Judging Freedom - Scott Ritter : Putin Outfoxes Blinken

Episode Date: June 24, 2024

Scott Ritter : Putin Outfoxes BlinkenSee 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 Monday, June 24th, 2024. Scott Ritter joins us now. Scott, my dear friend, thank you for your time and your analysis that forthcoming, no matter what we talk about, it's always a pleasure and deeply appreciated. Before we get to the American attack on Sebastopol, and before we get to some questions I have for you about Israel, can you tell us your view of the significance of President Putin's trips to North Korea and Vietnam last week, particularly that unbelievable press conference he gave in Vietnam in which he answered every question under the sun with brilliance and articulation. Russia had been a nation for some time under Vladimir Putin that sought to cooperate with the West as a partner. And Russia always viewed itself as a partner with the West. And Russia feels betrayed by the West, especially with what's been going on in Ukraine and how the West has performed. What Vladimir Putin did on this trip is send a signal that the partnership is over.

And one of the key aspects of this partnership was the way Russia worked with the United Nations, with China and others to put pressure on North Korea to walk away from its nuclear weapons program. Russia was not an advocate of North Korea's nuclear weapons program. It violated Russia's sensibilities when it came to nuclear nonproliferation, and Russia had signed on to many of the sanctions that had been imposed on North Korea. But now that Russia has been subjected to sanctions and Russia sees that the West is not interested in equitable solutions, but rather using the processes of sanctioning of so-called consensus building to destroy nations, to not achieve positive outcomes, but only outcomes that are positive for the United States, Russia has walked away and said, that's over. Russia has engaged with North Korea on a level that I don't think the American people fully comprehend. This is a strategic engagement from top to bottom, and it changes everything. One of the things that plagued North Korea going into this was food shortages.

They had a major problem with their agricultural sector. And a significant part of their labor force was diverted to very inefficient agricultural practices that oftentimes failed and led to starvation, which also led to a reduction in efficiency of the workforce. North Koreans will never go hungry again. Russia will guarantee their food supplies. What this does is liberate a good section of their workforce now well-fed to now be integrated into an expanding industry, an industry that will be thoroughly integrated with Russia's industry, which we know since the imposition of sanctions by the West has been thriving. This is defense industry and civil industry. This is

going to radically transform North Korea. North Korea will never be the same. Looking back, the irony here is that it could have been an American president being driven down the streets of Pyongyang. Donald Trump tried to achieve an outcome that would have eliminated North Korea's nuclear weapons, brought North Korea into the fold, and allowed North Korea this kind of economic development, and not allowed Russia this wonderful geopolitical strategic opportunity. But Donald Trump failed, betrayed by John Bolton, betrayed by Mike Pompeo. Joe Biden refused to pick up the baton, even though Kim Jong-un held it out there and said, please, please, please run with this. We want to go in this direction. What we have now is instead of a denuclearized North Korea, we have a North Korea that is sitting on very advanced ballistic missiles that have nuclear weapons on top,

and they're only going to get better. One of the things that Vladimir Putin committed to was turning over technology and weapon systems that will strengthen North Korea. And one of the things you're going to see is that North Korea's nuclear deterrent is going to become of a nature that prohibits any American preemption. There will be no American, South Korean, Japanese victory over North Korea going forward. North Korea is now strategically aligned with Russia. You go to war with North Korea, you're going to war with Russia. There's a famous photograph or infamous, depending on your point of view, that shows the Korean peninsula. And people use it to mock North Korea, where they show South Korea all lit up. And then you see the North and it's dark with a tiny little dot where Pyongyang

is. In three years, you're going to see North Korea lit up like you've never seen it before. This is transformational. It's empowered because in one stroke of Vladimir Putin destroyed the trilateral alliance that the United States was seeking to build with Japan and South Korea. Japan and South Korea now recognize that North Korea isn't just not going away. North Korea is going to be there stronger than ever in that if Japan and South Korea want to survive in this region, they need to start doing business with North Korea. This is a fundamental game changer. Then he went to Vietnam.

And the important things about Vietnam is Vietnam has been wooed by the United States. We tried to bring Vietnam over into the ASEAN organization, the Association of Southeast Asian States. By receiving Vladimir Putin the way they did, Vietnam said, you can't count on us, the West. We're not with you. We're with these guys. These are the guys we want to be with. This is a recognition on the part of Vietnam. And indeed, now we see Malaysia, another ASEAN nation, saying, hey, we want to join BRICS. Vietnam's going to want to join BRICS. Everybody's going to want to join BRICS.

BRICS is a game-changing forum. And Vladimir Putin, of course, Russia is the head of the BRICS meeting this year. Vladimir Putin is leading the charge. What he did is set Russia's marker down on the Pacific in the same way that he has set it down on Africa. Russia is a dominant force in the Pacific today. This was supposed to be America's pivot to the Pacific. This is supposed to be our region of the world. And Russia said, not today, Charlie. Right. You just gave an incredibly succinct and thorough summary of what has happened in the past week and the

significance of it. Enter China. What is the relationship between China and North Korea and Russia from and after this new Russia-North Korea alliance? Well, it's interesting. You know, a lot of people, and I remember reading this, people were saying Putin couldn't have done this without getting Xi Jinping's permission first. He had to go to China. That was his first state visit. And he had to get permission. Putin didn't ask permission of anybody. Putin doesn't ask permission of anybody. Putin told the Chinese this is what he's going to do. It puts the Chinese in an uncomfortable position because they had not yet walked away from the sanction of North Korea. They were continuing to abide by some of the, or most of the restrictions put on North Korea because they didn't want to incur the wrath of

the West in terms of unnecessary sanctioning. They have enough problems as it is. Putin, by Putin taking the lead, he's driving this boat. And this is an important thing to point out because people keep saying that Russia is subordinated to China. Russia is not subordinated to anybody. They have a great relationship with China. They will work with China where there is a place for them to work, but where Russia needs to act to put forward Russia's best interests, Russia will do so. And that's what this trip proved. And China now will have to conform to what Russia has done because they can't undo this. North Korea is now plugged in strategically to Russia in a way that they could have and should have been plugged into China. This is a missed opportunity by China. The same thing with Vietnam. Vietnam, people remember

1979, there was a very short but very violent and bloody war between Vietnam and China. They are two nations that don't get along. They have some issues over gas exploration. Russia going to Vietnam saying, we're with you on this is also a signal to China that Russia doesn't automatically fall in behind the Chinese line, that China will have to consider Russian national interests when pursuing their global policies. So if Professor Mearsheimer were here, he would say, what about China's hegemony and lust for dominance in the South China Sea? Well, again, I would push back with Professor Mearsheimer and say, those are your words. The Chinese aren't seeking hegemony. The Chinese are seeking equitable outcomes. China recognizes the South China Sea as a part of their territory,

and the parts that aren't in their territory are in their sphere of interest. That doesn't mean that China wants to control. It means that China wants to be in a partnership with these nations, an equitable partnership based upon mutually beneficial trade relations. That's what I would say is it's a total mischaracterization of China's policy. Got it. Well, in fairness to him, I'm guessing what I think he would say. I haven't discussed this with him yet. He's a big fan of yours, Scott. I'm a big fan of his, and I always point out that there's a reason why they call him professor, and they don't call me professor. So I recognize his intellectual status.

Matt Ho told me he was at one of your lectures once, and he said, we should call Scott professor. It was like a grad school course on whatever you were discussing. I don't remember the topic. Does Tony Blinken understand what you just summarized about the Western loss and the Russian gain? I'm not sure Joe Biden understands it because who knows what he understands. I don't know what he understands anymore. Understand the significance of what he understands anymore. Does the American State Department understand the significance of what you just described? Well, they do because I've heard Blinken and I've heard the State Department, I've heard U.S. government officials in the Biden administration articulate something similar to this. They acknowledge China's role. They acknowledge that China's role is trade related, that China is not seeking to push

itself out militarily, that where China does respond militarily, it's usually reacting to provocations from the West. I think strategically speaking, the United States understands this. It doesn't mean the United States agrees with the direction this is going. Just because you recognize what I said to be true doesn't mean that that's the policy the United States wants in place. Okay, but North Korea now has weapons that can reach Washington, D.C., Miami, Dallas, and Los Angeles, right? Oh, North Korea, they recognize this as a total game changer. Right now, the United States is in a total flux. We don't know what to do about what Russia just did with North Korea. We have

no idea. It changes everything. Okay. My question was inartful. What I meant to ask you was, does the American State Department recognize and appreciate the significance of the new relationship between Russia and North Korea. And you're saying they recognize it, but they don't really appreciate it. They have no idea how to respond. They weren't expecting this. Nobody was anticipating that Putin would go. And they thought that he was going to go and try and get some sort of limited ammunition deal. Here, we're going to give you a little bit of this. We need your ammunition because we're desperate for ammunition.

Putin didn't go there to get the ammunition. Putin went there to change the entire geopolitical balance of the Pacific. And that's what he did. Okay. What is the significance, veering away from this, of the American attack on civilians on a beach in Sevastopol, Crimea, yesterday? Well, to give you a hint, I think you've been on their show. Dmitry Saenz has a show, 60 Minutes, in Russian. I think you've been a guest. I was on that show today. I don't know if you mean the father or the son, but I've been on with each of them.

Yeah, the father, the father. And, you know, so I got to listen to three retired generals and strategic thinkers who are plugged into Putin's inner circle, obviously, talk about what happened and what the consequences should be and it was um it was frightening to listen to them speak about war with america um i don't know if every american understands we we committed an act of war against russia yesterday we united states committed an act of war the thing i like to tell americans is had the russians done something similar to us we would be at war with russia already we would never allow this kind of attack to take place on American soil, but we wouldn't tolerate. We would go directly to the source. Why we believe

that the Russians shouldn't be able to do the same thing is beyond me or why we believe they wouldn't do the same thing. And one of the reasons is I think that our government is hoping that Russia does overreact because, you know, they just had a failed peace summit in Switzerland. And now they've got a summit, a NATO summit coming up in July where they have to talk about how to respond to the Russian threat. Well, right now, the Russian threat is Russia winning in Ukraine and hypotheticals about what could be. But if Russia overreacts and actually starts lashing out, then suddenly that threat becomes discernible. And now NATO has something to build policy around. And this is, you know, what the Russians need to be aware of is that this is a trap, very much a trap set by

the United States. But it's a brutal trap that killed five children, five children. Imagine you're on the beach with your family in the summer and a Russian cluster bomb impacts and kills your kid. Where are you standing on this issue? And that's what every American has to understand. This struck a peaceful beach where tourists were out, the civilians, the local population was out. This was an act of war. And Americans need to recognize what their government has done and what the potential consequences of this action are. Has the State Department or the Defense Department responded in any way?

Chris, put the picture up again. This is the beach, Scott. In the foreground, of course, you see. There it is. In the foreground, you see people laying on the beach. In the background, you see the cluster bomb, an illegal weapon, exploding and killing children. What the Pentagon has said is that we're not responsible. Ukraine picks their own targets. That may be true. Ukraine may pick the target, but it's based upon intelligence

provided by the United States. And the guidance that's put in is provided by intelligence provided by the United States. This does not happen in a vacuum. The United States is very much the hidden hand. And it's not just that we give them data. Understand that ATAKOM's missiles, the Ukrainians don't have the technical capacity to do the programming of the targeting. So it's an American hand that's actually putting the targeting data in. It may be a Ukrainian finger that pushes the launch button, but everything prior to that is American provided. So we are very much, if this was, let me put it this way, if this was a murder trial, Judge, the Americans would be complicit, would be, you know, not just co-conspirators, but they would be charged with

murder because they provided the gun, they loaded the gun, they aimed the gun, and then somebody else's finger pulled the trigger. But you could get everybody involved in murder on that one. Right. Here's a Swiss military expert channeling his best Scott Ritter. Cut number nine. With regards to direct involvement of the United States of America, well, let's put it this way, any weapon system that is using GPS technically, indirectly, is using U.S. data. True. 100% true. Could these attackams have been fired without the assistance of American intel, know-how, or technicians? Theoretically, the answer is if a Ukrainian was trained on programming the data, but that's a special course that you have to go to that the Ukrainians haven't gone to. Okay, what about top secret codes needed to download data from satellites?

If we're bringing in classified information from the satellites, when it's brought into a ground station, that ground station is American controlled. Then the Americans would take that data, clean it up, and turn over, you know, what they would to the Ukrainians. But that data link and control of both ends of that data link is done with Americans. So the U.S. embassy is directly involved in this. I mean, that's the bottom line is that's the most secure place for a data link of this nature is the U.S. embassy. And then the U.S. embassy will farm it out to other locations inside Ukraine as needed. You are a student of Vladimir Putin. Before I ask you what you think he will do, here is the statement from Foreign Minister Lavrov. It's a full screen.

I will read it. The U.S. is responsible for this massacre, and they will get an answer. All flight missions for American ATAKOM's missiles are programmed by American specialists based on their own U.S. satellite intelligence data. Therefore, the responsibility for the deliberate missile strike against the civilian population of Sevastopol lies primarily with Washington, which supplied this weapon to Ukraine, as well as with the Kiev regime from whose territory this strike was launched. Such actions will not go unanswered. What will the answer be, Scott Ritter? Well, I'm not in the business of telling the Russians what to do, nor do I really. I'm not thrilled about the Russians doing anything against my country.

I mean, I'm not going to sit here and say this makes me happy. You understand what happened. You understand the significance of it. You talked earlier about how we would react if that were Long Beach Island, New Jersey, or Miami, Florida? What the Russians were talking about today is sort of graduated. The first thing is they're saying make the Black Sea closed airspace, to close down Black Sea airspace, to get the American drones, to get intelligence aircraft and say, I'm sorry, this is now Russia. And if you want to fight us over this, we'll be more than happy. But

we are declaring this to be a zone of military operations. The United States did that when we closed down the Adriatic Sea when we went to war against Serbia in 1999. We just shut down the Adriatic Sea and basically said, we own this, NATO owns this, you can't fly in this. Russia is thinking about doing the same thing. And then if the United States wants to militarily confront them on that, so be it. The next step they are thinking about is just shooting down a global hawk system. That's an act of war, but they claim it would be an act of self-defense. And another thing they're looking at- What does that mean?

Who's shooting down what? Well, the Russians would shoot down the Global Hawk drone that's currently flying loops off the coast of Crimea in the international airspace over the Black Sea. They would just shoot it down. The other thing they're talking about is taking down satellites. Basically, all the satellites are involved in the communications of the intelligence data, et cetera, to take that out. And then the last thing they're talking about is hitting ground stations, places where the attackams are brought in, the logistics. These are things America would do, by the way. I just want everybody to understand that instead of going,

this is insane. Just take a look at how America operates. We would not allow a weapon system to have a discernible logistics flow into a combat zone that's attacking American troops. We would hit every single one of those logistic nodes that we could. And that's something Russia wants. So I really think a thing that is being considered right now is shutting down the black sea. The problem is that's exactly what the United States wants. Now that allows the United States to go into the NATO summit and say, see, the Russians, they're irresponsible. They're shutting down the Black Sea.

The best thing Russia could do right now is not a damn thing, excuse my language, just continue to win this war, continue to beat the Ukrainians on the battlefield, because that's what puts the United States and NATO in the difficult position they're in right now, where they're doing acts of desperation, like authorizing Ukrainians to strike beaches in St. Louis. Two questions. In the third of your options, attacking logistics locations, that would mean killing Americans, correct?

Most likely, yeah. Okay. Big bigger question. How the hell did this happen? Who in the United States of America made a decision to allow the Ukrainians to kill children on a beach? I mean, this goes all the way back to the expansion of NATO. We just don't care about Russia. We've never cared about Russia. We've never sought to peacefully coexist with Russia. And so we have minimized any consideration of Russia and Russians in this. And this led us down a path where today, in order to justify our policies and justify the allies we have, namely Volodymyr Zelensky and the Ukrainians, we have to buy into their messaging. And the Ukrainian messaging is that Crimea is Ukrainian, not Russian, and that any Russian in Crimea is there as an illegal occupier, therefore

not an innocent victim. This is exactly what Mr. Podolak, one of the senior advisors to Zelensky, just said yesterday. He said, they're not innocents. Those are Russian occupiers. We can strike that. Now, the fact that America has remained silent on this, silent on the fact that the ally that we're empowering to carrying out these attacks is just admitted to killing innocent civilians, which is a war crime, and we're saying nothing about it, just shows you, again, how far we've drifted away from the norms and values that we ostensibly embrace as a nation. Wow. Do you think this was done intentionally by the Ukrainians? Do you think American intel knew that the children would be killed? No, I think that they were actually, there's a military airfield nearby this, this, the beach. They fired five attack them. Four of them were shot down

out over the water. One came in and I think got hit by the Russians and, and, and either prematurely detonated or, or, you know, sent the cluster munitions onto the beach. So I don't think that this was necessarily the Ukrainians saying, hey, we're going to attack innocent civilians, but it's the consequences of their action. They are using cluster munitions in areas where, you know, you have to accept responsibility for your actions. Aren't cluster munitions illegal under international law? I guess the U.S. and Ukraine haven't agreed to that, but they're still illegal under international law, no? No, international law, to be binding, you have to buy into it. You can't have some, there is, of course, a convention that prohibits the use of cluster

munitions. The nations have signed on to that, but we haven't signed on to it. And we do use cluster munitions. And again, as somebody who's been to war, I'm a big fan of cluster munitions under certain circumstances. They're very lethal weapons. They're very good against certain targets. War is about killing. And if you're going to go to war, kill. Kill as efficiently as possible, but you don't kill innocent civilians. How do you see this playing out? Vladimir Putin will do nothing. The Americans will be further frustrated. The war will continue to expand. At some point, Zelensky's government and military will collapse. I think that, again, there's a lot of anger in Russia right now, so I can't predict outcomes with any level of certainty here. The Russians have shown a great restraint in avoiding unnecessary escalation because they understand that they are on the proper trajectory to achieve the victory they want to achieve

at the price they're willing to pay for that victory. The Russians may very well do nothing. What I think what they'll do is you're going to see a more intensive program of strikes inside Ukraine designed to interdict the logistics associated with the TACM's deliveries. But when it comes to attacking NATO or the United States or expanding this conflict, that the Russians aren't going to do anything at this juncture. But their patience is running out. Here's President Putin on Zelenskyy's short term or long term, and when will the West tire of him? Cut number two. And there is a decision of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine of 2015, which says quite clearly that the term of the Ukrainian president is five years, no more, no less. What are we even talking about?

In the West, I think they just don't want, the West just doesn't want to change a president for a different figure. It's obvious that they have their hands full with other things. And it's Zelensky who will be charged with making all the unpopular decisions. And after they are done with him, he will be replaced. After they are done with him, they'll replace him.

The interesting thing is he actually put a time frame on this. He said by the spring of 2025, which means that Russia isn't planning on this war ending before the spring of 2025, which could scare the Ukrainians to death because Russia has taken down the Ukrainian energy producing infrastructure down to 23%. By the time winter comes, it may be in single digits. Ukraine will not survive the winter. And this is going to create tremendous pressure on the Ukrainian presidency, on the

Ukrainian parliament, on the Ukrainian military. It'll take Ukraine to the breaking point. Russia's playing the long game here. I actually didn't think they would do this a year ago. I thought that the West would be able to mobilize its defense industry efficiently, that Russia's defense industry couldn't keep up. I was proven wrong on both accounts. The West has shown incompetence beyond belief when it comes to mobilizing defense industry. And Russia has done laps, has lapped them. Russia is doing very well defensively. So Russia's sitting in the catbird seat, as they say. They just need to kill Ukrainian troops, which they're doing very efficiently.

The Ukrainians are about to comply with more dead Ukrainians by launching this 100,000-man counteroffensive into well-prepared Russian defensive positions in Kartikov. They'll lose those 100,000,'s no need for us to sacrifice these troops. Time is on our side. And he, for the first time, has put a marker on the calendar saying that we expect Zelensky to go sometime in the spring of 2025, which means that Russia will begin the process of looking for someone to negotiate termination of this conflict in the spring of 2025. Larry Johnson argued this morning that we're actually giving away, now that Ukraine's at the head of the line, it's above Saudi Arabia, it's above Israel, in terms of priority, or at least this is what the State Department wants and the Defense Department want us to believe. Larry says that the Ukrainians are actually draining our supplies, using more than we are able to manufacture in the United States. And so the supply, that which we would

want for our own purposes, if God forbid we need them, is shrinking. Agreed? 100%. Again, this comes back to the incompetence of our defense industry. We haven't scaled up appropriately. And going back to the words of General Christopher Cavoli, who's the commander of U.S. forces, NATO ground forces, but he spoke in January, I think, of 2023 to a Swedish defense forum. He said that the United States and NATO hadn't imagined the scope and scale of the violence that is taking place in Ukraine. They didn't imagine it. The level of casualties, the intensity of the fighting, the level of attrition couldn't

be imagined, which means we're not ready for this. We're not ready for how many people. We're not ready to fight a war where you lose hundreds of thousands of people in a short period of time. We're not ready to fight a war where the potential of losing hundreds, if not thousands of tanks in a month's time is there. We're not ready for a war where you expend 10,000 rounds of ammunition or more a day. We're just not prepared for it. And we haven't done anything in the intervening time since this conflict began to prepare for it. So we're feeding munitions into a meat grinder that's grinding it up at a rate that far exceeds what we're doing to replenish it. And we're drawing down from

the stocks that we need to fight a war to keep the Ukrainians up and running. And so we are literally bleeding ourselves white supporting the Ukrainians here. Scott, I wanted also to talk to you, we don't have time now, about the Zionist experiment and if it has failed. We'll save that for either later this week or next week before the 4th of July comes by. Thank you. Thank you very much for all this. We are very close to 400,000 subscriptions, which I was aiming for by the 4th of July. I think we're going to hit it this week in large measure because of you. Thanks for your thoughtfulness. Thanks for your courage. And thanks for your vast, vast knowledge of all these things and for your time. Thank you, my dear friend. Thank you.

Wow. Scott Ritter on fire. There's nothing quite like it. We have an interesting day for you tomorrow as well, just as we did today. At eight o'clock in the morning from Moscow, Pepe Escobar. At 10 o'clock in the morning, Moscow, Pepe Escobar. At 10 o'clock in the morning, I don't know where he's coming from, Professor Jeffrey Sachs. At 11 in the morning, Karen Kwiatkowski. And at noon, Matt Ho. My dear friends, thank you. Have a great evening. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. I'm out.