Judging Freedom - Prof. Jeffrey Sachs : Trump's Empire of Hubris.

Episode Date: December 15, 2025

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs : Trump's Empire of Hubris.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 our judging freedom. Today is Monday, December 15th. December 15th, where does the time fly? 2025, Professor Jeffrey Sachs will be with us in just a moment on President Trump's imperial hubris. But first this. History tells us every market eventually falls. Currencies collapse. And look at where we are now, $38 trillion in national debt. Stocks at record highs defying gravity. So what happens next? Groceries, gas, housing, everything's going up. And this dollar, it buys less every day. When the system breaks, your stocks won't save you and your dollars won't either. But one thing will.

Gold. I've set it on my show for years. Gold survives collapse. central bankers know this and billionaires know it that's why they're buying more is it too late to buy or is it just the right time call my friends at lear capital to find out ask questions get the free information there's no pressure and that's why i buy my gold and silver from lear and right now you can get up to twenty thousand dollars in bonus medals with a qualified purchase call 800 511 46 or go to Learjudgenap.com today. Professor Sacks, welcome here, my dear friend. Thank you for accommodating my schedule. You have a stinging and articulate critique of President Trump's national security strategy, and I thought we would talk about that.

The president says the United States enjoys unmatched supremacy. Is that the case today by any measurement? No, it's not the case. And it's basically that misunderstanding, which leads to many problems and errors in this national security strategy. And it's why the security strategy that President Trump is proposing would not improve U.S. security. It would worsen it. The basic idea of President Trump's national security strategy is we're so powerful. We can dictate terms. We should not be limited by quaint things like the United Nations or treaties or even normal relations with other countries. And within our own hemisphere, we're absolutely dominant. And we can tell the

countries in our hemisphere what to do or not to do. And as we see in the case of Venezuela, can threaten them, amassed troops, perhaps overthrow a government with impunity. So the idea of the national security strategy is that the United States is the most powerful country in the world and should remain so. And by dint of being the most powerful country in the world, it remains strong by dictating the terms to other countries. Well, my critique is that this is all a bit of a delusion. We are not all powerful. In fact, what is clearly evident in the case of the Ukraine war is that the United States could not dictate, though it tried to for 30 years, the expansion of NATO to Russia's border. Russia said no, it came to blows. It's not going to happen. The United States cannot dictate terms in other parts of the world, either. We can keep ourselves safe. We should deal with other countries in a mutually respectful way in order to enhance our security.

And we should drop the delusions that we can overthrow governments that will or tell the Latin American countries, you can't deal with China, for example, another sub-theme of this strategy. because all of that is arrogance that's going to lead to a downfall, not the kind of prudence that leads to real security. This treatment of other nations as pawns to be manipulated at will, does this start in the Woodrow Wilson Teddy Roosevelt era, or does it start unwittingly, because I don't think he intended this, under Harry Truman with the National Security Act post-World War II. Well, the United States has a very particular history, and interestingly,

what Trump is advocating here, at least vis-a-vis the rest of the countries in our own hemisphere, is what he calls a corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. A corollary named after himself. Of course, well, the Trump corollary. We had another president, Theodore Roosevelt, whose name was attached to another so-called corollary to the Monroe doctrine. But frankly, neither Trump nor Teddy Roosevelt read very carefully what the Monroe doctrine actually said in 18. You're one of the few people that has read it in its entirety, and some of what our viewers and listeners are about to hear will be new to them. Well, the Monroe

Doctrine is usually dated in shorthand as the United States is in charge of the Western Hemisphere in some sense. But what President Monroe said when he sent his seventh message to the Congress in 1823 is three stipulations. First, and this was in the aftermath of the wars of independence of the other countries of the Americas, that the newly independent countries of the Americas who had gained independence from the Spanish Empire or the Portuguese Empire, that Europe should not reclaim those colonies. In other words, the era of European colonization or empire building in the Americas was over.

Second, that the Europeans should not introduce their military into the Americas. And third, which is almost entirely forgotten in our time, is the reciprocity that the United States, under the Monroe Doctrine, declares, we will not interfere in Europe's wars and in Europe's security. So the Monroe Doctrine was actually stated in 1823 as a reciprocal doctrine. You stay out of our backyard and we'll stay out of yours when it comes to military and security issues. Don't threaten us. We won't get involved in the threat. How did we get 850 military installations in 80 countries around the world? Well, because we're not very good at reciprocity.

We're very good at telling other countries what to do, but not actually behaving according to the rules that we have set on others. In other words, do not do unto others in the way that we dictate to them what they should do to us. we say stat of our hemisphere, don't even come close, don't dream of threatening us anywhere in the Americas. But if we want to have a military base in Ukraine, that's none of Russia's business. If we want to arm Taiwan, a part of China, that's none of China's business. In other words, we can say, oh, don't even come within thousands of miles, don't even have a port servicing operation in Panama by a Hong Kong company, that's a threat to the United States.

But we can have 750 or 800 military bases in around 80 countries of the world on anyone's borders without anyone telling us what to do. So the idea of the golden rule does not apply under the the U.S. rubric. Now, what happened is, again, the U.S. has a particular history. It has been an imperial power from the start, but for the first hundreds of years, the empire building was on the North American continent. It was on defeating Native American populations or attacking the Mexican government and Mexican territory to rest a lot of the, the U.S. southwest of the United States, California for the United States and so forth. That empire building of the United States lasted through the 19th century. It ended around 1890. And then

immediately the United States said, okay, now we build an international empire. And it toppled the Kingdom of Hawaii in the 1890s. And then in 1898 on very dubious. grounds, went to war with a very weak and failing Spanish Empire and captured the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Cuba. And basically held on to those territories. Cuba technically gained independence, but under something called the Platte Amendment, the United States asserted its right to intervene at will in Cuban affairs for decades afterwards. And that's why we still have a patch of Cuba, Guantanamo Bay, where that naval base and prison is held until this day. That came from the conquests of the United States in 1898.

Soon after the Spanish-American war victory, Teddy Roosevelt, who was a real imperialist, after all, declared his corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, something very different. He said, not only only should Europe stay away, but he also said that the U.S. would be the policeman of the Western Hemisphere, quite explicitly, that we could go in to clean up bad behavior. One of the reasons, interestingly, why he said it, is that Venezuela, of all countries, because we're at it again. In 1902, defaulted on its foreign debt. And the British and the French actually shelled the harbor of Caracas to get the Venezuelans to restart their debt payments. So Teddy Roosevelt said, we'll take care of that problem, not the Europeans, will be the

policemen of our own hemisphere. But the Roosevelt corollary became a license for, the Marines landing wherever they wanted in Central America, in Cuba, in Haiti, in the Dominican Republic, in repeated military interventions and regime change operations overthrowing governments. This led to a lot of instability. And when the sixth cousin of Teddy Roosevelt gained the White House, Franklin Roosevelt, and he came into the White House on March 4th, 1933, he declared a good neighbor policy. He repudiated his distant cousins corollary,

and he said we will not intervene in the internal affairs of other countries in our hemisphere. And that was a principle that Roosevelt held to, and then it became part of a charter, the Charter of the Organization of American States, which was adopted in 1948, which says explicitly in part of the Charter Article 19, no country should interfere in the internal affairs of other countries in the hemisphere. Well, along comes Donald Trump. His corollary is the Theodore Roosevelt corollary

10 times over. It says not only are we the policemen, not only can we boss other countries around, but it's not only military issues where we're the policemen. We can tell other countries, you make contracts only with American companies, and you do not make contracts or trade or investments

with countries we don't like, subtext China. So Trump is, amping it up, telling other countries, we're going to run the whole show of our hemisphere. And this military buildup and killing people in boats off the coast of Venezuela is the application of what is called the Trump corollary. It's a lot of hubris. It's a lot of arrogance. It doesn't sit well with the rest of the world. And it's not going to work because it's a huge exaggeration of American power. So the seizure of the Venezuelan vessel in international waters by the U.S. military was an act of

piracy. The efforts to dislodge, disrupt, or destroy voluntary economic relationships between Chinese companies and Latin American companies by Trump is a violation of international laws that the United States wrote. We used to believe that rules, that law, that organizations like the World Trade Organization, that the UN, which is a U.S. creation, that treaties like the nuclear nonproliferation treaty or the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, were extremely important, not in a theoretical sense, but in a very practical sense of protecting America's national security. The idea is that you gain cooperation with other countries so that a group of countries

decides we will not harm other countries. We'll hold ourselves to a shared international standard, we'll have monitoring, we'll have verification, but we will agree with other countries on proper behavior. It's not a quaint thought. It's a pretty basic thought of human behavior that if you have a group and you want the group to behave, you establish principles. Well, Trump says, no, we're so powerful. Why do we care about principles?

He sneers at transnational controls, meaning the United Nations. United Nations, that's just a petty encumbrance on us. We're so powerful. We should be able to do what we want without anyone telling us what we should do. Well, you know, if you're all powerful, yes, but if you're actually part of human society, you recognize that the United States is 4.1% of the world population. It's roughly 14% of the world economy. It's not 90%. It's not 50%. It's about 14%. You start to understand. And by the way, we're one of nine nuclear armed nations. You start to understand acting like

we're all alone that you don't need rules, that you don't need treaties, that you don't need international agreements, that you don't need the UN, and that all of that is just a petty encumbrance on the giant that we are, you can see how this could go quite wrong. I want to go to one of your other areas of expertise, which is the economy, particularly international economics. The national security strategy claims that the United States possesses the world's soundest and most innovative economy. Is that true by any measurement? Well, the U.S. is, first of all, an innovative economy by any standard, but we're not alone by any standard. There are many innovative economies around the world, and just to take one

example, China is a peer of the United States in innovation. And in many, ways ahead of the United States. The world intellectual property organization, WIPO, WIPO, issues a report each year on the most innovative regional clusters in the world. The U.S. thinks of Silicon Valley, which, of course, is a very innovative place. But when you look at that list, lo and behold, the United States is not in the top three of the clusters on that list. Number one is what's south, the east China, what is called the Greater Bay Area, Hong Kong, Shenjin, and Guangzhou. That's where the robots are going to come from.

That's where a lot of the most high tech is coming from right now. That's where giant companies in China like Huawei and Tencent are located. That's rated number one in the world in innovation. One of the reasons is that while Silicon Valley has a lot of great ideas, they don't produce anything. Whereas in this cluster in China, they do everything. They do the ideas. They do the manufacturing. they do the international finance out of Hong Kong.

They put all the pieces together, which Silicon Valley does not do. Number two on the list, by the way, is Tokyo Yokohama Corridor. Number three on the list is Beijing. Number four is Silicon Valley. So we should have a little bit of understanding about the way the world is right now. But another point that I think is really important, emphasizes we don't have to be everything that's so grandiosely stated in the national security strategy to be safe. We're safe enough in the United States. We're very powerful. China cannot attack

us. China cannot threaten the United States. The only way we are endangered is if we have a nuclear war with another nuclear superpower. So we ought to be careful. We ought to be prudent. We ought to behave properly. And then we're completely safe. China's not a threat to us, but it is a peer. It is a competitor. Okay. And by the way, we used to like open trade when we dominated everything. But now that China is able to compete with us. We say, oh, that's unfair. Come on. Puffing up a little bit, America. We can compete. We don't have to change all the rules because China's successful in competing. We should have been awake a decade ago, not only Tesla, but our big automotive companies, where it was General Motors and Ford and others when it was time to make electric vehicles.

Okay, we said, nah, we're not interested. And then, okay, China now dominates the world electric vehicles. industry. So that's our problem. We weren't there to be making these innovations, to be making this industrial generation after another driving down the costs. Where were we when China was advancing remarkably dropping the costs of solar power? Well, that was Trump. He was saying drill baby drill throughout the first term. Okay. And we're back again. So we gave up leadership to China in many of the clean technologies right now. This is large-scale batteries in electric vehicles and solar power and wind power in many areas.

And then we say they're cheating. They're not cheating. We're not paying attention. We should have plans. This is such an indictment of Trump's thinking from such a broad array of approaches, Professor Sack. But can I say one thing? Yeah, then I've got to tell you what's troubling me, but go ahead. I'm not a partisan because I thought the Biden administration was terrible, terrible, terrible in every way.

You know, their foreign policy was completely awful, which is that they led this war in Ukraine, completely wrongheaded, completely futile. They gave absolutely a blank check to Netanyahu to commit the terrible crimes that Israel committed in Gaza. So I'm not partisan in this. I just think we don't have the right strategy. If we want the right strategy, it's actually to build international law to keep to nuclear arms control because that's really what safety is about. it's to stay out of wars of choice, especially wars that Israel drags us into, say, against Iran. Come on, for heaven's sake, or wars because we want to expand NATO, or wars like what seems to be right now, you know, on the stove with Venezuela, where we want to overthrow a government. For heaven's sake, none of that provides an ounce of security.

it only raises the world fever, it only raises the temperature, it only raises the insecurity. So my basic point is we could be the most secure, safe country in history because no one can touch us. We could be prosperous. We could do all of this without all of this arrogance that we think we can call the shots, demand everything of anyone, and blow off the whole idea of international law, the UN, and global cooperation. That's what our mistake is. It's not only international law that's suffering, it's the Constitution that's suffering because President Trump thinks he can use the military to take or kill or do whatever he wants, and Congress remains silent. He kills people on the

high seas. He steals oil on the high seas. He attempts to effectuate regime change. He treats other countries as pawns. Nothing from the House of the Senate does all this on his own and he seems to be getting away with it until the public has had enough. And what's interesting, you know, I can't stand in New York Times, I have to say these days. And it's had two editorials recently. One is, you know, we have to prepare for war. And second, we have to get back to a cold. World War mindset. I do not know. Who wrote those? Frederick. This is their editorial board. Something is so wrong at that newspaper. It's repulsive. But I just want to say they had an interesting story. I still look at it because I have a habit over decades of looking at it,

even though I can't stand their editorial page. They had a story where they brought the three former senators together. And Joe Manchin, Jeff Flake. They, The three of them, they said the Senate's dead. There's no Congress. So this is partly Trump, you know, just exercising power that he does not have by the Constitution. But it's also Congress absolutely playing dead. It's shocking. You and I recall when there were senators who were distinguished and we listen to them,

because they weren't the president, but they were important. And they had their own base, their own constituency, and they stood up for America. I was just reading a wonderful little book by J. William Fulbright, for example, back in 1970, a book he called the Pentagon Propaganda Machine. And he wrote about how the Pentagon was propagandizing the United States public. Well, that is so innocent what was happening then compared to what's happening now. But you had a senator of stature complaining. And we have nobody right now that I like Brand Paul.

He's just about the only independent senator in the whole Senate. Most of them are warmongers, first of all. And second, they don't even know that they've given up the power. And in the House of Representatives, does it even still exist? if there's no evidence that there's even a House of Representatives anymore, the President takes the power under Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution to set duties, and taxes have to originate in the House of Representatives, for heaven's sake. Well, now they originate in the President's House.

They originate in the imagination of the President when he wants to punish some country. he just declares an emergency. He doesn't like the court case in Brazil. He doesn't like what India is doing when dozens of other countries are doing the same thing about importing oil from Russia. So he does it himself. Where is Congress? We used to have a Speaker of House. We don't have a Speaker of House.

We don't have anybody right now saying anything. So Congress went dead. We don't know whether the Supreme Court still exists or it's only going to bless the President's one-person rule. and the president's idea is not going to make us secure. I have to say, footnote, maybe, maybe, maybe if he pays attention, he can get us out of that disastrous war in Ukraine. That's an American war caused by NATO enlargement. Maybe Trump will stop that.

But he seems to want to stop that and start other ones at the same time. Enough. No more. We don't need that. I'm staring at a resolution on my desk offered by Senator Schumer. in behalf of 42 of his Democratic colleagues condemning Tucker Carlson because of something he did not say,

did not say, you can't make this up on one of this podcast. That's what the Senate would rather spend its time on rather than exercising its powers to restrain the government. We need to stop, Jeff, and I know it's very late where you are now. Thank you very much for coming on with us.

Of course. Look forward to seeing you again next. week my dear friend excellent great thanks a lot all the best to you um i love it when professor sacks who such a scholar is also passionate tomorrow tuesday ambassador chas freeman at eight o'clock scott ritter at 11 o'clock arin mate at one in the afternoon matt ho at two in the afternoon karen koukowski at three in the afternoon and on wednesday my one-hour interview with Tucker Carlson here on Judging Freedom 11 o'clock Wednesday morning. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.

Thank you.