Judging Freedom - Prof. John J. Mearsheimer: What If Gaza and Ukraine Escalate?

Episode Date: June 6, 2024

Prof. John J. Mearsheimer: What If Gaza and Ukraine Escalate?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Resolve to earn your degree in the new year in the Bay with WGU. WGU is an online accredited university that specializes in personalized learning. With courses available 24-7 and monthly start dates, you can earn your degree on your schedule. You may even be able to graduate sooner than you think by demonstrating mastery of the material you know. Make 2025 the year you focus on your future. Learn more at wgu.edu. so hi everyone judge andrew napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, June 6th, 2024. Our dear good friend, Professor John Mearsheimer joins us now. Professor Mearsheimer, I know you're much into me, and thanks so much for the time that you give us. I do want to talk to you about

what if, what if, what if Gaza escalates, what if Ukraine escalates. But because I follow you and I know what you say in other venues, I want to start on another subject about which, of course, you are expert, you're expert in so many. Can China rise peacefully? Well, my argument has long been that war between the United States and China is not inevitable. I want to be clear on that. But my argument is that as China became more powerful economically and militarily, it would try to dominate Asia, and the United States would try to prevent that. And the end result is you would get an intense security competition that would be very dangerous. I thought that this was inevitable.

I think if you look at the history of great power politics, what's happening between the United States and China is predictable. So I think what we have now taking place is an intense security competition. But security competitions of this sort are always very dangerous. And if you look at what's happening in the South China Sea, as we talk here, there is all sorts of reasons to be concerned that this might escalate from a security competition to a shooting war. When you say security competition, are you talking about hegemony, absolute control over a certain geographic area and the power to exclude the others? Would that be a fair definition? Yeah, I think that's a fair definition of what I would

call regional hegemony. My argument is that great powers want to dominate their region of the world. If you look at the United States of America, we are a hegemon in the Western Hemisphere. There is no country in this hemisphere that would even countenance attacking the United States. And this is the ideal position from a security point of view. Most Americans take this for granted. They don't think about it. But the fact is, when the United States got started, Africa got its independence in 1783, it was a very vulnerable country. And the elites who ran this country up until today went to great lengths to achieve regional hegemony and to maintain it. And the Chinese would be foolish not to try to dominate Asia. They don't want to

be weak. The Chinese understand full well what happened to them when they were weak between the late 1840s and the late 1940s. They call this the century of national humiliation. So the Chinese want to dominate Asia. If I were a Chinese leader, that would be my goal. And I would not like the idea of the United States interfering in East Asian politics all the time. I would want to push the Americans as far away dominate East Asia, much as China doesn't interfere with our dominance of the Western Hemisphere? No, I think the United States will go to great lengths to prevent China from dominating Asia. I think there are a lot of people who do believe, and I would put you in this category, you can correct me if I'm wrong, that it doesn't matter if China were to dominate Asia. It would not be a serious security threat to the United States. And we continue to have significant economic intercourse. I do believe that. I don't think you do.

No, I think that's right. I think this is one of the few issues where you and I are on opposite ends of the dipole. Right, right. And this attitude that the Americans have, we can't let China dominate its area, also extends to the other side. We can't let Russia dominate its area. We got to use Ukraine as a battering ram with which to weaken Russia, and as absurd as this sounds, drive President Putin from office? I think there's no question that some people think like that, but that is a remarkably foolish way of thinking about Russia. Russia is not anywhere near as powerful as China, and Russia is not a threat to dominate Eastern Europe, much less all of Europe. In fact, we should have, from a balance of power politics perspective, from a realist perspective, the sort of perspective I

have, we should have good relations with the Russians. We should not be trying to contain the Russians because they're not bent on expansion. They're not powerful enough to dominate Europe. Okay. Our relations with Russia right now are terrible and dangerous, and you can weigh in on that. But before you do, here is a purported defense of why defending Ukraine is so important to the United States. The speaker is Senator Charles Grassley, who, by the way, is in line for the presidency. He's the president pro tem of the Senate, meaning the senior member of the Senate. He's a Republican in the Democrats' control of the Senate. He's in his 80s. I know him personally. I don't agree with anything that's on this clip, and some of it I think is abstruse. But here he is answering the question, why is Ukraine so important to the United States? One would be the 1993 Budapest

Agreement. Another one would be Article 5 of NATO, because if Putin would decide to build up the Russian Empire, as he said his goal is, that would include the Baltics and part of Poland, and instead of the United States being interested in just the defense and sovereignty of Ukraine and spending money in that direction. We would be spending many, many times more money to defend NATO or to defend our obligations under the Budapest Agreement. And in the case of NATO, that could even include American blood. So I think it's in our national security interest to support Ukraine outside of the leadership responsibilities that the United States has, is to have a consistent foreign policy so our friends will follow us

and so that our enemies will fear us. I don't know where to start. I'll let you start. This is, to me, erroneous, defective, profoundly wrong thinking. If this is symbolic of what the Congress is thinking, no wonder we're in such a mess. I'll let you take it. Well, let's just talk about the Budapest memo and the Article 5 guarantee that he referenced in the beginning of his comments. He is implying that we have an obligation to come to the defense of Ukraine. The Budapest memo, when it was written, was carefully crafted so that we have no commitment to defend Ukraine. It's a very loosey-goosey commitment, and it was designed that way. And with regard to Article 5, Article 5 only applies to countries that are in NATO, and Ukraine is not NATO.

So it's just irrelevant. Both of these are irrelevant. The main point, however, is he's making the argument that if we don't stop Putin in Ukraine, he's going to conquer Eastern Europe. He's going to conquer Western Europe. And, you know, it's going to look like the Cold War all over again. This is not a serious argument. The Russians don't have the capability to conquer even all of Ukraine. And Putin has never said that he was interested in conquering all of Ukraine. So the idea that he's then going to go on a rampage and conquer countries in Eastern Europe is simply not a serious argument. Is, in your view, Ukraine in danger of, I'll use two incendiary words, escalating or exploding when Great Britain, France, Germany, Sweden and the United States have all publicly stated and privately directed that their offensive military weaponry may be used to attack sites inside Russia. Resolve to earn your degree in the new year in the Bay with WGU. With courses available online

24-7 and monthly start dates, WGU offers maximum flexibility so you can focus on your future. Learn more at wgu.edu. Well, the Ukrainians have a deep-seated interest in escalating for the purposes of dragging the United States and NATO into the fight. You know, you hear a lot of talk these days that the Ukrainians want to attack into Russia so that that will help them win on the battlefield where they're obviously losing. I don't believe that attacking into Russia is going to have any effect on what happens on the battlefield. And I don't know any serious analyst who thinks that. What the Ukrainians want to do is they want to escalate, get the Russians to counter-escalate, and then drag us in, because they understand that that's probably their only hope for prevailing in this conflict. We, of course, don't want that to happen, and the Biden administration, despite all its foolishness regarding Ukraine,

is going to great lengths to make sure that this one doesn't escalate to the point where we get sucked in. If we do get sucked in, it's a war we can't win. There's no question about that. I mean, if we get sucked in, it is a great power war between two great powers that are armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons. Furthermore, the conflict would be taking place on Russia's doorstep. We both know the Russians view what is now going on in Ukraine as an existential threat. If the Americans were involved directly in the fight, that would be an existential threat on steroids. And in that kind of situation, if the balance of power began to shift against the Russians, if NATO began to prevail in any meaningful way, I think it's almost certain in my mind that the Russians would turn to nuclear weapons.

And even if that doesn't happen, the mere fact that you're fighting a major conventional war in Ukraine right on Russia's door, has all sorts of potential to lead to nuclear escalation. So it would be disastrous if we got sucked into this conflict. Professor Mearsheimer, does Russia fear NATO, or does it view it as a paper tiger? Well, I think it fears NATO in the sense that NATO is buttressing Ukraine. Ukraine couldn't fight this war, couldn't contest the Russians if it weren't for NATO support. So in that sense, they fear them. I think that the Russians do worry about escalation. They'd be foolish not to.

But I think in the end, they understand that this one is unlikely to escalate into a great power war involving the United States and Russia. President Putin was asked yesterday about the use of nuclear weapons. He didn't like the question, and he admonished the questioner. And of course, he reminded us of history. Only one country in the history of the world is used, did Harry Truman at the end of World War II. But I want you to listen to the translation of what he said and give me your thoughts on it, please. Chris, cut number seven.

There are always accusations flung at us that we are nuclear cyber-addling, but am I the one asking the question about the possible nuclear war? You were the one to ask the question. You are pushing me towards this question. And then you'll say that I've been brandishing the nuclear truncheon.

This is a very grave subject. The U.S. is the only country to have used nuclear weapons during the Second World War. Hiroshima, Nagasaki-75 kilotons, just the tactical nuclear weapons. So let's not push the situation towards the point when even a threat is involved, let alone the use of nuclear weapons. For some reason, the West believes that Russia is never going to resort to that. But we've got the nuclear doctrine in place. Have a look at it. What does it say? It says that someone else's actions threaten our sovereignty or territorial integrity. Then we believe we have the right to use all the tools at our disposal.

And no one should take that lightly or superficially. There needs to be a professional view of that. We have the right to use all the tools at our disposal, and no one should take that lightly or superficially. Can you read into that, Professor Mearsheimer? Yes, I think what Putin is trying to do here, in a very sophisticated way, is he's trying to walk a fine line. He does not want to appear to be reckless. He does not want to make it look like he's obsessed with nuclear weapons and constantly thinking about how he can use them. That's not in his interest. He doesn't want to look reckless. But again, he wants to make sure that he sends a

very clear signal to the West that if the West pushes him far enough, he will use nuclear weapons. He wants to facilitate deterrence here. So he's trying to avoid recklessness and at the same time facilitate deterrence. And this involves walking a fine line. And that's, I think, what you see him doing. I know you're not on the political end of things, and I don't expect you have your finger on the political pulse, but do you think the American people would welcome or even support American troops on the ground in Ukraine or in Eastern Europe ready to enter Ukraine? No, I don't think so. And I think there would obviously be some Americans who would support that, but there would be a huge chunk who wouldn't, and they would make a lot of noise. And furthermore, I think that President Biden, for all his faults, fully understands that it's not in the American national interest to put troops on the ground in Ukraine. It would be disastrous.

Switching gears to the other hotspot, which is Israel and Gaza, in two weeks over the president's, I guess, silent objection, I'm not sure where he stands on this, Prime Minister Netanyahu will address a joint session of Congress. One member of Congress says he won't show, happens to be Jewish, Senator Bernie Sanders, who calls Netanyahu a war criminal. Netanyahu's presence in Congress at this moment, payback to the donor class, showtime, substantive. What's your take? Well, I think that this is all about American domestic politics. I mean, I think the Republicans are driving this train, certainly not the Democrats. I mean, if you think about the position that Chuck Schumer is in,

it becomes manifestly clear that although he agreed to invite Netanyahu, it's not in his political interest or in Biden's political interest. But the Republicans understand that the Democrats are in a real bind over Israel today. There's a progressive wing of the Democratic Party that is deeply opposed to the Biden administration's policies in Gaza. And therefore, what they're trying to do, the Republicans, that is, is they're trying to exploit the fact that there is democratic opposition to what Israel is doing. And there's no better way to do that to invite Bibi Netanyahu to come to address the Senate. The Republicans and the Democrats both signed the letter of invitation. And the end result is that he'll come and get multiple standing ovations on Capitol Hill as he always does. And what you have here is the leader of an apartheid state who the ICJ has said

is pursuing a policy in Gaza that has the earmarks of genocide and who is also in a situation where he may get an arrest warrant from the ICC for committing war crimes or leading Israel to commit war crimes in Gaza. It's just hard to believe that an individual in that situation is being brought before Congress to address Congress and that he'll get all those standing ovations. But the question you want to ask yourself is, why is this the case? And the answer is quite obvious. It's the Israel lobby. It's Israel's influence through the institutions and individuals in the lobby that makes this bizarre situation possible. Professor Mearsheimer, can a country legally, morally, I suppose legally, morally and with intellectual honesty, call itself a democracy when it has special rights for some and degraded, even no rights for others?

It certainly can't call itself a liberal democracy. Israel does that all the time. And we, of course, make the same argument. But if you look at what's happening in Israel, it's very clear that it's an apartheid state. And to call an apartheid state a liberal democracy is not a serious argument. I'm always amazed when people argue that Israel shares their values. I always say to myself, it doesn't share my values. Well, he's going to stand in the same place where every president of the United States since James Madison stood, and he rejects the basic principles of American democracy, of equality under the law

and due process. He basically represents Jim Crow America, and thankfully Jim Crow America is in the rearview mirror. We never ever want to go back to Jim Crow America, and almost all of us greatly regret that the Americans went there at one time. The fact that we had slavery and then Jim Crow America is a black mark on our history. We never want that to happen again. We have, I think, better values now. And those values are not the same values that Israel has. Israel, again, is an apartheid state. But you want to ask yourself, what's going on here?

And as I said, the United States behaves in this manner towards Israel because of the power of the lobby. We have a special relationship with Israel that is unparalleled. There's no other case in the historical record that looks anything like this. And people should ask themselves, why is this the case? This is not a healthy situation for the United States. It's not a healthy situation for a liberal democracy like ours. President Biden has offered a peace proposal that has struck a lot of people as reasonable, not Ben-Gavir and Smotrich, the two members of the Israeli cabinet, not the war cabinet, the other, the governing cabinet, the real cabinet, but more importantly, the leaders of the right-wing groups that are in the governmental coalition. And they have said to Prime Minister Netanyahu, if he accepts this or if he fails to invade and degrade Rafah, they'll pull out of the government and the government will collapse and the Israelis will have to have an election in the midst of all this.

What happens if Netanyahu succumbs to their threat and resumes slaughtering innocents in Rafah. Bear in mind that yesterday it is reported and not denied that the Israelis attacked a school which was being used as a place of refuge by 39 children and a half dozen adults, all of whom were murdered. Well, attacking the school is nothing new. I mean, if you look at what the Israelis have been doing since October 7th, this just fits into the general pattern very neatly. There was a recent report out, by the way, that indicated that the Israelis have dropped 70,000 tons of bombs on Gaza. Wow. How small Gaza is. It's like a postage stamp. They've dropped 70,000 tons of bombs. Now, with regard to the question of what's going to happen moving forward here, I find it hard to believe that either Hamas and Israel can work out some sort of meaningful ceasefire agreement. You want to remember, it's not just the Israelis who are

unlikely to accept this deal. It's also Hamas. I mean, I hope I'm wrong here, but Hamas has said that for them to accept the deal, it has to be a permanent ceasefire. That means basically an end to the fighting. And Netanyahu cannot accept that. And furthermore, the Hamas leaders say that Israel has to pull all its forces out of Gaza for them to accept Biden's proposal. I can't imagine the Israelis doing that either. You want to remember, just going to the Israeli side of the equation, that the Israelis, and here we're talking mainly about Netanyahu, have said from the beginning that they're going to decisively defeat Hamas. They're not close to decisively defeating Hamas. So how do they get out now without it looking like a humiliating defeat? You know, you wonder why President Biden claims that this proposal, here's a picture of the school, by the way, after, obviously, after the attack on the murders, why President Biden claimed, I know politicians put spin on things and they even outright lie for whatever reason, claimed that

this was an Israeli proposal that the Americans endorsed and they're waiting for Hamas to say yes. Well, I think that President Biden is desperate. I mean, there's nobody who wants peace in Gaza more than President Biden at this point in time. Oh, but he could bring it about with a phone call. You've said that. Well, he's not going to do that. I mean, we live in the real world here, and he would lose for sure in November if he put any meaningful pressure on Israel. But President Biden is desperate to get a deal. And the other thing is that Netanyahu is not completely straight with President Biden. He oftentimes indicates that he'll accept Biden's proposal because he thinks that Hamas will turn it down. So he's playing politics here. Then when it becomes clear that Hamas is not going to turn the deal down, that Hamas may accept the deal.

What Netanyahu then does is he relies on people like Smotrich and Ben-Gavir on his far right to make the case that his government will fall if he were to accept the deal, and therefore he can't accept the deal. You know, if innocents weren't being slaughtered, this would be laughable. It's such an absurd game. Here's Admiral Kirby. I know he's not credible, but here he is on this very issue. And he says over and over and over again, it's an Israeli proposal. Cut number four. That proposal, an Israeli proposal, has been given to Hamas. It was done on Thursday night, our time. We're waiting for an official response from Hamas. It was done on Thursday night, our time.

We're waiting for an official response from Hamas. We would note that publicly, Hamas officials came out and welcomed this proposal. This was an Israeli proposal. We have every expectations that if Hamas agrees to the proposal, as was transmitted to them, an Israeli proposal, that Israel would say yes. I mean, he almost protested too much. How many times does he have to say in two sentences that it was an Israeli proposal? It's almost as if he knows it wasn't. Well, I'm not sure it wasn't an Israeli proposal in the sense that I think that they probably

cleared it with Netanyahu and company. And as I said before, Netanyahu has a tendency to agree to these things, thinking that Hamas will turn it down, right? And so I wouldn't be surprised if Biden and company were confident that the Israelis would accept the proposal and therefore felt free to say that it was an Israeli proposal. But then when there's evidence that Hamas might accept it, Netanyahu cuts in the other direction and distances himself from this proposal. I find it very hard to figure out on a day-to-day basis what exactly is going on with this ceasefire proposal, because people tend to be all over the

map on it. Is the resistance to Israeli genocide brewing amongst state actors in the region? I think it's always been there. It's never been too strong in large part because the Arab elites be very careful that they're not overthrown if they're seen as being in cahoots with the Israelis. So it's pressure from below more than anything else that I think drives the Arab elites to support the Palestinians. But it's very clear that if you look around the world, every day there's more evidence that people are turning against the israelis i think yesterday spain recognized a palestinian state and i saw it today where the naacp is calling for president biden to cut off the supply of arms to israel so you see the israelis are getting into deeper and deeper trouble on the public relations front, or in terms of their reputation, or in terms of diplomacy. And I think that this matters

greatly to the Israelis. Last area of our conversation, do you expect a serious conflagration in the north, the IDF against Hezbollah? Yeah, I mean, this is a really important subject. I was going to say about five minutes ago, we should talk a bit about it. Yeah. You're channeling me, or I'm channeling you. No, there's no question that the Israelis are seriously talking about launching an offensive against Hezbollah. Hezbollah is doing a great deal of damage in the north. It has inadvertently set fires over large swaths of northern Israel because of the weather and the fact that it's easy to start fires. What you're seeing is that some of the rounds that Hezbollah is firing into northern Israel

are starting fires, which the Israelis are having a devil of a time putting out. And the Israelis are deeply concerned about this. Furthermore, Hezbollah has really ramped up its firing of missiles and rockets into northern Israel in recent weeks. And the Israelis, of course, are retaliating, but that's just leading Hezbollah to counter-retaliate. And the end result is that northern Israel has, in good part, become unlivable. And you still have more than 60,000 people, these are Israeli citizens from northern Israel, who are now living in the center of Israel in temporary housing, who can't return home. And those people are saying, by the way,

that a ceasefire alone will not solve the problem, because their great fear is that if you get a ceasefire with Hezbollah, and they move back to their homes in the north, that that ceasefire will break down, and the end result will be that Hezbollah will start shelling again, and they'll have to flee their homes into central Israel. So this is a huge problem. Now, Benny Gantz, who's in the cabinet, has said he's promised those 60,000 plus people that they will be able to move back safely to northern Israel by September 1st. The question you have to ask yourself is, how is he going to do that? And one way he could do it, by the way, is put an end to the war in Gaza. Because if the war in Gaza ends, Hezbollah has made it clear that it will stop shelling northern Israel. But the war in Gaza looks like it's going to go on and on and on, which means the war with Hezbollah in northern

Israel is going to go on and on and on. And this is creating an untenable situation for Israel. I don't want to get too deep into Israeli politics, but you and many others on this program have opined that if former General Gantz became the Israeli prime minister, there would be no difference in the policy in Gaza. I'm thinking when you said he made a promise by September 1, does he think he'll be prime minister by September 1? He may think that and he may be prime minister, but is he going to pull everything out of Gaza, as Bibi won't do? I don't think so. Right.

Just to build on what you said, I think there's hardly any difference between Gantz and Netanyahu in terms of actual policy. They're birds of a feather, for sure. And I find it hard to believe that Gantz would come up with some sort of plan for putting an end to what's happening in Gaza so that what's happening with Hezbollah came to an end as well. I just don't see that happening. So I think in a very important way, the Israelis are in deep trouble, not only in Gaza. I mean, they're back into that hornet's nest, but they're also in deep trouble on their northern flank because they're dealing with an adversary that's filled with tough hombres and that's armed to the teeth with probably around 150,000 rockets and missiles,

many of which are very accurate. Does the United States get involved, in your view, either on the ground from the sea or the air if there is a full-fledged Israeli-Hezbollah war? I don't mean skirmishes. I mean a real war. Well, we certainly won't get involved on the ground. I'm not sure the Israelis will get involved on the ground. I mean, we should talk about this at some point, what an Israeli offensive against Hezbollah would look like, you know. But I think that, I think we would go to great lengths to avoid getting involved altogether. And I think we would not get involved on the ground. It is possible we would get involved with air or naval forces, but only in a very limited way. We did not get involved in 2006, and we did not get involved between 1982 and 2000,

which is the first time the Israelis went into southern Lebanon. I think that the scenario that we really have to worry about in terms of America getting involved is a war with Iran. And we saw this in April when on April 14th, the United States actually participated in the defense of Israel and shot down by some estimates slightly more than half of the missiles and drones that the Iranians threw at Israel. But I think in the case of Hezbollah or the case of Gaza, there's hardly any chance that we'll get involved directly. Professor Mearsheimer, thank you very much. I know we ran the gamut from China to Ukraine to Russia to Gaza to Israel, but your wealth of knowledge and your knowledge and your time is

much appreciated by my viewers and, of course, by me. My pleasure to talk to you and to your viewers. Thank you. We'll do it again next week. Thank you, Professor. All the best. All the best to you. Thank you. Remaining today at two o'clock, Max Blumenthal, all times Eastern as usual, and at 4 o'clock, Aaron Matej. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. I'm out.