Judging Freedom - Prof. John Mearsheimer : Welcome to Cold War 2.0

Episode Date: January 29, 2026

Prof. John Mearsheimer : Welcome to Cold War 2.0See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Undeclared wars are commonplace. Pragically, our government engages in preemptive war, otherwise known as aggression with no complaints from the American people. Sadly, we have become accustomed to living with the illegitimate use of force by government. To develop a truly free society, the issue of initiating force must be understood and rejected. What if sometimes to love your country you had to alter or abolish the government? Jefferson was right? What if that government is best, which governs least? What if it is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong? What if it is better to perish fighting for freedom than to

live as a slave? What if freedom's greatest hour of danger is now? Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for judging freedom. Today is Thursday, January 29, 2006. Professor John Amir Sharmer will be with us in just a moment. Should we be getting ready for another cold war? 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. And right 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 Mearsheimer, thank you very much for joining us, as always. Before we get to what may be the coming relationship between the United States and China

and the United States and Russia. How close, in your view, are the United States and Israel to attacking Iran? First of all, all indications are that Israel's not going to participate in the attack, that it's going to be the United States that does its solo. And in fact, the Iranians are sending a message to both the United States and Israel that if just the United States attacks against Iran, that Iran will retaliate against Israel, in addition to retaliating against American military installations in the region

and trying to shut down the straits or more moves. I would imagine if Iran were to do that, Israelis would then come into the fight. But the Israelis actually, I believe, want to stay out of the fight because I don't think they have the defensive capability, ability to fend off Iranian ballistic missiles. So they're trying to sort of hang back, and the Iranians are telling them that they can't hang back.

Go ahead. The Israelis must know what you just said to me. If the U.S. attacks Iran, Iran will treat that as if Israel attacked Iran. That's correct. You want to remember that on January 14th, remember on the morning of January 14th, President this year. this year. Remember, there was the big crisis with the protests between December 28th of last year, that's 2025 and January 14th, 2026. Oh, you're talking about the protests in Iran, the Mossad

MI6 CIA orchestrated protests. Yes, and it looked like President Trump was ready to launch the bombers on the morning of January 14th. And you were effectively asking your guests the same question. asked me back then. Right. Only two weeks ago. But what happened on January 14th to cool President Trump's jets was number one that the Israelis actually asked him not to attack Iran. Just think about that.

On January 14th, the Israelis asked him not to attack Iran. And the reason was that the Israelis understood that their defensive capabilities were not up to the task of dealing with what would have been a massive attack by ballistic missiles from Iran. Nothing's changed in the ensuing 15 days. The Israelis are still not in a good position to defend themselves should Iran attack. So the Americans are pretty much on their own. It looks like in terms of attacking Iran. Now, your question is, how likely is it that we will attack?

it's very hard to say. And the reason it's hard to say is on one hand, President Trump talks in very hawkish ways, and he makes it sound like he's got the six-shooter out of his holster, and it's just a matter of minutes before he pulls the trigger. Right. But on the other hand, when you look carefully at what his goals might be, what he's trying to achieve, and then you think about what kind of military means he has available, to achieve those goals or that goal, it doesn't look like there's a viable plan here.

I don't know what he can do with all that military force. So what's the point of using it? And I would say to you, going back to January 14th, I didn't touch on the second reason that we did not attack on January 14th. But the second reason is that the American military told him that day, given that the protests had ended that if we used military power, if President Trump used military power against Iran, they could not guarantee, the military commanders could not guarantee that we would win a decisive victory. So Trump decided not to go.

How would you measure a victory? We know what his demands are, and they're absurd, that Iran should ditch its civilian nuclear program, that it must reduce and eliminate missiles that are strong enough to reach Israel, and it must stop supporting proxy forces. They're never going to agree to that. That's right. But that's why those are not his ultimate goals. You're right.

That's just empty talk. The goal here is, number one, regime change, and as a result of regime change, creating chaos and dismembering Iran. Like Syria. Exactly. And that's what they wanted to do on January 14th. And by the way, you want to remember that we had, in effect, boots on the ground before January 14th. Those boots on the ground were the Iranian protesters.

So what was going to happen on January 14th in an ideal world was that the protesters on the ground working with the American military were going to topple the regime and create chaos in Iran. That's the ultimate goal. And what the military, the American military commanders told President Trump on January 14th is that we can't do that. We don't have the military capability. What had happened, the protests had died out, right? And the protests had not returned. So he may have more military force in the Gulf. He may have more tomahawk missiles.

But the idea that this additional military capability is going to topple the regime is not, It's just a foolish argument. Nobody believes that. So the question you have to ask yourself is, why would he attack? Now, you might say that what we're going to get here is a limited attack, right? It's going to be one of these things where President Trump goes and launches a number of attacks over the course of one day. And then at the end of the day, he claims victory. What would the goal be of a limited attack?

That's not going to decapitate the regime in one day. Is he going to kidnap the guy at Tola from his bed at 2 o'clock in the morning like he did President Matured? No, no, it's a saving face strategy. The problem that Trump has is that he's boxed himself in. He's talked like Mr. Tough guy. He's got all this military force, all this military force assembled in the Gulf. And what is he going to do? Walk away now and not do anything.

And this is going to cause him all sorts of problems. So he sort of has to do something. So the argument would be given that he can't topple the regime and he doesn't want to get involved in a protracted war where he's bombing Iran for the next two years. It seems to me that one could argue that what he should do is, you know, have a one-day strike. But the problem with that argument is that the Iranians anticipated that. And the Iranians have told him that if he launches any kind of. military attack, they're going to have a full bore retaliation. So the idea is that there's no way Trump can escape from a long war. And to go back to my earlier point, there's no way the Israelis

can escape from getting sucked into that war, which the Israelis don't want to do. So he's really in a pickle here. So what would he tell Congress and the American people, you know, he's not can ask for Congress's permission because, as Colonel McGregor says, and I hate to say this phrase, but sadly I think it's right, we're in a post-constitutional era. Yeah, I disagree. What will he tell Congress and what will he tell the American people is the reason he's spending billions of dollars, their dollars, not his, to attack Iran? Look, you know that he's a genius at spinning stories that. bear little resemblance to reality. So you and I and most other people will know that this will

have been a futile military attack, but he will spin it as a great victory. Lots of people will believe him, especially in his base and, you know, in that part of the media that identifies with him. The Israelis, of course, will help spin it as a great victory. And we know how much influence they have in the media in the United States today. And that's sort of how he would get away with it. All right. I know you're not a military person. You were.

You're a graduate of West Point, and you spent years in the Air Force. You're a geopolitical theorist of the highest level. Nevertheless. How strong are Iran's defenses? I don't think that Iran's defenses are strong at all. And I don't think Israel's defenses, despite all the money they spend on defense, are strong. What both sides have a lot of is offensive capability. They have the ability to strike at each other.

In other words, what I'm saying is Iran cannot do much to protect itself by shooting down Israeli aircraft, Israeli drones, Israeli missiles. But what they can do is retaliation. against the Israeli homeland with ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones. So you have two states here that can really pound each other should a war break out. Why is Iran in Trump's crosshairs? He cannot make the case that it's a threat to American national security. Now, you're going to say to me, Judge, you've had me on your show for three years. Don't be naive. you know why Iran's in your crosshairs because the lobby demands it. Of course. Our Middle East policy is basically governed by the Israel lobby.

We would have good relations with Iran if it weren't for Israel. In the 1990s, for example, the Clinton administration tried to foster some sort of rapprochement with Iran. And it was actually the Iranians who first reached out to the Clinton administration. And Bill Clinton understood that it was in our interest to improve our relations with Iran. And as soon as Clinton moved down that road, the lobby came in and told him the basic facts of life, which is that Israel determines what your policy is towards Iran. And you cannot have good relations towards Iran. So there's no way that President Trump can abandon.

the Israeli position. Wow. Will Russia or China allow Iran to be degraded materially by the U.S. and Israel? Well, they can't intervene directly. Is there a Russian-Iranian defense pact? Not in any meaningful way. There's no alliance there where an attack on one is considered an attack on both. And the Russians do not, under any circumstances, want to get directly involved in a war between Iran and the United States or Iran and Israel or Iran in both of those countries.

I think, however, the Iranians are getting help from the Russians and the Chinese. Let's go back to the big crisis involving the protest between December 28th of last year and January 14th that we were talking about before. You remember, as we've talked about on the show and other guests of yours have talked about on the show, the West smuggled all those Starlink terminals into Iran so that when Iran shut down the Internet and shut down the phone systems in that country in Iran, the protesters could turn to Starlink terminals or to the Starlink system to communicate. And amazingly, Iran was able to shut down the Starlink system inside of Iran. And the question is, how did they do that? And almost everybody says they had substantial help from both the Russians and the Chinese.

And I would be willing to bet that that's just the tip of the iceberg, that the Russians and the Chinese are giving them all sorts of other intelligence, and even material help. But that's different than intervening directly in a conflict. Agreed, agreed, a professor. What happens if the Iranians shut down the streets of war moves? I think almost everybody agrees that it would have a devastating effect on the international economy.

You want to remember that last summer during the 12-day war, one of the reasons that President Trump made sure that that war only left, lasted 12 days was he had a healthy sense that the Iranians were starting to move to shut down the Straits of Hormuz. And he understood that that would be catastrophic for the international economy, something we just didn't want at all. And so that matters. And of course, the Iranians understand that. And that's why the Iranians today are saying that we will shut down the States, number one, number two, we will attack American military installations in the Middle East, and number three, we will attack Israel.

That's their deterrent. And it is a quite formidable deterrent, which is not to say President Trump won't ignore it and go to war anyway, but as we said before, it's hard to see what he gains by going to war. Will an attack on Iran by American forces, unauthorized by the Congress, provoke any public officials in the United States, the way I'm laughing in a second, to address the elephant in the room. Why does Israel have nuclear weapons and Iran is not entitled to them? No. Nobody will say anything. I mean, you know, we're basically dealing with spineless

politicians and spineless journalists. Hardly anybody in the mainstream. and hardly any mainstream politician will stand up and explain what the elephant in the room is. It's really quite remarkable here. It is remarkable. Let's transfer over to Russia. You have said that you believe that the special military operation will be concluded on the battlefield and not in a conference room. Do you still feel that way now?

we're at the end of January, 2026. Oh, absolutely. I mean, these negotiations or so-called negotiations that are taking place in Abu Dhabi or a joke. I mean, all you have to do is ask yourself one simple question. How far apart are Russia's demands on one hand and what Ukraine and the Europeans are willing to accommodate the Russians on? And the answer is that they're light years apart.

There's no common ground here. They've not reached agreement on any one of Russia's major demands. So how do you get a negotiated settlement? When you listen to the conversation in the West about where we are in this process, you quickly realize, if you know anything about the nitty-gritty details, that it bears no resemblance to reality. You know, the idea that we're 90% of the way to an agreement or 95% of the way, we just have to figure out how to dot a couple more eyes and cross a couple more T's and then we're home free.

This is ludicrous. So it must be the American intelligence agencies that are feeding this to the American media. And Zelensky himself is giving speeches about how close we're getting. As Zelensky himself gave a speech a week or 10 days ago in which he said, we're not going to see it any territory. Well, that must have been for domestic political consumption, because if the Russians believed he was serious, they'd go home. Or do you think the entire concept of Abu Dhabi is a charade?

It is a charade. There's no question about it. The Russians are just playing along with this because they understand that they're are two wars taking place here, the war on the battlefield and the propaganda war. And it is in Russia's interest to win the propaganda war or do as well as possible in the propaganda war. And what the Russians want to do, and Putin is very effective at this, is showing how reasonable they are, never losing their temper, never using hot language, saying that they're always willing to negotiate, saying that they have never said they wouldn't negotiate with Zelensky or the Ukrainians

and so forth and so on. They always talk to the Zionist real estate negotiators or dealers that Trump sends over to deal with them, you know, Jared Kushner and Steve Whitkoff. Putin always talks to them or somebody else talks to them in Moscow. But for what end? I mean, these conversations never produce anything. In fact, when you listen to Witkoff and Kushner relay what had happened in the negotiations, you just sort of say to yourself, haven't these people figured out what Russia's demands are and therefore where we stand in terms of making progress in these negotiations? But you never get that. You just get empty rhetoric about how much progress we're making from these real estate moguls. Given the neocon-con,

prevalence, I would say not prevalence, predominance of the people around the president. Do you foresee a new Cold War coming? Do you foresee Russiaphobia, synophobia, animating the foreign policy of the United States? Well, as you know, let's just talk about U.S. China. As you know, I believe that the U.S. and China are already engaged in an intense security competition. Yes. And this is not going to go away. Would you call it a cold war? Yes, that's just a term. No, no, I would definitely call it a cold war because what I do in my lexicon is I distinguish

between a cold war and a hot war. And I think what we want to make sure it doesn't happen is we don't have a hot war. In other words, I think a cold war is in place. I think a cold war is inevitable. That's regrettable, but I think that's just how international politics works. With respect to China. Yes, with respect to China. There's a U.S. security competition, in my opinion, I've long argued this, that was inevitable. That is a cold war, I believe, similar to the cold war between the United States and the Soviet Union between roughly 1947 and 1989. But thankfully, that cold war that you and I both remember well, because we grew up in those years, never turned into a hot war, at least war directly involving the United States and the Soviet Union. And I think what we were. we have to hope for moving forward is that this security competition, or if you want, cold war

between the United States and China does not turn into a hot war, because that would be disastrous. Now can you apply your lexicon to the United States and Russia? I think that under Joe Biden, we were in more than a cold war with a cold war. Russia. I think we were almost at war with Russia. Most people call it a proxy war. I almost think the term proxy war doesn't go far enough in explaining how deeply involved we were in that conflict with Russia under President Biden. So that was at least a cold war and it skirted becoming a hot war. Now, what Trump is trying to do, and this is one of the positive things that Trump is trying to do in terms of foreign policy, is he's trying to improve relations with Russia. He's trying to end the Ukraine war.

And he's trying to move away from having a cold war with Russia. And I've long argued that that is a smart goal. And I only regret that he has been inept at it. strategizing on in terms of ways to actually accomplish that goal. But do you think that the Russians have overlooked or forgiven the attack on President Putin's home, which could not have happened without President Trump knowing about it? Well, it's not clear that Trump had to know about it. The CIA is something of a.

rogue elephant on occasion. And it could be that this was the CIA and MI6 working with the Ukrainians and that Trump didn't know about it or Trump was told that there was a particular attack coming in that vicinity that didn't involve hitting Putin's residence when in fact it did. So it's not clear that Trump knew about this. And I actually think that Trump probably didn't know about it because because he would not have allowed it to happen. But the really interesting question is what do the Russians think? And I think the Russians probably think, like you do, that Trump knew about it. And they have to act accordingly.

I think that the Russians are well aware that the Americans are a mortal enemy. I mean, Trump may have good intentions in his heart, but if you actually look at what he's doing, he's a huge problem for the Russians. And the Russians surely understand this. I mean, there's no question that we're trying to shift the burden for this war onto the shoulders of the Ukrainians. But we're still deeply involved. We're still providing a lot of intelligence to the Ukrainians. We're providing logistical support, and we're helping them get weapons.

So we're still in the fight. To put it in earlier terms we were using, we're still engaged in a cold war with Russia. Right, right. And what about the Europeans? I'm thinking particularly of Poland, Great Britain, Germany, and France. I think there's no question that although there are slight differences among all those countries and how they think about Russia, the Poles, for example, see the Russians as a greater threat than the French do. Nevertheless, the French also think that Russia is a mortal threat.

and all of these European countries are deeply committed to making sure that Russia does not defeat Ukraine, and they're doing everything they can to keep Ukraine afloat. The question is, can they do that as the United States slowly weans itself off the Ukraine war? And it doesn't look like they can do that for the foreseeable future. It looks like Ukraine needs the United States. And despite some of President Trump's rhetoric, I think most of the rhetoric and most of his actions indicate that he wants out. What happens if the United States leaves NATO? Formally, formally leaves NATO.

Well, assuming that formally, or de jure, means de facto, and we're basically out of there, it would have tremendous consequences for Europe. First of all, these European states would then be on their own to provide for their own security. There would be huge numbers of collective action problems among the various states. The idea that if we were to pull out the Europeans would come together and they would form a unified Europe and come up with a successful deterrent strategy, for dealing with Russia is not what's going to happen here. If anything, if you pull the Americans out, you put an end to NATO, all those centrifugal forces that are sitting there below the surface

that are now kept under control by the presence of the U.S. pacifier would come racing to the fore, and you'd have all sorts of collective action problems, and each of the European countries would be pretty much on their own. To take it a step further is very important to understand that the Union, the EU, has been as successful as it has been over the decades in large part because NATO. NATO provides a secure environment, a stable security environment for the European Union to operate in. If states in Europe are on their own have to provide for their own security and are competing with each other sometimes and cooperating with each other sometimes, that will have very negative effects on the European Union. It'll be much harder to make the European Union work. And the European

Union, as you know, is already being strained quite badly. So you take the Americans out of Europe. You take the American pacifier away. It's a completely different ballgame in terms of security. And I would argue even in terms of economics in Europe. Professor Mir Schammer, great conversation. Thank you, my dear friend. A terrific, terrific conversation. They all are, but this was, we had someone a so many topics. And as always, he gave such lucid comments and explanations of your views. Thank you, my dear friend. Thank you for your kind words, Judge. And I greatly look forward to seeing you next week. As do I and as do the many thousands that watch you. Thank you, Professor.

You're welcome. Okay. Coming up at 4 o'clock this afternoon, the end of the long but fruitful day, Pepe Escobar, Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.