Judging Freedom - Prof. John Mearsheimer : Israel’s Dangerous Game.

Episode Date: April 11, 2024

Prof. John Mearsheimer : Israel’s Dangerous Game.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, April 11th, 2024. Professor John Mearsheimer joins us now. Professor Mearsheimer, a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you for coming back on the show. Thank you for accommodating my schedule today. Professor Mearsheimer, if the United States intelligence community was involved in any way with the attack on the Crocus concert hall outside of Moscow three weeks ago,

would that be an act of war of the United States on Russia? Could be interpreted that way for sure. I mean, if we were directly involved. On the other hand, one could argue that we have been directly involved in terms of providing intelligence to the Ukrainians as they launch various attacks against Russia. And you could argue that that is an act of war. Go ahead. Is our role in being the chief financer of the Ukrainian war as culpable as our role in being a chief financer in the Israeli war against the Gazans? Well, in both cases, it's not just finance. It's also that we're providing lots of weaponry for both sides. And in both of those cases, we're providing diplomatic support as well. And intelligence support.

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I want to play for you a clip from Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, whom I think you know. Yes. Who has a very strong opinion about whether or not the CIA was involved in the concert hall attack. This looks a lot like what Nord Stream turned out to be, a U.S. operation. Only the CIA led it. Let's face it. We have done as much to create and to nurture ISIS as anything else on the face of the earth, whether it be Abu Musab al-Zarqawi or any of the instigators of the so-called ISIS consulate in the beginning. We've used ISIS, and when I say we, I mean that agency called the CIA, the same agency that does

so many nefarious things in our name. And they have worked ISIS and worked operatives from ISIS in order to do other things. And I'm hearing, and it makes a lot of sense to me, and I'm watching the behavior and the signals coming from Moscow, which are usually very indicative of the truth when it's something like this. And I think that's what Putin believes. And I think the intelligence community in Russia, whether it's the GRU, the NKVD, the KSB, the FSB or whatever, they believe it too. And that makes this Ukraine conflict a different conflict as of that killing of that many Russians that close to Putin and blame lying, at least in part, with the people who orchestrated it being the CIA. Would the American intelligence community, as you understand it, be so cold and indifferent

to 144 innocent young people who are by no means a military target as to have orchestrated, facilitated, or even looked the other way at their slaughter? I think it's possible for sure. I just don't think we have enough evidence to know how involved the CIA was, but I wouldn't put this past them. There's always a possibility that the CIA would do something of this magnitude. I mean, I would imagine that the Russians think that we're involved because we gave a warning that an attack was imminent from a terrorist group and that it might involve a concert. I mean, we explicitly said that. That means we knew something was coming. And if you're the Russians, you could hypothesize that the Americans knew this was coming, they were involved.

But you could also make the opposite argument that we didn't have anything to do with planning this. We saw it coming and we wanted to warn the Russians so that it didn't happen. You could make that argument. We just don't have enough facts to tell which story, enough facts at this point to tell which story is the correct one. Professor Mearsheimer, can Ukraine win this war? No, Ukraine is doomed to lose. Whether or not we give Ukraine that 60 plus billion dollars that's now sitting in Congress doesn't matter for the final outcome of this war. It may prolong the war somewhat, but in the end, the Ukrainians are going to lose. If we were strategically and morally smart, we would go to great lengths to end this war as quickly as possible so that Ukraine loses less territory that it's eventually going to lose, and so that fewer Ukrainians will die in the months ahead.

Here is Senator Tommy Tubberville of Alabama asking Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, whom he refers to as general, if Ukraine can win. Cut number 10. General, can Ukraine win? Yes, yes. What does that look like? Well, what we've said all along is we want to see Ukraine remain a sovereign, independent, democratic state that has the ability to defend its sovereign territory and deter aggression. And that's been our aim from the very beginning, and it remains our aim. But yes, they can be successful. I realize it's an opinion, but he's under oath. How could he say that? Well, leaving that aside, the fact is he was asked, how can they win?

You got to provide some sort of explanation. We know what all the arguments are as to why they can't win involving the balance of power, but he never answers the question. He just says, we in effect want Ukraine to win. We know they want Ukraine to win. Please explain to us, General Austin, how they can possibly do that. He has no explanation, and there's a very good reason he has no explanation. They can't win. What becomes of the war if the House of Representatives does vote on the $61 billion and approves it and the president signs it into law? We know that about $40 billion of it stays right here in the it into law. We know that about $40 billion of it stays right here in the U.S. What does the other $21 billion do for them? Just prolong the

inevitable? Well, a lot of it is economic aid. This is a package that includes economic and military aid, and they need the economic aid. So that'll go over there. But the reason a lot of it stays in the country, as you described it, is that what we have to do is build the weapons that they need. It's just so important to understand that the weapons are not on the shelf. It's not like once this bill is passed, we take the weapons off the shelf, we ship them across the Atlantic Ocean and give them to the Ukrainians. The weapons have to be built. So when people talk about the money staying in this country and the fact that this is going to create jobs, what they're saying is we're going to spin up the industrial base with this money and we're going to produce the weapons that the Ukrainians need.

But this is too little, too late. It just doesn't matter. Are you surprised when the Secretary of State says Ukraine will join NATO? Well, I'm surprised from a commonsensical point of view. This is a stupid thing to say, because it's like waving a red flag in front of a bull. You're basically giving the Russians greater incentive to destroy Ukraine, to take more territory, and to turn Ukraine into a dysfunctional, rump state. So it's not a smart thing to do. But am I surprised, given the performance of the Biden administration since it took office in January 2021? Absolutely not.

This is the gang that can't shoot straight. And then when they talk about what they're doing, they tell these half-truths and they make all these delusional statements. And sometimes I think they even lie. And so in that sense, I'm not surprised. Here's a clip of Secretary Blinken making that statement and then a follow-up, it didn't happen at the same time or the same place, of Senator Tuberville asking Secretary Austin if he agrees. Ukraine will become a member of NATO.

I heard Secretary Blinken say last week in Brussels that Ukraine will soon be in NATO. You agree with that? That's the goal of the NATO members is to, at some point, bring Ukraine into NATO. And that's certainly something that Ukraine wants to see. If you're Russia, would you want that? I'm just asking. I mean, we're playing games with Russia right now. I just want to understand why we would do that.

Certainly, if I was Russia, I would not want that, Senator. I would also not want Finland and Sweden to be a part of NATO, and they are. And the reason that they are is because Putin invaded his neighbor, and without provocation, without justification, and so that's why we are where we are. And instead of making things better for himself, he had the effect of enlarging NATO, which obviously creates worse conditions for him.

What do you think? I mean, he did not repeat what Blinken said. He equivocated. And I think he's smart enough in his subsequent comments, make this clear to understand that this is going to anger the Russians greatly, as I said to you two minutes ago, and this is going to lead to no good. His argument, and it's an argument you hear a lot these days, is that this whole crisis or this war has made NATO stronger by bringing Finland and Sweden in, is, I think, a bogus argument. I think if Ukraine loses this war, which is likely to happen, it's going to have a devastating effect on the alliance. This is not going to be good for the alliance. The alliance would be much better off if this war never happened. So I think he's dead wrong on that point.

Here's Deputy Secretary Campbell saying that the Russian military is actually stronger now than before the war started. It goes on to make the Biden administration argument about why the 60 billion should be sent there but the initial part of his statement is very telling russia has almost completely reconstituted militarily and after the initial setbacks on the battlefield delivered to them by a brave and hearty group in Ukraine, with the support of China, in particular, dual use capabilities, a variety of other efforts, industrial and commercial, Russia has retooled. I know Kurt Campbell quite well, and he is no fool. I've had my disagreements with him in the past, but he's a smart guy. And he understands what's going on here very clearly. And I think

he is about as straightforward in describing the situation as anybody at the senior level in the Biden administration. And I think that's what you see here. When Ukraine loses or when the world recognizes that Ukraine has lost, there may be elements in Ukraine that will never adhere to that recognition. Can it be perceived as a victory of Russia over NATO? Well, the fact that Russia is going to end up cleaving off a huge chunk of Ukrainian territory and making it part of a greater Russia is going to make it look for sure like NATO lost the war. Furthermore, Ukraine is going to end up as a dysfunctional rump state, and the Russians will make sure it remains a dysfunctional rump state, and that means it won't come into NATO. And therefore, NATO and the West and the United States will not be able to claim that we achieved our goal because Ukraine is not in NATO number one. And furthermore, Ukraine has been wrecked.

You also want to remember that there are significant divisions inside NATO now, involving the French and the Germans, involving Viktor Orban and the rest of NATO, involving the Americans and the Europeans. These cleavages exist, and they're only going to get worse with time. And the Russians are going to go to great lengths to exacerbate those cleavages and even create new cleavages. So this does not have a happy ending for NATO. I think NATO will be worse off in the end than it was the Israelis who attacked and destroyed the Iranian consulate adjacent to the Iranian embassy in Damascus, Syria, how dangerous a game are the Israelis playing? Well, I don't think there's any question the Israelis did it. Is this a dangerous game? Absolutely. It's very dangerous.

I think what the Americans have done subsequently, which is to say that they would support Israel no matter what if Iran attacks, is making a very bad situation even worse. I think what's going on here is that the Israelis are trying to drag us into a war with Iran. They, of course, have been trying to do that for a long time. And Iran and Israel were not at war when the Israelis struck the embassy in Damascus. And it was, in my opinion, unprovoked. And it's something that violates basic international norms. It's not supposed to do this. So they did it and they put the Iranians in a position where they have to retaliate. And if they retaliate against Israel and then we come into the fight, what does that mean? It probably means that we're going to attack Iran. So here we have a war between the United States and Iran. That's the last thing that we need at this point in time. And then there's the whole question of escalation. How does this play itself

out? If we whack Iran, what are the Iranians going to do to us? If the Israelis hit back at Iran, what will Iran do with regard to Israel? You can tell all sorts of stories about how this escalates in ways that are not good. And this, by the way, is why the United States has gone to great lengths up until now not to see us get into a war with Iran. It is not in the American national interest to get into a war with Iran. Iran doesn't want to get into a war with the United States or with Israel. But who is precipitating this? It's the Israelis, and we are foolishly taking the bait. Do you cringe every time I do when you hear a member of Congress say aiding Israel is in the national security interest of the

United States? Yes, I do. The evidence is so overwhelming now that that's not true. The evidence is overwhelming that Israel is an albatross around our neck. And what's happening with regard to Iran, not to mention what's happening with regard to Hamas, is clear evidence, in my opinion, of what an albatross Israel is. Has Israel failed to eradicate Hamas or even lost the benefit of its genocidal invasion of Gaza? There's no question that they have not defeated Hamas. By the Israelis' account, there are probably about 40,000 fighters to begin with in Hamas, maybe even more. There are some Israelis who use a higher number, but let's say the number

is 40,000. They claim they've killed 12,000 fighters. I doubt the number is that high, but let's assume that's correct. 12,000 out of 40,000 leaves a lot of fighters still alive. There's still a lot of tunnels. And very importantly, the Israelis have pulled almost all of their brigades, all their fighting forces out of Gaza. There's only one brigade left in Gaza. So how does Israel defeat Hamas? And the answer is they don't. Hamas is in effect going to win this war. At some point, the shooting is going to stop. And when the shooting stops, Hamas is going to come out and celebrate and say, we survived, therefore we won. And if you read the Israeli press closely, which I do every day, there are all sorts of people in Israel who understand there is no way

to defeat Hamas. Is there, well, Ramadan is over. What happens if the IDF comes back and invades Rafah, where a million and a quarter people are jammed in a city that once held just a quarter of a million, and that million have been pushed southward by the Israeli military, supposedly to be safe. Well, let's talk about the military dimension, defeating Hamas first, then talk about, sure, what happened to the civilian population. The Israelis argue that to finish off Hamas, to defeat Hamas, to win a decisive victory, they have to invade Rafah. This is not a serious argument. They may kill more Hamas fighters if they invade Rafah, but the idea that they're going to knock out Hamas and that's the end for Hamas is just not a serious argument. Then there's the question of the civilian population. Okay, just before you get to the civilian population, is this argument about the

desirability of invading Rafah a political argument made by Prime Minister Netanyahu and his government? Yes. I mean, the fact is that those forces on the right of Prime Minister Netanyahu in his government have made it clear that if he doesn't invade Rafah, they will overturn the government, right? So he is facing tremendous pressure from inside the government, inside the ruling coalition, to attack Rafah. So if he doesn't attack Rafah, he's in big political trouble. Furthermore, if he doesn't attack Rafah, right, he can never claim that he defeated Hamas because he didn't attack Rafah, and he said Hamas is located there. There are four or five battalions there. So he has to attack, I think, for political reasons. Otherwise, he's in big trouble. Now I want you to address the geopolitical consequences of a more mass slaughter of civilians down there. Well, I mean, I think you have to put it into

the broader context. I mean, the fact is that Samantha Power, who was in the government, has just said that famine has broken out in parts of Gaza. This is an amazing statement. Famine has now broken out. People are starving. The Israelis are not doing much, despite what the Biden administration says, to facilitate food supplies and water supplies moving into Gaza. And it looks like the genocide is continuing. And this is becoming apparent to more and more people. And more and more people are saying something has to be done to put an end to this. This cannot continue. So if in that context, the Israelis go into Rafah and they kill huge numbers of innocent Palestinians, this is just going to make the

public relations problem, for lack of a better phrase, even worse. This is going to put a greater stain on Israel's reputation. It's going to cause greater pressure to be brought to bear on the Biden administration, which, of course, is complicit in this genocide, and on the Israelis themselves to put an end to this. So this is not going to improve the situation either militarily or politically for the Israelis. Going into Rafah is going to make a horrible situation even worse. Going back to what we were talking about a few minutes ago, Professor Mearsheimer, with the Israeli destruction of the Iranian consulate. Did they, would they have given warning to the U.S. before this happened? Wouldn't the U.S. say, for heaven's sakes, don't do that because we don't

want to be dragged in. We're giving you all the help we can. That's a great question. I don't have a good answer. I would imagine that if they told us, we would have moved heaven and earth to tell them or convince them or coerce them not to attack the embassy. I would guess, and this is just a guess, they didn't tell us because they understood how we thought about that. You remember when we sent those aircraft carriers over in the beginning, we did it not because we wanted to join into the war or join the war. We did it because we wanted to deter escalation. We have no interest in escalation. We're trying to actually de-escalate this conflict we now have with the Houthis. So we don't want another conflict with Iran or with Hezbollah. But the Israelis, I believe, they would like to drag us in. Can you envision a full-fledged war between the United States

and Iran in which we have troops on the ground and naval personnel and ships and jet fighters and missiles and bombs over there? Well, I don't think there'll be boots on the ground. I think if there's a war between us and Iran, it will involve naval ships, aircraft, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, and so forth and so on. And I don't want to minimize what a disaster that would be, but I don't think we're going to invade Iran. That is a bridge too far. Were you surprised at all at the revelation last week of the Israeli use of AI with these three programs, one with the crazy name of Lavender, the other, the offensive name to me, of Where's Your Daddy

and Gospel. These programs, according to the Israeli journalist who exposed them, revealed the putting of numbers on an image of members of Hamas, 100 is must kill, one is the other end of that, and then putting facial recognition and numbers and whatever other information they had into the computer, and the computer deciding when and where to kill, but programmed to do so for maximum damage so that a daddy was killed when his wife and children were there as well. Does this surprise you? Is this some legitimate excuse of Prime Minister Netanyahu that the computer did it? No, this doesn't surprise me.

And this is part of the genocidal campaign, along with the famine that the Israelis are behind. So this doesn't surprise me. The person who wrote this article is named Yuval Abraham, and it's in a magazine that all of your viewers should read. It's called Plus 972. This is the second major piece by Yuval Abraham on the air war, on the Israeli air war. And it is very important to understand that, first of all, he's an Israeli. And second, the two articles that he's written, including the one that you described, the other one was last November, that both of those pieces are based on extended conversations with people who are planning and conducting the war. So he has huge amounts of hard evidence. And in the first article that he wrote last November,

he made it manifestly clear, or the article made it manifestly clear, that the Israelis were inflicting massive punishment on the civilian population on purpose. And this was not precision guided weaponry at work. They were trying to kill large numbers of innocent Palestinians. And what you see with the more recent article that you just described is more of the same, except we get all of this detail about these programs like Lavender. And I would just note, building on what you said, that what I found most shocking was the story that Yuval Abraham tells about Lavender, which is that the Israelis, instead of killing someone who's in Hamas when that fighter is by himself or with other Hamas fighters, waits till the person goes

home and is with his family so that they can kill not only him, but kill the family. This is just horrible. That by definition, by the way, is a war crime, by definition. Of course it is. But again, you want to remember, this is part of a genocidal campaign. This is part of a genocidal campaign. And if you don't like the word genocide, let's call it mass murder. Israelis are involved in mass murder. And as you and I have talked about on numerous occasions, we are complicit in this. How does this end? Does it end with Netanyahu coming to his senses and Ben-Gavir and Smotrich leaving the government in a new election and he's voted out of office?

Does it end with more slaughter? Does it end with Joe Biden saying enough is enough? We're not sending you spare parts or 2,000 pound bombs anymore? Well, you always want to remember that when you ask how something ends, it's important to talk about the military dimension, but it's more important to talk about the political dimension because as Clausewitz said, war is an extension of politics by other means. The key question here is what does the political settlement look like? You know, when the shooting stops, at some point the shooting is going to stop. It's already diminished somewhat. That could change if they go into Rafah. But there's less shooting today, less killing today than there was two months ago or four

months ago. And it's going to end at some point. But the $64,000 question is, what does the political settlement look like? And the answer is, there is no plan as to what to do with Gaza after the shooting stops. If you read the Israeli press, all sorts of military officers, these are military officers in the IDF, are complaining that Netanyahu will not tell them what the political plan looks like, because they believe they can't continue to wage the war, bring the war to an end, without some understanding of what the political architecture of Gaza is

going to look like. So what's going to happen here is the shooting is going to stop at some point. You're going to have two plus million people, most of whom are homeless, most of whom are starving, and most of whom have no political system that they can turn to for help. And the question is, what are we going to do then? You know, not far from where I live in New Jersey, there were Israeli real estate agents here purporting to sell or offer for sale land in Gaza. And the attorney general of New Jersey, who is himself Jewish, said, you can't do it. And they went up to Canada where they're offering it for sale. So I don't know if that's part of Netanyahu's goal, which is to make this some sort of a commercial enterprise. This would be theft on top of murder. The theft is insignificant compared to the mass murder,

but maybe that's part of his goal. No, but let's just build on this. The principal Israeli goal, in my opinion, from the very beginning has been to ethically cleanse Gaza. To expand greater Israel from the river to the sea. Well, they've already expanded Greater Israel in the sense that they now control Gaza, right? They control Gaza and they control the West Bank, and of course they controlled Green Line Israel, which is the pre-1967 Israel. So they controlled all of Greater Israel. The problem that the Israelis face is that there are as many Palestinians in greater Israel as there are Israeli Jews. And what they want to do is they want to cleanse

the Palestinians in the West Bank and in Gaza. And they saw October 7th as an opportunity to cleanse, and they tried to cleanse, and they failed. But when people start talking about selling, you know, real estate on the Mediterranean in Gaza, they are assuming that the Palestinians are going to be driven out. And then you can bring in Israeli settlers and you can sell waterfront property to American Jews or Canadian Jews, right? That's what they're assuming here. But the problem is they have been unable to ethnically cleanse. They have been completely unsuccessful. And the Israelis do not have a vested interest in creating a viable political and social order in Gaza, because that will make it harder to cleanse. It's much better to maintain something approximating the status quo for the foreseeable

future, because that lends itself to a policy of ethnic cleansing. All of this is to say the future for these Palestinians in Gaza and in the West Bank as well is just horrendous. Professor Meir-Shanomer, your analysis is brilliant and courageous, and thank you very much for it. Again, thanks for accommodating my schedule. Thanks for all your time today. We'll look forward to seeing you next week. Likewise, and thank you for having me, Judge. Of course, Professor. Wow. Well, he called it as he sees it, mass murder. Coming up at four o'clock Eastern, Max Blumenthal on the heels of Professor Ramir Scheimer, and at five o'clock Eastern,

the Intelligence Community Roundtable with the boys, Larry Johnson and Ray McGovern. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thanks for watching!