Judging Freedom - Prof. Jeffrey Sachs: US Misunderstands Russia

Episode Date: February 29, 2024

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs: US Misunderstands RussiaSee 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, February 29th, 2024. Professor Jeffrey Sachs joins us now. Professor Sachs, thank you very much for joining us. I've got to tell you, I'm a little down in the dumps about what's been happening in Gaza. It's utterly repellent and it seems to be getting worse and we need to discuss it. But first, Ukraine. I want you, you've probably seen this, but I want you to see it again.

And I want you to be able to comment to our audience. This is the President of France two days ago. There is no consensus today to send ground troops in an official, endorsed and sanctioned manner, but in dynamic terms, nothing should be ruled out. But in dynamic terms, nothing should be ruled out. How crazy is that, Professor Sachs? Crazy is the word. So crazy, excuse me, that all of Macron's counterparts across Europe and at the White House said no plans to send troops.

But this shows the incoherence of the NATO leaders. It shows that the jig is up, as it were. This whole thing, in my view, this war has been a NATO scam in the sense that this was a completely over NATO expansion. Everything has gone badly wrong, predictably, at least I predicted it. It's a disaster for Ukraine. And now they're scrambling because all these leaders bought into lots of phony narratives, bought into the fact that Russia would be in a collapsed state by now, that Ukraine would have defeated Russia on the battlefield, all sorts of completely phony claims or reckless gambles, let's say, because maybe they believed there was some chance of it, but they were gambling with Ukrainian lives and with the American money. And it all went bad. Again, I'm going to say predictably so, because from the start of this and before the start of this, I said this was a disaster. Biden's been on the wrong path, not just during his presidency, but during his vice presidency, because he was a major point person in the violent coup that overthrew the Ukrainian president that wanted neutrality, all in the service of the American idea of expanding NATO to Ukraine and carrying

out a neoconservative playbook to thereby weaken Russia. Well, it's gone terribly wrong. Now they're scrambling. Every one of these leaders, Macron, Biden, Schultz, across the board in Western Europe is highly unpopular and understandably and justifiably so because they are behaving recklessly. Olaf Scholz, the German Chancellor, was compelled to make his own statement without mentioning President Macron by name. Here's what he said. NATO is not and will not be party to the war. That remains the case. We do not want Russia's war against Ukraine to become a war between Russia and NATO. We agree on this with all our allies. This also means no German participation in the war. To put it bluntly, as German Chancellor, I will not be sending any members of the German armed forces to Ukraine.

Our soldiers can count on that. And you too can count on that. And you too can count on that. Do you think we have special forces there now, unrevealed to the public, unknown to the Congress, ordered by the president? Of course. There's no doubt about it. Because many of the weapon systems that we have given to Ukraine require U.S. technical support. Many of the intelligence services are U.S. engagement. Of course, the U.S. has people on the ground, and so do many of the other countries. There's no doubt about it. The New York Times carried a semi-bizarre story about the CIA and all its operations in Ukraine,

semi-bizarre because it pretended that this somehow started in 2014 with the phone call the night of the coup. The whole thing is preposterous in terms of the New York Times description because the CIA has been engaged in Ukraine for decades. But the point is there are lots of Americans on the ground, as is true of other NATO countries. The Russians know it. Occasionally, these people get killed. Then either the deaths are not reported or they're called mercenaries, as if they're somehow volunteers. It seems pretty likely that a large number of French military were killed recently, and they were called mercenaries after the fact. But yes, of course, there's already engagement. It's very dangerous. And the Russians are saying, be careful, we're heading to another round of escalation and escalation without any upper limit. If you keep escalating, is what President Putin says to NATO, they're not going to allow

Ukraine to become a NATO country. They're not going to. And if it escalates to nuclear war, it's going to escalate to nuclear war. I don't want to sound glib in this. I think it's the madness, madness of our leaders, of Biden, Macron, Schultz. By the way, he says it's not our war. Schultz, of course it's. Germany's incredibly deeply engaged in this war. So of course it's a NATO-Russia war. Everybody knows that. But we don't have any leadership right now. We don't know whether Biden really could handle negotiations. I mean, physically, mentally, I don't know anymore. None of us knows. But what we do know is that nothing is taking place to provide off-ramps. And we have continuing unbelievable recklessness, not only Macron,

but the Secretary General of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, someone I've known for a long time and once respected, let me put it that way, says Ukraine is going to be part of NATO. Well, over our dead bodies. Over a lot of dead bodies. Exactly. Doesn't the government sometimes use the euphemistic word when a soldier is killed and they don't want to acknowledge it? Oh, he was a contractor?

Mercenary is what they've been using in this case, but it could be a, they're not even saying contractor because then they'd say who is contracting. So they're saying it's just some volunteer that happens to show up to help run a Patriot missile or something else. You know, it, it's very transparent and it's very dangerous and it's been dangerous all along. First, it's been an incredible danger and a destruction of Ukraine. And the longer it goes on, the worse it is for Ukraine. It is destroying the European economy and it's destroying the politics of Europe also. And it is a continuing danger of escalation to who knows where possibly complete disaster. Here is your favorite deputy secretary of state speaking to theverted over the weekend. Listen to what she says at the very end,

referring to nasty surprises in store for President Putin. Cut number 10, Chris. With the $60 billion supplemental that the administration has requested of Congress, we can ensure that Ukraine not only survives, but she thrives. With this support in 2024, we can help ensure Ukraine can continue to fight, to build, to recover, and to reform. With this money, Ukraine will be able to fight back in the east, but it will also be able to accelerate the asymmetric warfare that has been most effective on the battlefield. And as I said in Kiev three weeks ago, this supplemental funding will ensure Putin faces some nasty surprises on the battlefield this year.

This woman is one of the most dangerous people that has ever held high office in the United States. She has blood on her hands, a lot of it. She was the point person for the coup in February 2014. But if you look at the whole career, She was the deputy security advisor to Cheney. She was George W. Bush Jr.'s ambassador to NATO. That's Bush Jr. Then she was hired by Hillary Clinton. Not a surprise. surprise, first as a spokesperson, then as the Assistant Secretary of State, who in 2014 is caught on tape with the then U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, determining who would be the post-coup government. She was the one that ran back and forth from Washington to the Maidan to help orchestrate the events that led to the violent overthrow of Yanukovych. And then she was hired as a Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs for Biden, continuing Biden's deep personal involvement in this disaster.

This isn't just President Biden somehow walking into this. This has been a project of Biden, Newland, Sullivan, Blinken, that goes back at least to 2014. We know it. The tape is amazing to listen to because Newland tells Piat that she's going to get Biden to do the attaboy, in other words, to pat the new government on the back to help secure everything. And who's arranging this with Newland? Jake Sullivan, who was the vice president's national security advisor and now is the current national security advisor. This project has gone disastrously wrong. This woman has no business being in government right now and has created a disaster. Usually it's so many involved, but she's been the major point person for a long time. And yet she's obviously a political survivor in administrations of Republicans and Democrats. How much longer?

I think, Judge, the point of that is that this neocon project has been a bipartisan project of the military industrial complex that goes back for more than 30 years now. It's coming to an end because it's a complete disaster. We don't know what kind of end. Is it an end with a boom or with a whimper? God, it should be an end with a phone call from Biden to Putin to say we've got to sit down and peacefully end this thing. But it seems are saying, come on, this is at an end. And the majority of the Republican Senate is waking up and speaking out clearly. The Democrats, almost to a person, are warmongering to this moment because they think that they have to avoid any embarrassment for Biden. But the embarrassment is not embarrassment. It's a disaster, the policy that he has helped to lead for more than a decade.

So we've got to stop this and stop the killing, stop the escalation and get to peace. Before we leave Ukraine and get to Israel and Gaza, can you enlighten us on this Transnistria separatist movement in Moldova? Is this something significant that the Transnistria people or their local assembly has apparently voted in overwhelming numbers to join Russia. Is this significant, profound, timely, or is it just a blip on the, not even a blip on the radar? No, it's more than a blip. It's another major danger. You know, you have the whole region inflamed. This is an enclave of ethnic Russians in Moldova. It has been a flashpoint and a point of controversy ever since the end of the Soviet Union, because it is a Russian ethnic enclave, but it could be another expansion of war. It's another reason why we should be sitting down and saying, we'll end the war,

no NATO expansion, no more Russian adventures needed in ethnic Russian areas of other countries, because we're moving to a rational system of security, not the games that these people play because they treat them as games, except that there we consider scenarios, they are, quote, gamed out. When you do the formal analysis, that the people doing this, Ms. Newland and others and President Biden, they're not at the front lines. The bombs are not dropping on their heads or their children's heads. They're gaming this out. And yes, this is another flashpoint that's extremely dangerous, which is why we need to have discussions and negotiations. And this is the one thing that Biden has refused to do since the first day in office with anybody consequential. So this is really an extraordinary situation. No negotiations. How can the world be safe this way? It's not possible.

Well, let's go to the least safest part of the world now, which is Gaza. Earlier today, innocent Gazan civilians were lined up to receive flour and water from an aid truck, and more than 100 were slaughtered, mowed down by Israeli troops. This has got to be one of the most reprehensible and public slaughterings that they've engaged in. Will it change anything? Well, first we should say, you know, the Israeli Defense Force has a, what they call an explanation, which is that this was a stampede and most of the dead were not shot by the IDF. It was only a few that surged towards IDF troops.

I don't believe Israeli reports in general because the line has been relentless. By the way, I rarely believe White House reports because the line is also relentless. But the point I would make is this. Of course, it's important to determine what happened. There will be a UN Security Council emergency meeting today in New York in the evening. As I understand it, I'm overseas, so I'm not up to date by the minute, but I believe the UN Security Council is going to meet to hear some of the facts and probably more videos and other evidence will come to light. But no matter what the story is, even if it was a stampede, Israel has deliberately starved the people of Gaza. Starved.

I'm not using an exaggeration. I'm talking literally starving a population. So if it was a stampede of starving people, that is blood on Israel's hands in any event. So even the cover story of the IDF, in my view, has no exculpation for Israel whatsoever. Israel is a criminal, is in nonstop war crime status now. I believe in genocidal status. And it is without shame, without remorse, without truth, without insight into what it's doing. But what it is doing is endangering Israel's fundamental security because it is driving the world to believe that the Israeli state is not legitimate. Because this is a murderous government right now. And this is blood on Israel's hands,

even if it's merely, in quotation marks, a stampede of desperately hungry people who are being starved by Israel. When will state actors with the force of arms stop this? They won't. They won't because the United States is viewed, understandably, by the governments in the region as capable of madness. So there is a deterrent effect of the U.S. protecting Israel's genocidal actions in Gaza right now. This will stop when the United States stops providing the munitions to Israel. It will not stop by any self-control in Israel. There is none in this government. This is a murderous gang in government right now. These are zealots. They have some messianic vision of controlling all of today's Palestinian lands.

They're not going to stop. They believe in ethnic cleansing or worse, depending on whatever is needed. And it is, again, the United States, which is the sole support. And it's our mumbling, bumbling president and the others that are not stopping this slaughter. And I'm really disgusted by the lack of any honesty of the U.S. government about this. Well, speaking of honesty, Amos Hochstein, who is the chief American negotiator born in Israel, fought with the IDF became an American citizen worked his way up the State Department, etc. said

since you and I have been together last the settlers must be enabled to return to the West Bank two days later the Secretary of State of the United States, Tony Blinken, said the settlements are illegal. We're changing American policy. Does anybody believe the United States? Is anything that any of them say credible at all,

except when they send arms to kill. Let me just give you an empirical point. I was at an international summit last week, the African Union Summit, which of course has the African heads of state, but leaders from outside the U.S. I've been meeting with the heads of state in the last two weeks. Nobody believes the United States for one minute. One leader said to me, what is happening in your country? What is this madness? What is going on with you people in the United States. And this is the sentiment around the world. And it's the understandable sentiment because this is genocide being brought to us every day by videos, by IDF troops gleefully blowing up hospitals, mosques,

apartment buildings, schools, universities, thumbs up in front of the cameras. We see all of this. We hear the hate speech of the Israeli government, And we don't see any action whatsoever by the United States other than the practical step every day to arm Israel. And we have our Secretary of State saying what Israel does is fully up to them. We're not going to tell them what to do. Right. I have to go, Professor Sachs. You know, I could listen to you and our viewers could listen to you for a long time. But I am going to tell everyone that you and Mrs. Sachs and I will be together next week in Rome at the Vatican at a conference commemorating the 750th anniversary of the death of St. Thomas Aquinas, in which we'll be discussing natural law principles, the idea that our

rights come from our humanity and not from the government, an idea to which every president swears allegiance and none of them follows. Well, the purpose of our meeting, as you know, is to help remind the world of not only the great teachings of Thomas Aquinas, but as you say, the great idea of virtue, human virtue, and natural law as a basis for our well-being and our survival. So it's a very remarkable anniversary. I can't wait to be with you together at the Vatican Forum.

Same here. It's a great place, and I'm looking forward to it. But thank you for your time, Professor Sachs. And maybe, I think Chris will work this out, we can do a Judging Freedom together in the same room at the same time in front of the same camera. Wonderful. Let's do it next week.

Thank you. All the best. See you then. Bye-bye. Another brilliant, brilliant man. Coming up in five minutes at three o'clock, Colonel Douglas McGregor at four o'clock, Professor John Mearsheimer at five o'clock. This is all U.S. Eastern Times. Scott Horton, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.