Judging Freedom - Ukraine's Dire Situation w/Alastair Crooke fmr Brit ambassador

Episode Date: August 25, 2023

Ukraine's Dire Situation  w/Alastair Crooke fmr Brit ambassadorSee 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 Friday, August 25th, 2023. Our good friend Alistair Crook joins us from the hills north of Rome in Italy. Alistair, always a pleasure. I have a lot to ask you about, particularly a recent column you wrote about why you are weeping for the West. But before we do that, let's address the breaking international news in the past 24 hours. What is the perception on the ground in Europe about the death of Yevgeny Prigozhin? Do people assume that this was orchestrated by the Kremlin? Do they suspect it might have been done by MI6 or CIA or Mossad so that it would look bad for Putin? Does anybody think it was an accident?

What's your finger on the pulse telling you? Well, first of all, nothing is settled at the moment. There is an investigation, but there are lots of allegations being thrown around, lots of theories being aired. Let me just stop you for a second. Is it settled that he's dead? No, not even that is settled. They're still waiting for the DNA to confirm it. So it's not settled that he's dead. It's not settled. Therefore, he was on that plane.

Two planes took over, two Bregosian planes took off from Moscow at the same time. One of them crashed. The other one did a U-turn and returned to Moscow immediately. So we don't know what's happened to that other plane at all. Secondly, we don't know what caused this crash to take place. First of all, people thought it might be a surface-to-air missile, but that increasingly is looking unlikely.

They're still investigating it because really what you saw was the whole tail of the airplane come apart from the main body of the airplane. So it split in two very clearly, and they fell very much separately. And that's not so much a characteristic of a missile, but of an explosion taking place inside. Whether that explosion was a mechanical causation, or if it was an explosion inulating about, therefore, what might be behind it if it was not just a mechanical. It was quite an old Embraer Brazilian aircraft.

I'm not suggesting that that was necessarily the fault, but I'm just saying there's a lot of speculation, and most of it is just pure speculation about whether, you know, this was Putin was involved or the GRU were involved. Both of those are highly unlikely, in my view. You know that, first of all, Putin has spoken very quite really warmly about Prigozhin in the last moment, quite gently. And I'm not surprised. You know, this whole thing with the Prokhorin insurrection, you know, I have a little experience of these things. And really, you know, the GRU is a very competent organization.

Russian intelligence is a serious organization, more serious than most Western services, in my view, personally. But, you know, they must have, you know, this was a complex intelligence game that was going on. Prigozhin was almost co-trailing for a year, sort of saying, well, you know, I'm against the government. I mean, I don't like the Ministry of Defense and everything. Of course, the GRU, of course, the high command knew what was going on in Wagner.

Of course, they knew these things. So it's very complicated. We don't know how it's all working out. And anyway, Putin has not said anything other than that he did a great service. And you recall that if this man was considered to have done something bad, he called him to his office in the Kremlin and said, listen, you know, your mistake is you have to understand that Wagner doesn't serve Prigozhin. It serves Mother Russia. And all of his commanders behind him were nodding. It was only Prigozhin that looked a little bit unhappy with us. Here's President Putin yesterday.

It's very brief. There's an English translation, a simultaneous translation, basically saying he's sorry these people died. First of all, I want to express my sincere condolences to the families of all the victims. This is always a tragedy. Preliminary information suggests that Wagner Group employees were also on board. Nothing really new or profound.

Yet, my dear friend, the Western press, from my former employers at Fox, to the New York Times, to the Wall Street Journal, to the Washington Post are all saying he was murdered and Putin did it. Rubbish. Is the Western press, is the West generated or animated by CIA and MI6 going to use this as an opportunity to bash Putin yet again? Of course, but it's rubbish. I mean, first of all, you know, if anyone wanted to get rid of Prigozhin, I mean, in that sort of way, I mean, he was in Africa last week. He could have just sort of disappeared in Africa and, you know, not come back. Why would you, in the middle of a brick summit and a middle of something, blow up his plane. I mean, it would be ludicrous. They're not, you know, they're not children in the security services. But also, you know, as I say to you,

I mean, you know, there was a Western finger in the Bregosian pie from the beginning. Remember the discord leaks? I mean, it was very clear. The Discord leak said that Prokosin was offering Russian deployment information to Kiev. And Kiev came back and Washington Post said, well, they didn't really trust it. You don't need an intelligence service to pick that up. I mean, Putin could have read it in the newspapers or anything else, and no one knew that this was going on. It's much more of a complex situation that's happening. And we don't know. And Putin, the other thing that's really important,

at that meeting, and you played some of it, I think, at some point, but at that meeting with Prigozhin and all the commanders of Wagner, he made it very clear he said the problem is not what you've done now the problem is that you've got to understand we have to sort this out you are a mercenary organization there has to be some sort of normal organization you can't go off and do your diplomacy in af or Belarus and have, like the foreign ministry doing it, diplomacy elsewhere. There has to be a Russian diplomacy. We have to get this organized.

And who you serve is Mother Russia, not me and not Prigozhin. And he then gave Prigozhin and he gave an undertaking to Prigozhin. And he then gave Prigozhin, and he gave an undertaking to Prigozhin, and Prigozhin asked, and Putin said, no, I'm not going to go after you. I'm not going to go after you. And we've seen every sign that he's not going after it. Prigozhin has been in Moscow, he's been to Africa, he goes back and forwards with Belarus, with St. Petersburg. The rest is just story. And the West is just building this up because at the end of it, they know there's a lot of blame coming on top of Ukraine. There's a lot of blame coming for Ukraine. Already it's dog-eat-dog in the West and between allies and everything. And so either

they're going to get the blame on themselves, or alternatively, we're going to try and divert it and put all the blame and say, well, it was all Putin's fault, and therefore we're not to blame for this mess up. How did the West so badly miscalculate its proxy war against Russia? I mean, this thing can't go on for more than a few more weeks, according to our military sources. That's right. That's right. Perhaps three or four weeks, but not long. They completely miscalculated because they are totally embraced in this idea that Russia is weak. They live in the world of the Cold War in the 70s when they were dealing with Yeltsin, the incompetent, the drunken Yeltsin, and that it was possible just to go and steal pieces of the Russian states. And the Harvard

boys were there organizing this. And it was a complete mess. And Putin pulled it together. For 20 years, he's pulled the Russian military together, its weapon systems together, and its economy, making it self-sufficient. He said that in 2007 at the security conference in Europe and he said okay you threaten us. I take the challenge Okay, I'm going to take your challenge I don't accept that you are able to dictate to us and so they just can't they just can't manage this So they're stuck on this language that Russia is incompetent. It's a failure. Its army is haphazard and rickety. It's anything but.

I think you have your finger on it very nicely, Alistair. Do you think it's still the American or maybe Western neocons? I don't know. Do you have neocons in Western Europe? We certainly have neocons. Right now they're running the State Department. I mean, to them, anything that comes out of Moscow is bad, and anything that comes out of London or Washington is good, almost without exception. They literally believe in the exceptionalism of the West, and yet they've sent second and third rate military equipment to their vassal state, Ukraine. They've miscalculated the Russian strength. They don't even seem to recognize

that Ukraine military and political leadership is on life support. No, they don't. They don't. I think it's beginning. And this is why we're seeing the blame game. I think we see all sorts of articles appearing in the American press and the European press. Certainly, you know, they know that it's not going anywhere. And therefore, you know, now they're blaming the Ukrainians. Now they're saying, oh, well, it's the Ukrainian force. We gave them the training. We gave them all the weapons. The Wall Street Journal has an article like that saying, we gave them everything. And, you know, they could still just about do it. But, you know, we haven't got any more to give them. If they don't do it now, it's finished. So they're trying desperately to get something happening on the ground. And it's failing.

They haven't achieved anything in this period, apart from firing 42 drones at Crimea on their independence day, none of which landed. But it is, yes. And now they're also saying, well, it's probably the Europeans. They overhyped the Ukrainians. The Ukrainians, you know, were suggested that they were going to knock for six the Russian

armor and its defenses. They still think it's their fighting in Iraq in 1993. They still think it's a sort of desert war and that they're going to smash through the Iraqis. They forget that the Iraqis had already come to

terms about Kuwait, and that Saddam Hussein had ordered his troops not to fight NATO. Then there was this great dust storm, and they ended up entangled together. There was this famous Battle of 73 Eastings, and they crashed through Iraq. And so they think this is the same. It is very different. Here's two interesting clips. One you've seen, I know, because we've played it. The other I don't know if you've seen.

The first is President Biden just last month in Helsinki saying Putin has already lost the war. The second is Jake Sullivan, the president's national security advisor, just last weekend, five days ago at Camp David, saying something quite different. What agreement is ultimately reached depends upon Putin. There is no possibility of him winning the war in Ukraine. He's already lost that war. Imagine if even if anyway, he's already lost that war. I will say that over the course of the past two years, there have been a lot of analyses of how this war would unfold coming from a lot of quarters.

And we've seen numerous changes in those analyses over time as dynamic battlefield conditions change. So what we have said from multiple podiums and multiple briefings remains the same, which is we're doing everything we can to support Ukraine in its counteroffensive. We're not going to handicap the outcome. We're not going to predict what's going to happen because this war has been inherently unpredictable. What we did this week is formalize through a letter from Secretary Blinken to his counterparts in Europe that upon the completion of that training, the United States would be prepared in consultation with Congress to approve that. So to put all of those questions to rest, that in fact, the training will be followed by the transfer as we work with Congress to effectuate that and with our allies. All right. The second part of that is nonsense, because if those planes ever arrive, it'll be too little, too late. And we know it's

a year or two to train. The Russians will love it. It'll give them the chance. Correct. But the other part of what what you're seeing there is, I believe what you're seeing there, sorry, I don't mean to interrupt you. But I was just going to say, you know, we've moved on now, because I think it is generally understood by all but very few, that there's not going to be a success, that there's not going to be success. But now there is a great debate and there's not an understanding. How do we get out of this? Where do we go? On the one hand, you've got those that say, well, look, you know, let's just move on quickly and move out and concentrate on China.

And the others say, no, that is too damaging to the electoral prospects of Biden. And we've got to sort of keep it going and make sure that it's not, you know, seen to be a complete failure. And then we've got to blame, you know, the Ukrainians. They didn't make use of the training we gave them, et cetera, et cetera. And while this is going on,

President Biden has asked the Congress, which is on summer holiday until the week after next, for another $28 billion in aid. We all thought that the $113 billion blank check that was given to him would not be used up because of the screwy calculation accounting system that the Pentagon uses that no single human being is able to understand or explain, at least not one that I've come across. They claim now that they've used up $113 billion, they need another $28 billion. So what off-ramp does he have? Just keep plowing money in until election day? Well, there is one off-ramp, but it's not yet mentioned in polite society. That is, the only effective one is capitulation, either capitulation by Kiev because they've ground to a halt,

they've imploded, they've become paralyzed, or imposed capitulation because there can't be a frozen conflict because Russia will not accept for the West simply to build up the Ukrainians again, to fill them with more weapons and more military, and then four or five years later start the war again. They're not going to accept this. They played this once. They found the result was the Minsk Accords,

which were just a false affair to allow that buildup to take place. It's not going to happen again. So there's no frozen contact. And I know it sounds, it may be said that, you know, you're giving Russian speaking notes on this. I'm not. It's the logic of the situation. The logic of the situation is we're not actually with two forces

that have come together that are equally matched and cannot progress. Neither one or the other can win. It's not like that. The only way satisfactorily to stop this becoming a long war and a lot more people to die in this process, either now or in two or three years' time when it restarts, the simple way is to encourage,

for someone to encourage Zelensky or whoever's in charge there very shortly, you know, really you will save yourself more. It will be better for Ukraine in the long run just to capitulate as early as possible and not have it forced on you. Paul Jay Talk to us, if you will, about the geopolitical reaction to this war, the new cohesion of anti-Western forces, the rise of BRICS as economic, cultural, maybe even political organization. You mean against the war or against generally generally? I mean against the West generally. Oh, you mean in the world or in Europe? In the world. In the world. Yeah. Why is Alistair Crook weeping for the West? Well, I don't think many people will join in Weeping for the West

outside of Europe and the West. But they're weeping for the West because they see its complete dysfunctionality. They see that, you know, simply politics doesn't go anywhere. Politics is caught up in the absurdities of discussing abstract propositions about what is a woman and other things like this. There's nothing happening. We are becoming less and less functional, less and less capable. And they're realizing that the causes of this are deep and profound and they need to be addressed and no one is addressing it. And at the same time, if they don't deal with this,

if you like, with this cultural war that is ongoing, they will find there's very little of Europe left at the end of this, on which to have, you know, the sense of European identity. European identity has been gradually strangled in terms of its nation states over this period. And now there's no real sense of what is a European, what is it going to be? So Europe is in a dire problem. And this is going to get so much worse as the economic standard of living collapses. And at the same time, Europeans find that they're only minorities within their own state, one minority amongst other minorities. And this means that their identity is really just withering away. So they feel they've got to do something now to try and preserve that

identity. And even though some of them are long lived, it It is still you know, it's still a danger. So we are seeing a very strong pushback in the West As you are having in the United States In terms of realizing that we're engaged in in a cultural war which is existential for Europe existential in the economic sense and existential in the terms of what does it mean to be European? Are NATO's now manifest weaknesses and absurd political and military calculations making BRICS more attractive to more nations. And as BRICS grows and maybe adopts a currency based in gold, what will that do to the American dollar?

I know there's a lot to unpack there. No, no. But, I mean, put it simply, this is a huge shift that has taken place. And it derives from two great errors that have been perpetuated. The first was to start the financial war against Russia and against other states through sanctions and through other means. And the second was to lose Saudi Arabia, because that means you've lost China and Saudi Arabia, which were the main buyers of U.S. treasuries. Without having buyers of U.S. treasuries,

it's inevitable that the problems of the debt are going to become really serious. It's also the case that this huge gathering of the BRICs that have come together in these last few days, which includes Saudi Arabia, Iran, it includes all the six main energy producers. It includes all the main energy consumers. And it is now going to trade without using the dollar, without

touching the dollar. There was a sort of false demand for the dollar, which owed itself only and exclusively to the Bretton Woods Agreement and the petrodollar agreement. And as that fades away and large proportions of the world just shift to trading in their own currencies, the dollar will get weaker. Inflation, therefore, will go up as it devalues and therefore interest rates will go up. And this will put great stress on European and American banks and the financial system. So this is a result of some very bad strategic mistakes that were made a little earlier. It's clear, is it not, that the American-imposed sanctions have hurt the West far more than they have hurt the target of the sanctions, which is the Russian economy.

Yes, but it did provoke this backlash. And you see it particularly in Africa. But in the Middle East, they no longer want the binary American-European you're either with us or against us formula any longer. We are our own people. We make our own decisions. And we don't care about you anymore. And it's really, I mean, it's the feeling is very profound and quite hostile. And now in certainly in Africa and I mean, listen to what they're saying in West Africa about Europe and

about colonialism and the French and things like this. It's gathering steam. It's not running out of momentum. It's gathering steam. And most of the world is coming together in this form. And as I say, it will have monetary. I'm not talking about a reserve currency. It's not like that. It's just simply that the system which imposed on so many countries to have to buy and keep dollars is gone. And as it sort of deflates and goes away, the dollar is going to inevitably lose that demand, therefore become weaker, and therefore inflation will go up. And as inflation goes up, interest rates go up, putting great stress on the economy. Alistair, always a pleasure, my dear friend. No matter what we're talking about, the regular viewers of this show and certainly the host

of the show are happy that you have returned from holiday. So am I. At least I made it. Yes. Yes. Thank you. Thank thank you my dear friend great great conversation no matter how gloomy things look you you have a gifted way of explaining things with uh credibility and clarity thank you very much wow if you like what you saw like and subscribe my dear friends. We're up to about 188,000 subscribers. Our goal is 200,000 subscriptions by Labor Day, which is just 10 days away. And what do we have for you this afternoon, later today? It may not be afternoon where you are, but at 2.30 Eastern, a roundtable

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