Judging Freedom - Prof. John Mearsheimer : Trump and the International Order.

Episode Date: September 4, 2025

Prof. John Mearsheimer : Trump and the International Order.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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That's an equivalent to $15 a month. Limited time new customer offer for first three months only. Speeds may slow above 35 gigabytes on unlimited. plan. Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. Hi, everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, September 4th, 2025. Professor John Mearsheimer joins us now. Professor Mearsheimer, a pleasure, my dear friend.

Thank you very much for joining me. I want to talk to you in general terms about President Donald Trump and the international world order. So I'm going to address a variety of different topics before I ask you to, as you can so uniquely, package all this in a bow if possible. Do you think that the elites in Ukraine, by which I mean senior military,

senior diplomats, senior governmental people, but not President Zelensky, recognize that the end is near and it will not be the end, that they had hoped for? I think a lot of them understand that Ukraine is in really deep trouble. I would imagine a number of them, including Zelensky, still believe that they can rescue the situation.

You know, Zelensky met with the Europeans in Paris today, and apparently President Trump was videoed in to the meeting, and if you listen to them talk, they're still pushing forward plans or strategies on how Ukraine can rescue the situation. And it may be the case that they really believe that this is going to work in the end and that President Trump is giving them reasons to think that Ukraine can pull its chestnuts out of the fire. I mean, I personally find it hard to imagine how the Ukrainians don't see the writing on the wall. But hope springs eternal in some cases well i would love to speak about writing on the wall i would like to have been a fly on the wall to have heard what president trump said to them i mean there's a report in the

washington post that came out about an hour to an hour and a half ago saying the united states is no longer participating in security guarantees or will begin unwinding this you can't stop it overnight there's 100 000 troops there for Europe against Russia. Could this possibly have emanated from something Trump said to Macron and Starmor and Merritton? I would love to have known what their reaction was. Well, if you look at what's been reported about this meeting in Paris, it seems that if anything, Trump has given the Europeans hope that the Americans will work with the Europeans to put sanctions on Russia.

This is sanctions work. So you don't see any evidence that Trump is cutting any other direction, at least in terms of the meeting today. But you know with Trump, who can tell from day to day where he stands on these? I mean, it's back to saying what he thinks his audience wants to hear?

Oh, I think he does that all the time. And I think he's constantly throwing the Europeans a bone. He never makes any firm commitments, and he never does anything concrete these days. But he hints to them that he's with them and that he's going to help put pressure on the Russians and get the Russians to make concessions. And then we're going to get a final deal. And we're all going to live happily ever after. Well, this is a fairy tale, isn't it?

Yeah, it's delusional. In anyway, anything, if anything, if you look at what the Europeans were saying at this meeting in Paris today, they are clearly doubling down. They are making no concessions whatsoever to the Russians. They're talking basically about creating a million-man Ukrainian army that is really well-maned. They're talking about giving the Ukrainians long-range missiles that can strike into Russia or allowing Ukraine to build missiles indigenously that can hit Russia. And they're talking about putting European troops in Ukraine. So if anything, the Europeans and the Ukrainians are doubling down.

and sending a message to the Russians that there's not going to be any compromise. And, of course, we know full well that the Russians are not going to compromise. So there's not going to be any deal here. Don't the Europeans recognize how the Ukrainian military's backs are to a wall, so to speak, how far advanced the Russian military has gone, how close President Putin is to achieving his goals there. Don't they recognize that? You would certainly think so.

I find it hard to believe that they don't. But the counter story is that they believe all these news reports that the Russians are suffering much greater casualties than the Ukrainians and that the Russian economy is really in deep trouble. And if we can just get more sanctions on them, that economy will crash. I think they're telling themselves stories like that. Otherwise, you would think that they would understand that Ukraine is in desperate straits, which it is.

Here's an interesting comment that President Putin made just the other day. This may have been in Beijing or it may have been in Vladivostok. he was at or about to go to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting, but this is a fascinating comment about the early days of the war, and he's talking about when his troops were very close to Kiev, when how and why and under what circumstances he removed them, and what the Ukrainian response to. that was. It's only about 30 seconds. Chris, cut number two. And after we, at the insistent urging

of our Western European colleagues, withdrew our troops from Kiev, the situation immediately changed, and we were told, almost verbatim, now we will fight until either you tear our heads off or we tear yours off. I don't remember whether I've ever said this publicly or not, but that's roughly how it sounded. Only in cruder terms, but quite openly, and oddly enough in a sort of comradly way. So now it's either us or you. Well, and this all continues. Wow.

What do you think? I think it's hardly surprising. You want to remember that when the war first started and negotiations were taking place in Istanbul, the West asked Putin if he would remove his troops from the Kiev area And the argument was that for purposes of facilitating negotiations, it would be a good, a sign of good, it would be a good gesture, a positive gesture, a sign of goodwill if the Russians got those troops away from Kiev. And Putin did remove them from Kiev because he believed at the time that the Istanbul negotiations were making great progress, they would probably end up with a deal.

and he wanted to do everything he could to facilitate it. And, of course, those troops were then removed, and the end result was that the negotiations broke down because the West was not interested in negotiations. Troops had been removed. But it's very interesting, Professor Mearsheimer, that President Putin relates this rather crude threat. I doubt that it was made to his face.

It must have been made through diplomatic. channels will tear your heads off. Yeah. And he said it was even cruder than that. So who knows exactly what the language was and how it would be translated into English. How has Trump exacerbated the war in Ukraine? Well, he's exacerbated it in the sense that he's not put an end to it. he's facilitated the continuation of the war. I don't think he's exacerbated it in the sense that

he's made the war more intense or more dangerous. He's just kept the war going because he's been unwilling to pull the plug on the Ukrainians. He's worked out this arrangement where we no longer are going to give weapons directly to the Ukrainians. The Europeans are going to buy weapons from us. They're going to pay for those weapons. And then the Europeans are going to give our weapons to Ukraine. This is the deal that he's worked out. But he's not cut off the flow of U.S. weapons to Ukraine. They're just going through a middleman at this point in time. Has the U.S. begun to receive the flow of European cash? Or is there no European cash? weapons being bought on credit?

I'm not sure there, but I am quite certain that the Europeans will end up paying for those weapons, and the Ukrainians as well will end up paying for those weapons. Although I think in the Ukrainian case, the Europeans will give lots of their own money to the Ukrainians, and the Ukrainians will use that money to buy weaponry from the United States. But I think Trump is deeply committed to not spending much more money on Ukraine. and letting the Ukrainians and the Europeans pick up the bill. I guess he's also deeply committed to the military industrial complex.

He wants that flow to continue. He could stop all of this in a couple of weeks if he just said, no more arms, no more U.S. arms, the matter who's paying for them. I think what Trump really wants to see is us continue to build lots of arms but not use them in Ukraine, use them for our own purposes, and use them for Israel's purposes. I think that's his principal interest for continuing to build arms.

Before we get to Israel, how has the president adversely affected the international economics scene? I mean, he's turned India from a friend into an economic foe. He's united the Shanghai group, and that means he's united the Bricks group. What has he accomplished with these tariffs and with what appears to you and me to be a basic misunderstanding of economics 101? Well, with the tariffs, especially the tariffs on India, he is in effect pushed the Indians into the arms of the Chinese and into the arms of the Russians. You want to remember that over the past roughly 25 years, relations between India and the United States have improved greatly. And shortly after President Trump took office in January, Prime Minister Modi came to visit him. And it looked like relations were going to greatly improve over the course of the second Trump presidency.

And from our point of view, that made excellent sense because we wanted China to be clear. closely allied with us, excuse me, we wanted India to be closely allied with us against China. But what's actually happened here is a result of putting these secondary sanctions on India, is that we've not only pushed India into the arms of the Russians, we've pushed India into the arms of the Chinese, which again, it's not in their interest. And furthermore, the tariffs, the secondary tariffs, another 25% worth of tariffs, that we've put on India are not going to work. So it's the worst of both worlds.

It's just hard to believe what the Trump administration is thinking with these tariffs against India. So the BRICS is basically an economic cooperative, which avoids the need for the American Western controlled swift bank system, which avoids the need to use. US dollars as an international means of trade. But Shanghai, even though it involves many of the same people as BRICS, is a security agreement. I mean, you're talking about uniting enormous populations against the United States by foolhardy, ignorant economic decisions. Is that a Is that a fair statement?

Well, it's not just economic decisions. It's also our geopolitical decisions. You want to think about what's happening here. You have two major blocks for me. The first block is the Russians plus the Chinese, plus the Iranians, plus the North Koreans, on one side. And then on the other side, you have the United States, Ukraine, the Europeans, and Israel. These are the two big blocks that are forming. Now, I've long argued that it's an America's

strategic interest to not allow that to happen. The United States has a vested interest in having good relations with Russia, and it has a vested interest in having very good relations with India as well. So India and Russia should be on our side of the ledger, right? But we've driven the Russia. together with the Chinese, the Iranians, and North Koreans. And as we were just discussing, we've pushed the Indians into the arms of the Chinese and into the arms of the Russians, which is not to our advantage. Furthermore, when you talk about the North Koreans, we have a deep-seated interest in trying to push North Korea to get rid of its nuclear weapons.

If anything, the exact opposite is happening. And if you look at the celebrations that just took place in Beijing, regarding the end of World War II in Asia, you saw the North Korean leader, the Russian leader, and the Chinese leader all together for the first time. Or with regard to Iran, and this is important to point out the Europeans, because of pressure from the United States and pressure from Israel, the Europeans want to put snapback sanctions on Iran. The Europeans and the Americans are going after Iran now. What are snapback? Snapback is when the JCPOA, you remember the original nuclear agreement was put in place, a number of sanctions were taken off of Iran. And at some point down the road, it was put into the agreement.

If any one party decided that Iran was not living up to the JCPOA, you could put the sanctions back on. But Trump removed the JCPOA, did he not? No, that's exactly right. We pulled out of the JCPOA, right? Right. And therefore, it's up to the Europeans. And here we're talking about the big three European countries

that were involved in the JCPOA, and that would be Britain, France, and Germany. And Britain, France, and Germany want to put snapback sanctions on Iran. And they want to do that, of course, at the behest of the United States and of Israel. And they have done that. The Chinese and the Russians have come together with the Iranians. They've written a letter, the foreign ministers of each one of those three countries, and say that this is illegal, it's unacceptable, and it's counterproductive.

And they're not going to go along with the snapback sanctions. And you want to remember the Chinese and the Russians were part of the JCPOA. So in a certain way, they're obligated to go back to the snapback sanctions, but they're not going to do it. So now we're going to have a big row over sanctions vis-a-vis Iran, which is not in our interest. We should have good relations with Iran. There's no reason that we should have poisonous relations with Iran, and people should be talking about what is the likelihood that we're going to attack Iran in the fall. But how can we have good relations? with Iran when the American government is controlled by the donor class, which is basically a foreign lobbying group for Israel.

Well, we can't. That's the problem. I mean, if you think about the situation we're in, okay? Here we have this situation in Gaza where we are basically backing a genocide. Then we have terrible relations with Iran, and we stand a chance of getting into a serious war with Iran, and we stand a chance of getting into a serious war with Iran. the fall of 2025. And this is in large part driven by Israel. Then you look at Ukraine. We're in a totally disastrous situation there. We ended up as a result pushing the Russians into the arms of the Chinese. And then with regard to India, as we were talking about before with these secondary sanctions on India, we've pushed the Indians into the arms of both the Russians and the Chinese. None of this makes any sense. And we're in this situation that is, I think, strategically disastrous. Wow.

I've noticed some public criticism of Prime Minister Netanyahu's efforts to invade, destroy Gaza, take over Gaza, however you want to characterize it. And they seem to be coming from some significant people, the head of the IDF, the head of the IDF, the head of, of Shenbet, Netanyahu's own head of national security, whoever that is, and Netanyahu's own foreign minister. Are these performative or substantive? Can any amount of domestic pressure short of the collapse of his government stop Netanyahu from his continued slaughter, genocide, and starvation? Well, there are substantive concerns because the chief of staff understands full well that Israel cannot defeat Hamas militarily. And the chief of staff surely understands that what Netanyahu really wants to do is he wants

to drive all of the Palestinians who are in the northern part of Gaza, that's Gaza City. He wants to drive them southward, get them concentrated in the south, and then eventually ethnically cleanse Gaza or murder most of them, either way. And the IDF chief of staff understands that that is a logistical nightmare. So again, it's not only impossible from the IDF chief of staff's point of view to defeat Hamas militarily, but the idea of moving all those Palestinians concentrating them and then getting them out of Gaza is not a feasible alternative at this point in time. So the chief of staff says, let's have a ceasefire now.

Let's work at a deal. But that's the last thing that Netanyahu could do because it would represent a failure of his policy because his principal policy goal here is to ethnically cleanse Gaza and then eventually to ethnically cleanse the West Bank. And if he accepts a ceasefire now and that turns into a permanent ceasefire, he's failed to achieve his principal goal. And moreover, his secondary goal, which is defeating Hamas, has not been achieved either. And then furthermore, he'd have to face the music once he left office, and he would surely leave office shortly after that. And he would have to face the music both on the legal front and the fact that he was in the driver's seat on October 7th when Israel was attacked. What is the likely geopolitical effect maybe push back or blow back as the wrong word to the president of the United States?

carrying out a public execution of someone never charged or convicted of a crime, and then boasting about it and saying more of this is going to come. I speak, of course, of the murders of these people in a speedboat 1,300 miles from the United States outside the waters, international waters, but close to Venezuela. I actually find it shocking in a certain sense that Trump would do this. I mean, we don't even know who those people were on that boat and what they were doing on the boat. He tells a story that these were drug dealers and these were drugs that were headed towards the United States.

He has provided no evidence to support that argument. And as you point out, there is good reason to think. that that's not the case. And since they were so far away from the United States, wouldn't it have made more sense to board the ship or board the boat and find out? Of course. I mean, suppose they made a mistake. Suppose they're wrong.

I mean, the New York Times, I realize it's the New York Times. Maybe they have an ax to grind, but they interviewed the former head of drug interdiction for the Justice Department, person who presumably knows what he's talking about. And he said the gang that Trump identified Trend de Aragua that he said was carrying fentanyl does not deal in fentanyl. When these gangs carry drugs on the high seas, they only have two people, not 11, because they're concerned about exactly what happened happening. This was more likely than not either human smuggling voluntary or involuntary, meaning these people paid to get from one country.

to the next. Where's James Madison's ghost? This is why you have due process so the wrong people are not killed. Moreover, even if they were what Trump said they were, and even if they were doing what Trump said they were doing, the penalty for that is not death. I agree completely. I've heard that the Navy said that what should be done here is that the ship, the boat, should have been boarded. That's what the Navy was in favor of doing. That would have been absolutely lawful if in United States waters. Yes. And Trump overruled them. But I'd make a more general point, one that should be music to your ears. But the more time goes by, the more I've come to appreciate the importance of laws and rules, it's very difficult to run a society, to run a country. If you don't have

a set of rules and laws that almost everybody respects almost all of the time. And even at the international level, you need certain rules and laws. I understand that they're not going to be respected anywhere near as often as national law or domestic laws are. But nevertheless, you need international law. You need laws on the home front. And it's important that people obey those laws. But we have a president who believes he's above the law.

He just doesn't care about the law. What do you think the reaction in the Kremlin and Beijing was to this type of public execution and boasting? I think it's something that they've come to expect. I think that they recognize, just like you and I recognize, that this is what the United States has become. It's really a thoroughly depressing story. Look, I'm a realist. I understand that the world is a nasty place, and sometimes you have to do. really hard-headed things. I understand that. But we are so far beyond that, so reckless,

so lacking in any sense of common decency. It's really just hard to believe where we're at. Professor Mir Sharmer, thank you very much, my dear friend. Always a pleasure. And we'll look forward to seeing you next week. Look forward to being here. Thank you. If you're watching us live in five minutes, but at 3.30 today, Colonel Douglas McGregor, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.