Judging Freedom - Prof. Jeffrey Sachs: US Foreign Policy is a Corrupt Scam.

Episode Date: December 29, 2023

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs: US Foreign Policy is a Corrupt Scam. 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 Thursday, December 28, 2023. Our dear friend, Professor Jeffrey Sachs, joins us today. Professor Sachs, always a pleasure. The best to you in this holiday season. And my gratitude and the gratitude of all of my viewers and listeners for the time you spend with us. Thank you so much. Well, Happy New Year to you and everybody else listening. Thank you. Let's hope for a good 2024. and everybody else listening. Thank you. I want to discuss big picture about why you believe U.S.

foreign policy is a scam built on corruption. But before we do, a couple of granular questions about Ukraine and about Gaza. Over the Christmas weekend, the commander-in-chief of the Ukraine military, General Zeluzhny, held a press conference at which he said he needs 500,000 more troops. And in response to that, President Zelensky said, yes, we need 500,000 more troops and we need 13 billion U.S. dollars to house, feed, clothe, and train them. Isn't the war effectively over, and are these two delusional? Well, these two are desperate for their own position. Ukraine is being slaughtered. Russia is dominant on the battlefield. We have heard in recent weeks so many details of how the United States stopped an agreement between Ukraine and Russia, which would have spared Ukraine of this

war. And the U.S. stopped it because it told the Ukrainians, you keep fighting. And the Ukrainians have lost hundreds of thousands of people. You have these two, Zelensky and Zelensky, who are basically in the U.S. pocket and have been funded by the U.S., and the U.S. told them, fight. And it's been a bloodbath and a disaster, and it continues to be so, and it will continue to be so. And so this is an endgame, And it's a shame of Biden who caused this because Biden stopped negotiations that would have ended the conflict in March or April 2022. And now this has been widely reported. We talked about it months ago because I knew it directly from the Turkish negotiators and from others. But now the news has spilled out into the public. In other words, this is a war that is causing disaster in Ukraine,

that is causing massive costs to the United States, that is serving no useful purpose, and that was prolonged deliberately by Biden in some completely miscalculated idea that this would weaken Russia when it's done exactly the opposite. Of course, it strengthened Russia, led to a massive upgrading of Russia's military technology at the size of Russia's army and all of this was predictable except that we have a completely incompetent administration the Financial Times reports that uh the uh zielinski administration recognizes they're not likely to get the 68 billion that they want from Congress. And so they're trying to get a loan from the EU.

That was vetoed by President Orban of Hungary. But it appears, according to the Financial Times, EU country members on their own are pooling together a loan of $20 billion to the Ukrainian government. I mean, such a loan is crazy. If it would ever be paid back, it would be paid back by the United States. They don't have the ability to pay it back. The government will collapse without United States dollars on a regular basis. Am I reading this right? Now, this is all pathetic because it's all in denial of basic facts that have been evident for many, many years, that this is a war caused by the U.S. insistence that Ukraine be part of the U.S.-NATO military alliance. And the U.S. has persisted in this. And even when peace on the basis of Ukraine's neutrality was at hand in 2022, the United States stopped it.

The Europeans act like vassal states to the U.S. These are deeply unpopular governments in Europe. There's not a popular leader in Europe right now. They're losing elections massively, one after the other, because this is a plan that has just gone over the cliff. It was a terrible idea. It was based on a set of miscalculations of the U.S. military industrial complex with Biden out there as the front person. And it's gone horribly wrong. And they can't admit it because they're all parties to this horrible outcome. And so they don't want to admit it. They'd rather double down. It's not them fighting after all. It's not their money. It's everybody's doing it on deficit spending and on not their soldiers, but on only Ukrainians dying. Now, Ukrainian young women who are being pulled off the streets, drafted, sent to the front lines to be killed. It's just unbelievable. But this is what happens when this becomes a personal venture of a small number

of people sold to the public on completely false pretenses, lies all the way, not on money voted by governments, but finding every subterfuge to just add to the pile of debt without accountability or responsibility. This is what's happened. We now have a foreign policy in the hands of a few people. They happen to be incompetent, aside from everything else. Or there's another theory, which is they don't really care so much about the outcome. It's the war itself that's the desirable part because it's big business. Switching gears to the Middle East, do you see any let up in the slaughter of Gazans, the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians by the Israeli forces? Well, quite the contrary. We see an intensification of mass murder, basically, war crimes committed every day, and the Israelis saying that they're going to extend the war into Lebanon. All of this depends daily on U.S. munitions. Israel cannot do this other than with the US as a direct partner. This is not the US giving a green light or the US blocking vetoes in the UN. This is the US as a direct partner

every day in the munitions needed to kill people massively. Again, unbelievable. And it's all done, again, on so many false pretenses. And it's mass murder. The Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, a legal think tank, has enabled a group of Palestinians to file a lawsuit in U.S. federal court charging U.S. government complicity in genocide. And if one goes to the website of the Center for Constitutional Rights, you find an extremely detailed set of briefs, first the first complaint and now a follow-up brief, documenting the genocidal intent and actions of the Israeli government. And the U.S. is party to this. It has no possible successful endpoint, by the way. There's no possible successful end point because it's based on

a fundamentally impossible political idea, which is the Netanyahu government's political idea that Israel is going to dominate the entire region, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza, on a permanent basis. That's the political idea. It's impossible because there can never be peace on that basis. And even Biden, who basically mumbles for a living as far as I'm concerned because he doesn't act like a president, says, well, that's not possible possible and yet he shovels the munitions every day to support that completely impossible cause here's uh president Erdogan of Turkey yesterday using very harsh language I don't know if his bark is worse than his bite uh professor Sachs. I'll let you opine on that. But this is cut number one on the new list, Chris. This is very, very harsh language about Prime Minister Netanyahu.

And right in front of our eyes for 80 days, all virtues relating to humanity have been shot at. At stadiums, we saw the Nazi camps of Israelis. How does this happen? They used to talk about Hitler, but how are you any different than Hitler? This is even worse than Hitler. What Netanyahu is doing is no less than what Hitler did. So Hitler was not as rich as he was. He is richer than Hitler. He takes support from the West. He receives every kind of support from the US. İngilizlerden her türlü destek alıyor ve bu destekle, Gazi'nin daha da 20 bin insanı öldürüyor. İçeride kalan ve yaratılan insanların sesini Müslüman Türklerin sesinin yalanıdır. Savaşta bile dokunulmaması gereken hastaneler, okullar, ibadethaneler, evler ve meclisler bile dokunmamalıdır. Ama onlar bombadaydı.

Gazze'li bilim insanları aileleriyle birlikte, Gazan scientists were martyred together with their families. The barbarism in Gaza was covered by journalists, but close to 100 journalists were massacred. Is there a military significance to what he says, meaning might he become a state actor in the conflict we've been speaking in recent weeks, I've been in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Qatar, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. I've been meeting with diplomats from a very large number of countries. President Erdogan used a very strong language, but I can tell you the sentiment is nearly universal, and it's not restricted to the Islamic world either. There was a vote last week, basically not reported in the U.S. press, but a vote of the U.N. General Assembly calling for Palestinian political self-determination. That vote passed unanimously, but for four votes

in the whole chamber. Those four votes were the United States, Israel, Micronesia, and Nauru. Now, people may not know Micronesia and Nauru, but Micronesia is a tiny island with 113,000 people. I believe Nauru is a tiny island I happened to visit recently with 12,000 people. In other words, the entire world, other than the United States and Israel and the tiniest places, are aghast at what's happening. This has its own profound significance. The United States stands completely isolated globally for supporting Israel in this massacre. And the consequences of that are being felt all over the world in shifting alliances, in economic patterns, in changing geopolitical structures, even in the use of the dollar as currency and many other things. There is a massive, a seismic change of geopolitics underway in which the U.S. has chosen nearly total isolation in the world. I see it every day because my job is to be out in the world discussing

issues of economic development and finance, the global economy, trade, the currency system. And what's happening is the U.S., so contrary to being what Biden in his fantasy thinks that the world looks to the U.S. for leadership, the world looks at the U.S. aghast. The U.S. stands alone with Israel. at what Israel is doing, because we haven't had the real-time video feed of mass slaughter quite this way before. Of course, we've had war in our living rooms, on our social media or television broadcasts, but the real-time slaughter, and as President Erdogan said, of hospitals and schools, I would add mosques, apartment buildings. This is an attempt stated by the Israelis, although we don't want to hear it. So we try not to hear the actual words that are used, but to make Gaza uninhabitable. And that's got a purpose that also needs to be understood. Israel is not

fighting Hamas. Israel is fighting for a greater Israel, which is a kind of messianic, biblical idea that now is in political ascendancy in Israel, that Israel has the right to control all of the area. It has the right to control the millions and millions of Palestinians because some zealots believe, and they are powerful right now. God said so in the book of Joshua sometime around the 5th century BC. And you can't really make this up because this is 21st century stuff. And it's devastating. And this is what we're siding with. I don't think Americans really understand what is motivating the Israelis.

I don't think Americans understand the risk of this war widening very significantly, very dangerously, and very fast. But this is what we're up against. And unfortunately, we have a president who's not effectively a president. I don't know what he is, but it's the worst foreign policy imaginable right now. And it's led us to basically, okay, I'll be nice. It's the world against four countries. You could say it's against two, really. Right, right. You say it's the worst foreign policy imaginable.

You are, of course, a student of American foreign policy. You have studied it as a student and as a professor and teacher and diplomat, and you have concluded, this is a dreadful conclusion, Professor Sachs. I agree with you. Everybody watching and listening to us now agrees with you. Mearsheimer and McGregor and all the others agree with you. Everybody watching and listening to us now agrees with you. Mearsheimer and McGregor and all the others agree with you, but it's harsh. U.S. foreign policy is a scam built on corruption. Why do you say that? You know, I've been trying to understand how it is that every single American foreign policy in the last couple of decades, one could go back, but let me start with the year 2000, basically, has failed miserably.

The U.S. said, okay, we're going to get rid of the Taliban in Afghanistan. Well, the Taliban is there. The U.S. said, we're going to make Iraq, you know, a great U.S. ally. And Iraq is, of course, a great ally of Iran, its next door neighbor. Okay, we're going to get rid of Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president. Well, he's there, but the U.S. CIA-led effort cost hundreds of thousands of deaths in the interim. The U.S. said, we're going to make Libya in our image and bombed Libya in 2011 and overthrew the government of Muammar Gaddafi and unleashed a war. I was going to say civil war. Well, there is a civil war in Libya, but it's a war, I was going to say civil war. Well, there is a civil war in Libya, but it's a war throughout Africa now because what spilled out of Libya was armaments and jihadists and mercenaries that have spread throughout much of Central and Western Africa by now. The U.S. said,

we're going to overthrow Yanukovych, the Ukrainian president, in February 2014. The new government's going to call for NATO enlargement. We're going to move in. That was the Biden-Sullivan-Newland plan. And what do we have? We have a war that has been raging for nine years in which Ukraine is getting picked to pieces because our side completely blew it. So there was another absurd article by one of the Kagan family, a man named Frederick Kagan, who works at the American Enterprise Institute. And it was a typical article by him because every year, basically, or every couple of years, he talks about some great villain of the United States and how we have to spend billions and billions of dollars to fight them because it's the greatest. And he went on again. And so I was

going to respond. And then I thought, you know, something's a little deeper than this. It's one failure after another. Absolute disaster after another. Trillions of dollars down the drain. And it's the same cast of characters. And it makes you think. It's not just a lack of accountability. There's something obvious. It's in plain sight what's happening. In a way, they're winning. They're not winning in anything that has to do with my interests or your interest, Judge, or the interests of the American people. But they've gotten the military spending and the defense-related budget up to about $1.5 trillion this year, more contracts spilling out everywhere. They got two wars going on. This is phenomenal. Can you imagine Raytheon and Lockheed and Northrop Grumman

and others? We got two wars and maybe the wars are going to spread, in fact. And they've been able to mobilize $5 trillion over this period in failed efforts. And they're still there, the very same people. Is that what the U.S. has spent since 9-11, $5 trillion in all these failed wars? The estimate is worth people looking at. You can go to the website of the Watson Institute at Brown University, which has been looking at the costs of these wars for many, many years with great detail. of $8 trillion. But I just want to be cautious. The $5 trillion is roughly the direct outlays. Another trillion is roughly the interest on the debt taken for the first $5 trillion. And then $2 trillion that they add in to reach $8 trillion is for the future health care costs of the veterans whose limbs were destroyed, who face so many health conditions as a result.

This is U.S. veterans as a result of these wars. So they put the number at $8 trillion. I put the number at $5 trillion because I said the future costs, well, that's for the future. And I didn't count the interest on the debt. But we're talking about tens of thousands of dollars per household and for nothing, absolutely not one single positive result. And why these people aren't chased out of town is the real mystery. And the answer is they own the town. That's the point. They own the town.

You know, there's an old, ancient, maybe not very funny joke, but I've always liked it from my childhood of, you know, the guy who leaves the factory every night with a wheelbarrow full of straw and the guard looks through the straw, can't find anything, knows the guy's stealing something, but it goes on for years. And finally, this guy retires and the guard calls him over, says, look, you've pulled something on us. I don't get what it is. I look through the straw every night.

What were you stealing? And the guy said, wheelbarrows. And so for me, this is the real story of what's happening. They're making wars as business. This is business. It's hundreds of billions of dollars of contracts. It's big business. And the business is everywhere. If you're in the Atlantic Council, you're paid for by the military complex. If you're part of this Institute for the Study of War, which is part of the Kagan family enterprise, you're paid for by this. It's the whole business of Washington. The military or defense industry,

so-called, although defense is a euphemism for military, spends about $150 billion a year in lobbying. According to opensecrets.org, about 72% of those lobbyists are recycled from the U.S. government, the revolving door. So this is part of the scam. And then every day, every month, we're told we must spend more. We must spend more. The dangers are greater. We're going to have the Ukraine war. We have Gaza. We're going to have the war in the Red Sea. The Middle East could expand. Don't let's not forget Taiwan next year and on and on and on. And it doesn't matter whether a word of what they say makes sense. They're stealing the wheelbarrows. What they're doing is getting budgets that are busting the federal government. We have a debt that is more than 100%

of our gross national product now. None of these wars is paid for. None of this military spending is paid for. We're all doing it on borrowing basis right now. Interest rates have soared. And we're digging in deeper. And we have these leaders of Congress. Leaders, this is a strange idea,

but we have these people in Congress whose campaigns are paid for by the defense industry, like the chair of the House, the House Armed Services Committee, Mike Rogers. His whole profession, his whole career is paid for by the military industry. And he's out there every day saying, oh, my colleagues in the Republican Party, they've lost the melody. They don't want to keep funding this. Now, the Democrats have been the real warmongers in recent years. The Republicans are trying to hold back, but some of them are completely bought off by the military, others not. And that's where the battle lies as we go into the new year, because as soon as Congress reconvenes, we're going to hear how absolutely urgent it is to spend tens of billions of dollars immediately, if not an even expanded ask that Biden's going to ask for to keep everybody happy in this little game. And of course, nobody's happy because this is a complete

tragedy for Ukraine. It's a devastation for Palestine. It's a horrible outcome for U.S. foreign policy and for our place in the world. And all of it fails. But the one thing that has succeeded to this moment, at least, is the money keeps flowing. I'm going to let you rest your voice for just a minute, Professor Sachs. Here's retired U.S. Army Colonel Marian Wright testifying in a forum with which you're familiar, the United Nations. And she found a quote from Secretary Blinken boasting that, oh, all this money was spent, 90% of it comes back to the U.S. and enriches the workers at military munitions plants. Take a listen.

Right now, the United States is providing weapons in two conflicts, the Ukraine-Russia conflict and Israel-Gaza. We know much more, I know much more about, because I'm an American citizen, I watch this stuff, how much military equipment is being provided by my country. Just four or five days ago, on December 7th, in a press conference with the UK Foreign Minister David Cameron, Secretary of State Blinken said that in the last two years the US has provided over $70 billion to support Ukraine, and European allies have provided over $110 million in weapons. Blinken said, if you look at these investments that we've made in Ukraine's defense to deal with this aggression, 90% of the security assistance we've provided has actually been

spent here in the United States with our manufacturers, with our production, and that's produced more American jobs, more growth in our own economy. So this has been a win-win that we need to continue. Terry, industrial complex, through its network of allies and control of the Congress, effectively control American foreign policy, prop up a false idea of an enemy, whip up propaganda in favor of war. You know, the fact that Blinken resorts to this and the White House passed around fact sheets of where the munitions factories are across the United States shows the desperation. They couldn't win on the facts. They lied about the causes of the wars. They lied about the progress of the wars. They lied about the causes of the wars. They lied about the progress of the wars. They lied about the military and civilian disasters of the wars. They lost the argument that this is in the

American interest in foreign policy or security or anything like that. And so they resorted to this last desperation of saying, you got factories in your district as if this is the best use of the American people and know-how and technology is to be making munitions that massively kill people and that do absolutely nothing for the American people other than tragically make us complicit in this against our will and also raise the debt that we're going to have to pay for all of this as if our workers couldn't be doing something else. And I just want to underscore as an economist, Blinken's total phony use of the word investment. He says investment in Ukraine. You know, investment is a term in economics. It means you build some capital, which gives you the ability to be more productive in the future. We're not making an investment in Ukraine. We are destroying Ukraine through these munitions. So the idea that this is an investment, well, this is an investment that makes you bankrupt, that kills hundreds of thousands

of people. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to laugh at that point and is destroying the physical infrastructure. That's not an investment, Secretary Blinken. That is a disaster. And you should know, I know you're on vacation, but this will raise your blood pressure. Here's what Senator Lindsey Graham says. You can imagine what's coming if you haven't seen this. I know everything is possible out of that man's mouth. Right. Here's what he says we should do next. Secretary Austin and the Biden administration's failing our troops in the field. I admire him. He's a patriot, but he's not doing a good job protecting the soldiers.

I asked him a couple of months ago, Joey, what you're talking about. Is there a red line? Would PATRIOT, BUT HE'S NOT DOING A GOOD JOB PROTECTING THE SOLDIERS. I ASKED HIM A COUPLE OF MONTHS AGO, JOY, WHAT YOU WERE TALKING ABOUT. IS THERE A RED LINE? WOULD YOU TELL OUR ENEMIES PUBLICLY THAT IF YOU KILL AN AMERICAN, WE'RE COMING AFTER YOU? WITHOUT IRAN, THERE ARE NO HOUTIES. THE HOUTIES ARE COMPLETELY BACKED BY IRAN. I'VE BEEN SAYING FOR SIX MONTHS NOW, HIT IRAN. THEY HAVE OIL FIELDS OUT IN THE OPEN. THEY HAVE THE REVOLUTIONARY GUARD HEADQUARTERS YOU CAN SEE FROM SPACE. BLOW IT OFF THE MAP. Hit Iran. They have oil fields out in the open. They have the Revolutionary Guard headquarters you can see from space. Blow it off the map.

Start World War III, Senator. The man's an idiot and always has been, I'm sorry to say, for as long as he's been saying such things. It's almost like a Photoshopped video because you could go back and find Lindsey Graham saying, hit them, bomb them, about just about any place, anywhere in the world. That's his one mode of operation. You don't have to even know exactly who we're supposed to be bombing on this particular day. That's the whole

idea in this guy's head. And he's, of course, one of the disastrous authors of American foreign policy of the last 20 years. Take out his record, look at every single war that he has called for, look at all this spending. He's a disaster, and he should be apologizing to the American people rather than calling for more war. Professor Sachs, thank you very much for taking the time to join us today and all the many, many times in 2023. You are a fan favorite, as I'm sure you know, and I hope we can continue to work together in the new year. Of course we will. And Happy New Year to you and everybody.

Thanks a lot. Thank you. Thank you. All the best. Bye-bye. Bye. Wow. Professor Sachs at his best.

At 2 o'clock this afternoon, Eastern Scott Horton, Why Do Presidents Kill? And At 2 o'clock this afternoon, Eastern, Scott Horton, why do presidents kill? And at 3 o'clock this afternoon, Colonel Kwiatkowski, why is government indifferent to evil? We're ending up with a bang in 2023. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. I'm out.