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Jan. 7, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
25:57
Pepe Escobar : Eurasia vs. NATO.
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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Tuesday, January 7th, 2025.
Pepe Escobar is here with us from Paris to talk about Eurasia versus NATO in 2025.
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Pepe Escobar, welcome here, my dear friend.
A belated happy new year to you.
Thank you for all the time you gave us in 2024.
We look forward to your generosity.
That's selfish of me, but we do look forward to your generosity in 2025.
You mean my immense pleasure to be with you.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, my dear friend.
What did BRICS accomplish in 2024?
Starting with that summit in Kazan in October, which was really groundbreaking, the most extraordinary scene of the summit was possibly the round table with all the BRICS members,
plus the BRICS Plus partners.
And some international organizations.
The UN was present as well.
All that presided by Putin.
And basically, everybody had the right to speak.
It was a consensus of the global majority, in fact.
Everybody on the same table.
Given the right to speak and to say anything they wanted with no mediation at all.
This in itself was absolutely extraordinary.
There were no grand proclamations at the BRICS summit, but it was a message that was perfectly understood.
Across the global south and the global majority, that this is a new geopolitical group that is finally finding its ground and with a long-term project of coming up with something different from the rules-based international order.
So this was the biggest accomplishment of that year.
Is Turkey at last a full-fledged member of BRICS, or is it still in that sort of associate provisional wait-and-see category?
It's even more complicated, Judge.
They were officially invited to be BRICS partner.
There are 13 BRICS partners that they announced in Kazan in October.
Turkey is one of them.
They haven't responded that officially.
Early this week, we had already an enormous bombshell, in fact, announced by the Brazilians who are presiding BRICS in 2025.
Guess what?
Indonesia was admitted as a full BRICS member, not even as a partner, straight into the top BRICS.
So because Saudi Arabia at the moment, they...
They say that they are part of BRICS 10, but not exactly because they don't go to all the meetings.
They are still hedging their bets.
Everybody knows why.
Because MBS is still terrified of American power.
So he still has to hedge his bets.
Steps in Indonesia, which is the powerhouse of Southeast Asia, and it's going to be one of the greatest economies of the century, immediately as...
Let's say the BRICS number 10, sidestepping Saudi Arabia, and directly.
It's a geopolitical earthquake, absolutely.
In President Putin and President Xi's wildest imaginings, where would they like to see BRICS in 5 or 10 years?
As the builder and the organizer of...
A different system of international relations, more equitable, with voices for everybody sitting on the same table.
Obviously, bypassing not only the US dollar but also the euro.
Most of trade among BRICS members and BRICS partners in their own currencies, which means that BRICS is not a direct affront.
To the US-dominated world order.
It's mostly an affront to the IMF and the World Bank.
And the number one problem that BRICS has to deal with in the next five years is foreign debt.
Countries, big power, mid-level nations across BRICS, all of them are different levels.
They cannot grow if they have enormous foreign debt.
Especially vis-a-vis IMF and the World Bank.
So this is something that they have to find a way to solve that.
And at least attenuate that by increasing loans and investments and trade in general in their own currencies.
And this is already ongoing.
Staying on 2024, but switching our focus.
What became of the axis of resistance in 2024?
It's an absolutely crucial question, Judge.
And we cannot say that as it stands.
What we do know is that there were major blows against the axis of resistance, especially Lebanon and Syria.
Not in Yemen, not in Iraq.
And in terms of Iran, it's even more complicated, because in Iran, there's the clash of two vectors, let's put it this way.
One of them, more Western-oriented, in many aspects, Atlanticist.
They want closer relations with the West.
And that includes, very, very important, the current government.
Peseshkin as president, Arakshi as foreign minister, and Zarif, great friend of John Kerry, by the way, as vice president.
And the other axis is, no, we need to increase our support to the axis of resistance, especially considering these latest blows in terms of the loss of Syria completely and against Hezbollah.
But what's happening at the same time?
Hezbollah is reorganizing very, very quick.
The echoes that we have from Lebanon, and we have good connections across Lebanon, is that Hezbollah is quietly reorganizing at breakneck speed.
So they will be back.
And they will find a way to compensate the loss.
Just to be precise, when we say, and we use this phrase all the time, Pepe, when we say axis of resistance, resistance to what?
I'll be very blunt.
Israel and the United States.
This is the short answer.
It's, of course, much more nuanced than that.
It's essentially against what Israel is doing in Gaza and in the West Bank and now in southern Lebanon, the bombing of great swathes of southern Lebanon and southern Beirut as well.
What they are doing in Syria, which is illegally encroaching on parts of southern Syria.
So it's a war against Israel.
Which didn't start a year and a half ago.
It started in the 1940s.
And, of course, the fact that Israel could not do what they do without full U.S. support.
Essentially, that's it.
Of course, we could go on forever on the declinations.
Right, understood.
A great description, Pepe.
Thank you very much.
Talk to us, if you would, about the current or coming Well, it's part of my first column of the year.
I started to write it this morning before talking to you.
I'm trying to put in one column all these variables that are directly related to Trump 2.0, of course, and this clash between the collective West and...
The BRICS universe and the global majority, in fact.
China, they will be concentrating in 2025 on a triad.
The tech war against the US, basically, this is a tech, the war between the US and China is a technological war.
And the Chinese, when they came up with that concept of Made in China 2025, I remember very well because this happened even before Trump came to power in early 2017.
I was following this very, very closely.
And then when Trump came with the first batch of sanctions against China, the Chinese simply stopped talking about Made in China 2025 and kept doing what they were doing, which was to...
We need to be the top one, two, or three in these 10 domains of high technology by 2025.
And they're already there in at least half of them.
And they will accomplish that maybe in the next two or three years.
How about militarily?
How powerful is China?
We still don't know because most of the...
So, including our friends in the Beltway, they have educated or uneducated guesses, right?
But the fact that Russia and China are collaborating at the highest level in terms of their strategic relationship, also on the military level, which is something, by the way, that will be included in this Crucial deal that will be signed three days before Trump comes to power on the 17th between Russia and Iran in Moscow.
What is the deal?
Is it a full-fledged defense pact?
It's a full-fledged economic, energy, and also defense pact.
That's why it took, Judge, over two years of negotiations.
They had the final document.
A few weeks ago, max.
And now, on the table for Pesachkin in Tehran, on the table for Putin in Moscow, and they're going to sign it in a few days.
If Tel Aviv and Washington attack Tehran after this document is signed, does Moscow get involved?
Theoretically, it could.
Exactly. But, once again, there are degrees of...
What kind of attack does this attack...
Is this attack configured in Moscow as an attack not only against Iran, but also against BRICS as a whole, against the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, against Iran-Russia strategic partnership, etc.
It depends what kind of attack.
But if it's a really hardcore attack, yes.
Moscow will help Tehran.
There's no question.
And this is something that they had been discussing in detail since, well, it's almost two years.
The first time that I heard this directly from Iranian officials in Moscow was like in March or April of 2023 when they were saying, look, both sides were talking to each other and, okay,
whatever you need, you got it.
It's at this level.
And the fact that The relationship, not the presidency in Iran.
The most important relationship is Ayatollah Khamenei.
Khamenei and Putin, they have not as close a relationship as Putin and Xi, but at the highest level, it's very close, and they understand each other.
Does the world, with the exception of the United States, Great Britain, and Israel, Acknowledge that the Western rules-based international order is a sham.
No, they don't.
And for them, it's anathema that the global majority, especially now via BRICS, has a geopolitical superpower and also geoeconomic superpower, especially now with Indonesia,
290 million people.
A wealth of natural resources, a big powerhouse, not only in Southeast Asia, but in Asia as a whole.
Very important, a Muslim country, a Muslim-majority country.
And for this Atlanticist axis, it's simply impossible to absorb that and understand that these past roughly 250 years of Western domination is coming to a close.
At best, the West is going to be one among many on the same table deciding a new set of order for the world, not the rules-based that you can change any time you want.
And, of course, a reform of the UN.
Everything is involved.
The fact that the BRICS have their own development bank, which is their alternative to the IMF and the World Bank.
The fact that BRICS is interconnected with other multilateral organizations like ASEAN in Southeast Asia, the Belt and Road Initiative in China, the Eurasian Economic Union, and most policymakers from Washington to Brussels.
Not only they cannot absorb that, but they don't even understand how it works, and they don't understand the degree of interconnectedness of all these multilateral organizations.
Is a lasting and sustainable peace between Russia and the United States feasible?
It is feasible if the US wants it, Judge.
I'll give you an example.
And this is quite striking, coming from an European intellectual.
Yesterday, I was watching an interview by Emmanuel Todd, which is possibly the number one remaining great French intellectual, anthropologist, historian, political scientist, demographer.
And he came up with a formulation that is incredible.
I'm going to include it in this column that I'm writing today.
He said, Nobody put it this way anywhere, as far as I know.
Can you repeat that line, please, Pepe?
Yes, of course.
So translating literally from the French, the way he said it in an interview, Trump's job will be to manage the American defeat vis-a-vis Russia.
What did he mean?
He means that the US and the collective West lost the war in Ukraine.
And he says, look, this is not Afghanistan.
This is much more serious.
And it is.
Because Todd is one of the very few high-level, multi, let's say, cross-cultural intellectuals in Europe that understand the war.
The American-NATO war against Russia.
Because he's one of the very few who actually tries to understand the Russian position.
You know, he reads Putin's speeches.
He interprets.
It's very rare to find people like that in the UK, in France, in Italy, in Germany.
So that's how he interpreted.
And that's the crux of his book, which translated from French.
He published it nearly a year ago.
It came out, I think, in February last year here in Paris.
The Defeat of the West.
It has not been translated into English yet.
But when it comes out in the West, it's going to be a bombshell.
Because it's very, very serious.
Demography, armament, everything.
Geography, analysis of Protestantism, analysis of nihilism.
You know, it's very, very serious.
And Todd is the only one in France capable of doing this.
You know, applying this scope of analysis towards the most important clash of the 21st century, which is basically the US against Eurasia.
And when you say Eurasia, we say Russia and China, essentially.
I'm going to play a clip from the disreputable American Secretary of State, Tony Blinken, who, of course, disagrees with the...
The conclusion that you've just articulated so nicely, the universal acceptance of American and Western defeat in Ukraine.
This is part of a long interview he gave to the New York Times.
This clip we're going to run is only about a half a minute long, but in it you'll hear him repeat the Joe Biden mantra that Putin has failed.
Chris, cut number two.
Do you feel like you've left Ukraine in the strongest position that you could have?
Or what are the things that you could have done differently?
Well, first, what we've left is Ukraine, which was not self-evident because Putin's ambition was to erase it from the map.
We stopped that.
Putin has failed.
His strategic objective in regaining Ukraine has failed and will not succeed.
Ukraine is standing.
And I believe it also has.
No memory whatsoever.
And we're basically watching Mediocre functionary with no strategic vision posing as a geopolitician.
So no wonder it's pathetic.
And no memory, of course, because a part of the narrative, especially of this exiting administration, is a total erasure of historical, geographical, political,
geopolitical, economic memory.
Will NATO collapse if President Trump pulls the U.S. out of it?
Of course.
If President Trump would take the U.S. out of NATO, NATO collapses instantly.
There's no question.
NATO is the U.S. This U.S. plus a bunch of vassals, essentially.
Europe's in bad shape.
The government in Austria has collapsed.
The government in Germany has collapsed.
The French change prime ministers every six months.
Three! Every three months, right?
Who would have thought that the most stable government in Europe is the country from which you just finished a very happy visit, the land of my grandparents?
Of course.
And I was so happy to be in Italy these past two weeks.
Wow. Even with all the trouble and all the sorrows, of course, the economy is devastated in many aspects.
50% of the Italian population, they are basically surviving or living with their parents because they cannot even afford to pay rent.
I had some incredible conversations with the people.
With people who do trade in Florence, which is something that comes since forever, as we know.
And they were complaining that the Chinese are taking over everything.
They are complaining that South Asians, Bangladeshis, Nepalis, Indians and Pakistanis, they run all the shops.
So there's no job for Italians.
Unless you are in the luxury industry, which of course in Firenze and Tuscany is.
But this is a niche market.
But the government is stable, is it not?
This government is stable because Meloni is very, very clever, and the people who are behind her, they are also very clever because they know how to keep this government running with the minimum,
including their gigantic internal debt.
For instance.
But now France is surpassing Italy in terms of debt.
And the fact that Italy is decentralized, it's not heavily centralized as here in France.
You see certain regions in Italy who are thriving.
Emilia-Romagna is always thriving.
Piemonte is always thriving.
Lombardia is always thriving.
Parts of Tuscany as well.
And they don't...
Basically, they don't give a damn about Rome.
Or the South, as you know very well.
So you see two Italys all the time.
An Italy that is everything that we imagine in terms of industrial powerhouse, glamour, etc.
And this over 50% of Italy who is practically submerged.
And this is very painful to watch, especially in Rome itself.
Pepe, it's a pleasure, my dear friend.
Nobody gives this analysis quite like you do.
Thank you very much for your time.
I look forward to that column that I know you're going to go back to working on as soon as we finish, and I hope you'll visit us again next week.
See you.
Thank you so much.
Happy New Year.
All the best.
Happy New Year to you.
Happy New Year to all of us, our audience.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Coming up later today, Kivork Almasian at noon, Matt Ho at two, Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski at three, and Colonel Douglas McGregor at four.
Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.
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