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Jan. 9, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
20:40
Prof. Gilbert Doctorow : Will Trump Expand the US?
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I don't think the Russians are going to be too surprised or excited.
I don't think they're going to take any change in policy with respect to the states.
Frankly, it's difficult to judge what the opinion of the Kremlin is or of the chattering classes in Russia because Russia is in the midst.
of the two-week winter break, which runs from December 31st, our New Year's, to January 13th, their New Year's, what they call the Old New Year's, according to the Russian Orthodox Church calendar.
And during this time, all commentators, most of the hosts of the premier news programs, they're all on vacation.
Therefore, as to the regular news briefs, They have limited their commentary to what we say, what is being said on Western media, the kind of shock that a news organization like CNN expressed when they were reviewing Trump's latest remarks.
Have a handle on the Kremlin's thinking, more so than almost any American that I know of.
How do you think they would react if we wake up some morning and find out, now I'm going to expand the question, that the U.S. has taken control by force of the Panama Canal and by some other means of Greenland?
I'm mainly concerned about Greenland because if you look at the North Pole, you will see the proximity between Greenland and Russia.
I would rather move back away from the way the Greenland issue is being covered by our media, and that is all media, mainstream and alternative.
The attention has been to what is in Greenland, it's been to what Greenland will mean 30 years from now when the polar ice cap melts, and what this means for American activity, future activity in the Arctic region.
What threats it poses or doesn't to Russian navigation.
These are the issues that we see discussed in our newspapers.
It's all very fine, but I think it has nothing would ever do with what President Trump is doing now.
I don't think this man is terribly concerned about anything that could or would happen 30 years from now.
His mind is much more focused on what's going to happen in his lifespan and during his time in power.
And for that, we have to take a step back and say that this man, who is generally viewed by mainstream people, by his opponents, as being superficial, transactional, unable to deal with foreign policy issues in a mature way,
he is putting something forward which is not the least bit frivolous for today and tomorrow, not for 30 years' perspective.
And what I mean is, he has been advised clearly.
But what President Reagan did in a similar situation to what he is facing now with the Ukraine war.
In October 1983, President Reagan was faced with a very unpleasant fact of 140-plus American soldiers having been blown to bits in Lebanon by a Hezbollah attack on the barracks where they and French soldiers were based in a peacekeeping mission.
Two days later, he invaded Grenada.
That is the message from the Reagan administration that Mr. Trump is employing now.
He is preparing to throw Ukraine under the bus, and he doesn't want to be held accountable for it because he wants the whole thing to diminish in importance compared to the American takeover of Greenland.
Okay, so is the compensation for throwing Ukraine under the bus the acquisition of Greenland?
The acquisition of the Panama Canal or an invasion of Iran?
Something must be done because of the mentality of the people in Washington, D.C. to compensate for and remove the public attention from what will be a humiliating loss in Ukraine.
I think you agree with that.
That is summing it up very precisely.
That is what's going on right now.
And what do you think?
He'll do.
Colonel McGregor thinks it's the invasion of Ukraine.
You're suggesting something a little bit more benign and probably not military, but who knows, with respect to Greenland and Panama.
I don't see any need for him to use military muscle on Greenland.
If you pay attention closely to what the Danish Prime Minister said yesterday when asked about this whole case in the press.
She said, well, Greenland's future is up to Greenlanders.
That's as much as saying that she's given up.
She has no intention of facing down Trump and the United States over this or creating a scandal within NATO.
When you consider who exactly are the Greenlanders, they are 56,000 people in that vast territory.
Don't you think it would be quite easy to buy them all off?
I'm sure it would be, and that's probably a mirror of Trump's thinking.
But how would Putin react to the ability of Trump to put offensive weaponry, as cold as it is up there, and maybe cold is an understatement, it's inside the Arctic Circle, aimed at Russia?
I don't see any basis for Putin to complain.
It's been discussed openly in Russian media that they are prepared to make the so-called medium-range Arishnik an intercontinental ballistic missile.
They will simply position it in the Russian Far East.
So that would be nothing more so if Mr. Trump wants to eventually place missiles in Northern Greenland.
It would be a counter move to what the Russians can achieve in the next few months if they want to.
When do you think the Kremlin expects the special military operation in Ukraine to be over?
And it will end either when President Zelensky leaves or the Ukrainian military collapses or President Putin says we've achieved our goals.
I mean, I don't know how it's going to end, but when do you think the Kremlin expects it to end?
Well, during 2025, that's for sure.
Whether it will reach a critical stage before the inauguration is the only open question.
We have very little time remaining, and the Russians still are several weeks away from capturing Pokrovsk, which is all discussed as a major logistics hub supporting the whole Ukrainian front in Donbas.
Once they capture Pokrovsk, Then it will be really a straight line to the Napa River, and possibly it could be so overwhelming for the Ukrainian forces that they capitulate.
That is a possibility.
I wouldn't call it a probability, but a possibility.
Failing that, now that Mr. Trump has moved his timeline from a 24-hour solution to a six-month solution, it's entirely thinkable that the Russians will devastate the Ukrainian army.
And solve the problem for Mr. Trump.
You mentioned the winter break.
I mean, is this like World War I, where they just stopped fighting at Christmas time?
Have both sides stopped for the two weeks, or is the fighting going on as we speak?
Well, the fighting's going on.
The only thing that stopped is the newscasters are all on vacation, and many Russian companies shut down.
But that's all.
These shows that you monitor, particularly the one on which both you and I have appeared, called The Great Game, it's not on television anymore.
Well, it's not on television because the hosts are on vacation.
It will be back on the 14th of January, along with all regular programming on Russian television.
All they're showing now are classic films from the Soviet era and some very new blockbusters.
Something called Bogatyr, which is a Russian folk hero from the Middle Ages.
These are for the kids and for the family to enjoy themselves and to get a little break from all the war news.
Okay. Secretary of State Blinken has been giving a series of For lack of a better phrase, farewell interviews.
It gave a very long one to the New York Times.
Even though it was the New York Times, it was videoed.
I'm going to play a short clip for you and ask you what you think.
And I ask you to concentrate on his and Joe Biden's favorite phrase, which to me is totally unrealistic, but I invite your comments.
Putin. 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...
And I believe it also has extraordinary potential not only to survive, but actually to thrive going forward.
And that does depend on decisions that future administrations and many other countries will make.
This guy's in another world.
Is there any evidence whatsoever that Putin's goal was to...
I know what the answer is going to be, but I want to hear your response.
Putin's goal was to erase Ukraine from the map.
I'm quoting him literally.
That's total nonsense.
But then, as you say, he's living in a different world.
He's pure propaganda.
He is one of the authors of that propaganda, and he seems perhaps to have swallowed it himself, which is the worst possible thing for any manufacturer of propaganda.
Fool everybody else, but you certainly shouldn't fool yourselves.
He seems to be fooled.
The problem is with these interviews, and I've read, and you're showing one that was videotaped.
I read the extensive one taken by the Financial Times.
This was about a week ago.
They were giving this man a halo.
I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you.
They were giving him what?
A halo.
An angelic halo.
He should be wearing satanic horns, which would be more appropriate to his moral content.
Watch this one, because in this one, which is a little bit longer, it's 90 seconds, it's the same interview, but a different cut.
He actually boasts, quote, we put Ukraine on a path to NATO membership.
I mean, it's as if he has no...
Where the line is drawn on the map, at this point, I don't think is fundamentally going to change very much.
The real question is, can we make sure that Ukraine is in a position to move forward strongly?
You mean that the areas that Russia controls you feel will have to be ceded?
Ceded is not the question.
The question is...
The line, as a practical matter, in the foreseeable future, is unlikely to move very much.
Ukraine's claim on that territory will always be there.
And the question is, will they find ways, with the support of others, to regain territory that's been lost?
I think the critical thing now, going forward, is this.
If there is going to be a resolution, or at least a near-term resolution, because it's unlikely that Putin will give up on his ambitions.
If there's a ceasefire, then in Putin's mind, the ceasefire is likely to give him time to rest, to refit, to reattack at some point in the future.
So what's going to be critical to make sure that any ceasefire that comes about is actually enduring is to make sure that Ukraine has the capacity going forward to deter further aggression.
And that can come in many forms.
It could come through NATO, and we put Ukraine on a path to NATO membership.
It could come through security assurances, commitments, guarantees by different countries.
I mean, this is another world in which he lives if he really thinks that in the past two and a half years, we, the U.S. and the West, NATO, put Ukraine on the path to NATO membership.
I think this is his bid for a professorship at Columbia University.
Oh, Jeff Sachs is going to love that.
He'll have Blinken as well as Mrs. Clinton and Victoria Nuland as colleagues.
Well, Columbia has taken over the role of the Hoover Institute once upon a time took in the Cold War, and it seems to be a graveyard for people like Blinken who would like to have the comfort of a prestigious calling card.
And who are looking for the opportunity to remain in the public eye.
But what he is saying is utter rubbish.
And I don't believe there are too many people, serious people, even in Washington, D.C., who would take what he's saying seriously.
As for the rest of the world, of course nobody takes it seriously.
Yesterday I had a very interesting interview on a rising star in Indian public broadcasting in English.
And there was an active diplomat, an Indian diplomat, who was firmly believing that the war in Ukraine is just a proxy war of NATO and the United States against Russia, and was expecting Russian victory.
I think that people like that in the global south don't take anything that Mr. Blinken says seriously.
And so it's not just you and me and...
The alternative media in the States, which has a big audience, who understand this.
But I think in the global South, there are a lot of people, even in positions of power, who understand it as well.
How stable would NATO be if, as Trump has threatened, the U.S. leaves, or if, as Colonel McGregor believes, after an election, of course, the outcome of which no one yet can know,
Germany leaves.
Well, I've made attention to Colonel McGregor's remarks on Germany, and I understand where he's coming from.
He is following now the work that Elon Musk is doing to raise the chances of electoral victory for the Alternative for Deutschland, so-called hard right party, and that would seek to change the relationship between Germany.
And NATO and Germany and the United States.
Though it's not entirely clear whether Germany, even under an AFD government, would seek to withdraw from NATO, that's not 100% clear.
Nonetheless, the likelihood of there being a big change in the political composition of the ruling coalition that takes power sometime this spring in Germany, I don't believe that the alternative Dutchland will have a commanding position.
They may be the single largest party in results possible, not highly likely, but possible.
But it will certainly be way below the percent needed to form a government without a coalition partner.
And as things are today, the other parties maintain their cordon sanitaire around this party.
So it's difficult for me to agree with Colonel McGregor that there'll be a change of policy on NATO.
Is it difficult for you to accept that the U.S. might leave NATO or radically diminish its role, say, removing a lot of troops, no longer commanding all of NATO and European militaries?
I think I share your second assessment.
For the United States to leave NATO, that becomes a congressional decision.
There are legal hurdles.
For Trump to do that, and I don't know that he would want to waste his political capital on an uncertain outcome.
On the other hand, he just has to do nothing.
Doing nothing means to stop financing, to stop participating in things.
That's within his power, so that he can remove effectively the United States contribution to NATO, which is critical to NATO's remaining in place.
The fact of the matter is that whether European countries devote 2% or 3% or even 5% of their GDP to armaments, to defense, that does nothing to ensure that there is a unified European military force capable of foreign expeditions or even capable of defending Europe without the United States participation.
The elites in Europe...
Seem to have fallen in line in the past two years, not necessarily with cash, but certainly with their words, behind Joe Biden and Jake Sullivan and Tony Blinken on Ukraine.
Is there an attitude of deference on the part of the elites towards the U.S. or stated differently?
Are they going to change their minds when Donald Trump's in the White House and he says, we're getting the hell out of Ukraine?
I think that this requires a little bit of subtlety here.
It is too easy to assume that everything that Europe does is aligning itself with Washington's diktat, that they are totally subservient and have no self-respect.
I think that is erroneous.
I think it's missing the point that Europe developed its own neoconservative globalist thinkers.
It doesn't just adopt what Robert Kagan wrote.
They had their own people.
This was the wave of the times coming out of the monopolar world, the unipolar world of the 1990s.
And the Europeans have a little bit of intellectual contribution to all these horrible mistakes.
So it is today.
They are not only lackeys to the United States.
They are willing lackeys because they support the overriding principles.
Of a values-driven foreign policy.
And that values-driven foreign policy is to defend a democracy, a young democracy, a vibrant democracy in Ukraine, which is the theory, of course.
It's absolutely no correspondence to reality.
Nonetheless, what I'm saying is that Europeans have fallen into traps that they've made for themselves, not only traps that have been set by Washington for them.
Professor Doctorow, thank you very much, my dear friend.
Always a pleasure.
Your insight is unique and valuable and much appreciated by those of us that watch it and by I who get to interrogate you.
All the best.
We'll see you next week.
Well, thanks for having me.
Of course.
Coming up later today at 12 noon, Max Blumenthal at 1 o'clock, Ambassador Ian Proud at 2 o'clock, Professor John Mearsheimer at 3 o'clock.
Colonel Lawrence McGregor, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.
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