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Feb. 19, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
25:34
COL. Lawrence Wilkerson : NATO on the Ropes
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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Thursday, February 20th, 2025.
Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson will be here with us in a moment on Is NATO on the Ropes?
Of course, we'll also talk about Gaza and Ukraine.
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Colonel Wilkerson, my dear friend, welcome here.
Thank you for your time.
Thank you for letting me pick your brain.
Before we get to the hot news, President Trump's comments about President Zelensky and the 180-degree apparent movement on U.S. foreign policy in that respect, I have a few other questions I'd like to ask you.
Does Prime Minister, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu still need and still want to resume the genocide in Gaza?
Very much so, in my view.
He may have some difficulty because there are domestic reasons and external reasons that might slow him down, but I think he will eventually get there.
And in the meantime, he's doing pretty much the same thing in the West Bank, so he's eliminating Palestinians that give him a problem in any event.
So he's not too much of a rush to resume.
When you say domestic issues, you mean domestic Israeli political issues?
Both, political and domestic.
I think he's got real problems with what I would call the hostage movement because people are beginning to understand, and revelations are coming out every day, that he's been the major impediment to getting their people back.
And then second, I think he's in trouble because of a number of things that he's done, not least of which was the business with drafting those who are orthodox or ultra-orthodox, and the fact that the IDF is running out of people,
very frankly speaking, and other issues like that that involve him personally in the political system.
And his position is not as secure as the poll ratings might indicate.
And the fact that he put sycophants in charge of the IDF and now at least 60% or so of them are reporting genuinely on the position of the IDF is not helping either.
Some of them might walk out soon.
We have just sent to, the United States has just sent to Israel 1,800 Moabs, mother of all bombs, which Ritter and McGregor say are so big and so heavy,
you would know this as well, that the Israelis don't even have planes big enough, strong enough to take these bombs up and drop them, meaning what have to be done by Americans.
This is just a predicate to my next question.
When Netanyahu determines or concocts a pretext, I don't think he'll overtly stop supporting him.
I do think he's going to weigh in when Bibi makes his move on Iran.
And I think it's unquestionable he's going to make a move on Iran.
And let me back up to the statements you made there.
I inquired about Moab's that went to Israel earlier, several years ago.
And when I inquired, I was told that we also gave them a couple of planes.
So I don't know if that's now a true statement that they don't have the capability to deliver at least one or two themselves.
This was on occasion where we thought we had pretty much pinpointed where the most dangerous underground facility was that pertained to going from 60% to 90% and then to a bomb.
But these bombs, as I understand it, are so radically destructive.
What could the IDF possibly want them for unless they think they're going to reach the Iranian nuclear facilities?
And are these things designed to penetrate the earth and cause mayhem below the surface of the earth?
They are, but I'm not sure that they will get what even I, in 2002 and 2003, understood the Iranians to be doing with North Korean tutelage.
I wouldn't put it past Netanyahu to say that there's a certain tunnel complex or whatever in Gaza and use one there.
I'm not exactly sure how to answer that, because Israel, in its entire existence, has never had peace.
What it had was, in the case of the period you're talking about, and labeling as peace, not your fault.
It was an open-air concentration camp with about 2.1, 2.2 million people in it.
Right. Ongoing genocide, if you will, on the West Bank on a slow burn and in East Jerusalem as well.
So I don't think the Israelis have ever lived with peace.
What you're saying is they lived with a time when they made lots of money, could go to the discos without being blown up, and felt relatively secure because they were treating their own seven-plus million citizens who were non-Jewish as fourth-class citizens.
Okay, I get all that.
But what I mean is the genocide in Gaza stopped a few weeks ago.
Have the Israelis become accustomed to that?
Or can Netanyahu on a dime turn public opinion around and reconstitute the slaughter?
I never count Netanyahu's ability to capitalize on that portion 50-60% of the Israeli population, not the total population of Israel.
Half of that plus is Palestinian Arab or Christian.
But I never count on his...
I never discount his capacity to turn that Jewish population on a dime whenever he needs it.
Are American Zionists attempting to use the Trump Department of Justice to interfere with or suppress the free speech of exchange students on American campuses when they speak out in favor of a Palestinian state?
Throw Speaker Johnson and about two-thirds of the United States Congress in that question, and I'll say absolutely yes.
I mean, where are we going with this?
The First Amendment pertains to all persons, not just to Americans.
So an exchange student from Palestine or Brazil or Moscow can say whatever she or he wants about the Israeli Prime Minister and the suppression of Palestinian life.
And the DOJ has the obligation to protect that speech, not to punish it.
And I'm hearing that the repercussions are much wider than you're suggesting.
The repercussions go all the way to the professors, to the teachers in general, and others on campuses all across America who might speak up for a moment or two in defense of Palestine, Palestinians, or any oppressed people in that region.
Would back up Netanyahu.
In light of his bombastic but I believe sincere comments in the past two days about peace, in light of his claiming personal credit, which is probably legitimate, for the ceasefire agreement,
in light of his expectations for a sincere negotiation towards phase two, which is supposed to start next week, the negotiations toward phase two.
Don't you think he might call up Bibi and say, dial it back, Bibi.
We're not ready to support you killing people just yet.
You might be right, and I'll tell you why.
I think there's another pressure on him that might register heavily with him.
Mohammed bin Salman has called Sisi and the King of Jordan, Abdullah, to Riyadh to meet, to palaver in advance of, I think it's early March, Arab summit.
Where they're going to talk about the status of the Palestinians.
That might produce some pressure.
You know, Trump listens to MBS.
Very interesting, Colonel.
Let's go to the news of the week.
I want to read to you President Trump's tweet, which is a rather incendiary and profound statement.
I'm going to ask you if you think he means it.
Think of it.
A modestly successful comedian, Volodymyr Zelensky, talked the United States of America into spending $350 billion to go into a war that couldn't be won, that never had to start, but a war that he, without the United States and Trump,
will never be able to settle.
The United States has spent $200 billion more than Europe.
And Europe's money is guaranteed, while the United States will get nothing back.
Why didn't Sleepy Joe demand equalization, in that this war is far more important to Europe than it is to us?
We have a big, beautiful ocean as separation.
On top of this, Zelensky admits that half of the money we sent him is, in quotes and in caps, missing.
He refuses to have elections, is very low in Ukrainian polls, and the only thing he was good at was playing Biden like a fiddle.
A dictator without...
One more paragraph, Colonel.
A dictator without elections.
Zelensky better move fast, or he is not going to have a country left.
In the meantime, we are successfully negotiating an end of the war with Russia.
Something we'll admit only Trump and the Trump administration can do.
Biden never tried.
Europe has failed to bring peace.
And Zelensky probably wants to keep the gravy train going.
I love Ukraine.
But Zelensky has done a terrible job.
His country is shattered.
And millions have unnecessarily died.
Millions have unnecessarily died.
And so it continues.
President Trump.
What was your initial reaction when you read that, Colonel Wilkerson?
I take that characterization for what it's worth in terms of the general concept of Ukraine and the war there.
But he's wrong and badly wrong about who used whom.
We used Zelensky.
He did not use us, just as we are using Netanyahu.
Netanyahu is not using us.
Well, I was about to ask you about this Zelensky playing Biden like a fiddle.
I was going to ask you if Netanyahu is playing Trump like a fiddle.
You could say that, but I understand what the Empire wants in the Levant and what it uses Israel to do, and I understand what Biden, as a representative of the Empire, and I think it was more Blinken and Sullivan, wanted to use Ukraine to do.
And it had nothing to do with Zelensky.
In fact, Zelensky in the beginning, if you realize what he was like in the beginning, I have no love for him now, especially.
But in the beginning, he campaigned and won a sizable majority of the vote on not going to war with Russia.
And then he had the opportunity to stop it after it had started and was ready to sign, and we talked him out of it.
You know, in one of his prior statements, without mentioning...
Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson by name, President Trump did, in my view, have a good handle on all this when he said there was a peace agreement and then the U.S., which is true, it was out of the mouth of Boris Johnson,
but it was the U.S. doing this, the U.S. talked him out of it.
Isn't all of this a sea change?
Of 180 degrees, like turning an aircraft carrier around on a dime in American foreign policy, Colonel Wilkerson.
That's a good metaphor.
It is exactly that, and I'm ecstatic over it.
I just hope it is real and continuous.
I watched Lavrov very closely, played the tape three times.
I watched Rubio.
I watched Lavrov's press conference afterwards.
I watched Putin's press conference afterwards.
And then today I watched Putin and Wang Yi have their annual meeting.
And they're all euphoric.
You can tell it between the lines, if not directly.
I am too.
And I do hope this plays out.
Here's somebody you probably know, Colonel, although this was after your...
Time running the State Department.
Former Ambassador Michael McFaul, who represents the neocon view, probably the establishment view, he's beside himself.
Chris, cut number two.
The Trump administration would, even before negotiations have started, would signal to the Kremlin that they're willing to give them everything that they wanted at the very beginning of the war.
Remember what Putin said.
He said, we're invading to liberate these territories.
The Trump administration has said Ukraine has to give them territories.
He said, we want neutrality.
We don't want Ukraine and NATO.
The Trump administration has already said that.
The Trump administration has talked about lifting sanctions and to add insult to injury.
They're now saying that Zelensky, President Zelensky, the democratically elected president of Ukraine, who is abiding by the Ukrainian constitution, including the clause about martial law, now has to stand for reelection before they will start the negotiations.
And none of those demands are being made of Putin, who's been in power as a dictator for 25 years.
I honestly think they never imagined that they would be in such a great position.
Now, I hope that the Trump team will get their act together.
I hope that they'll think about the consequences of just capitulating right and left.
But I worry they've gotten off to a terrible start and we're already in a hole.
Sounds like it was written by Victoria Nuland.
Well, he could have written the articles in The New York Times this morning.
They are just foaming it over themselves for all the...
Things that Trump gave away and so forth.
As if Biden didn't give almost a million lives away.
For what purpose?
On both the Russian and the Ukrainian side.
And arguably destroyed Ukraine.
I mean, let's face it.
Even if we come to a reasonable settlement with respect to Ukraine, they have lost big time.
But more importantly, for that guy you just played, NATO and Washington.
Have lost majorly.
And Trump has acknowledged it.
Right. What will become of NATO under the presidency of Donald Trump, Colonel Wilkerson?
Well, I think it was collapsing anyway.
I've said that many times.
It's untenable.
It has no real threat.
Certainly Russia's not a threat to it.
And you can't hold an alliance, political and military, like that one together without a real threat.
And it has no threat.
And the Europeans are falling apart, just falling apart.
I listened to a French conservative yesterday who speaks fluent English, and he just went on.
He said, the Europeans are like rabbits.
I'm driving down through the southern part of France at night.
My headlights are on and the rabbits are in the road running around all over the place.
That's the way we are.
That's the way we are.
And Vanderlyn is out there saying she's going to do her 16th round of sanctions on Russia.
Okay, madam, where's your army?
He then went on to say, The entire European complex, NATO members minus the United States and Turkey, could not put 50,000 troops on the ground in Ukraine.
He's right.
Colonel, do you think that what I just read from President Trump and the other statements he has made in conjunction with this, mainly that Kiev started the war,
didn't literally start the war, But it and the West certainly provoked the war.
Do you think he is sincere?
Yes, I do.
I know there's a disagreement on this amongst our friends and colleagues and even some people that appear on the show regularly.
Where do you come down on this?
You're asking me if I think Donald Trump believes Ukraine started the war.
Is that the question?
You could put it that way, or you could put it broader.
All of these statements that he made about the inappropriateness of the war, Zelensky being a dictator, it's time for a change, Russia's defending its borders,
NATO shouldn't have been there.
Is he sincere?
Is that attitude coming from him sincere?
There's enough truth in there to be a statement that I would characterize as about time.
Yeah, there's some budging in there.
But that's typical Trump.
He's not one to parse words to try and fit with everybody's idea of rectitude, certainly not academic rectitude.
But he's changed the whole game, just like this Frenchman was saying yesterday.
Macron was a joke.
Schultz was a joke.
And this guy was careful to point out, as I've been pointing out all along.
About another 12 months, every government in Europe is going to change.
And we're going to see an entirely different Europe.
Well, we're going to see that first on Sunday with the German elections.
According to our friend Gilbert Doctorow, there's no way Scholz will be back.
He might have a portfolio in the government, but he's never going to be back as chancellor.
Macron is a dead man governing.
He's a dead man governing.
And Sarkir Starmer as well, who, by the way, offered to send troops to Ukraine.
Where's he going to get them from?
Yeah, but he quickly followed up with if the United States backs them.
Forget it.
You may know this gentleman as well, Colonel, General Barry McCaffrey, who is also...
Also beside himself, Chris, cut number four.
All of Europe now understands that the guarantees, the assurance of U.S. military and political backing are essentially gone.
There can be no trust in the future deterrence of NATO minus the United States.
By the way, this comes with a background of incomprehensible...
Sort of babble speak, seize the Panama Canal, seize Greenland, coerce economically Canada in becoming a 51st state, use military power against drug cartels in Mexico.
You know, it's just difficult to understand how anyone could arrive at these conclusions.
By the way, we're looking at a Secretary of State, former Senator Rubio, who has experience and judgment and history.
Keith Kellogg's a sound guy, knowledgeable, the National Security Advisor.
Why are these people not speaking out?
Where is the leadership of Congress watching what's now occurring?
It's placing the United States at fundamental risk going forward.
I don't know what he's talking about, Colonel.
Judge, I got a truth in advertising here.
I used to sit down in the chairman's mess across from Barry and have lunch with him.
And I'll tell you what, Barry is not a rocket scientist.
He's not even close.
Barry disgraced us in uniform when he advocated for the 2003 invasion of Iraq while taking loads of money from military contractors who were going to make a fortune off that war.
I have no use for anything Barry McCaffrey says.
I noticed you rolled your eyes when I mentioned his name.
Before we ran the clip, I did not know of this unpleasant professional relationship that you had with him.
He was a good soldier.
He was a good soldier, brave soldier, won a lot of awards, but he had no brain.
Colonel, you understand the State Department and its mentality probably than anybody on the planet.
Can Trump change the attitude, the cultural view of Russia 180 degrees amongst all those foreign service people who've been raised from birth to hate all things Russian?
Huge challenge, no question about it.
Huge challenge.
And I would say that permeates the entire special relationship with London, for example, the Five Eyes.
You can't find too many people in that relationship.
And elsewhere in the United States government who don't have a distaste for Russia for some reason or another, lingering over, in most cases, from the end of the Cold War and from all the times that they saw Russia as the number one enemy in the world.
Wow. Carl, what...
My students.
My students gave me great hope because they were not that way.
Over 600 of those students on two campuses over 20 years.
They gave me great hope.
They're not that way.
And I put them in every place.
I put them in the DIA, the CIA, the NSA, the Foreign Service.
It'll change.
All right.
Now I forgot what I was just going to ask you, Colonel, but thank you very much for your time.
Much appreciated, my dear friend.
I love the way you fearlessly just wade into these ideological and political battles.
And of course, I also love that we agree.
I hope the snow does not hit DC this weekend.
Aren't you supposed to get a mountain of it?
We are.
And let me just say to your comment, common sense usually does prevail with people.
Yes. Thank you, Colonel.
Always a pleasure.
Thank you very much for joining us.
Have a great weekend.
Stay warm.
You too.
A great man.
Great conversation, if I may say so.
Coming up at 3 o'clock this afternoon on all these same subjects, Professor John Mearsheimer.
And at 4 o'clock, if we can find him, Max Blumenthal.
Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.
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