Dec. 18, 2024 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
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| Hi, everyone. | |
| Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. | |
| Today is Thursday, December 19th, 2024. | |
| Professor John Mearsheimer will be here with us in just a moment on the U.S. and the West continue to taunt President Putin. | |
| And today he replied. | |
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| Professor Mearsheimer, welcome here, my dear friend. | |
| Always a pleasure. | |
| Before we get to President Putin's three-and-a-half-hour marathon news conference today, I'd like to be able to pick your brain on a couple of issues. | |
| Was the departure of President Assad from Syria A strategic defeat for Russia. | |
| I think it was clearly a defeat for Russia, but it was not a major defeat. | |
| The Russians were not deeply invested in Syria, and they're going to move a lot of those assets, maybe all the assets we don't know for sure, out of Syria into Libya. | |
| That's what it looks like now. | |
| But at the same time, President Putin in that news conference that he gave said it has not been determined exactly what is going to happen to the two military bases, two Russian military bases in Syria. | |
| So it is possible that the Russians will end up keeping those bases in Syria, but also transferring some of the forces to Libya just to protect themselves. | |
| And end up, therefore, with two sets of bases in the Middle East. | |
| But in the final analysis, all of this just doesn't matter that much. | |
| Because from the Russian point of view, all that really matters at this point in time is what's happening in Ukraine, because Ukraine is an existential threat to them. | |
| So they want to keep their eye on that ball more than anything else. | |
| And Putin has done an excellent job of doing just that. | |
| Was the assassination of General Kirilov of any military or strategic value whatsoever for the Ukrainians? | |
| No, I think almost everybody agrees that it was not. | |
| It was an act of desperation, in my opinion. | |
| The Ukrainians and the West are desperate at this point in time. | |
| Every day it becomes clearer and clearer that Ukraine is going to lose. | |
| And we in the West and the Ukrainians have a tremendous amount invested in this war. | |
| And we're flailing around now trying to look for clever ways to try to rectify the situation. | |
| But there are no clever ways. | |
| And killing this general makes no sense at all. | |
| The British elites have been crowing about his death. | |
| The BBC has said he was a justifiable military target. | |
| It's almost as if someone put a magnifying glass to the MI6 fingerprints on the scooter that exploded that killed the man. | |
| Do you think this could have happened? | |
| Given the subservience of SBU, the Ukrainian intelligence services, to American and British, do you think this could have happened without the knowledge and consent of MI6 and CIA? | |
| And if the answer to that is they obviously knew about it, I think there are some problems coming. | |
| Well, they could have known about it, but they might not have known about it. | |
| I mean, the problem we face in a lot of these cases today... | |
| We're not exactly sure what happened. | |
| And the story you were just telling is a plausible story. | |
| But I don't know for sure. | |
| I don't think it matters that much because I don't think the Russians are interested in picking a fight with us, with the United States, and seeing the war in Ukraine escalate. | |
| The Russians are in control on the battlefield for the most part. | |
| And if they're smart, and I do believe they're smart, they'll just continue to focus on events on the battlefield. | |
| And they will surely retaliate for events like this, the killing of the general and, you know, the firing of the Atakums and so forth and so on. | |
| But they won't retaliate in a major way because it's not in their interest to escalate and let this one spin out of control. | |
| How long do you think the Ukraine military can last, Professor Maersheimer? | |
| Well, as I've said before, I'd be very surprised if they lasted past 2025, the summer of 2025. | |
| I think, you know, another six or seven months is about all the fight they have in them. | |
| I think it's truly impressive. | |
| What a job, what an excellent job the Ukrainian military has done hanging on in an incredibly adverse situation. | |
| I thought, to be honest, that they would have collapsed a while ago just because it had become clear in the past few months that they were going to lose the war and all that was happening on the battlefield is that more and more Ukrainians were dying, | |
| but they've managed to hang on. | |
| And I don't think, however, that they'll be able to go much beyond the summer of 2025. | |
| You think Donald Trump will be true to his word and on January 20th or 21st stop the shipment of American arms to Ukraine? | |
| No, I think that he will continue to ship arms to Ukraine. | |
| He probably believes that he can, in the process, work out some sort of settlement with Putin and then put an end to shipping arms to Ukraine. | |
| But I don't believe he's going to work out a settlement. | |
| And therefore, I think he will probably continue sending arms to Ukraine. | |
| If, by the way, he cuts off the flow of arms to Ukraine completely. | |
| I would think that the Ukrainian military would stop fighting shortly after that. | |
| There would be no point in them continuing the fight. | |
| Can you, switching over to Syria now, explain the interplay of the Russians, the Turks, the Kurds, the Israelis, and the US in the demise of the Assad government? | |
| Oh, I think the Americans clearly played the key role. | |
| The Turks played a secondary role and the Israelis played a tertiary role. | |
| I can say a word or two about the Russians as well. | |
| But just to start with the Americans, it was American sanctions and the fact that the United States was stealing all that Syrian oil and Syrian wheat production. | |
| That really throttled the Syrian economy and played a central role in hollowing out the Syrian army. | |
| And of course, the Turks were enormously important because they were arming and training, with help from the United States, the Syrian rebels who overran the country in 12 days. | |
| Training the rebels the way the Turks were. | |
| So I think it was the Americans first and the Turks second who played the key role here. | |
| With regard to the Russians, the arguments often made that the Russians didn't do enough to help the Syrians. | |
| I believe that's not true. | |
| I believe the Russians were well aware that the Syrian army was in terrible shape, that Erdogan was... | |
| And the Russians wanted Assad to negotiate with the Turks. | |
| He refused. | |
| And the Russians wanted him to reform his army in all sorts of ways. | |
| And he refused. | |
| And when the fight came, when the fight started on November 26th, There was not much the Russians could do to rescue the situation, which deteriorated almost immediately. | |
| You want to remember that the Syrian army collapsed in a mere 12 days. | |
| It had been hollowed out. | |
| It was not capable of putting up a fight. | |
| And in those circumstances, what could the Russians do? | |
| What could the Iranians do? | |
| The answer is virtually nothing. | |
| President Putin was asked about this today at his press conference. | |
| And of course, he says that Russia did not fail in Syria. | |
| But here's what he said. | |
| Cut number six. | |
| You and those who pay your salary would like to present everything that's happening in Syria as a shortcoming or a defeat of Russia. | |
| I'd like to assure you that is not so. | |
| And I'll tell you why. | |
| We have come to Syria 10 years ago. | |
| So, in order to prevent the creation of a terroristic enclave, the likes of which we've seen in the other countries, for example, in Afghanistan, in general, we have achieved our goal. | |
| Even those groups that used to fight with the Assad regime, with the governmental forces, they have evolved as well. | |
| It is for a reason that today many European countries and the United States would like to establish relations with them. | |
| If they are a terrorist organization, how come you're trying to do that? | |
| Then that means that they have changed. | |
| That means that, to a certain extent, our goal has been achieved. | |
| Interesting observation that he made. | |
| Of course, he's talking about HTS, which The United States and the British governments have characterized this terrorist organization, which the State Department has put a $10 million bounty on Mr. Al-Julani, the head of that organization, who now purports to be the head of what remains of the government of Syria. | |
| I guess it's not shocking to you that the same government, which declared these people terrorists, which offered a $10 million bounty to arrest one of them, paid them. | |
| And train their fighters. | |
| No, it's not shocking at all. | |
| And we've done this in the past and we'll do it again in the future. | |
| You want to remember that the United States is complicit in a genocide in Gaza. | |
| That tells you all you need to know about America's respect for basic human life. | |
| It is odd, though, I almost said general professor, that there are Americans sitting in federal prisons because they fell for stings in which they thought they'd be providing material assistance to a terrorist organization. | |
| But if you're a CIA agent or management, you can not only provide assistance, you can dip into the till of the American taxpayer and use that as your cash. | |
| It tells you there's something fundamentally wrong in the United States, and I think lots of people understand that. | |
| I think it's one of the reasons that President Trump is moving back into the White House. | |
| There's a huge amount of dissatisfaction in the land with the governing elites in this country. | |
| People don't trust them. | |
| They think that they're dishonest. | |
| They think that they operate according to a double standard. | |
| They think that the elites are above the law. | |
| And they're sick and tired of it. | |
| And the end result is you get Donald Trump in the White House. | |
| And by the way, if the Democrats had let their primaries take their natural course in 2016, you would not have ended up with Hillary Clinton as the Democratic candidate. | |
| You would have ended up with Bernie Sanders. | |
| And in 2020, the same logic would have led to Bernie Sanders, not Joe Biden being the Democratic nominee. | |
| The fact that Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump are such powerful political candidates tells you that there is something fundamentally wrong here. | |
| You were just providing some evidence of that. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Well, with respect to the Democratic Party, Bill and Hillary cook the books so they and their colleagues can control who leads it. | |
| But you're right. | |
| There's something fundamentally wrong, culturally wrong with America. | |
| That we do these things. | |
| This show tries out of the mouths of very bright people like you and others to expose all of that. | |
| Should Israel be rejoicing in its newfound property in Syria, or might this come back to bite them? | |
| No, it's very interesting, but because there's a ceasefire... | |
| In Lebanon between Hezbollah on one side and the Israelis on the other, and because Assad has fallen, there's this sense in the West that Israel is in the driver's seat now. | |
| It's won a great victory. | |
| Everything looks swimming, moving forward. | |
| I don't accept this argument at all. | |
| First of all, just to turn to Syria, Syria was not a significant threat to Israel. | |
| Nobody would argue that the Syrian military was a meaningful threat. | |
| Syria mattered because it provided a conduit for arms that went from Iran into Lebanon to Hezbollah. | |
| And that conduit has now been cut off. | |
| And I think that is a major victory for Israel. | |
| But I don't think it is a permanent victory. | |
| I think it's a temporary victory. | |
| But other than that, I don't see where Syria and what has happened there is that big a victory for Israel. | |
| Now, you want to remember that Israel has not defeated Hamas. | |
| Israel is now stuck in Gaza and is responsible for administering Gaza moving forward. | |
| Israel has not defeated Hezbollah. | |
| And in fact, many people in Israel were very unhappy about the ceasefire with Hezbollah because they thought that Hezbollah had not been finished off, and that meant the mortal threat to Israel was left intact. | |
| So Hezbollah and Hamas are alive and in fighting shape. | |
| Furthermore, the Houthis just fired a ballistic missile at Israel, and they hit a school. | |
| In the Tel Aviv suburbs, and they promise more missiles down the road. | |
| Israel still has wicked centrifugal forces at play inside its society. | |
| It's been accused of genocide most recently by Human Rights Watch and before that by Amnesty International. | |
| The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for former Defense Minister Yoav Ghalin and for Prime Minister Netanyahu. | |
| This is a country that is in real trouble. | |
| And it's going to be in real trouble for the foreseeable future, especially if things go south in Syria. | |
| And it's very hard to predict. | |
| What Israel's situation in Syria will look like in five years. | |
| But one can tell a plausible story where it will not be a happy ending to this toppling of Assad. | |
| Hasn't Israel captured significant amounts of land equivalent to several times the size of the Gaza Strip? | |
| And does it not dominate and occupy those lands? | |
| And do you expect them ever to return it? | |
| Well, there's no question they've conquered a large slice of territory, not only on the Golan Heights, but in other places in southern Syria. | |
| But they're going to have to occupy these forces, and there's going to be resistance from the Syrian side over time. | |
| And the question you have to ask yourself is whether or not this is to Israel's advantage. | |
| Many people in the West are arguing that it is to their advantage. | |
| I'm not sure it is. | |
| I think that... | |
| The Israelis don't need to conquer more territory at this point in time and try to administer it. | |
| But that's not the conventional wisdom in the West at this point in time. | |
| Back to Ukraine. | |
| Some breaking news. | |
| Newsweek is reporting. | |
| I'm going to look down at my mobile device to read this literally. | |
| Just a few minutes ago, Ukrainian forces reportedly struck a Russian chemical plant in the Rostov oblast. | |
| On December 18, yesterday, according to Reuters, using at least 13 missiles, 84 drones, and attackums. | |
| So Joe Biden was the American. | |
| Joe Biden is still, at this stage of his life and presidency, and at this stage in this losing war, authorizing the Ukrainians... | |
| And you have to have American help to do it, as you know, because of the top secret codes needed to operate these things to send missiles into Russia. | |
| A wise move or a foolish move? | |
| No, I think it's a foolish move. | |
| And I think that Trump has hit the nail on the head when he has said this is extremely foolish, that we shouldn't be doing this at this point in time. | |
| And given that Biden's days are numbered and it's clear what Trump would like, I think it makes eminently good sense for Biden to put an end to this. | |
| But, of course, what he's trying to do is complicate Trump's life once he gets into the White House. | |
| Apparently he's succeeding, but that remains to be seen. | |
| Here's a clip from President Putin's marathon. | |
| I think you'll appreciate the question and the response. | |
| Chris, number five. | |
| Mr. President, you have failed to reach the objectives of your special military operation. | |
| Large numbers of Russians have died, including a general assassinated here in Moscow this week. | |
| And the leader of Syria, who you supported, has been overthrown. | |
| Mr. President, when you face President-elect Trump, you will be the weaker leader. | |
| How do you propose to compromise? | |
| What are you going to offer? | |
| You asked what we can offer, or I can offer, to the President-elect Trump when we meet. | |
| I do not know when we are going to meet, because he does not speak about that. | |
| I haven't spoken to him for more than four years now. | |
| I am prepared for that conversation at any time. | |
| I will be prepared to hold a meeting as well, if he so desires. | |
| You said that this conversation will take place where I'll be in a weakened state. | |
| I'm of a different opinion. | |
| I think that Russia became much stronger over the past two or three years. | |
| Russia today... | |
| It's in such a state that we have been trying to achieve. | |
| It has become stronger. | |
| It has become a truly sovereign country. | |
| Is Russia stronger today politically, militarily, culturally, economically than it was three years ago? | |
| Yes. | |
| And General Cavoli, who is the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, has said exactly that, that the Russian army is... | |
| In much better shape today than it was when the war started in February 2022. | |
| And of course, the Ukrainian army is in much worse shape. | |
| And that's why the Russians are on the verge of victory in Ukraine. | |
| So I don't know how anybody can say that Russia is in a weak position and that Putin will be in a weak position when he bargains with Donald Trump. | |
| I think it's Trump who's playing the bad hand. | |
| It's not Trump's fault. | |
| He's inherited this terrible situation. | |
| But Putin is in the driver's seat, in my opinion. | |
| And Putin will drive a really hard bargain, which is going to make it extremely difficult for Trump to reach some sort of agreement with Putin that he can sell. | |
| Trump can sell in the West. | |
| You and I have talked about the... | |
| There is no chance to shoot down these Oreshnik missiles. | |
| Well, if those Western experts you mentioned think so, That Oreshnik can be shot down, we suggest they, and those in the West and the United States, who pay them for their analysis, conduct some kind of technological experiment, | |
| a high-tech duel of the 21st century. | |
| Let them name some object, let's say, in Kiev, concentrate all their air defense and missile defense forces there, And we will hit it with Oreshnik and see what happens. | |
| We are ready for such an experiment. | |
| Is the other side ready? | |
| I guess we're not going to take him up on that. | |
| He's being very playful here. | |
| And he can be very playful because, as I said a few minutes ago, he's in the driver's seat. | |
| And he knows that. | |
| He knows we are in deep trouble in Ukraine. | |
| I want to ask you one or two questions about NATO, Professor. | |
| President Trump has indicated a wish that the United States should send less money to NATO. | |
| Does he run the risk of... | |
| Cutting off the supply of cash to American arms manufacturers, if he does that? | |
| I doubt it. | |
| I mean, there may be some of that, but the fact is that the Europeans will continue to buy American weaponry, whether we weaken our commitment to NATO or not. | |
| The key point here is that if Trump had his druthers, he would not only recognize That Ukraine cannot be in NATO. | |
| He put an end to NATO. | |
| The fact is Trump thinks that NATO is more of a liability than it is an asset. | |
| He'd like to put an end to it. | |
| He wanted to do that in his first administration. | |
| He couldn't do it. | |
| And it'll be very interesting to see what happens here moving forward because he has unmitigated contempt for NATO. | |
| And as I say, he'd like to at least lessen our commitment. | |
| He'd like to put more of the burden for dealing with Ukraine on the Europeans. | |
| And of course, the last thing the Europeans want is that burden put on their shoulders. | |
| They'd much prefer to buck pass to the United States. | |
| How is it that the European elites regard Russia today as the same threat? | |
| Well, I think they really don't. | |
| I think that the European elites make the argument that the Russians are the second coming of the Third Reich, and if we don't stop them in Ukraine, they're going to be on the beaches of Dunkirk. | |
| They make that argument. | |
| Because they want to keep the Americans involved in Ukraine, and they want to keep their publics on board to support the war. | |
| This is good old-fashioned threat inflation, which we're expert at, and we've portrayed the Russians in the worst possible light. | |
| This is the second coming of the Wehrmacht. | |
| Putin is Hitler. | |
| You know the whole nine yards. | |
| The fact is, they don't really believe it. | |
| Nor do the publics. | |
| And the evidence for that is they're not spending an increased amount of money on defense. | |
| They're not building a formidable military establishment in each of the European countries that can stand up to the Russians. | |
| Do you see evidence that the Germans and the French and the British are tripling the size of their military establishments to deal with this horrendous threat? | |
| No. | |
| If anything, their militaries are getting weaker and weaker. | |
| They've given away a huge number of their armaments to the Ukrainians. | |
| They don't even have a large inventory of weaponry that they can turn to. | |
| They don't have big armies. | |
| The British army hasn't been this small since 1714. | |
| They don't take the Russian threat that seriously. | |
| They just talk that way. | |
| Professor Mearsheimer, thank you very much. | |
| Thank you. | |
| For your eloquence. | |
| Thank you for your brilliance. | |
| Thank you for allowing me to pick your brain in front of our most appreciative audience. | |
| I wish you and your family a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. | |
| And I hope you'll come and join us again after the holidays and in the new year. | |
| Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you and your family and to all the viewers. | |
| Thank you. | |
| Thank you, Professor Mearsham. | |
| We're all the best. | |
| Coming up tomorrow at 4 o 'clock. | |
| It'll be Friday. | |
| It'll be the Intelligence Community Roundtable with Larry Johnson and Ray McGovern. | |
| Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. |
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