Judging Freedom - Prof. John Mearsheimer: Are Ukraine and Israel Winning Propaganda Wars?

Episode Date: August 28, 2024

Prof. John Mearsheimer: Are Ukraine and Israel Winning Propaganda Wars?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 August 27th, 2024. Professor John Mearsheimer joins us now. Professor Mearsheimer, as always, it's a pleasure to be able to pick your brain and hear your analysis. We've been talking in the past two days about propaganda. What is your view on the use of propaganda in modern warfare? It's omnipresent. I mean, what we're trying to do here, people like you and I, separate out the facts and make sense of what's really going on in the face of a barrage of propaganda, all of which is designed to throw us off the track and confuse us as to what's

actually happening. And if you look at the West, I mean, you would think that propaganda wouldn't get as far because we're supposed to have a marketplace of ideas where all sorts of people are able to challenge what's propaganda and therefore knock a lot of the arguments that the propagandists are throwing out there down. But that's not the case in the United States. There is no real marketplace of ideas. There's a dominant discourse. And except for platforms like yours and a handful of others in what I call the alternative media world, the mainstream is pretty much on the same page on every issue, and it's all propaganda. So I'm going to hold a newspaper in front of my face. This is yesterday's Wall Street Journal. I

don't know if you saw this, Professor Mearsheimer. It purports to show an Israeli Iron Dome missile destroying an incoming Hezbollah missile. According to our friend Alistair Crook, this photo, which again purports to have been taken Sunday morning, is a year old. And it was run by the Wall Street Journal. The New York Times ran the same photograph, a smaller version of it, also on yesterday's front page. And the photograph was taken with sunlight out. And according to Alistair, this attack by Hezbollah and response by Israel occurred under cover of darkness

and it only lasted for 20 minutes. And then the following happened. Chris, cut number 13. What happened today is not the end of the verse. One of the reasons we can't give more detail of this is immediately at five o'clock in the morning, the Israeli government issued an absolute ban on any reporting of any damage or any attacks. A complete censor was imposed on what happened in Tel Aviv, what happened at the air base, which they also attacked, which is where the drones flew from. Absolute ban, no reporting, no photographs, no visuals.

And so they put a complete blackout on any news of any damage to any infrastructure, any defense sites or to the intelligence bases in Tel Aviv. A government be taken, of a sophisticated society, it's not a third world country, be taken seriously when it puts a complete ban on the damage done by the enemy's military. But it's not only that they put a complete ban on it, then they say that hardly any damage was done to Israel and the Iron Dome system did a brilliant job of knocking down all of the incoming cruise missiles and rockets that were coming from Hezbollah. One then says to him or herself, if they knock down every incoming missile or rocket, there's no damage. So why would you

prevent the media from seeing what happened, which is really nothing because Israel was so successful at defending itself? At one point, Netanyahu said the IDF intercepted all the UAVs. What's a UAV? Do you know? A drone? Ah, all the UAVs that Hezbollah launched. Now, that can't possibly be true. And if it were, as you say, why the censorship? Yeah. I mean, by the way, just to segue over to the Ukraine war, for years, the Ukrainians have claimed every is the way it works. The Ukrainians are doing everything they can, just as the Israelis are, to make it clear that the other side really can't hurt them. But at the same time, if you look at what the Israelis are saying about their preemptive attack

against Hezbollah, their portraying is this great success where they destroyed virtually everything in the target set that they were going after. But given the fact that Hezbollah then responded with a quite significant barrage against Israel, you know that's not true. Now, there's no question the Israelis got some of Hezbollah's assets. And I think there's no question that some of those Hezbollah cruise missiles, and certainly the rockets, got through. But how much damage they did, we don't know, for reasons you just described. Does President Putin's patience in ordering a swift and lethal response to the invasion at Kursk, enhance Ukrainian propaganda by allowing them and the Western media to say things like, he's panicking, he can't decide what to do, he's afraid, we hit a soft underbelly.

Well, if you're Vladimir Putin, why do you care? I mean, I wouldn't care. Well, at whom is the propaganda war aimed? Is it aimed for domestic consumption, or is it to try and persuade Joe Biden to permit them to use long-range missiles to attack Moscow? Well, it's mainly aimed at domestic audiences, and that would include, in the case of Ukraine, the fighting forces. I mean, there's no question that there has been for quite a while now a significant morale problem inside the Ukrainian military. And furthermore, it's very difficult to get Ukrainian citizens to volunteer to serve in the military. And if you think you're going to lose and it looks like everything Ukraine does turns out to be a disaster, then it's going

to be even harder to keep the troops fighting and get people to enlist. So what you do is you say that we're actually doing very well. The situation is improving. You give all sorts of indications that the tide might be turning. And that's what the propaganda is designed to do vis-a-vis the troops. But of course, it applies to the publics as well. The Ukrainian government and the Western governments want to keep their peoples supporting the war, even though, you know, if they told the truth, it's likely that support for the war in the publics, both in Ukraine and in the West, would evaporate quite quickly. So the United States alone has given Ukraine $185 billion, with a B B in cash, military equipment, assistance, and ammunition

in the past two and a half years. Who's winning the propaganda war, Ukraine and the West or Russia? Can you say? Well, I think up to now in the West, the Ukrainians in the West have been winning the propaganda war. But if you segue over to who's winning the real war, you get the opposite answer, and that is that the Russians are winning. And slowly but steadily, what's happening here is that more and more people are beginning to understand that the propaganda war is just that. It's a story, it's a series of stories that are basically lies or stories that withhold key pieces of information or spinning in the extreme. All these forms of deception are at play. And people are beginning to realize that is true because they're seeing what's happening on the battlefield. But even then,

it was clear that Ukraine's situation in Eastern Ukraine on the main battlefront was deteriorating in significant ways before August 6th. But then all of a sudden, the Ukrainians launched this offensive into the Kursk region, and the propaganda machines are turned on full force, and we're being told that this is going to reverse the tide, that this is a great day for the Ukrainians. It shows they can continue the fight. The Russians are in trouble. There's good reason to think that Putin might be toppled. You know all these crazy stories that are spun out, which bear little resemblance to reality. The idea that Putin is going to be toppled because of the Kursk Offensive

is not a serious argument. And as you've heard me say, I think if anything, the Kursk Offensive is going to speed up the collapse of the Ukrainian military. It's not going to make this war last any longer. It was a remarkably foolish operation. But you can't say that in the West, right? Because the propaganda machines don't allow for that. Do you have a feel for what pressure there might be on President Putin from the right in the Russian intelligence community, military community, the Kremlin itself, people like former President Medvedev, to hammer, to bring this to a lethal, violent, certain, and quick end? As best I can tell, there is significant pressure on Putin to, as I like to say, turn the dogs loose, really go after Ukraine, which contrary to the propaganda in the West and

in Ukraine, he has not done. I mean, there are all sorts of target sets he could go after, which would inflict massive punishment on the Ukrainian population. He has not done that. I think he has wisely not done that. And I think he's powerful enough and he has been successful enough in waging the war that he can resist that kind of pressure. But I do believe, and this is very important, that if we crossed a red line, we did something that greatly upset him and really did look like it might shift the balance of power, I think he would then turn the dogs loose. Here's someone that you and I formerly criticized quite a bit when she was in office. She no longer is. Victoria Nuland calling for American airstrikes inside Russia. This is two months ago in May. I think if the attacks are coming directly

from over the line in Russia, that those bases ought to be fair game, whether they are where missiles are being launched from or where they are, where troops are being supplied from. I think it's time for that because Russia has obviously escalated this war, including, as you said at the beginning, attacking Russia's second city, Kharkiv, which is not on the front lines and trying to decimate it without ever having to put a boot on the ground. So I think it is time to give the Ukrainians more help hitting these bases inside Russia. I guess President Putin is being very, very patient and restrained. I mean, for example, he could target massive amounts of American military equipment, which is being stored, maintained, and prepared for use in Romania and in Poland if he wanted to.

He might kill some Americans in the process, but he could easily do it without much interference. Yeah, he can do all sorts of things. I mean, he could take down this giant dam in the Kiev region and flood a huge portion of the city of Kiev. He could destroy the river, the bridges on the river Dnieper. I mean, there are a lot of different things he hasn't done that he can do. And by the way, he could engage in a bombing campaign that's not aimed at the energy infrastructure or aimed at military targets, but which is aimed at killing large numbers of civilians, similar to what we did when we bombed both Germany and Japan in World War II. There are a lot of things that he could do that would really make it much more costly for the Ukrainian population, but he has not done that. And I,

again, say I think he was smart not to do it. By the way, going back to Nuland's comments, she was not talking about the United States hitting targets in Russia. She was talking about us allowing the Ukrainians to hit targets on the other side of the Russian-Ukrainian border. And we have granted the Ukrainians permission to do that. And in fact, we effectively, if not explicitly, granted the Ukrainians permission to invade Russian territory. The one thing that we have not agreed to allow the Ukrainians to do, which is what they want to do, is take those long-range missiles, the Atakams, and hit deep into Mother Russia. Well, Professor Mearsheimer, as recently as last night, President Zelensky said he would like to be able to hit St. Petersburg

or Moscow. I mean, this would be almost inconceivable, wouldn't it, using American equipment? Well, it's not inconceivable in the sense that he could use it, use the equipment, and do it. It's inconceivable that he would survive this. We would land on him like a ton of bricks. I think that may be a real Russian red line. You know, there's all this talk about us crossing Russian red lines and the Russians never responding. It's not clear to me that we have really been crossing red lines. It's not clear that the Russians have said, for example, that if you introduce Abrams tanks and Challenger

tanks, that's crossing a red line. Or if you bring in sophisticated artillery or what have you. I think a good case can be made that launching a significant number of ATACOMs and other cruise missiles into the Russian heartland would be crossing a red line. But even there, I think the key question you have to ask yourself is how effective are each of these moves? You want to remember going back pretty much to the start of this war, the Ukrainians and their supporters in the United States have argued that if you just give the Ukrainians X or you just give them Y or you allow them to do A or B, that will fundamentally alter the equation on the battlefield. Well, we've given them those weapons, we've let them do this, we've let them do that,

and it's had hardly any effect at all. If anything, Russia's position today is much improved over what it was when the war started in February 2022. And the best example of this, by the way, are the F-16s. You know, there was all this talk about how giving the Ukrainians F-16s is really going to matter. I mean, we don't want to get into the details, but this is a joke. The F-16s hardly matter at all. There's really just not much we can do to stem the tide at this point in time. Putin, of course, understands that, and that's why he's sitting tight. He's not letting people on his right push him to do anything rash, and he's just moving forward steadily every day.

Staying on the topic of propaganda, but switching to Israel and Gaza? Is Israel winning the propaganda war? I don't think so. I don't think it's winning at all. I think certainly outside the West, it's suffered a decisive defeat. But even inside the West, almost everybody knows what's going on in Gaza, for one, and even with regard to Hezbollah and Iran. There are just limits to what the Israelis can do to disguise the genocide that they're engaged in in Gaza and the provocative behavior that they're engaged in with regard to Iran and even with regard to Hezbollah. So I don't think they're winning the propaganda war. The Israelis used to be quite sophisticated and the lobby used to be quite sophisticated. Here

we're talking about the Israel lobby in the United States. But those days are long gone. And as I've said before, what the lobby is engaged in now inside the United States is smash mouth politics. It's right out in the open and people see it. People know what happened to these four Ivy League university presidents. Right. And to three progressive liberal Democrat members of the House of Representatives who were defeated in primaries because AIPAC put, in the case of one of them in the Bronx, $13 million into the election. I mean, the Bronx doesn't spend $13 million in a congressional election, but the Democrats did this year.

Yeah, it's just hard to miss these things. And, you know, even the counter to Israel's propaganda and to the lobby's propaganda even seeps into the mainstream. I saw a recent clip that somebody sent me of John Stewart poking fun at the Democratic National Convention for not allowing someone who was pro-Palestinian to make a statement. I think lots and lots of people understand that the Palestinian voices were iced out at the Democratic National Convention. Every other conceivable group under the sun got to speak at the Democratic National Convention, except Palestinians. And people figure out pretty quickly what's going on here. And this is why Israel is in deep trouble. There's just

no question. I want to read to you some statements from public officials in Israel. So this is from Ronan Barr. You know who he is. He's the head of Shin Bet. Yes. He refers to the actions of the Itamar Ben-Gavir controlled militias and the settlers that he animates in the West Bank as Jewish terror. It appears that there's actually violence between

local police, IDF, and Ben Gavir's police. This would almost be inconceivable in America. This would be like the FBI and the New Jersey State Police shooting at each other because people in New Jersey are trying to steal real estate from people in Pennsylvania. Yeah. I mean, there's just no question about that. You saw this, you saw evidence of this on film when those nine individuals who were accused of raping the Palestinian prisoner were arrested and put behind bars. And then protesters came in to try to remove those individuals who were arrested from jail. And you had conflict breakout that involved military against police, police against police, and so forth and so on. The security forces were

fighting against each other. It was not a large scale conflict by any means, but it was just, I think, a harbinger of things to come. And it certainly provides support for the point that you're making. So how perilous is Israel's stability or how perilous is the stability of the Netanyahu government when retired Major General Yitzhak Barik says things like Israel will collapse in a year, Netanyahu has decided to die with the Philistines, Netanyahu has lost his humanity, morality, norms, values, and sense of responsibility. This is not an editorialist saying it. This is a prominent retired member of the military going for Bibi's jugular.

Look, if you look at Israel's external threat environment and how it's dealing with it. And then you look at the centrifugal forces at play inside Israel, and you marry those two things together. Israel is in almost a hopeless situation. Let's just go back to the attack on Hezbollah. Israel launched this attack on Hezbollah. Hezbollah retaliated. What's the end result of this? Did Israel win? Has Israel shut down the threat from Hezbollah? Does Israel have escalation dominance over Hezbollah so that it can solve this problem once and for all? The answer is no. Same thing is true with Iran. What about Hamas? Go down into the Gaza Strip. Have the Israeli forces, the IDF, has the IDF defeated the Palestinians? Have they defeated Hamas? The answer is no. There's just

all sorts of evidence to that effect. Then go inside the country and just take into account the fact that you have people like Smutrik and Ben-Gavir in the government and what that means for the future of Israel, because their strength is only going to grow with the passage of time. And then you take all these conflicts that you see on the street between groups of one sort and groups of another sort, and you can tell a story where Israel does have a real civil war or a lot of violent conflict moving forward. And this, again, is independent of what's happening externally. So whether Netanyahu lasts another year, two years, three years, in the overall scheme of things, it just doesn't matter much. Because Israel just doesn't have solutions to

its external problems and to its internal problems. But the Israeli people have received and perpetrated 70 years of dehumanization of the Palestinians. It's been going on since 1948, more than 70 years. What are the chances of a two-state solution without it being imposed by force? I can answer that with one word, zero. Not going to happen. No matter who is the prime minister of Israel. Exactly. It's not going to happen. Again, there's no chance it's going to happen today. And if you look at Israel's political trajectory moving forward, it becomes more hawkish with the passage of time. I mean, Smutrich and Ben-Gavir are not only not going away,

they're going to become more influential politicians with the passage of time. And they're going to be more individuals who bear a resemblance to them than more moderate politicians in Israel. How much more patience do you expect expect of Israel's regional neighbors, where we seem to see what you pointed out months ago, Professor Mearsheimer, still persisting. The vast majority of the population, furious and livid at what they see every day on their mobile devices happening in Gaza and the West Bank, the overwhelming majority. I know these countries are not democracies, but the leadership does depend to some extent upon populist support. And the government's not responding to this. How much longer will that state of affairs exist before one of those governments responds? I don't think those governments can do much. I mean, the two sort of key cases here

are the Egyptians or the government in Egypt and the government in Jordan. And both of those governments are feeling huge pressure from down below. You want to remember that over 50% of the population in Jordan is Palestinian. So there is huge pressure on the king there, and there's huge pressure on Sisi in Egypt. But they can't get tough with Israel because they have no leverage. And in fact, the United States, which means Israel, has huge leverage over them. These are two countries that are in deep economic trouble, and they depend on support from the West, economic support. We control the spigot, we meaning the United States, which is another way of saying the Israelis and the Americans control the spigot. So those governments are

paralyzed when it comes to getting tough with Israel. And of course, they have no military option against Israel. The great danger is that the people down below in Jordan and in Egypt will rise up and overthrow the existing governments in those countries. But even if that were to happen, right, which would not be in our interest, we believe, the new governments in both of those countries would not have the military wherewithal to attack Israel or to coerce Israel. And they certainly would have to be cut as in the fact that they're economically dependent on the United States and Israel to make sure that they continue to get aid from international institutions and even from the United States itself. What would happen if Turkey cut off Israel's oil supply? That's a little different. I mean, I think that the Turks have a lot more leverage over the Israelis than either the Egyptians and the Jordanians do.

But the question is, is Erdogan, when push comes to shove, really willing to play hardball? And I have doubts about that. I think that the United States and Israel together can face him down if he decides that he's going to get tough. And I think if we face him down, he will back down. Here's Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, on Saturday, cut number eight, Chris. They started saying there will be a stop to the aggression and that there was going to be a ceasefire and to hold off.

And that is why we took our time. We didn't tell anyone we would take our time, but honestly, we took our time to give room for these negotiations. Our main goal in this front and all the blood lost and all these sacrifices is to stop the aggression in Gaza. He said this Saturday afternoon. 12 hours later, he was attempting to bomb and apparently did so successfully, although you wouldn't know it from the Israeli press, Israeli military targets. So I suppose, and you correct me if my supposition

is without evidence, this is going to be a slow, methodical, gradual buildup of aggression against Yeah. Let me ask you this. If you're playing Iran's hand or Hezbollah's hand, doesn't it make sense for you to drag out your response as long as possible for two reasons. One is you keep the Israelis in a constant state of suspense. And furthermore, that has economic consequences. But furthermore, you wait until the Americans, who can't keep all of those military forces in the Middle East forever, remove some of them. And then you're in a better position to attack Israel than you would be now. So, you know, there's a lot of people, there are a lot of people out there who are saying the Israelis have deterred the Iranians. The Iranians are afraid to attack Israel. And they were saying a similar thing about Hezbollah. But what I'm saying to you, Judge, is I think a good case can be made that it's smart for the Iranians to wait, just as it was smart for Hezbollah to wait.

And I'm curious what you think of that. Well, I agree with you. And I would add another factor, Professor Mearshermer, and I suspect you agree with this. It further degrades the IDF, which is already exhausted, depleted, humiliated, defeated, and if you listen to what seeps out from them, unwilling to fight another war. Yeah. Two quick points on that. I have a number of friends who follow the war in Gaza very carefully, and they believe that the number of IDF casualties in Gaza is much greater than is reported in the Israeli media. I'm not saying that's true, but there are, you know, pieces of evidence floating around there to make you think that is probably true.

Second point I would make to you is you notice, although the Israelis slammed Hezbollah the other day, they attacked Hezbollah before it was able to hit Israel. There is hardly any talk in the IDF or in the Israeli elite foreign policy establishment about invading Lebanon with ground forces. And this dovetails with your point that the troops are worn out. They're having trouble when they call up the reservists for a third or fourth tour to get those reservists to report for duty because they're exhausted, because these constant call-ups are doing damage to their home life, to their businesses, and so forth and so on. So Israel is in real trouble in a protracted war. And this is what General Yitzhak Brick, who you were referring to before, basically said. If this

war goes on for one more year, Israel is kaput. Now, I wouldn't go that far, but the problems just get deeper the longer the war goes on. And that gives countries like the Iranians, and it gives actors like Hezbollah, an incentive to draw it out, to not attack right away, and to keep the Israelis waiting and keep the Americans waiting for the eventual strike. Professor Mearsheimer, it's a pleasure. As always, you and I will be together this weekend at the Ron Paul Institute for Peace, where we both are featured speakers. And I'm looking forward more to hearing you than to hearing my own voice. Look forward to it, Professor Mearsheimer.

Thank you for your time. And of course, I hope we can see you again here next week. I will be here. Good talking to you as always, Judge. Thank you, my dear friend. Please remember to like and subscribe. We're up to 429,000 subscriptions. Our goal has been a half a million by Christmas. We're well on track to make

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