Judging Freedom - Prof. John Mearsheimer : Ukraine and Israel Destroying Themselves.

Episode Date: August 28, 2025

Prof. John Mearsheimer : Ukraine and Israel Destroying Themselves.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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Where did the summer go? 2025, Professor John Mearsheimer joins us now. I see you're back in Chicago, Professor Amirschimer, I guess because the school year is starting. The summer is over, and I'm going to how much we love the summer, it's come and gone. Not what, of course, I want to talk to you about, but it's a... I can't help but mentioning it. The President of the United States this week taunted, taunted the Ukrainians

for playing defense in the war, and he likened them to a athletic team that only plays defense and doesn't play offense. What legitimate peaceful service, peaceful purpose is served by such a taunt? First of all, he's just simply wrong. I don't know what he's talking about. It just goes to show you that President Trump's biggest problem is that he has good instincts on this

conflict, but he just doesn't know the facts. The war started in 2022. That means that we have seen war in 2022, 2022, 2023, 2023, 2024, and now 2025. In 2022, the Ukrainians launched two major offens, where they capture. a huge amount of real estate from the Russians. In 2023, I believe it was on June 4th of that year, the Ukrainians launched that major offensive against those dug-in Russian positions, all for the purposes of creating a blitzkrieg and going to the Sea of Azov.

That offensive that they launched on June 4th continued on into the fall of 2023. And then in 2024, as I'm sure almost everybody remembers, in August of 2024, they launched a major offensive into the Kersk region of Russia. This year, they've not launched any major offenses in large part because they're in so much trouble and they're losing so badly on the battlefield. But of the four years, the war has gone on, they have launched major league offenses in three of the years. So this argument that the Ukrainians have been on the defensive the whole time is ludicrous. And by the way, I would add, if I had been advising the Ukrainians, I would have remained on the defensive. I think they were remarkably foolish to take the offensive.

But what President Trump is trying to do here is, to in effect, taught them. And as we all know, that is his modus operandi when dealing with friends and adversaries alike. Here's a brief email from Colonel McGregor. Ukrainian channels report an increase in casualties on the front lines. The Ukrainian armed forces lose up to 300 trucks, pickups, motorcycles, minibuses, ATVs, and other logistics vehicles per day. Additionally, up to 40 to 50 units of more expensive armored vehicles, tanks, armored cars, and air defense systems per day. All these losses mean that the infantry and drone operators are

taking over the war. How much longer can they possibly last? Well, it's hard to put a specific number on it, but it is hard for me to imagine them lasting more than six to nine months. I mean, I think Colonel McGregor's numbers are probably on the money. And I think everything you reading the newspapers, and this is Western newspapers, tells you that the Ukrainians are suffering badly, that the Russians are moving forward. They're making penetrations along the line, destroying huge numbers of pieces of equipment on the Ukrainian side, killing lots of Ukrainians. And all of this is happening at the same time that support for Ukraine in the West, especially in the United States

is beginning to weaken. Right, right. Go ahead. Go ahead. I just add one other factor to this, and we've talked about this, is if you look at public opinion inside of Ukraine, it's beginning to tank.

The Ukrainian public opinion in support of the war. Yeah. Their loss of dead and missing is now up to a million seven. Now, the population was, 40 million before the war. I don't know what it is now, but that's an extraordinary number, a million seven. Well, that million seven number is a tricky number, because how many of those people are missing, right? Well, they might be deserters. Oh, for sure, for sure. There's no question about that. But what is that number? Is it 700,000? Is it 200,000? Let's say it's 400,000.

that means 1.3 million are dead. Wow. That number's too high, in my opinion. What's the population of Ukraine down to now? 17 million, 20 million? No, it's not down that low. I think it's probably around 28 million. I haven't looked in a while at exactly what the number is, but it's probably around 28 million. You want to remember lots of Ukrainians have left the country and Russia's captured territory that had Ukrainians in it. Lots of Ukrainians have died. And this was a country, by the way, that people were saying was in a demographic death spiral even before the war started. Why did the first Trump administration, after the coup in 2014, orchestrated by the CIA, the MI6, and the U.S. State Department,

Why did the Trump in Trump administration, first time around, arm Ukraine to the teeth? Well, I think that Trump was badly damaged by the Russia gate charges. The argument was made by all sorts of people in the media and by the Democrats, that he was a Russian agent. And any efforts that he made to show that he was supporting Ukraine and he was opposed. or what Putin was doing, worked to sort of alleviate the problem that he had being accused of being a Russian agent. So I think that that's why he did it. And the end result is that he can't claim that he's not at all responsible for this war

because he helped arm up the Ukrainians to the point where they could stand up and fight in 2022. Very important to understand that the trouble starts in 2014 with the coup on the Maidan. And starting in 2014, we begin to train the Ukrainian army and we begin to arm them with defensive weapons. And then along comes Trump who arms them with offensive weapons. And we continue to train them. And very importantly, we go to great lengths to try to integrate the Ukrainian military into NATO, not in a de jure way, but in a de facto way. We run all sorts of major operations where Ukrainian forces operate side by side with NATO forces. We want in a de facto way to make Ukraine part of NATO. This is why when 2022 comes, the Americans are not interested

in a diplomatic settlement before the shooting starts. I think the Americans understand that the Ukrainian army is a quite formidable fighting force and will stand up to the Russians. And this is why once the war starts in the year 2022, the Ukrainians are able to launch two major offenses and conquer lots of territory because the balance of power in 2022 between the Ukrainians and the Russians actually favors the Ukrainians. And President Trump is in part responsible for this because he's the one who started the flow of offensive weapons into Ukraine. This is where he had the famous or infamous conversation with President Zelensky where he threatened to hold up on arms deliveries until Zelensky had his prosecutors investigate

Joe Biden. This was the trigger, the lynchpin, to the first impeachment of Donald Trump. Yeah. You know, the more time goes on, the more I come to think. The Democrats' effort to portray Trump as a Russian agent was a colossal mistake. And it's one of the principal reasons that Trump today is filled with a revenge motive. He has payback. And this is just poisonous for the American political system.

But the Democrats and people on the left bear a lot of responsibility for pushing this bogus narrative. forward after the 2016 election. I'm not defending what Trump is doing today because he's just making a bad situation worse. I agree. I agree with you. What purpose, what peaceful purpose is served by United States intel and military engaging in intel reconnaissance and surveillance to help the Ukrainians kill Russian soldiers? Well, it just prolongs the war, right? And what you'd like to see is you'd like to see the war end sooner rather than later. And, of course, I'm in complete agreement with you.

And both of us think that from Ukraine's point of view, from a moral point of view, from a human point of view, it would be the right thing to do. But I believe that what's going on here is that Trump is protecting himself from criticism, that will be directed at him when Ukraine finally loses the war. It's very important to understand that Ukraine is going to lose. There is going to be an end to the shooting at some point. And then people are going to want to point fingers. And Trump doesn't want them to be able to point fingers at him.

He doesn't want to be in the same situation Joe Biden was in after Afghanistan went down. So what he's doing is taking all sorts of measures that I would, say, are protective. It's like the sanctions on India. The sanctions on India are really foolish in the extreme. I don't know anybody who thinks otherwise. But Trump can say when Ukraine goes under that he employed secondary sanctions, because this is effectively secondary sanctions. Right. Right. Putting sanctions on India. He has not failed, by the way, in his story, to continue to armed Ukraine. He's not paying for it, or we're not paying for it anymore, and we're not giving it directly to the Ukrainians, but we're giving it to the Europeans who are paying for it and

giving it to the Ukrainians. So he can't be blamed for cutting off weaponry. He can't be blamed for not using secondary sanctions. And the same thing goes. But he can be blamed, he can be blamed for extending Joe Biden's war to the point where it's now Donald Trump's war. That happened a long time ago. once he moved into it. Once he moved into the White House, he might not have noticed it. But you and I noticed that at the time, there was a sign on his desk. You remember, it said the buck stops here? You remember that sign, right? Yeah, it's not there anymore. And there was also a sign at his campaign rallies. I'll end the war in 24 hours. Yeah, that worked out very well, didn't it? Right, right, right. Can you foresee,

European ground troops in Ukraine under any circumstances, either in the death throes of the war or after the war is over without the consent of the Russians? No. You want to remember that what the Europeans are talking about is putting those troops into Ukraine after there's a peace agreement, not after there's a ceasefire, after there's a peace agreement. That means the Russians have to sign on to an agreement that Ukraine and the West sign on to. The Russians are not going to sign on to an agreement that allows for NATO forces in Ukraine. They are not going to sign on to an agreement where the United States and the Europeans give Ukraine a security guarantee, a meaningful security guarantee. It's not going to happen.

So if you get a peace agreement, by definition, you're not going to have NATO troops in Ukraine. Switching gears, is it realistic for us to accept the words of the President of the United States that he was unaware that the Israelis attacked a hospital in southern Gaza, which killed 20 people, doctors, health care workers, patients, and five journalists? I think not. I believe that behind the scenes, I have no hard evidence of this, but that deductive apparatus up in my head tells me that there are lots of people inside the administration and outside the administration who have access to President Trump who are telling him that he has to put an end to this. And any time a crime of this magnitude happens, there's a spike in the number of people who send him that message. What is happening there is so horrific, and so many people understand that. And so many people understand that this is a black mark on his presidency,

that I would bet a lot of money that he knew about it immediately, and that a number of people told him he has to shut this down. Why isn't he the object of obloquy and over-the-top criticism for legitimizing genocide the way Biden was, not from a huge portion of the population, but from enough Democrats that had sunk Kamala Harris. Well, there's a recent poll that's out that's quite remarkable. It shows that 67% of Democrats, 67% of Democrats think that Israel is committing genocide

or something that's akin to genocide in Gaza. And another 8% think that it's not genocide, but it's mass murder. So that number is 75% of Democrats, okay? If you look at the Republican numbers, it's almost completely reversed. So Trump is not getting much heat from Republicans, give or take a few Republicans. And it's the Democrats who are giving him heat, but let's get inside those Democratic numbers. That's the public. That's public opinion. And as we've talked about on numerous occasions on this show, what the policymakers, what the leadership in the Democratic Party says and does is very different from what your rank and file Democrats think. So there is that disjuncture there, and therefore you would not expect Democratic leaders, right, despite what the base thinks, the Democratic Party's base thinks, to put pressure on President Trump.

So he's just not getting a lot of pressure from his own party or from the leadership of the Democratic Party. Here's a Treasury Minister, I'm not sure the exact title, Smotrich, you know, one of the right-wing fanatics in the government, but in the California. cabinet in the War Cabinet speaking just last week. Chris number 16. What will come in over the next few days is very little. A few bakeries handing out pizzas to people and public kitchens providing a daily portion of cooked food. Civilians in Gaza will get a pita and a plate of food and that's it. That's exactly what we're seeing in the videos. People are standing in line waiting for someone to ladle them a bowl of soup. What I want to avoid having to bring even a single grain into the Gaza strip altogether, not even for the civilians? Maybe so. I completely

understand the anger. I completely understand the pain in our guts that we all feel as citizens. The truth is, until the last hostage returns, we shouldn't even be giving water to the Gaza strip. For a year and a half now, we've been beating Hamas to a pulp. We're dismantling Gaza and leaving it as sword lovers with total and unprecedented destruction in the world, and the world still isn't stopping us. With the aim of achieving the one and only required outcome, conquering Gaza, destroying Hamas, and bringing back all the hostages. In one word, victory. With the deference to Professor Meersheimer's stomach, play the other one, Chris, number

15. We are destroying everything that is still left of the strip, simply because everything there is just one big terror city. As part of the war, the IDF is moving the population out of the combat zones and not leaving one stone upon another. I'm telling you, just look at the videos of what's happening in the Gaza Strip. The population will move to the south of the strip, and from there, God willing, to third countries. As part of President Trump's plan, this is a change in the course of history, nothing less.

The bare minimum will reach the population simply so that the world won't stop us and accuse us of war crimes. The IDF is finally conducting a campaign against Hamas' civil administration and not just focusing on the military infrastructure. We are eliminating ministers, officials, money changers, and figures in Hamas' economic and governmental apparatus. For two and a half months, we did not have done. allow humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip. This created tremendous pressure on Hamas and that's a good thing. But even pressure needs to be regulated so it doesn't blow up in our faces. When the IDF recently resumed maneuvering with full force to conquer the Gaza Strip,

when the IDF is moving the population from the last places where they still had a bit of food and our greatest friends in the world, those who support us, those who understand that we cannot stop just short of total victory in destroying Hamas, when they ask us to help them, to help us and to refute the lives of the region, This guy's a madman, but did you catch as part of Trump's plan? Has Donald Trump, without telling the American people, signed off on some plan to move a million and a half people out of Gaza to some other country? Well, he was hinting at that when he first began to talk earlier this year about how this situation might be resolved. But the more important point is that this is the most honest and forthright statement of what Israel is doing in Gaza that I have seen.

It is much better than anything you get in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal or on the major news outlets on TV. This is a good statement in that it lays out what the Israelis are doing. It tells you that they're committing genocide. Now, look, the problem that the Israelis face, just to take this a step further, is they can't find any countries to take the Palestinians. And the end result is, although they have basically made Gaza unlivable, and they have been in the process of executing a genocide, they can't eliminate the problem because they can't eliminate the Palestinians from Gaza. So this is a huge problem for them because it means that they just

have to keep murdering people. They have to continue the genocide. There's no end in sight. The question you want to ask yourself here is if they can't move the Palestinians out of Gaza, how does this play out? You know, the Israelis have no plan for the day after. It's not like the Israelis are going to counten it some sort of new arrangement for the Palestinians inside of Gaza. That's not their goal. As Smotrich said, their goal is to expel them. And the way they're doing that is to execute a genocide. And again, if you don't have a place to move them to, how do you achieve Smotrich's goals?

Is Israel destroying itself? It's a very interesting question. It's doing huge damage to itself. There's no question about that. I don't think that Israel is going to disappear from the map any time in the near future or in the foreseeable future. But the amount of damage that this country is doing to itself is just enormous. And it does not have a bright future. And I would bet a lot of money that you're going to see lots of more moderate and secular Israelis leave

that country with the passage of time, and you're going to see fewer and fewer Jews in the diaspora move to Israel. Here's a Dutch commentator by the name of Rabani. I believe he's Dutch and Palestinian. A very interesting observation. I'd like your thoughts on it. Professor, cut number eight. The surrounding Arab states see any participation in the ethnic cleansing of the Gaza

strip, as a national security threat, as a danger to their own regime stability and legitimacy. And they're absolutely dead set against cooperating with this, although they do seem fine with Israel slaughtering Palestinians and the Gaza Strip, as long as they remain on that side of the border. Do the Americans and Israelis really believe they can strongarm the surrounding Arab states into participating in the scheme, I doubt it's going to work, but there's a more fundamental question, which is the growing doubts among the senior leadership of the Israeli military that they can succeed in establishing full control over the entirety of the Gaza Strip.

And so what you really have here is a recipe for indefinite conflict, indefinite insurgency. and that may be something that suits Israel quite well. I find it very hard to disagree with him. And he was in effect making the argument that I was making that it's hard to see how Israel can find, Israel in the United States can find countries that will take these people. I would note to you, Judge,

and this is very important, that the Israelis had settlers and troops in Gaza until 2005. And Ariel Sharon, who was no shrinking violent, was prime minister of Israel in 2005, and he pulled the settlers and the troops out of Gaza. And that's when they turned it into a large open-air prison or a concentration camp, whatever you want to call it. That's happened in 2005. And the reason Sharon did that is he understood

that Gaza was a hornet's nest. And staying in Gaza, keeping troops and keeping settlers in Gaza was a nightmare. So he pulled them out. And what's happened since October 7, 2023, is that the Israelis have gone back in and they want to stay in. But they want to stay in predicated on the assumption they can drive all the Palestinians out. So here we have a situation where they can't drive the Palestinians out, but they're back in Gaza. And the final point I would make, which is another very important point, is that the Israeli army, because it depends so heavily on reservists, is an army that's configured to fight short wars. Six-day war, you remember that? Not long wars. This war has been going on since October 7, 2023. We're coming up on the

second anniversary, and the army is worn out. The reservists are rebelling. They can't get you numbers of reservists to report for duty. They're talking about recruiting people from the diaspora to come to Israel to serve in the IDF. This is the problem that they face. And if you go back in there, it's not going to be easy for the Israeli military to deal with the Palestinians, because the Palestinians will fight back. Is the Israeli military planning to attack or invade Iran? I am sure that they have contingency plans, and I think a powerful case can be made that they will attack Iran. And I think on the other hand, there is a case to be made that they might not be able to do that.

And that case would revolve around the fact that the last time the Iranians really blasted Israel in the exchanges that took place in the 12-day war. And I think the Israelis understand that this time they will get hit even harder by the Iranians. I don't think you can make a case that the Israelis will be better off in terms of what the exchanges between the two sides look like moving forward. The other thing is Trump, I think, will be very reluctant to turn the Israelis loose for fear that the Iranians will shut down the Gulf. shut down the Straits of Hormuz, which would cause huge problems for the world economy, which means the American economy, and that would hurt Trump's political standing. So I think you can make a case that the Israelis won't do it.

But if I had to bet, I would bet that they try it again. Let me take you back to where we started. Are the Ukrainians destroying Ukraine? No question about it, with great help from us. I believe we bear the principal responsibility of the United States of America. This all started in April 2008 at the Bucharest NATO Summit, where the United States forced the Europeans to accept the policy that said we would bring Ukraine into NATO. And then at every point forward from 2008 up to 2022, we doubled down on our efforts to

bring Ukraine into NATO. And there's never been real enthusiasm inside of Ukraine for joining NATO. It was the Americans who were principally driving this train. And we bear the principal responsibility because we helped cause a war that's going to lead to the destruction of Ukraine. Had that meeting in April 2008 never taken place, Ukraine and all likelihood would be intact today inside its pre-2014 borders. So American policymakers, starting with Condoleezza Rice and Bush, George W. Bush, who pushed us down this road to begin with, have a lot of blood on their hands. What are the long-term prospects for American world leadership, given these disastrous decisions it makes with respect to genocide and

Israel and the facilitation of the self-destruction of Ukraine. Well, you want to remember that during the unipolar moment, which basically went from 1992 to 2017, we were really in the catbird seat because we were the only great power in the system. And then after 2017, you had two more great powers, China and Russia. And that meant America's power position in the world had declined. And it was hard for us to claim the mantle of leadership in that multipolar world the way we did in the unipolar world. So we had problems as soon as the structure of the international system went from unipularity to multiparity. But then we have compounded our problem by pursuing remarkably foolish

behaviors. We've pushed the Chinese and the Russians together. We've turned them into mortal enemies of the United States. We're now antagonizing the Indians in ways that I find incomprehensible. And if you think in terms of bricks, right, this means Brazil, India, and Russia are all coming together in ways that are designed to challenge the United States, make it more difficult for us to exercise diplomatic influence around the world. And by the way, we're now talking about getting the Europeans to put snapback sanctions on Iran, which is going to drive the Iran.

further into the arms of those BRICS countries. Iran, of course, is a member of BRICS. So the United States is diplomacy in places like Iran and places like Gaza and what we're doing in Ukraine. It's all having the consequence of isolating us and doing us great damage in terms of our leadership role around the world. Professor Mirosheimer, thank you very much. for letting me pick your brain on both of these hotspots. I hope you have a great holiday weekend

coming up and we'll look forward to seeing you next week. I hope you have a great holiday too and I look forward to talking again in a week. Thank you. All the best. Thank you. Coming up tomorrow at 4 o'clock, the end of the day, the end of the week, the end of the month, the intelligence community roundtable with Larry Johnson and Ray McGovern. Justin Lepalton for Judging Freedom. Thank you. Thank you.