Judging Freedom - Ukraine NATO and the U.S. w_ Alastair Crooke

Episode Date: April 21, 2023

Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Friday, April 21st, 2023. It's 10 o'clock in the morning here on the east coast of the United States, 4 in the afternoon in Rome, Italy, which is where we find one of our favorite guests, the former British diplomat and current intellectual. I was going to say former diplomat and intellectual, which is still an intellectual, Alistair Crook. Alistair, it's a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you for joining us. You and I have both been fascinated with a relatively simple comment made by French President Macron on his jet flight from Beijing back to Paris after spending three days with Chinese leadership in Beijing, where he seemed to have used the words to the effect of, it's time for Europe to separate itself from the American rhythm. He didn't say war, but the implication was rhythm of war. And from that, observers have drawn the conclusion of his attempts to lead Europe

away from the United States politically and militarily. What kind of a hubbub has this caused? Oh, a big ruckus. A big ruckus, particularly in the United States and to a certain extent in Europe. In fact, some in Europe have called it a betrayal. Curiously enough, they're talking about it as a betrayal of America, a betrayal of Europeans when he said these things. As such, it's not so very radical to say, let's be equidistant from China and the United States.

But the impact has been huge and completely missed, because it's not really so much about separating from the United States. And I would argue that that's almost impossible. That horse left the stable long ago. In fact, it left the stable when Europe went in with sanctions on Russia and went full court on sanctions on Russia. The intelligence services told the Europeans, American and British said, listen, it's slam dunk. We just do this and Russia will collapse. May I just add another reason to support your conclusion that the horse is out of the barn? The utter and total silence from European leaders over the now well-accepted American destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline. President Putin, who made one of the few honest comments about it, said it's as if the United States still occupies Germany as it did right after World War

II. That's how silent the German leaders and add French, British, Italian, etc. have been over this. But go ahead, please. I think that's right. I mean, the fever that we saw in 22 about Ukraine is breaking slightly in Europe. But the response, the establishment response is basically to insist on uniformity of message, control of messaging, and also crackdown on all protests, strong crackdown. If you've watched any of the videos from France, you'll get an idea that they're fairly brutal. It's the same everywhere in Europe, and they're not reported.

And it reflects an underlying fear. There's a great deal of fear in Europe because they fear a financial crisis is imminent, the European one, not an American one in this case, in the banking sector. And so at the moment, although it is shifting, it's slow and it's still not possible to have a proper discussion. And Macron emphasized that. I don't think anything's going to change in that respect except the one thing everyone missed because what it did was open up the fault line between East Europe and Western Europe in the European Union and throw the whole of the European structure

into some sort of, if you like, crisis. You in a in a brilliant piece you recently published uh or at least you quote someone else i think an american intelligence official as having concluded that the center of gravity of nato is moving from east to west it's It's not Berlin or Paris, it's Warsaw. Ironically, NATO's counterpart in those Cold War years was called the Warsaw Pact. And now Warsaw seems to be what? Calling the shots? Yeah, precisely. Precisely. The pendulum swung with the advent of all those former Soviet republics into the European Union. I remember I was working with Solana, who was the European high representative at the time. And I said, you know, it's going to be impossible to run a European Union with so many different, if you like, interests, so many different cultures, so many different. It was hard enough. We were then 12 member states.

It's now 30 member states. Some of them come from a very different culture. And I think this is what has so angered the East Europeans. But from that time, the United States has allied itself closely with the East Europeans, and the East Europeans have effectively become the tail wagging the Brussels dog. They control it, I mean, completely. And the weakness of the sort of France, the French-German alliance is very obvious. So what Macron's comments did was really exacerbate this

crisis, exacerbate this fault line and all the other fault lines that are in Europe. Let me put it in this way very simply. The Ukraine war, to one extent, has actually reinforced the political culture in Russia, at the same time that it is deeply exposing the hollowness of the political culture of the European Union and Europe. And that is leading to, if you like, factions and fault lines opening across the European Union. What do you think President Macron was hoping would be the response to his statement? I think, you know, he likes to do these sort of philosophical comments, because he didn't include any sort of suggestion about how to do it, how to go about it. It wasn't mentioned in that. And there are huge practical difficulties. It's not going to happen as I say we're tied

to Washington policy we were tied the moment all those European states with great enthusiasm said we're going to sanction Russia and it'll be over in weeks it'll have collapsed at that point there was not really easily any way out that part of that, if you like, that process, they can't back out of it. So I think his idea was actually just to stir this debate in Europe, just open it, but not actually to give us proper answer to it. He succeeded in doing that. Recently, Secretary General Stoltenberg made what I thought was a rather startling comment. I don't think he could have made this

without the approval of his American masters. Take a listen and tell me what you think. Let me be clear. Ukraine's rightful place is in the Euro-Atlantic family. Ukraine's rightful place is in NATO. NATO stands with you today, tomorrow, and for as long as it takes. I mean, to me, that's reckless and almost invites President Putin to go all the way west to the Polish border if that were to happen or if it looks like it was going to happen. Why would he make such a statement in the height of the war? Well, you know, in a sense, you've asked, I've heard you ask people about the off-ramp from this conflict. Yes.

And really, I mean, we have repeatedly burnt down the off-ramp, if there was one, or a potential off-ramp. We burnt it down because it's not just about how we see things. It's also how Russia sees things. And in Russia, there has, as I say, been this revival of sort of a nationalistic political culture, which is very important. And Putin has been riding that wave very successfully. I mean, Putin isn't naturally from that sector. He was always actually European and very close to West Europe. But he's had to move and he's moved and it's now very much in tune. Of course, there is still the Gorbachev, the Yeltsin faction in Russia, but they are quiescent. They've got nothing to say at the moment. So he cannot negotiate in this position

without losing that attribute, which is what keeps him at 80 percent in the polls if he does a negotiation which is seen to be weakness by the russian people it's finished so when you ask me about stoltenberg i mean this is part of this what we're having now, this sort of myth-making, where both the neocons and military officers say things which are quite ridiculous. I think, partly they think, they have this imagination that Russia somehow is so fragile, so rotten in itself, that just the announcement of this huge, huge offensive that's coming, the Russian troops are going to start panicking and they're going to get frightened and that they're going to then bring about a crisis in Moscow. I mean, it's magical thinking. It's not, I mean, it really is completely out of it. But I think they have this idea that if an authoritative figure says,

we're going to give Group Mount the biggest offensive since the Second World War, that this is going to frighten the Russian troops on the ground. Of course, it's nonsense. Right. What is the, if there is such a view, the view of the man or woman in the street, Rome, Paris, Berlin, London, about the war? Are they fearful? Are they concerned? Does life go on as normal? You know, to begin with, there is even greater control of messaging in the press in Europe than there is in America, if you believe it. It is much more controlled and you just get shouted down if you've said anything or made any critical comment.

However, now Europeans have begun to notice. They've noticed, first of all, that their industry is slowly being moved out of Europe and is being moved to other locations. They've noticed inflation. They have noticed very clearly also the sense that what we are seeing is going to be a complete change with paying three to four times the going rate for liquid natural gas for the future completely destroys the competitive basis of our economy so this is beginning to be noticed but i think you know for a big change to take place here there has to be a crisis there will be it needs the crisis to bring it needs catharsis to really bring about a shift in Europe. And catharsis is probably coming. Maybe it'll be coming quite soon with what happens in

Ukraine. Maybe there'll be catharsis in the United States too at some stage. But I think at the moment, people are still locked down. They can sense there's a change coming. People are very angry. I mean, there's huge anger because people's livelihoods are being destroyed. So is the anger at President Putin because of the perception that this is an unwarranted, unjust invasion of a sovereign country, or is the anger at NATO because of the perception that it has delayed the inevitable and caused hundreds of thousands of deaths along the way? Well, there were huge protests in the Czech Republic over the last few days, big, big protests. Well, they normally stand with Ukraine,

but these were protests against the government for the stance. There is increasingly the criticism of the government. I mean, it's very basic. They said, you know, what were they thinking? Why did they really imagine that sanctioning Russia was a good idea and that giving up our cheap energy supplies was a good idea and taking liquefied natural gas instead? I mean, what were they thinking?

I mean, did they not do any homework? Did they not understand that Russia had changed economically and was not like the 1998 or when there was a financial crisis. When you say they, you're talking about the leadership of the countries. For example, the sanctions were imposed by Joe Biden, not by a great debate in the United States Congress, by Boris Yeltsin or whoever was the prime minister of Great Britain at the time. There have been so many. Not by a vote of the Parliament.

These are not necessarily popular or the result of political compromise. They're executive decisions made in order to influence the outcome of a war. Am I right? Quite right. And there was no discussion in Europe either. I mean, we and the Europeans were told wrongly by this is another of the big intelligence failures that we have seen to them. Russia. And you remember at that point, at the address to the Congress, Biden said the ruble will be rubble. And that was the view, and that was the view in Europe. So there was no discussion and no thought and no analysis about the consequences for Europe, because they thought

it would be all over so quickly, and then it would all go back to normal, and then we'd have cheap energy again, and it would be fine. That's what they were told. No one questioned it. They didn't think it through, and they made a catastrophic mistake. And that's dawning on many people, ordinary Europeans. You know, our leaders have put us in a terrible situation from which there is no escape at the moment. I want to play a clip for you of Victoria Nuland, the Undersecretary of State of

the United States for Political Affairs. That's her official title. Her unofficial title is the puppet master of all things Ukraine, arguing in favor of an American invasion of Crimea. There is a drone base in Crimea where the drones that the Iranians have given Russia are being launched from. There are command and control sites in Crimea that are essential for Russia's hold on all of the territory, including the land bridge. There are mass military installations on Crimea that Russia has turned into essential logistics and back office depots for this war. Those are legitimate targets. Ukraine is hitting them and we are supporting them. What does she hope to accomplish with that? What they've been looking for for 20 years and they are desperate because it's a window that

is fleeting and they fear that it might be shutting, the last chance to destroy Russia, the last chance to provoke the West into a major war with Russia. And so she and others are pushing this very hard because they've been expecting it, they've been organizing, preparing it for a long time, and suddenly they know this is the last opportunity. If it's lost, they'll never get it again. Has there been much coverage of, and if so, reaction to the revelation of secret Pentagon documents by this 21-year-old airman in the media in Europe. In America, it has humiliated the government, exposed it as a liar, and so the government's allies in the press

have downplayed it. It's not on the front pages anymore. Back in the Pentagon Papers days, if you were to go back on microfiche and look at the New York Times and the Washington Post, it was covered day after day after day, week after week after week. But this story is already on the back pages because the government, in my view, has persuaded its buddies in the press, to whom it leaks information when it wants it out there, that this embarrassment needs to be suppressed? It hardly features in Europe. It's been the only place it features at all is because of Germany and Nord Stream.

They see a connection between it. It's only on the internet where people speculate, is this another Lee Harvey Oswald or are we seeing something very different? Who is behind it? What is the power play that is taking place in Washington and what does that mean for Europe? But it's not in the public domain really at all as it is. And I see that obviously in the United States is very much a point of issue. Let me ask you what you've commented on my asking others, and you and I may have discussed this,

one of my favorite phrases, the off-ramp. Does the U.S. have an off-ramp? It's obviously not what Mrs. Newland has just suggested. That's World War III. But does the Biden administration have an off-ramp? Is there a way for the U.S. to get out of this now that it is apparent that the $68 billion it has spent has not produced the victories it claimed it anticipated? It doesn't, because it's still like the European leadership, that is, in complete delusion. They imagine an off-rump consists of providing security. We must make Ukraine feel safe. Therefore, we have to sort

of NATO-ize Ukraine again. And only then can we then tell Russia that it has to leave the country, and then there can be some sort of an agreement. And of course, I mean, you know, a demilitarized Crimea with a militarized Ukraine is inviting the obvious that it will be invaded and they will try and take it. I mean, there's clearly going to be no take up from Moscow on this. The ideas at the moment are delusional. And that's why I'm saying also you have to pay attention to the politics in Moscow. It is delusional in terms of the politics in Moscow. If there's a change in the Russian popular perception, it is they're saying, you know, why are we still going slow? Why don't

we just finish off? Why do we allow these things to go on in Kiev? Why not just finish this war? Well, the reason is because Russia and Putin, as leader, are playing a slow game, a slow type of Sun Tzu war that is intended. He wants to go to the sort of threshold of war with the West because he wants to push it, you know, not to a negotiation about Ukraine. He wants to push it to a negotiation about the original document he gave the Americans, I think it was in December 21, saying we have to have a new security architecture in Europe. We have to have NATO roll back, instead of which we've had NATO rolled forwards into Sweden and Finland. So we're nowhere near that.

You're coming to us from Rome. Where will you be the next time you come to us? Probably just up the road. Oh, all right. I misunderstood you. I thought you were traveling back to Great Britain. Alistair, it's always a pleasure. Have a great weekend.

We love chatting with you. The viewers love it. It's so refreshing, and we'll look forward to chatting next week. Thank you so much. All the best to you. Sure. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.