Judging Freedom - Prof. John Mearsheimer : The Empire Can’t Hold

Episode Date: January 8, 2026

Prof. John Mearsheimer : The Empire Can’t HoldSee 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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government? What if Jefferson was right? What if that government is best, which governs least? What if it is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong? What if it is better to perish fighting for freedom than to live as a slave? What if freedom's greatest hour of danger is now? Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for judging freedom. Today is Thursday, January 8th, 20206. Professor John Mearsheimer will be here with us in just a moment on The Empire Can't Hold. But first, this. History tells us every market eventually falls. Currencies collapse. And look at where we are now. 38 trillion in national debt. Stocks at record highs. defying gravity. So what happens next? Groceries, gas, housing, everything's going up. And this dollar, it buys less every day. When the system breaks, your stocks won't save you and your dollars won't either. But one thing will. Gold. I've set it on my show for years. Gold survives collapse.

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Call 800, 511, 4620 or go to Learjudgeonap.com today. Professor Mir Schumer, welcome here, my dear friend. Happy New Year, such as the world is. It's always a pleasure to be with you. Professor Mir Schumer, does the United States need a military budget of $1.5 trillion a year? As President Trump has indicated, he will propose for next year? Absolutely not. It's shocking that he's talking about a 50% increase in a military. budget that's already up to $1 trillion. If anything, we should be cutting the size of the defense budget in large part because we have such a huge budget deficit.

And I think it's important to do everything to eliminate that budget deficit as much as possible and not to make it grow greater. He believes the tariffs are going to solve the problem. Tariffs of the magic formula here, they're going to bring in all sorts of revenue. and then he'll take a good chunk of that revenue, and that's what will allow him to go from $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion. I wouldn't bet a lot of money on that. The Pentagon has never passed an audit.

It has failed every audit that's been imposed on it. Isn't this kind of money just a recipe for adventurism? The type of adventurism we saw the other night in Caracas, we'll probably never know what the cost. was because the government won't reveal it. Well, I actually think most of these endeavors, military endeavors that Trump engages in, are very limited in scope and don't cost a whole heck of a lot of money relative to a $1 trillion budget.

I think when you talk about containing China or containing Russia, then you're talking about huge amounts of money. or if you're talking about maintaining NATO, that requires a lot of money. I don't think these military operations matter that much. I think you'll see a great deal of waste and fraud is in the weapons acquisition process. This will allow us to buy more weapons, and it's quite clear that the Pentagon has a weapons acquisition process that's broken. And throwing more money at it will make a bad situation. worse. Have the neocons, or as our friend and colleague, Colonel Douglas McGregor, prefers to call them

globalists, now taken charge of American foreign policy? No, I actually think that's not the case. I thought that for a day or two, but I've changed my mind on it. Oh, I want to hear this. Yeah, if you read the Wall Street Journal this morning, and that's sort of neocon central, they're complies. They're complaining about the fact that Trump is not doing nation building in Venezuela. In other words, Trump is keeping the same regime in place. This is really not a case of regime change. And he's made it clear they're not going to be any elections. And we're really not interested in turning Venezuela into a democracy. And what you see with regard to Trump is he uses military force often, but he uses it in a very selective and limited way. He'll dump a couple bombs on Nigeria.

You know, he'll go in to Venezuela and kidnap the president, but he is not doing regime change and social engineering in the way that the neo-conservatives want. And this is in good part what allows Trump to get away with what he's doing. He uses military force in a very limited way. It's one and done. And then before people can criticize him for what he has done, he's on to the next escapade. And you see this with regard to Venezuela. The Venezuela operation is barely finished. And what are we talking about? Greenland, the next stop on the train line. And if he does Greenland, as soon as that's done, he'll be talking about doing Iran. But all of these are low-cost operations. Now, he's betting that Venezuela will be a low-cost operation, that he can violate the neocon desire to do social engineering, to turn it

into a democracy. He can do Venezuela on the cheap. Whether that turns out to be the case or not remains to be seen, and I would bet that this will be where he first runs into serious trouble. But again, my basic point is that the neo-cons have not captured him. I got to play an interesting clip from Senator Tom Tillis on the floor of the Senate. A. commenting on Greenland, Chris, number one. Mr. Miller said that the U.S. government, obviously, Greenland should be part of the U.S. That is absurd.

He doesn't speak for the U.S. government. He speaks for the President of the United States, and on that basis, he can. Some people around here call me cranky. I've got a couple of buddies that call me cranky. You know what makes me cranky? Stupid. You don't speak on behalf of this U.S. Senator or the Congress. You can say it may be the position of the President of the United States,

that Greenland should be a part of the United States, but it's not the position of this government. They're not refusing to have us have access to project power into the Arctic. We could do it without taking over a NATO country. The flip side could be that Mr. Miller or somebody else said, hey, this would be cool, let's take over Greenland. It'll be like a big aircraft carrier. Well, that's stupid too.

And I'm sick of stupid. The amateurs who said it was a good idea should lose their jobs. I'd claim that because most Republicans don't talk. that way about the president's aspirations. He's been talking about Greenland for a long time, but you're right. The talk about Greenland, Cuba, and perhaps Iran, as heated up, will get to Iran in a minute. What do you think of the likely geopolitical ramifications of this invasion into Venezuela? I think it all depends on whether it goes smoothly. and we don't get pinned down in Venezuela.

You want to be aware of the fact that he is talking about, he meaning Trump, talking about doing social engineering in other countries in the region as well, Colombia, Nicaragua, Cuba. He has a pretty extensive agenda in the Americas. And if he gets pinned down in Venezuela, I think is likely to happen, then that's going to limit our ability to deal with Europe, to deal with East Asia, and to deal with the Middle East. But if that doesn't happen, if he proves that this is something he can pull off quickly

and rather easily and he doesn't get bogged down in other places, then it will have few geopolitical consequences. Well, other than delivering Citgo, to his Zionist in chief buddy Paul Singer. What did he accomplish by kidnapping President Maduro? Well, you know, people talk about regime change, that we've just done regime change. The fact is we've not done regime change. Right.

The regime is still in place. All we did is, you know, take away Maduro and replace him with Rodriguez. And I'm not sure there's a lot of difference between the two of them, and the government's just going to continue to hide. operate. What's changed is we're basically going to use our enormous economic leverage, not so much military leverage, our economic leverage, to basically take control of Venezuela by taking control of its oil. And we think that by taking control of its oil, we can keep the present government in power, and we can make sure that that government,

dances to our tune. And that will allow us to continue to exploit Venezuela for as far as the eye can see. And you know that they're talking about us being deeply involved or running Venezuela to use the president's terminology for as far as the eye can see. And then again, the question is, how do you do that? And they think we can do it with all this economic leverage we gain from controlling their oil. Well, they obviously don't mean running the government. They don't mean collecting the garbage and filling the potholes and providing health care. They're just talking about oil. If they're just talking about oil, that's not going to be profitable while Trump is president, is it?

It's an enormous expense to get that oil out of the ground and to get it refined and on the market. There's no question about that. And I think Trump is dreaming when he thinks that we're going to be making big oil profits from Venezuela, soon. But the question is, given that we now basically are in charge in Venezuela, the question is, can we keep a stable government in place that basically does what we want? I mean, the problem here with your question, from my point of view, is I can't sort of explain what the threat was from Venezuela to begin with. There was none.

I can't explain why we're there. I mean, this all puzzles me. But it seems that President Trump is interested in controlling the oil for exactly what reason I don't know, because as you just pointed out, we're not going to make much money from that oil in the near term. And as other people point out, if we were making a lot of money from that oil,

it would just hurt the oil businesses in the United States. Correct, correct. It's very hard to say what's going on here. You know, people talk about driving the Chinese out of the region and creating a situation where China cannot get Venezuelan oil. Okay, well, where do you think the Chinese will then turn to get their oil? The answer is quite simple.

Russia, and that's what we're trying to avoid. So how this all fits together is very hard to say. I don't understand what the Trump administration is doing. All I would say to you is we are deeply involved at this point. And I think we're going to have one well of a difficult time keeping the lid on Venezuela. Almost everybody agrees that this is an incredibly difficult country to govern. That's always been the case, and it still is the case. And the idea that we're going to be able to govern from above, I wouldn't put a lot of money on that.

The second is that nationalism comes into play in these cases. You want to understand that this is a case of old-fashioned imperialism. And old-fashioned imperialism disappeared for a good reason. And that reason is nationalism. People in countries like Venezuela don't want the Yankees coming down and telling them how to run their politics. And there's going to be resistance over time. So this is an escapade that I think is likely to blow up in Trump's face. Someone who agrees with you, I don't have the clip on this, but Chris just sent me the little transcript

is Belarusian President Lukashenko said about two hours ago, quote, if the Americans want a second Vietnam, they're going to have one. Well, again, Trump understands that if you have boots on the ground, then you're in a situation that's analogous to Vietnam. And he's not putting boots on the ground. And what he's trying to do is govern Venezuela with economic coercive measures. He has this government in place. No regime change. We just changed the leadership.

And he thinks that we can use our. economic leverage to get that government to dance to our tune, to govern Venezuela in the way we would like it to be governed, to allow our oil companies to come in and exploit the country as Donald Trump sees fit. And the question is, do you think he can get away with that? And if he can't, and then he decides that he has to put boots on the ground, then Lukashenko is right. Then we are really in deep trouble. But this is theft, pure and simple. Just like the theft of those oil tankers. There's no question about that.

I think that's not even a debatable issue. I mean, he basically believed that Venezuela and other countries have no right to nationalize their own oil. Right, right. They can't do that. Because Trump believes it's our oil. Right. He believes that the oil under the ground of Venezuela somehow, he cannot articulate a reason,

but somehow belongs to the United States. Yes, they did nationalize Sitko. Sitko was sold in a fire sale, and who bought it? Paul Singer, he's probably salivating about what it's now worth compared to what he just paid for it at a fire sale, so to speak, authorized by a federal judge. Let me go to Russia, please. What do you think the Kremlin's reaction is?

In the past two weeks, one of their tankers was seized, the Maduro escapade invasion occurred, and the CIA has tipped its hand about being involved in the drone attack on President Putin's house. Yeah, this is a, the attack on Putin's house and the fact that it's quite clear the CIA was involved is really shocking. It's just another case of the United States crossing red lines. that we would have never dreamed about crossing during the Cold War. The big two precedents here are one when we attacked, or the Ukrainians attacked with aid from us, aid from the CIA,

one leg of the strategic nuclear triad of the Russian arsenal. That was quite shocking when we went after those bombers. And then the other precedent is when we assisted the Ukrainian, in their invasion of the Kursk region of Russia. I mean, think about that, invading Mother Russia with U.S. support. I found that hard to believe at the time. And this is the third big example. And I think the Russians have come to the conclusion that at some point,

this is not the right moment, but at some point, they're going to have to do something major to send a clear signal to the United States that this is intolerable. I think the Russians fully understand that the United States elite, the foreign policy elite in the United States has lost track of the fact that we live in a nuclear-armed world,

that we live in a very dangerous world, and that doing these sorts of things threatens escalation to the nuclear level. The Russians are very upfront about this these days. They really think that the United States lost track of reality during the unipolar moment and has failed to understand the impact of nuclear weapons on relations between great powers. And I think there's a lot of truth in that. So I find this attack

or attempted attack on Putin's residence that was assisted by the CIA to be foolish in the extreme. But I would say to you, Judge, having said all that, I think the Russians understand, at this point in time, what they want to do is keep their eye on the ball, right? Their major goal at this point in time is to win the war in Ukraine and not to get sidetracked by what's happening in Venezuela, what's happening with regard to their tanker being captured by the United States. This obviously is not going to make them happy, but you don't want to get sidetracked. You want to keep your eye on what's important.

As my mother used to say, first things first, and let's get the job done in Ukraine. I think that's their goal. And if the United States gets sidetracked in Venezuela, that's to their advantage. Will the Russians consider the United States a serious credible negotiator with all this stuff going on? Will Putin spend five hours with those two real estate agents, Whitkoff and Kushner? Well, he's doing this for public relations purposes. He's basically trying to tell the world that he's a reasonable individual who believes in diplomacy. Donald Trump might not believe in diplomacy, but he believes in diplomacy.

So this is all being done for show. Putin surely understands that diplomacy is off the table. If you listen to Trump talk, you listen to his conversation with the New York Times that's just now being reported by the Times. It's quite clear that he has little use for international law. He has little use for diplomacy. He believes in pure power politics. It's nothing but raw power. And he believes Trump that he's the one who decides, you know, when a treaty or when international law applies and when it doesn't.

And the Russians understand this at this juncture. And furthermore, they understand that diplomacy as a means of shutting down the war in Ukraine is off the table. This war is going to be settled on the battlefield. Right, right. are worried about diplomacy with the Trump administration at this point in time. They just don't want to alienate Trump any more than they have to, and they want to show the world that they, unlike Trump, are reasonable. The two real estate agents, as I keep calling them, were present in Paris earlier this week.

This is difficult to say with a stray face professor because it's so absurd. when the coalition of the willing, plus President Zelensky, announced that the EU is prepared to send military peacekeepers to a post-war Ukraine, and they are offering that the President Putin. Are they out of their minds? Are they blind and deaf to what Putin and Lavrov have been saying for the past two and a half years? Well, just to be clear, the Americans were there, as you said. Right, right. They didn't say anything. They just stood there and nodded while these announcements were made by President Macron and then the others chimed in. But also, as a result of that meeting, they're saying that we're going to provide,

we meaning the Americans are going to provide a backstop for the European. So we're involved in this escapade. What do I think of it? It's lunacy. You just kind of wonder what's going on here. The Russians have made it unequivocally clear that that is unacceptable. This is what the war is all about. The war was all about putting NATO into Ukraine or NATO troops and NATO weapons into Ukraine.

The idea that the Russians are going to allow this to happen is laughable. And they're talking about doing it after a ceasefire. This guarantees that there will not be a ceasefire. This is why many people suspect that the reason they came up with this scheme was because they want to make sure there is no ceasefire. This is a way of tying Trump's hands. Trump would like to work out some sort of deal with the Russians. But there's no way a deal can be worked out with the Russians when you're pushing forward a proposal like this. So the argument goes, this is designed to underremen.

mind any attempt at a meaningful end to the war. Let me go to another one of your areas of expertise. The Chinese have invested about $5 billion in infrastructure and other investments in Venezuela. How do they respond to what Trump pulled off the other day? I find it hard to say at this point. I've thought about that. Sometimes I wonder whether or not Trump is doing what he's doing in Venezuela to drive the Chinese and to a lesser extent the Russians out to get them completely out. You want to remember in terms of the Monroe Doctrine, we have historically not had any serious problem with adversaries like China and Russia doing economic deals in the Western Hemisphere.

Oh, but wait a minute. The national strategic, whatever you call it, the NSS, the national security strategy said they're not adversaries. They're economic competitors. Well, even if they are economic competitors, the Monroe Doctrine has never had any real problem with economic competitors at the West Hemisphere. If you're going to form a military alliance with a country in the Western Hemisphere, that's verboten. or if you're going to put military forces in the Western Hemisphere, as happened in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, that too is verboten. But the Soviets had economic relations with countries in the Western Hemisphere during the Cold War, and not just Cuba, but Nicaragua and others as well. And we allowed that.

So the question you have to ask yourself is whether you think that what Trump is doing in Venezuela is designed to push the Chinese completely out of the Western Hemisphere so that there'll be no economic intercourse. I don't see any evidence that that's the direction that we're headed in. So I think that the Chinese will keep an economic footprint in the Western Hemisphere. It may be somewhat less than it has been up to now. It's hard to say. But the interesting issue is whether or not they ever try to form a military alliance with a country like Venezuela. And I think given what's recently happened and what the president's people say in the national security strategy, the Chinese are smart enough to understand that that would be a

prescription for really big trouble to do that at this point in time. You think this invasion of Venezuela and kidnapping of President Maduro is giving the people in Beijing ideas about what they might do in Taiwan? No, because they think about Taiwan in a completely different way. We don't believe that Venezuela belongs to us. We might believe that the oil belongs to us, but we don't believe that Venezuela is part of the United States. From a Chinese perspective, Taiwan belongs to China. It's sacred territory.

And they are going to take it back no matter what. because it belongs to them. So there's a very different logic at play here. I think from a Chinese point of view, what's going on in Venezuela is good news if the United States fails in its goal to win a quick and rather easy victory in Venezuela, as I described it before.

What the Chinese should be hoping for is that we get bogged down in Venezuela, and then we decide we're gonna do nation building and other countries in the region as well, because that will guarantee that we cannot pivot to East Asia in a meaningful way. Is the Constitution any longer a meaningful restraint on the federal government?

No, I don't think there's any meaningful restraint. When you say the federal government, I would say the executive and here we're- Well, I mean the executive branch. Yeah, here we're talking about President Trump. If you read his interview with the New York Times, it's quite clear that he believes, He believes he is the ultimate decider on almost every issue.

What he wants to do, he does. And there's just no constraints on him. That's certainly true at the international level. And I think that he basically believes that at the domestic level as well. And as you know probably better than I do, Congress, the judiciary, and the media do virtually nothing to check him. There are a handful of people in the body politic. like you and all your guests on the show and a number of other people as well,

but we're not large in number who think that what's going on is a disaster in terms of civil liberties and the Constitution and so forth and so on. But the major institutions that we were supposed to count on, that the founding fathers were counting on when they set up this political system back in the 18th century. They're not doing their job. How is the ICE murder of? of this lady in her car playing in Chicago? That I don't know.

It just happened. And I would imagine, given our experience here with ICE in Chicago, that the vast majority of Chicagoans are outraged. I mean, the antipathy towards ICE in Chicago was palatable, palatable. It's really quite remarkable. Well, Professor Mir Schumer, thank you for your time. My dear friend, I know this is not your usual time, but I appreciate you accommodating my schedule. These stories just keep popping up, and we can't get through a week without you.

We'll look forward to seeing you next week. Likewise. It's a pleasure being here, as always, Judge. Thank you, Professor. All the best to you. Coming up tomorrow Friday at 10.30 in the morning, Professor Jeffrey Sachs at 4 o'clock in the afternoon with Larry Johnson and Ray McGovern, the Intelligence Community Roundtable. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.