Judging Freedom - Prof. John Mearsheimer: Is Armageddon Coming in the Middle East?

Episode Date: February 15, 2024

Prof. John Mearsheimer: Is Armageddon Coming in the Middle East?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Thank you. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, February 15, 2024. Professor John Mearsheimer is with us in just a moment. Can Ukraine possibly win its war with Russia? Are we closer to Armageddon in the Middle East? But first this. Justin Faltano here. I love being a spokesperson for causes that I believe in, and one of them is the soundness of money. We don't have that anymore.

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Professor Mearsheimer, welcome here, my dear friend. Sunday night, the Senate of the United States passed and sent over to the House of Representatives legislation that would authorize the Treasury to borrow cash and the Defense Department to distribute military equipment, the total package of which is about $61 billion to Ukraine. There's other money in there for Israel and Taiwan, but I want to ask you about Ukraine. Ukraine's on its last leg. The commander-in-chief of the military was just fired and replaced by someone whose troops nicknamed him the butcher. Some of this money is to be given in the future in the next presidency, not the presidency that we're now in. Where is

this money going to go and what good is it if they don't have the human beings with which to operate military equipment? Well, the money is not going to have much of a positive effect on what happens in this war. I mean, for a long time, the biggest problem that the Ukrainians faced had to do with weaponry, especially artillery. There was a huge imbalance in weaponry, and this was working to the disadvantage of the Ukrainians. What's now happened is that the Ukrainians are running out of manpower. It's becoming a huge problem. And when you read the newspapers, people are not talking about the imbalance in artillery. They're talking about the fact that Ukraine just doesn't have enough soldiers on the front line.

And their prospects of replacing the lost soldiers with a new mobilization, it's just not very good. So they're in real trouble there. And the other big development that is working against them in quite profound ways is that the Russians have developed the capability to turn dumb bombs into smart bombs. And they are pounding the Ukrainian forces on the ground with air power. There's no question that when you talk about air power, the Russians have a decisive advantage over the Ukrainians. badly outnumbered in terms of weaponry, where they're badly outnumbered in terms of manpower, and where the Russians have a decisive advantage in the air. How in God's name are the Ukrainians going to turn this around and win this war against the Russians? And the answer is they're not going to do it. And this is

basically throwing money down a rat hole and getting more Ukrainians killed. I know that you and I ordinarily don't discuss politics, but I can only conclude that the Congress is either unaware or willing to ignore the very gloomy state of affairs over there, which you have just summarized, because the $61 billion includes hardware that Ukraine is lacking and includes a lot of cash. As I said, some of it tries to tie the hands of whoever is inaugurated as president in 2025, whether it's Joe Biden, Donald Trump, or somebody else, which of course under the law they can do. It's unusual for them to do that, but they can do it. But this is just going to add to America's debt. It's not going to help the Ukrainians at all from the picture you've painted. What they

need is manpower and they don't have it. They've lost a half a million, a half a million young men to this onslaught. Well, they need more than manpower. They also need weaponry. And we're giving them lots of dollar bills, and we'll give them some weaponry. But it's very important to emphasize that we cannot give them enough weaponry to redress the imbalance between the Ukrainian side and the Russian side. So this doesn't fix the weaponry problem, and there's nothing we can do to fix the manpower problem. The Ukrainians are

just doomed on that dimension of the problem. And with regard to air power, there's hardly anything we can do there either. So the situation is not going to change. But I want to make one other point. You want to remember that this is just past the Senate. It has not passed the House. And before it becomes law, it has to pass both the Senate and the House. And it's not clear that it will sail through the House because there is huge opposition in the House of Representatives to pushing this bill through. It's not even clear, Professor, that it will make it to the floor of the House because some conservative and libertarian, self-proclaimed constitutionalist Republicans have threatened the speakership of Speaker Johnson, even lets it come to the floor. Very unusual package because it also includes about $11 billion to Israel on top of everything we've given Israel. We can discuss Israel in a moment.

It includes about $5 billion to Taiwan. It includes some aid for Gaza, which the Israelis are preventing going through. I don't know what the House is going to do with it at all. Just one other quick point on that, Judge, and that is Donald Trump is adamantly opposed to the bill, and he is lobbying people in the Republican Party inside of the House to vote against it. So that makes it even more difficult to push this through. You know, the Republicans, I think, because of a special election in New York, have a two vote, two majority in the House. I don't know where this is going to go. If the Speaker wants this with Trump lobbying against it, he's obviously lobbying Republicans. With many Republicans against it, the Speaker would have to rely on Democrats. In the old days, that was a good thing when there was bipartisanship. But today, if the Speaker relies on Democrats too much, the Republicans

may take his speakership away from him. It's a crazy musical chairs in the House of Representatives. I know you had a chance to watch Tucker Carlson's very, very much anticipated and very much watched interview with President Putin. Were you surprised at all with the history lesson and with the articulation of Putin with his sound, rational answers to the questions that Tucker Carlson put to him? I was not surprised at all by the answers, the substance of the answers that Putin gave, especially the sort of last two-thirds of the discussion between the two of them. I mean, most of what Putin said we've heard before. I was surprised that he went on and on for about a half hour at the beginning talking about ancient history.

It was all more or less beside the point. He could have made his point in a minute or two or three or four. He didn't have to take a half hour to do that. And I think it probably turned some viewers off and it detracted from his overall performance. So I was surprised by that. I thought Tucker Carlson did an excellent job trying to end that discourse that was taking place and instead get him to talk about more contemporary issues. But he was not very successful at that. But eventually you got to that. And I thought that Putin demonstrated that he has a terrific command of the facts. He has a clear-cut

view of the world and a clear-cut view of what he is doing in Ukraine. You can disagree with that as you see fit, but I think that he is an impressive individual. I know that's an unpopular thing to say in the West and that I'll be accused of being Putin's puppet or something like that, but the fact is that, as I said on the show the last time, he is a world historical figure. Well, you and I, along with a lot of our colleagues, have already been accused by the Ukrainian PR people, or maybe it's their intelligence apparatus, of being Russian propagandists.

So they can accuse us of whatever they want, whether there's evidence for it or not. Were you surprised that the media and the establishment here in the West dumped on Tucker Carlson. I mean, I agree with your analysis of how Putin came off, and I agree with your analysis of Tucker Carlson. I thought he was courageous, gifted, and quite intelligent in the manner in which he went on this. He is, of course, my friend and former colleague, though we haven't spoken in a while. But were you surprised that Hillary Clinton called him a useful idiot, that the media only dwelt on Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter who's now charged with espionage? None of the mainstream media, perhaps out of jealousy that they didn't get the interview, praised him for

exposing this to the world as he did with hundreds of millions of viewers. What's very interesting to me is that Putin made a number of very important substantive points. And if you look at the mainstream media and the establishment response in the West, nobody focused on the substance. They didn't say that Putin said something that was wrong. For example, I thought it was very interesting that he said, Putin, that in the immediate aftermath of the attack, the attack took place in February 2022. Shortly thereafter, when negotiations were taking place in Istanbul, he was asked by the French, and I think someone else, if as goodwill gesture, he would pull the Russian troops out of the Kiev area, and hopefully that would facilitate

the negotiations in Istanbul. And he did that, and many people thought that he did that at the time because he was losing the war or the fight in the Kiev area. But he said, no, it was a gesture of goodwill, and I was asked by the French and someone else to do this. If that's true, that's, I think, an important piece of information. And nobody refuted it. So as far as I'm concerned, what Putin said was true, unless, you know, somebody can show that it's not true. But he was making a substantial number of other points

on important issues. And you would think that the Western media and the Western foreign policy establishment would contest him on the issues. But no, that's not what happened. In fact, what they did was they smeared Putin and they smeared Tucker Carlson. And this is just the way things work in the West. If you don't agree with somebody and you can't defeat that somebody on the basis of facts, what you do is smear the person. Right. Chris, let's run the clip where Tucker Carlson asks President Putin if he would ever invade Poland under any circumstances. And then Professor Mearsheimer segues into what Boris Johnson did to the agreement in Turkey. You'll see President Putin going like this, showing his

fingers about an inch to an inch and a quarter apart, showing the size and depth of detail that was in the agreement, much of which was initialed and signed by the chief Ukrainian negotiator. Watch this. Paul Jay Can you imagine a scenario where you sent Russian troops to Poland? Alexander Kravchenko Only in one case, if Poland attacks Russia. Why? Because we have no interest in Poland, Latvia or anywhere else. Why would we do that? We simply don't have any interest. It's just threat mongering. So I just want to make sure I'm not misunderstanding what you're saying. I don't think that I am. I think you're saying you want

a negotiated settlement to what's happening in Ukraine. Right. And we made it. We prepared a huge document in Istanbul that was initialed by the head of the Ukrainian delegation. He affixed his signature to some of the provisions. Not to all of it. He put his signature and then he himself said, we were ready to sign it and the war would have been over long ago, 18 months ago.

However, Prime Minister Johnson came, talked us out of it and we missed that chance. Boris Johnson, of course, was outraged at that statement, but that's been reported many, many times, and here it is out of the horse's mouth. And this is exactly what you said about pulling the troops out of Kyiv so as to facilitate the negotiations in Turkey until the West interceded. That's correct. I mean, the first set of comments about Poland make perfect sense. I mean, the conventional wisdom in the West Poland make perfect sense. I mean, the conventional wisdom in the West is we better start preparing for World War III,

because after he conquers all of Ukraine, he's going to conquer countries in Eastern Europe, and then he's going to threaten Western Europe, and this is going to lead to World War III. This, of course, is nonsense. He's never expressed any interest in conquering all of Ukraine, much less conquering countries in Eastern Europe to include Poland. And that was reflected in his comments. And I just don't understand why people continue to make that argument that he is interested in conquering countries like Poland and conquering all of Ukraine.

And in fact, just to go back to Istanbul, that deal that they were about to cut did not involve Ukraine surrendering its sovereignty to Russia. You know, I want to go on to Israel and Gaza, but I have to make you laugh a little bit by running a former Republican presidential nominee and still senior senator from Utah, Mitt Romney, making absurd arguments, cut number eight, Chris, on the floor of the Senate. This is the opposite of what you just said. Watch this. If we fail to help Ukraine, Putin will invade a NATO nation.

He may delay his next invasion until he rebuilds his decimated military. But we must be clear-eyed. Ukraine is not the end. It is a step. If we fail to help Ukraine, China will eventually absorb Taiwan. If we fail to help Ukraine, NATO, the alliance that's prevented great power conflict for over 75 years, will falter and eventually disintegrate. This is the nonsense that the Senate apparently accepts when it votes overwhelmingly. I think it was like 75 to 25, more or less those numbers, in favor of this aid package. Yeah, I mean, this is the conventional wisdom, not just in the Senate, but in the foreign policy establishment. The problem that these folks face

is there's just no evidence to support that. Where is the evidence that Putin is interested in conquering all of Ukraine? And where is the evidence that he's interested in conquering countries in Eastern Europe? And what do they have to say about the fact that Putin was willing, as a goodwill gesture, to pull forces out of the Kyiv area in March of 2022? What does he say to that? I mean, this is the substance. This is what we should be talking about. But again, we don't talk about substance. We engage in smearing. I want to ask you this, has AIPAC controlled or corrupted the United States Congress when it comes to aid to Israel? Well, the fact is that AIPAC and the lobby more generally has a huge impact on Congress. And it's almost impossible for anyone in Congress to oppose

Israel or to support any efforts that the White House might make to curtail Israeli behavior. AIPAC is a remarkably powerful lobby. And I think, you know, when Steve Walton and I wrote the book in 2007, AIPAC and lobby more generally was incredibly powerful then. I think it's gotten more powerful with the passage of time. I think it has to get more powerful because defending Israel has become increasingly difficult. It's important to understand that Israel's behavior at this point in time is so outrageous that for the lobby to protect Israel, which of course it does, and it does an excellent job, it has to work over time. It has to work harder than ever. And of course, as time goes by, the task that the lobby faces is going to be even harder, because if you look at

public opinion polls among young people, and this includes young American Jews, there is great dissatisfaction with this there. But if AIPAC, which is a foreign lobbying group that does not have to register, by foreign I mean it lobbies in behalf of a foreign lobbying group that does not have to register. By foreign, I mean it lobbies in behalf of a foreign government that does not have to register with the DOJ. As far as I know, it is the only lobbying group anywhere in the United States that lobbies in behalf of a foreign government, openly and notoriously, there's nothing hidden about this, that doesn't have to register. If it has that kind of a vice grip on the Congress, isn't that some sort of a corruption, members of Congress voting to please the group that will drive it from office,

drive them from office if they don't please it, and financially reward it if they do please it. Well, I wouldn't use the word corruption because they're not operating outside the law. I mean, as you well know, interest groups hold tremendous sway in the United States. Just think about the National Rifle Association. Think about the Cuban lobby. I think the Israeli lobby is the most powerful lobby in the United States. It's truly impressive how powerful it is, but it's not corrupt or illegal. We can argue whether they should have to, whether AIPAC should have to register as a foreign lobby or not, but the fact is that it doesn't. And as long as the law says it doesn't have to register as a foreign lobby,

it's free to do pretty much what it wants. If you were asking me if this is a good thing, the answer is unequivocally no. This is a disaster for the United States, and it's a disaster for Israel. And it's important to emphasize that if there were no lobby, if there were no Israel lobby, the United States would treat Israel like a normal country, and we would have a fundamentally different policy toward Israel. And I would argue, and this is what Steve and I argued in the book, it would be better not only for the United States, but for Israel. Why do you say AIPAC is not good for the United States, that it's not good for American foreign policy because there's no rational dialogue about American foreign policy when it comes to Israel.

It's just, oh, this is what AIPAC wants. We have to do it. Example, do we have a treaty with Israel? No. Is Israel a legal ally of ours? No. What American national security benefit is served by sending all this cash to Israel, Professor Mearsheimer? None. I mean, it makes no sense. I mean, what we should be doing is treating Israel like a normal country. And if we had done that long ago, we would have pushed

Israel to accept a two-state solution. There wouldn't be all these settlements on the West Bank. We wouldn't be in the total mess that we're in today. But no president, despite the fact that almost all of them since Jimmy Carter have tried, has been able to put meaningful pressure on Israel. Look at what's happening today. Joe Biden is clearly upset, deeply angry, maybe a better way to put it, with what Israel is doing, especially with regard to this assault on Rafah. And Biden wants Israel to change its behavior and to not continue the assaults that began on Monday in Rafah. But he can't get the Israelis to do that. Why? Because he can't put any pressure on Israel. Why? Because if he puts pressure on Israel, the lobby will go after him, hammer and tongue. And he's running for re-election this fall.

And the last thing he wants to do is get into trouble with the lobby. Here's somebody who had the courage to say to President Biden's face, you have to stop the invasion of Rafah. I don't know if Joe Biden knew King Abdullah was going to say this, but watch the looks on President Biden's face while King Abdullah is speaking. Number 10, Chris. Nearly 100,000 people have been killed, injured, or are missing. The majority are women and children. We cannot afford an Israeli attack on Rafah. It is certain to produce another humanitarian catastrophe.

The situation is already unbearable for over a million people who have been pushed into Rafah since the war started. We cannot stand by and let this continue. We need a lasting ceasefire now. This war must end. We must urgently and immediately work to ensure the sustainable delivery of sufficient aid to Gaza through all possible entry points and mechanisms. And I thank you, Mr. President, for your support on this. Restrictions on vital relief aid and medical items are leading to inhumane conditions. Do you think, Professor Mearsheimer, that King Abdullah said what Joe Biden wanted him to say and what Joe Biden didn't want to say for fear of the political pushback by AIPAC and its minions? Yes, I think that President Biden, I can't be certain on this, but I do think that he agrees with the king. And I think he's made it clear in private conversations that he's

enraged by what Netanyahu is doing. And he's deeply frustrated by the fact that Netanyahu won't cooperate with him. But he cannot say this publicly. He could never say what the king said publicly. He's got himself into deep political trouble again in the year in which he's coming up for re-election uh since you and i spoke last obviously the slaughter in gaza continues uh we have seen uh ambulance drivers who were motioned by the idf okay okay you can go over there and tend to the people we just shot themselves murdered. We have seen videos of Palestinian prisoners in their underwear being tortured by IDF troops and observed and videoed by Israeli citizens. We have seen a character by the name of Itamar Ben-Gavir, who's the head of Israeli internal security. So he's the equivalent of the head of our FBI, saying the Israeli military and the police that he commands

should shoot Palestinian women and children in the head if they come anywhere near the Palestine-Israeli border. So I guess nothing is going to dial back this slaughter. It only seems to be getting worse, Professor Mearsheimer. I think that that's basically true. I mean, I think that despite all the protests from the Biden administration, the Israelis have done very little to change their behavior. I mean, it is theoretically possible that they won't launch a massive assault on Rafah. I mean, the Biden administration has been pushing them to use targeted attacks on Rafah, to be much more precise in their attacks, to focus on Hamas and go to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties. The question you have to ask yourself is, do you think that the Israelis will actually do that,

or that there will be a massive assault on Rafah? And given everything we've seen up to now, I think it would make sense to surmise that they will launch a massive assault. They just don't seem to care at all. They don't seem to care at all about world opinion. It's actually quite shocking to me. One could argue maybe that I'm naive, especially given that, you know, I wrote the Israel lobby book. You are not naive. But I really do sort of wonder what they're thinking. This is going to be a stain on Israel's reputation that is not going to go away for a long, long time. That, of course, is the former Secretary of State and Director of the CIA, Mike Pompeo,

celebrating with IDF troops at some sort of a resource center for them when they're given a break in their killing and slaughter. Well, why would he do something like that other than for domestic American political purposes? Yeah. He wants to be president of the United States. Well, do you think that Joe Biden has given Netanyahu a red line over which he can't cross? Man, if he has, I'd like to know where that red line is in light of the things that have happened there in the past week. No, all the evidence is that he if the Israelis launch a full scale assault into Rafah against the wishes of the Biden administration, the Biden administration will just sit by and do nothing about it. So I think Netanyahu believes that he has a free pass. He can do whatever he wants. That's the way he's acted up to now.

And again, I think it's the way he's likely to act going forward. And by the way, we have not even talked about what is really the next big issue after Rafa, and that is what the settlement looks like in Gaza after the shooting stops. We'll have to save that for our next get-together, but I do want to ask you this. What military justification, not domestic American, but military pacification is there for the 86 separate attacks that Joe Biden directed the Defense Department to inflict on Iraq, our supposed ally that we supposedly liberated 20 years ago, on Syria and on Lebanon in retaliation for the three Georgia National Guard reservists who were killed and 41 others injured at Tower 22 three weeks ago. What conceivable military benefit is served by the slaughter of civilians that Joe Biden brought about? Well, their basic argument is that what we're doing is reestablishing deterrence. It's quite clear that if you look at the Iranian-backed militias in Syria and in Iraq,

they have been attacking American bases in those two countries. And in fact, it was the American base. Actually, it was not a base in Iraq. It was right next door in Jordan, and they killed three Americans. And that's what precipitated this American retaliation. And they want to restore deterrence. But almost everybody I know believes that this is not going to have any effect, that these groups are going to continue to attack American forces in both Syria and Iraq. And I think that that's true. So I don't think there's any meaningful military justification for doing this. And by the way, the same logic applies to the Houthis. The Houthis have been striking at American shipping and the American Navy and the British, any ships that are heading

to Israel through the Red Sea, the Houthis have been taking shots at. And we've attacked the Houthis for purposes of deterring them from doing that. And it hasn't worked and it's not going to work. Professor John Mearsheimer, University of Chicago, one of the most not naive people I know, but self-effacing nevertheless. Thank you very much for joining us. It's a pleasure, Professor. Your audience is enormous today. And of course, it will grow over the weekend. And I look forward to seeing you next week. Likewise. Thank you. A great man

and a great interview. We are all privileged to hear his thoughts. Coming up at three o'clock Eastern today, Colonel McGregor, and at 4.15 Eastern today, Max Blumenthal. To rest my voice for a few minutes, Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thank you.