"Is Trump Missing the Boat?"
by
Alastair Crooke
Judge Napolitano Judging Freedom (May 27, 2025)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeeE1qavSg0
[2:34] Judge Napolitano: “Let’s start with Ukraine. What about the Russian modus operandi and goals does Donald Trump seem not to understand?”
[2:52] Alastair Crooke: “As you know, I have just come back from St. Petersburg which is, was, the liberal capital, the capital of the liberal world in Russia.” And I found a huge change, really, a significant change. This anger, deep anger, a cold anger. Now what I want to explain is that when I was there a year ago in St. Petersburg and talking to people. Of course they were still bemused, puzzled by the West putting sanctions on them. At first, many people from St. Petersburg, some of them left the country, went to Europe, went to other places because they thought it would be disastrous and would affect them badly”
[3:50] But what happened? Nothing. The economy wasn’t affected by it at all. And the people who’d left appeared rather foolish for having done that. But nonetheless, you have to put this into context. What’s driving this anger is essentially Russia, of course, went through a terrible time. St. Petersburg, particularly with the siege and with the famine. And then they had, if you like, the Soviet Union. The Bolsheviks were there. The Soviet Union came. They got through the Soviet Union. They pulled themselves out of it by themselves. But the transition caused huge suffering. Really bad suffering. People, the statistics were grim. The mortality rates for infant mortality rates shot up during that period.”
[4:54] And then, just as they come out of that, get through it and are starting to recover, what happens? The West forces Russia into a defensive war: a war and with sanctions and with, if you like, more forms of pain on it. Now the sanctions haven’t affected Russians so much. … So, they’ve lost their [foreign] properties. But that’s mostly for the elites. What I’m talking about more is just the sense of real anger. Anger at the West. Particularly among Europeans that they thought were friends or were colleagues that they were working with who seem to be saying that ‘You, you deserve it.’
We just saw Linsey Graham getting up in the senate and I think his words were, he said, ‘You’re going to face these massive sanctions. You deserve it for your barbarity in Ukraine.’ And they’re [the Russians] really angry about that now. Really, it’s a pivot. It’s a pivot because it has major implications. There is no longer any pressure on Putin … everyone understands very clearly that the operation must go on, must continue because otherwise all this expenditure of life to date is wasted. Because then there will be the next war the next time the West comes back and attacks us and then all this blood will have been for nothing. So, we have to take this through to conclusion. And so, everyone understands that Putin gets it. He understands that. And he’s playing what they see as a sophisticated game of chess with the American psyche of, you know, ‘We must be tough,’ ‘We must be strong,’ ‘Peace through strength.’ And they realize that Putin is having to play that for diplomatic reasons, for China, for Iran, for BRICS as a whole he needs to play that. And everyone understands that and now they are deeply angry.
[7:48] Trump has missed the boat. He is not going to be able to come back because he is seen as weak. He is seen as being unable to show that he has the political strength to mean what he says. And this is what the Russians keep saying. And they say: ‘Look. What we are asking for, we’re not asking anything from America except for a relationship.’ What does a relationship mean? No, it doesn’t mean a little bit more money or we will invest more with you in the Arctic. It means when you say something, you mean it and do it. And we mean it and will do it.
[8:39] Judge Napolitano: “It’s one thing for Lindsey Graham not to understand this. But it is quite another if the President and the people around him, whether they are the America Firsters or the neocons fail to understand what you have just described. Do you sense, and I think your answer is yes, that Trump and his national security do not understand what you’ve just described?”
[9:06] Alastair Crook: “Partly, they don’t want to understand that and also because, you know, this ideological, if you like, this peace-making ideology of the West is so transactional that it doesn’t take account of situations where there’s irreconcilability. It’s always ‘Can you have a little more land here a little less there?’? Look, here’s the spectrum. We’ll divide it, you know, half-and-half. But when we’re talking about things like neutrality – which is one of Russia’s main objectives – neutrality isn’t a thing. It’s a way of thinking. It’s a consciousness. You are a consciousness. The Swiss had a neutral consciousness for many decades.”
[9:50] “And again, sovereignty is a consciousness. Your people feel they are [sovereign. So, how do you divide this up? A little bit of [sovereignty] to him and a bit of sovereignty somewhere else. You can’t do that. You can’t do this with sovereignty. You’re either sovereign or you’re not sovereign.”