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March 13, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
28:04
Pepe Escobar : The Ceasefire Kabuki
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Thursday, March 13th, 2025.
From midnight in Thailand, Pepe Escobar joins us now.
Pepe, a pleasure, my dear friend.
My pleasure.
I want to talk to you at some length about what you have characterized as the kabuki ceasefire.
But before we do...
I had an unbelievable week last week in Moscow, but I must relate one incident to you.
As I was walking into a very, very fine restaurant called the Bolshoi.
It's in the same block as the Bolshoi Ballet.
A man and his wife are coming out, and the man says to me, are you Judge Napolitano?
And I said, yes.
And then he goes, are you friends with Pepe Escobar?
I'm embarrassed.
Pepe is better known than I am.
No, definitely not, George.
Does Marco Rubio manifest a full understanding of the complexities of international diplomacy when he makes an announcement like, we just cut a deal with the Ukrainians,
it's up to you, the Russians, to take it or leave it?
Does he know what he's doing?
No. Obviously not.
First of all, because he's not an experienced diplomat, like you just saw earlier this week in Moscow, what is the greatest diplomat of our times, how does he behave, how he organizes his thought,
how he understands the other, whatever the other is.
Power or a small country in Africa.
It doesn't matter.
This is a true diplomat.
I proposed the characterization of this bombastic ceasefire as a kabuki, as you mentioned, but as a kabuki inside a matryoshka.
So you have the typical Russian matryoshka with lots of kabuki masks inside.
And you start peeling off the masks, and at the end...
Probably you have the mini kabuki mask inside the matryoshka.
It's a Minsk tree dancer.
And you cannot disguise her anymore.
There are no more masks to peel off.
So, obviously, Rubio could never understand that if he said that in public for the world public opinion to digest, you have to back it with facts.
And he didn't have any facts in hand.
It's very simple.
Because Rubio or even President Trump, they don't have the cards.
Who has the cards?
President Putin.
So what happened just a few minutes ago?
The Putin press conference after the meeting with Lukashenko.
And it was something absolutely extraordinary.
It was really a bombshell.
He ripped the notion of a ceasefire based on literally nothing.
And he proposed a true conversation where the ceasefire is included.
So he started qualifying what the ceasefire will be.
And it was a masterpiece.
It was like a Caravaggio painting the chiaroscuro in the painting.
Amazing. Absolutely amazing.
He talked about Kursk.
He talked about a long-term resolution.
Peace long-term, not a gimmick, which is this notion of the Rubio ceasefire is.
And now we have the president of the Russian Federation saying basically, yes, we accept the ceasefire, but this is what we have to discuss about the ceasefire and around the ceasefire.
This is also called diplomacy, because it didn't reject the American proposal.
So do you think that the Americans believe that Putin will drop his four or five demands, which he's made since day one?
Exactly. Neutrality, territorial sovereignty, new elections, no NATO, no military.
Are the Americans naive enough to think that?
Before you answer that, here is the actual announcement.
Today, we made an offer that the Ukrainians have accepted, which is to enter into a ceasefire and into immediate negotiations to end this conflict in a way that's enduring and sustainable.
We'll take this offer now to the Russians, and we hope that they'll say yes, that they'll say yes to peace.
The ball is now in their court.
We also got into substantive details on How this war is going to permanently end.
We have a named delegation in terms of next steps from the Russian side.
We have a named delegation in terms of next steps from the Ukrainian side.
I will talk to my Russian counterpart in the coming days.
Secretary Rubio will be with G7 foreign ministers in the next couple of days.
We have the NATO Secretary General in the White House.
Is it me or are they amateurs?
Amateurs. Absolutely amateurs.
Not to mention Tutti Frutti or Ruti, the NATO Secretary General, former Prime Minister of Holland.
And they are inconsequential.
So G7 meeting...
Obviously, this is a negotiation between Washington and Moscow.
It's very, very clear.
Washington and the Foreign Minister Lavrov knows this.
Washington is not a neutral.
Washington is a co-belligerent in the war.
In fact, they started the war, Judge.
Yes. To be precise, this is a war started by...
Let's say the Washington Axis, all those silos in power in Washington that even before 2014 and Maidan agreed that we have to launch another operation to undermine Russia,
harass Russia and maybe dismantle Russia.
Short-term or long-term.
This was even before Meidan.
Accelerated with Meidan and accelerated when turbo after the SMO three years ago.
So this was an American proxy war against Russia from the beginning.
And now we have the purely Kafkaesque situation of the party who actually launched the war is posing as the mediator.
Call our friends in the past.
What does that mean?
So in one week, Rubio and Waltz made this ridiculous announcement.
Trump announced the reopening of the Biden-era pipeline to continue to deliver military and intelligence aid to Kiev.
And Kiev...
Sent 250 drones to attack residential neighborhoods in Moscow.
Yes, exactly.
How does the Kremlin view all of that happening at the same time?
Exactly at the same time.
It was, if I'm not mistaken, 354 drones in total, most of them sent against Moscow.
And the seriousness of...
Of this was reflected by Putin's visit to Gerasimov in Kursk wearing a military uniform for the first time since the beginning of the SMO three years ago.
This was immensely symbolic for every Russian.
I would imagine that the image of him in a military uniform is all over the eastern part of the globe.
Absolutely, Judge.
Everywhere, all across East Asia, Central Asia, West Asia, and across Eurasia.
I am in this little corner here, Southeast Asia.
So we had this, and what he said to Gerasimov and his briefing after listening to Gerasimov.
Who is Gerasimov?
Is that the commanding general on the ground?
Yes, the head of the general staff, General Gerasimov, which, by the way, is extremely respected by the Ukrainians, including Zaluzhny.
Zaluzhny, which the Brits are grooming to be the next leader in Ukraine, he profoundly respects.
Okay. Well, the fact that Putin went to Kursk in military fatigues and saying, look, more or less he was saying, look, I ordered you to finish this operation as soon as possible.
Congratulations on what you have done already.
But let's finish as soon as possible.
There are two options for the remaining Ukrainian fighters.
Surrender or die.
Literally. Renaud, look at your screen.
Yes. That is President Putin in the military here speaking with General Gerasimo.
Exactly. And very, very important.
So this was the, I would say, the confluence of...
The victory in Kursk, which is now inevitable, and those 354 drones against several targets all across the Russian Federation, which was a desperate last-minute gambit by the Ukrainians to prove to their Western backers,
look, we can still do something.
We are harassing the Russians.
So, considering that Putin had to go to Kursk to make his point in Kursk that it's essential to finally liberate Russian territory in Kursk and then surrender or die for the Ukrainians and very very important all the mercenaries and there are a lot of foreign mercenaries in Kursk they will be treated as mercenaries
and they are not protected by the Geneva Convention Ritter says That they will all be executed on the spot, which under the convention would be lawful.
Exactly. If they are executed en masse, it will be lawful because they are not protected by Geneva.
So when we put this all together and the fact that immediately afterwards, like one day after that, he goes on this press conference after meeting with Lukashenko.
It was a very important meeting of the Union State.
Russia and Belarus.
And after that was a press conference.
And there is this absolutely bombshell press conference where he actually accepts the ceasefire and gives the list of everything that has to be discussed, including what everybody knows since at least June last year.
The main conditions.
Neutral Ukraine, no NATO or European peacekeeping forces, analyzing the root causes.
of the war, what led to the war even before Beidun and even before the beginning of the SMO3 years ago, and of course part of a larger diplomatic military and geopolitical conversation with the Americans.
So, look, let's have some civilized rules of the game from now on between both of us superpowers.
Very interesting.
Now, I had, before I ask you about the talk that you observed by the Chinese foreign minister, I had a marvelous two and a half hours, two hours taped, half hour, some small talk,
with one of the...
Probably the most brilliant diplomat in the world today, Sergei Lavrov.
I was deeply moved that I was invited.
There were only three of us that got to question him.
One of them was another colleague of ours, Larry Johnson.
I saw the whole thing, Judge, of course.
You saw the whole thing.
He gives long, long answers.
And then, of course, he has a small talk with you.
But you said in your note to me that as a result of your observations of this, You, Pepe Escobar, had some questions for me.
Yes. Can I play the journalist for only two minutes, George, if you allow me?
What do you mean play a journalist?
You're one of the world's best known and highly regarded journalists.
Okay. My first question is very instinctive.
What was your gut feeling of sitting down with...
The foremost diplomat of our times.
What did you feel, you know, beneath all his brilliance and what he was telling you?
The man behind it.
What was your instinct when you started to analyze the man, Sergei Lavrov?
Very relaxed, very down to earth, very, if I can use the diplomatic phrase, disarming.
So he said to me, when I first arrived, I went directly to the studio.
When I first arrived in Moscow on Thursday, I went directly to the studios of our mutual friend, Dmitry Symes, to debate a 30-minute segment of his show, The Great Game, which is the political talk show that the elites all watch in Russia.
So now it is Monday morning, and I'm in the formal reception rooms.
Of the foreign ministry in Moscow.
And he says to me, I'm disappointed in you, Judge Napolitano.
Why? What happened?
You came to Moscow and you first went to Dmitry Sainz.
And I have to wait five days to meet you.
The next time you come to Moscow, you come to me first.
You come to me first.
Very disarming.
And then we were chatting and he says...
So in the old days, I lived in the same neighborhood where you live.
He obviously knows where my apartment is in New York City, which is very close to the UN.
So he knows I live there, and he said, I know that neighborhood because I lived there for 10 years from 81 to 91. Very disarming and very normal, very gracious.
What was a little out-of-body experience was his very, very long...
Highly articulate answers.
I'm thinking to myself, am I really sitting in the conference room of the foreign minister of Russia, listening to him answer my questions and the questions of my colleagues, or am I dreaming this?
In detail.
In a very sophisticated manner.
Very detailed.
One of my questions was a double-part question.
After he answered the first part, which took about 15 minutes, he looked at me, made eye contact, and then he remembered the second half of the question, and he launched into a dissertation like that.
He also said to me afterwards, I'll stop trying to imitate him, I hope you didn't think my answers were too long.
Now, I did, but I wasn't going to say anything.
He said, you're lucky you're not Tucker Carlson, because President Putin's first answer to him was 45 minutes long.
And we learned later that Tucker had to go to the restroom.
What? You can't make this stuff up.
So for you, this was an outstanding experience in your professional life, wasn't it?
It surely was.
Yes, it surely was.
I thought of you because of your linguistic skills and because you know all these people.
For me, it was a novel experience.
You know, I had security when I was on the bench, but the level of security in Moscow to go anywhere near a government official is truly...
Yes. Extraordinary, but comforting.
I mean, at that moment in my life, I was probably one of the best protected people on the planet because I enjoyed the benefits of everybody that was there to protect him.
I did speak to Maria.
Refresh me on her last name.
Zakarp. And I said to her, you know, Maria, you are always welcome on Judging Freedom.
She said, well, we watch Judging Freedom here.
I said, we like to watch Judging Freedom with you on.
She said, we'll see if we can arrange it.
So like a diplomat, she didn't say yes, and she didn't say no.
Judge, seriously, everybody that is anybody in Moscow watches your show.
Seriously. And they comment afterwards.
And then when we meet, you know, foreigners and Russians and all that.
Always something that happened during the show is part of the conversation.
Well, my second question is very, very simple.
What about Moscow, Judge?
Isn't that absolutely dazzling?
It is absolutely dazzling.
Now, I stayed in a hotel near...
You stayed in the Metropole, right?
I stayed in the Metropole, which is the place to stay, right near Red Square.
That's the older part of the city.
It reminded me of downtown Manhattan.
Not midtown, downtown.
Downtown Manhattan.
But still hustling, bustling, and beautiful.
Some narrow alleyways and winding streets.
It was gorgeous.
But the financial district.
You went to Moscow City.
The dollars.
Yes. It's like midtown Manhattan.
I mean, the towers are unbelievable.
They're enormous.
They're gorgeous.
It also reminded me of Doha because everything is shiny, gleamy, ultra-modern architecture.
They have towers that go every which way.
It was absolutely spectacular.
And I could tell from the people moving, these are not vacant spaces that landlords are looking for tenants.
These are places filled with workers, mainly bankers and others in the financial industry.
The American public has a Joe Biden Cold War image of Russia as it existed perhaps in the Soviet days when Ronald Reagan declared it an evil empire.
And it was at the time.
It no longer is.
It is a place of free market, free expression.
Serious, serious Orthodox Christianity.
And happy.
Happy. And I'm sure you saw that everything works perfectly.
Not to mention the cleaning list, the organization of the city.
I did not see a single pothole.
And we were way outside of the city on the highways.
For one day.
And the other days we were all over the city.
Not a single pothole.
Traffic jams just like in Manhattan.
You know what I also didn't see?
Larry Johnson pointed this out to me.
Cops. Here in New York there are police on every street corner.
I don't think I saw three or four policemen in the whole time that I was there.
The only time I saw them was when they encountered me at the airport.
But I didn't see them on the streets.
They are very discreet.
I'll tell you where they are, Judge, sometimes.
In certain metro stations, because they are running ID checks on immigrants.
Because this is now a serious problem.
Because they are extremely worried about some Central Asian immigrants who could be Salafi jihadis in disguise.
Well, look, I was with Professor Dugan.
His daughter was murdered in an attack that was aimed at him.
Of course.
And the perpetrators were Ukrainian intelligence agents.
I was not unmindful of that, though I didn't have any fear while I was there.
Maybe I was naive, but I didn't have any fear at all.
But you were extremely well protected, Judge and Larry, but you don't see them.
No, you don't see them.
Right. Tell us about...
They're all over the place, but you don't see them.
Tell us about...
The foreign minister of China, engagement with Trump, Gaza, and the EU.
This was immensely important.
It was at the end of the two sessions in Beijing last week, which is the session where they organized economic policy for the year ahead, 2025.
And on Friday, Wang Yi had his special press conference where...
He more or less set the tones for Chinese foreign policy for 2025.
And in the column that I wrote, I got the major takeaways on relations with Russia, relations with the US, relations with the Global South, Wang Yi.
He went out of his way, as usual, to position China as a member of the Global South.
The Chinese hate to qualify themselves as a superpower, which they are de facto now.
No. We are one of...
They don't even say leaders.
We are part of the global south.
Gaza, of course, same thing, the official Chinese position.
Only 50% of...
Israel, Palestine, geopolitically was achieved.
The other 50% has to be done.
It has to be done as soon as possible.
And of course, it's very tricky the way they talk directly about American policy that goes against China or try to contain China.
But basically, he said...
If they try to contain us and if they try to be our friends at the same time, this is not going to work.
You cannot be both.
You have to choose, essentially.
So if American policy with Trump 2.0 is going to be aggressive, China will retort in style.
So he didn't rinse his words about that.
But he was very conciliatory and he focused essentially on the global south.
On BRICS, on Belt and Road Initiative, on this dual track of China of lots of investments.
This was basically the speech by the Premier, Lin Chiang.
They're going to grow.
They plan to grow 5% a year this year, which is an enormous challenge.
They did it last year.
Last year, they grew 4.9%.
So they can do it 5% this year.
And he detailed, you know, incentives.
We're going to try to solve many of these problems, including real estate crisis, unemployment, going to create 12 million new jobs, etc.
And when you put together the prime minister and Wang Yi together in one week, setting the tone for domestic policy and Chinese foreign policy, you see how they got the drive.
And they don't need to, you know, we are surfing the way.
We are the top of the way.
They don't need to say it because it's obvious for everybody.
There are American neocons, as you know, who think we can use the foreign policy of the United States to drive a wedge between Russia and China.
Do you think that's even possible?
No, of course it's not.
And he was very specific about that.
Anything you try, and he didn't...
Refer specifically to the United States.
He said, any foreign actors that try to drive a wedge between Russia and China are destined to fail.
And this is what he says in public literally every week.
And this is what your new friend, Sergey Lavrov, also says in public every week.
Because this is an extremely complex...
Wide-ranging and comprehensive strategic partnership.
Of course, there are lots of small problems.
I'll give you just an example, if I can, in 20 seconds.
Sure. One of the trade corridors from using the Trans-Siberian from Western China to go to Europe.
They go through Russia.
So the Russians started to stop a lot of these cargo trains because they identified that some dual-use material could end up in Ukraine.
They told the Chinese, look, we have this kind of problem.
The Chinese, okay, we need to solve it.
Otherwise, we cannot use this corridor anymore.
And we should use other corridors instead of yours.
So they're trying to...
Reach an agreement about that.
So there are problems and there are challenges, and it's not a completely smooth relationship.
It cannot be.
But they talk to each other at the diplomatic level, at the trade level, defense level, customs level, you name it.
That's the difference.
This is what diplomacy is all about, essentially.
Right. Pepe, thank you.
Thank you for one of our more wide-ranging and enjoyable, they're all enjoyable, but one of our more enjoyable Conversations.
Deeply appreciated, my friend.
I was so happy to see you in Russia.
I was so happy to see you in Russia, and I could tell that you were enjoying yourself.
Next time with you, my friend.
All the best.
Thank you.
Wonderful. All the best.
Thank you so much.
Thanks, everybody.
Coming up later today at 3 o'clock Eastern on all of this, Professor John Mearsheimer, and at 4 o'clock Eastern on all of this, Colonel Larry Wilkerson, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.
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