NATO, Ukraine, and Israel w/Prof. Jeffrey Sachs
Transcript:
Andrew Napolitano
Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for judging freedom. It is five o'clock in the afternoon and October 9 2023, here on the East Coast of the United States. It is eight o'clock in the morning and October 10 in Australia, where our intrepid guest finds us Professor Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University a long way from home, but happily giving us some of his valuable time. Professor Sachs, thanks very much for joining us.
Jeffrey Sachs
Great to be with you again.
Andrew Napolitano
What's happening in Israel as we speak Professor Sachs?
Jeffrey Sachs
Well, I'm just reading the news service reports. So I have no inside information at all. Of course, the situation is, is horrific. This mass, horrific terrorist killing on the one side and Israel, now bombing Gaza, one of the most densely populated parts of the world and saying that it is besieging Gaza cutting off all fuel, food, electricity, water. It's, of course, a catastrophe from a humanitarian point of view, a catastrophe from a political and social point of view. So in horrible circumstances like this, you know, the reactions can compound the disasters and many fold, we experienced 911 in the United States, and ended up launching several wars, in response that were also disastrous for the United States and for those places affected. So it's really important in these tumultuous, and horrible moments, to think about consequences and about the future. And who knows whether that's happening right now, on any side in the ongoing Israel Palestinian conflict, which dates back a century now. So one could see horror, compounded by horror. And that, of course, is my my fear. Professor Sachs
Andrew Napolitano
you're one of the more intelligent people I'm privileged to know. And I've been asking this all day and can't seem to get a straight answer. How could Mossad mi six and CIA not have foreseen an attack that came from air, land and sea and vile and involved 1000s of human beings?
Jeffrey Sachs
Look, what we see repeatedly in the upper echelons of government is self delusion and self deception. We had our national security council lead Jake Sullivan, say two weeks ago that the Middle East is at the quietest time. I think he said in in decades, decades. This is delusional. It's just willful, thinking, motivated thinking that you want the situation in reality to be as you want it to be, rather than as it is. So I'm not surprised by great errors by badly run governments. the Netanyahu government is absolutely has divided Israel, it's filled with the right wing radicals as people know, and it divided Israel profoundly. How can one be making good judgments? So in such a circumstance, so what we have in the United States is a delusional about foreign policy and foreign affairs around the world we want. We declare things like Sullivan declared, because that's the way we want them to be not the way that they are. And this is actually not so unusual. To see such blood funders, because we think that governments are, you know, led by fact seeking intelligent people. They're led by power hungry, people who have a motivated agenda, and then interpret the data that they want to see not the data as they come in. And I think that this is basically what's happened. I don't have, you know, the deeper minute by minute understanding of this, but I think one shouldn't be surprised by a government, like the one in Israel right now, misjudging profoundly. Because it's misjudging on many fronts. It's divided the country you had millions of people in the street protesting against the government just weeks ago. Well, this, this is part of the same phenomenon.
Andrew Napolitano
Does this unite the Israeli people behind Prime Minister Netanyahu? Or is his tenure in the prime minister's office? finally coming to an end?
Jeffrey Sachs
Both, you know, the immediate responses unite around a leader, the response to the moment later is, what a disaster time for this one to go. So this is the end of Netanyahu, but not in days, but counted in, you know, months or a short period of time, this is a complete disaster for this government, it will fall, but in the very short term, the response will be to unite.
Andrew Napolitano
The Israelis are looking for 155 millimeter, artillery shells. We don't have them. We gave them all to Ukraine. How symbolic is this? of our ability or inability to support to two wars?
Jeffrey Sachs
What we're hearing again, I'm, you know, only a consumer of this information. I have no inside track at all. But we're hearing, literally, this morning reports that shells are being shipped from Poland, to Israel that were intended for Ukraine for imminent delivery. So yes, so we have been hearing not from the US not from NATO until the last couple of weeks, that even before the crisis in Israel and Gaza, that the ammunition stocks were very, very low and your guests that you've had on, they have been saying repeatedly that in a war of attrition, Ukraine would lose because the US simply didn't have the stockpiles. Right. So this is what we're seeing right now. And, again, reports on the ground, not that I have any insight information, but as I listened, are saying that Ukraine basically stopped any almost any kind of operations other than trying to dig in which they may or may not be successful in doing because they just don't have the ammunition anymore. And they're certainly not going to get it in this context. Okay.
Andrew Napolitano
So because of its historical relationship with the United States, certainly in the post 1948 era, Israel will go to the head of the line when it comes to whatever military equipment we have that we can afford to get rid of you just pointed out that that's happening in Poland of all places.
Jeffrey Sachs
Yes, this is right. It's, of course, and understandably going to be viewed as a dire emergency. It's gotten a political priority in the United States. And it has to dawn on the Ukrainians that, you know, this is yet another disaster. That is compounding what was already a disaster had they accurately assess the situation? Of course, everybody lies, everybody. Proponents of false information in this, but those who watch closely have said that the ammunition shortfall has been intensifying for months. In any event, even before these events, and now these events spell an end to the supplies of even basic ammunition, much less tensions in other parts of the world. So this is really quite a dangerous and remarkable situation.
Andrew Napolitano
I want to play a clip in a minute of President Sullins keep blaming, you can guess who on the attack on Israel. But before I do big picture, do you think an attack of this nature might cause the intelligence community to be a little bit more honest with its superiors rather than telling them what they think they want to hear? Somebody should have told Jake Sullivan and Tony Blinken and Lloyd Austin and eventually the president, things are not good in Gaza. Just because it's quiet doesn't mean it's going to stay quiet. Somebody should have told them. Russia is not the ineffective military that you thought it was. In the Soviet days, somebody should have told them that Ukraine is so corrupt, they'll sell what we give them to Hamas.
Jeffrey Sachs
Unfortunately, the history is that events like this worsen intelligence rather than improve intelligence. 911 was itself a massive intelligence failure. But that's not how it was treated. It was treated as the occasion for the launch of the the GE watch the global war on terror, immediately, followed by the war in Afghanistan, and then by a war on totally false premises in Iraq, in 2003. In fact, the we know that the intelligence was subverted in the case of Iraq, quite devastatingly, basically, it was twisted by the senior politicians. And this is typically what will happen. After an event like this, the motivated thinking becomes even more powerful, not a search for the truth, but a search, an effort to hide the truth and a search for victory, and victory for politicians. That means somehow, revenge and so forth, not a an accurate understanding of what happened. So I'm afraid that we're not likely to get much of an account, we and part of the problem is we keep discussing, especially regarding Ukraine, but it's true in general, there's no accountability at all, for the intelligence services, in part because they're so deeply enmeshed in operations, not just intelligence. This was the fundamental error, in my view for American democracy in 1947, which was to make the CIA, both an intelligence agency and an army at the same time, and one is politically motivated direction, that's the army and the intelligence, which is supposed to really provide the information is utterly compromised by the second function. And so I think that we're unlikely to see that kind of clarity that you're talking about come out of this, we're likely to see an escalation of violence, which it's not impossible, and I don't mean to predict it, because I don't know. And it's very early days, but could lead to, you know, a spreading war in the Middle East, not only an event,
Andrew Napolitano
do you think that the neocon sent globalists might lose their appetite for the support of the Ukraine war, particularly in the US? The Lindsey Graham folks in deference to the cry for help from Prime Minister Netanyahu.
Jeffrey Sachs
Well, they've never shown much capacity to judge real capabilities before so I'm not sure that we will have anything other than demands for escalation across the board standing strong. America's reputation now is at stake at war with Iran, which I think Lindsey Graham called for if I'm not mistaken, I apologize if I am mistaken. But I think in recent tweets, he says that this war should now be expanded. He didn't say our limitation of ammunition requires us now to under understand what to do. I think the tendency of these kinds of politicians is to escalate. That's really their language. That's their MO. And I think events like this trigger, terrible further events and that is is perhaps where we're headed right now. I don't see cool heads prevailing on any, any front.
Andrew Napolitano
Here's President Solinsky. There's two points from this. This is either yesterday or today, but it's after the Hamas attack on Israel. One is that he says he addressed the foreign ministers of NATO nations. I didn't know that. I'm going to ask you what the heck do you think he told them, the other is take a guess, on whom he blames the attack on Israel.
Jeffrey Sachs
I don't have today was
a very eventful day, various meetings. And among them those related to the latest international developments are of particular importance, I held a meeting with the heads of our intelligence, Main Intelligence Directorate and Foreign Intelligence Service, as well as with our diplomats on the situation in and around Israel, and on the overall situation in the Middle East. This is a fundamental importance for us, not only for Ukraine, but also for the entire Europe. According to the available information, a very clear one. Russia is interested in triggering a war in the Middle East, so that a new source of pain and suffering could undermine world unity, increase discord and contradictions and thus help Russia destroy freedom in Europe. We see Russian propagandists gloating. We see Moscow's Iranian friends openly supporting those who attacked Israel. And all of this is a much greater threat than the world currently perceives. The world wars of the past started with local aggressions. We know how to counter this threat. We are preparing appropriate steps. And most importantly, we are defending the need for maximum unity in the world. Today I address the NATO Parliamentary Assembly first of all, on the issue of unity. Every state in the world must now choose how it will defend international law.
Andrew Napolitano
He's got to be terrified that the Neo cons and the globalists will lose interest in him. I almost can't imagine what he would have said that would have been accepted as rational to the Navy. I've never even heard of this thing you would know it the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. Is there a NATO parliament? Professor Sachs?
Jeffrey Sachs
I think it is. I'm not even sure but I think he means parliamentarians from NATO nations, not a NATO Parliament per se. So it's parliamentarians that are from NATO countries. Oh, the chilling part is basically, you know, not quite a call but a kind of prediction of world war three. Yes, this is not. This is not out of the possibilities. We are in a world of violence and a world with an absence of diplomacy. And we are in a world of lots of grievance and lots of weapons. And we're not talking the United States doesn't talk to Russia. It barely talks to China. It does not, of course, talk to Iran. And the truth is that there is absolutely the possibility of these wars, spilling more and more widely to utter disaster. In fact, it is the dynamic of war that it spreads unless there are leaders smart enough to stop it. And the American mindset from World War Two is you don't stop it, you completely defeat your enemy. Unconditional Surrender is an American idea. The problem is in a in our current age, it's an impossible idea. That impossibility is not accepted in American ideology and these among these leaders, but we live in a nuclear age where unconditional surrender of the opponent is not possible. We live in an age where technological capacity of warfare is much more spread widely than we like to believe. We thought that Putin could never stand up against NATO weapons we thought he would just simply back down. We thought a lot of things. The Israelis really thought that they were completely secure and had no reason to negotiate with Palestinians on anything. They really believe that a few days ago and all of that mindset is false. In our world today, if we don't have diplomacy, we won't have peace. If we don't have peace, we will have spreading war actually. So Zelinsky it's very chilling to watch that it's almost like a clip from a movie, not a not a real life discussion. You know, he looks like a character in a movie. And he was a character in a movie. That was his career. But it looks like something that you would see in a movie theater, not something that you expect to see in real life. And he talks about unity, he means exactly the opposite of unity. He means our side needs to defeat the other side. So he's talking about the deepest division possible, and acknowledging, basically, that it could mean world war three, but in such circumstances, we need to be united, we are aside.
Andrew Napolitano
Are you worried that if the Israeli Defense Forces go too far and literally level Gaza, and if the United States Navy shells, Gaza, either directly or through jets that are on the air force carrier that Saudi Arabia, UAE, Iran, Jordan, Egypt are not going to sit still?
Jeffrey Sachs
Yes, I think that if there is a a flow, full blown attack on Gaza, there will be a wider war. Iran, and others would probably call for that. And there would be probably some reaction in that way. In other words, a full blown attack against the millions of people trapped in this very, very small, extremely densely settled enclave would be a prelude quite possibly to a wider war. Secretary General Gutierrez said today, he called on Israel to abide by international law, by international humanitarian law by international law of warfare. He said that besieging Gaza would cutting off all food, water power, would violate international law, if I heard correctly, the quick tape remember, I'm halfway around the world. So I'm just hearing parcels of information. But clearly, the Secretary General warned specifically about that kind of overreaction. And not only that it would be a violation, deep violation of international law and humanitarian catastrophe. But I think that we have to judge that it could absolutely lead to a wider war. Here.
Andrew Napolitano
Here is the UN Secretary General. In New York earlier today,
with a 56 year long occupation and no political end in sight. It's time to end this vicious circle of bloodshed, hatred and polarization. You Israel must see its legitimate needs for security materialized, and Palestinians must see a clear perspective for the establishment of their own state realized, only a negotiated peace that fulfills the legitimate national aspirations of Palestinians and Israelis, together with their security, like the long held vision of a two state solution in line with the United Nations resolutions, international law and previous agreements can bring long term stability to the people of these lands, and why the Middle East region
Andrew Napolitano
owe him you've advised him you talk to him just like you and I are talking now without the cameras and microphones, is there a little more he can do then make public statements?
Jeffrey Sachs
You know, I've advised three Secretaries General it's an incredible and unique job being Secretary General, all the problems come to you. But all the power resides with the major powers. And so he embodies international law. He embodies the decisions made by the global community, but he can't enforce any of those. That depends on DNI It States, China, Russia, UK, France, the permanent five members of the Security Council together, putting into practice the decisions that have been made by the global community, including the UN Security Council. But what He also noted is this is 56 years onward of this occupation. And there is no two state solution in prospect because a significant part of the Israeli politics led by the current Prime Minister Netanyahu and a significant part of the US politics that supports Israel has never wanted it. And certainly the current government in Israel doesn't want it. And so this impasse is not something that UN Secretary General can resolve. But what he is saying is that without a resolution of the underlying politics, there is no peace possible. You know, I think this is the main lesson that I see for Ukraine for Israel and Palestine, and for so many other conflicts. A very, very famous saying, by the theorist of war, von Clausewitz, who is most famous saying is that war is the continuation of politics with other means. This is very important for people to understand when you see conflict, this is not madness, almost ever. It's politics. It's brutal politics, but it's a continuation of politics with other means. And what that means is that solutions are inevitably requiring politics. And that usually means diplomacy, statecraft, not some unilateral, military, and all victory. But this is not the mindset, of course, of people in battle. And it's certainly not the American mindset. Our mindset is unconditional surrender of a foe. And at some times in history that has happened. But in most times of history, it's a great illusion. And what we do in our discourse, is deny any politics, we just like to say, oh, that's an evil attack. That's an evil person. We don't even try to explore the politics. In the ISRAEL PALESTINE issue. There is underlying politics, by the way that goes back 100 years, right. Very intense politics. I've spent most of my life you know, seeing it, absorbing it from both sides. But we don't want to talk about that. We want to okay, it's terror. Now, we have to respond and we will crush the opposition, no politics in that. And similarly, the way we reacted in Ukraine or visa vie, so many of our other crises, if you don't follow von Clausewitz, you don't get it. War is a continuation of politics with other means. My advice is understand the politics and try to resolve the underlying reasons for this violence.
Andrew Napolitano
Professor Jeffrey Sachs Thank you very much for your time, particularly where you are and what you're doing is very much appreciated by me and by the many 1000s watching us
Jeffrey Sachs
safe travel be with you. We'll talk to you soon.
Andrew Napolitano
Thanks safe travels my dear friend.
Jeffrey Sachs
Thank you.
Andrew Napolitano
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