Judging Freedom - Prof. John Mearsheimer : The End of Ukraine as We Knew It

Episode Date: February 5, 2026

Prof. John Mearsheimer : The End of Ukraine as We Knew ItSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Undeclared wars are commonplace. Pragically, our government engages in preemptive war, otherwise known as aggression with no complaints from the American people. Sadly, we have become accustomed to living with the illegitimate use of force by government. To develop a truly free society, the issue of initiating force must be understood and rejected. What if sometimes to love your country you had to alter or abolish the government? 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, February 5, 2006. Professor John Mearsheimer joined us now. Professor Mearsheimer, a pleasure to matter what we're talking about. So the President of the United States says he's not constrained by international law. And today, for the first time since 1972, the world is unconstrained by any legal architecture restraining the development of nuclear weapons. both of these are due to the fault determination thinking, absence of thinking, however you want to characterize it, of Donald Trump. What remains of international law, Professor Mearsheimer?

Just on the matter of arms control, it's not just Trump. You want to remember that we entered the unipolar moment. This is right after the Cold War ended with a handful of arms control agreements in place. virtually all of those nuclear arms control agreements are now gone, as you pointed out. This is the first time since 1972. We have the Salt 1 Treaty that we've been without an arms control agreement. It's actually hardly surprising. Putting Trump aside for the moment, the fact is that the Republicans have historically hated arms control.

They went to enormous lengths to prevent the United States from reaching arms control agreements. They weren't always successful, of course, but they were a real obstacle. And then you had people like George W. Bush, who did away with the ABM Treaty shortly after he came to power. And then eventually the INF Treaty was done away with, and now New Start is done away with. But there's a long pattern of this kind of behavior. So it's not just restricted to Trump. But with regard to Trump, as we've talked about before on the show, he hates international institutions. These arms control agreements are institutions, and it's hardly surprising that he is willing to either kill them or let them expire, and that's what he's done in this case.

Well, he must also hate the Constitution because treaties, when ratified by the Senate, have the same place in our lexicon as the Constitution does. That's in the Constitution itself. Well, he didn't violate the Constitution here. He just let the treaty expire. No, no, I'm talking about his disdain for the Constitution when he chooses not to comply with international law. I realize he let it expire. Ritter says that the true value, I'm going to guess you agree with this, but if you don't, so state, of these treaties is not the limitation on the number of warheads. It's the opportunity to inspect other countries' weapons.

That's the crown jewel of these agreements, and we no longer have that. I think that's true, but I think in the final analysis, these arms control agreements don't mean very much. I mean, if you think about it, according to this arms control agreement that is just expiring, each side is allowed 1,500 nuclear warheads. that's more than enough to blow the world up a couple times over. Yes. And let's assume that now one side begins to arms race and the other doesn't. And let's say that one side moves up to 10,000 warheads and the other side only has, let's say, 2,000 warheads.

So one side has a 5 to 1 advantage. Do you think that this matters? The answer is no, because there's no way you can win a victory, even if you have a nuclear advantage when the numbers are that large. Unless you have a president who has the mentality of a six-year-old and thinks he's got to have more than what everybody else has. That may be true to some extent. I mean, but I think that president, whoever he or she is, once they start thinking about what they can do with those nuclear weapons and they talk to their advisors, it will quickly become clear that it just doesn't provide you with any meaningful advantage in a nuclear war. And in fact, what you're going to do is you're going to incinerate your own country if you try to use those thousands of- Correct, correct, correct.

I could just say very quickly, the thing I always liked about arms control is it prevented both sides, but especially us, from throwing money down a rat hole. Correct. Correct. That is the other sort of unseen advantage of it. One of the reasons that probably November 22nd, 1963 in Dallas happened. And the United States is negotiating with Iran and making utterly unrealistic demands on Iran, which if acquiesced in by Iran, would effectively remove its sovereignty as a nation. Are these real negotiations or are they a farce? It looks to me like another kabuki dance. We have two kabuki dances going on at the same time. The first involves the Russians.

And if you look at the New York Times, which I looked at right before I got online with you, they pointed out that the talks in Abu Dhabi just broke up. And there was virtually zero progress. And the Times pointed out that after all these months, it's quite remarkable how little progress has been made. This is between the Russians, the Ukrainians, and the Americans involving the Ukraine war. And as you and I have been saying for many, many months now, this is all a kabuki dance. Well, here we go again with the Iranians. First of all, Trump puts these demands on the Iranians, you know, to do away with their ballistic missiles, completely do away with their nuclear program, don't support Hezboa and Hamas, that there is no way the Iranians would ever accept.

And then we're reduced to talking about their nuclear enrichment capability. Well, we've been there. This is what the JCPOA was all about. President Obama negotiated a deal on this, and it was Trump who walked away. The Iranians have made it clear. They're not going to give up their nuclear enrichment capability. So really, all Trump can do at this point in time is agree to another JCPOA, that same agreement or something like that agreement that he walked away from in 2016. But it's hard to imagine him doing that. So all of this is to say, looks like another Kabuki. dance to me. Tell me if Trump has a good understanding of what's going on between the United States

and Iran. Chris, cut number 14. Should the Supreme Leader in Iran be worried right now? I would say he should be very worried, yeah. He should be. As you know, they're negotiating with us. I know they are, but the protesters have said, you know, where are the Americans? You promised them we would have their back. Do we still have their back? Well, we've had their back. And look, that country's a mess, right now because of us. We went in, we wiped out their nuclear. If we didn't take out that nuclear, we wouldn't have peace in the Middle East because the Arab countries could have never done that. They were very, very afraid of Iran. They're not afraid of Iran anymore. Those beautiful B2 bombers went in and they hit their target every single bomb and obliterated it. And within one month,

they were going to have a nuclear weapon. That was a big threat. They're not going to have it anymore. But if we obliterated, what's the deal about? I mean, if there's no more, are they trying to restart the nuclear program? Well, I heard that they are, and if they do, and I let them know, if they do, we're going to send them right back and do their job again. So you're understanding that they tried to restart it, and that's why you're threatening force. They tried to go back to the site. They weren't even able to get near it. There was total obliteration.

But they were thinking about starting a new site in a different part of the country. We found out about it. I said, you do that. We're going to do very bad things to you. I mean, does he think you can build one of the, things in a month or two? Does he even have the slightest understanding of what he's talking about? Every expert we've talked about said we didn't lay a glove on their nuclear enrichment. Well, I think we may have laid a glove on it, but even if we fully destroyed it, almost

everybody I know who's an expert in this area agrees, they can build, rebuild their nuclear enrichment capability with great ease. With regard to the enriched uranium that they had, That, I would bet we didn't lay a glove on. I'm not 100 certain. Well, that's what I meant to say. You know, we collapsed a couple of caves, but we didn't destroy the enriched uranium. Why would they give up euritreth and uranium for civilian uses? Every major medical center in the world has nuclear medicine.

Why would they give up their offensive weapons when they have a madman in Tel Aviv who wants to destroy them? Well, they won't. That's why this is a kabuki dance. I just don't understand what's going on here. I want people to tell me what the plausible deal looks like between us and the Iranians that are paymasters, the Israelis would accept, right? What's the deal? Nobody tells me what the deal is. The same thing, again, is true with regard to the Russian issue. What is the plausible deal that's on the table that will satisfy the Russians, the Ukrainians, the Europeans, and the Americans? And there is no plausible deal.

So we pretend that these talks that endlessly go on are going to lead somewhere when there is no chance at this point that either one of those talks are going to lead anywhere. And by the way, what this tells you about the Iranian case, is that Trump is probably going to come up without a deal, right, unless he agrees to JCPOA, too. There's going to be no deal. And then the question is, what does he do then? Sorry, I just had to lower a shade, lower a shade behind me. I want to go back to Abu Dhabi.

Do you think that there is a second track being negotiated there, which would result, if successful, in the normalization? of relations between the United States and Russia? Two-part answer. Number one, I hope so. Number two, I find it hard to imagine because the Russians have these non-negotiable demands that the Ukrainians and the Europeans

and many Americans find totally unacceptable. And I find it hard to imagine that therefore you can put together some sort of deal that satisfies all the parties. I think the only hope here is that Ukraine's situation in the war deteriorates to the point where they have no choice, but to reach some sort of armistice with Russia and we get a cold peace. I think that's the only plausible outcome. Do you think they're on their last leg?

And do you think they, if they are, do you think they recognize it, Professor? Well, they're on their last legs, but the question is, how long will they keep fighting while they are on their last legs? I mean, their energy infrastructure has been almost completely destroyed. And the Russians have so many ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones that they'll be able to continue wrecking that energy infrastructure and other kinds of infrastructure for the foreseeable future. So the Russians are just wrecking the country. And if you read what's happening on the battlefield, again, to go back to the New York Times, they had a piece today that said that Ukraine does not have enough manpower to cover the front lines, and there are big gaps in those front lines, and the Russians are finding those gaps and exploiting them.

In other words, the Russians have a huge manpower problem that they can't fix because all sorts of people won't come to the draft board when they're, drafted, and all sorts of people are AWOL. So the army is in desperate straits, and the Russian army isn't actually quite good shape. So the Ukrainians are clearly losing the war, and the only interesting question at this point in time is how long they keep fighting. Can we accept as a given that the Russians will never concede their demands from day one? The acquisition, the lawful acquisition of land and the permanent neutralization of Ukraine. Well, I think with regard to the permanent neutralization of Ukraine, which means Ukraine cannot be in NATO and it cannot have a legitimate

security guarantee from the United States, I think that's been true since day one. And that is not going to change. And as you and I both know, that is the principal cause of the war, the of Ukraine in NATO. With regard to territory, I'm not going to, I'm going to, I think if a deal had been cut in the spring of 2022 or even in the summer of 2022, Ukraine would have ended up keeping almost all the territory it's now going to lose. Oh, well, that agreement that Boris Johnson and Joe Biden talked Zelensky out of had them keeping much of the land that they're now going to lose. Did it not that 126-page agreement that was negotiated in the late winter, early spring of 22 in Istanbul? Well, we have to be careful here. There was no final agreement. And exactly what the terms were regarding territory were not clearly spelled out. But it's quite clear that the Russians were not bent on absorbing or annexing those four oblasts in eastern Ukraine that they have now annexed. They had already, you remember, annexed the Crimean Peninsula in 2014.

Right. point of view, that was a done deal in the spring of 2022. But the four oblast, I think if the Ukrainians had been accommodating, they could have ended up keeping those four oblast. But those days are gone. And you're now in a situation where the Russians are determined to keep those four oblast, which they have an ex. And I think the interesting question is, will they take more oblasts? Will they take Odessa? Will they take Harciv? And if the Ukrainian military were to collect, on the battlefield at any point in the near future. I think the Russians would grab more territory. They didn't exit, and they wouldn't be willing to give it back at any point to the Ukrainians. Let me take you back to Iran. What bona fide American military purpose would be served by the U.S. attacking or invading? You can choose whichever word you want, Iran.

Well, we're not going to invade, that's for sure, because that would involve boots on the ground, and it's hard to imagine us doing that. I think almost everybody agrees that there will be an air and missile offensive. And I cannot figure out what we can do with military force to achieve a goal that's desirable. For example, you could say what we want to do here is regime change. I do not believe that we can do regime change with the military forces that we have in the region. We'd have to invade the country. And as I said, we're not going to do that.

So I think even if you really pound Iran, it's not going to lead to regime change. Then we talk about maybe wrecking military infrastructure. could wreck some of that, but not all of it. And what's the end result? And where does that leave us? And then there's all sorts of talk about going back after the nuclear sites. Well, I thought President Trump told us that all the nuclear sites. There are no nuclear sites. Yeah. Even if you go after them, what does that buy you? I mean, what you always want to ask yourself when you're strategizing about going to war, what's the end game and what's the plausible strategy that you have for achieving your final goals? And I do not see how we can come up with meaningful final goals that we can

achieve by using military force. And by the way, none of this takes into account the fact that Iran has a retaliatory capability. We're just talking here, you and I, about what we can do to Iran. But Iran can do a lot to us and to the Israelis and to the international economy. Will Trump attack Iran if Netanyahu asks him not to? Well, that's what happened on January 14th. I actually, to be honest, find it difficult to understand exactly what the Israelis are thinking at this point in time. I think there's little doubt that on January 14th, the Israelis asked us not. to attack Iran. For that reason, that's one of two reasons, we did not attack. But Trump continued

after January 14th up to the present to talk tough about whacking Iran with military force. So that raises the question. One of the Israelis been whispering in his ear since then, it's possible the Israelis think that we have enough defensive assets and offensive assets in the region now, that we didn't have enough on January 14th, but we have enough now for the United States to pound Iran and for Israel to get off scot-free or almost scot-free from an Iranian retaliation. But I find that hard to believe. Is that even feasible, John? No, I don't think so. That's what I'm saying to you. So I would, let's assume that you and I are right. that would tell me that the Israelis then shouldn't be enthusiastic about attacking now,

just like they weren't enthusiastic on January 14th. But I'm not sure what the Israelis are thinking, because the signals that you get, as best I can pick them up, in the media, are kind of mixed on this. But I wouldn't be surprised. This is just a surmise on my part. I would not be surprised if Trump doesn't attack, and one of the reasons is the Israelis tell him not to,

because the Israelis understand that they will get pounded, number one, and number two, I think they understand that we cannot achieve any meaningful goal against Iran, and especially with regard to regime change, which is what their great dream is. With the President of the United States disdaining international law and manifesting that not only in the Caribbean, but in the city of Minneapolis, at least disdaining in a moral sense. Are we now just might makes right on the international scene? Will it be just three guerrillas with each of their own hegemony, Russia, China, and the U.S.?

And everybody will look for some sort of connection to protect them, even though Trump is not reliable with allies, much less foes? Well, as you know, I'm a good realist, and I believe that power, is the currency of international power, of international politics, and that states really care about the balance of power. And I think that it's very important for any state to want to be as powerful as possible. I think that just makes good strategic sense. But I also think there are limits

to what you can do with military power. I think it's very important to have national laws and international institutions that work to the advantage of all countries in the international system, including the United States, States. I think it's important to place a premium on soft power to talk about liberal values and to make yourself an attractive country. I also think it makes sense to treat your allies with respect.

And even with regard to adversaries, in many cases you want to treat them with respect so that you don't make a bad situation worse. The problem with the Trump administration is that the president and himself doesn't agree with me on almost all of those points. He does agree that power matters, but beyond that, he doesn't care about institutions, international law, so forth and so on. The end result is I think he's got himself into quite a bit of trouble. What's the trouble that he's in? What box or corner is he painted himself into? Well, I think one of the real problems that he faces is that he's been using our tremendous economic leverage against all sorts of countries around the world.

And they've begun to realize that having a partnership with the United States, an economic partnership with the United States, is not in their interest the way it once was. And I think, if anything, what they want to do is they want to have alternative trading partners. They want to begin to look for other deals. You know, he put wicked tariffs on India last year, 50% tariffs, because he was unhappy that India was importing Russian oil. Well, what the Indians have done is they have recently consummated an important economic deal with the European Union.

Ursula von der Leyen said it was the mother of all economic deals. And the Indians, of course, have always had good relations with the Russians. And they're now talking to the British. They're even talking to the Canadians, who they recently had a big diplomatic spat with. So you see, the Indians understand that you want to look for alternative trading partners. And this is not in America's interest. Because what's happened here is the tariffs are not working. The Wall Street Journal's had a series of articles with headlines that say that the tariffs are failing to bring back the manufacturing base.

You want to remember that one of the principal reasons that President Trump put tariffs on many countries around the world was he wanted to rebuild the manufacturing base that had been greatly weakened over the course of the unipolar moment. But that's not working. The tariffs are not working to resuscitate the manufacturing base. And at the same time, we're alienating historical trading partners. And those trading partners are looking for new relationships that exclude the United States. This is not in our interest. And that's why he's now done. 180-degree turn on India. And I believe moving forward, you'll see more of this. You'll see less reliance on tariffs because tariffs don't buy them that much. And the more the dollar sinks,

the more the government has to pay for its bonds. Yes, which means the more we have to pay to service that debt. And that debt is enormous. Well, the debt is now a trillion dollars a year, just the debt service. Yes. And don't forget, he's talking about taking the defense budget, which was supposed to be an astronomical $1.0 trillion and ramping it up to $1.5 trillion. Correct. What effect do you think that's going to have on our debt? Wow. And the Republicans, of course, will give him whatever he wants, including masked men in the streets

shooting people in the back. I would just say to you very quickly, if the Republicans get clobbered in the midterms and Trump is then not just a lame duck, but a badly-dead, damaged lame duck. It'll be very interesting to see what the Republican Party does on these issues. I don't think they'll be as subservient to Trump after that election, assuming it goes the way I described, as they have been beforehand. I think you're right. That is, of course, eight months away. And who knows, our friend Gerald Salentie always likes to say, when all else Fowles, they take you to war.

Well, you know, that points up that as Trump's approval ratings go down, problems with the economy emerge and his number of successes on the international front begin to diminish. The question is, what will he do? And I think you can make an argument that Trump will double down. He'll get tougher. Well, that's his personality. That's his character. Yeah.

And if he does that, I think his... poll ratings and the Republican Party's poll ratings will go down as well. I think he has a vested interest in beginning to back off. And you could argue that that's what he was doing in Minneapolis. He was backing off and that what we're going to see in the future is a less aggressive ice because he understands that pursuing the kinds of policies around the country that ice pursued in Minneapolis is a prescription for electoral disaster. But if he doesn't do that, and as you point out, I think, well, his instincts are not to do that, it's going to, I think, cause huge problems for the Republicans in the fall.

Indeed. Professor Miros Chambra, thank you very much, my dear friend. Thank you, as always, for letting me question you all across the board. Your thoughts are so valuable to the audience and deeply appreciate it. I look forward to seeing you next week, my friend. Definitely. Have a good weekend, Judge. You as well. Stay warm, Professor, in Chicago.

Well, New York is going to have weather just like Chicago as we did for the past two weekends. You don't want to hear about that. Tomorrow Friday, 4 o'clock in the afternoon, the Intelligence Community Roundtable, Larry Johnson, Ray McGovern. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.