Judging Freedom - [MUST WATCH] - Prof. John Mearsheimer: Should the US Be at War With China?

Episode Date: November 14, 2024

[MUST WATCH] - Prof. John Mearsheimer: Should the US Be at War With China?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Thank you. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, November 14th, 2024. Professor John Mearsheimer joins us now, my dear friend. Always a pleasure. Thank you for joining us. I do want to spend some time with you, Professor Mearsheimer, on the potential adversity between the United States and China. I know this is a field about which you've studied, written, and lectured. But before we get there, what do you think the Kremlin's reaction has been to the election of Donald Trump and the national security state nominees he has offered thus far? I think when the Russians look at what's happening, they expect more of the same. I think the Russians understand that you

really can't trust the Americans. And the idea that Donald Trump has some magic formula that can put an end to this war quickly that works to Russia's advantage is delusional. And I think the Russians understand that this one is going to be settled on the battlefield. So I don't think it makes much difference to Putin and company who's in charge here in the White House. Can you foresee any circumstances under which the war is amicably ended? That is, Vladimir Putin puts his signature on or authorizes Sergei Lavrov to put his on a document that's negotiated with Vladimir Zelensky on the other side? Well, there's two ways the war can end. And in both cases, you could have a signed document. One is a frozen conflict, in which case there could be a signed document freezing the conflict, much like what you had ending the

Korean War, where you could have a genuine peace agreement. And I think what you're getting at is whether or not there's any possibility of a genuine peace agreement that Putin would agree to. I think there is almost no chance that would happen. Is there any question in your mind, Professor Mearsheimer, that the Russians are very likely to achieve their goals militarily in Ukraine and that they are nearing those goals? I think that, first of of all we don't know exactly what their goals are we can hypothesize what their goals are as you know I've long hypothesized that their goals are to capture about 40 percent of uh Ukrainian territory uh they already control four oblasts and Crimea. And I think they'll try to take at least four more Oblasts and end up controlling, you know, about 40, 45% of Ukrainian territory. And they'll

incorporate that into Russia. They'll annex that territory. And then they also will want to go to great lengths to make sure that Ukraine is a dysfunctional rump state. And of course, whether or not they can capture all of that territory depends on what happens on the battlefield. And all the evidence at this point in time, coupled with the fact that Donald Trump is now in the White House and does not have much interest in continuing to support Ukraine, tells me that the Russians will win this war and be able to conquer considerably more territory than they now control. So the Russians are in the driver's seat, and there's just not much we can do to stop them. Is Trump's claim that he could or would or knows how to end the war in 24 hours, essentially nonsense?

Yeah, it's not a serious argument. I mean, and that's why he won't tell you what the magic formula is. There is no magic formula here, unless you're willing to make the necessary concessions that the Russians require. And I don't think that is in the cards. All the evidence is that Trump himself and his advisors would be unwilling to, one, recognize Russia's annexation and the West, especially the United States, and then make sure that Ukraine is militarily weak moving forward. Those are the conditions that the Russians insist on. And I find it hard to imagine Donald Trump and his advisors buying onto that deal. Paul Jay Suppose Trump pulls a fast one, Professor Doctorow, Gilbert Doctorow, offered this and insists on new elections in Ukraine. I mean, even if you got somebody who was interested in some sort of plan for putting an end to the war, that person is not going to get elected if he or she says that they will recognize Russia's annexations and they will be willing to eliminate all security arrangements

with the West. That person is not going to get elected, and that's what's necessary to make this work. But let's put that aside. Let's assume I'm wrong. The question you have to ask yourself is whether the United States is willing to accommodate Russian demands. Do you think that Marco Rubio and these other individuals who Trump has appointed will be willing to go along with a peace deal that makes it clear that Russia won? I mean, that's what we're talking about here when you talk about Russian demands. The Russians are basically saying, we won this war, and we want terms that reflect the fact that we have won the war. Right. And you can't blame them. Of course you can.

But at the same time, you know very well the United States is not going to admit that Russia won. Right. The only thing we can do to prolong this conflict, even once the shooting stops, to prolong this conflict for as far as the eye can see. Maybe this is an unfair question, but I'll throw this softball to you anyway. Can Marco Rubio command the international respect that Sergei Lavrov does? No. No American Secretary of State could do that because we've done so much damage to ourselves. We've, you know, spent the last couple decades shooting ourselves in the foot time after time. There's hardly any respect for the United States outside of the West

at this point in time. And I don't think that there's any person who could be appointed Secretary of State who could rectify that problem over the next four years. I disagree with you. I think I am talking to someone right now who, if he were appointed Secretary of State, could rectify that problem. The issue is who would appoint you? The answer is you and nobody else. Maybe there are five or six other people who would appoint me, but none of them have any real power. Right. Ron Paul would appoint you. Well, the issue of whether or not Trump and Putin spoke, do you have any knowledge on this? The Washington Post insisted on the CIA version of this, that Trump and Putin spoke, and Trump said, don't accelerate the war. The Russians

say we never spoke, and the Trump transition team is remaining silent. The big picture here, since it's the Washington Post, we assume the CIA is behind it. Does the CIA want this war to continue? And is this something that President Trump will have to confront, an adversarial relationship with the Central Intelligence Agency on this war? Well, he has an adversarial relationship with the intelligence community in general and the CIA in particular for all sorts of other reasons going back to the 2016 election. I mean, Trump not only distrusts the intelligence community, he loathes the intelligence community. And this is just another dimension to that problem. I think it's quite clear that the CIA

and all of the institutions in the deep state are committed to preventing a Russian victory. And they don't want to accommodate the Russiansussians they want to continue to figure out different ways to help the ukrainians if not defeat the russians at least stalemate the russians and believe them so i think that the cia is probably interested in continuing the war what do you think the EU and NATO those jobs right now. They just happen to have an R after their name instead of a D. I think they were initially horrified by Trump's election because Trump clearly wants to put an end to NATO and he would like to get out of Europe, he'd like to have good relations with the Russians, and this scares the living bejesus

out of the European elites. But if you look at the people that Trump has appointed to these important security positions, they're not people who want to leave Europe. And in fact, most of them are neoconservatives who want to stay everywhere we are now located and fight all the wars that we're now fighting. So I think the European elites are probably breathing a sigh of relief given the appointments that Trump has made. One of the national security people, my former colleague at Fox News, Pete Hegseth, wants to bomb Tehran. I mean, should the secretary, admittedly, said this as a host or co-host on Fox and Friends. He didn't say it as the nominee. But shouldn't the secretary of defense, should he be an enabler to a bellicose president or should he warn a bellicose president? You really want to consider what will happen if we start destroying the Tehran airport?

You think Vladimir Putin is going to sit back and let that happen? Shouldn't that be the conversation rather than, yes, sir, when do you want it done? Of course. I mean, I think that the group of people who Trump has so far appointed, and he's filled almost all the important national security positions, are all super hawks on Iran. The question is, will they act on their rhetoric when they are in real positions of power? As you know, when you're on Fox News, it's easy to say almost anything and get away with it because it has no real consequences. You're not in charge. You're the Secretary of Defense or you're the President of the United States,

and you're making decisions that have huge consequences. And I mean huge consequences. You're probably going to tone down your rhetoric and you're going to change your views or alter your views somewhat. And I just hope that all of these super hawks on Iran think through what the consequences would be of an American-Iran war, and they back off, just as the Biden administration did. Here's a very animated Pete Hegseth talking about bombing Iran. Now, he's doing it in his context as a guest on his own show. So there are three other hosts this day, because he's doing it in his context as a guest on his own show. So there are three other hosts this day because he's a host on weekends. This is a weekday show. This is a role that he filled regularly.

It's a role that I filled when I was there. But my area, of course, was the law and the judiciary and the Constitution. But he's rather bellicose here. I'd like your thoughts on this. He's talking about changing rules so they are advantageous to us and, if necessary, bombing the cultural sites in Tehran. Cut number five. Sometimes you have moments, Stephen. I happen to believe that we can't kick the can down the road any longer in trying to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear bomb.

They used the killing of Soleimani as an excuse to say, we're scrapping the Iran deal. We all know they were scrapping it anyway. So what better time than now to say, we're starting the clock. You've got a week. You've got X amount of time before we start taking out your energy production facilities. We take out key infrastructure. We take out your missile sites. We take out nuclear developments.

We take out key infrastructure. We take out your missile sites. We take out nuclear development. We take out port capabilities or, you know, take out a Quds headquarters while you're at it. If you want. I understand that's not a popular idea. If we're going to fight to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear bomb, this regime, then we need to rewrite the rules that are advantageous to us. I don't want to hit cultural sites on purpose, but if you're using one to harbor your most dangerous weapons, then that should be on the target list. Doesn't Iran already have what it needs to put together offensive nuclear capability? Yeah, he's talking about taking out that nuclear capability before Iran actually develops a bomb. That's what he's talking about. And all I would say is that if we were to pursue the policy he just described, that would guarantee that Iran would eventually get a bomb. And once they got a bomb, they'd be

mad as hornets, and this would not be to our advantage at all you want to understand that in the early cold war we thought about doing the same thing to the soviet union soviet union had a nascent nuclear program we had a rather well-developed nuclear program we wanted to keep that advantage and we thought about attacking the soviet nuclear capability and we decided not to do it because excuse me we understood we could take it out. There was no question about that, but they would rebuild it, and they would end up with a nuclear arsenal, and the relations between the United States and the Soviet Union would be poisonous. So we didn't do it. And the same basic logic applies here. We can take out Iran's nuclear

capability in all likelihood at this point in time. But the question then remains, what will happen after that? If we did as he suggested and destroyed infrastructure as well, do you think that Vladimir Putin would sit back and do nothing? It's very hard to say. Very hard to say. It's scary to contemplate, isn't it, Professor? It is scary to contemplate. It's hard for me to imagine the Russians getting involved in a war between the United States and Iran, getting directly involved, simply because they are deeply involved in the Ukraine war. And this is a matter of first things first.

You know, they want to take care of Ukraine but I think there's no question that the Russians would help the Iranians and over time they would probably help them more and more and that would mean that the United States and Russia would be at each other's throat in Iran as well as in Ukraine. And this would not be a good situation. Of course, I may be wrong here, and the Russians may simply come to the aid of Ukraine. It is possible. I don't think it's likely, but I do think it's possible. I think we're playing with fire here. The fact is that the United States is filled with people who believe that we can use the big stick to solve every problem and to beat back every adversary. And the Israelis, by the way, have the same mentality.

And I don't understand why we don't recognize that there are just limits to what you can do with military force. And the idea that you can bash Iran, you can bash Russia, you can bleed Russia white in Ukraine, all of these ideas have led to nothing but failure. And, you know, continuing to go down this road makes no sense to me. Senator Rubio, Congressman Waltz, who's to be the National Security Advisor, and Pete Hegseth all describe themselves as China hawks. What does that mean to you? Well, that means that they are deeply committed to not simply containing China, but to pursuing a rollback strategy. They want to pursue a very aggressive strategy towards China, which both militarily and economically is designed to weaken

China, to do to China what we did to the Soviet Union. You want to remember that by 1989, the Cold War was over. And then in December 1991, the Soviet Union disappeared from the planet. It broke apart. And we considered that a great victory. And what these China hawks would like to do is they'd like to do the same thing to China. They'd like to wreck China. They're not just interested in containment. Somebody like me is interested in containment. I want to contain Chinese power, make sure that they don't dominate East Asia the way we dominate the Western hemisphere. But I think we have to be very prudent in our containment policy and we have to avoid pursuing a rollback policy because there's great potential if you pursue rollback that you'll end up in a shooting war with the Chinese, and this

is something we don't want. But these people, again, this gets back to my point about big stick diplomacy. They almost welcome a fight with China. They just think we'll polarize the Chinese. We're Godzilla, they're Bambi. And this is their view with regard to Iran. It's the view they have with regard to Hezbollah and Hamas. And I could go on and on. It's just the way they think about the world. And it's a fundamentally flawed view. I mean, can the United States militarily bring about the breakup of China without adversely affecting the mainland of the United States? No. But you want to remember, we didn't use military force to break apart the Soviet Union. The argument that they would make is that an aggressive containment policy or an aggressive

rollback policy was one that put the Soviets at a great disadvantage. They just couldn't keep up with us, especially when we began to develop sophisticated technologies like Star Wars. And the end result is they had to quit the Cold War, and then the Soviet Union fell apart. So the idea here is that we can put so much pressure on China. We can get so tough with China that we can basically cause it to lose the competition and hopefully eventually run into huge political problems on the home front that lead to a great weakening of China. And once again, you know, we'll be back to unipolarity. We'll be in the driver's seat.

I think this is their basic. Does that theory make any sense to you? I'm pretty sure you're going to say no, but... No, it's remarkably foolish. Look, you should understand that the United States has had the Midas touch in reverse for a long time now. One of the reasons that Donald Trump got elected is the American people understand that we have leaders who are not very successful at executing foreign policy and, by the way, domestic policy as well. That's why Trump got elected. And Trump was elected to sort of change our foreign policy, and by the way, domestic policy as well. That's why Trump got elected. And Trump was elected to sort of change our foreign policy. He said he was going to do things differently. He was going to clean house and he was going to, you know, change relations here, there, and everywhere and solve this problem. And look, as I said earlier, he's appointed the same neocon mentality

as we have now. They just have R after their name instead of D. What's the difference between Tony Blinken and Marco Rubio? Oh, there's a fundamental difference. Tony Blinken is an incompetent and Rubio is at least competent. They both have foolish views. That's your point. And I certainly agree with that. Right, right.

But Rubio will be an improvement over Blinken because Blinken has set such a low bar simply because he's just incompetent. I mean, if you go outside the United States and you talk to people and you mention Tony Blinken's name, people just roll their eyes and they do that for good reason. And I'm disappointed that Rubio is the Secretary of State, as you can understand. But Rubio is, I think, he's intellectually more competent than Tony Blinken. in play to protect Iran's nuclear capabilities? Does China wish to purchase any of that or benefit from it or fear its gradation by the Israelis and the Americans? Well, you want to remember that when the JCPOA, the original arms control agreement that the Obama administration played the key role in crafting. At that point in time, both the Chinese and the Russians worked with us to craft the JCPOA. The Russians and the Chinese have no interest in nuclear proliferation taking place,

and they wanted to prevent Iran from going nuclear. So we were all together at that point in time. But given development since then, I think both the Russians and the Chinese have different views about Iran and Iranian nuclear weapons. I don't think they're anywhere near as committed, either country, to preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. So I think that we're going to have a tough time if Iran begins to go down the nuclear road, getting the Russians and the Chinese to work with us as we did when we crafted the JCPOA to prevent that from happening. And furthermore, I think the Russians and the Chinese are going to help the Iranians in all sorts of ways. And that may even be true on the nuclear front. As we've talked about before on this show, it's very important

to understand that American policy has driven the Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians, and the North Koreans close together. They now form a rather tight block. And in that world, if Iran begins to go down the nuclear road, I would not be surprised if the Chinese and the Russians don't say much. Or if they say something against Iran taking that path, they don't back it up in any meaningful way. And in the end, Iran gets nuclear weapons. I don't understand why Iran doesn't have nuclear weapons already. If I were the Iranian National Security Advisor, they would have had nuclear weapons a long time ago. But given the direction that we're moving in, given the views of people

that President Trump has just appointed, the President-elect has just appointed, the incentives, in my opinion, for the Iranians to get nuclear weapons sooner rather than later are very great. Here's one of Donald Trump's former national security advisors with whom he had a famous and public dispute, John Bolton, also an alumnus of Fox News, but also the former acting U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, nations rambling on about the Iranians and Tulsi Gabbard and Trump's appointees. I'll be interested to hear your thoughts. Cut number nine. I think that Tulsi Gabbard's nomination to be director of national intelligence, when I first heard that today, my immediate reaction was hilarious. Why? She's totally not competent for that job. Gates is the worst. She may be tracking in at the second worst. Haven't had a lot of time to do research on the Tulsi Gabbard nomination. But let me bring you to January the 8th, 2020 congressional briefing after

President Trump's correct decision to eliminate Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Iranian Quds Force. Tulsi Gabbard said in an interview with Jake Tapper that the briefers who described the reasons for the elimination of Qasem Soleimani and how it carried out, she said they provided vague comments, no justification whatsoever for this illegal and unconstitutional act of war that President Trump took. So now is she prepared to obey the orders of a man who committed an illegal and unconstitutional act of war as director of national intelligence? Is that the kind of person Donald Trump wants to head that important function?

I've believed for a long time that ODNI should be abolished. And now there's another reason to abolish it. Let me say that I agree with her that the murder of Soleimani was illegal and unconstitutional. How she's going to restrain Trump who ordered that on the advice of John Bolton, who knows? Look, Bolton is ecstatic about the appointment of people like Michael Waltz and Marco Rubio and the new Secretary of Defense because they are basically neoconservatives like he is. He doesn't like Tulsi Gabbard for the same reason he didn't like J.D. Vance. These are people who are interested in restraining American foreign policy. And anybody who's interested in the policy of restraint is anathema to John Bolton,

because he's never seen a war he didn't want to fight. And the question you have to ask yourself is how wise do you think John Bolton's views are? And in my opinion, John Bolton has proven at point after point that his view of foreign policy leads to one disaster after another. But he's Lindsey Graham with an ugly mustache. I mean, it's the same. I don't want to get personal. And I apologize. It's the same I never met a war, I didn't want somebody else to fight attitude. Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, Bolton's a super haw I didn't want somebody else to fight attitude. Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, Bolton's a super hawk. You want to remember, he's one of the principal proponents of pulling out of the JCPOA.

And look how well that is. What is the JCPOA? This was the nuclear agreement that the Obama administration crafted to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability. And President Trump, after he was elected, pulled out of that deal. He pulled out in 2018. And a lot of people, me included at the time, said it was a remarkably foolish idea because as long as that deal was in place, there was no way Iran could even get close to developing nuclear weapons because there were so many limits placed on its nuclear program. But the Israelis didn't buy that argument at all, especially Benjamin Netanyahu.

The Israel lobby here in the United States didn't, and the Trump administration and people like John Bolton didn't. So they created a situation in 2018 where President Trump pulled out of the JCPOA. And as soon as that happened, the Iranians began to develop all sorts of capabilities that brought them very close to nuclear weapons. They began to enrich uranium in ways that they were prohibited from doing under the JCPOA. And now we're at a point where people are talking about bombing Iran because the Iranians are so close to having a nuclear weapon. Should we be bombing countries that have nuclear weapons who fail to comply with the restraints imposed by the UN? You know where I'm going, of course. I'm not sure what your question is. Is it legal? Should we be bombing other countries that are developing or have nuclear weapons without the approval of the UN,

which is the argument that Netanyahu and company are making about Iran because he has his own nuclear weapons and God only knows how he got them. He stole the technology from us. No, we should not be bombing countries that have nuclear weapons because in most cases they have the capability to retaliate against us. And as I said, if somebody has built a nuclear weapon already, then they have that capability and they will rebuild their nuclear arsenal after you bomb it. And with regard to a country that doesn't have nuclear weapons, it's almost going to always be the case that that country is well on its way to acquiring nuclear weapons and has the nuclear know-how. So the same basic logic applies. There's just not

much point, in my opinion, in attacking those countries. The truth is, the best way to make sure that Iran doesn't get nuclear weapons is to remove the threat of attacking Iran that motivates the Iranians to acquire nuclear weapons. And we're incapable of doing that. And if anything, what we do is we up the ante all the time. We increase the threats that we offer to the Iranians. And that just incentivizes them to get nuclear weapons. What we should do is back off. What we should have done after we worked out the JCPOA was done something to work out a detente or rapprochement between the West and the Iranians so that, again, we eliminated the incentive for them to get nuclear weapons.

And I think that policy, coupled with the JCPOA, which we might have been able to renew, was the best way to deal with the Iranian nuclear problem. But instead, what we did is we pulled out of the JCPOA, which allowed them to enrich uranium. And then what we did was we threatened the Iranians at every turn, which gave them incentive to develop nuclear weapons. Why didn't that agreement cover Israel? One very simple word, the Israel lobby. I mean, it's, you know. And by the way, just very quickly, Israel and the lobby were key players in getting the United States to pull out of the JCPOA.

Remember, Benjamin Netanyahu's early trips to Congress, his early trips to Capitol Hill, were designed to sabotage the Iranian nuclear deal. Correct. Before we go, here's the Secretary of Defense nominee at his Zionist best. Cut number 10. Anyone that wants to take the stage and talk about dual loyalty is dead wrong. What this organization represents, what Western civilization represents today, is an understanding that Zionism and Americanism are the front lines of Western civilization and freedom in our world today. And what better time for that relationship? From the scrapping of the terrible Iran deal to the embassy move, the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish state,

and the recognition of the Golan Heights. This president is a true friend of the state of Israel. It is an eternal bond, an unbreakable bond that represents faith and freedom and fidelity to historic religious and cultural traditions. The opposite of secularism and Islamism and anti-Semitism. That is an earful. He's obviously talking about the JCPOA when he's condemning the agreement. I wonder if he even knows what he's talking about. He's about to administer a budget of $850 billion and manage 3 million human beings who have the greatest lethality on the planet. Does he know what he's talking about? No, he not only doesn't know what he's

talking about, I mean, he's just your typical super hawk. And those kind of views are going to do nothing but get us in trouble. But the other major problem that he faces is he has no management experience. The Pentagon is a huge, sprawling bureaucracy. And to run the Pentagon, you have to have some experience running a large-scale organization. Otherwise, you're going to get into really deep trouble. This is what happened to Les Aspin when he went from being the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee to being Secretary of Defense. Aspin knew a lot about defense issues. He was certainly more sophisticated than Hexeth is. But the fact is that Aspen was overwhelmed by the job because he just didn't understand how to manage the Pentagon. I don't see how this guy is going to be able to manage the Pentagon, simply because

he has no experience running a large-scale bureaucracy. If you look at General Austin, whatever you think of his views about foreign policy, he was a high-level army general who has much experience running large-scale military organizations, and he has had no problem running the Pentagon, at least that we know of. I'm not sure that's going to be the case here. And when you marry that fact with his views, it's probably the case that he's not going to last very long in the job. Colonel McGregor made the same prediction for the same reasons. Professor Mearsheimer, a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you for all your time. Thank you for letting me go all over the place, from the Kremlin to China to the Pentagon. Much appreciated, my dear friend. You're more than welcome.

We'll see. I hope we can see you again next week. Definitely. Thank you. Coming up at four o'clock this afternoon, Eastern, Aaron Maté. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thank you.