Judging Freedom - Pro. John Mearsheimer: Who/What Caused the War in Ukraine?

Episode Date: April 25, 2024

Pro. John Mearsheimer: Who/What Caused the War in Ukraine?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, April 25th, 2024. Professor John Mearsheimer joins us now. My dear friend, Professor Mearsheimer, thank you very much for your time. I thought of you earlier this week when I heard one of the Secretary of State's sort of hand-wringing defense of American involvement in Ukraine. And in the course of that defense, he opined that all of this began when Putin, quote, invaded Ukraine. What is the who, what, when, where, how of the origin of the military dispute in Ukraine? The origin, in my opinion, is clearly in early April of 2008 at the NATO-Bucharest summit, where NATO said at the conclusion of the summit that both Georgia and Ukraine would be brought into NATO. The Russians

made it clear, Putin in particular, that this was an existential threat to Russia, and Russia would not let it happen. They made it clear at the time that Ukraine would be destroyed before it was allowed into NATO. And then the crisis broke out, not the war, the crisis broke out in February of 2014. And instead of backing off and trying to accommodate the Russians, we doubled down. And then after Joe Biden moved into the White House in January of 2021, he really doubled down. And unsurprisingly, 13 months later in February of 2024, the Russians invaded Ukraine. And it's very important to emphasize that the Russians were desperate to work out a diplomatic solution before they invaded.

In December of 2021, this is about two months before the war started, Putin sent the letter to both Jens Stoltenberg, the head of NATO, and to President Biden, laying out a plan to resolve this diplomatically. And we basically gave them the high sign. So the responsibility, in my opinion, for this war lies squarely in the West and really in Washington. You mentioned 2014. That's when the United States fomented a coup, correct me if I'm wrong, Professor Mearsheimer, that drove a popularly elected but either neutral or Russian aligned president from office. It literally drove him from the country. Do I have that right? You have that right. The only qualification is we're not exactly sure how deeply involved the United States was. We know that the United States was involved. There's no question about

that. But how deeply is open to question at this point in time. But this is part of a long tradition in American foreign policy. We've been running around the world for decades now overthrowing governments. And in some cases, those governments are democratically elected. Just go back to what we did in Iran in 1953, what we did in Guatemala in 1954, what we did in Chile in 1973. I mean, this is part of a pattern. What would Tony Blinken say if he heard what you just recounted? He has blinders on if he thinks this war began when the Russian troops marched in in February of 22?

This is the way Tony Blinken and people in the administration, and to be honest, most people in the foreign policy establishment in this country think about world events. I mean, let's just go to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict now taking place in Gaza. If you listen to Tony Blinken speak, he will tell you it all began on October 7th, but October 7th didn't come out of nowhere. October 7th was a consequence of the fact that the Israelis had basically locked the Palestinians into a giant concentration camp or open-air prison. And this was in large part a prison break. And nevertheless, people like Tony Blinken never want to talk about that. All they want to talk about is what Hamas did on October 7th.

If we go back to Ukraine, would a fair analogy be an alliance between Mexico and China, which put Chinese troops or Chinese offensive weaponry approaching the Texas border? Absolutely. The United States has this thing called the Monroe Doctrine, and it basically says that no distant great power, and here we're talking about a great power coming out of either Asia or Europe, is allowed to form a military alliance for the country in the Western Hemisphere, and it's certainly not allowed to station military forces in this hemisphere. And you and I are both old enough to remember the Cuban Missile Crisis, which is what happens when a foreign country tries to move into our hemisphere. We simply don't tolerate it. So your analogy is right on the money.

Is there anything unreasonable about President Putin having said at that conference in 2008, not going to happen? No, it makes perfect sense. And I believe if you took any American policy maker over my lifetime and you put him or her in Putin's shoes, that person would have said the same thing that Putin said. And yet, Victoria Nuland and her folks in the CIA supported this overthrow of, I can't remember his name, the president. Yanukovych. Yanukovych, thank you, in 2014 and fomented a series of elections that ended up with President Zelensky, who, of course, like Woodrow Wilson, ran as the peace candidate and then did the opposite.

What is the status today of the Ukraine military, Professor Mearsheimer? Well, the Ukraine military is in desperate straits. I mean, the Ukrainians themselves are saying that, and you're seeing all sorts of evidence that people in the Western media recognize that. The biggest problem that the Ukrainians face is actually not the lack of weaponry. That is a major league problem. I don't want to underestimate that. But the biggest problem is manpower.

They simply don't have enough troops. They have no way of mobilizing enough troops to compensate for the imbalance that now exists in the fact that their troops have been run ragged over the past two plus years. So it's no surprise that we see lots of evidence of desertion by Ukrainian forces on the front lines. And we see lots of evidence of Ukrainian forces basically crumbling in the face of the Russian offensive. And it's hard to imagine, you know, over the next couple of months, how the Russians don't end up conquering a lot more territory and killing a lot more Ukrainians. The American establishment, from the Republican Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, to the Democratic leader in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, to President Biden,

and the entire State Department, seem to be celebrating the decision of the Congress to spend $95 billion. We'll put aside Israel and Taiwan and other recipients for now. We're just talking about the $61 billion for Ukraine, the lion's share of which we know stays right here in the United States, goes to the military-industrial complex. What good will this money serve other than perhaps delaying the inevitable Russian military triumph? I like your language. I agree with what you say. I just put it in affirmative terms. Very importantly, the New York Times had a big story today on this package, this arms package, and it pointed out that $28 billion of the $61 billion, that's almost half of the package, this arms package, and it pointed out that $28 billion of the $61 billion, that's almost

half of the package, goes to building weapons that will replenish the stocks that have been run down in the United States in the process of supplying the Ukrainians in the past. Just think about that. $28 of the $61 billion is not going to produce weapons that go to Ukraine. They're going to be weapons that stay here because we've given so many weapons to the Ukrainians already. Furthermore, if you look carefully at the piece in the Times, actually it's in the Wall Street Journal, I apologize. If you look at the piece in the Wall Street Journal today, it describes what kinds of weapons that we're going to give the Ukrainians right away, but it never gives numbers. And none of the articles I can find

give numbers. And I think the reason that the administration is not providing numbers is because once we see those numbers, we'll see that they're paltry, that the Ukrainians are not getting many weapons, at least right away. And the fact is they need massive numbers of weaponry right away. And they not only need weaponry, of course, they need manpower, and we can do nothing to provide manpower. So they're basically screwed here's uh jake sullivan the president's uh national security advisor uh talking about the weapons that have already arrived in ukraine i don't know if what he's saying is truthful but before i give you my opinion i want yours cut number nine chris since the start of this conflict we've more than doubled our monthly production of

155. by the end of this year we will have more than doubled our monthly production of 155. By the end of this year, we will have doubled it again. And as a result, we're going to be able to provide from our own production steady and significant supplies of artillery to Ukraine. We are also providing Ukraine with new capabilities. I'm able to confirm, as you've heard from others, that in February, the President directed his team to provide Ukraine with a significant number of ATAKOMS missiles for use inside Ukraine's sovereign territory.

That shipment started moving in March as part of the PDA that the President authorized on March 12th, and those missiles have arrived in Ukraine. This followed Russia's procurement and use of North Korea's ballistic missiles against Ukraine, as well as Russia's renewed and escalating attacks against civilian infrastructure in Ukraine. As far as you know, is this accurate? Is this reliable? Or is this political propaganda? Well, I think what he is saying is true. I don't think he's lying, but he's not providing meaningful information. As I said before, is lying, but he is not providing meaningful information. As I said before, what I want to know is what do the numbers look like? We know

what the basic balance of power looks like on the front. We know that the Russians have roughly 10 times as much artillery as the Ukrainians do. So, Jake, please tell me how much artillery we are giving the Ukrainians, how quickly they're going to get it, and what it's going to do to redress this 10 to 1 balance. Furthermore, with regard to attack them, there's no question that in February, unbeknownst to us, Biden decided to give the Ukrainians long range attack them. We had given them short range ATAKMs last year. So in February, the decision was made to give them the long range ATAKMs. They were first used a few days ago on April 17th. They attacked an airfield in northern Crimea. The Russians, as best I can tell, believed that they

shot down 13 of the 15 ATAKMs. So the Russians have the capability to shoot a lot of these missiles down, but let us assume they do not have much of a capability. It is not going to matter anyway because this battle is being settled on the front lines. It is being settled by artillery, air power, and manpower. And when you look at what is happening on the front lines and what the balance of power looks like between the two sides, the Ukrainians are in a terrible situation that looks like it's just getting worse. And he has no story to tell us about how to rectify that problem. Isn't it dangerous for America to be sending offensive weaponry that reaches inside of Russia? Isn't it dangerous for American national security for us to be doing

that? Well, as long as those weapons are not too effective, it's not that dangerous. And it looks like they're not that effective. Therefore, I'm not that worried. But if these were really effective weapons and were doing lots of damage inside Russia, then I'd be really worried. But I would note to you that if that were to be the case, we would not have given them the weapons to begin with. Because for all of President Biden's faults, he is well aware of the danger of escalation. And he's actually treaded quite lightly because of the escalation problem since the start of this conflict. Have we depleted our own supplies of weapons and ammunition to a dangerously low point, should, God forbid, we need them?

I think that that's true, although it's not clear that we had enough in our stockpiles if we were to get into a fight of any serious nature. I mean, the scenario that people talk about is the United States getting into a conflict with China over Taiwan or over the South China Sea. Let's assume that happens. Hopefully it won't, of course. But assume it happens. It's very clear from having watched the war in Ukraine that you have to have huge stockpiles of weaponry, and you have to be able to produce lots of weaponry very quickly to replace the weaponry that you use. This is clear. This is what's going on in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Well, China has a huge manufacturing base, and they have huge stockpiles of weaponry. And like the Russians, they have the ability to produce new weapons very quickly and in huge quantities. We do not. That means if we

were to get into a protracted war with the Chinese, if it lasted any appreciable period of time, we'd be in deep trouble. Here's Jake Sullivan again, complaining about the Ukraine funding delays. So this must be a few days ago. Cut number eight, Chris. The consequences of the delay have been felt in Ukraine. Over the past six months, Ukraine has had to ration ammunition, and that has resulted in the loss of some territory in the east, including the city of Avdiivka. And while today's announcement is very good news for Ukraine, they are still under severe pressure on the battlefield, and it is certainly possible that Russia could make additional tactical gains in the coming weeks. Russia has tried to grind out very slow,

costly progress on multiple fronts over the past few weeks. They are threatening the town of Chassivyar. They are threatening settlements to the west of Evdyvka. And of course, they're raining hell down on Kharkiv and other cities across Ukraine. The fact is that it's going to take some time for us to dig out of the hole that was created by six months of delay before Congress passed the supplemental. Well, that was just yesterday. Is he not giving there an accurate recitation of what's going on, Russia grinding it out, moving slowly and inexorably westward? Yeah, he fully understands what's happening. He's

making the argument that we can rescue the situation. I bet if you could administer truth serum to him, he would admit that there is a remarkably small chance that the Ukrainians can rectify the situation. But let me make two points about what he had to say. First of all, the implication in his comments is that we had all of this equipment sitting on the shelf. And if we had just loosened the restrictions or we had passed this bill earlier, we could have sent all this equipment to the Ukrainians. I don't believe that's the case. I don't believe there was much equipment there to give them. Second point I'd make is I believe that somewhere down the road, we'll find out that we gave the Ukrainians lots of equipment anyway. Wow. I don't believe the Biden administration, given its stakes in this war, would not have looked for ways to get around the rules. When a country thinks it's facing an existential threat, and there's all sorts of evidence that people in the Biden administration think this is an existential threat, even though I don't agree with that, they go to great lengths to find ways to get around the rules. And you want to remember that

President Biden and company have said that in February, they decided to give Ukraine long-range attackams. That was in February. That was before this legislation was just passed. Furthermore, you remember, I think it was in March, they found $300 million worth of equipment to give to the Ukrainians. So my gut instinct tells me that we've been giving the Ukrainians lots of help, surreptitiously, but it hasn't mattered very much because, again, we just don't have much to give them. What do the attack them cost? I'm not sure what they cost. It's a good question. Can the president just send that stuff over there without any authorization, or does Tony Blinken sign another document under oath like he signed for the Israelis, swearing that, A,

this is an emergency, and B, it's needed for American national security, therefore C, we don't have to go to Congress. Look, when a government feels that it is in a terrible situation in international politics and something needs to be done, it doesn't pay much attention to what the law says. It does what it has to do. This is just the way international politics works. And by the way, this is why you don't want permanent wars, because when you're constantly fighting wars and you establish a national security state, it's not long before civil liberties are thrown out the window. And, you know, we basically act as if

we're in a permanent state of emergency. And when you're in a permanent state of emergency, you break the rules. And by the way, if you go back to the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln, you know, who was probably the greatest president the United States ever had, thankfully he was in charge during the American Civil War. He broke the rules, and he felt that he had no choice to break the rules because we were in an extreme emergency. So I would just say to you, I don't think the rules are going to matter much to the Biden administration. Do you think that Washington has ever considered that Ukraine might actually lose, or do they not care about that as long as it doesn't happen before November of this year? Well, they care greatly that it doesn't happen before November

of this year. There's no question about that. But I think they also are desperate to avoid defeat, whether it takes place before or after November. I mean, we have a lot of skin in this game, to put it rather crudely, right? Or at least the Biden administration does, or the War Party does, however you want to put it. And people want to go to great lengths to avoid defeat. I sometimes think that the establishment, military, industrial, State Department, that mentality, thinks that the U.S. capabilities are limitless. Do they? I think there's no doubt that they do. If you listen to President Biden talk about the United States, he thinks we're the greatest country in the history of the world. We're the most powerful state on the planet. There's never been a country as powerful as us. There's nothing we can't do. We can handle China and East Asia, Ukraine and Eastern Europe, and the Palestinian problem in Gaza, and not even break a sweat.

That's just the way things are. This is the United States of America. It knows no limits. And once you start thinking like that, you're going to get yourself into a heck of a lot of trouble. And as you've noticed, and I've noticed, we are in a heck of a lot of trouble. Here's Foreign Minister Lavrov speaking shortly after the House of Representatives approved the big package that included the $61 billion for Ukraine. Cut number one, Chris. Currently, the United States and its NATO allies persist in their fixation on dealing a decisive blow to Russia.

They seem prepared to keep opposing our nation, using Ukraine as their last stand, so to speak. Simultaneously, Western nations are precariously teetering towards a direct military confrontation involving nuclear powers carrying potential catastrophic outcomes. What do you think? Well, I think that he's obviously correct that we are and have been since the beginning of this war interested in weakening Russia to the point where it's knocked out of the ranks of the great powers. We were hoping that the Ukrainian army could deliver a hammer blow to the Russian army inside

of Ukraine. And that coupled with the sanction would bring the Russians to their knees. It obviously hasn't worked. And now we're in a situation where the Russians are basically in good shape. They're on a roll. And it looks like Ukraine and NATO are on the verge of a significant defeat, which raises the question, how will we up the ante? And one can make an argument that we have to be very careful here in responding to a possible defeat or to an actual defeat, because if we escalate, the Russians will counter-escalate, and that could lead to serious trouble.

Well, one of the antis that the Biden administration is considering, they were warned against by President Putin this morning. We don't have a clip of it. I didn't see it on tape. I just read about it because the Biden administration is threatening to pressure Western countries that regulate banks that have Russian depositors in those banks to seize the frozen Russian assets. This would be an act of theft on a massive, massive scale. What would be the Russian response to that? I'm not sure what the Russian response would be, but thankfully it would not be military. And what I worry about is where you get into a situation where we ratchet things up militarily. For example, put boots on the ground in Ukraine or use American or NATO air power to redress problems on the Ukrainian battlefield. And the Russians then retaliate and we end up in a

great power war. That's my major concern. I think that the Russians will retaliate. There will be economic consequences if we confiscate their money. But I don't think that will lead to any fighting between the two sides. And that's what I really care about. Do we have boots on the ground in Ukraine now, Professor Mearsheimer, American boots on the ground? One can answer that in two ways. We do have boots on the ground in the sense that we have military advisors and intelligence people and people of that sort inside of Ukraine. I think virtually every country does. But we don't have any combat forces in there.

We don't have fighting forces. We don't have any infantry units or artillery units, at least that we know of. And when people talk about putting boots on the ground, they're talking about taking large-scale French forces or large-scale American forces and putting them in places like Odessa. That's the nightmare scenario. I don't think we're going to do that. And I don't think that the Biden administration would dare to let the French do it. So all the evidence at this point is that we won't be foolish enough to put, you know, serious boots on the ground. Why in heaven's name would the French do that? I don't have, you know, I'm tempted to say because they're crazy, but the fact is the French are not going to do it. It was just Macron who was talking about doing that.

The Germans made it unequivocally clear that this was a nutty idea. And there's all sorts of evidence that people inside of France think that Macron is delusional. It could be that he was just trying to scare the Russians or something like that. It was an empty threat that he thought the Russians might take seriously. But I find it hard to believe that the French alone would put forces in, especially if there was adamant opposition from all of France's principal allies, which there would be. But there's nothing to be gained even by the threat other than exposure of the person making the threat as a fool. You're not going to get any argument from me. As you and I both know, if you look at American foreign policy, both towards the Gaza war and towards Ukraine, it's filled with foolishness. How long do you think the war goes on before Ukraine just has to give up the ghost? I'm not sure. The more you watch it, the more you think that, you know, maybe sometime this summer it'll reach the point where there has to be some sort of ceasefire and you get a frozen conflict. Ukrainians who do fight, and not every Ukrainian fights, but those Ukrainians who do fight are really filled with nationalistic fervor, and they are willing to fight and die till the very

end. So there are a lot of Ukrainians who are willing to continue fighting, even as things go south. And that makes one think that their army won't collapse. It won't fall apart at some point in the near future. But on the other hand, all armies have breaking points. And when you look at what's happening to the Ukrainian army, you can tell a plausible story about how it cracks sometime this summer or maybe in the fall. But if it doesn't, it's going to get rolled back in significant ways anyway, and they're going to end up losing much more territory than they've already lost, which is why I've long argued now is the time to cut a deal. So they minimize the number of Ukrainians killed, number one, and two, minimize the amount of territory they lose. It doesn't get anywhere.

Do you think there's a back channel communication going on, or do you think that Biden has absolutely prohibited it? Well, my intuition is that there's no meaningful back channel here. You certainly see no evidence of it whatsoever. It is possible we're just missing something. And as we were talking about a few minutes ago, people like Sullivan surely understand and Biden and Blinken as well, that Ukraine is in a grim situation and there's not much we can do to rescue that situation. So maybe they aren't talking to the Russians, but it certainly doesn't appear that way to an outsider like me. You mentioned early in this interview your observation about desertions. Isn't it true that even some of these Nazi units, the more extreme nationalists that have swastikas tattooed on their bodies, have in fact deserted? It's not clear that they've deserted. There is

small amounts of evidence that that may be true. But what they're refusing to do is take orders to go into points or places where a conflict is taking place because they think that they'll get clobbered. So they're refusing orders from the center. But there's no question, if you look at the army as a whole, that there are a huge number of desertions. And you want to remember the problem that the Ukrainians face is not only desertions, they also have a significant draft dodging problem inside Ukraine. And then they have all sorts of people who are of draft age, who are outside of Ukraine, most of them in the European Union, who don't want to come back to serve in the military. And this, of course, explains why they have a huge manpower problem, which, as I said at the top of the show, is a bigger problem than the weaponry problem, which is a huge problem in and of itself.

And the manpower problem cannot be cured by their share of the $61 billion. No, not at all. I mean, the money that we're giving them has no effect on the manpower problem. Professor Mearsheimer, it's a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you very much for joining us. I hope we can see you again next week. I look forward to it, Judge. Thank you. Thank you. Coming up at four o'clock Eastern, Max Blumenthal, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thanks for watching!