Judging Freedom - Prof. John Mearsheimer: Is Israel on the Brink?

Episode Date: September 19, 2024

Prof. John Mearsheimer: Is Israel on the Brink?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, September 19th, 2024. Professor John Mearsheimer joins us now. Professor Mearsheimer, I want to spend a fair amount of time discussing the intimating in and from Kiev that the British government and the White House were about to authorize the Ukrainians to use long-range British missiles with American technology and technicians to reach deep inside Russia. President Putin issued a very stern warning. And then apparently while Prime Minister Starmer was over the Atlantic on his way here, the Defense Department or someone talked Joe Biden out of it. And he very angrily started a meeting with Prime Minister Starmer as a result of which no announcement was made at all about whether this would happen. I don't know if it's on the back burner or if it's totally off the stove. What are your thoughts on what likely happened? Well, I think that Putin made it unequivocally clear that he viewed this as a declaration of war

by the West and especially by the United States, and that there would be retaliation. And I would bet a good chunk of money that somebody at the highest levels of the Russian government called somebody at the highest levels of the American government and told them in no uncertain terms that they should believe every word that Putin had uttered and maybe even gave the Americans some details on what the Russians might do. But I think that the White House got the message loudly and clearly that they were playing with fire. And I think when you marry that to the fact that in the end, there was no real military advantage to be gained by using these weapons or having the Ukrainians use these weapons, it made eminently good sense to stand down. And thankfully, Biden did. And may I add to that the calendar? November 5th, quickly approaching the last thing Joe Biden would want is some calamity. I mean, let's face it, the invasion of Kyrgyzstan, we still don't know the

level of American involvement militarily or intelligence-wise, correct me if I'm wrong, has been a disaster for the Ukrainians. Yeah, there's no question. I mean, every day the story gets darker and darker for the Ukrainians. It looked for a while, especially in the first week or two of the campaign, that this was going to be a great morale booster and it was something that could be spun by the propagandists in the West and inside Ukraine as a great victory. But those days are gone and it is quite clear that this is a disaster. I think a more general point that you want to keep in mind here, it is not just the November election that matters. It is also the fact that the United States is in a disastrous situation in Ukraine, and it's in a disastrous situation in the Middle East. We'll talk about this eventually,

but just to stick to Ukraine for the moment. The fact is the Russians are winning, and people in the administration surely know this, and they surely know that there's no way to turn this around. Despite their public utterings, they have to understand that the Ukrainians are in deep, deep trouble, and the situation's only going to get worse. So the Biden administration really faces two big disasters, and it has no way out. So I think what you see the Biden administration doing in the case of Ukraine is really kind of flailing. They're just looking for some magic formula, for some magic hope that they can pull a rabbit out of a hat or something like that. And the truth is they can't do that.

They're doomed. They made a catastrophic mistake allowing this war, actually promoting this war in February of 2022. And they and the Ukrainians are going to pay an awful price for that mistake. Chris, can you put up the full screen of the Speaker of the Russian Duma? So this is the rough equivalent of the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Václav Váladín. Quote, for those who didn't get it the first time, what the European Parliament is calling for leads to a world war using nuclear weapons. Does the West take these threats seriously? Shouldn't it? Well, there are a lot of people who don't take it seriously, but it's quite clear that the people who are in charge take it seriously. That's certainly true

of Biden. And it's certainly true of all sorts of people in the Pentagon. There've been all sorts of reports that the Pentagon is the institution inside the government that takes this threat most seriously. And they should take it seriously. You want to remember that what's going on in Ukraine is something that the Russians have long said represents an existential threat to them. It's a major war right on their border. And you want to remember that going back to the start of this conflict, we have made it clear that our basic goal is to drive the Russians out of the ranks of the great powers. Our basic goal was to defeat the Russians in Ukraine,

wreck their economy, and drive them out of the ranks of the great powers. So the Russians are obviously scared. They have no intentions of losing. And if they get at all desperate, if they think we're upping the ante in a way that puts them at a great disadvantage, you can rest assured that they're going to give at least serious considerations to using nuclear weapons. And in the case of using nuclear weapons against Ukraine, you can use them in ways that you can probably get away with it because Ukraine has no capability to retaliate. So this is a really dangerous situation. Professor Mearsheimer, do you believe that Russia is prepared to fight a war against

the United States and bring it here? No, I don't think that they would start there. I think if the Russians retaliate, they may retaliate against certain American assets in Europe, or they may knock down some American satellites. But I think they'll start at a low rung on the escalation ladder, and they'll dare us to retaliate. I mean, what if the Russians attack one U.S. military base in Eastern Europe or in Germany? Or let's say they sink an aircraft carrier, even more dramatic. Yeah, if they were to sink an aircraft carrier, what would we do, right? I mean, we would purely retaliate, and they would retaliate. And then you start to go up the escalation ladder. And the question is, are we willing to play that game? Or are we going to

be the first one to say, I quit? We don't always retaliate when our naval ships are sunk, USS Liberty. Well, the Liberty, as you know, is a completely different matter. I'm just trying to goad you a little bit. We've discussed this almost until we're blue in the face. LBJ and McNamara were just totally beholden to the people that did the attacking, which was the Israeli government. But just to be clear here, I don't think the Russians would go after an aircraft carrier to start. They might. It's possible. But again, you want to just ask yourself what happens as you go up the escalation ladder. The great danger is you end up in a situation where we're hitting the Russian homeland and

they're hitting the American homeland. And that's something we absolutely do not want, and they do not want. If the United States is involved in a war, a land war with Israel invading Lebanon, and another war, whether air or naval, with Iran, what do you think Russia would do? What do you think your friends in Beijing would do? Well, I think that the Russians for sure will go to great lengths to help the Iranians indirectly. I find it hard to imagine that the Russians would come in to the fight on the side of the Iranians directly, in large part because they are deeply involved in Ukraine, and the last thing they need is another war. Furthermore, the Iranians will be able to handle themselves.

There's nothing the Americans and the Israelis can do that threatens the survival of Iran. They may launch a massive air attack against Iran's nuclear facilities and some other military installations. But at the end of the day, Iran is going to be left standing, and Iran will have the capability to rebuild those lost installations and, as far as the nuclear weapons are concerned, build nuclear weapons if it wants to. So there's no need for the Russians to sort of prevent Iran from suffering a decisive defeat. And again, the Russians are involved in Ukraine. So I think they'll stay out, but they'll give the Iranians lots of equipment and do everything they can to help the Iranians stymie the Israelis and the Americans. And will the Chinese just look at this,

or will they do something like maybe move on to Taiwan, knowing that we couldn't possibly fight three wars at once? I don't think the Chinese would use this as an opportunity to invade Taiwan. I think if you look at what the Chinese would have to do to conquer Taiwan, it's quite clear that now is not the time to try to do that. The military problems associated with that operation are just too great. I think they may cause trouble. They may try to cause trouble in the South China Sea. As I've said before, I think from a Chinese point of view, what the Americans are doing in Ukraine and what the Americans are doing in the Middle East is mana from heaven for them. They should just hope, the Chinese that is, that the conflict in the

Middle East goes on forever and ever, and that the Americans keep all those naval assets that they now have deployed in the Mediterranean and in the Red Sea in place. Because as long as they're in the Red Sea and in the Mediterranean, they're not out in East Asia trying to contain the Chinese. So this is all good news for the Chinese. Earlier this week, and even continuing into today, the Israeli government engaged in massive acts of terror against civilians and others in Lebanon. We all know how this, we don't know precisely how it happened, but we know generally what happened. Mobile devices exploded all over the place, in hospitals, in shops, in cars, on the street, in people's pockets, in their homes. 50 people are dead, including children. 3,000 people are wounded.

This resumed a little bit, not on the scale that it had the other day, a little bit today. What kind of a military strategy is this, Professor Mearsheimer? It's a very interesting question. I mean, it gets at the issue of what the Israelis are up to here with regard to Hezbollah. I think that there are two possible ways the Israelis could be thinking. One is that they move large-scale military forces to the border with Hezbollah. This is to northern Israel, and they've done some of that. And then they explode all these pagers and do great damage to Hezbollah. And the purpose of these two moves is to coerce Hezbollah into reaching some sort of ceasefire. It's very clear that the Israelis are deeply committed to getting a ceasefire with Hezbollah

so that all of those 60,000 Israelis who have been displaced from northern Israel can go back home. And what I'm describing here is a coercion strategy. In other words, you cause great pain on Hezbollah with the exploding pagers, number one. And then number two, you bring up ground forces, which they've done to threaten an invasion. That's the coercion strategy. The other strategy is you just invade. But if you're going to invade, if you've decided to do that, you don't want to explode the pagers beforehand. You want to explode the pagers as you invade into southern Lebanon and begin to attack Hezbollah forces, who will then be at a disadvantage because of these exploding pagers.

But they didn't do that. They've played that card now. And that tells you that the coercion strategy was their goal. They wanted to coerce Hezbollah. And I think the reason that coercion was the first choice of the two strategies was because they don't want to invade. They know that it will be a nightmare once they go in there. So the question you then have to ask yourself is, do you believe that this has worked? Has Bilal been coerced? Are they going to throw up their hands and basically surrender and reach a peace agreement or a ceasefire with the Israelis? And Nasrallah has now spoken, and he has made it unequivocally clear that they're not going to throw their hands up. These are tough hombres, and they're going to fight back. So the Israelis are now left with one option, which is to invade. And the question we have to ask ourselves is, how likely dohal, who is a regular on this show and a fan and admirer of yours and has extraordinary contacts in Israel and even in Gaza, is of the view that the Israelis were planning an invasion and intended to precede the invasion with the explosions of these mobile devices immediately preceding the invasion.

However, low-level Hezbollah discovered what happened, and so the Israelis decided to set them off anyway, even though they are nowhere near ready for the invasion. Does that make sense to you? It is certainly a plausible explanation. I don't know for sure. It's somewhat different than the argument I made about the coercion strategy. I mean, what Max is saying, and I have the highest regard for Max, of course, is that what's going on here is that they really wanted to wait and not use them until they invaded, because that made the most sense. But their hand was forced, and therefore they've been sort of pushed back to a coercion strategy.

That may very well be the case. What is the likely response to be to this attack on civilians? Response by whom? Hezbollah and its friends in the resistance. Well, they're used to that. I mean, people just take that for granted. The Israelis wantonly kill civilians. I mean, all you have to do is look at the genocide in Gaza. This is nothing new. Everybody understands this. The question is, what can Hezbollah do to retaliate? And that remains to be seen. But I don't think anybody's going to be shocked or surprised. No, but what I mean is, is this going to bring about the confrontation that Netanyahu wants? I mean, last week, General Carrillo was in Israel twice. Was he saying to Netanyahu, go ahead, do what you want, we'll be with you, or you go into

Lebanon, you're on your own? Well, he would never say to Netanyahu that if you go into Lebanon, you're on your own. That doesn't work. Even if he had told Netanyahu that, you know, we wouldn't provide ground troops or we wouldn't do this or we wouldn't do that or we wouldn't protect them diplomatically, Netanyahu would just ignore him because Netanyahu can override the Biden administration. In a battle of wills between the Biden administration and Netanyahu, Netanyahu wins nine out of ten times. So I don't think what the general told Netanyahu matters very much. Well, you have a lame duck president who doesn't have to face the electorate again, who can cease the armed deliveries with a phone call. He could do that. There's no question about that. But do you seriously think he would do that,

Joe Biden? I don't think he would do it, but he doesn't think the way you and I do. And I don't mean that in a negative way. Who knows what's going on in his head. Some of our colleagues have suggested that General Carrillo went there to read Netanyahu, the Riot Act, whether the federal government, whether the American government follows through on that so-called reading of the Riot Act or not is another issue. I find it hard to believe that Joe Biden sent anybody over there to read him the riot act. Will Joe Biden send Marines to help invade Lebanon on the ground? I do not believe that will happen. I would be truly shocked if we sent ground forces in. If we provided some air assets, that wouldn't surprise me, or naval assets. But ground forces, that I find hard to believe. Does Netanyahu hope to provoke a war with Iran, notwithstanding the strength of Iran, its distance from Israel, the size of its military, the size

of its population, I'm sounding like Mearsheimer now, the wealth of its country. I know these things that you look at from listening to your lectures and from our personal conversations. What is the likelihood that Iran is stronger than Israel? And wouldn't the probability that Russia would give Iran whatever it can, not whatever it wants, whatever it can, deter Netanyahu? Or is he still determined to take on Iran and to pick a fight with Hezbollah as some precursor to taking on Iran. I think your commentary is missing the most important point. That is, he wants to drag us into the war, and he wants it to be a war between Iran on one side and the United States and Israel on the other side. And what he wants us to do

is use our awesome military capability to really whack Iran. You were talking about the Hezbollah scenario, would the Americans come in? The really interesting question is the Iran scenario. If the Iranians come into the fight, will the Americans come into the fight? Okay, play that out, Professor. Well, I think if the Iranians come into the fight, we will come into the fight. And it will be us and the Israelis against the Iranians. And we desperately want to avoid this. I mean, we want to avoid a war between Hezbollah and Israel in good part because we don't want

Iran to come in, which means we have to come in, and then we end up in a war with Iran. The Israelis have been trying to make that war happen for a long time. You remember on April 1st, they bombed the Iranian embassy in Damascus, and then they killed the Palestinian leader in Tehran. I mean, they're trying to make a U.S.-Iran war happen, and we're trying to make it not happen. Here's Admiral Kirby addressing all of this and referencing the elusive character Amos Hochstein, born in Israel and fought in the IDF, now an American citizen and a high-ranking person in the Biden-Blinken Justice Department, excuse me, State Department. Cut number two. We still believe the best way to get those hostages home is through a negotiated arrangement. On the tensions with Lebanon, again, too soon to know what these incidents are going to

mean to the already high tensions between Israel and Hezbollah up at that border, the blue line specifically. All I can tell you is even as recently as a couple of days ago, Amos Hochstein, our envoy, was in the region having discussions to do everything we can from a diplomatic perspective to prevent those tensions from escalating into all-out conflict. What do you think? Well, there's only one way that you can shut down the war between Hezbollah and Israel, and that is to shut down the war in Gaza, to have a ceasefire and some sort of meaningful agreement. That's not going to happen while Netanyahu's in office, is it?

No, it's not. I mean, I think there's almost no question about that because if he does agree to a ceasefire, he won't be in office because people like Smotrich and Ben-Gavir have said that they'll leave the government. And if they're true to their word, which they're likely to be, that's the end for the Netanyahu government. So he's not going to reach a ceasefire in Gaza. He's going to continue to murder Palestinians, continue to tear the place apart. And the end result is Hezbollah is going to stay in the fight. They're not going to back off. So Amos Hochstein can talk to people in Lebanon and people in Israel till he's blue in the face, but it's just not going to do any good.

Does Hezbollah have missiles? I think the answer to this is yes, that can pierce the Israeli defenses? Well, I think there's no question about that. They have 150,000 plus missiles, and the Iron Dome system is greatly overrated. It may knock down a few of those, but it's not going to knock down many of them. And they'll just saturate, Hezbollah will saturate particular targets and they will certainly get a handful of missiles or rockets through on every designated target of importance. So I think that the Israelis understand full well that if they get into a full-scale shooting match with Hezbollah, it will have huge consequences for the infrastructure in Israel and also in terms of people being killed. In what form would American aid come? Jets in the sky, ships in the Mediterranean,

all attempting to destroy Hezbollah's offensive weaponry? Yes, I think that's basically it. Israeli aircraft, post-American aircraft, and we would surely help the Israelis go after those targets. How well we did is another matter. But there are sort of two dimensions to a possible war. The one you're just describing is sort of an air and naval war, and the other is a ground invasion. The Israelis appear to be talking is a ground invasion. And the Israelis appear to be talking about a ground

invasion. How can they possibly prevail in a ground invasion against Hezbollah when they couldn't prevail in a ground invasion against Hamas? They can't. And they basically know that. And you also want to remember that when they first started against Tomas, the troops were fresh, right? And it's been almost a year since they've been fighting in Gaza, and the troops are worn down. There are real readiness problems with the IDF ground forces, as you would expect. And therefore, that IDF army, those IDF ground forces that are going to go into southern Lebanon are going to have a lot of wear and tear on them. And they're going to be up against, as I said before, very tough hombres, just as they were up against very tough hombres in Gaza. Professor Mearsham, always a pleasure.

No matter what we're talking about, a gift to be able to pick your brain. Thank you very much for your time. My pleasure, Judge. And we'll see you again next week. I hope that'll be convenient for you. I look forward to it. Thank you, sir. Coming up later today, not much later today, at four o'clock this afternoon, we're pretending it's Friday because of commitments I have on Friday, the end of the day, the end of the week, more or less. The Intelligence Community Roundtable with Larry Johnson and Ray McGovern. And at five o'clock Eastern, it will be midnight in Moscow, Pepe Escobar.

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