Nov. 17, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
25:45
Scott Ritter : NATO’s Ukraine Strategy Is Collapsing
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is in the United States.
Today is Monday, November 17th, 2025.
Scott Ritter joins us from Moscow, where I think it is early morning on Tuesday.
Scott, it's a pleasure, my dear friend.
Thank you for staying up late.
Thank you for accommodating my schedule.
I want to talk to you about NATO's collapsing Ukraine strategy.
But before I do, what would be the purpose and what would likely be the cost of the United States deploying an armada of Navy ships off the coast of Venezuela?
The purpose would be intimidation.
I can't see any real, look, Venezuela has a well-trained army.
It has militia that numbers in the millions.
And it doesn't matter how many ships we have off the coast of Venezuela.
We're not going to be able to deploy or offload hundreds of thousands of Marines or soldiers from these ships.
We're talking several thousand Marine combat forces available.
So I think it's primarily intimidation.
There is significant strike capability inherent in these ships.
So, you know, we could try and launch some sort of decapitation strike or an effort to suppress Venezuela's military in support of a coup that the CIA might be plotting.
But primarily, it's purely intimidation.
What would something like this cost?
I mean, no one really knows how many ships are there, but you could probably calculate it.
I mean, the Gerald R. Ford, the largest aircraft carrier we have, doesn't travel alone.
It must travel with a small armada of its own.
Are we talking about hundreds of millions, maybe a billion dollars in taxpayer dollars to put all those ships down there in that place at that time?
Yeah, we are talking about a lot of money, probably hundreds of millions of dollars, you know, for the time being.
We'll see what happens, how long they stay there.
But, you know, it is a significant cost.
You know, and the war with Venezuela was not a pre-planned cost.
So it comes out of an operational budget that's already strained by our having naval forces deployed in the Middle East, our European deployments, our deployments in the Pacific.
So this is a strain on the defense budget, and it is U.S. taxpayer money.
And one has to ask, you know, why do we have the U.S. Navy sailing off of the shores of a foreign country when the United States Congress hasn't deemed there to be a threat worthy of war?
What legitimate moral, legal, military target would there be for these ships and their support personnel to attack?
Nothing legitimate.
This would be an illegal war of aggression that we would be carrying out against Venezuela based upon a manufactured excuse.
The Venezuela drug excuses, you know, the modern day equivalent of the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction excuse, non-existent threats made up simply to provide a president with a political cover for carrying out a war of aggression, a war of choice.
We don't need to go to war with Venezuela.
Venezuela does not pose a threat against the United States or our allies.
So this is simply a war of choice.
And because there is no foundation in international law, indeed, there's no constitutional foundation for what the president's about to do, it makes it purely an illegal war of aggression.
Earlier today, the president said in one of his off-the-cuff shoot from the hips remarks that he might engage in negotiations with Maduro.
Well, first of all, they don't consider Maduro the valid, Marco Rubio doesn't consider Maduro the lawful president of Venezuela, but what is there for them to negotiate?
Well, I mean, again, we come back to when we talked about the fleet off the coast, you know, purely intimidation.
I think the negotiation would be somewhere along the lines of Maduro should leave Venezuela and allow the United States to put a government in his stead and to avoid bloodshed, to avoid the violence.
I believe this would be what the United States going in negotiation would be.
Moving over to NATO.
Does NATO want a wider war with Russia than the one it is already waging in Ukraine?
No, first of all, NATO can't fight a wider war.
There's no military capacity to fight such a war.
This is about political posturing by leaders in the NATO alliance for their domestic audiences to justify increased defense spending.
So they talk about, first of all, any rhetoric that comes out of NATO speaks of a war by 2029, 2030.
It's 2025, soon to be 2026, but several years off.
So we're not talking about anything that's practical or real.
We're talking about theory, which means that it's not serious.
You don't articulate a threat and then say, well, we're going to deal with this threat in five years.
That means it's not a threat.
So this is just purely political posturing of the stupidest kind.
Are there German, British, Polish, French, or any of those troops, boots on the ground in Ukraine as we speak?
There may be advanced parties.
There might be a handful of soldiers going in to do advanced force preparations, scouting out locations where theoretically they could deploy troops.
But nobody in NATO is talking about sending troops in right now.
All of the scenarios say that we will send troops into Ukraine once a ceasefire has been achieved.
But even then, there's a heavy caveat because Europe won't send troops into Ukraine without American backing and America won't back this.
So this is purely a politicized deployment of a handful of troops who will be carrying out the kind of advanced preparation work, scouting out potential locations, identifying lines of communications and things of that nature that would allow planning to take place.
But Europe isn't going to send a single troop into a single combat force into Ukraine until there's a ceasefire.
And Russia's already said there ain't going to be no ceasefire.
How precarious is President Zelensky's hold on the presidency, even though we know it's not a lawful one, it is a significant one.
Now that the corruption has been identified, the corrupt characters were two of his closest collaborators.
Are fingers pointing at him?
I mean, realistically, yes, fingers are pointing to him.
Again, so long as the European powers that be that back him want him to be, continue to be the president of Ukraine, these corruption charges aren't going to stick to him.
That's why they're rounding up the Minister of Justice, or I think it's Energy and the Minister of Justice.
You know, Zelensky is the Teflon president at this juncture.
The moment the charges stick is the moment you realize that Europe has said enough, he's out.
Does Europe recognize, as far as you can tell, the degraded, seriously degraded position of the Ukrainian military?
There's no doubt that genuine intelligence professionals, and I do believe Europe does possess some, are reporting back through their channels about the reality of the situation on the ground.
But understand that Europe is being heavily politicized in regards to Ukraine.
The British are carrying out one of the most massive information warfare operations as we speak, designed to keep Ukraine in the fight.
And a key aspect of that is to minimize Russian gains and maximize the potential of Ukraine to continue defense, therefore justifying the continued expenditure of European money into Ukraine.
But you're starting to see the European media embrace reality.
A gentleman who writes for Die Veldt, I believe, a German journalist who has been very pro-Ukrainian and very anti-Russian has finally written a piece that says it's over for Ukraine.
They don't stand a chance.
Does the European leadership, Kayakalas, Vander Leyen, Mertz in Germany, Starmer in Great Britain, Maloney in Italy, Macron in France, recognize the inevitable?
We have to remember that their fates are linked to Ukraine, meaning that if Ukraine collapses, they collapse.
So it's not a matter of them recognizing the inevitable.
It's a matter of their survival.
And so politicians have a way of deluding themselves and lying to their respective constituencies in order to sustain their political viability.
And I believe that's what the case is.
There's not a single one of those leaders who honestly believes that Ukraine is doing well.
But all of them know that if Ukraine collapses, so too does their political fortunes.
Is CIA still on the ground in Ukraine and using satellites to help Ukraine target Russian troops and kill them?
I mean, personally, I don't know.
I mean, I would believe that the CIA retains a residual capability, probably not frontline capability.
And they're backed by joint special operations forces.
I believe what is happening with Ukraine resembles what Joint Special Operation Forces were doing in Syria, where they provide units with these laptop capabilities that allow for an interface with satellite information and that we are feeding the Ukrainians the intelligence they need to carry out operations.
But this allows us not to have personnel right there on the front line, but further back in a support role.
And I believe that both Joint Special Operations and the CIA paramilitary operatives have a residual presence on the ground in Ukraine.
Is Donald Trump telling the truth when he says he wants peace in Ukraine or are his hands tied by the neocons around him and the Zionists who funded him and he knows it?
You know, more and more, I begin to question whether or not Donald Trump was ever serious about peace, because when you look at the terms that he was seeking to achieve through his negotiation, it was the equivalent of a Russian surrender.
And we can never forget that Donald Trump, this is his second term, his first term from 2017 to 2021 was marked by the fact that he was very aggressive towards Russia when it came to Ukraine, providing Ukraine with offensive weaponry, allowing the CIA to put over 20 bases on the ground in Ukraine to actively train the Ukrainian forces to fight and kill Russians.
That was the sole purpose of the training.
And so, you know, when Donald Trump comes in today and says, you know, that war would never have happened had I been president, I doubt it because he was pushing for that war.
And even though Joe Biden started this conflict in terms of the shooting aspects of it, you know, Trump says he wants peace, but peace on his terms, which means it's not peace.
It will never be peace.
It's designed to be a peace that weakens Russia and allows the United States and Europe to continue the process of isolating Russia, collapsing Russia's economy, degrading Russia's political-societal relationship and bringing down Vladimir Putin, which ultimately remains the goal of the United States and Europe in terms of their official policy.
So no, Donald Trump is lying when he says he wants peace.
Peace is a mantra he's using to pursue regime change policies against Russia.
Do you think that he embraces the idea of Newland, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Tony Blinken, Joe Biden, that Ukraine can be used as a battering ram with which to drive Vladimir Putin from office?
That's the policy he had in his first four years.
Yeah, that's the policy he inherited from Joe Biden.
Remember, Joe Biden didn't invent this.
He inherited much of what's taking place from the Trump administration, which was there for four years before Biden.
So I just think that the Trump administration is not being honest.
It's something the Russians are very aware of, that the foundational, you know, the policy objectives have not changed from the time Joe Biden was president to Trump.
We still, Scott Benson, he comes straight out and says, we want to collapse the Russian economy.
Now, if you want peace and you want friendship with Russia, do you really want to go down the path of saying, I'm going to collapse the Russian economy?
No, we seek the military defeat of Russia.
That's what a ceasefire is.
It means that Ukraine has fought the Russian army to a standstill.
That's what we are pursuing.
So, you know, the bottom line is, yes, Trump is pursuing a policy that seeks to bring down Vladimir Putin.
He inherited this policy from Biden, but he hasn't changed it.
And I believe that he was hoping that he could convince Putin to a ceasefire that the United States would then use to put itself in a superior position strategically vis-a-vis Russia, but Putin's not playing that game.
Could you argue, not only did Biden, that Biden inherited this from Trump because of Trump's over-the-top arming?
of Ukraine in his first term and that what is now in Trump's lap was triggered by Trump's decisions eight years ago.
100%.
That's been my argument the whole time.
He keeps saying this is Joe Biden's war.
And I say that's just a straight out lie.
This is Donald Trump's war.
This is the war that Donald Trump wanted when he was the president in the first term.
This is the war that he was advocating for.
This is the posture that he assumed.
These are the policies that he endorsed.
So this is Donald Trump's war.
He's just not man enough to own it.
Here he is yesterday talking about new sanctions.
It's a little ridiculous, Scott.
New sanctions on Russia.
Chris Cutt number three.
Yeah, they're doing that, and that's okay with me.
They're passing legislation or putting the Republicans are putting in legislation that's very tough.
It's sanctioning, et cetera, et cetera, on any country doing business with Russia.
They may add Iran to that, as you know.
I suggested it.
So any country that does business with Russia will be very severely sanctioned.
We may add Iran to the formula.
These secondary sanctions affected Russia in any material or significant way?
You've been traveling around Russia for the past couple of weeks.
Look, every Russian I speak to, and I had some very significant interviews in the last couple of days, they say sanctions bite.
There's no doubt about it.
I mean, it's not the normal way of doing business, but Russia has adapted to them, and the Russian economy continues to grow.
Right now, it enjoys a growth rate of, what, 4.8%?
What's the American growth rate?
1.6, 1.8.
So, you know, Russia's economy is doing far better than the American economy when it comes to growth.
You know, they had to make adjustments and they continue to have to make adjustments.
No economy realistically wants to go into war footing because that's just not the way to make economies boom.
And Russia's had to go into a war footing with its defense industry.
So that overheats the economy.
It leads to inflationary trends.
All of this is impacting the Russian economy.
But the day-to-day existence of the Russians is of a very high quality.
It's a stable economy, a stable existence.
There's no gas lines.
Prices of food are normal.
Yes, there's inflation.
There's no doubt about that.
And that's brought on by the economic consequences of sanctions.
But the idea that sanctions are choking out Russia is absurd.
The sanctions are choking out Europe.
And if Donald Trump continues this stupidity, he's going to find that the world isn't going to buy into his threats, his intimidation.
And it'll be the United States that's isolated, not Russia.
How does Sergei Lavrov, the foreign minister of Russia, deal with a guy like Marco Rubio that doesn't even want to talk to him?
Well, the story going around is very directly.
Lavrov has been accused of being a little bit undiplomatic in his phone call with Marco Rubio basically laying down the law and prompting Rubio to not only terminate the conversation, but pull out of Budapest.
And there was rumors that Lavrov was on the way out because of this, but no, the Kremlin has came out and said they have full trust and confidence in Lavrov.
Lavrov's back out there making the same pronouncements.
The reality is I think there was There was a movement inside the Kremlin that wanted to believe in the Alaska momentum and wanted to believe, and some magic still remained.
But the reality is the Trump administration just isn't serious about peace with Russia at this point in time.
You saw that with Donald Trump's statement.
You see that with everything Marco Rubio says.
And the point I make over and over again, there's only one pathway to peace with the United States between Russia and the United States, and that's 100% total Russian victory in Ukraine.
Until that happens, Trump will be tied down by his own legacy, Marco Rubio by his own hatred.
Russia needs to end the potential of Ukraine being a tool that can be used to undermine Russia once and for all with a decisive military victory.
And that's the general approach that Russia's taking.
I mean, I can't speak on behalf of Vladimir Putin or whatever attempt to, but every Russian I've spoken to agrees that not only is that what's needed, but that's the direction Russia's heading.
President Putin back in September offered to extend the terms of the New START treaty beyond their legal conclusion in February of 2026.
The New START treaty, of course, you know this better than anybody on the planet, puts a cap on certain types of weapons.
Why has the United States not even responded to that very magnanimous, moral, legal offer by President Putin?
Well, one of the main reasons is because Marco Rubio fired all of our arms control specialists back in July.
1,300 State Department employees, many of whom were employed in the arms control bureaus or the bureaus dealing with Russia, are gone.
We don't have anybody in America that is capable of thinking about arms control right now.
There's no serious effort on the part of the United States to follow through.
Two, you know, the United States is very worried about China right now.
Because we flexed our muscles in and around Taiwan and made not so veiled hints that if there was a war with Taiwan, it could go nuclear.
China said, okay, if you want to go nuclear, then let's go nuclear.
We're going to stop our moderate-sized nuclear arsenal that was at 200, and we're going to modernize this, increase the number of missiles, increase the number of weapons.
Today, 500 to 700 weapons are growing to be over 1,000 by 2030.
This new start cap is 1,550, but Russia has 1,550.
Now, if China has 1,000, that puts the United States behind.
And so the stupidity of American policy, combined with the fact that we don't have any capacity to engage in arms control, has resulted in a situation where the United States finds itself at a strategic disadvantage.
And so there's a lot of pressure being put on the president to wait when this treaty ends to go ahead and immediately start to increase the number of warheads deployed on Minuteman 3 that gives us great options and things of that nature.
Why in his right mind would a Secretary of State fire all of his arms control specialists?
Aren't they vital to a long-term peace?
They are if your interests are long-term peace or arms control, but this administration's interests aren't long-term peace and it isn't arms control.
You know, the Trump administration has embraced this mantra of peace through strength, but that means you have to be strong.
And, you know, it's being strong is one thing.
If you're, you know, Teddy Roosevelt, speak softly, but carry a big stick.
Donald Trump ain't to speak softly kind.
His strength comes from his verbal diarrhea, where he flexes muscles that he no longer has.
I mean, this is a man who, you know, has created a cult of personality.
People surrounding him love everything he says and treats it as if it's the gospel.
But his words are so far removed from reality, it's not funny.
But Marco Rubio came in and was told to cut the State Department.
He looked at skill sets that weren't going to be in demand under the Trump administration and he terminated them.
Wow.
Scotty, it's been a long couple of weeks for you, a long day.
Thank you very much for joining us.
Will you be home by Thanksgiving?
I will.
I will definitely be home by Thanksgiving.
Good.
I'm sure your family will be happy to see you, and we'll be happy to see you as well.
Thank you for joining us, my dear friend.
Safe travels.
We'll look forward to seeing you next week.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you.
Coming up tomorrow, very interesting day for you.
At eight in the morning, Ambassador Chas Freeman.
At 10 in the morning, Aleister Crook.
At 1 in the afternoon, Sheriff David Hathaway.
David Hathaway is the sheriff of Santa Cruz County, Arizona, but he's formerly in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration investigations in Latin America.
And will he have a lot to discuss with us about the extrajudicial murders the Pentagon is visiting on Latin American fishermen?