Judging Freedom - Prof. John Mearsheimer: Ukraine and Israel / Is China ready to pounce?

Episode Date: November 30, 2023

Join us on a thought-provoking journey through the labyrinth of the recent Israeli-Hamas ceasefire and the enduring Israel-Palestinian conflict. Guiding our exploration is none other than the insightful Professor John Mearsheimer from the University of Chicago. Brace yourself as we dissect the delicate distinctions between a truce and a ceasefire, and dip our toes into the ocean of possibilities for a long-lasting solution. We'll be sifting through the maneuvers by both sides, uncovering overlooked intelligence, and pulling back the curtain on the complexity of the region's future. The pressure cooker of political tension doesn't stop there though. We're turning up the heat as we scrutinize the predicaments faced by President Biden and Prime Minister Netanyahu amidst this volatile situation. Can the IDF truly defeat Hamas? What's the role of American and British forces in the conflict? And as the tension in the Middle East escalates, we're on the hunt for clues on the wavering support for Ukraine. Join us as we navigate through these tough questions, offering a fresh perspective on the ongoing peace negotiations, the role of international players, and the potential resolutions hidden in plain sight.#Israel #Gaza #ceasefire #hostages #Ukraine #zelenskyy #Biden #china #IsraelPalestine #MiddleEastConflict #PeaceInTheMiddleEast #GazaUnderAttack #Ceasefire #Jerusalem #prayforpeace #hostages See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Thank you. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Wednesday, November 29th, 2023. Professor John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago joins us now for his regular weekly appearance on the show. Professor Mearsheimer, always a pleasure, my dear friend. Thanks for coming back and sharing your thoughts with us. Glad to be here. So since we were, thank you, since we were together last, there has been somewhat of a ceasefire or a truce. If there's a significant difference in the terminology,

I'll ask you to elaborate. But whatever it was, it appears as though hostilities between the Israelis and Hamas have stopped for a while, while people that the Israelis, who released 39 Palestinian people that they had arrested, arrested another 133 during the truce. have a tendency to do this in the West Bank, and that this would essentially be fruitless as a compliance with their obligations under the truce? Well, it's very hard to say, you know, what Hamas was thinking in this regard. One could argue that Hamas thought there was a good chance that would happen, but they went along with the truce anyway, or the temporary ceasefire anyway, because they needed to get supplies into Gaza, and they needed time to sort of reconstitute the fighting forces. So you could make that argument, although we don't know for sure. I would add, however, that when the Israelis do something like this, it makes it unlikely that you'll have

further exchanges of prisoners and hostages. And it just doesn't make much sense. I mean, I don't understand if the Israelis are doing this, why they would do it. First of all, is there a difference in international parlance between a truce and a ceasefire, or can we use those terms interchangeably? Well, I think that a truce is something that's much more short-term, and a ceasefire is seen as something that's more long-term. But you could talk about a temporary ceasefire, and that would equal a truce. I don't think the language matters here at all. The key point is the Israelis made it clear that this truce was only going to last for a short period of time, and once it was over with, which appears to be tomorrow, Thursday,

they're going to unleash the dogs. So do these truces have a tendency to take on a life of their own because of the sort of good feeling that they generate on both sides? are working on something far longer, or that's their hope, far more serious and far more restraining than just two or three days to exchange a few dozen hostages. Well, I think in Qatar, in the United States, in Western Europe, in Egypt, in Jordan, all of these countries are deeply interested in making this truce become a real ceasefire. I think all these countries would like to shut this one down. I would imagine that Hamas feels the same way. The problem is that the Israelis don't feel that way. The Israelis are fully aware that they have not come close to completing the job. In other words, defeating Hamas and making Gaza terror-free in their rhetoric. And, excuse me, they feel that they have to go back on the offensive

to, in effect, win this war. So I think the Israelis have no interest in seeing this truce become a genuine ceasefire that lasts for a long time. So what have the sides been doing in the past 72 hours? Regrouping, getting advantageous positions, restocking ammunition and getting ready to fight again? Well, I think in the case of the Palestinians and not just Hamas, they've been getting supplies into Gaza that have helped the average Palestinian survive. I mean, they were in really desperate straits. They're probably still in desperate straits, but in less desperate straits today

than they were at the start of the ceasefire. So I think a lot of that was taking place. One does wonder how much of that aid, especially the gas that came into Gaza, was cleaved off by Hamas and helped them improve their situation. I would imagine that both Hamas and Israel took this truce as an opportunity to sort of rationalize their defenses and to prepare for the next stage. And my guess would be that Hamas benefited more than Israel did from this truce. Let's go back to what happened on October 7th. You and I have read some investigative pieces, one in the Telegram and one in the IDF saw a suspicious drone activity on the Gaza side of the Israeli-Gaza border on October 6th and reported it, and their superiors discounted what they said. But the Telegram piece reports a substantial amount of activity and practice and arming that had been going on for almost a year,

actual practicing of assaulting buildings and practicing of taking hostages. If the telegram piece is accurate and if the Financial Times piece is accurate. What does that tell you about Prime Minister Netanyahu's government with respect to intelligence, military, and security? Well, the piece I saw was not in the telegram. It's probably the same piece you saw, but it was in BBC. And it talked about the preparations that Hamas made for launching the offensive on October 7th. And the piece is truly amazing because Hamas prepared over the course of three years for the October 7th offensive. They did it out in the open.

They filmed their training exercises, which were very realistic. They posted those training exercises on the Internet. And you just sort of say to yourself, close to the Gaza-Israel border, who could observe what was going on inside Gaza. And given what I read in the BBC piece, it's hardly surprising that these young women saw all sorts of preparations for an offensive coming from Gaza in the immediate future. And they, of course, these young women reported that to higher headquarters, and it was dismissed by higher headquarters. They wouldn't listen to these spotters or the eyes of the IDF, who were seeing what Hamas was making perfectly obvious. So you really sort of scratch your head and say,

how did the Israelis miss this one so badly now that we see these stories coming out? Well, that's the $64,000 question. How did they miss it this badly? I mean, add to that the likelihood that Mossad has assets on the ground, not necessarily Israelis on the ground, but double agents, either people in Hamas or residents of Gaza who are on the payroll or have some allegiance to Israel. There are, of course, Gazans who prior to October

7th worked in Israel and were paid for their work in Israel. They don't anymore course, Gazans who, prior to October 7th, worked in Israel and were paid for their work in Israel. They don't anymore. But my point is, how do they miss this? What did Bibi know? When did he know it? Will we ever know the answers to these questions, Professor Mearsheimer? Well, just to embellish your point, the piece on the BBC website makes clear that Hamas was one of 11 groups inside of Gaza that participated in this event on October 7th. It's very important to understand that there were 11 separate groups. That is in the piece. Who are the other 10? Not by name, but by characteristic.

Well, they were very similar to Hamas. They had just either split off from Hamas or had been created in addition to Hamas. The most famous of the other 10 is Islamic Jihad, which is the second largest group. Hamas is clearly the biggest group. And it's clear from the article that Hamas was basically in charge of training all 11 groups for the attack on October 7th. But to get to your question, I think that when the war comes to a halt, when the shooting stops, the Israelis will set up a commission to examine what happened. And then we'll get a really detailed discussion or description of how the Israelis got caught with their pants down. After reading the BBC piece and the Financial

Times piece talking about these young women and what they were seeing and reporting to higher headquarters, it really is kind of amazing that the Israelis were so completely surprised. I mean, is this just an act of misogynistic prejudice? What could these 20-year-old girls know? Or is it just an incompetent, an incredible lack of professionalism that what they saw with their own eyes was not taken seriously by their superiors? Well, it can be for those reasons or other reasons. It could be that, and I think that this is highly likely, that the Israelis just had a great deal of contempt for the Palestinians. They thought the Palestinians were surely capable of some sort of military attack into Israel and out of the Gaza Strip. But I don't think they thought that the Hamas forces and the other forces were capable of doing what they did on October 7th. I think they were really surprised. And there's

evidence that Hamas itself was surprised by how successful they were. So I think the Israelis just dismissed the threat, just didn't think it was that serious. They could easily handle it. Let's say that the truce ends tomorrow. What will the IDF do? Will it get back into the business of attempting to eliminate all life as it is known in Gaza? Well, I think the Israelis are almost certainly, I mean, I hope I'm wrong here, but they're almost certainly going to start the bombing campaign again. And my sense is that the Americans have been putting enormous pressure on them behind closed doors to limit the scope of the offensive. What that means is very hard to say. You want to remember there are a huge number of people packed in southern Gaza because the Israelis ran lots of Gazans out of

northern Gaza into southern Gaza. So they're going to have their hands full, the Israelis, coming up with a bombing campaign that is one that spares large numbers of civilians. The problem that the Israelis have is that they really don't want to go after Hamas, because to go after Hamas, you have to use ground forces and you have to engage in face-to-face fighting. You have to go into the tunnels, you have to go into buildings, and the Israelis are remarkably sensitive to casualties. You want to remember, the Israelis and Hamas have had three previous engagements that were quite significant in scope. One was in 2008, 2009. The second was in 2014. And the third was in 2021. In none of those instances did the IDF go into Gaza or into

urban areas in any meaningful way. And the reason is the Israelis fully understand that they would pay an enormous price and it would take one heck of a long time to finish off Hamas if they could even do that, right? So here you have a situation where they have two choices. They can bomb or they can send their ground forces into tunnels and into buildings and root out Hamas. Unsurprisingly, they have done very little of the latter, and they have done a lot of bombing. And so I think that what they'll do is they'll bomb. And this is going to cause huge problems for them, because I don't think Joe Biden and a lot of Democrats are going to tolerate that for long. how could they morally assault southern Gaza after they forced people and encouraged them

by all their leaflets to leave northern Gaza and go down there? It's almost like shooting fish in a barrel if they do that. Or is my question absurd because there is no morality here? There are no moral standards. I wouldn't say your question is absurd, but I think that you gave the answer. You can't make a moral case for this. Look, what the Israelis have done is they basically turned Gaza into a free fire zone. You and I are old enough to remember the Vietnam War. And we would turn certain areas of Vietnam into free fire zones. And anything that moved in those zones was liable or likely to be killed. And in a very important way, that's what the Israelis have been doing in Gaza. They've been going after hospitals. They've been going after ambulances.

They've been going after UN institutions. They've been going after schools. And they, of course, justify this because they argue that Hamas fights from those places. Hamas is everywhere. And if you buy that argument, then you can make the case that you should just destroy the whole place. Treat it like a free fire. Is that the end game? To destroy Gaza and slaughter two million human beings? Well, I don't think they're going to slaughter two million human beings. My view is that what the Israelis wanted to do in an ideal world was ethnically cleanse Gaza. And in the very beginning, it looked like they may get away with that because it looked like the United States was playing along. But what's happened since then is that not only the United States, but various Arab countries and the Palestinians themselves have made it unequivocally clear that this is not happening. We're not having a second Nakba. The Palestinians are not going to be cleansed in Gaza. So the question is,

what's the fallback position? And there are two things you can do, and this is what I was alluding to before. One is you can punish the civilian population. You can bomb the civilian population and inflict massive punishment on them. And you can go after Hamas and root out Hamas and finish it off. My argument is the Israelis are not going to do the latter. They're not going to go after Hamas in any meaningful way. They're not going to defeat Hamas. And therefore, they're forced to bomb. Well, what is their goal then if they're not going to defeat Hamas? I mean, Prime Minister Netanyahu has said that's their goal. The crazy security minister, Ben-Gavir, has said that that's their goal. They have no winning goal.

That's the problem. The Israelis are in deep trouble, and we're in deep trouble as well. There's no magic formula here. And by the way, we haven't even talked about what you do in Gaza after the war is over with. Let's say they go in and deliver a hammer blow to Hamas. Hamas is basically crippled to the point where it can't cause much trouble for a good year or two. Let's say that happens. I'm wrong. Then the question is, what are you going to do to make Gaza work?

And, you know, people talk about, let's bring in the international community. Nobody in the international community wants any part of that. The Americans don't want to go in there. And really, do the Israelis want to stay there and run the place? I doubt it. We talk about bringing Mahmoud Abbas in. He, of course, is on the West Bank. And Mahmoud Abbas has zero credibility among the Palestinian population. He's ancient.

He's in his late 80s. The idea that he's the solution is laughable, right? So what are the Israelis going to do once this is over with? I certainly don't have a good answer. And I have talked to a good number of people and asked them this very question. And I've not found anybody, we're wedded at the hip with Israel. Oh, we're in favor of the two-state solution. Oh, we're not in favor of slaughtering innocents. How can he get out of this? That's a very interesting question.

I mean, there's no doubt that Joe Biden is feeling the heat from inside his administration, from inside the White House, inside the State Department, inside USAID. People in his administration are profoundly upset about the killing of Palestinian civilians, and they're putting pressure on him to do something about it. He also understands this has huge consequences for his election next November, because in swing states like Michigan, you have large Arab American communities. And if they're positively hostile toward you, you're likely to lose that swing state and maybe others. So what's happening here is that Biden has a growing incentive to crack down on the Israelis. But the problem that he faces is that there will be huge resistance if he does that from the Israel lobby, which is

another way of saying Israel's staunchest supporters in the United States. They, not surprisingly, want President Biden to support Israel no matter what. And if he doesn't do that, they will make him pay a price. So Biden is in a situation where whether he goes left or he goes right, he's in trouble. And I don't see a simple way out for him. How does Prime Minister Netanyahu come out of this? How could heahu come out of this? How could he possibly come out of this as a winner when he's going to be the subject of the most intense interrogation that the Israeli government has ever conducted? What did he know and when did he know it? Well, first of all, he's largely responsible for what happened on October 7th.

You know, Harry Truman's very famous statement that the buck stops here. Well, if you're the prime minister of Israel, the buck stops at your desk. He has yet to acknowledge that. He has yet to take responsibility for that. Of course, and he won't. But the fact is, lots of people in his society, right, believe that he is responsible. He was in charge. That's one.

Point two is the question of how this war plays itself out. If you accept my basic argument, which I think is correct, that he's not going to win, he's not going to defeat Hamas. You remember, he has said, as you pointed out, that I'm going to defeat Hamas or the IDF not going to defeat Hamas. You remember, he has said, as you pointed out, that I'm going to defeat Hamas or the IDF is going to defeat Hamas. If he doesn't do that, right, then he's going to be in double trouble. And I don't- Yesterday, yesterday he said, quote, I alone can defeat Hamas. Well, Professor Mearsheimer, he can't do anything alone. Can the IDF win any battle without U.S. support? Well, U.S. support, I mean, obviously he can't win it alone. In fact, he sounds like Donald Trump when he's talking like that. But the question here is

whether the IDF can do it. And my point to you is I don't think the IDF can do it. And I don't think American support matters very much because what we're talking about here to defeat Hamas is basically sending ground forces into the tunnels, ground forces into the heart of the cities in Gaza and rooting out Hamas. And for the Israelis to do that, they're going to have to pay an enormous blood price. And it's very important to understand that Israel is remarkably sensitive to casualties. So I think they will be reluctant to go in and try and root Hamas out. Furthermore, as I've argued on the show before, I think if they try to root out Hamas, they're not going to succeed. And by the way, going back to our discussion of that BBC

article or Telegram article, the fact is that it's not only Hamas they have to deal with. According to that article, there are other groups, including Islamic Jihad, that they have to deal with. Are American and British special forces on the ground in Gaza now? I don't know for a fact. It's just very hard to say. I would imagine that if there are American and British forces, they're very small in number and they're playing an advisory role. I don't think the Israelis need us to do their dirty work for them. I think they can, you know, handle the matter of, or the problem of rooting out Hamas if they decide to do that. I think the Israelis need us for the bombing campaign.

And, you know, we've supplied them with those 2,000 and 1,000-pound bombs. And we're providing, up to now, diplomatic cover for them as well. But in terms of the ground campaign, I don't think it really matters very much in terms of whether we have special forces in there or not. What will it take for Joe Biden to call up Prime Minister Netanyahu and say, enough is enough, we can't back you anymore. You're killing too many innocents. Well, first of all, it depends exactly what the Israelis do starting tomorrow when they relaunch the campaign. If it's a rather selective air assault, they're not killing nearly as many civilians as they killed previously in northern

Gaza. The pressure on Biden might not be too great, but if the Israelis really go full bore and they start to tear Gaza apart, I believe the pressure will be enormous. And my sense is that the recent truce or temporary ceasefire, if anything, gave a lot of the doubters an opportunity is a growing opposition to what the Israelis are doing in Gaza. Why do we have naval ships offshore in the eastern Mediterranean, Professor Mearsheimer? Well, my sense is that that's always been to send a clear signal to Hezbollah and to Iran not to escalate. The United States lives in mortal fear of this war escalating. And in fact, the defense minister, Yoav Galant in Israel, is really gung-ho about pounding Lebanon. He'd like to expand the war. And the Americans have told him, and they've told Netanyahu in no uncertain terms, that that is simply unacceptable. So we do not want the war to spread. If you're interested in ethnically cleansing the Palestinians,

you can make a case for expanding the war. So I don't find it surprising at all that some Israelis like Gallant want to expand the war, but the Americans don't want that. And we have forces over there for purposes of deterrence. How would the U.S. prevent Defense Minister Gallant and the IDF from expanding the war? Would Joe Biden actually turn off the spigot of cash and military equipment that flows to Israel? I don't know. Talk about $64,000 questions. That is a $64,000 question. The question you have to ask yourself is whether you believe there are any limits to what Israel can do that will cause us to play hardball with them. You know, I've written on the Israel lobby, and I think when it comes to Israeli-Palestinian issues, it's hard to imagine anything that Israel does causing us to really come down on them like a ton of bricks.

But one has to understand that somewhere out there, there is a threshold. And if the Israelis do something that really damages the American national interest in a visible way or really hurts President Biden's re-election chances, he may very well crack down on Israel. But you want to understand that that will have political costs. I mean, the problem that Biden faces is that there are political costs if he continues to support Israel's bombing campaign, huge political costs, it looks like. And it also looks like they're huge political costs if he cracks down on Israel, because the lobby will go after him. I just wonder if the loss of enthusiasm on the West for support for Ukraine has been caused in some significant measure by this Israeli-Gaza conflagration. Well, you want to remember that before October 7th,

support for Ukraine was waning in a serious way. And I think it's quite clear that what's happening in the Middle East has caused us to have even less interest in prolonging the Ukraine war. I mean, if you think about where the United States is at this point in time, we're facing a never-ending war in Ukraine, and we're facing a never-ending war in Gaza. And this is not good from the point of view of the American national interest. So I think that what you see the Biden administration maneuvering to do vis-a-vis Ukraine is try to shut that one down. I mean, there's all sorts of evidence that we have made it clear to Ukraine that they're not going to get a lot more weaponry and that they better start thinking about negotiating some sort of settlement, a real ceasefire, to go back to our

discussion of that lexicon before. And so I would think that we're going to push hard for a meaningful ceasefire. My view, Judge, for what it's worth, is that the Russians are not going to buy that, that the Russians are not going to stop until they conquer a lot more territory in Ukraine, because the Russians understand that the Americans and the Ukrainians will never give up in terms of pushing the Russians out of Ukraine. It may take us a long time, but we will continue to push, push, push, even after we get a ceasefire. This is why it'll be a frozen conflict. Well, if you're the Russians and you think the Americans are going to be at your throat forever and ever, and you think the Ukrainians will

be with them, you have a vested interest in taking more of Ukraine than you now control and making sure that you turn Ukraine into a truly dysfunctional, rough state. I keep thinking of that awful trip that Boris Johnson took to dissuade President Zelensky from an agreement that he could have had, which wouldn't have shed a drop of blood, a far better agreement than anything he's going to get now. It's shocking how foolish the United States and Britain have been in terms of their policy on Ukraine and Russia. Just amazing. I mean, if you go back to December 17th, 2021, this is about three months, actually two months before the war starts, January, February 24th, 2022. The Russians were working overtime to get

some sort of diplomatic settlement. This is before the war. And we wouldn't cut them any slack. We showed remarkably little interest in trying to shut this down, despite the fact we were running around saying a war was coming, right? Then the war breaks out and you have these peace negotiations that start involving the Israelis and involving the Turks and others. And it looks like it's going to succeed. You're going to be able to shut the war down. And Zelensky's in favor of this and Putin's in favor of this. And what do we do? We, meaning the United States. We disrupt it. We disrupt it. This is like crazy. And then later that year, General Milley, this is after the Ukrainians have won two major tactical victories, one in Kharkiv and the other in Hirsan, right? General Milley, who smartly recognizes that this is the high water mark, says, let's cut a deal.

Let's see if we can end this war now. And the Biden administration sends him to the woodshed and tells him in no uncertain terms that we're not going to cut a deal now. And here we are today, right, with Ukraine in desperate straits and the Russians, you know, in the driver's seat. Professor Mearsheimer, always a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you for your astute analysis on both of these hotbed issues and locations. I hope you can come back again next week because there will be more events for us to talk about. I'm sad to say that's true. Thank you, Professor. Thanks for watching!