Judging Freedom - Prof. John Mearsheimer: Our Dangerous Geopolitical Landscape.

Episode Date: December 5, 2024

Prof. John Mearsheimer: Our Dangerous Geopolitical Landscape.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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I mean, the president who declared martial law and is very unpopular has all sorts of domestic political problems. And I think him declaring martial law had mainly to do with those domestic political problems. He accused the opposition party, which basically controls the National Assembly, of being in cahoots with the North Koreans and threatening democracy inside of South Korea. So that's why he said he declared martial law. But I don't believe that for one second. I think he was trying to solve his domestic political problems by moving away from democracy and moving to martial law. With regard to what the geopolitical consequences will be, I think hardly any. I think one could make an argument that given that this government has gone to great lengths to improve relations with Japan,

which is not easy for any South Korean government, if this government is eventually overthrown and a more liberal government comes to replace it, one could argue that those relations between Korea, South Korea, and Japan will deteriorate somewhat. But I think that won't happen. And if it did happen, it wouldn't have great consequences. One of our guests has described South Korea as a vassal state of the United States, and another has described it as a lily pad from which the United States would fight against China should that eventuality occur. Do you subscribe to either of those views of South Korea? Well, I think to say it's a vassal state's a bit too strong. There's no question that the South Koreans are highly dependent on us. And it goes back to what happened in 1950. You remember, you know, on June 25th, 1950, the North Koreans invaded,

and they almost completely overran South Korea. And the only thing that saved them was that American forces came in. And we've been there in large numbers ever since. And they depend on us in very important ways, not only at the conventional level, but also for purposes of nuclear deterrence. They don't have any nuclear weapons of their own. North Korea has nuclear weapons. China has nuclear weapons.

And therefore, the South Koreans are heavily dependent on us. And when you're heavily dependent on the United States, the United States pushes you around in all sorts of ways. And I think that's true for sure what South Korea's role would be in such a war. If it was in the East China Sea, which is actually very close to South Korea, the South Koreans might be involved and probably would be involved. If it's in the South China Sea instead of the East China Sea, the South Koreans might not be involved, and we might not use South Korea as a place from which to launch weapons. But it's very hard to say for sure without looking at the specific contingency. And why are there more American

troops in South Korea than in any other country outside the US? Well, it's a legacy of the Korean War. Is it just fear of the North? Well, it's not just fear of the North. It's also that we want to have a significant military presence in East Asia, and that there are not a lot of other places where you could locate troops. You want to remember that what makes China very different from the Soviet Union during the Cold War is that the Soviet Union did not control the entire European landmass, and we went to great lengths to prevent the Soviet Union from controlling the entire European landmass. And here we're talking mainly about Western Europe. But in the case of China, or in East Asia, it basically controls the entire Asian landmass, except for South Korea. Not true if you get into Southeast Asia,

but if you're in Northeast Asia, or, you know, in the center of East Asia, China controls the landmass. So the question is, where are we going to put ground troops? We had ground troops in the Philippines, not large numbers, during the Cold War, and we had air forces and naval forces there. But when the Cold War ended, they basically pushed us out. And they've never been too enthusiastic about having us come back in large part because of history. If a liberal government takes over in South

Korea and they ask 28,000 American troops to leave, would we go? It's an interesting question. I think if they pushed hard, we'd probably have to go. But I think that's an extremely unlikely scenario. I think if they pushed hard, we'd probably have to go. But I think that's an extremely unlikely scenario. I think if a liberal government, the Democratic Party, takes over again in South Korea, there's no question they want to put some distance between themselves and the United States. The present government is much closer to the United States. It's more in America's pocket than the previous government was. So we would have some problems, not great problems, but some problems with a more liberal

government than we have with the present government. Is there any significance to the uniform silence from the State Department, from the National Security Advisor, from the U.S. Ambassador to South Korea, from the general in charge of the 28,000 troops? Well, the first question that pops into your mind is, were we involved? I mean, we know this was happening. Did we encourage it? My guess is that we did not know it was going to happen and we didn't encourage it. I don't see how this would be in our interest. Don't we spy on our allies and wouldn't are limits to how much you can know about any other leader. And it could be that he did this at the last moment. Right.

They did it at 1030 at night, local time. And, of course, by the time breakfast came along, it was over with. Yeah. It was a foolish move on the president's part. He was effectively shooting himself in the foot. And you want to remember the main reason he did this, as I said before, is that he is incredibly unpopular. He has all sorts of problems on the home front.

And if you have those kind of problems and you declare martial law and you're in a situation where the opposition can shut down your move to establish martial law, it's highly likely that the opposition is going to do that and it's going to succeed. And that's, of course, exactly what happened. On the other side of the globe, while he was doing that, the French government collapsed. Is there any geopolitical significance to that? I think that the situation in Europe is looking quite bleak. It's not only the French government that's in trouble, it's the German government that's in trouble as well. Germany's called for new elections. The German economy is in terrible shape. If you go inside France and you look at what's happening, there is huge trouble in the body populace in the sense that you have a great deal of polarization. And there it's not just two sides, it's a center,

a right and the left. And it doesn't seem that there's any way that the prime minister, who's in a terrible situation now, the French prime minister, can work with all three of these elements, the center, the right, and the left, to pass the budget. And it's not clear what the French are going to do. It's not clear what's going to happen to Macron. And furthermore, when you look at the you know, the precipitating cause of this crisis, it has to do with the budget and the fact that the French are spending so much money and they're not taking enough money to cover all the money that's going out. What you see is that there may be a lot of pressure to spend much less money on defense because the French have been spending a lot of money on defense.

And what they have to do is they have to cut back the government spending. And the question is, where do you go to cut? And if you cut social services, if you cut programs that are aimed at alleviating the problems that people in the body politic face, you're going to run into really significant trouble. You're going to run into a buzzsaw. So the incentives to cut defense spending in France, I think, moving forward are going to be quite significant. And this will have some geopolitical consequences. Continuing our travel around the globe, why are there a thousand American troops in Syria?

Well, because we want to influence events in Syria and we want to influence events all over the Middle East and all over the world, as you well know. Once we get into some country with military force, we hardly ever take those military forces out. The Iraqis want us out of Iraq, which is right next door to Syria. We won't leave. We're in Syria. Of course, it's a violation of international law, just like our presence in Syria. I suppose the justification is that the Syrian government doesn't control the geographical area where the American troops are located. But surely the Israelis are happy that we're there and the Russians are not. I think there's no question about that. I think the Israelis want us to be in as many places as possible in the Middle East to wield influence. I think there's no question about

that. And I think that the Israelis have wanted us to do things in Syria to work to Israel's advantage. As you will know, arms from Iran go through Syria to get to Hezbollah, and this matters enormously to the Israelis. And And this matters enormously to the Israelis and anything that matters enormously to the Israelis matters enormously to the Americans. So they want us there, we want to be there, and that's why we're there. Will Russian troops, ground troops, be fighting against President Assad's adversaries, whether it's IDF or whether it's these militias that the CIA has funded in Syria? It's very hard to say. I mean, what's quite amazing at this point in time is the rapidity at which the Syrian army is collapsing.

And it's hard to tell where it's going to stop. And there are not many Russian troops there that can help at the moment. It's not clear they can get a lot of Hezbollah forces in there. And I'm not sure who's going to help the Syrian army in a meaningful way. The Russians are using air power and the Syrian air forces at play as well, but there are limits to what air power can do. I think you need ground forces to sort of reinforce the Syrian army. I find it hard to imagine that the Russians are going to move significant troops into Syria at this point in time, given the situation that they face in Ukraine. They just can't afford to take ground forces out of Ukraine and large numbers of ground forces out

of Ukraine and move them into Syria. Paul Jay Explain to us, please, the unusual and unique posture of Turkey vis-a-vis Syria. I guess it's going to withdraw its application to join BRICS after what President Erdogan has been saying and doing in the past week, or maybe I'm wrong. Well, I think what's going on with the Turks, and it's hard to be certain because there's not a lot of information out there. But as you've talked about on the show with other people, it's quite clear that the Russians and the Turks were talking about facilitating a meeting between Assad, the Syrian leader, and Erdogan, the Turkish leader, because Erdogan was very interested in reaching some sort of settlement, some sort of modus vivendi with Assad. But Assad refused to meet with Erdogan

as long as Turkey had troops in northern Syria. So I think that Erdogan was very upset as a result of that. He was frustrated. You also want to remember that Erdogan and Turkey have a rich history of trying to topple the Assad regime. In 2011, when the United States was involved in trying to topple the Assad regime, the Turks were involved as well. Erdogan has long wanted to get rid of Assad. He's viewed Assad as an adversary to be gotten rid of. He failed, as did we, after 2011, because, of course, the Russians came into Syria in 2015 and pulled Assad's chestnuts out of the fire. But I think what's happening here is that the Turks saw an opportunity to get rid of Assad, or at least to cause him significant problems,

and they supported this invasion. They used their proxies. And I would bet the Turks did not anticipate this level of success. I think that they probably thought they could put great pressure on Assad and maybe force him to negotiate with them. But what's happened here is that the Syrian army has come close to completely collapsing. It's just in terrible shape. Why is Russia backing Assad? Well, because Russia has a longstanding relationship with Assad, or I should say with Syria. With his father.

Yeah, with his father, exactly, Hafez al-Assad, going back to the Cold War. And the Russians, unsurprisingly, want to maintain their influence in the Middle East. So when the Cold War ended and the Soviet Union fell apart in December 1991, the Soviets, not surprisingly, stayed in Syria. They kept their military bases in Syria. And they see that as an excellent place for them to wield influence in the region. It's not altogether unlike us leaving forces in Syria or the Turks leaving forces in Syria. This is the way power politics works. You know, great powers and even countries like Turkey want to have troops in other countries if they can get away with it. Professor Mearsheimer, earlier this week, President-elect Trump wrote on his Truth Social account

that if the hostages, the Israeli hostages, are not returned before he becomes president, Hamas will be hit harder, I'm quoting, than anybody has been hit in the long and storied history of the United States of America. What could he have been talking about? I think he's talking about using nuclear weapons against Tomás. I mean, what else could he be talking about? Well, that would kill the hostages he claims he's trying to extricate. I don't know what he's talking about. I mean, this is not a serious line of argument. Gaza's been turned to rubble. What is Trump going to do that the Israelis haven't done? And what effect is that going to have on Hamas?

Well, that was going to be my next question. What can Trump and the Americans do that Netanyahu has failed to do? Not much. Yeah, exactly. And by the way, you see the same sort of logic at play with regard to Ukraine. You know, Trump and his lieutenants talk really tough about Ukraine. They're going to tell the Russians they want to cut a deal. And if the Russians don't agree to come to the table and work out a deal, they're going to lower the boom on the Russians. Please explain to me, how are they going to do this? The Biden administration couldn't do it. How's Trump going to do it? But this, you know, this pattern of behavior by Donald Trump that you see now before he takes office is what you would expect for him. He's a tough guy in his own mind,

and he likes to threaten people. And he thinks that by threatening people, he'll get them to kowtow to him and do what he wants. He believes in coercion. And I think it's not going to work with Hamas. And I don't think it's going to work with the Russians. And I think he's going to be surprised once he gets into office how much trouble he is in, or to put it slightly differently, how much trouble the United States is in and how little leeway he has for getting us out of all this trouble. But going to another area where he's going to have trouble, of course, is Ukraine. The White House said $3 billion is on its way to Ukraine. Secretary Blinken said $50 billion. I

don't know where he gets that number from unless he somehow thinks that Congress is going to give another authorization. There's about $7 billion left by my calculation and even by the White House calculation in the pipeline, authorized, but not yet sent there. What could possibly be gained by sending $3 or $7 or even $50 billion worth of military equipment to this military that's teetering on the brink? Well, it's very important to emphasize here that Keith Kellogg, who is the person that President Trump has appointed to deal with Ukraine and with Russia, that Kellogg has applauded the Biden administration for upping the ante in terms of the material aid that we're sending to Ukraine. Wait a minute, Professor Mearsheimer. Donald Trump said a dozen times during the campaign

he's going to end the war in Ukraine in the first 24 hours after he's sworn in, and then he dispatches the warrior Kellogg to say, oh, Biden's doing a good job. Yeah. And you want to remember that Mike Waltz, after he visited Jake Sullivan, made it clear that there was hardly any daylight at all between Waltz and Sullivan. So you say to yourself, when you listen to the principal advisors of Donald Trump, who are going to be dealing with Ukraine, please tell me what's the difference between what Trump is going to do and what Biden has been doing. And the answer is there is virtually no difference at this point in time. So the only possibility here that there will be a radical change in policy after January 20th is that Trump will

abandon the policies that his advisors are pushing forward, people like Kellogg and Waltz and Rubio, and instead he'll adopt or put into play his own policy on how to deal with Ukraine. I think that's extremely unlikely to happen. And uh that's why i think that uh we're not going to have a settlement here this one is going to be settled on the battlefield as i argued right well here's president zielinski with a delusion well you can comment on this yourself chris number one please if we want to stop the hot stage of the war we should take on the nato umbrella the territory of ukraine that we have under our control that's what we need to do fast and then ukraine can get back the other part of its territory diplomatically that was um that was november 29th so that was less than a week ago, he's still speaking about Ukraine joining NATO.

Either he's delusional or this is some sort of a negotiating ploy. I don't know. What do you think? It's delusional, but there are two parts to his argument, both of which are delusional. One is that he's going to get that territory back, the four oblasts that they've lost in the East and Crimea, that they're eventually going to get them back, and they're going to join NATO. That's his view. What these people don't understand, and this includes the administration, is that from Russia's point of view, Ukraine in NATO is an existential threat. The Russians will fight to the death to prevent that from happening. People in the West just simply don't get that. They refuse to believe that the Russians think that Ukraine in NATO is an existential threat. And they continue to talk about bringing

Ukraine into NATO, or if they don't talk about bringing Ukraine into NATO, they talk about making Ukraine a de facto member of NATO by giving security guarantees and all sorts of promises of weaponry down the road. This is categorically unacceptable to the Russians. It is an existential threat. That means the Russians view it as a threat to their survival. Many people in the West say this is not true. It's not a threat to their survival. But what people in the West think doesn't matter. What matters is what the Russians think. So all of this talk by people like Kellogg and Waltz and other people around Trump, as well as people in the Biden administration and people in Ukraine

about bringing Ukraine into NATO or giving it security guarantees is not going to work. Is there any moral, military, or geopolitical benefit to the distribution of another three or seven or 50, we don't know what the number could be, billion dollars worth of military equipment to Ukraine at this point in the war? Well, let me just address the moral dimension to this, because the argument that the Biden administration and most people in the foreign policy establishment would make is that we have a moral obligation to continue to arm the Ukrainians. And people who are in favor of sending more armaments now to the Ukrainians are on the correct moral side of this dispute. I think that's dead wrong. The end result of this is more Ukrainians are going

to die. Ukrainians are going to lose more territory. This is just going to end up creating an even greater disaster for Ukraine over time than we now have. In my opinion, the morally correct thing to do, and this is something we should have done a long time, is put an end to this war. We should have recognized that Ukraine cannot win the war. And we should have encouraged the Ukrainians to stop the war and cut their losses. But we didn't do that. So my argument is that what we're doing now is not only strategically foolish, it's a morally bankrupt policy as well. Could Joe Biden possibly be doing all this just to push the catastrophe, the ultimate collapse of the military and perhaps even the Kiev government onto Donald Trump's watch?

Well, I think there's no question that's the case. But, you know, if you listen to Keith Kellogg talk about what the Biden administration is doing, he argues that this is good because it will increase Ukraine's and the West's position at the bargaining table. In other words, they anticipate there's going to be some sort of negotiation process that takes place after Trump enters the White House. And in that negotiation process, the fact that we've strengthened Ukraine in the meantime, even if it's not greatly, even if we've just strengthened Ukraine on the margins, that will make Ukraine more powerful and give it greater leverage at the bargaining table. I think this is delusional, again, because this is not going to

be settled at the bargaining table, because the Trump administration refuses to accept the fact that Ukraine can't be in NATO and that there can't be Western security guarantees to Ukraine. We refuse to accept that. And if you don't accept that, this one has got to be settled on the battlefield. How much longer can the Ukraine military last no matter what equipment we send their way? It's hard to believe it's going to last much beyond the midpoint of 2025. I just find it hard to believe that that will happen. Given the manpower problems that they face, given the weaponry problems that they face, given the number of people who are refusing to serve, who are fleeing from the front lines, who are surrendering.

I mean, this looks like a catastrophe in the making. And I just, I do find it hard to believe that they can last, you know, past, I'd say, June 2025. Is the CIA fomenting coup d'etat, Civil war, revolution, whatever you want to call it, in Georgia so as to give Vladimir Putin more headaches? I don't know. Is it possible? Yes. Are we possibly trying to cause serious trouble in Georgia to complicate Putin's life?

It's certainly possible. I don't see any hard evidence of that. So I can't say one way or the other that we're doing that. Spoken very diplomatically, Professor. Thank you very much for your time, Professor Mearsheimer. Always a pleasure. My pleasure as well, Judge. Well, we'll see. I hope to see you again next week.

Definitely. And thank you. Thank you. Coming up tomorrow, Friday at four in the afternoon, the end of the week, the end of the day, the Intelligence Community Roundtable. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thank you.