. He just has to decide what the United States and Russia come about? 1980s to break Russia. In the 1980s, it was to break the Soviet Union, part of the Cold War. At the end of the Cold War, at the end of 1991, when the Soviet Union was dissolved into the 15 successor states, including Russia as the legal successor state of the Soviet Union itself, the United States continued its Cold War past the Cold War. And everything that was done after that was an attempt to continue to weaken divide defeat russia or to create a kind of regime change so that there would be a regime that would be uh suppliant to american interests so this has been going on for a long time there has not been diplomacy in the sense that you have negotiations with each other, you follow through. And since, especially 1999, when Bill Clinton bombed Belgrade for 78 straight days. Unbelievable. But bombed a capital of Europe for 78 straight

days. No UN anything, just Bill Clinton deciding to do it and ordering NATO to do it, there has been no diplomacy whatsoever with Russia. And every action the United States has taken since then has been unilateral. The US withdrew from the anti-ballistic missile treaty with Russia in 2002 unilaterally, not on the basis of negotiation the United States expanded NATO to seven more countries in 2004 against promises made and against Russia's Express opposition to the Baltic States Romania Bulgaria Slovenia and Slovakia in 2004. The United States invited Ukraine and Georgia to become members of NATO without any negotiation with Russia. The United States participated in a violent coup against the Ukrainian government without diplomacy with Russia, the United States undermined and effectively torpedoed the Minsk agreements without diplomacy with Russia.

When President Putin said in, I should add, the United States unilaterally abandoned the Intermediate Nuclear Force Agreement in 2019 without diplomacy with Russia. In 2021, when President Putin said we urgently need a new security arrangement, in December 15, 2021, the United States explicitly refused to engage. When Ukraine and Russia reached a tentative peace agreement in March 2022, the United States sent the word, do not sign an agreement, no negotiation. When President Putin said we are open for negotiations, the United States response is there is no one to negotiate with. There is no diplomacy. The idea is the U.S. gets its way, except the U.S. doesn't get its way. The U.S. ends up destroying one country after another, Afghanistan, Syria, Ukraine, Libya, because if you don't have diplomacy and you resort to supposed covert operations or to overt war, you create destruction. The U..S has forgotten how to have diplomacy there is none and that is why we are in a war in which hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have died in which

tens or hundreds of thousands more will die unless we somehow rediscover diplomacy and how Ukrainian is being pulled apart it's not that the options get better they get worse and worse and worse and worse because we're always told this isn't the time to negotiate or there's no one to negotiate with and the country gets picked to pieces we We didn't even try once to negotiate. So this is a complete, utter failure of the most basic principle of at least try to talk to the other side. Well, we have a president who hurls taunts and personal insults at state leaders around the world. He called President Xi of China a dictator. He said- By the way, just after having sat down with him and supposedly calmed matters,

the next word is, well, he's a dictator. Right. What he said about President Putin is even worse. He's called him a crazy SOB. How can this guy be in power? He's made it so obvious that the United States was, this is a failure, you know this, using Ukraine as a battering ram to attempt to drive President Putin from power. And the United States is using violence. I mean, if the CIA knew about the attack on the concert and looked the other way or had anything whatsoever to do with facilitating, it's an act of war. The use of American military equipment to fire American ammunition inside of Russia is an act of war. And they're not talking to each other.

Has diplomacy between the United States and China also broken down completely? Or is there some rudimentary communications going on? There is rudimentary communication, but basically, again, a complete inability of the United States to follow through on its word on almost anything. You know, we have a one china policy that means we do not recognize taiwan as a separate country and this is the standing basis of our relations and in 1982 the united states signed a communique with china saying that we would not arm taiwan for the long term that we would reduce the armaments and that there was no intention for any long-term military support to a part of china after all and yet what are we doing right now? We are 42 years later.

We're arming Taiwan. And there are now troops on the ground on one of the islands. I think we lost you, Professor Sachs. Well, he's about as far away from New Jersey in the United States where I am as you can get and still be on the planet. Deeply grateful for his analysis and for his time. Coming up later today at 2 o'clock Eastern, Matt Ho, who spoke to the Security Council of the United Nations in New York on Friday. And Karen Kwiatkowski, Lieutenant Colonel Kwiatkowski, how much worse can things get at 3 o'clock Eastern?

Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. I'm