Judging Freedom - Prof. Jeffrey Sachs: Which Countries Trust the US?

Episode Date: August 26, 2024

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs: Which Countries Trust the US?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 August 26, 2024. Professor Jeffrey Sachs will be with us here in a moment on why does the United States still act like it's king of the hill. But first this. A divisive presidential election is upon us and the winner is gold. Let me tell you what I mean. Since 2016, our national debt has grown a staggering 70% and gold has increased by 60%. Do you own gold? I do. I bought my gold in February 2023 and it has risen 33%. You've heard me talk about Lear Capital, the company I trust.

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So take action right now, my friends. Call 800-511-4620 or go to learjudgenap.com. Protect your savings and retirement before it's too late. 800-511-4620, learjudgenap.com. Remember, hope is not a strategy, but gold is. Professor Sachs, welcome here, my dear friend. Since we were together last, Israel and Hezbollah have exchanged rocket fire. Do you have any grasp or any analysis on the significance of this? Well, I think it's very significant. Israel is still trying to provoke a wider war. And at the same time, Israel is extraordinarily vulnerable. While in this round, Israel attacked Hezbollah first and apparently disrupted to some extent Hezbollah's attack. The fact of the matter is that Hezbollah can deliver missiles to hit Israel, and Israel can't stop it. It can, to some extent, preempt it, but it can't stop it. Israel is trying, therefore, to bring the United States into a wider war, specifically a war with Iran, which would be perhaps World War III. The U.S., I think, is resisting. It absolutely

should resist. Israel keeps trying to provoke a wider war, which could be completely disastrous. The one thing that Israel does not do is negotiate over the political crisis. This is a crisis in the Middle East made by Israel's refusal to negotiate with Palestine. That's the whole story. And until today, every solution Israel wants is a solution of war. And since it can't win on its own, it wants to draw the United States into that war. But that would draw in Russia and others, and it could be world ending. So Israel is on the wrong track, and we should understand what's happening as being extremely dangerous. And dangerous to Israel, by the way. They're gambling with their own future and own survival. Alistair Crook, Larry Johnson, Ray McGovern have all opined earlier today on this program that

Israel is practically on a suicide mission. I think that's right. I don't think it isn't, in their view, suicidal, but it is on a path that could lead to their self-destruction, because it's completely reckless what they're doing. General Yitzhak Brick, the major general retired, said in Haaretz over the weekend, the war has lost its purpose. Israel will collapse in a year. Netanyahu has decided to die with the Philistines. He has lost his humanity, his morality, his norms, his values, and his sense of responsibility. Pretty damning. That's pretty heavy stuff. But it's understandable. Israel is absolutely pursuing a path of war, violence, torture, assassination that can lead nowhere for Israel's security. It can only lead to a catastrophe. Does Israel have competent, respected diplomats.

Well, the diplomats that have been on display in the Netanyahu government have been obnoxious, I have to say. I've watched many of them at work close up. And they absolutely believe that shouting into the face of the world is somehow good for Israel. It's shambolic. I've seen it. I've written about it, how bad the diplomacy is, because Israel doesn't believe in diplomacy. Israel believes in crushing the opposition, crushing the Palestinians, crushing anyone that stands in its way. And since it can't do it, it believes that it can induce the United States to do it. Here's fodder for your cannon. Here's Danny Dannen, the former Israeli ambassador to the UN, now a roving Israeli ambassador just a few days ago at the United Nations Security Council.

The representative of the Palestinian Authority is still here. He has been sitting in that chair for 20 years. You have accomplished absolutely nothing. Since October 7th, you have delivered hundreds of speeches. Yet you have never uttered anything even resembling a condemnation of Hamas. Mr. Mansour, if you cannot condemn them, you are one of them. You do not represent the Palestinian people. Mr. Mansour, you are a terrorist in a suit. I demand you to condemn Hamas. If you do not condemn them, you are one of them. Doesn't sound like it's a productive negotiation or diplomacy to me. I know Ambassador Riyad Mansour quite well.

That is the Palestinian ambassador. He's extremely impressive, very professional, extremely decent. And the words from this Israeli former ambassador are vile. They are phony, personalized, disgusting, because Israel is the one that has blocked any kind of political solution for decades. This is obvious. Now the whole world says we need a Palestinian state. The U.S. blocked through its veto are two countries that oppose it. Israel, naturally, because it wants to have an apartheid system that rules over Palestine, or it wants ethnic cleansing

or killing people to have the rest of them flee, and the United States, which backs this regime. The rest of the world wants a solution. Ambassador Mansour is a gentleman and a spokesman for peace. And so what we just heard is an example of anti-diplomacy, I would say. Does anybody think that the Israelis are seriously negotiating when they murder the chief negotiator on the other side and when they keep upping the ante every time Hamas agrees to what's on the table? underlying question here, which is that Israel rules over millions of Palestinian people, and it does so with a fist. It does so through torture, through murder, through abuse, through terror, with mowing the lawn, as they say, every few years, which means killing enough people to scare the rest of the population. So that's Israel's approach. Until there is a real Palestinian state and political self-determination for the Palestinian people, there will be war and oppression. But Israel wants as its, quote, solution, what they call

greater Israel, which is that Israel keeps its control over all of the millions of Palestinian people and over all of the territories occupied in 1967. So they can't negotiate. Every time the U.S. says negotiations and we're close to a cease fire and so forth, it's again shambolic. It's a fake because the United States representatives understand that Israel is not only not putting any solution on the table, it is actively blocking any path to peace. So this is where we are. It's a charade. We have a true situation, which is that the world demands, and the Palestinians call for, political self-determination. Decades of international law call for a two-state solution. A recent decision of the International Court of Justice declared Israel's settlements in the occupied territories to be illegal. By the way, Israel has known that

for 50 years plus. So this is not a secret. They know that they have been violating international law. The United States has abetted this all along. That's why we are where we are, that there is no political solution. I always like to emphasize and remind people of the famous maxim of the war theorist von Clausewitz, who wrote in the 1830s, and he wrote the magnum opus on war, on war is the title actually, and he said that war is the continuation of politics with other means. When you see a war, think politics. Israel's politics is the politics of domination and apartheid. It's straightforward. It's not hidden. It's what they say to each other. It's what these ministers talk about. It's been the purpose of Netanyahu and his party, Likud, from the start.

So with that, there is total political blockade. The United States government mumbles, and it literally mumbles most of the time, we want a two-state solution, we want a two-state solution. But then it says it must be agreed by the two parties. Well, that's an absurdity. That really means, if you decode it, and it's not hard to decode, that the United States will arm Israel to veto the two-state solution. That's been what's happening. That's been what's happening for decades. So this is very straightforward. Israel does not want peace

except on its terms of full domination, and they don't hide it. This is the platform of the key ministers of this government. Transitioning to Ukraine and Russia, can any serious argument be made that Ukraine invaded Russia on its own, that the U.S. did not know about it, approve it, and orchestrate it, the same with Great Britain and the same with the rest of NATO? Of course not. Everything that Ukraine does is not only known, but it's Great Britain and the same with the rest of NATO? Of course not. Everything that Ukraine does is not only known, but it's aided and abetted by the United States, by the UK, by Poland. That's what NATO is. This is a NATO war. So of course not. It's not even an issue. Where is it going to get them? Wasn't this a foolish charade to win a propaganda war? I mean, all it is going to do is cause more death and more destruction,

unless, of course, the geniuses in the State Department want to make sure this war doesn't end before November 5th? This incursion into Kursk is an incursion in the north into sparsely populated rural areas. It has no tactical or strategic value in the real battles that are going on on the contact line. There is one theory that a goal of the incursion into Kursk was to capture the Kursk nuclear power plant. That's a plausible back reading of this. Ukraine did not do so, it will not do so. It failed to do so, though it apparently shot some drones at the cursed nuclear power plant, which is completely reckless to do. But in every other way, this is a sideshow. It means absolutely nothing. And in the meantime, Russia is making significant advances in the core of the conflict area in the Donbass. And Ukraine's defenses not only are weak and in some places crumbling, but they were completely undercut by moving battalions and even brigades from the contact

line to the Kursk region for this temporary action, which has been stalled and stopped. And eventually, all of those Ukrainians that went in are going to be dead or they're going to retreat. It's not going to take a long time. Are there any countries that respect or trust the United States? There are countries that fear the United States because the U.S. is capable of destabilizing countries. Countries are afraid of the CIA or U.S. military bases in their countries. There are a few countries that are financial partners or industrial partners of the U.S. military-industrial complex, which is raking in a lot of money from these wars right now. So some of the big arms producers in Europe are making some money.

But if you look at public opinion in Europe, not so much about their attitudes to the United States, but their attitudes to their own governments. There's not a government in Europe among the NATO alliance that has popular support. What's happening right now is that just as in the United States where people are really tired of Biden, don't like this administration, think the US is on the wrong track, don't support the foreign policy, don't support the economic policy. This is pretty much true across all of the NATO countries right now. Some even governments are held in even more disdain than Biden is by a majority in the United States. If you look at France, President Macron's ratings

or Scholz's ratings in Germany, they're around 20% approval rating right now. This is completely against what the people themselves feel is in their interest. And all over the world, there is high anxiety because of the spread of war and all the loose talk about expanding war and, oh yeah, don't get scared of nuclear war. Be scared. This is my main advice everywhere. Let's stay away from the cliff. And this administration in the United States has brought us closer to the cliff. And that's why it's unforgivable. Is the United States in a position to be a world leader today, even if other countries were desirous of that? Look, you know, we heard Biden in the Democratic Convention, and he talked about the world leader and the indispensable leader. He used rhetoric from the 1990s, because that's the rhetoric that Biden

knows. It's all that perhaps he remembers at this point. But when the Soviet Union dissolved in December 1991, the policymakers in the United States, the security leaders in the United States said, oh, we're all alone. We're the world's sole superpower. And people like our then Secretary of State under Clinton, Madeleine Albright, said we are the indispensable nation and so on. And what emerged was an incredible hubris, an incredible arrogance. Not only is the U.S. the sole superpower, but we can do what we want. We can go to war where we want. We can overthrow governments where we want. We can take out Saddam. We can go to war where we want. We can overthrow governments where we want. We can take out Saddam. We can take out Afghanistan. We can take out Syria. We can take out Libya. We can

overthrow the government in Ukraine. What followed was incredible hubris and incredible recklessness. Well, we now have a debt that is 100% of GDP because we have fought trillions and trillions of dollars of useless, wasteless, wasted, costly wars that have run up massive bills. We've done it on debt. It brought no security or relief to the United States. And in the meantime, China has become, of course, a world-leading power. Russia has become a lot more powerful. India is becoming a world-leading power, the most populous nation in the world, and nuclear power and a technology power. So you have many superpowers right now.

And what's happening in Washington is sheer shock and anxiety and being completely delusional, thinking, oh, well, that'll go away. We still run the world. Now, Biden is the most delusional of all because he's the one that lives most in the past. But the foreign policy of the United States is still predicated on the U.S. being what they call the world hegemon or the sole superpower or the unipolar world. Well, this was never true, but it's way out of date right now. It has nothing to do with the world realities. And because we're operating on the basis that we can tell China this, we can defeat Russia here, we can decide on the Middle East. Of course, nothing works. So we've got a foreign policy that's completely predicated on what was never a correct idea, what was always

arrogance and hubris, but is now just delusional. It makes no sense at all. How overextended is the United States today? I guess I mean militarily. Well, look, we're fighting a war in Ukraine that NATO is losing predictably because Russia has very high stakes. And for NATO, it's a kind of, yeah, why not thing. But for Russia, it's an existential thing. They don't want NATO on their borders. This is the reason why there is a war in Ukraine. In the Middle East, the United States really can't protect Israel the way that Israel believes the U.S. can. And God forbid the U.S. should go to war with Iran. The results would be devastating for Israel Israel first and foremost, and could lead us to World War III. And then at the same time, the U.S. is provoking China by sending weapons systems to Taiwan when Taiwan's part of China. And then we have loose talk by our generals. Well, yeah, there may be a war in East Asia, in the South

China Sea or over Taiwan in the next two or three years. Every war game says we lose that one big time, if not blow up the whole world. So of course the US is overextended, but the foreign policy is so misguided. If we just dealt diplomatically with China, if we just dealt diplomatically with Russia, if we dealt diplomatically with India, if we did it on a basis of respect, not on bluster and threats and telling them who runs the world and so forth, but actually tried to solve problems, we would be a lot safer and we could actually cut sharply the, you know, we have 750 overseas military bases. Are you kidding? In about 80 countries.

Exactly. And it does nothing for U.S. security. It's extraordinarily costly. It has been a predicate of so many irresponsible U.S. actions, whether it's regime change operations or wars that we should never have started and never had been in. I'm thinking of Libya or Syria, now Ukraine. These are wars of choice. So we're wildly overextended, especially when you have the experience that I do regularly. When I come home, each time, go through the airport,

the airport's, the elevator's broken, the walkway's broken, the Amtrak doesn't work. You know, I'm sorry to personalize it, but our infrastructure is breaking down. You and I use the same airports, LaGuardia, Newark, JFK. They are owned by the Port Authority

of New York and New Jersey. That is the richest debt-free government in the United States of America, and they can't get their escalators and elevators to work. We don't get their escalators and elevators to work. We don't get anything to work in our country anymore. Last time I took Amtrak back from Washington to New York, it broke down. We had to run out of Amtrak to get a local New Jersey train to get back into the city. And then the next day, the electricity broke down on the Amtrak line from New York to Boston, eight hours delayed.

I've been on trains all the last two months throughout Asia and throughout Europe. Never did that happen one moment. I neglected to run a little clip before, and Chris did a lot of work to get the translation. Here is Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah, yesterday responding after the Sunday morning back and forth between Hezbollah and Israel, and obviously there's the translation into English. It is normal that the resistance announced its commitment and steadfastness to respond to this tyrant aggression so that we can balance the equation that has cost us blood and sacrifice over decades. This is something we cannot forgive.

You know, Hezbollah has... For an hour and a half, that was what we thought was the essence of what he was saying. Hezbollah has, by some counts, 150,000 missiles that it can fire, rockets that it can fire into Israel. Does Israel have that many? No. And I don't know the count. And as you know, you've got lots of great military experts to talk to. But there is a general feeling that the so-called Iron Dome cannot really protect Israel from Hezbollah. Israel could stay on constant alert, but as one pro-Israel analyst reported in the last 24 hours, it's extraordinarily costly to do, extraordinarily difficult to do on an ongoing basis. And Hezbollah is not the only one that can attack. The Houthis have thoroughly

disrupted trade that goes through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal. Iran has tremendous capabilities as well. Israel is not going to win on the battlefield. Israel can protect itself only through peace and diplomacy and a two-state solution. Professor Sachs, thank you very much for your analysis, deep analysis on all of this. Very, very much appreciated. Great to be with you. I'm glad you're back in New York after all your trouble. We'll see you again next week. Excellent. Thank you so much. afternoon, the one and only Pepe Escobar. At two o'clock in the afternoon, Matt Ho. At three o'clock

in the afternoon, Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski. And at four in the afternoon, the always worth waiting for Professor John Mearsheimer. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. I'm out.