Judging Freedom - Prof. Jeffrey Sachs: US Misreads Russia and China.

Episode Date: April 9, 2024

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs: US Misreads Russia and China.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Thanks for watching! Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, April 9th, 2024. Professor Jeffrey Sachs joins us. Professor Sachs, always a pleasure, my dear friend. I have a lot of different topics I'd like to discuss with you. I want to start with a rather startling comment made to us by one of our colleagues just two or three days ago, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, about the Crocus attack, the attack on the concert hall, the Crocusus concert hall outside of Moscow now two weeks ago and faded from the front pages, not in Colonel Wilkerson's view, as you'll see. He's of the view

that the CIA was behind it. Watch this. This looks a lot like what Nord Stream turned out to be, a U.S. operation. Only the CIA led it. Let's face it. We have done as much to create and to nurture ISIS as anything else on the face of the earth, whether it be Abu Musab al-Zarqawi or any of the instigators of the so-called ISIS consulate in the beginning. We've used ISIS. And when I say we, I mean that agency called the CIA,

the same agency that does so many nefarious things in our name. And they have worked ISIS and worked operatives from ISIS in order to do other things. And I'm hearing, and it makes a lot of sense to me, and I'm watching the behavior and the signals coming from Moscow, which are usually very indicative of the truth when it's something like this. And I think that's what Putin believes. And I think the intelligence community in Russia, whether it's the GRU, the NKPD, the KSB, the FSB or whatever, they believe it too. And that makes this Ukraine conflict a different conflict as of that killing of that many Russians that close to Putin and

blame lying, at least in part, with the people who orchestrated it being the CIA. What's your take on that, Professor Sachs? Well, isn't it extraordinary that a very senior and respected official like that can offer that hypothesis in a very plausible way? We know that the CIA has run jihadists. This is not at all a secret. It's kept out of the New York Times, let's say. It's kept out of the mainstream media, but it's not at all a secret to those who follow these events. We have reason to suspect that this particular crocus attack was linked to Ukraine in some way, because, of course, the perpetrators were fleeing to Ukraine, and they have told the Russian investigators that they were expected to be received in Kiev. We know that the United States knew a lot about this attack. How? It hasn't told us. It's so strange, actually, that the U.S. acknowledges, well, it knew. It actually gave a warning, albeit a couple of weeks beforehand, about an attack like this about to take place.

How? Why doesn't it explain? Why isn't there more understanding? It all gives rise to the kind of speculation of Lawrence Wilkerson, very plausible, and what senior Russian officials are saying. As we discuss all the time, the U.S. government lies so relentlessly that whether or not this particular claim is true, it certainly could be true. And nothing that the United States government has done since this attack has allayed these suspicions, nor has it dissuaded very senior Russian officials from making such assertions, though the Russian leaders and investigators have said that it's an ongoing investigation. So it's dismaying and impressive to hear Lawrence Wilkerson speak in this way, very measured, very reasonable, obviously deeply experienced, and very worrisome. You have been harshly critical of many of the dastardly deeds that the CIA has been involved in,

secret wars, secret army, secret coups. I've joined that criticism. Your colleagues on this program have. The viewers have applauded the intellectual honesty that exposes that. But tell me, Professor Sachs, are these American CIA agents so indifferent to innocent human life, so heedless of basic moral standards, so reckless in their disregard for international law and American federal law, that they would facilitate the killing of 144 young people at a concert in order to make some kind of a point to the Russian president? I don't know. I really don't know the answer to that. I do know that the CIA organizationally takes missions to destabilize adversaries or perceived adversaries of the United States. Those actions have resulted in vast

numbers of deaths over the decades. So this is what the CIA does in part. Remember, as we've always discussed, of course, it's two organizations in one, which is its profound failing of design. It's a secret army that aims at destabilization. And there's no doubt, if we know it even in this case from the New York Times story recently that the CIA operated in Ukraine with the purpose of destabilizing Russia. That was not a surprise to read, but it was a surprise to read it in the pages of the New York Times a few weeks ago. But that has been an ongoing mission of the CIA for decades. So I would say everything is possible. It is really important for the American people to understand that the CIA has been publicly investigated precisely one time, and that was 49 years ago. Frank Church. The Church Committee in 1975, we will be at the 50th anniversary next year. There has not been one occasion since then in which the actions of

the CIA have been independently investigated by even another branch of government, much less true independent investigation with access to the facts. When you have a secret army that is unaccountable to the public, unaccountable to the Congress, operates for decades, operates under presidential orders that are once in a while exposed, but then even so not discussed, you can have all sorts of results. Let me give one quick example, which is one of the most under-discussed facts of our modern times. And that is that President Obama tasked the CIA with the overthrow of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. And we know that from, I think, two stories in the New York Times, as well as the other ways that one learns about these things in diplomatic circles. And this is almost completely undiscussed that basically Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama,

and the CIA launched a war in Syria that has been going on now for more than a dozen years. What kind of review has there been of this? None. What kind of public debate has there been of this? None. How many lives have been lost? A lot more than in the Crocus Hall. So you ask, could the CIA do this? Of course the CIA could do this. And for intervening in Syria, but that was years after the United States CIA started that war and armed the jihadists, by the way, because that was one of the cases where we armed militant jihadists for the purpose of overthrowing a government. So yes, of course it's possible. Do we know the facts? No, we don't know the facts. Are we going to be told the facts? No. But one thing I would like to put on the table is that at the 50th anniversary of the church committee, it's high time we have another investigation of what this organization has been doing for the last 50 years, because in my view, it has put all of our lives in peril. Hear, hear, Professor. The Pope recently called you in from New York to ask your opinion on matters involving the sustainability of life on Earth and things planned at the UN in the fall.

Of course, my hat is off to you. If Speaker Mike Johnson called you in and said, oh, Professor Sachs, we can't decide what to do with the $61 billion authorization for Ukraine that came over from the Senate a few months ago, what would you tell him? I would tell him, Speaker, please understand the current situation that more money for Ukraine means more destruction of Ukraine. The longer this Biden war on Ukraine continues, because it is a war and it is on Ukraine, it's destroying Ukraine. The longer that this continues, the worse the outcome for Ukraine. What Ukraine needs is not $61 billion of American taxpayer money down the drain. What Ukraine needs is a phone call from President Biden to President Putin to say, you know, it's time we sit down and end this thing. And the reason

I say that is that this is a war that was provoked by the United States and by Obama and Biden and Clinton and others already 10 years ago, starting with an idea that is about 30 years old, that U.S. military forces would take their positions in Ukraine on the Russian border through NATO. This was a reckless gamble that was propounded again almost 30 years ago. It was spelled out carefully by Zbigniew Brzezinski in 1997. The gambit was that if the U.S. and NATO would expand to Ukraine, this would end Russia's status as a great power because it would surround Russia essentially in the Black Sea. Biden has been part of this. It was reckless. Every senior diplomat, including our current CIA director, then our U.S. ambassador to Russia in 2008, knew how reckless this was. European leaders said to me privately how reckless this idea was back in 2008. But this idea of expanding NATO

to Ukraine is seen by Russia as an existential threat, and Russia will continue to fight against that, basically a proxy war against the United States, as long as the United States continues to push this. Now, many people have made this observation in the last three years. John Mearsheimer made it precisely back in 2014. George Kennan said that expanding NATO would be the worst mistake in the post-Cold War era, one that would be absolutely fateful and fatal. In fact, he wrote this back in 1997 in the New York Times. And until this moment, this remains the U.S. doctrine. It's unbelievable. Just last week, Blinken said again, NATO will expand to Ukraine. In other words, Ukraine will continue to be pummeled, continue to lose territory,

continue to lose thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of young men and women in Ukraine to this U.S. reckless, stupid, irresponsible gamble. So I would say to Speaker Johnson, you don't help Ukraine by sending $61 billion. You certainly don't help the American people and the U.S. taxpayer. You don't help sanity in U.S. politics. Why, I would ask him, would you want to bail out the failed politics of President Biden at this moment? Because this was a gambit of Biden and Obama and Hillary Clinton that goes back a decade. Why at this moment, Mr. Speaker, would you want to try to bail that out to somehow disguise this debacle till after November makes no sense politically, financially, militarily, strategically. It's certainly not in the help of Ukraine. What will help Ukraine is negotiations between the United States and Russia on a direct basis of responsibility to end the war,

to end a war that was provoked by U.S. intentions to expand militarily to Russia's border and seen as an existential threat by Russia as a result. Here, a great statement, Jeff, and I didn't even tell you ahead of time that I was going to ask you that as articulate and complete as you always are. Just to raise your blood pressure a little bit, here's the statement that you referred to made by a hand-wringing, as always, Secretary Blinken, with, I believe, the Ukrainian foreign minister standing next to him about Ukraine joining NATO. Ukraine will become a member of NATO. Our purpose at the summit is to help build a bridge to that membership.

It's just crazy that they still embrace this view after all that's happened in the past two years. It is so incredibly irresponsible, the lack of diplomacy. Why President Biden and President Putin are not speaking. You know, President Biden spoke with President Xi Jinping last week, and that is a good thing. He needs to speak with President Putin as well. They need to find a resolution of this before Ukraine is completely destroyed, as it is being destroyed now every day. Of course, Russia is advancing across the front lines. On typical days, hundreds or more than a thousand Ukrainians are dying because of Russia's vast superiority in artillery and complete superiority in air power and hypersonic missiles and the rest.

Ukraine is losing on the battlefield, but it's losing exactly what we claim to be trying to defend because President Biden won't acknowledge this is a failed gambit. This is playing a bad hand terribly, continuing to raise the stakes on a failed hand. And maybe one can understand that from Biden's extremely personal point of view, but from the point of view of Ukraine, from the point of view of the American people, the taxpayers, the U.S. Congress, it makes no sense. Transitioning.

Two or three days ago, an Israeli journalist revealed the existence of an AI program employed by the IDF called Lavender. And this is apparently the means by which the IDF decided who to kill. The program assigned a number to suspected members of Hamas from one to a hundred. A hundred was, you know, must be killed. One is we're not sure, and the other numbers in between. And wherever this person happened to be, the computers sent dumb bombs, not smart bombs, to the House and didn't care that it killed family members and neighbors as well. Or even gave explicit allowance for that. How much, how many collateral deaths given the targets and so forth? Correct. I mean, do you expect that the Netanyahu government will try to shed blame or insulate or shield itself from blame saying the computers did it? thoughts, Professor Sachs, of the reckless criminal nature in which this war has been executed with the knowing and deliberate slaughter of everybody around the target,

even the target's children and grandchildren. Yeah, I think that there are several points here. First of all, Israel is surely committing war crimes up to and including the crime of genocide. Israeli government who have a vision of ethnic cleansing or slaughter in some pursuit of what they call greater Israel. So at the core of this is politics and destructive politics leading to massive war crimes. But there's the other element, which is the rapid infusion of advanced technologies in killing in a completely ethics, civility, public knowledge, public awareness. So there's a general phenomenon here. It's happening, of course, with the U.S. military. It's happening in Ukraine. It's happening in Gaza. It's happening reportedly with the nuclear war gaming and so forth, we are infusing it with artificial intelligence in ways that is extraordinarily dangerous, in this case in Israel, criminal and cruel.

But with these technologies advancing so quickly with governments that are not accountable to ethics or to the public, this is astounding and alarming. If I could make just a quick digression, which seems maybe completely out of left field, but I think it's related. My own view is that most likely the COVID pandemic was developed by a U.S. research program funded by the NIH in a highly secretive research program that was manipulating dangerous pathogenic viruses, making them more dangerous. The reason it's related, in my view, is that we are in a moment of extraordinarily rapidly advancing technologies. Even the biotech and the AI build on the same underlying digital technologies and platforms in a way. But the fact of the matter is these are out of control. They are militarized. They are extraordinarily dangerous. And we don't have any governance within our countries or internationally, in which ethics and the common good are maintained

in the face of this relentless militarization, whether it's of pathogens or whether it's of artificial intelligence. So what's happening in Israel can be viewed at a political level, but it can also be viewed at a technological level that's both are terrifying. And it can be viewed, of course, on a moral level. Professor Sachs, my hat is off to you. I stand up and salute you. If you were here, I would hug and kiss you for the courage,

intellectual bravery, and acumen with which you just explained a view that I know you have held and on which you've done a lot of research and on which you've given a lot of talks with respect to the COVID pandemic. We will well publicize for you what you just so nicely summarized. Last topic before we go. I appreciate it. If I may, before we turn to the last topic, just let me give you one little snippet more about AI and the military. And that was just a typical event. I was at a security conference in Bratislava, Slovakia, recently. And this question of AI and militarization came up. And it was a discussion on stage of some NATO generals. And their point was not, this is a dangerous and runaway technology or how can we get it under control or what kind of diplomacy.

The entire talk was we'll beat the Chinese in this. We'll beat the Chinese in this. We can stay ahead. This is how generals think. Maybe it's right for generals to think that way, but it's not right for governments and diplomats and the public to think this way. And the generals must not be in charge. But their view was, well, we're just in another arms race. So we're going to maximize, accelerate in every way the deployment of these extraordinarily dangerous tools without any consideration for diplomacy, for ethics, for safety, for what can go wrong. And so this phenomenon that we see in Israel now, this phenomenon of the so-called biodefense, whatever that is, but manipulation of dangerous pathogens, and the bravado and stupidity, I would say, of these generals thinking, ah, we'll be ahead of our adversaries, as if this is the only approach to the dangers that we face is really all around us. That's what I wanted to emphasize.

Well, nicely put. And as you mentioned, generals, it's a transition to my last topic with you this morning. Why are there several hundred American troops on a small island off the coast of Taiwan? What are they doing there? Are these war games? Are they provocation? Are they a tripwire? Well, they're definitely a provocation, whether advertent or inadvertent. It's completely shocking that Americans have troops in an island of Taiwan, which the United States recognizes as part of China, against the expressed, and I would say alarmed, point of view of the Chinese leadership. What are we doing? How many wars do we want to be engaged in? Where is even the modicum, the minimum, the iota of prudence in our behavior? It doesn't exist right now. That's exactly what we saw Blinken doing. No awareness, it seems, of the red lines of other nations. In the call, by the way, between President Biden and President Xi Jinping, in the Chinese readout, the strongest language by far was the Chinese expression made during the call that Taiwan

is the reddest of red lines. And you know, the deepest failure of American foreign policy is the expressed denial of red lines of anyone else besides us. This is where we go wrong in an absolutely devastating way. We simply could not hear that the Russians were concerned about NATO coming up to their 2,000 kilometer border with Ukraine. Nah, nothing to worry about, said these fools in our government. Well, it's the same in Taiwan. We don't want to hear. The Chinese are telling us something very serious, very real, and given their history and their geography, very understandable, which is that Taiwan is a red line. The United States recognized this in a communique more than 40 years ago when it said it would not arm Taiwan for the long term. It was going to taper off what had been support upon the diplomatic relations with the PRC. We do not live up to that. We don't even want to hear about red lines. I suggest we learn to listen.

Professor Sachs, thank you very much, my dear friend, for very intriguing and troublesome topics with your usual insightful, and if I may, brilliant and articulate analysis. Much appreciated, I can tell you from the comments that come in and from the size of the audience watching us at this moment as an indication of how it'll be appreciated throughout this week. Thank you, my dear friend. Thanks a lot, and we'll see you next week.. Thank you, my dear friend. Thanks a lot. And we'll see you next week. You got it. All the best. Thanks a lot. Wow. A dynamic and terrific observation. No surprise given the person who gave it to us, Professor Jeffrey Sachs, but dynamic nevertheless. Here's our day coming up for you. At 11 o'clock this morning, Eastern

Colonel Douglas McGregor. At two o'clock this afternoon, Eastern, Matt Ho was on his way to Gaza. At three o'clock this afternoon, Eastern, Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski. And at 4.30 Eastern this afternoon, the inimitable Scott Ritter. All today, looking forward to it. I hope you are as well. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thank you.