Judging Freedom - Prof. John Mearsheimer: Bibi’s Catastrophic Blunders

Episode Date: September 12, 2024

Prof. John Mearsheimer: Bibi’s Catastrophic BlundersSee 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, September 12, 2014. Professor John Mearsheimer joins us now. Professor Mearsheimer, always a pleasure. My dear friend, we were just reminiscing about the weekend we spent together at the Ron Paul Gathering in Northern Virginia on Labor Day weekend. It was a great time to bond with you and other colleagues of ours, and I deeply appreciate it. And of course, I appreciate your time here. I want to talk to you at some length to elicit your opinion on the mistakes the Prime Minister Netanyahu has made from before October 7th up to the present day. But I have to discuss first some of the latest events in Ukraine and one in the South China Sea. But before I leave Netanyahu, just to tease you a little, according to Haaretz, now I know you read Haaretz, you may have seen this, the latest sobriquet being thrown at him by the families of the hostages is The Hangman of Gaza Street.

I don't know if you've heard that, but that's what they're calling him. Okay, to Ukraine. Is there any question in your mind but that the Ukrainian, NATO, UK, US invasion of Kursk was a disaster? There's no doubt in my mind it was a disaster. And I think that it was a disaster for two simple reasons. One is that the Ukrainians gained no military advantage in Kursk itself.

There was just no real good reason to go in there. And in fact, once they went in, the Russians brought air power and artillery to bear, and they've decimated the Ukrainian forces. And the Ukrainians have very little to show for this operation. At the same time, the really important battlefield is in eastern Ukraine. That's where the rubber meets the road. And what the Ukrainians had to do to make the Kursk offensive work was they had to pull forces from eastern Ukraine, from the main battlefield. And that just gave the Russians, who already had an advantage in the east, an even greater advantage. So the Ukrainians lose in Kursk and they lose on the eastern front. And the end result is they are worse off today than they would be

if they had taken those forces they sent into Kursk and either left them on the eastern front or moved the new forces to the eastern front. But they didn't do that, and they have sped up their defeat. Your analysis is absolutely consistent with all of the ex-military and ex-intel people. I know you're ex-military, but you're in the field of academia that we put on the show. However, last Saturday in London, the Financial Times, a publication that you and I consult on a daily basis, hosted a most unusual conference at which there were two speakers. I wish you were there because you have forgotten more than these two know, notwithstanding who they are. One is CIA Director William Burns, and the other is MI6 Director

Sir Peter Moore. I would like you to listen to what they said about the invasion in Kursk. Chris, cut number nine. Typically audacious and bold on the part of the Ukrainians to try and change the game in a way. And I think they have, to a degree, changed the narrative around this. The Kursk offensive is a significant tactical achievement. It's not only been a boost in Ukrainian morale, it has exposed some of the vulnerabilities of Putin's Russia and of his military. Your views of what these two said, notwithstanding who they are and the armies that they command? Well, I think that they're both delusional. I mean, I think that if you're

going to make the case that the Kursk offensive has had a meaningful effect on the course of the war, you have to spell out what that effect is. And they, of course, don't do that. And if you listen to the head of MI6, what he said, you know, is that it effectively has given the Ukrainians a morale boost, which is, of course, temporary and not very meaningful. And it's changed the discourse. Okay, it's changed the discourse, but I'm not really interested in the discourse. What I want to know is what's happened on the battlefield. And those guys have no story to tell about how this improves Ukraine's overall position in the fight against the Russians.

You know, it gets worse. Here's Sir Peter again in the same conference. This sounds like it was scripted by Victoria Nuland for him, cut number 10. And it's important to remember how this started in this phase with Putin mounting a war of aggression in February 2022. And two and a half years later, that failed. It continues to fail. The Ukrainians will continue to fight. We will continue to help them to fight. And it's difficult. In my view, this is not a misunderstanding. And this is beyond deception. This is an outright lie. He knows darn well when this started and he knows darn well that

Putin hasn't failed. Yeah, I mean, there's no question about it that this war was not caused by Russian aggression. It was caused by NATO expansion. The Russians and Putin in particular made it unequivocally clear that NATO incorporating Ukraine into the alliance was an existential threat and they would do everything possible to prevent it. And furthermore, with regard to the argument that Putin is not going to win the war or is not winning the war, this is wrong too. One can debate what that victory will look like. I've long argued that in the end, it will be an ugly victory. The Russians will not win a decisive victory, but they're clearly going to end up cleaving off a large chunk of Ukrainian territory incorporated into Russia. And furthermore, they're going to leave Ukraine as a rump state, a dysfunctional rump state. And if this isn't losing on Ukraine's part and winning on Russia's part, I don't know what is. Sticking with Ukraine, four days ago, the Ukrainians dispatched 140 drones toward Moscow. The Russians say they disengaged, disabled, shot down,

whatever the phrase is. 139 of them. One got through, hit a residential building, killed an innocent civilian woman, and injured six other innocent civilians. Is this significant that the Ukrainians from Ukraine can attack the most well-protected from the air city on the planet, Moscow. No, it's not significant because if you can hit Moscow with one drone, that doesn't buy you very much at all. And by the way, earlier in the war, Ukraine hit Moscow with drones. So this is not the first time this has happened. But these are pinpricks at best. They just don't matter. It's, again, like the sort of propaganda war that's taken place. When you listen to these intelligence chiefs talk, it's just really, in the end, a lot of blather. The question is, what's happening on the battlefield?

And when you hear about drone attacks on Moscow, you have to ask yourself one simple question. How does this affect the outcome of the war? And the answer is very simple. It doesn't affect it at all. And by the way, this is the whole issue that's now coming up with regard to whether or not Britain and the United States are going to allow Ukraine to use long range missiles to strike deep into Russia. My next topic. Yeah, I'm not surprised. But the question you want to ask yourself is whether you think this is going to affect the outcome of the war

in any meaningful way. Simply not. And again, the people who are pushing to do this never make the argument that it will do X, Y, and Z. That will shift the balance of power here, and Ukrainians will be back in the driver's seat. You never get arguments like that. You just get these empty claims that when you look at closely, fall apart. So yesterday, David Lamy, the new British foreign minister, and Antony Blinken, the American Secretary of State, spent the day with former President of Ukraine Zelensky, and at the end of which we're going to play in a minute the clip in part of what Secretary Blinken said. The Wall Street Journal claims from its reading between the lines that they are either on their way to or have already agreed to allow long-range missiles. That announcement will not be made until this weekend when Sir Keir Stormer, the new British Prime Minister, and President Biden meet in the White House. You know the way these things work. The decision is always made before the heads of state get together, but I guess they want to make the announcement. Here's Secretary Blinken. This is last night.

This is at the end of the day after he and Foreign Minister Lammy and President Zelensky had spent the day together. Please pay attention to the last phrase, which I would argue is poking the bear, cut number 22. It's important that the Ukrainian people continue to hear directly from us. We remain fully committed to Ukraine's victory, to not only ensuring that Ukraine can defend itself today, but can stand on its own feet strongly, militarily, economically, democratically, for many, many days ahead, to securing the path the Ukrainian people have chosen toward greater integration in the Euro-Atlantic community, including the European Union and NATO. Now, unless this has been made with an eye on November 5th for American domestic political consumption, why on earth would he say something

like, after all that's gone on in the past two and a half years, Ukraine's going to join NATO? Well, I would assume that you and I can both agree that he long ago lost touch with reality. Yes. This is just another manifestation of that. I mean, when you hear him talk about how the war is going and what we're going to promise to do for the Ukrainians in the future, all I can say is that the guy is delusional. This is just craziness, right? Ukraine is in deep,

deep trouble on the battlefield. And if anything, support for continuing to give Ukraine money and weapons over the long term is beginning to soften greatly, especially in countries like Germany, and even in countries like the United States. So if anything, he should be telling the Ukrainians to work out a deal. And finally, the point about bringing Ukraine into the EU and especially bringing Ukraine into NATO, this is just dooming Ukraine to even greater damage on the part of the Russians, because the Russians want to make sure that Ukraine never becomes part of NATO. And that gives them a powerful incentive when they hear Blinken talking like that to take more Russian territory and to go to greater lengths to turn Ukraine into a dysfunctional rum state. So this is not in

Ukraine's interest. It's just making a bad situation, or I should say it's making a terrible situation even worse. What do you think the Kremlin's reaction will be if President Biden and Prime Minister Starmer announce tomorrow or Saturday that they've authorized the Ukrainians to use British-made and American-made long-range missiles? The American ones can only be fired, engaged by American technicians. Well, it's hard to say for sure. My first question when I hear this is, what impact are those missiles likely to have? In other words, how many missiles are we going to give them? What kind of damage are they going to do? I do not believe we

have a lot of missiles to give them. I also believe the Russians have the capability to shoot down a good number of them. How many or what percentage is hard to say at this point in time. But I think if we in the West give Ukraine permission to strike deep into Ukraine with these missiles, a lot will depend on how effective they are. If they're not effective, the Russians won't feel compelled to respond. But if they are effective, and again, I want to be clear here, I don't think they're going to be effective in turning the tide on the battlefield. But if they're effective in terms of killing large numbers of Russian civilians and hitting important targets, something like the Kremlin, for example, then the Russians will retaliate in a serious way.

Switching to an area of great interest to you, last week the admiral in charge of the American Pacific fleet, such as it is, admonished the general in charge of the Chinese fleet in the South China Sea, saying, what you're doing is dangerous. You're too close to us. Get the heck out of here. The Chinese basically told them to go pound salt. Who owns the South China Sea? Is it owned by China? Is it owned by the 12-mile limit around every protrusion of land there? Or is it international waters like the U.S. claims? Well, as your question implies, it all depends who you ask. If you ask the Chinese, they would tell you they basically own most of the South China Sea. From their perspective, it's a giant Chinese lake. From the perspective of the United States and almost all of the countries in East Asia besides

China, it's international waters. And not only do you have a dispute on that very issue, you have all sorts of disputes between countries like the Philippines and China, Vietnam and China, Indonesia and China on who controls certain areas of the South China Sea and who controls certain piles of rocks in the South China Sea. So this is a very dangerous area when you think about a potential conflict between the United States and China. I've long argued that I think that the South China Sea is more dangerous than Taiwan. A lot of people in the West like to focus on Taiwan as the principal flashpoint that we have to worry about. I think there's no question we want to worry about Taiwan, and we want to go to enormous lengths to make sure we don't have a war over Taiwan. But I think a war involving the

South China Sea is more likely. That's not to say it is likely. And we have to go to great lengths there to make sure that we don't have there? Why is the United States Navy there? We don't have an aircraft carrier to go there. The only three aircraft carriers that work are either in the Red Sea or the Eastern Mediterranean. Why are we in the South China Sea? Well, we've been in the South China Sea for a long time. It goes back to World War II, and then we were there during the Cold War. And then when the Cold War ended, we stayed in East Asia, just like we stayed in Europe. And as you know, if anything, we increased the size of our footprint around the world after the Cold War ended. So we were not going to leave the South China Sea or East Asia more generally. And then with the rise of China, the United States became focused on containing China. And as we've talked about before on the

show, there's this whole question of whether the United States should defend Taiwan. And there's also the question of whether or not the United States should defend the South China Sea for the purposes of containing China. And it seems to me that it's quite clear that whether you're talking about the Trump administration, the Biden administration, or in the future, another Trump administration or Harris administration, we are not going to go home and we're going to remain in the South China Sea. We're going to remain committed to making sure that it is an international body of water. And we're going to remain committed to the Philippines. And all of this just tells you

that this is a dangerous situation. Who has the better Navy, China or the U.S.? I think that the United States clearly has a better Navy, but what you want to remember is that China is effectively a giant aircraft carrier. So if a war were to break out over Taiwan or over the South China Sea or over the East China Sea, the United States and the Chinese were to start shooting at each other, it wouldn't simply be the navies, you know, the ships that were in the water that mattered. In fact, one could argue that all of the land-based aircrafts, aircraft and all of the land-based missiles inside of China would be of tremendous advantage to the Chinese in a conflict against us. Switching gears to Israel, what is the, if there is one, greatest or worst, however you want to characterize it, mistake that Prime Minister Netanyahu has made throughout this entire Gaza-Hezbollah event? You can go back to before October 7th if you

feel you need to to answer that. Well, the first problem he made, the first mistake he made was long ago when he rejected a two-state solution and he decided that he was going to create a greater Israel that would effectively be an apartheid state. That was a huge blunder. Then he made a huge blunder in not foreseeing what happened on October 7th. The buck stops with him. He was the prime minister of Israel, and he is ultimately responsible for the disaster that befell Israel on October 7th. Then once the war began, once Israel turned the dogs loose in Gaza, he made another huge mistake, because what he ended up doing was not only trying to defeat Hamas decisively, which was impossible to do, but he ended up trying to ethnically cleanse Gaza, which took him down the road to genocide. And in the end, the Israelis have murdered huge numbers of Palestinian civilians and they have not defeated Hamas. What he should have done if he was smart, and I'm talking about what he should have done from his own perspective, is he should have just said, we made a fundamental mistake on October 7th. We were

unprepared. We got caught with our pants down. And what we're going to do is we're going to build the defenses around Gaza to the point where Hamas will never do that again. And we are going to go from there. And we're not going to go to war inside of Gaza. We're not going to try to reconquer Gaza or decisively defeat Hamas, because that's not possible. But he didn't do that. He didn't, you know, come back basically to a situation where Israel maintained Gaza as a giant open-air prison, which is what he should have done. Again, I want to be clear, my argument is that long ago he should have moved towards a two-state solution, given the Palestinians a state of their own. But after that, it was a foolish move to go to war inside of Gaza. And he's stuck there now. While you're addressing the two-state solution,

Hillary Rodham Clinton is out with a new book. It's out today, or at least the advanced galleys are out today. And among many other things in there, she claims that in the year 2000, her husband offered a two-state solution proposal to Ehud Barak, the former chief of staff of the IDF and then the prime minister, a political liberal by Israeli standards, and he accepted it, but Yasser Arafat would not. She blames Arafat for everything that happened since then and said that if he had accepted her husband's proposal, the Palestinians, instead of having lost what

she says is 41,000 people, we all know the number is multiples of that greater, would be celebrating their 23rd anniversary as a sovereign country. Have you ever heard such a claim? Oh, sure. Bill Clinton himself made this claim after the Camp David negotiations failed in 2000. Let me give you a little background on this case. Bill Clinton was in his last year in the White House. This is 2000. And he was deeply committed to creating some sort of peaceful agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians, which in his mind meant a two-state solution. So I think there's no question that Clinton's heart was in the right place. And he pushed both Barack and Arafat to meet at Camp David in the summer of 2000.

Now, Arafat said, I don't want to meet. Arafat said, we have not done enough preliminary legwork to produce a meaningful agreement. Clinton put enormous pressure on Arafat to come. Arafat said, I'll go to Camp David, but I want to be clear that I don't think this is going to work out. And if it doesn't work out, I don't want you to blame me. In other words, I don't want you to stab me in the back. So they went to Camp David, they negotiated. It was a very dysfunctional negotiating process. Did Clinton agree not to stab him in the back? Yes, he did. Of course he did. And of course, the negotiations failed, right? They did not reach an agreement. The idea that there was an agreement that Clinton had crafted, a final

agreement, it was presented to Barak, Ehud Barak, and he accepted it and Arafat rejected. It is simply not true. And in fact, after Camp David failed, the two sides continued to negotiate because there was a possibility of a deal. There's no question about that. But there was no deal reached at Camp David. Camp David broke up. And of course, Bill Clinton stabbed Arafat in the back. He blamed Arafat for the failure. And the story that Hillary is now telling is the story that Bill told after Camp David failed. And Arafat, who foolishly went to Camp David believing that Clinton would be true to his word, ended up being the bad guy. And if you talk to most supporters of Israel in the United States today, they'll tell you that story every time. It's a story that's constantly repeated. And

Hillary now repeating it will just give more ammunition to Israel's supporters to make the argument that we'd all be living happily ever after had it not been for Arafat, which is another way of saying if it hadn't been for those evil Palestinians. Over the weekend, Prime Minister Netanyahu announced publicly that he instructed the IDF to prepare for an invasion of Lebanon. This is the third time he's made such an announcement. Do you think he's serious? And why would he make this announcement publicly unless it's, to quote Sir Peter, just for the narrative? I don't know what he's thinking here.

I really don't. I mean, if the Israelis go after Lebanon, they can do it in one of two ways. One is they can invade with ground forces. And two, they can bomb Hezbollah from the air. When you listen to Netanyahu talk and you listen to many Israelis talk, it sounds like they're going to go in there with ground forces. I find it hard to believe that they would countenance doing that. First of all, their army is in terrible shape, in large part because of all the wear and tear from what's been going on in Gaza since last October. They're having a huge problem with reservists, and reservists comprise more than half of the IDF forces. Furthermore, if you go into southern Lebanon and you tangle with Hezbollah, you're going into a hornet's nest. It's not like

this is going to be an easy victory. This is not going to be like the Six-Day War in 1967. You want to remember the Israelis went into southern Lebanon to tangle with Hezbollah in 2006, and they basically lost. They came out with their tail between their legs. So with an army that's in bad shape and a Hezbollah fighting force that's more effective today than it was in 2006, I want to know how the Israelis are going to go in there and solve the problem. You know, the United States is in the area and one might argue the United States can help the Israelis, but are we going to send in ground forces? I find that hard to imagine. I guess we could help the Israelis bomb but are we going to send in ground forces? I find that hard to imagine.

I guess we could help the Israelis bomb Hezbollah, but I'm not sure the Israelis need that much help bombing Hezbollah. And if the Israelis and the Americans begin to bomb Hezbollah, I think Hezbollah is going to launch a huge chunk of those 150,000 plus rockets and missiles that it has at Israel. I'm not sure this is good for Israel. I'm not sure that this is the way Israel should proceed. What the Israelis should do is they should agree to a ceasefire in Gaza, because once they agree to a ceasefire in Gaza, that will end the war with Hezbollah. Hezbollah is in this war, or in this shooting match with Israel because of what's going on in Gaza. So let's get a ceasefire in Gaza and then you don't have the Hezbollah problem anymore. And all of those, I would guess 60,000, 70,000 Israelis who live in the north of Israel

normally, but are now displaced, can go back home. But of course, Netanyahu won't agree to a cease fire in Gaza. And the end result is the shooting match between Hezbollah on one side and Israel on the other shows no signs of ending. Do you think we're comfortable in saying that he wouldn't actually pull the trigger, so to speak, and dispatch them, whether by land or air, into Lebanon without knowing the exact nature of support that he has from the United States? I mean, the general, the four-star, name escaping me,

in charge of CENTCOM, the military's phrase, you know this from your military experience for Central Europe, but it includes the Middle East, just spent a week in Tel Aviv. He knows we'll support him no matter what. I mean, Netanyahu basically thinks that he owns us. He gets whatever he wants. You saw what happened when he went before Congress. Oh, yes. He doesn't worry about American support. This is not a serious issue.

If Iran attacks, you know, we're all waiting for the big Iranian attack. If Iran attacks Israel, the United States, this is why we have all those military assets in the theater, is going to help the Israelis fend off the Iranian attack. We help the Israelis at every turn. And the Biden administration is certainly not going to hesitate to help Israel. I just have another question to ask you about the South China Sea and the presence of American ships there. If the South China Sea is international waters, is the Caribbean? Yes. Imagine what would happen if the Chinese build a port or a military facility of some sort in Western Africa and send ships into the Caribbean or 13 miles off the coast of New Jersey. Look, we have the Monroe Doctrine here in the Western Hemisphere.

We are a regional hegemon in the Western Hemisphere. And we have told distant great powers like the Chinese and the Russians that they cannot form a military alliance with any countries in the Western Hemisphere, and they cannot deploy military forces permanently in the Western Hemisphere. You remember the Cuban Missile Crisis? And after that, Soviets talked about building a naval base at Cienfuegos in Cuba, and we told them in no uncertain terms that was not possible. But that didn't mean that the Caribbean was not an international body of order. It was. But we just told the distant great powers, in this case, the Soviet Union at the time that it couldn't permanently station forces in the area. And the same thing is true with regard to China. There's no question that China can bring naval forces right off the

coast of California. It can bring naval forces right off the coast of California. It can bring naval forces right off the coast of Long Island. It can bring naval forces into the Caribbean, but they can't stay there, and they can't form a military alliance with a country in the region. The Monroe Doctrine is just a statement articulated by President James Monroe in the early 1800s. It's not a treaty. It's not a statute. It's just a tradition. It's a very important tradition. It represents American thinking about the Western Hemisphere. And what the United States does not want is for China to be in a position where it dominates East Asia, and that includes the South China Sea. And the United States is

there to prevent China from dominating East Asia. We don't want, and I know you disagree with this, we don't want China to dominate East Asia the way the United States dominates the Western Hemisphere. And that's really what's going on here. The debate about whether it's international waters or whether it's a Chinese lake, I think that's really of secondary importance. The key point is we don't want China to be so powerful that it dominates the region and can maybe even push us out beyond the first island chain and then the second island chain. You know, we have a Monroe Doctrine. But if you, Judge, were in charge in Beijing, wouldn't you want to have a Monroe Doctrine of your own? Wouldn't you want to get

American military forces out of your face? Of course you would. I'm waiting for the Putin Doctrine in Eastern Europe. I guess we're not going to see that without World War III. Well, that's a very important parallel. Basically, what Putin said is, I do not want NATO forces on my doorstep. I don't want them in my face in Ukraine. And the Chinese feel the same way about American forces in the South China Sea. I don't blame them one bit. If we have a Monroe Doctrine, you would expect them to have a Monroe Doctrine. Just as Nuland, over the weekends, it's funny you should mention this, acknowledged Victoria Nuland, her involvement in the disruption of the agreement between Moscow and Kiev negotiated in Istanbul in 2022. And the reason given, I don't know why she's suddenly so candid, but God bless her,

never thought I'd be saying that about her, but the reason given is because the agreement as initialed by the Russians and the Ukrainians prohibited the United States or any Western power from putting offensive weaponry into Ukraine, and she wanted it there, and hence the war. Yes. And she says that they were also deeply disturbed when they looked, when they, meaning the United States, looked at the various appendices or appendixes to the agreement that was being negotiated, that there were significant limits on Ukraine's ability to defend itself in terms of the number of weapons and the kinds of weapons that the Ukrainians themselves could have. And of course, NATO weapons or U.S. weapons were verboten. So what we discovered was that

Ukraine would be left in a position where it couldn't defend itself in any meaningful way. And that's, of course, what the Russians wanted. But I would just make one further point about this. I think by early April, Victoria Nuland, Joe Biden, that whole crowd had come to the conclusion that we could defeat the Russians. The Russian military did not perform well in March and early April. And we thought we could defeat them on the battlefield, and we thought that sanctions would bring Russia to its knees. So I think the deep reason that we walked away or we pushed the Ukrainians to walk away from the Istanbul negotiations was not simply because of what was in these appendices, but it was because we thought that we could decisively defeat the Russians in this war.

A catastrophic, catastrophic miscalculation. A catastrophic miscalculation, only matched by the initial decision in April 2008 to bring Ukraine into NATO. That was a decision that's going to reverberate for long past the time both you and I are in the grave. It was just a huge mistake. And of course, when the crisis breaks out in February 2014, instead of rethinking this situation and asking where we are and maybe backing off to avoid further trouble, what we do is double down. And if you look at what's happened at every point after February 2014, and you listen to Tony Blinken speak as he did about 10 minutes ago here on the show, what you see is that we continue to double down.

And the end result of this is the situation gets worse and worse for Ukraine and worse and worse for us. Professor Mearsheimer, a pleasure, my dear friend. We're all around the globe, from Kiev to the Caribbean to the South China Sea. It's a pleasure to be able to pick your brain. Thank you, my dear friend. I hope you come to be able to pick your brain. Thank you, my dear friend. I hope you come back and join us again next week. I look forward to it.

Thank you. Coming up at four o'clock this afternoon, Eastern, Max Blumenthal, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. I'm out.