Judging Freedom - U.S. & NATO fallen into their Own Trap_ - Alastair Crooke

Episode Date: March 30, 2023

Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, March 30th, 2023. It's about 9 40 in the morning here on the east coast of the United States. Our guest is coming from outside of Rome, Italy. He is the inimitable Alistair Crook, former British intelligence agent, now an academic and intellectual, always been an intellectual, who sees the world the way a lot of us do, who are skeptical of authority and critical of the West. Alistair, I've admired your work for years. It's a pleasure. Welcome to Judging Freedom, my friend. Thank you very much. I'm pleased to be here with you. You wrote a very interesting piece in your Strategic Culture Foundation, called Latant, as in detente between Russia and China,

is a bitter pill for the West to follow. And you began it with a very, very intriguing phrase. And that is, upon leaving his meeting with Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi said to Putin, quote, change is coming that hasn't happened in a hundred years, and we're going to drive this change together. Now, before you tell us what you think President Xi meant by that, if President Biden heard that, I would think he should be terrified, don't you? I think he should be, but I don't think that they really understand in Washington the extent of the change that is taking place, particularly in the Middle East. Since that was said, of course, we've had a resolution. A new security architecture has come into position as a result of Chinese mediation between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which settles many of the main points, including the nuclear issue.

Iran's, if you like, Iran's security gave security assurances to Saudi Arabia about Aramco and its future. And then we've had the meetings with Assad in Moscow. Then we've had Assad in the UAE, the United Arab Republic. And we've had Assad, who's been a long time, if you like, a pariah, taking part. And we've had then the most significant, the most extraordinary, I mean, for me, I mean, I didn't expect it to come, the invitation by Saudi Arabia, by the king of Saudi Arabia, for President Raisi of Iran to visit after Eid. That's the holiday after Ramadan. So, I mean, things are just moving very rapidly. It's been agreed that the Iranians and Saudis

will work together to end the Yemen war. It's been agreed also, a second mediation by China to end the conflict between Iran and those Kurdish forces in Iraq that have been attacking into Iran. Big changes in a very short time. And it's a signal, I think, of a new spirit. I mean, there is a sort of sense of a new consciousness, if I can put it in those terms, that is emerging in the Middle East and indeed around the world, which is quite striking. And the old narrative, the narrative of hegemony, the narrative that you're either with us or you're against us. That's gone. How dangerous has American hegemony been? The belief in exceptionalism, the belief that America is always right and whoever it chooses as an adversary is always wrong,

the belief that we will use force and kill people to get them to accept our version of democracy. And of course, it would be a democracy subservient to American wishes. I mean, stated differently, how much more of this will it take before American policymakers recognize the futility and amorality of the driving culture behind American foreign policy? That's a question that's going to be very difficult to answer. How long is it going to take before there's a real shift in perception in Washington? But, I mean, if you want the quick answer of what happened, I mean, why did all these sudden mediations turn successful

out of the blue like that? Right. Well, frankly, in a word, because America was not part of it. It was out of the equation. And therefore... I have to stop you right here. That is truly a profound, profound statement, because America was not part of it. Exactly.

Utterly profound, but please go on. And so all of that, you're with us or you're against us, and we have this throughout the region. There's a different atmosphere and for example even the indians the indian foreign minister said the other day how long does it take before europe and america understand that its problems are not the world's problems and that we're not one side or the other that we are our own side, and we are pursuing our own values. And this is really very much the sort of sentiment around the world. Suddenly they have realized they don't need the United States for security, and also suddenly the problems and the tensions disappear.

And so on the one hand, Saudi Arabia has laid down the Wahhabi tool, the Wahhabi weapon that is used in Syria and Iraq and elsewhere around the world. And Iran has given it the security assurances that it was needed. So we don't really need a JCPOA, that's the nuclear deal, anymore, because if the Gulf states are content with the security assurances that they were given, and don't forget, although it's headlined as being China's mediation, standing behind us is Russia, too. So we will have two of the big powers, if you like, guaranteeing this mediation. So I think it's chances that it will work. And at the same time, Alistair, the American government

directly out of the mouth of the president and senior officials, and indirectly through your former friends in MI6 and CIA and their friends in the press, continue to demonize President Putin personally, to demonize Russia, to demonize China, to demonize President Xi. I'm sure you know this, but a month ago, for a three-day weekend, half of America was looking up into the skies to see if they could find a Chinese balloon, which the President of the United States just couldn't wait until it got over the ocean so they could safely shoot it down and demonize President Xi. It sounds to me like the Americans, all 330 million of us, because of poor leadership and antiquated stereotypical American way of thinking, are going to be left out of the new world order.

You know, this is such a dangerous situation. I mean, all my career, all my life, I have worked to try and keep channels open, even if they are channels with people that my own people don't particularly like, because you never know when you need these channels. Channels that stay open are important. It's not always possible just to open them in five minutes when you need them. You have to work at opening channels, particularly in the Islamic world.

You can't go there and say, okay, let's cut to the quick. What's your bottom line? This is mine. Let's do a deal. It doesn't work like that, let's cut to the quick. What's your bottom line? This is mine. Let's do a deal. It doesn't work like that. And so you need channels open. And I am dismayed. I spoke not so long ago with the Deputy Defense Minister of Russia when I was there. And I said, you know, you haven't got, he said, all the channels are gone. Virtually all of them are over, except we have this one

video link with the Pentagon, but that's mostly for tactical deconfliction purposes. We don't have any reliable contacts. And what's more, we don't have people who can do diplomacy. Even during the height of the Vietnam War, another American instigated disaster. The Pentagon and the State Department had open channels of communications with the Kremlin and used them regularly. Now it appears, except to make sure there isn't some sort of an accidental act of violence like over the Black Sea, there's no regular communication between Washington and Moscow. And this is either a reflection of President Biden's personality or personal deficiencies or tough guy foreign policy. He'll dispatch Victorian Newland, the number two or three person in the State Department, to say we're going to remove the Russians from Crimea. Well, that would be like Putin saying we're going to remove the Americans from New Mexico. I mean, this is just crazy to make

statements like this. The Chinese are interested in harmony and prosperity, and we're demonizing them as spying on Americans, when of course in reality the American government is the most effective spire on Americans. Yeah, I think it's more serious, really. I think it's a deep philosophical problem in the circles around the White House, because they not only think that they want to impose a certain worldview, but they think that anything that counters it is just unacceptable and that in order to create, if you like, this new world that they're looking for, other cultures are unacceptable and really must be removed. And so I think that this view actually makes it impossible for you to do any negotiation.

A long time ago when I was talking to the IRA, and we sort of rather naively sort of put, at least I didn't, but I've put the IRA, the provisional IRA in the room with the Protestant military leaders and we thought this would be a success. It was a disaster. It just confirmed the worst expectations of the other and it took us four more years of careful preparation before we could get to the point where it was possible to do politics between the two groups. When President Xi visited Moscow last week, very ostentatious and opened a visit that was followed by the press. We all know that he publicly suggested a ceasefire in Ukraine. He said it in front of President Putin.

He wouldn't have said something like that without the diplomats having agreed on it ahead of time. But before he even made that statement public, I want you to see what Admiral Kirby, the official spokesperson for the American Joe Biden National Security Council, said about this. Take a listen. We'd be concerned if coming out of this meeting, there was some sort of call for a ceasefire because right now, while ceasefire sounds good, it actually ratifies Russia's gains on the ground. It actually serves Russia's purpose for a ceasefire to basically call a stop right now without any acknowledgement that Russia is illegally inside Ukraine.

So United States will be against the ceasefire because this principal issue or because it was proposed by China? I think I've been very clear. It's about the principle of a ceasefire called for right now, which would essentially just ratify Russia's gains. Now, this interview took place before President Xi made his statement. The very smart young man doing the interview is a television commentator from Beijing. He got right to the heart of things. And Admiral Kirby, of course, really didn't want to go there. Why are the Americans against a ceasefire in a war that they know, must know from intelligence sources, your former colleagues, that the Ukrainians cannot win?

That is a big, big puzzle and it's not a very easy one to answer because they clearly concede that they cannot win this war. And what they are saying, therefore, is a block, because from Moscow's perspective, there's no point in talking to Zelensky. He can't deliver anyway. The only interlocutors that Moscow feels worthwhile talking with, of course, is Washington. Because if you recall, a little while ago in December, Moscow set out a paper with all its needs, its security needs, and said, we need to talk about a new security architecture in Europe. And we need to have some understandings about a withdrawal of NATO from our borders. Now that was not addressed and the paper languished, but talking just to Zelensky is not sufficient. So I don't think

there's any appetite in Moscow either for a negotiation, certainly not with Europeans like Scholz or Macron is out of the question for the Russians. They wouldn't entertain that for a second. But they are talking, and we have definite confirmation that Ukraine was discussed at some length between Putin, he said so, and Xi when they met in Moscow. But the conditions are not there. I think the conditions may soon be there. Because what I saw in Afghanistan may happen sometime in Ukraine, too. That simply the center, the Kiev, will implode, rather like Moscow had imploded, if you like, during the Afghan war, and suddenly everything stops. I mean, I was there, and suddenly the Soviet soldiers were in base. They didn't leave the base. Everything came to a grinding halt. I think we're getting close to this point of entropy,

in that in financial terms, in terms of the number of men that are available for this conflict, all these things, logistics, all of these things suggest that actually it may end not by Washington negotiating it, but simply the whole thing falling into entropy. What happens then is going to be complicated and difficult to foresee. I mean, for example, if that happened and we had Kiev that is in some sort of chaos, political chaos, maybe coup and counter-coup taking place within the regime there, what would happen? Well, the Russians, I think, have absolutely no desire to seize Kiev in a military way. But if it was just left open and in chaos, I think they'd feel bound to put in, I don't know

if we can call it a peacekeeping force, but an armed peacekeeping force in order to establish order and get some sort of control and to get a new government and something up and working in Ukraine as soon as possible. Whether they go beyond that or not, who knows? They're very good at not disclosing their intentions, military intentions. Let's go to the other side of the world for a few minutes, Alistair. How reckless is it for the President of the United States to say, we will fight the Chinese government in any conflagration over Taiwan, given the distance between Taiwan and the U.S., given the size of the Chinese Navy and military,

given the nearly impossible, almost insurmountable logistics of getting American troops and material there. How reckless is it for the current Speaker of the House of Representatives, the number three person in the American government, to visit Taiwan and send some sort of an ambiguous but ominous message to Beijing? Well, it's nuts, that's all. It's just nuts because, I mean, quite clearly, NATO and what if the Ukraine conflict has shown anything? It is actually that NATO, that is the United States and Europe, simply does not have the military industrial capability

even to fight in Ukraine, let alone to fight a war against China, which is the biggest manufacturing country in the world. And it's not going to happen for years like that. We're still talking about producing shells, let alone sophisticated weapons or munitions. And we sent away our supply lines 20, 30 years ago. We don't even have the skilled people to operate those,

people who know how to use tools that you need for that sort of sophisticated manufacturing. There's no way. And also the Chinese, you know, have hypersonic missiles. They have an advanced surface fleet. And it's not possible. So why are they saying this? I think this is, I think all of this, if you ask me, because you asked me these difficult questions of why they're saying this. In my view, there's no strategic rationale underlying it. This is all down to the simple question, what is good for Biden re-election prospects? Is this good? Okay, let's do it.

If it's not good, forget it. I don't think there's anything more strategic. You're British, you're in Rome, you have a fabulous finger on the pulse of American politics. Joe Biden wants to run for re-election and be perceived as the wartime president or a wartime leader of some sort, like his heroes Abraham Lincoln and FDR, and he's willing to risk the lives of Russian boys, Ukrainian boys, and ultimately American boys in order to bring this about. Last area I want to ask you about, you were talking about the realignment of allegiances in the Middle East. Is any of the turmoil in Israel connected to this? Turmoil that seems to be either fomented, whipped up, or at least publicly approved of by the White House.

It is. It is. It's really, in a sense, the canary in the mine, because it is a very similar situation. It's a reflection of what is happening in the United States. There are two major forces, the Mizrahi, that is the Jews that come originally from Africa and from the region, and the Ashkenazi, the more European Jews. And the European Jews are closer to the Biden way of thinking, the Biden, the liberal democratic group, and the Mizrahi want to create a Jewish state again, a Jewish state and enact the land of Israel.

Now, of course, that does have on that Jewish state, that of course does pose dangers for the whole region, depending on what happens and how that's done. But this is not that different, if you like. They are trying to go back, if you like, to what we can loosely call traditionalism, Jewish traditionalism in this case, as opposed to in America, a traditionalism that harks back to the Constitution and the founding fathers of America. But this is the common theme, not only for Europe, but across the region, for China, for Russia. It's no coincidence that Russia also, in the background, has Orthodox Christianity, as if you like, providing a moral framework. People want meaning back in their lives. Again, they want, you know, the Mizrahi say,

listen, if we can't sort this out about the legislation and the legislative process, what right do we have to be on this land? What rights are we here? I mean, this is existential for them, this question, if you say, well, we have no claim. What rights are we to be this? And so not only that, in other places, the big change is how to get some sort of, if you like, go back to old cultures, old legacies, how to bring that forward in today's world to give some meaning to people in this otherwise hollow world of a technical liberal democracy that we are facing where you never get into power. You're always excluded from power, ultimately, because the system just continues on keeping everything in place so that, as they say, the Mizrahi said, you know, we win, we win,

we go on winning, and somehow, although we win, we're never in power. Wow. Alastair, this has been a wonderful conversation. I can tell you from the comments on my screen that you are deeply and profoundly appreciated by the Judging Freedom audience. I hope you'll come back again soon. Maybe we'll talk about some potential resolutions to these hot button problems that you've articulated so nicely. But in the meantime, thank you very much, my dear friend. Much appreciated. Thank you. And thank you for having me on your program. Of course. Of course. Wow. More as we get it. And again, if you appreciate what you just saw and heard,

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