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June 3, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
24:40
AMB. Charles Freeman : Is Hegseth Picking a Fight With China?
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Wednesday, June 4th, 2025.
Ambassador Charles Freeman will be here with us in just a minute on this.
Is the American Secretary of Defense looking to pick a fight with China?
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Ambassador Freeman, welcome here, my dear friend.
Before we get to China, of course, the hot news on which I ardently seek your views is the drone attack in Russia.
Is it fair to characterize it this way, Ambassador?
The United States of America and its NATO allies just waged an attack on Russia using their proxy, Ukraine.
Well, this was apparently begun planning for in the Biden-Sullivan, probably Rishi Sunak era about a year and a half ago.
There's a real question about whether there was continuity in government and the Trump administration knew about the plan.
It seems everyone seems to have come down to the theory that the MI6 of Britain was behind it.
It was very, very dangerous.
There has been a long tradition, for good reasons, that the two sides in the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union, now the United States and Russia, exempt each other's nuclear deterrent, all elements of it, from attack.
Because to attack an element of a nuclear deterrent is regarded by both as the equivalent of a nuclear attack.
Trying to degrade the deterrent value of the other side's nuclear weapons.
Of course, Great Britain is not part of the Strategic Arms Limitations Treaty, which has been suspended, but which both sides had continued to honor in practice, nor is Ukraine.
But this has set a precedent, which is very bad, not just because of the attack on the nuclear bomber.
An obsolete bomber, the Tu-95, not made anymore.
Basically the equivalent of the B-52.
But also because of the method that was used, which was to use civilian drivers to drive trucks that had been specially engineered, to have retractable roofs full of killer drones.
I parked those and then fire the drones through the roof.
After the roof was retracted.
It doesn't appear that that much damage was done to the Russians.
Allied images show several aircraft severely destroyed and a couple damaged, but the basic fleet remains intact.
This was on the eve of the Istanbul talks, and one has to suppose that the purpose was, in part, to derail those talks, to rile up the Russians to do something crazy.
That would justify the continuation of the war, which is what the British and other Europeans want, not what President Trump wants.
So this was a disaster in terms of the precedence it set.
And it was followed, of course, by an effort to take down the bridge from the mainland of Russia to Crimea, which it also appears to have not succeeded.
Traffic is still moving across the bridge, apparently.
But that, too, seems to have involved MI6 and expectations that with the takeout of the Russian bomber force, the takeout of the bridge, the way would be clear for some sort of further assault on Crimea, which there are indications may be in the preparation.
Wouldn't a Joe Biden finding President Biden finding the signing of a statement authorizing this, they call it a presidential finding, have to be reported to President Trump?
I mean, Ambassador Freeman, is it even conceivable that the President of the United States would not know that American intel had planned, plotted, and carried this out?
I think, unfortunately, it is.
The transition was messy.
President Trump, for some reason, Does not feel that he is bound by the decisions of his predecessors.
He acts as though he is the sole authority and not occupying the office of the presidency.
And I would have to say also that his interactions with the intelligence community are brief, perfunctory, apparently uncomfortable.
They take place once a week.
In about an hour, he's to meet again with the intelligence people for a briefing.
He does it only once a week.
I don't know what he knows.
I think you can't be confident that, in fact, there was the sort of continuity that would have been appropriate.
Is it conceivable that the CIA was not involved?
Colonel McGregor seems to feel the CIA took a lead role in this, he also thinks.
Now, I suggested this to him, but I didn't even put this idea in his brain.
He also seems to think that Mossad was involved, that the nature of this attack was very reminiscent of the Pager attack that Mossad pulled off in Lebanon.
Well, I think the CIA obviously had to have been involved.
It had a very close liaison relationship with MI6, which was probably the lead agency on this.
I don't know whether Mossad was involved.
I think there is an analogy with the terrorist attack on Hezbollah that Mossad carried out through explosive pagers, but I don't think that necessarily leads to the conclusion that Mossad was involved.
On the other hand, the argument that it might have been involved is that the Israelis would like this war in Ukraine to go on.
It diverts attention from them.
It keeps the U.S. arguably tied down in their endeavors.
And it's good for ourselves.
And a lot of Israelis are, in fact, from Ukraine or Russia.
So I can't rule that out, but I don't see any evidence of it.
Here's, I don't often...
Quote Steve Bannon, but he's harshly critical of Senator Graham and seriously warning of where this could go, and he's harshly critical of President Zelensky.
Here he is on another program, another show.
I think this is Chris Cuomo's show, but I might be wrong.
I'll identify the anchor in a minute.
Cut number eight.
We can't have people over there telling the Ukrainians that we're going to back – what we're trying to do is calm this down.
What President Trump is trying to say is, look, we can't have Lindsey Graham, and particularly Zelensky, leading us into a third world war with a deep strike into Russia.
And Putin came back today and said, hey, we're going to get to the bottom of this, and we're going to see who's accountable in Ukraine and beyond.
And that was a message to the United States.
What he's doing over there right now is stirring it up.
He's giving Ukrainians false hope that we're there to support them on engaging Russia in a kinetic conflict, and we are not.
Two things ought to happen: either cancel his passport and don't land back in the country, or put him in jail if he comes back.
And people better wake up to the fact that we're getting sucked into this war.
If the intelligence community actually did this, this is an act of war against Russia.
Do the American people vote to go to war with the Russian people?
That was News Nation with my longtime friend and former colleague, Chris Cuomo.
I thought much of what Steve Bannon made sense.
Aren't there statutes or rules that prohibit members of Congress from conducting their own foreign policy?
Well, there used to be, but the presidents now are against that.
When JCPOA, the nuclear agreement was negotiated with Iran, we had 51 senators write a letter to the Ayatollah saying, don't pay attention to that man in the White House.
We're in charge and this agreement stinks.
We won't approve it.
So there's an independent branch of government that unfortunately is heard from these days mainly in irresponsible ways.
That is certainly the case with Lindsey Graham.
I agree with Steve Bannon.
This is not anything that a senator you ought to be doing.
And I note that there are increasing reports that Mr. Graham, Senator Graham, may be on the Ukrainian payroll with money that's been laundered through the Baltics and its way into his pockets or his campaigns.
So this is very unsavory and very unwise on his part.
Here's another clip.
This is President Zelensky boasting about the success, so-called success, of this drone attack.
Chris, cut number 10. Europe, together with America, has better weapons than Russia.
We also have stronger tactical solutions.
Our operation SpiderWeb yesterday proved that.
Russia must feel what its losses mean.
That is what will push it toward diplomacy.
And when Russia takes losses in this war, it's obvious to everyone that Ukraine is the one holding the line not just for itself, but for all of Europe.
Ambassador, if he means what he says, Isn't this the height of naivete that this drone attack will push Russia toward a diplomatic solution?
If anything, it will push Russia towards more aggressive military solution.
Two responses.
First, the Russians don't panic easily.
Vladimir Putin has a reputation for very cold-blooded consideration of options.
He has been very restrained in his response to this provocative action by Ukraine.
He sent his team to Istanbul to conduct the talks.
They did not reach any agreement at all except on a number of humanitarian prisoner and dead soldiers exchanges which are going forward.
They did clarify that there is no meeting of the minds at all between Ukraine and Russia on how to end this war.
President Zelensky just, in effect, confirmed that.
So the second point is that you have to regard firing weapons deep into Irkutsk in central Siberia, very far away from Ukraine, attacking Russian bases and trying to take down bridges and actually blowing up a railroad with the death of some civilians as acts of desperation on Ukraine's part.
They certainly do no good at all.
They have no effect on the steady advance of the Russian forces on the ground along the entire frontier.
They're now into Sumy, the area from which Ukraine attacked Kursk, and they continue to push west and south virtually everywhere.
Attacking the rear makes a little bit of military sense in terms of These attacks didn't affect logistics at all.
And they will have no effect on the battle that really counts, which is the one on the ground.
The level of damage, Alistair Crook says six to seven planes, General Keane.
Of course, it's on the payroll of one of these Defense Department think tanks, says 40 to 44. A, does it make a difference given the size of the Russian fleet?
B, which do you think is more accurate?
or do you have another number from your sources?
I don't have a number, but it's a very, I think Alistair Crook is very much in the ballpark, and the other estimates are what the plan was.
If it had been carried out, Does this do anything significant to Russian warfighting ability in Ukraine?
No, it does not.
Does it really degrade the Russian nuclear internal?
Not much.
These are, as I said, aircraft that went into production in 1952, about a while ago.
In that sense, they are the equivalent, as I mentioned, of the B-52.
They're still operating?
They're not being produced at all.
There was apparently one transport aircraft, an illusion, blown up.
But the satellite photography shows minimal losses, not the sort of huge losses that General Keene posits.
You know, Ambassador, I am not a fan of General Kellogg.
I don't think you are either, but this is...
If you listen to him, it almost sounds like he and the people around the president had no idea this was happening.
Chris, cut number six.
Each age has its own style of warfare, and we're seeing now drone warfare, and we're going to have to adapt to that and look at that.
And it's not so much the damage done on the bombers, which was what you call the bear, in the NATO terms, we call them bear and blackjack, because the 22s, the Tupolev 22s, those are the swept-wing ones, and they're all nuclear-capable.
But any time you attack the triad, it's not so much the damage you do on the triad itself, like the delivery vehicles, the bombers, but it's the psychological impact you have.
That was a huge embarrassment.
Well, and I think what it showed, it showed that, you know, Ukraine is not lying down on this.
Ukraine is basically, you know, we can play this game too.
And they can raise the risk level to levels that are basically, to me, they've got to be unacceptable.
Raise the risk levels to a four-star general neocon who whispers into the president's ear, unacceptable.
I don't even want to believe that.
Well, he's, I think, basically right in the sense that we've seen in this war that every escalation by Ukraine in the West has led to a counter-escalation by the Russians.
The fact that the Russians have taken their time to investigate these incidents, make sure they understand them, and before they act, is a sign of maturity on their part.
But they will act.
There will be a counter-escalation.
And General Kellogg, I believe, in another context, is quoted as outlining some of the Russian arsenal that has been held in reserve and not devoted to the war in Ukraine.
The Russians have plenty of means of upping the damage level in Ukraine.
I expect they probably will.
Transitioning to another field of your expertise, which is China.
I'm going to ask you if the Secretary of Defense is saber-rattling, but in fairness to him and to you, we'll play the clip of what he said.
Chris, cut number 13. We cannot look away and we cannot ignore it.
China's behavior toward its neighbors and the world is a wake-up call.
Any attempt by Communist China to conquer Taiwan by force would result in devastating consequences for the Indo-Pacific and the world.
There's no reason to sugarcoat it.
The threat China poses is real and it could be eminent.
We hope not.
But it certainly could be.
It has to be clear to all that Beijing is credibly preparing to potentially use military force to alter the balance of power in the Indo-Pacific.
We know.
It's public.
That Xi has ordered his military to be capable of invading Taiwan by 2027.
Ultimately, a strong, resolute, and capable network of allies and partners is our key strategic advantage.
China envies what we have together.
And it sees what we can collectively bring to bear on defense.
But it's up to all of us to ensure that we live up to that potential by investing.
What is he talking about?
Well, I thought you were going to ask me about drones, where the Chinese are the global leaders.
Please tell us.
He makes it sound as though somehow, 6,000 miles of ocean between us, the Chinese ought to be afraid of us.
Well, that's right.
But, of course, they're supplying drones to both sides in the Ukraine-Russian war, or drone parts.
Anyway, they haven't taken China's sides.
His statement, Did not go over terribly well with the audience.
The part that you just heard or you just played basically demanded that countries in the region make a choice to align themselves with the United States in a future war with China.
Absolutely none of them have made any such commitment and none of them want to make such a commitment.
And I think people in the region are well aware there are no Chinese aircraft or ships patrolling the American coast or Running provocative pseudo-attacks on our ports to see how we react.
We're in their face.
They're not in ours.
And when he talks about Chinese aggression, everybody in that audience knows that China hasn't started a war, hasn't been in a war since 1979, a war with Vietnam.
Whereas we have invaded multiple countries, and we continue to maintain troops in places like Syria.
Which are there completely illegally.
So I would say this was a talk addressed to an American audience.
It was a pep speech.
It was addressed to the extent it was to the people there, to those who are passionately pro-American or anti-Chinese.
But all of the polling data, the statements from leaders, illustrate that that number of countries is rather few.
If there are any.
A final point.
He also tried to make a point that Europeans should stick to Europe and not be helpful and not do anything in Asia.
And that didn't go over well with our European allies who think that they now have to watch out for their own interests because we won't.
So I think this is a talk that did not...
Ambassador, if the Xi government decides to use military force to dislodge the government of Taiwan, what the hell can the United States do about it?
Well, all of the war games that we've run, the scenarios we run, so that if we do intervene to stop that, By the way, this is a Chinese civil war.
Taiwan is the product of an American intervention to halt the Chinese civil war before it concluded to protect Chiang Kai-shek.
It's evolved into a robust democracy, but it's still part of a civil war situation.
If we intervene, all of the war games seem to show that we could lose two-thirds of our Navy and Air Force.
The Chinese would, too.
So we would be finished as a world power without that level of damage to our armed forces.
We don't have the ability to rebuild.
People imagine that just as in World War II, where Japan could not replace the ships and aircraft that it lost, whereas we could, and then some, that we're in that position.
But the position now is reversed.
China has 200 times the shipbuilding capability we do.
It's aircraft production.
It's able to ramp up considerably.
It spends less than 2% of GDP on its military.
We're spending not just the Defense Department budget, but another third or so on top of that, $1.5 trillion, about 5% or 6% of our GDP.
And we're in debt.
China's not.
So this is not a scenario that we ought to be looking for.
And I think we're leading with our chin.
And I don't think we'll like the result if we actually get the war that we seem to be preparing for.
Ambassador Charles Freeman, a pleasure, my dear friend, no matter what we're talking about.
Thank you so much for joining us.
We'll look forward and thank you for accommodating my schedule.
This is not your usual time.
We'll look forward to seeing you next week.
Thank you, Ambassador.
Coming up later today at two o 'clock.
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