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Feb. 18, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
23:35
AMB. Charles Freeman : Trump, Russia, and Europe.
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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Tuesday, February 18th, 2025.
Ambassador Charles Freeman will be here with us in just a moment on President Trump, Russia, and Europe.
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Ambassador Freeman, welcome here, my dear friend.
Good day to you.
I do want to explore your knowledge about and concerns over Russia, the meetings in Saudi Arabia, where you were once the U.S. ambassador, and what you expect to happen there with Europe excluded.
But first, a couple of other questions, if I may.
On Israel and Gaza, do you think that Prime Minister Netanyahu really wants the United States to own Gaza with its offshore natural gas deposits?
No, I don't think that's the case at all.
I think he was looking for an excuse to resume the genocide in Gaza, and the president has basically backed him in that.
Talking about real estate development from the International Hotel Tower in Gaza and so forth.
But that's going to take a long time to happen.
And the immediate problem, which Mr. Netanyahu has been dealing with and is about to resume dealing with, is how to get rid of the Palestinians.
Either drive them out of Gaza or kill them.
And we're about to see that start over again.
He wants...
To resume.
That is, Benjamin Netanyahu wants to resume the war no matter what Donald Trump wants or says.
Is that a fair statement of his attitude?
Correct. But he's just thrilled that he has covered that the American president has endorsed ethnic cleansing in Gaza with a, frankly, fairly preposterous end state in mind, namely turning Gaza into some kind of great resort.
Not for the Palestinians, obviously, but for Israelis.
Switching over to Ukraine, Ambassador, if Trump really wants peace in Ukraine, why is the Biden military supply pipeline still flowing?
Well, there's a contradiction here.
You see Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, accompanied by Mr. National Security Advisor Waltz, in Riyadh, declaring that the purpose of their talks with the Russians is to see whether the Russians want peace or not.
And the flow of weapons is seen by some of those people, at least, as putting pressure on the Russians to want peace.
In fact, there have been threats from General Kellogg, the special envoy that...
Isn't that allegation, excuse me for interrupting, Ambassador, absurd?
The basic parameters for a negotiated settlement, not just of the situation in Ukraine, but European security architecture, are being discussed.
So this is a parameter-setting meeting.
Europeans who are beside themselves, if not being present, are included, and Ukraine as well, will have to be brought into this because the only way you can end a war is by reconciling the parties.
To its outcome.
And the outcome of the war in Ukraine lets Russia basically set the terms for ending it.
And those terms will include a major reorganization of security system in Europe to downplay the role of the United States.
We've already seen the president of the European Council, Antonio Costa, come forward and say that Europe is going to have to negotiate with Russia directly to To establish a new security architecture.
The United States presumably will be part of that process, but Europeans now feel they have to take their own fate in their hands after 80 years of depending almost totally on the United States, following our lead and inhaling our propaganda.
Chris, put up the photo again, if you could do it full screen there, of course.
You see Marco Rubio on the left, the Secretary of State of the United States.
On his left is Mike Waltz.
On his right is Stephen Witkoff.
And then on the right, you see Sergei Lavrov.
I mean, this is a profound significance because prior to the presidency of Donald Trump, the Secretary of State, Tony Blinken, arguably one of the worst in the modern era, maybe the worst ever.
Refused to sit down at a table, even to take a phone call from Sergei Lavrov, his opposite number in Moscow.
How significant is this?
And then I'm going to ask you about who's missing.
Yeah, I think it is very significant.
And it's amazing to me that the immediate European reaction to the resumption of bilateral dialogue between the United States and Russia The Russian Federation was horror.
I mean, somehow they thought it was a wonderful idea that we would fight a war and not have any contact with the enemy during that war.
That is a recipe for forever war.
We are now in a war termination phase.
And you can only do that by talking to the other side.
So this is very, very important.
We don't know what the outcome of these discussions will be.
But we do know that the Russians are in a position...
To control the terms of the war termination.
And those will involve what they said in December 2021.
And frankly, for decades before that.
There needs to be a new European security architect.
Ukraine needs to fit into that as a neutral, not as part of an alliance aimed at Russia.
And the Russian speakers in Ukraine, or about a third of the population originally, are going to have to have their rights guaranteed.
Now we see the Europeans, who are excluded, meeting in Paris to discuss what?
Discuss a preposterous deployment of peacekeepers in Ukraine, as though the Russians would accept that, as though there are enough European troops to man such a force.
Some military estimates suggest that a peacekeeping force of any consequence would have to be 500,000 men strong.
It's not possible.
None of the European great powers have armed forces that are anywhere near capable of playing that role, even if the Russians accepted it, which they won't.
Sir Keir Starmer was quoted this morning as saying he's ready to order British troops to Ukraine.
Isn't that ridiculous?
Yes, it is ridiculous.
The army is capable in many ways.
It is an auxiliary force for the United States.
It is not capable of playing that sort of role on the European continent.
If General Kellogg is still the president's emissary on matters Ukraine and Russian, it's a mystery that he's not there.
But here is what he said two days ago.
I think this is nonsense, but of course...
He purports to speak for the president, and I invite your comments.
Chris, cut number one.
Can you assure this audience that Ukrainians will be at the table and Europeans will be at the table?
Oh, you just changed the whole dynamic.
The answer to that last question, just as you framed it, the answer is no.
The answer to the earlier part of that question is yes, of course the Ukrainians are going to be at the table.
So the Europeans who have provided...
As much or more support than the Americans in this process, you don't think should be at the table directly.
You think it should be two protagonists.
I said I'm a school of realism.
I think that's not going to happen.
But our philosophy is not to continue this war to the death of every last Ukrainian.
There's really, there's two protagonists when you look at it, and there's one, hopefully, to be an intermediary.
Okay, who are the protagonists and who's the intermediary?
Well, I'm saying, notice I'm being very diplomatic about it.
The fact is, we're looking at, you can have the Ukrainians, the Russians, and clearly the Americans at the table talking, but we've got to have specifics to get to it.
Does he know what he's talking about, Ambassador?
I suspect he does, at least in the initial phase.
This is an incredibly complicated situation.
It can't be settled suddenly in talks in Riyadh.
It can't be settled solely between the United States and Russia.
Europeans will have to be involved.
What have the Europeans said so far?
They have continued basically to talk belligerently about Russia.
They're talking about Matching Russia on the battlefield in Ukraine, which they're incapable of doing.
There have been no significant European ideas about how to end this war.
So they've basically followed the United States.
Okay, now they're in a position where they have no choice but to follow the United States.
But eventually, they're going to have to be involved either directly as part of the U.S.-Russian dialogue or on their own.
And I think the chances are very good that this whole exercise is going to encourage them to play their own cards separately from us.
In other words, NATO is being hollowed out.
You understand the Saudi mindset probably better than anyone in the United States.
Tell us about Well, one of the changes in the world order that is occurring is the empowerment of middle-ranking powers.
Turkey, for example, Saudi Arabia.
The Saudis see themselves as such a power.
They want to be recognized globally as...
A significant force for peace.
So this is putting Saudi Arabia on that diplomatic map.
It also ingratiates the Saudis with our president and performs a service for the United States on an issue that is not contentious from a Saudi perspective.
They want peace in Ukraine.
So do we, we claim.
This is an offset to our total disagreement about Gaza and the Palestinian issue.
Where is Mohammed bin Salman on Gaza and the Palestinian issue?
At one point he was prepared to normalize relations with Israel, and then after October 7th he said no normalization.
I think he's been consistent.
What hasn't been consistent is the Israeli characterization of his position, trying to erode it by claiming he's prepared to make all sorts of...
They said that in return for Israel facilitating Palestinian self-determination, establishing a state in Palestine with its capital in East Jerusalem,
they would lead the entire Arab world or Muslim world, all 57 Muslim countries.
In normalizing relations with Israel.
But short of that, they would not.
What we were hearing earlier was a desire on the part of the Saudis and a willingness to deal transactionally, pragmatically, with Israel on specific common interests.
Those mainly involved Iran.
Of course, now Saudi Arabia has reconciled itself to Iran.
It's wary of Iran, but it is improving its relations.
And in some respects, we are beginning to see the formation of a Gulf-Arab-Iranian coalition aimed at balancing Israel, given Israel's destruction of its neighborhood and establishment of itself as the regional hegemon.
So I think Mohammed bin Salman has been quite consistent.
And his current position has, of course, hardened in response to the president's...
Back to Russia and the United States.
Does the United States, does Donald Trump have any leverage with Russia, with Lavrov, with President Putin?
Very little.
Russia is under terribly heavy sanctions.
Adding a few more isn't going to do very much.
The Russians have readjusted their orientation away from Europe toward China, India, West Asia, and Africa.
They're not going to give that up, whatever happens.
The weaponry we've supplied to Ukraine has been effectively countered on the battlefield.
We don't have the production capability.
Sometimes we imagine that we are still in the position we were in World War II.
We were the great arsenal of democracy, and able to supply weapons to everyone, including the Soviet Union, to defeat the Nazis and the Japanese Imperial Armed Forces.
We don't have that search capability anymore, so we have trouble supplying even our own inventories.
The Russians have had a similar problem, although they seem to have done a lot better at increasing production than we have.
We've tried to tap South Korean weaponry for the Ukrainian forces and ourselves.
The Russians have done the same with North Korea.
And the Russians, of course, have turned to Iran.
Our European allies have supplied lots of things to the Ukrainians, but they don't have much more to give.
So we don't have a lot of leverage.
And I think it's healthy to recognize reality, even if it's extremely painful, because we have been living.
In a dream world of our own manufacture, claiming that Ukraine is winning, Russian casualties are astronomical, Russia's economy is collapsing, Mr. Putin is about to be overthrown, the Russian army is incompetent,
all things which are not true.
Now we have to confront reality as it is rather than as we would like it to be.
Foreign Minister Lavrov, I don't know if this is in Riyadh or if it's in Moscow, but it was yesterday.
A little bit of a history lesson, but the Russian understanding of why the Europeans are not at the table.
Cut number 11. The leaders of Russia, France, Germany.
And Ukraine spent more than 17 hours fine-tuning every comma in a document aimed at resolving the Ukrainian situation by granting a special status to part of Donbass within a united Ukrainian state.
The UN Security Council unanimously approved this plan.
From the very first days, the Ukrainian side began violating it.
Instead of a ceasefire and troop withdrawal, there were constant bombings of Donbass.
Instead of restoring Ukraine's economic integrity, there was a water blockade of Crimea, and much more.
Later, when Ms. Merkel and Mr. Olan retired and started speaking to journalists, they openly and repeatedly admitted that they never intended to implement what they had signed.
They claimed that time was needed to arm Ukraine.
Those were their chances.
Now, at the Munich conference, there have been calls.
For example, Alexander Stubb, the president of Finland, our close neighbor, wants a neutral state that always stood for all things good and against all things bad, said that, above all, a ceasefire must be agreed upon and used to strengthen Ukraine militarily.
It turns out that the European philosophy has not gone anywhere.
Therefore, I do not know what they would do at the negotiating table.
If they intend to haggle over some deceitful ideas about freezing the conflict while, in their usual manner, they actually plan to continue the war, then why invite them at all?
Wow! Then why invite them at all?
What do you think?
Well, history is absolutely correct.
And as I said, the Europeans have not come forward with any idea other than a military idea, which they're incapable of executing.
So, for the moment, they have made themselves irrelevant.
And I disagree with General Kellogg.
I think, of course, they will have to be invited to come.
But they're going to have to accept the realities of what happened on the battlefield.
Which determine what is possible and what isn't.
The outcomes they are seeking, like the one that President Stubb mentioned and was quoted by Foreign Minister Lethrop, is just not possible.
I wonder if Secretary of State Rubio, I guess I should be compassionate, he's only had the job for two weeks, is a match.
For Foreign Minister Lavrov.
But switching gears before we go, which animated the Europeans more?
The admonition they received from Vice President Vance last week or their exclusion from these talks in Riyadh?
Hard to say.
I think both were deeply offensive to them.
The Vice President's speech was an attack on European cultural norms and was perceived as arrogant and condescending.
It was also seen as signaling an American turn away from concern about security in Europe toward China and the Pacific.
This has been, of course, a perennial issue in America.
Strategic reasoning should we emphasize the Atlantic or the Pacific?
And we're clearly moving to emphasize the Pacific.
So that was a shock to the Europeans.
But the fact that they are not at the table discussing things that will determine their future is deeply alarming to them.
I don't know which is more alarming.
It's a signal of an American reorientation toward the Pacific and away from them, or the absence of any participation in determining Europe's destiny.
Ambassador Freeman, thank you very much for your time.
This has been a great conversation.
Thank you for allowing me to pick your brain.
Much appreciated.
We look forward to seeing you again next week.
Keep raising these issues.
They won't go away.
Right. There's much rest to talk about.
Thank you, my friend.
Coming up later today at 2 o'clock, Matt Ho.
At 3 o'clock, Karen Kwiatkowski.
At 4 o'clock, just returned from the front lines in Donbass.
It will be midnight in Moscow.
Pepe Escobar.
Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.
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