March 11, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
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| Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. | |
| Today is Wednesday, March 12th, 2025. | |
| Back from Moscow, with much to discuss. | |
| Today with Ambassador, or right now, shortly with Ambassador Charles Freeman, on all the mistakes that NATO made. | |
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| We were chatting in the break about how warm, engaging, and well-informed Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is. | |
| My interview with him, which is two hours long. | |
| And did involve others to ask questions, one of whom is a regular on the show and longtime friend and colleague of mine, Larry Johnson, will be airing at noon here on Judging Freedom, noon Eastern. | |
| But I was, I shouldn't say taken aback, I was moved by his profound understanding of the way Americans think. | |
| So yesterday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced, we have a ceasefire plan. | |
| But their so-called plan is something that already has been rejected publicly and privately, publicly a dozen times by the Russians. | |
| Question for you, Ambassador. | |
| What kind of a mistake is it for Secretary of State Rubio to be touting a ceasefire that he knows the Russians have and will continue to reject? | |
| Well, I think the more significant achievement is persuading Mr. Zelensky, who has been adamant about not negotiating a peace with the Russians to agree to do so. | |
| He's agreed to do so in the context of an offer by him of a ceasefire. | |
| Well, this is an agreement between him and Marco Rubio in the United States, I guess. | |
| Certainly not an agreement with the Russians. | |
| If the Russians had previously, in advance, agreed that they would accept such an offer, this would make sense. | |
| Otherwise, it's a potential embarrassment. | |
| Now, we now have Mr. Witkoff, the private emissary of President Trump, going off to Moscow. | |
| And I think there's a real question about what that meeting will yield. | |
| Because it will sound to the Russians as though the United States has been deaf to their position and maybe is offering a ceasefire just as a cover to get European NATO troops into Ukraine somehow by the back door. | |
| Or this is a political stunt intended to put the Russians on the spot. | |
| The evidence for that is... | |
| Marco Rubio's triumphant statement that the ball is now on the Russians' court. | |
| There's another issue, finally, I'll just mention, and that is Mr. Witkoff has now got an established public record of repudiating agreements that he himself brokered. | |
| I'm speaking of the agreement between Israel and Hamas to conduct a three-phased ceasefire. | |
| Suddenly, in the middle of this, he unilaterally Pleasing the Israelis, but horrifying. | |
| Declared that phase one should just continue and Israel should remain in Gaza. | |
| So his credibility is not very great. | |
| And we have the question of our own president's credibility, given the speed and ease with which he changes his mind on things. | |
| So I'm not sure what this all means. | |
| I don't see it as the triumph that the administration is portraying it as. | |
| I haven't yet seen definitive European reactions to it, but I suspect that they will be very mixed. | |
| Very interesting, Ambassador. | |
| I think Secretary of State Rubio is just not serving the cause of peace well, and he's not serving... | |
| American-Russian relations well. | |
| I would imagine the Russians are quite unhappy with him. | |
| Off the record, I asked Foreign Minister Lavrov, are there any circumstances under which President Putin would accept a ceasefire? | |
| And he looked at me and said, why would we? | |
| Well, exactly. | |
| That's the answer. | |
| Exactly. The fact is that it's not unusual for the losing side in the war to offer a ceasefire. | |
| And the Russians will interpret this as some kind of recognition on Mr. Zelensky's part that he has basically lost the war. | |
| But they are advancing on every front. | |
| In Kursk, they are mopping up the last Ukrainian elements there. | |
| Along the broad front in Ukraine, they are taking more and more territory. | |
| It's pretty clear that the West, which had backed Ukraine to the hilt, is now divided with the United States, seen by Europeans as unreliable at best and as treacherous at worst. | |
| And, of course, the United States has now restored the intelligence support and weapons supplies to Ukraine that had earlier been suspended to get Mr. Zelensky's attention. | |
| And this means, I think, you know, where we're headed is where I thought we were going to go all along, namely, that there will be negotiations during the fighting, but the fighting will not cease. | |
| And as Mr. Lavrov evidently told you, why should the Russians agree to a ceasefire when every hour that goes by strengthens their position? | |
| Is it fair to say that... | |
| All the intel who were told, human assets who were told to dial it back didn't leave and didn't go anywhere, and now they're back to doing their thing. | |
| I mean, how inconsistent with this, with prudent management of intelligence and military resources, is it to turn them off for two weeks and then say, oh, we changed our minds, now we want you back there? | |
| Well, we seem to like to jerk people around these days. | |
| I don't know whether they left or not. | |
| I suspect they may have left, if only for symbolic reasons, to convince the Ukrainians that we were serious about not backing their insistence on continuing the war. | |
| But I don't think the war is going to end because of the ceasefire. | |
| I think we may get a negotiation. | |
| I suspect that the Europeans will take a Russian rejection. | |
| of the ceasefire offer, which I think is foreordained. | |
| As you said, the Russians have been very clear, both in public and in private, about this for a long time, that they are not interested in a ceasefire. | |
| They want a peace. | |
| They want an agreement on the three elements of the Putin ultimatum of December 2021. | |
| Neutrality for Ukraine, protection for Russian speakers and other minorities in Ukraine. | |
| In accordance, by the way, with the rules of the European Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe. | |
| And finally, a broader discussion and agreement eventually on some sort of security architecture for Europe as a whole that would leave Europe undivided and not in a state of military confrontation between Russia and the rest of it. | |
| These are the things they want, and I don't think they're going to In a minute, I'm going to ask you, what do the European elites fear and what do the European elites want? | |
| But first, I want to play this clip of a small portion of my interview with Foreign Minister Lavrov, and I'll tell you right up front what he believes The European elites want, and that's more war. | |
| Chris, cut number 10. Prime Minister of Denmark. | |
| She said that these days Ukraine is weak. | |
| Ukraine cannot be fairly treated now. | |
| Therefore, for Ukraine, today peace is worse than war. | |
| She said this. | |
| Pump Ukraine with weapons again. | |
| And when we shake, have shaken Russian position, then let's see whether we can talk. | |
| And the chief of German intelligence a couple of days ago said that it would be bad for Ukraine and for Europe if the war ends before 2029 and 2030 even better. | |
| Yes, they say these things. | |
| And when President Trump was interrogating President Zelensky in the Oval Office, asking him many times, you don't want to negotiate. | |
| Zelensky was trying to avoid the nuns. | |
| That was me going, oh, because I was seated right again. | |
| I crossed the table for him. | |
| I was stunned at what he was saying. | |
| Do you understand that the Europeans want a long war? | |
| And if so, why? | |
| I don't think they want a long war, but I think they're very comfortable with a military confrontation managed by the United States. | |
| And in the meantime, they are rearming in anticipation. | |
| That the United States might leave NATO, or at least greatly reduce its participation in NATO. | |
| So, from their point of view, they've had, you know, 80 years. | |
| They've been able to lean back, do very well, and allow the United States to impose order on Europe, both during the Cold War and after it. | |
| And they've not come up with any answers of their own, and they still don't have any. | |
| What they're talking about in their meetings, which they have now, to discuss how to deal with the change in the American position that Mr. Trump has brought about, is how to confront Russia, how to keep the confrontation with Russia military. | |
| What they badly need is a political settlement with Russia, and with the United States, by the way. | |
| They're not even thinking about that, at least not out loud. | |
| What do they fear? | |
| Do they fear the Great Reset that Alistair Crook talks about, a monumentally new, open, political, commercial relationship between Washington and the Kremlin? | |
| I think that's part of their fear. | |
| They've managed, however, to inhale their own propaganda. | |
| And they're giddy with fear of that the Russians somehow, despite not being able to take much of Ukraine, will somehow, you know, march back to Paris the way they did after Napoleon invaded them. | |
| Or that they will keep going as the Soviet army did in response to the Nazi aggression against the Soviet Union, Russia, 85 years ago. | |
| So, I think that, you know, we have been engaged in an incredibly fierce information war, and we've clearly been very effective. | |
| People in the United States, the Biden administration, wanted to sell Europeans on the notion that they should all unite against Russia, they should be fearful of Russia, and they've succeeded, at least in getting them to be fearful. | |
| I don't know how united they made. | |
| When I asked Foreign Minister Lavrov about the United States and NATO and NATO's strength or existence in a post-American NATO, | |
| here's a portion of his response, cut number nine. | |
| What he did bluntly said was that if you want us to protect you, to give you security guarantees, You pay what is necessary. | |
| It's still to be discussed what is necessary. | |
| Two and a half, five percent, anything in the middle. | |
| But he also said that those who fulfill the criteria of the percentage of GNP to be contributed to NATO, then the United States would guarantee that they are safe and secure. | |
| He doesn't want to provide these guarantees, security guarantees to Ukraine under Zelensky. | |
| He has his own view of the situation, which he bluntly presents every now and then, that this war should have never started, that the pulling Ukraine into NATO in violation of its constitution, | |
| in violation of the... | |
| Declaration of Independence of 1991 on the basis of which we recognized Ukraine as a sovereign state for several reasons, including that this declaration was saying no NATO. | |
| This declaration would say no NATO. | |
| He has a profound understanding of things, doesn't he? | |
| He is a very professional, smart, Maybe the best in the world. | |
| His only real competition is the Chinese foreign minister. | |
| These are men with decades of experience. | |
| Sergey Lavrov speaks multiple languages. | |
| He lived in the United States when he served at the UN. | |
| He clearly has a very good understanding of us. | |
| And experience counts. | |
| So does intellectual ability, and he's got both. | |
| What do the Europeans fear? | |
| Do they fear that they'll have to spend a greater percentage of GNP on the military if Donald Trump dials American participation in NATO back? | |
| Do they have the ultimate fear of the United States leaving NATO, which Foreign Minister Lavrov told me he didn't think would happen, but a lot of... | |
| Your colleagues on this show believe that it will happen. | |
| What do you think Ursula von der Leyen and Keir Stormer and Emmanuel Macron and Frederick Mertz go to bed worrying about every night? | |
| Well, I think it's properly termed nameless dread. | |
| What is that? | |
| That is the fear of something. | |
| That might happen, but you can't really define what will happen, and you just, you know, fear of the future. | |
| No, of course, Europeans have always been very comfortable relying on the United States for their defense, spending less money, buying a lot of American weaponry. | |
| I think about 55% of their procurement of foreign weapons goes to Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Norfolk Drummond, L3 and Boeing. | |
| So they've been very comfortable with this. | |
| They now realize they're going to have to spend a good deal more money. | |
| They're actually going to have to develop a much better pan-European military industrial base. | |
| They don't want to be dependent on American weaponry anymore. | |
| Just consider the possibility of a conflict over Greenland. | |
| Which the United States now apparently covets. | |
| It's part of Denmark. | |
| Do you think the Danes could rely on American F-35s not being turned off in midair if they tried to defend Greenland against us? | |
| So basically, the world is undergoing a major change, and a good deal of it has to do with doubts about the reliability, the steadfastness, the predictability. | |
| Of the United States. | |
| And so fear of unpredictability or a nameless dread, as I said, is not without a basis for the Europeans. | |
| Let's end where we started, Ambassador. | |
| Did Secretary of State Rubio make a colossal blunder? | |
| By saying we've agreed to a ceasefire, the ball is now in the Russian court when he knows that the Russians will never accept this? | |
| Remains to be seen. | |
| And the question is, you know, what is the framework within which you make that judgment? | |
| If it's domestic politics, this sets up Mr. Trump to be tough on Russia. | |
| Oh, Russia didn't agree to a ceasefire. | |
| I'm going to do X, Y, and Z, and I'm tough, and so forth, which would offset some of the... | |
| I don't think it helps produce a peace with the Russians. | |
| I think they probably will judge that they've been bad in public relations terms, and they won't like it. | |
| And I don't know what their reaction beyond that will be, but I expect when and if negotiations between Ukraine and Russia actually begin, and of course they haven't yet, when they actually begin, I expect the Russians to be very, | |
| very insistent on the basic framework that they put forward in December of 2021, before it was rejected and they felt they had no alternative to conduct an invasion of Ukraine. | |
| Ambassador Charles Freeman, a pleasure, my dear friend. | |
| Thank you for accommodating my schedule. | |
| I'm still a little jet-lagged, but I understand what you said and appreciate it deeply, as do those watching us now and who will be watching us throughout the week. | |
| All the best. | |
| We look forward to seeing you again next week. | |
| Keep up the good work. | |
| Thank you. | |
| Thank you, Ambassador. | |
| And coming up later today, at 10 o'clock in the morning, Jeffrey Sachs, who will be ecstatic when I tell him What Foreign Minister Lavrov said to me about him. | |
| At noon, my interview with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. | |
| It's a joint interview. | |
| Larry Johnson gets to ask some questions. | |
| A young blogger named Mario Nofal. | |
| Gets to ask some questions, and I got to ask some questions as well. | |
| At 2 o'clock on all of this, Scott Ritter. | |
| At 3 o'clock on all of this, Aaron Maté. | |
| Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. |
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