Judging Freedom - Scott Ritter: Risking Nuclear War

Episode Date: June 12, 2024

Scott Ritter: Risking Nuclear WarSee 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, June 11th, 2024. My dear friend Scott Ritter joins us now. Scott, a pleasure, my friend. Thank you very much for your time. Is Joe Biden risking nuclear war in Ukraine? The policies of the United States are such that conditions can be created without any stretch of the imaginations that would be conducive to nuclear war. And this is something that should be avoided at all costs. But there seems to be a feeling within the Biden administration that de-emphasizes the potential of nuclear conflict, premised on the notion that Russia, A, lacks the capacity to carry out any meaningful nuclear war, and B, that Russia is bluffing, that the warnings that are coming out of Russia is just bluster to be ignored.

Let's talk about capacity, and then we'll talk about will. Isn't it true that Russia's capacity is greater than ours? We're talking about nuclear weapons. Yes, Russia is the most powerful nuclear nation in the world, on the planet. Their weapons are more numerous, but more importantly, they're more capable. They're more modern. Russia has modernized its nuclear arsenal. It has cutting edge technology, hypersonic maneuvering warheads, giant delivery systems that can deliver not just multiple warheads, but the decoy systems that make the warheads even more lethal because they could penetrate any missile defense shield that the United States might be able to put up. The Russians also have classes of missiles that we don't, road mobile missiles that are deployed in

the vast expanse of Siberia. And when they disappeared to the Siberian forests, are virtually impossible to target and therefore become survivable. So yes, the Russians have a far more modern, far more lethal, far more capable nuclear deterrence force than the United States does. And how about Russian will to use them? How about Russian, we don't bluff guys. Well, well, you know, the good news is, um, hopefully we never find out if the Russians are bluffing because the moment we can answer that question, it's all over. Right. Oh, darn, the Russians weren't bluffing. Boom.

It's too late. It's 10 minutes away. Right. I'm very happy that you and I can continue to have this discussion. Are the Russians bluffing? That means that we haven't called their bluff sufficiently for the Russians to demonstrate the will. But I think when we take a look at, you know, Russian actions, you know, Russia has stayed the course on the special military operation, on its Ukraine operations. There hasn't been a massive deviation in terms of the ultimate outcomes. They have made tactical

and they have made operational adjustments to this plan, dictated by, you know, emerging realities like the delivery of hundreds of billions of dollars of military equipment and financial assistance to Ukraine that enabled them to continue and sustain this fight. But Russia has stayed the course, you know, and I think that that is proof positive that when Russia says it's going to do something, it's going to do something. Putin doesn't have a track record of speaking out of turn, of saying something than being compelled to backtrack and say what the president meant to say was X, Y, and Z. And so when you look at this track record of consistency between stated policy and policy as implemented, I think we have good grounds to say that when Putin talks about Russia's nuclear deterrence and the conditions under which this deterrence may be employed operationally, that he's not making it up.

Words are very important to the Russians. I learned this a long time ago when I was working with Russian diplomats at the United Nations. They would chastise me and others and say, you have to be very careful with the words you use because words have meaning. You can't just come out there and say things because people listen to what you're saying and then they expect certain things to happen. Putin as a leader, a Russian leader, is very careful with what he says. His words are vetted by him and his staff to make sure that the policies that he's speaking about are consistent with the way he's described the policies. So I don't think Russia's bluffing. I think Russia has been very

straightforward about what they can do and the conditions under which they would be obliged to do that. Here's his latest statement on nuclear weapons, cut number three. The use of nuclear weapons is possible in the event of an exceptional threat to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of our country in exceptional cases. I don't think this is such a case right now. There is no necessity for that. Hasn't Joe Biden authorized the Ukrainians to use American weaponry to attack the territorial integrity and thus the sovereignty of the nation of Russia? Absolutely. This is a very dangerous situation. But what's important here, Judge, is that Vladimir Putin said this after the American policy was not only announced, but implemented.

It just shows the maturity of Russian leadership in general. He's the only adult in the room right now. Clearly, a case could be made. And indeed, there are many Russian political observers and commentators inside Russia who make this case that the red line has already been crossed by the United States, by Ukraine in attacking Russia with these American weapons, that Russia already has a prima facie case to use nuclear weapons in accordance with its doctrine. But what Putin has done here is tone it down, to ratchet it down, to calm things down, and to say, no, we haven't met that yet. This is extraordinary leadership. This is escalation management. Every American needs

to thank Vladimir Putin for his maturity, because otherwise we may not be here tomorrow. So, you know, but the problem is in Washington, D.C., they're going to say, see, we told you he's bluffing. He's bluffing. He's all bluff, all bluster. He's not going to do it. We don't want ourselves stumbling towards a potential nuclear conflict. Let's hope that reason prevails. Here's someone who does not understand what you just said. Cut number four, Chris. From the president's perspective, this was common sense.

What was happening up around Kharkiv, which was new just in the last couple of months, was a Russian offensive where they were moving from one side of the border directly to the other side of the border. And it simply didn't make sense not to allow the Ukrainians to fire across that border to hit Russian guns and emplacements that were firing at the Ukrainians to fire across that border to hit Russian guns and emplacements that were firing at the Ukrainians. So the president authorized that. The Ukrainians have carried out that authorization on the battlefield. And one thing I will point out is that the momentum of that operation in Kharkiv has stalled out. Now, Kharkiv is still under threat, but the Russians have not been able to make material progress on the ground in recent days in that area.

And the United States will continue to support Ukraine in holding the line and pushing back against the aggressing Russian forces. Does he know what he's talking about? No. First of all, I'd just like to remind Jake Sullivan of a couple realities. One, it was the Ukrainians actually using Russian national proxies, Russians, anti-Putin Russian forces fighting under the flag of Ukraine, trained and directed by the CIA, who carried out offensive operations from the northern Kharkiv region into Belgorod region, attacking Russia. And we saw this back in the spring. So when we speak of who initiated what, understand that it was Ukraine with the CIA that used their Russian anti-Putin proxies to attack Russia vigorously, by the way way so this attack that russia is doing right now is not not designed to capture the city of kharkov or to seek you know vast territorial gains it's to create a buffer

zone to push the ukrainians back um so jake sullivan of course has misread the scenario too you know it's one thing for jake to talk about not allowing the Russians a safe haven. But what Jake doesn't understand is that NATO is a safe haven for Ukraine. What does he think the Russians will think about the bases in Poland and the Baltics that are used to repair damaged Ukrainian tanks? Is this not now a target? What about the warehouses that store the weapons that are being staged prior to being shipped into Ukraine? Are those not targets? What about the airfields where F-16 fighters that are being prepared for combat operations are staged and pilots are being trained? Are those not targets? where Ukraine gets to do critical tasks without fear of Russian reprisal. So for Jake Sullivan suddenly to say, oh, we can't allow Russia to have a safe haven on its territory, it cuts both ways, Jake. But here's the last thing he doesn't understand, and this is the stupidity of Jake Sullivan and the Biden administration. Russia just sucked Ukraine into a giant trap. You remember the

Battle of Bakhmut. Everybody remembers the Battle of Bakhmut. Everybody remembers the Battle of Bakhmut. It was a meat grinder operation that Russia began and then trapped the Ukrainians. And 90,000 dead Ukrainians later, Bakhmut was captured by the Russians. The Battle of Diyavka, the same thing. Ukrainians got committed to a fight. They poured 60,000 reserves into that battle. They were destroyed. Now Russia has moved on to Kharkov. Yeah, the Russians aren't advancing.

Wasn't their intention. What they did is get Ukraine to suck up all their reserves, and they're now launching counterattacks, and the Russians have stopped their dug-in, and they're in the process of slaughtering the Ukrainian reserves. This is the Russian way of warfare. Jake Sullivan doesn't get it. He's too busy looking at stupid dots on a map to understand that he yet again has fallen into a trap that is destroying Ukraine's ability to sustain this conflict. What is the significance

of the latest announcement to come out of the White House, which is the permission for the neo-Nazis, some unique battalion or group in the Ukrainian military that have swastikas tattooed on their bodies, that they can now use American offensive weaponry. Why would Biden do that, knowing, as he should, the Russian memory for history and culture and attitude about Nazis. Let's just remember that this current situation in Ukraine grows out of the February 2014 Maidan coup, a coup that was carried out by Ukrainian nationalists, violent extremists, who are loyal to the memory of Stepan Bandera, a Ukrainian nationalist, ultra-nationalist. Let me just stop you. The American CIA worked with the worst elements in Ukraine, these people you're now talking about, Victoria Nuland and her folks in the State Department as

well, to pull off this coup. Correct. They pulled off the coup, and now these people are the ones who went into Mariupol and terrorized the Russian population there. They turned themselves into a military unit. They called it the Azov Battalion, later Regiment, Azov being the Sea of Azov right off the coast of the city of Mariupol. They are 100% neo-Nazi. As you said, the Stratisks, Hitler, the whole thing. They glorify Ukrainian nationalist linkage with Hitler. And it got so bad that in 2015, when the United States started training the Ukrainian forces, the United States Congress passed an amendment to the Defense Authorization Act that

said, we can give money to Ukraine, but we can't allow any of that money to be used to train the Azov battalion. Because as the United States Congress said, they are neo-Nazi white supremacists and we can't support this. And the Congress passed this amendment all the way up until 2022 when we started supplying Ukraine with these weapons. The people in Congress who signed this amendment calling the Azov regiment Nazis, when Republicans stood up in Congress and said, why are we funding Nazis? People like Jamie Raskin stood up. How dare you say there's Nazis? There are no Nazis. He's the one who signed the legislation that said we can't give money to these Nazis. They're the same ones that allowed Azov members to come to the United States Congress, be feted, to be treated

as heroes, to hold auctions in the People's House selling memorabilia with the Nazi symbology. So we sold Nazi memorabilia in the People's House to raise money for Nazis, which are what the Azov regiment is. For the Ukrainians right now, the Azov battalion, which renamed itself because it became too much of a political problem, they're now the third assault regiment. They are one of the few remaining effective units left in the Ukrainians, and they are used extensively to launch counterattacks and plug holes in the battlefield. They need weapons. And as long as the United States prohibits American weapons from being sent to Azov, this unit would not be

effective. So what the Biden administration has done is said, no, we're going to give weapons to these people. And it's not just them. It's now the Kraken Regiment, which is a Nazi regiment. It's the 67th Armored Regiment, which is a Nazi regiment. It's the 67th Armored Regiment, which is a Nazi regiment. There's other units of that nature, where basically the surviving mobile reserve capacity of the Ukrainian Armed Forces is 100% Nazi, and we need to ensure that Ukraine has weapons that can allow these units to fight. So yes, ladies and gentlemen, you heard me right. A week after we celebrated the 80th anniversary of the D-Day invasion, where our American soldiers went over the beach to fight and destroy the Nazi scourge that had occupied France and pushed them

back into Germany, fighting alongside our Soviet allies to accomplish the same mission. Yes, this America today is now deliberately providing weapons to units we know are Nazi affiliated. The Soviets, let's see, the French president, for all of his faults, for all of his faults, invited Vladimir Putin to the D-Day celebration, and the White House says if Vlad comes, Joe is not. And, of course, we all know who was there. How much longer do you think this can go on before it either becomes World War III or Ukraine collapses? The good news is that Russia doesn't want World War III. That's the very good news. And we saw this in the final statement made by Vladimir Putin at the plenary

session of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, where he didn't lead off by talking about headline-grabbing situation, nuclear war, conflict. He led off by talking about headline grabbing situation, nuclear war, conflict. He let off by talking about the Russian economy and the growth. I don't know if people have been watching, but the World Bank, I think, just came out with new estimates about Russian economic growth. And basically, they admit they got their numbers wrong, that Russia is literally going to have their economy grow at twice the rate that the IMF and the World Bank had thought, unlike Europe's economy, which is shrinking. The Russian economy is doing well.

He talked about BRICS. He talked about the transformation of the world away from American hegemony into a multilateral world. This is his focus. He's looking downrange. That's not the vision of a man who's looking for a nuclear conflict. And then, of course, he finished with his statements, and you played a major part of it that said, we don't think the conditions exist today. He's trying to de-emphasize nuclear weapons. So long as Russia is blessed with a leader of this caliber, I believe we can avoid nuclear conflict, but it's not a guaranteed outcome because if we push him long enough, this is the same leader who stared into the camera and said, all orders have been issued, all documents have been signed, there will be no warning or phone

calls. If you cross the final boundary, we will do what we have to do. And he said, yes, we have nuclear weapons. Yes, we have a nuclear doctrine. Yes, there are conditions under which nuclear weapons can be used. So the world would end. But I think Putin is thinking long-term strategically. He didn't spend 25 years rebuilding Russia just to throw it away in a nuclear war. So I'm glad he's the leader of Russia. You know, he just won an election that has him staying in power for six years. Joe Biden's coming up for an election in November that he may not win. Europe just went through an election that showed that, you know, traditional power bases that were supportive of a conflict with

Ukraine no longer have that support. Emmanuel Macron himself saw his support shrink to 14%, I think is what he got. He has to call snap elections for a French parliament, which may put a right-wing government in play that is opposed to going to war against Russia. So we see Europe curing itself, healing itself right now. Russia's smart. They just have to buy time and let the problem of these warmongers solve itself. I've said this many times on your program. I'll say it again. All of the plans that NATO is thinking about in terms of expanding their forces and building capacity to fight Russia are in the heads of people or on paper, but there's nothing real there.

They can't afford it. And one of the reasons they can't afford it is because of the very bad economic situation in Europe, which has manifested itself politically now in demands for change. And so I do think we're going to see change percolating up through Europe, changing the strategic focus of confronting Russia into how do we peacefully live with Russia. And when that happens, the United States is going to have to make adjustments as well. Last question, is Putin sending offensive weaponry via ships and submarines to Cuba? As we speak, there's a Russian missile frigate, I believe, and a Russian missile submarine that have made a port call in Cuba.

This port call has been many months in the planning, well before the current crisis has manifested itself. But the important thing is that the message is the same. Russia is sending ships that have long-range precision strike capability to include Zircon hypersonic missiles that can't be shot down, and that these are cruising off the coast of the United States. You know, Bob Dylan wrote a song like a rolling stone and the, one of the main lyrics there is, how does it feel? And I think that should be the theme song of the Russian Naval Tour. How does it feel America? How does it feel to have ships cruising off your shore that can destroy your government that quick and there's nothing

you can do about it because that's what you do to us when you send your ships into the Black Sea and you cruise around the Black Sea. You threaten us the same way. That's how it feels when you send your ships into the Baltic Sea and threaten St. Petersburg. That's how it feels when you have your destroyers do a cruise across the northern straits, threatening our missile silos with your Tomahawk missiles. That's how it feels. It's not a good feeling, is it? And it isn't a good feeling. The Russians are basically putting a marker on the table that says the game's over. It's no longer a one-way street. You know, one of the things that we do, again, America, wake up, people. We send B-52 bombers out of England flying down the Baltic Sea in a direct beeline towards St. Petersburg, the second largest city in Russia.

Beyond that is the Kola Peninsula, where the Russian fleet is and strategic capabilities are. And we send the B-52 on a strike flight. It is an attack profile that if we're going to launch cruise missiles and fire them, this is the profile it would do. And it goes right up to the release point and then it turns away. And we do this all the time.

Wow. Russia, in addition to these two ships, Russia is deploying, I believe, a pair of Tupolev strategic bombers, jet-powered bombers. And I would bet that sometime during their tour of the Caribbean, they're going to fly a strike profile against Washington, D.C. How does it feel? Not very good, does it? America needs to wake up that it's not a one-way street anymore, that what we do will be done to us. And the Russians have the ability to do it to us with the same lethality or even more than what we can do to the Russians.

I'm looking at Mr. How does it feel over your right shoulder at the Palace Theater. Scott, I'm going to let you go. Thank you very much, my dear friend. Best of luck tomorrow. I think it's tomorrow in D.C. with the great Ray McGovern. Where are you going to be? The Press Club? We'll be at the National Press Club, correct. I've been invited to join. I can't get there. I wish

I could be there. I was going to show up and surprise you, but I can't. But you guys are in my head and in my heart. Knock them dead. We have one more quick announcement, if you might, Judge. September 28th, you and I are joining Gerald Celeste for the rock show of rock shows. We are going to stop nuclear war. We are promoting democracy, saving America, saving the world. We don't know all the details yet, but we're going to put a million people into Kingston on September 28th, right? Correct. Saturday, September 28th, noontime, Kingston, New York, a major, major argument for

peace featuring Scott and me at Gerald Salenti's establishment, which is huge. Thank you, Scott. Thanks for everything. All the best, my friend. Thanks, Judge. Wow. Fabulous as always. Got to go. 5.15 this afternoon. Matt Ho, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.