Judging Freedom - Prof. John Mearsheimer : Trump’s Greenland Gambit: Force Over Diplomacy?

Episode Date: January 22, 2026

Prof. John Mearsheimer : Trump’s Greenland Gambit: Force Over Diplomacy?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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? 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 22nd, 26th. Professor John Mearsheimer will be with us in just a moment on President Trump's Greenland Gambit and whatever else he was trying to accomplish in Switzerland this. week 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. Central bankers know this and billionaires know it. That's why they're buying more. Is it too late to buy or is it just the right time? Call my friends at Lear Capital to find out. Ask questions. Get the free information. There's no pressure. And that's why I buy my gold and silver from Lear. Now you can get up to $20,000 in bonus medals with a qualified purchase. Call 800, 511, 4620 or go to Learjudgeonap.com today. Professor John Mearsheimer, welcome here, my dear friend, and thank you for accommodating my schedule as you always so graciously do.

In the post-World War II era, has there been a rule-based international order or have the rules been whatever the United States wanted? Well, there's been a rules-based order in the Cold War, during the Cold War. And then when the Cold War ended and we moved into the Unipolar moment where the United States was the only great power on the planet, we definitely had a rules-based order there as well. Now, it's very important to understand that it's the great powers that write the rules, and they write the rules in their own favor. This is the reason that great powers normally like rules and routinely obey the rules. There's no question that they occasionally disobey them when they think the rules that they wrote are not in their interest. But most of the

time, they obey the rules, and they obey the rules because they understand that rules and international law are useful tools of diplomacy. It's in a great power's interest to operate in a rules-based system because it creates the rules. What we have with President Trump, and this shows what a radical president he is, is that he has no interest in international law. He thinks it's just cumbersome and useless, and he has little interest in international institutions. You want to understand that his administration recently withdrew from 66 international institutions, number one, number two, this Board of Peace, this Kakamemi idea that he's come up with, is basically designed to undermine the United Nations. And furthermore, if you look at what's going on at Davos, and even before Davos,

he's basically trying to destroy NATO. He does not like institutions. He does not like international law. And in that sense, he is remarkably different for virtually all of his predecessors. But these rules, the Geneva Conventions, the UN Charter, the Convention Against Torture, there's so many of these. They were almost to the letter written by the United States. Why would he discard them? Why would he say, I have no use for international law when it was written to benefit the United States by all of his predecessors. Well, it's because he thinks that these rules and these laws don't benefit the United States. Now, one could make that argument and say that what we have to do

is create new rules or new laws, or we have to significantly amend the existing rules and laws. But he's not talking about doing that. He's just talking about trashing institutions and trashing international law. And why he's doing that is because he thinks those institutions and laws are counterproductive for the United States. I think he's dead wrong. And virtually all his predecessors thought that that was the wrong way to look at the world. Can the CIA just swoop into Iran and pass out rifles and encourage people to kill each other? Oh, sure. I mean, there's a rich history there. There's a book by Steve Kinzer. Stephen Kinzer. It's called The Brothers. It's about John Foster Dulles and Alan Dulles in operation during the Eisenhower years. John Foster Dulles, as you remember, was the Secretary of State, and his brother was Alan Dulles, who was the head of the CIA. It's an easy read. It's a wonderful read. And if you read Kinzer's book, you'll see that the CIA was basically. out of control from the beginning. So what's going on today is no surprise at all.

So what happened in the streets of Iranian cities where the former director of the CIA, also a former Secretary of State, not clear in which job he had more power, but you can guess, Mike Pompeo boasted that Mossad agents were walking in the streets. The evidence, the video evidence, is unmistakable about CIA, MI6, Mossad, apparently French, and maybe Jordanian intelligence, distributed weapons and fermented violence. For this to happen, would the president have had to authorize it? Wouldn't these CIA people that cause the deaths of innocent civilians fear a prosecution for murder by a future administration remembering there's no statute of limitations on murder?

Before I answer your question, it is important to point out that in 1953, right, a helped overthrow the government, democratically elected government in Iran. So there is a precedent here. Yeah, well, the present government is democratically elected, and these intelligence agencies apparently thought they could have a redo. That's absolutely correct. And your question was, does President Trump know what's going on? Well, no, I don't know.

who knows if he knows what's going on, but would they do, let me refine the question and prevail upon your expertise as to how the intelligence community has operated. Would they have done something of this magnitude knowledgeable of the deaths to be caused without a presidential finding to sort of protect them from a future prosecution? I don't think they worry about future prosecution. Those things hardly ever happen. I mean, Larry and Ray are the guys to ask on this because they've been on the inside and they know very well how these things work. But my understanding is that the CIA does all sorts of things that are technically unlawful, but they're hardly ever prosecuted for doing that.

And when it comes to regime change, you want to understand that it's not just the CIA alone that's into the business of regime. change, the idea of regime change, certainly in Iran, permeates the entire bureaucracy, the entire national security bureaucracy. This is why Trump surely knows what's going on. He might not know the details, but it's clear, it's clear from his tweets that he understood what was going on in Iran, and he was tweeting, he was sending messages via tweet or social media that were encouraging the protesters in Iran to continue their protests and promising that we would come in at the right moment to help them along. So he knew, and I think everybody else who deals with national security inside that administration knew. According to Alistair Crook, Russian intelligence,

known by its initials of FSB, the successor of the KGB, and Chinese intelligence. the name and initials unknown to me, were largely responsible for, along with the Iranian intelligence, destroying the means of communication that MI6 CIA and Mossad had with all these creeps in the streets. Yeah. I mean, what happened here, Judge, is that we understood that the Iranians would shut down the Internet and they would shut down phone services very quickly. because the Iranian government would obviously understand that the protesters have to communicate,

one among themselves, and two, with outside forces like the CIA and Mossad and so forth and so on. So we understood that at some point when the Internet in Iran and the phone system was shut down, they would not be able to communicate the protesters. So what we did is we sent in tens of thousands, of Starlink terminals before the protests started in late December of last year. That's 2025. And we thought that the Iranian protesters and their friends would be able to use Starlink to communicate. And the Iranian government would be unable to stop the protests. The regime would be toppled and so forth and so on. But what happened is around January 8th, it was very clear that the Iranian government moved in,

and it began to shut down very quickly the Starlink terminals. And the protesters then had no ability to communicate with each other or to communicate with the outside. And they were finished. And that's why on January 14th, when President Trump, early in the day, was talking tough about, bombing Iran later in the day he decided that it was not going to bomb Iran. Because what happened between January 8th, when the Iranian government moved in against the protesters and January 14th, is that the government prevailed over the protesters. And there was no good reason for us to come in because we couldn't build on the protests

to help overthrow the government. We couldn't deliver the coup de grace in large part because the protests were melting away. Maybe his buddy Beebe was not prepared to defend Israel. Oh, there's no question about that. The Israeli press and the Western press say that. And what you want to remember is that in the 12-day war, this is when Israel and the United States went to war. Last June. Last June, right. It went from June 13th to June 24th. And we bombed those nuclear facilities on June 22nd. It was one day of attacks by us and the Israelis attack all other 12 days.

But what happened is that the Iranians launched a bevy of cruise missiles and ballistic missiles at Israel. And they started off doing significant damage. But as the campaign, the 12-day campaign, war on, the Iranians got more effective, at delivering devastating blows against Israel. More ballistic missiles were getting through. So at the end of the 12-day war, it was not the Iranians who were asking the Americans to stop the war. It was the Israelis. And in fact, the Iranians were criticized by many at the time for ending the war, for stopping the war.

The argument was the upper hand was shifting to the Iranians, and the Iranians should continue it because they would be able to punish Israel in significant ways. Anyway, fast forward to the present to January 14th. Presumably, it's on January 14th, according to the news reports, when Netanyahu calls Trump up. And Netanyahu says, don't attack Iran because Iran will attack us, and we're not prepared to defend ourselves. So really what happened here is little had changed

between the end of the 12-day war on June 24th and January 14th. The Israelis are not capable of parrying a ballistic missile and cruise missile attack by Iran. Wow. Why do you suppose Trump wants Greenland? It's very hard to say. I shouldn't be laughing about it. He likes the way the country looks with another chunk on it. He wants to rename it Trumpland. I mean, who knows?

I think he wants it on his resume, to be honest. I think he wants to be, say, you know, say, you know, Thomas Jefferson can say, I purchased, I got the Louisiana purchase from the French. I'm going to take Greenland and make it part of the United States. And, I mean, I don't know why he wants. wants Greenland. The idea that Greenland is vulnerable unless we take it is not a serious argument. The Danes are willing to fully cooperate with us to defend Greenland, number one. Number two, the Chinese and the Russians are not about to take Greenland. And if they ever begin to move in that

direction. The Danes will be perfectly happy to let us move in to deal with that Chinese and Russian threat. And furthermore, the people in Greenland will be willing to work with us and we'll have a free hand. So there's no reason for us to control Greenland. And it looks like Trump, with all the pushback that he saw at Davos, and before Davos, has now backed off from not only talking about conquering Greenland, but also from purchasing Greenland. It appears that we're not going to purchase Greenland because the Greenlanders and the Danes don't want to be part of the United States, but it's also the case that we're not going to attack it. So we're going to go back to the status quo ante in effect before this whole kerfuffle got going.

Wow. What do you think Trump accomplished in Davos, aside from making himself look ridiculous with a 90-minute stem winder? I think what Trump is trying to do here is he's basically trying to wreck the transatlantic relationship. He has no use for the Europeans, has no use for NATO. And I think that Trump is angry at the Europeans for fighting with him over Ukraine. The subject of Ukraine has got pushed off the front pages for sure. But you want to remember over the past few months, Trump was actually working hard with Putin. He was not working effectively, but he was working hard to get a deal and shut down the Ukraine war. He wanted this as a feather in his cap, number one, and number two, he understood for good strategic reasons that it made sense for us to have good relations with the Russians. But the Europeans thwarted him at every turn. The Europeans worked with Zelensky to thwart Trump.

And Trump was very angry at them. He was very angry. And he made that clear. And this is an opportunity, the Greenland case, to really whiplash the Europeans. And he's doing that. He's taking every opportunity to poke them in the eye. This is payback time. Now, a lot of the critics in the United States, States say, this is a disaster, President Trump, because what you're doing is you're damaging the transatlantic relationship. You're damaging NATO. We need NATO. He does not believe that. He has no use for the transatlantic relationship. He has nothing but contempt for European leaders. And he has little, if any, use for NATO. So this is an opportunity for him to tear at the fabric of the transatlantic relationship. And I think that was enhanced by his performance at Davos. Just listen to

his speech, right? He was contemptuous of the European elites who were sitting in front of him in the audience. So what is Russia's, what is the Kremlin's attitude about this? Let him continue to destabilize NATO. Let him continue to undermine the EU or, or, for heaven's sakes, we can't let him get that close to us in the Arctic. I would imagine, you know, who knows for sure, but I would imagine they're schizophrenic on this one. On one hand, I think they're probably glad to see the transatlantic relationship weakening. I think they're glad to see fractures in Europe. If you listen to Zelensky's speech today at Davos, Zelensky was talking about a fractured Europe. Just think about that.

This is Zelensky who has depended heavily on the Europeans. The Europeans and Zelensky have been a tag team, but here's Zelensky berating the Europeans and talking about how Europe is fractured. So I think that, you know, from a Russian point of view, this is all good news for sure. But on the other hand, I think the Russians are very nervous about Trump. and what he's doing and what he might do and how that might get them in a war with us, I think that the Russians would prefer to have a Trump that looks a lot more stable, a lot more predictable. I mean, the thing about Trump is that he's just unpredictable. He, you know, goes from issue to issue.

You know, he changes positions on issues from day to day. Look at Greenland. Can you discern any consistency? I mean, there's no ideological or moral consist or legal consistency whatsoever. Is it just his covetousness? Look at what he said to the Prime Minister of Norway. First of all, the government of Norway has nothing to do with the Nobel Peace Prize, but he basically said, because you didn't give me the Nobel Peace Prize,

I'm not interested in peace. There it is. I no longer feel, dear Jonas, Jonas is the prime minister, considering your country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped eight wars plus, it's another canard. I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States. Denmark cannot protect that land, talking about Greenland from Russia or China. So why do they have a right of ownership anyway. Can we leave that nonsense aside? And let me just take a stab at telling you what I think the broad outlines of Trump's worldview are. If you can, if you can ascertain that, you deserve a Nobel Prize. I'm not sure for what. I will do my best. And of course, the audience should take everything I say with many grains of salt, because figuring out, what he's up to is not always easy.

As I said before, I think he is a radical president, certainly when you compare him to his predecessor. But I think the first point you want to keep in mind is that he's a unilateralist. He doesn't like working with allies. He views allies as not much different than adversaries. He wants to be pretty much free to do whatever he wants. He wants to centralize power in the executive branch. and he does not want to be beholden to any other countries.

This gets back to my second point about international law and international institutions, what we were talking about earlier in the program. He has nothing but contempt for international institutions and international law and morality, international values and so forth and so on. And that's consistent with his unilateralism. I just do what I think is right, and he makes that clear. Third point I'd make is that Trump is not interested in picking a fight with the other great powers in the system. This is not widely recognized, but there are two great powers in the system besides the United States.

One is China and the other is Russia. He's actually had quite good relations with the Chinese since taking office last January 20th. And to the Russians, he's trying to improve relations with the Russians. He's trying to end the Ukraine war. And he wants to have good relations with both the Russians and the Chinese. Where you see Trump using military force and threatening to use military force is with middle-sized powers and minor powers. And this is because Trump is basically a bully. He likes to beat up on powers that are weaker than the United States.

and where he's free to use military force and not really suffer any consequences. He can't do that with Russia. The last thing he wants to do is get into a war with Russia, and certainly the same is true with China. So he leaves the other great powers alone, and he picks on countries like Canada, talks about making it the 51st state, picks on Venezuela, picks on Iran, talks about taking mainland, and then he pushes the Europeans around, very weak. And this is the typical behavior of a bully. Now, my final point about Trump, which I think is very important to keep in mind, he has been very smart about using military force

in a light-handed way. He does not put boots on the ground. He does not get involved in nation building. And to put a finer point on that, he's not interested in promoting democracy anywhere. When he does do regime change, and remember, he did not do regime change in Venezuela, but when he does or tries to do regime change in Iran, he's not talking about creating a democratic regime. He's just talking about toppling the government. That's all he's interested in doing. And by the way, he's not interested in putting boots on the ground to do it. He wants the protesters to do it. And you remember when he bombed Nigeria, he just dropped a few bombs in an open. field. He went to war briefly from the air and with missiles against the Houthis, but after a month,

it wasn't working out very well. So he just walked away, right? So because he's picking on weaker countries and he's not getting involved in forever wars, he's free to use military force or to threaten to use military force in a unilateral way that ignores international law and international institutions. And this is what you see going on. Chris cuts one and two back to back. Watch this, professor. So we want a piece of ice for world protection. And they won't give it. We've never asked for anything else. And we could have kept that piece of land. And we didn't. So they have a choice. You can say yes. And we will be.

very appreciative or you can say no and we will remember we had a good speech we've got great reviews i can't believe it we got good reviews in that speech usually they say he's a horrible dictator type person i'm a dictator but sometimes you need a dictator but they didn't say that in this case and and no it's common sense it's all based on common sense you know it's not conservative or liberal or anything else it's mostly that's a 95% common sense and that's what we have And if you say no, we will remember. That's almost literally out of the script from Mario Puzzo's The Godfather. Yeah. But also, you remember, he just said, sometimes you need a dictator. Right. Right. He did say that.

Yeah. Very important point. He's obviously not a dictator, at least yet. But he tends in that direction in very powerful ways. because he sees himself in a position where he knows best, and he doesn't want any encumbrances. He doesn't want checks and balances inside the United States. He doesn't give a hoot what the courts say. He doesn't give a hoot what Congress says. He doesn't give a hoot what the media says. He does what he wants.

And the same thing is true on the international stage. This is the point I was trying to make before. And by the way, if you look at this Kaka Mamie Board of Peace that he's come up with, right? I mean, is there a better example of Trump portraying himself as the leader of the world, someone who goes around the world and causes other countries, including the Russians, to sign on to this Board of Peace where he's the chairman for life and where they have to pay a billion dollars, if they want to get lifetime membership. And oh, by the way, who controls that billion dollars?

He does, probably in some offshore account in Switzerland or wherever. It's really quite remarkable. If you read about the Board of Peace and how he thinks about himself, he in a very important way, views himself as a benign dictator. Professor Amir Shamer, thank you very much. This is a little bit humorous, but very, very gloomy. We don't have time to get into what's happening in the streets of American cities. But there you see a dictatorship.

Last night, the Department of Homeland Security says it can break down people's doors and arrest them in their homes without warrants. That, of course, defies 250 years of history and jurisprudence. I don't know where they're getting it from. We'll see where it goes. But thank you very much for your time. much appreciated, and we'll look forward to seeing you next week. And I'll look forward to seeing you next week, Judge. Thank you, Professor. All the best. Coming up tomorrow, Friday, it'll be the

end of the week, but not the end of the day. The Intelligence Community Roundtable at 8 in the morning Eastern. Ray McGovern, Larry Johnson, 8 o'clock Friday morning, the Intelligence Community Roundtable, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.