Judging Freedom - Russia & NOKO getting tighter - What's this mean for Ukraine? w/Tony Shaffer fmr DoD

Episode Date: September 5, 2023

Russia & NOKO getting tighter - What's this mean for Ukraine? w/Tony Shaffer fmr DoDSee 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 Tuesday, September 5th, 2023. Tony Schaefer joins us today. Tony, since last we were on right before the holiday weekend, the Wall Street Journal reported in banner headlines and with just a single source that the Ukrainians have breached the first of the three Russian rings of defense preventing the Ukrainian military from moving eastward into East Ukraine. Do you buy it? No, unfortunately I don't. There's no evidence outside of that one report that there's any sustainable or measurable progress by the Ukrainians. Remember,

we're now three months into this. I think the most folks now are counting the 2nd of June as the start date of the offensive. And there's no independent verification because Milley has said the same thing. Milley said the same thing last week. Oh, we're through the first line. It's like, no, you're not at the first line. And the Sorobican line, those are all very effective, overlapping fields of fire, professionally prepared defensive positions. And the fact is the Russians have been able to essentially establish an understanding of avenues of approach that the Ukrainians would use. And they've been able to essentially decimate them at every move. I mean, yeah, there's been some villages that have been taken temporarily,

and no doubt that the Ukrainian soldiers have been fighting and dying with great valor, but there's no real progress to show that the offensive has been anywhere near effective. I would say it's been counterproductive at this point. So where do the Ukrainians stand? I mean, without American artillery shells, is there any way they can move eastward? And they don't have American artillery shells anymore because we don't have them anymore. We've replaced them with cluster bombs. Joe Biden needs this war for domestic political reasons. I believe so. But he's not a magician. I mean, no matter how much cash and equipment we ship over there, they're running out of human beings to fight on their side. McGregor reports that some of their conscriptees,

I can't call them draftees because they're kidnapped out of bars and off the streets, are as young as 16 and as old as 60, Ukraine. Right. So that tells me that, let's break that down a little bit. And yeah, if you were going to actually do, and I said this last time and I'll say it again, because I think it's accurate. If you really wanted to actually have an effective use of the Western forces, that is to say unit cohesion, you had to basically train units to come together as part of a larger unit with the available technology effectively used and led, you'd need someone like McGregor. And look, Doug and I are friends, you know that. But I'm just saying this because I really do mean it.

Doug or a Schwarzkopf would have to essentially finally hone and put that on the battlefield. You don't have that. You've got competing generals in Ukraine not doing what is necessary to achieve even local victories. You have adequate combat power, arguably, I believe, with the Leopard tanks, the Chieftain tanks, the support vehicles to actually gain ground. If you wanted to penetrate one of these lines, you could do it, but you're not because you've got competing interests going on. And at this point, because there has been no major progress, the Western support, NATO support is now becoming, I think, tenuous. No matter what you read in the Wall Street Journal, the Germans aren't keen on this.

Turkish are not keen on this. I think Poland is mostly keen on this because we're paying them a lot of money to be keen on it. There's a lot of things going on in Poland right now that tell me that our interests and their interests are locked together based on economics. And there are legitimate grievances by the Poles. Don't get me wrong. I'm just saying that it's very clear that that's where most of the focus is right now. And despite that, again, Judge, there's no indication that anything that's been done over the past 90 days will have any long-lasting effect on the battle space. It's just nothing there. Tony, the last time we looked at the kill ratios, it was seven to one. One Russian for every seven Ukrainians. Now, anybody can do the math. How much longer can Ukraine last?

Yeah. Well, they can't. And I think that's where they're at. I think that's why you've heard, I think, within the last four or five days, Zelensky's announced another round of conscriptions of old men and young boys. And he fired his defense minister, didn't he? He fired his defense minister, but it's, I think he should fire his entire defense staff. They're all corrupt. And matter of fact, there's been legitimate articles about funding going missing that we've sent them, which is not a surprise by any means. And so, yeah, I don't, but trust me, I don't think it's, I don't think it's corruption that got this guy fired. I think he's going to be the fall guy. This defense minister is going to be the fall guy. One of the fall guys for the failure of the offensive.

They got to have someone to blame. I think he's going to be one of the guys. Remember Mark Milley's on the way out the door to Mark's going to get blamed for this. Well, probably rightly so, but Mark's term as chairman ends on the 30th of September. I think his retirement ceremony is at Fort Myer coming up in at least a few days. And, you know, I think that's something that needs to be examined is what advice was given when and by who and why they're here. Because, again, I think there could have been things done to actually enhance their ability, that is Ukrainian ability, to penetrate those lines. But those choices and those strategies were not employed. So there's some reason for that. But

before you ask this question, Judge, Zelensky, I think, is now preparing the public, his public, for the idea that they've got to go into defilade. They've got to go into a defensive posture to try to stave off the potential for a new Russian offensive, which I think the Russians have the option to do starting on or about the 1st of October. What level of control does the U.S. military or does NATO leadership have over strategic decisions made by the Ukrainian military? Well, they don't, they cannot direct, but you have immense power through suggestion relating to what resources are provided and when. I'm sure Mark Milley has given ample and substantial guidance to the Ukrainian, all the Ukrainian leadership from the president on down to the generals in the field. I just think it's been bad advice, obviously. I mean, the results are obvious to those who want

to look. But I think the fact that you had Victoria Nuland, you basically had Jake Sullivan and Mark Milley, all these guys essentially directing the war. Let me be clear on this. You cannot have people sitting in Washington directing war. It's never worked. It didn't work during Vietnam. Uh, didn't work, uh, you know, in Afghanistan where you had, and Iraq, where you had people essentially out trying to do things which were not focused by people in the theater. You do not win wars. I mean, there's a reason why, Judge, they let Eisenhower run the theater in Europe without having Washington telling him what to do. Washington will always try to tell you what to do, but you can't do it. And I think the Ukrainians learned the hard way to not fight a battle where Washington is calling the shots.

So do we just dump hundreds of millions in cash and $100 billion in equipment on them and let them run with it as they want? And some of it gets stolen and sold on the black market to God knows who, even the Russians? Well, you know, you have to understand, Judge, we have a very big defense industry to feed. And McConnell, Leader McConnell admitted this. He said, you know, you all are forgetting. I think it was about 10 days ago and before he had another one of his vapor lock moments. He actually said publicly, the quotas out there, hey, you have to remember, most of this money we're sending to Ukraine is actually being spent in Washington. No, no truer words have been spoken. You know, I always refer back to the Eisenhower military

industrial complex speech, his last speech and the military, you know, our mutual friend Bruce Fine calls it the military industrial congressional complex because Congress always benefits from the money being sloshed around. So yeah, I think it is an exercise in funding the defense industry who they don't care who wins. They just want to be able to continue to provide 7% growth per year to their investors. I've talked to guys who run these companies. Doesn't Joe Biden need an off-ramp or the ability to claim some kind of progress in order to sell this to the American public in the fall of 24. So you have a media, which is still to this day, to your point, the Wall Street Journal and others, conspiring with Biden to continue this happy talk party line. One of our mutual friends calls it happy talk, a happy talk party line

where all the information that is provided to the public is shaded to benefit Biden and the idea that Ukraine's winning. So until there's some series of catastrophic events which get people to wake up, no, Biden's going to continue. Biden has no interest in telling the truth if the truth goes against the narrative, which would support his reelection, period, from the economy to this. And again, I am not speaking politically. I know that you and I are sensitive to this fact. I am not speaking politically. I'm speaking as an observer. I've got a degree in political science. I've been around the swamp and the D.C. folks. I've met Joe Biden. I'm speaking based on my personal belief, based on informed study of all these issues. Your observations are shared by many people, Tony. We're going to take a break.

When we come back, we'll talk to Colonel Schaefer about this bizarre new arrangement between Russia and North Korea approved by China and how that can affect the national security of the United States. But first this. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Lear Capital. You all know that I am a paid spokesperson for Lear Capital because it's the right thing to do, because the government is regulating too much and printing too much money and reducing the value of everything you earn and everything you own.

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you'll find out if you can qualify for a $15,000 gold bonus. So call Lear now, 800-511-4620 or learjudgenap.com. So over the Labor Day weekend, Russia and North Korea very ostentatiously announced that Kim Jong-un and Vladimir Putin will meet in Vladivostok, Russia, very soon. And it was also revealed, but not announced, and I didn't see this in the mainstream media, that Russia has been selling advanced ICBMs to North Korea, ICBMs which Ray McGovern says can reach Washington or New York, certainly anywhere in Japan or South Korea. So let's start first with how significant is this publicly acknowledged meeting between the two? And could it have happened without the personal approval of Chinese President Xi first? So while I recognized that North Korea is essentially a client state of China, the tradition and context between Russia and North Korea go way back.

I mean, this goes back to literally the war, the Korean War. And in the early, let's see, about the mid-2000s, I think it was 2000 to 2009, I sat on something called the Nuclear Strategy Forum with Ambassador Hank Cooper and Dr. Peter Pryor and some others you would probably know. And our job was to examine nuclear weapons from the defensive and offensive perspective. One of the issues that came up then was the North Korean nuclear program. And we knew back then, based on direct observation,

I don't want to get into classified information, but Judge, the Russians had people on site helping coach and direct the nuclear explosions that went off in North Korea for the test. So it's a deep and abiding relationship. So this latest chapter is just that, another chapter in the book of the Russian-North Korean relationships. What is frightening, what people should be worried about is more than the North Koreans giving 105 artillery rounds to the Russians, which they have a lot of, and they can afford to give it to them. It's more about the technology transfer from Russia to North Korea. North Korea has been limited by a number of factors regarding

its nuclear weapons programs. There's been efforts to slow them down, if not defeat them, and I don't want to get into. So the Russians come in, they're going to give them some advanced technology, which actually will help them hone and refine their ballistic missile capabilities, plus their actual ability to build a pit, which is, you know, the idea of having a hydrogen weapon versus an atomic weapon, which anybody who understands the difference will understand the magnitude of that. So the Chinese allowing this to happen is not surprising because they, the Chinese, will use North Korea when they want to rattle the cage of the United States. It's all related. And earlier today I was on an interview where I was asked a similar question about this.

Just imagine, do you remember the movie, The Naked Gun with Leslie Nielsen? Yes. The beginning of that movie is him going into this meeting of all the bad guys in the world, you know, Gaddafi and Khomeini, you know, and they're all meeting to plan bad things against nice. It's just like that.

It's just like, that's what's going on. And the common bad guy is is Biden, who would play a pretty good Frank Drebin if it wasn't so sad that he is that badly hobbled mentally. But I'm just telling you that the Russian support to North Korea should be the focus, not the other way around. Okay. Here's a Q&A that I did with our friend and colleague Ray McGovern just about an hour ago. I misspoke at the end of my question and said North Korea when I meant to say South Korea, but you'll understand the gist of this. I'd like you to take a look at it. It's not very long. And share your thoughts with us. Because North Korea has a treaty with China. Japan has a treaty with the United States. South Korea has a treaty with the United States. If Kim Jong-un uses one of these missiles to attack Japan or North Korea, then

China and the United States are in a war with each other at the same time that the United States and Russia are in a proxy war over Ukraine. That's correct. And that's why it's really hard to understand why Russia, with Chinese blessing, would give this kind of weapon to North Korea. But remember, North Korea has no incentive to strike Japan. It's a deterrent, a deterrent. And a deterrent can be very powerful in a strategic equation. Your thoughts, Colonel Schaefer? It's all about deterrence. I agree with him on that point.

I disagree with some of the tactical points he makes. So two things on this issue. Both South Korea and Japan are indeed under our nuclear umbrella. And technically speaking, based on treaties, we'd have to respond if North Korea did something. With that said, there's no trust the United States would do anything based on the failed Joe Biden leadership. Again, I'm not speaking politically. I'm speaking practically. And because of that.

But you know as well or better than I how treaties work. It's the perception. North Korea attacks South Korea. We have to defend South Korea. We attack North Korea. China has to defend North Korea. World War III. Bad guys act on perception. The perception was we were ready to give up the South Korean peninsula right after World War II. Look at the war that happened there. Miscalculation is the greatest danger to the world peace. Because again, the perception is we wouldn't do anything. If, you know, Un and China may think they can get away with something based on their perception. This is not about reality, Judge. You know,

one of the things I learned early as an intelligence officer, as a clandestine guy, you need to manage perceptions, not reality. And that's what Biden does not do well. He does not manage either very well. And that's my point. China, I mean, both Japan and South Korea have within six months technical capability to develop their own nuclear weapons. That is to say they have delivery systems already available to them based on their own domestic production.

And they have, because of their civilian nuclear programs established, and look, it's as common knowledge. I'm sure that people don't like talking about it. Both those countries could defend themselves regarding nuclear weapons if they so chose to do it. But it's not in anybody's interest to see anybody start lobbing nukes around because inevitably there's going to be a global exchange of nuclear weapons based on every exercise I've ever seen. Can the United States afford to have two vassal states in war, two proxy wars at the same time, US v. Russia using Ukraine, US v. China using Japan or South Korea? Well, this is,? Well, you're not going to like my answer, but here it is. We should stop all support to Ukraine, period. It's not in our interest to be there. There's no path forward for victory. Look, I don't believe in an expensive defense.

I believe in an effective defense, and there's nothing effective, Judge, about us being involved in Ukraine at this point in time. The focus needs to be the Pacific for two reasons. First, I do believe Taiwan has the right of independence. There are more Taiwanese than there are Chinese at this point. We've entered into a number of informal agreements. We're actually helping them buy. They're buying their weapons, Judge. They're buying them. We're giving them to Ukraine. So that's a big distinguishing characteristic and yes we out of all the places where nation building has actually worked the one the one thing that actually worked was South Korea we did nation building there we're still there of course but

it worked we made the investment and same with Japan our economic interests are tied to the Pacific at this point especially those nations so I believe we should act in the interest of our the american people and the economy versus whatever's going on with biden and ukraine giving all these billions of dollars with no hope of ever none of that's going to be retrieved ever judge it's not like we're investing in ukraine so it's it's it's it's not we need to we need to focus on this so if something happens involving north korea and, you know something else is going to happen involving Taiwan. It'll all happen all at once. I'm sure that's true.

And we don't have the ability or the manpower or the political will to do anything about it. It would be tough. Okay. Tony Schaefer, a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you so much. Thank you for joining us. Good to see you, Judge. Okay.

More as we get it. Larry Johnson at one o'clock Eastern later today. Colonel Douglas McGregor at two o'clock Eastern later today. Yours truly on Newsmax at three o'clock Eastern later today. Wow. Making up for taking yesterday off. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. for Judging Freedom.