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Jan. 19, 2023 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
31:26
Desperation Or Suicide? US To Encourage Ukraine To Attack Crimea

The New York Times is reporting that the Biden Administration is considering giving Ukraine the tools and the green light to attack Russia in Crimea, surmising that a lack of Russian escalation to this point means they will similarly not respond to a US-backed attack. What could go wrong?

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Provoking Russia: Lessons from History 00:14:09
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With us today is Daniel McAdams, our co-host.
Daniel, good to see you.
Good morning, Dr. Paul.
How are you this morning?
Very good.
Good.
Good.
Are you going to help the world out today and give them some information that they can use?
I don't know.
You know, what I think is we give them information, but it's up to them whether they want to use it or not.
It's up to them to check it out if they want.
But we'd like to make a few suggestions that the world does not have to be in this chaos.
One thing that I sort of detest are unnecessary, unconstitutional, immoral wars.
And second darely to that is how politicized things get.
You know, partisanship sometimes.
The supporters for the war in Ukraine right now is completely different party-wise than it was back when George Bush was president.
Otherwise, you can find allies when Bush is doing this stuff for Trump, but you can't, but the Democrats, you know, they're all for the war when it's necessary.
So they're back and forth traditionally.
I think they've lost their reputation about the Democrats being anti-war.
So we want to talk about a place where we're having perpetual war, and which we had warned about even before 2014.
It wasn't good, but it wasn't in the news.
But 2014, we decided to get involved, and it was obviously a very easy call to say, this is a bad idea.
Who's it going to really help?
But anyway, we went in, thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people all told, have been killed over this thing.
Russians, Ukrainians, fortunately not too many Americans, but the Americans back at home are starting to feel for it because the Americans back here at home had to pay for the thing.
So they're suffering.
They're being taxed for a ridiculous foreign policy.
And now they're talking about even doing more.
They're talking about, you know, it's said and they have already talked about a red line, but this is a big, big red line and it's moving right in.
And because we are, and our friend Douglas McGregor brought this to our attention from the New York Times, an article saying, the U.S. considering helping Ukraine strike Crimea.
Well, they've been fighting about that for a long time, but why should somebody that's suffering in his country, just surviving, have to all of a sudden be working very, very hard to go in and settle this dispute in Ukraine?
Yeah, it's very, very dangerous.
And let's put up the first clip if we can.
This is from the New York Times.
This is the article that our friend sent us over yesterday.
U.S. warms to helping Ukraine target Crimea.
The Biden administration is considering the argument that Kiev needs the power to strike at the Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014.
Of course, that's their spin on it.
My first reaction reading this, Dr. Paul, is this does not smack of confidence, but rather of desperation.
If you're confident that you're winning a war, you don't make a move like this, a very, very bold move that you are counting on not being responded to.
And here's a couple of pieces of my evidence, if I'm making this case.
Let's put the next clip on this.
It's from the article.
And this is interesting.
I highlighted a part of it and I'll emphasize it when I read it, but the Biden administration has come to believe that if the Ukrainian military can show Russia that its control of Crimea can be threatened, that would strengthen Kiev's position in any future negotiations.
Now, if you read that a couple times and think about it, this is not saying if we help Ukraine strike Crimea, they will win the war.
This essentially assumes that Crimea will, that Ukraine will lose the war, which will happen.
But it's saying if they can at least attack Crimea before they're forced to negotiate, they'll be in a better position.
And that really is kind of a twist on this idea, and you said it from the beginning, fighting, U.S. fighting Russia down to the last Ukrainian.
And that's essentially what this is.
The whole thing rests on the presumption, and it's been cooked up in the think tanks in Washington, D.C. that are funded, as you know, by the military-industrial complex.
This whole proposition rests on the supposition that Russia will not respond and will not escalate and will not confront the West if the U.S. and its allies in Europe continue to get more directly involved.
That's a big supposition when you recognize what the downside is if you're wrong.
Yeah, the word presumption is an important word because they presume that if we do A, some B is going to happen.
And almost it never does.
You know, in economics, it doesn't work that way.
In foreign policy, it doesn't work very well either.
But, you know, a lot of things, there were times the Republicans recently now said we have to tighten up on this and have a better foreign policy.
We cannot be embarrassed again by the way we had to leave Afghanistan.
And then I got to thinking, you know, Afghanistan was an awful mess, it's true, but it was a consequence of us going in and fighting this war they shouldn't have.
But what about, they even have stopped talking about it.
But the leaving of Vietnam, I think the images there were much, much worse than that.
But it was a mess.
And it's all a consequence of foreign policy, of interventionism.
And that's why we should be more supportive, not we us, of our country, more supportive of non-interventionism.
But it is hard to predict exactly what will happen many times.
I don't think in those early years when the French were losing in Vietnam and we started accelerating and the presumptions were, well, we're going to be there at least 10 years and we're going to lose, you know, 38,000 Americans, or no, it was actually more than that.
And they never assumed that would happen, but it did.
And this still has a lot of presumptions, and who knows what it'll do.
But I think this possibility of a strategy, people, I think most countries do that.
Oh, peace is coming.
So let's go and get the last square yard that we can before we have to settle and see what we can get to negotiate.
So they're already, you know, in a way, I think what you're saying, they're already negotiating what it might look like afterwards.
Well, you know, as the article points out, the U.S. started by not even really admitting that it was providing the stingers that were supposed to turn the tide in favor of Ukraine, if you remember, way, way back almost a year ago.
They wouldn't even admit that in the open.
And so when Russia didn't respond to that, then they started providing other weapons, including HIMARS and other things.
Now they're thinking about sending in Bradleys as well.
So the presumption in D.C. is because they have not responded, because Russia hasn't responded, they won't respond.
And let's put this next one up, because this is from the article in the New York Times, a very important article to read and certainly to read between the lines.
And this is what I'm saying.
But over the course of the conflict, the U.S. and its NATO allies have been steadily loosening the handcuffs they put on themselves, moving from providing javelins and stingers to advanced missile systems, Patriot air defense systems, armored fighting vehicles, and even some Western tanks to give Ukraine the capacity to strike against Russia's onslaught.
Here's what I would say about this, Dr. Paul.
Here, the Western policymakers and the think tankers and all these people in the administration are making the exact same mistake they made just in advance of the Russian attack, which is the assumption that Russia has no red lines.
And that's what they confidently predicted.
We can essentially de facto bring Ukraine in NATO.
We can arm them to the teeth.
We can train them how to kill Russians.
We can do all this with impunity.
And Putin, it doesn't matter if you like him or not, he very consistently said over the years, and he started in 2007 in Munich, he said, these are our red lines.
This is what we won't accept.
We can accept Ukraine being a NATO.
We cannot accept it being a de facto member of NATO with arms pointing to Russia.
We will act.
And the U.S. said, no, you're lying.
You're bluffing.
You're not going to act.
There's no red lines.
And they acted and they started this war based on the false presumption in Washington that there were no red lines.
Dr. Paul, they continue this mistake.
This whole article is about them continuing the mistake of assuming that Russia has no red lines.
I think really the question every American has to ask, is it worth testing Russia's commitment to defend Crimea, which they consider as part of Russia, which has voted to become part of, is it worth us risking nuclear conflict for this little peninsula's hands?
When it comes to the stupidity that's go on in this country and the tragedies on our middle streets and why the policies on immigration, all this causes it, you know.
And you say, nobody could do that on purpose.
It's all stupidity.
And it is a lot of that.
Ignorance on economics.
Oh, no, that won't happen.
But there are some people who like it.
Now, in here, I want to suggest that maybe there is an element of the wild, wild hawks.
We have hawks in this country, but a few of them are insanely hawkish.
So, yes, the red line, maybe most people say, well, no, we can reason.
They're not going to do it.
We've got to be tough and not let them run roughshod over us.
But there might be a few in there who say, what we really want is to provoke them.
You're right.
That's a good point.
And we've done that a lot over the years.
But you know, when you think, they've been provoking for a long time, ever since the Cold War sort of faded away.
They've been provoking and provoking.
And I think they want, their policies might remain the same, and their goals might remain the same.
But then, if Russia, if we can provoke Russia, then we can retaliate.
It's sort of like how we provoked Japan in World War II.
We had to do that.
And the FDR knew that.
And so the stage was sent because we provoked them into doing something.
So this is why when you have interventionism, there's so many variables.
There's no precise belief.
If you have a policy of non-intervention, you know exactly where the line should be drawn.
But your enemies know that too.
And of course, from our viewpoint, we believe it would be much better than what we do now.
You know, you just made such an important point.
And in a way, it kind of undermines everything that we try to do, which is we try to argue that if they only understood it wasn't in our interest to do this, they wouldn't do it.
But your point that you made is so important because we forget the fact that there are people who are just insane, you know, and that they actually want this.
Like you and I would say, well, they're going to provoke a nuclear war.
That's horrible.
They would say, well, we're going to provoke a nuclear war.
That sounds like a great idea.
And that unfortunately is what we're dealing with.
So we're trying to use logic and reason to make our case.
But in fact, you can't use logic and reason to people who are criminally insane.
And that's why.
Don't go looking for it.
Especially when our border, if we had problems on our borders, you might think, well, maybe we ought to deal with our borders.
Oh, no, that's off limits.
But the Ukrainian border and the Russian border, that's what we have to deal with, and it's not going so well.
Well, let's go back to the article one more time because this is another important quote, I think, if we can put that next clip up.
Contributing to the shifting thinking is a dampening of fears that targeting Crimea would drive Mr. Putin to use a tactical nuclear weapon, officials say.
And here's a quote from General Hodges, Doug Hodges. Quote, it feels to me like increasingly the administration is recognizing that the threat of Russian escalation is perhaps not what they thought it was earlier.
To which we would say, well, what if you're wrong?
It feels to him.
He gets a feeling that the reaction won't be.
Well, this is the same General Doug Hodges who chalked up such brilliant military victories as in Iraq and Afghanistan, both of which he had leadership roles in.
So basically the guy's 0 for 2, and yet somehow he's worthy of being quoted in the New York Times saying, well, it just kind of feels to me like Putin's not going to retaliate.
So what the hell?
Let's do it anyway.
Well, we're hearing a little bit of resistance from Berlin.
They're saying, well, we're not so anxious to do this.
Berlin won't allow exports of German tanks to Ukraine unless the U.S. sends their own tanks.
So it's sort of like they're tired of being patsis.
And I think there's a history there to suggest other reasons why they might not want to be sending the Ukrainians weapons.
So this is something that, you know, they don't plan on this, but it also means that the solidarity between the Allies might not be as solid as some people think.
Europe's Trade Dilemma 00:11:26
And see, the Europeans would have been much better off.
What if they were independent-minded and worked with the Russians?
You know, they might not have to worry about energy and cold houses and all these things.
But they had to go along with that.
And I always thought immediately, you know, we were putting missiles in Eastern Europe.
Why are they doing it?
Why do the people want to do it?
They're just setting themselves up.
And they're always in the negotiation instead of taking a little different position.
But it is, some people like war, and they have other reasons for doing it.
And sometimes they believe nothing bad will happen.
And they have no real goal in promoting something that looks like there could be a more peaceful arrangement.
Because there was some excitement, you know, in 1989, 1990.
You know, I can just remember very clearly, boy, this is, you know, this is good economics and it's going to help.
But it wasn't too long till we had to say, we like empire.
And the people who run the world and run our foreign policy and monetary policy, they had a different opinion.
You make a really good point about Germany and its economy because Germany was the industrial powerhouse of Europe.
They literally drove Europe, and now they're literally freezing in their homes because they don't have any gas because their government decided, A, to follow these insane green policies and destroy their entire economy, and B, basically shoot their best provider of energy in the head.
So now this great German powerhouse is nothing.
So I'm glad your reaction to that article was exactly what mine was when I first read it, which is this kind of sounds like, you know, like when kids are playing DARE.
You go do that.
No, you do it first.
And it seems to me like maybe we're reading too much into it, but maybe that solidarity, as you mentioned, it has limits.
Maybe Germany is realizing that when it looks around in its freezing country and its destroyed economy, that the U.S. is going to probably pull out of it just fine compared to Europe.
Then they convert the debate to something other than, you know, pro-war peace.
It becomes a weapons argument.
Whose weapons get sold and how far can they shoot?
Can they go 100 miles or 150 miles?
And they go on and on.
I think they sort of show that they're not interested in working on the things that we're working on.
They're working on the things of more strategy, the military-industrial complex, and who's going to run the world, and where's the oil going to come from, and all this, which you wouldn't have to worry about those things if you would have at the time, you know, when the Cold War failed and was over, I think that would have been a tremendous opportunity.
But boy, no, there were some people in charge there that had different ideas.
Well, you know, Biden and his boneheaded Democrats are hell-bent on getting us into World War III.
It seemed like they're just itching for it.
Thank goodness we have an opposition party in the U.S. Please put up this next quote.
Thank goodness we have two-part.
Oh, wait, hold on a minute.
This is from the GOP.
It's a tweet from the Armed Services Committee.
Quote, the current hand-rigging and hesitation by the Biden administration and some of our European allies in providing critical weapon systems to Ukraine stinks of the weak politics of 2021.
That's the incoming chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, and he's joined by the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Representative McCall.
So the opposition in Congress is that Biden has not done enough to antagonize and attack Russia.
That's what passes for political debate in the U.S. You know what really gets me worried when they have a conference like that or an announcement that McConnell joins somebody.
Once he's joined, it's over.
It's not going to happen.
But so sad, you just ruined my day.
I'm sorry about that.
Because we do have to talk about it.
We do have a few friends there, and maybe someday they'll wake up.
But it has to wake up from the grassroots.
That's the one thing I am just positive on.
The wars unfortunately don't get started from the grassroots.
You know, I make fun of the fact that teenagers in one country get together with teenagers in another.
Hey, wouldn't it be pretty neat if we had a war?
That's lots of fun.
No, it's always some people who have some special interest involved in weapons or strategy or whatever they want.
But that is a real problem.
It ends, though, when the people finally wake up.
But, you know, the analogy with COVID is the same thing.
Remember how it was started?
We found scientists that, what are they doing?
Very early on.
Yeah, they get fired and lose their jobs and disgraced.
And yet, when the people woke up and just take their mask off and they're sick and tired of it, it doesn't mean it's been a total victory, but at least people can get on airplanes, at least for now, without a mask on.
But there's always these people.
They're not worried about people getting COVID as much as they're worrying about, are we able to retain the power that we gained with COVID or these other wars?
This is, you know, it's a strategy of keeping power and empire and a military-industrial complex has nothing to do with trying to provide a country that is safe and secure, where, you know, people get along together and where you have a positive notion about trade.
But, you know, no matter what they do about trade now, and unfortunately, the last administration encouraged some of this conflict in trade.
That is what should be encouraged.
So what is it Germany's doing?
What if the Germans and the Russians could have had a secret conference and say, you know what, we're secret free traders.
Let's work on that together.
No, that's not going to happen.
There's going to be some big money and big talk and big bombs that will always strategize for the next big war.
Yeah.
Well, as depressing as that tweet was from the GOP leadership, and I was on a podcast the other day where I argued that those 20 holdouts, Republican holdouts in McCarthy, they have more power than they know.
And I reflected upon your work with the Liberty Committee in Congress, the Liberty Caucus, in that you don't need a huge group.
And this 20, if they could find a way to remain cohesive, they would really present almost as if a de facto political party within Congress.
You know, we only have R's and D's.
We don't have a European parliamentary system.
But if these 20 could hold the line like this, they have so much power, particularly because the House is so close between R's and D's.
They are like really a de facto opposition party.
And it would be really great to see them try to tie up because it would reduce the power of McCall and the armed services guy with the wig and all that.
It would really reduce their power if they can hold together.
If we only could go up there with some shrimp and some sandwiches every Thursday and have a lunch with these guys, we probably could get some.
That was a cheap bribe, wasn't it?
Pretty good.
It wasn't bad shrimp, that's for sure.
So are we ready to go?
I want to mention, even though this is connected in many ways, and we've talked about this in the past, but WikiLeaks cable is revealing information.
We're getting more and more information, so that's all a positive.
WikiLeak cables show U.S. new NATO expansion was Russia's bright red line.
So it wasn't like they didn't know it, and we already discussed that a bit.
But I think it's back to this whole thing.
If they know it's deliberately, why do they do it?
If they're just ridiculously stupid, then people better wake up and change things before they get us into a really, really bad situation.
But, you know, the American people, I think, are already very negative on it.
You know, I like the information that people are connecting Ukraine with their inflation because they're showing that they're paying for it.
You know, I was thinking about something the other day about, you know, the big talk now is the balanced budget.
You know, 10 years they'll have a balanced budget.
And they say, well, we have to pass the debt limit.
And, you know, I got to thinking, you know, the budget is always balanced because you can't exist if you don't.
When things were so-called balanced under Bretton Woods, it was balanced because the proof of it was you turn in dollars and you got gold, at least for foreigners.
But now you don't turn it in for gold, you turn it in for produce and products and living.
And so that is the payment.
That is the tax.
So it balances out.
We are paying for it.
We're paying for it by taxes, and the tax is the inflation tax.
So all this fanfare about this next week we're going to raise the debt limit, which is, it gives a chance for the discussion.
But, you know, I just think it's so ridiculous that when I'm still with the communists on balanced budget, they only lied to us for five years.
Now we say, oh, we need 10 years to get our house in order.
Well, this was a piece we saw in Zero Hedge, and it was for the Committee for East for Russia-U.S. Accord, I think it was called anyway.
But it points out that within the many WikiLeaks releases over the years, it's extremely evident that these policymakers knew at the time that what they were doing would provoke Russia and go over the red line.
And it kind of goes back to what you were saying earlier.
They knew it and they didn't care.
And that's what we're dealing with.
We're dealing with psychopaths.
I want to just mention one thing along this line.
Davos Zelensky, he got to go there.
I think he sent a video.
I don't think he could.
He was too busy.
He's too busy fighting.
But he tells them, well, he says, tell the Western Beckers to speed up arms delivery.
He doesn't, he's gotten a lot.
How many couple dollars worth so far?
So he's there.
There was a lot of money there.
And he has a lot of people that make money off war.
So he's still in the news, and he's going to be in the news for a while.
So it's hard to, you know, we talk a lot about what they're doing and policy is bad and could lead to this and all this.
But someday, Daniel, what we ought to do is sit here and say, what is your opinion, Daniel, of exactly the way things are going to be considering all the options that happen in one year from now or five years from now?
Waking Up to Monsters 00:02:19
We'll have a five-year plan.
Where do you think it's going at this rate?
Well, we did get a little bit of good news this morning, and I hate to have, you know, I hate to relish someone else's misfortune, but in fact, I don't really hate to do that because someone who was an absolute monster we talked about for at least two years during COVID, who was really the worst totalitarian, she made she in China look like a total free market libertarian because she was a monster.
And of course, I'm talking about the prime minister of New Zealand, Yucinda Ardern, who locked the country down completely.
She forced shots literally into everyone's arms, and now they're dropping like flies.
Well, what happened?
All of this nonsense, all of this totalitarianism made her deeply unpopular.
And she tearfully announced today that she is resigning as prime minister.
I wonder if she'll get a retirement fund.
No, she's going to get a good job in the IMF.
She's going to get a bunch of money.
But still, I don't hate to say it.
I'm glad to see that she's going down.
I'm glad to see she's such a monster.
She was, of course, a good friend of our friend Klaus Schwab and all of the WEFers.
She loved this whole thing.
And she's going down now.
And she just says, she just admits it.
I can't win the election.
Well, maybe this will wake them up because, you know, if you just ask me, in general, five years ago or so, what do you think of New Zealand?
Well, I only hear neat things about it.
And they've Read stories about civil liberties and different things.
But that is sort of the way, it reminds me of Canada a little bit.
Canada used to have a different reference.
But look at what they're doing.
But the reputation was better.
Once again, the people, and you suggest, and you're probably right, she's just fading out before she loses.
So she knows that she has spent all her popularity and that she no longer is going to get elected.
So she's getting out.
But that means that people wake up.
But what disappoints me is, why don't they wake up sooner?
That's what has to happen.
People Waking Up 00:03:13
Of course, that's why groups like ours exist because there's quite a few groups now that are influencing foreign policy and all.
And we don't know where they are because they're not going to be on the evening news.
Anyway, the good news is she's leaving.
The question is, what's coming in?
Let's hope they find somebody that's a little bit more freedom of worry in it.
Maybe they can draft you to run New Zealand.
We'll go down there and that's a lot.
I don't even fly commercial airlines.
That'd be a long way to go.
That'd be a long flight.
Well, I'm just going to close by thanking our viewers again.
We're at the end of a week for me.
Dr. Paul, of course, is a glutton for punishment.
He has to come back tomorrow and continue working.
But this is my last day of the week.
So I want to thank all of you for watching the show this week.
We do our best to try to bring you the news, to try to sprinkle it with the Ron Paul flavor, with the freedom flavor, and provide it to you as best we can.
Your tuning in shows us and encourages us to keep doing what we're doing.
When you subscribe to our channel on Rumble or YouTube or anywhere else, and you hit like, you help us get the message out.
It doesn't cost anything, and we definitely appreciate it.
So thanks again for another great week on the Liberty Report and back to you, Dr. Paul.
Very good.
And I, too, of course, want to thank my viewers for tuning in and express my same opinion that I've expressed many times.
And that is the attitude of the people very important.
And governments reflect that attitude.
That doesn't mean it's mobocracy or excessive democracy at all.
It just shows that attitudes are important and governments will change.
But my big beef is that the people wait too long.
We, who are in these organizations, try to alert people.
I always claim that we should do a better job because how can we do such a poor job or something, a philosophy that's so wonderful when you talk about the free market, sound money, non-intervention, non-violence, and a foreign policy of non-invention, this should be an easy sell.
But I tell you what, you know, the freebie people, the people say this is free, this is free, and everybody's ripping you off.
Yes, and we are being ripped off, but it's the people who systematically run their affairs so that the middle class gets wiped out.
And that's why I've been so interested in monetary policy.
And right now, I already complained today that the people in this country have to, you know, they balance the budget by being taxed.
So you raise the taxes and we pay for everything we get.
The idea is we print the money and then we dilute the value, we inflate, and then the prices go up.
And that's the tax.
So this is the reason why economics is so important to understand because even though people try to separate, say, economic policies over here and it's sterile, and then there's a foreign policy that's over here, I don't think that's true at all.
I think there's only one policy and that's the protection and the understanding of what it is to live in a free society where personal liberty is protected.
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