Judging Freedom - Prof. John Mearsheimer: How Close to a Regional War?

Episode Date: March 13, 2025

Prof. John Mearsheimer: How Close to a Regional War?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

you Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, March 13th, 2000 and March 13th, 2025, Professor John Mearsheimer joins us now. Professor Mearsheimer, always a pleasure. Thank you very much for joining us. I planned on spending most of our time talking about your views on the likelihood of a regional war in the Middle East, and we will get to that, but the events in Ukraine are coming fast and thick thick and I need to address them with you now.

So in one week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio presented to the press what he said was a ceasefire agreement to which President Zelensky of Ukraine had signed on. Nothing in writing, just Secretary Rubio's words. In the same week, President Trump resumed the supply of military equipment and ammunition to Kiev and authorized the return of US intelligence. In the same week, Ukraine dispatched about 350 drones to bomb a residential neighborhood in Moscow. What's your take on this week?

Well, it's quite clear that the Americans are trying to play nice with the Ukrainians, but they're not making any meaningful concessions. And they're working with the Ukrainians to see if they can get this whole peace process moving forward. And then today, we had this very interesting announcement from Putin about the ceasefire, which is very interesting because he effectively

says that he accepts the idea of a ceasefire in principle, but then he notes that there will be some very significant obstacles that basically mean that in practice it will never work, or if it does work, it'll take a long time to implement. Who knows what happens in the meantime. But things are moving very rapidly. But I'm not sure we're any closer to a meaningful settlement of this conflict today than we were two weeks ago. I'm going to play for you a clip from the Secretary of State,

ask your comments on it, and then I will play for you what President Putin had to say about this. It's interesting, the Putin clip, the network from which we extracted it ran underneath what we call the lower thirds. Putin accepts ceasefire. Of course, one man's acceptance is another man's rejection. They apparently wrote that headline on the basis of the first words out of his mouth, not on the basis of his ticking off the various conditions which have been consistent throughout and which apparently are not addressed by Secretary Rubio. Here's Secretary Rubio, Professor Mearsheimermer in Ireland yesterday, basically saying, Oh, I hope they say yes.

Cut number one. Are you truly prepared to apply pressure on Russia? Should it be recalcitrant and not agree to the terms of these fights? These fires? There's been no concrete action that this administration has taken to punish Russia since well, that's a couple of points to be clear. As far as I am aware, the United States has not provided armaments to Russia. The United States is not providing assistance to Russia. Every single sanction that has been imposed on Russia remains in place.

Every single sanction the President inherited has remained in place. But he inherited previous sanctions. Right. But, well, I mean, they're pretty sanctioned up. I mean, there's a lot of sanctions on already. They're pretty sanctioned up. There's a lot of sanctions on already. So my point being is that there's been no steps taken to relieve any of these things. These things continue to be in place, but we don't think it's constructive for me to

stand here today and begin to issue threats about what we're going to do if Russia says no. Let's hope they say yes. Are the presence of the sanctions, which have resulted in an increase in economic activity and prosperity in Russia, which have caused American businesses to lose $330 billion in revenue, really leverage that Marco Rubio has with Sergey Lavrov and President Putin? Not really. As you say, the Russians have basically beaten the sanctions. There are all sorts of people who will say that at the end of this year, the sanctions will finally kick in and bring the Russians to their knees, but they've been saying this for the past

two years. So it's hard to believe that that's true. The fact is the sanctions have not worked. And it is important to emphasize that Secretary Rubio did not in this instance threaten more sanctions. I think what he's interested in doing is seeing if the Americans can work with the Russians to make this ceasefire work and then get the peace process on its way.

Here's President Putin. It's a long statement, but we've added it down to a little under two minutes commenting on the ceasefire. Now, nothing's been reduced to writing as far as we know. The communications to the Russians, as far as we know, have been public communications, which we've all seen, like this one. And you'll chuckle, I think, at the lower third,

saying Putin accepts ceasefire. But I'd like your thoughts on it. Chris, cut number 16. So how are they going to use these 30 days? Are they going to use it in order to continue the forced mobilization in Ukraine, in order to supply weapons to those areas, in order to newly mobilize units to undergo training? Or none of this is going to happen, then we have a question. How are we going to resolve the issues of control or verification?

How can we be guaranteed that none of this is going to happen in the future? How are we going to control this? I think on the level of common sense, everyone understands this. This is a very serious question. Who is going to give orders to cease fire? And what is the value of these orders? Can you imagine, about 2000 kilometers, who is going to determine who and where violated this agreement? That's an area of 2000 km.

And then who is going to blame who? The violations of this agreement. All of these are questions that need to be thoroughly studied on both sides. So the idea in itself is correct and we support it, but there are questions that need to be discussed. I think we need to discuss this with our American partners, maybe we need to have a call with President Trump and discuss this, but the idea in itself to stop this conflict in a peaceful way, that's something

that we support. Start with Secretary of State Rubio. Is the United States a true neutral mediator here? Because in my view, and I suspect in yours, the US is a co-belligerent, which financed, which started, promoted, provoked, and financed the war against Russia. Yeah, there's no question. The United States and Ukraine were more generally the and Ukraine, are at war against Russia. The idea that we're a third party or mediator

is not a serious argument. And it's clear that President Putin is not interested in giving the Ukrainians 30 days in which to regroup. One would think Secretary Rubio, an inexperienced diplomat, but a person familiar with American foreign policy and the intelligence community from his years in the Senate,

on the Senate Intel Committee, would know that. I think that Secretary Rubio knows what's going on here. He's not a fool. And I don't think that President Trump is fooled by what's going on here. Look, the fact is that Putin is in the driver's seat because the Ukrainians are losing on the battlefield and we have no way of rescuing the situation. So it's in Putin's interest to present an image of a reasonable

statesman who talks in very judicious terms and wants to do everything he can to facilitate peace and go along with some sort of ceasefire, work out the terms, while at the same time playing hardball. He'd be a fool not to play hardball, but he wants to have the velvet glove over the male fist. And this is exactly what's going on. So what- The US has no veiled fist, does it? The US has no leverage with Russia.

No, my point is he has the male fist and he's putting the velvet glove over the male fist. This is what you see when you listen to Putin talk. He goes out of his way to sound reasonable, and he'd be fully... Okay, I misunderstood you. I thought you said Senator Rubio has the velvet glove over the male fist. No. You're saying President Putin does, fully understood and totally accepted.

But Rubio has no cards to play. That's correct. We have no cards to play. That's correct. We have no cards to play. We lost the war. Remember, as you said, we are co-belligerent in this war and we lost the war or we are losing the war. All you have to do is look at what's happening in Kursk.

We are in trouble. When I was with in Kursk. We are in trouble. When I was with Foreign Minister Lavrov on Monday, off the record afterwards in small talk with him, I said, what are the chances of you people agreeing to a ceasefire? And he said, why would we do that? And he's right. They're close to what triumph, at least in terms of the territory that they seek. Are they not? Yes, but the smart thing for them to do,

and this is what they're doing, is saying they accept the idea of a ceasefire in principle. And then they're telling us, this is what Putin was doing, what all the obstacles are to actually putting that ceasefire into effect. And it becomes clear after listening to him talk and he wasn't even raising all the obstacles that are out there, that you're not gonna get

a meaningful ceasefire unless the Russians are doing so well in terms of executing the war that a ceasefire makes sense for them. That may be the case somewhere down the road, but at this point in time, it does not make sense for the Russians to agree to a ceasefire. And they're not agreeing to a ceasefire. They're agreeing to it only in principle. If we agree that President Putin's conditions are total neutrality, no NATO, no military, territorial integrity for the Russian-speaking peoples, Ukraine is never going to agree to this voluntarily, are they? It's hard to imagine it really is.

And I mean, you may get the Europeans to go along. That'll be tough. But getting the Ukrainians to accept the loss, the permanent loss of a significant slice of their territory, and agreeing to demilitarize and exist without security guarantees. Wow. It's hard to.

I forgot one more condition that he is insisting upon, elections, because in their view, I realized that Ukraine is the interpreter of its own constitution, not Russia, but in the Russian view, President Zelensky is illegitimate and either needs to be re-elected or replaced by someone who is elected. I understand that argument, but I don't think in the end it makes any difference because it's not like you're going to get someone in office, someone to replace Zelensky who's

interested in accepting Russia's terms. Agreed. I mean, unless that person is a puppet installed by the US, and if that's the case, they'll be enormously unpopular in Ukraine and maybe not even long-lived. Yeah, I think that that's sadly basically true. Speaking of long-lived Prime Minister Netanyahu's people, not through his office, but through Defense Minister Katz, announced the termination not only of water, food, and medicine, but electricity in Gaza. At the same time that that is happening, the United States is negotiating directly with Hamas, which of course is unthinkable to the right wing in Netanyahu's cabinet. What's your

make on that? Is this Donald Trump slapping Bibi in the face? Do they really think they can come to some sort of an agreement with Hamas? This is a group that the State Department calls the terrorist organization, which makes it a felony to do anything to them that aids them, and yet the Secretary of State has dispatched a negotiator to negotiate directly with them? I think that the United States was frustrated with Netanyahu in terms of negotiating the next step or the next stage of the ceasefire and getting the hostages back. And they therefore decided that what we would do

is we would negotiate directly with Hamas ourselves. The Israelis consider this an absolute no, no, they do not think that we have the right to negotiate with Hamas without their permission or without them being there. So they made that clear and Trump of course backed off and we're now saying we won't meet with Hamas by ourselves again because we fully understand

who's in charge in this relationship. We know who's in charge of the relationship. When Secretary Rubio rescinds the green card of a person he probably never heard of because of statements the person made on the Columbia University campus last April. This of course is a big deal here in New York. It should be a big deal everywhere because it's an attack on freedom of speech like we haven't seen in this country in many generations.

But I suspect it is the Trump Department of Homeland Security and DOJ doing a favor for the president's Zionist backers? The truth is, Judge, that the single greatest threat to freedom of speech in the United States at this point in time is Israel and its supporters here in the United States. It's truly amazing the extent to which Israel's supporters are going to enormous lengths to shut down free speech not only on university campuses, but all across the country And what can be done about it when the Israelis Have the president in their pocket or they're in his pocket. I'm not sure how

the analogy goes. Well, what can be done is very simple. People could speak up about this. They could stand on the rooftops and scream about what's happening and making it very clear that this is a threat to basic American values. This is a threat to liberal democracy. But the fact is we live in a country where most people would prefer to stay down in the foxhole and not get up and actually fight this battle. And yet- I read, Jeff Sachs and I read it together with each other. It's not very long, it's only about three or four pages.

The charging document against Mr. Khalil, it alleges no crime, It alleges no crime. It alleges no facts. It alleges no misbehavior. It offers no evidence. It simply concludes that in the opinion of the Secretary of State, and I'm telling you again, I can't imagine Marco Rubio has ever heard of this guy.

In the opinion of the Secretary of State, his physical presence, Khalil's physical presence in the United States of America impedes the effective execution of American foreign policy. What judge would accept that, unless the judge is an immigration judge whose boss is Marco Rubio? I don't know. I mean, you know the legal system better than I do, but the legal system in the past does not work to prevent Israel and its supporters here in the United States from, you know, carrying out acts like this. This is disgraceful. There's no other way to put it. And in fact, it's more than disgraceful as I said before it threatens basic American values

our mutual friend and Presenter on this show Pepe Escobar was present at a speech given in Beijing the other day a speech given in Beijing the other day by the Chinese foreign minister who was asked, what is China's opinion on the events in Gaza? And he answered with one sentence, Gaza is for the Gazans. Are you surprised at that?

I'm not sure. Oh, you mean he was saying that Gaza is for the Gazans, like the Palestinians own Gaza. Yes, this is the opinion of the Chinese foreign minister, presumably speaking for President Xi and the Chinese government. Yeah, this is hardly surprising. The Chinese have been actually very good on the issue of the genocide. And they've made it very clear that they understand that the Israelis are behaving like barbarians and that this is unacceptable.

And so I think this is just not surprising. I thought of you when Pepe said that the Chinese foreign minister made the following statement, and I'm paraphrasing, of course this is the paraphrase of a translation from Chinese into English, but I think it's fairly accurate. The United States cannot both be our friend and trade with us and attempt to contain us. That's right up John Mearsheimer's alley, is it not? Well, the truth is you would be amazed at how many times countries have fought wars

against each other, and in the course of the war, they have traded with each other. There's a whole literature, it's called the trading with the enemy literature. And you want to remember that during the Cold War, the Europeans and even the Americans did trade somewhat with the Soviet Union. And as the Cold War wore on, there was more and more trade between Western Europe and the Soviet Union. So it is possible to have an intense security competition,

if not a war between two countries where they continue to trade nevertheless. Unbelievable. I forgot to play this clip a few minutes ago. This is the boss of Marco Rubio, the boss of Attorney General Bondi, the boss of Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, talking about the freedom of speech. Tell me if you think this is credible. John Mearschammer cut 14.

And I have stopped all government censorship and brought back free speech in America. It's back. This is, of course, the week before Mr. Khalil was arrested by federal agents who had no arrest monitor search warrant who broke into his dorm room in the presence of his wife and her eighth month of pregnancy, yanked him out and shipped him to Louisiana. Louisiana, a place where he apparently has never been before in his life and not withstanding the clause in the constitution that says when the government moves against you, the judicial location must be the judicial district in which the government says you did whatever you did that causes them to move against you. Does this surprise you?

whatever you did that causes them to move against you. Does this surprise you? I'm actually surprised at the extent to which Trump and his administration are suppressing free speech. I mean, I knew it wouldn't be perfect once he took office, but I'm amazed. This case that you're referring to involving this gentleman at Columbia University is just the tip of the iceberg. There's just all sorts of activities taking place on the part of the government to shut down free speech,

especially with regard to the Israel-Palestine conflict. We have a huge problem here. And the idea that Donald Trump is facilitating free speech and taking off all obstacles to free speech is a laughable argument. I often think when JD Vance on February 14th went to Munich and lambasted the Europeans for suppressing free speech, you wonder what he's thinking when he sees what his administration is doing here in the land of the fray

Here's the here's the trump administration's borders are answering an unwanted question About the uh, kaleel case and unfortunately for tom homon whom i've known for many years He really knew nothing about the case and sort of made up the answer. It's a bit embarrassing, but it's interesting that the feds would speak this way. Chris. Specifically, if Lakin's law doesn't pass, if this lawsuit against the Greenlight law goes nowhere,

what are the different kinds of things you would consider doing? What are the other steps of courses of action you can do? And specifically with that Palestinian, pro-Palestinian student from Columbia, on his arrest papers, what exactly does it say in terms of the charge? I'm not, I'm not familiar with the exact charge. I can just tell you what my discussions have been with it,

is that it's a direct violation of our foreign policy objectives. He is, when you hand out leaflets, incite violence on the college campus, that's illegal. Being in this country with a visa or a resident alien card is a privilege and you gotta follow certain rules. Resident aliens get removed all the time

when they commit certain crimes. So he's no different. And he's not gonna be the only one. And your first question is, look, Pam Bynes already filed a lawsuit. If she has to keep filing lawsuits, that's what we're going to do. I'm hoping the voters on New York State see what we're doing.

And I'm not asking them to vote either way. I can't do that. But I'm saying that I think the voters, look at exactly what ICE is doing, who we're arresting. I think President Trump has a lot of support for what he's doing. It's very strange that he would say people who commit crimes and have a green card have no right to stay here because Mr. Khalil has not been accused of any crime.

I think the Trump administration wants to make an example of him and maybe a test case, but they picked the wrong case. They can't allege anything that would form the basis for a proper deportation. And the shipping him to Louisiana, well, I guess you'd rather, if you're the government and you want to deport some kid from Syria, you'd rather argue before a judge in Louisiana than a judge in New Orleans than a judge in Manhattan. Is that fair to say? I guess. It'll be very interesting to see how judges at all levels deal with the Trump administration in the months ahead. There are going to be a huge number of legal challenges.

They're already growing in number. And I'll be anxious to see if judges actually stand up to Trump and his lieutenants in the various moves that they've made. I'd be curious what your thoughts are on that. Well, my thoughts are that Trump is rolling the dice in the hopes that the Supreme Court, one third of whose members he appointed, will ultimately back him up. Only one of these cases, there are now hundreds of them, only one of these cases has reached the Supreme Court and they rejected his argument. It had to do with his ability to fire people without cause, without pointing to, in other

words, fire en masse. The lower courts had enjoined the firing and the Supreme Court refused to get involved. It wasn't on the merits. It was, is it appropriate for the Supreme Court to get involved now? And the court voted five to four no. But these are clearly perilous times. And I say this to somebody that knows him well and has known him for 40 years and knows the people

around him, but these are perilous times for free speech. More perilous than any time in my lifetime of which I am aware. I agree. And again, you do not wanna underestimate the extent to which Israel and its supporters are driving this train. Professor Mearsheimer, thank you very much. And no matter what we talk about

or how gloomy the news may be, it's a pleasure to be able to work with you and pick your brain. I say this every time, but I mean it sincerely. You know I mean it, I've told you this in private. It's my pleasure to be on your show. Thank you, Professor. All the best. Same to you. Thank you. And coming up at four o'clock, who's probably riled up over all of this, Colonel Larry Wilkerson, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. You