Judging Freedom - Prof. John Mearsheimer: When Will Middle East and Ukraine Explode

Episode Date: February 29, 2024

Prof. John Mearsheimer: When Will Middle East and Ukraine ExplodeSee 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 Thursday, February 29th, 2024. Professor John Mearsheimer joins us now. Professor Mearsheimer, always a pleasure. There's a lot to talk to you about, making the argument that Ukraine can be saved, Ukraine can be saved, the United States will be safer if Ukraine is saved. President Macron foolishly said, we're not going to take off the table the idea of sending troops. Many of his NATO heads of state colleagues have repudiated that. So with all that as a background, how close to the end is Ukraine with respect to the war and with respect to the stability

of its government? And how unwise is NATO even to be talking about sending troops there? Well, there's no question if you follow events on the battlefield and you follow events in Kiev that Ukraine is in real trouble. The Russians are clearly in the dominant position on the battlefield. The balance of power is shifting in their direction, and there's very little that we in the West and the Ukrainians can do to rectify that shift in the balance. So the Ukrainians are in real trouble on the battlefield. And of course, back in Kiev, there's lots of intrigue. There's lots of unhappiness with Zelensky and with the way the war is going. And there's lots of unhappiness about the fact that it's hard to mobilize more people to fill the ranks, the end result is that the West is beginning to panic because we are so heavily invested in this war. And we have been, of course, from the beginning.

And the best indicator of that is the fact that Macron, the French leader, foolishly suggested that we might put boots on the ground. We, meaning NATO, might put boots on the ground in Ukraine. Of course, this is a remarkably foolish idea, and it's not going to happen. But the fact that he said it is, I think, evidence of how much trouble the West and Ukraine are in. Mrs. Nuland, the Secretary of State, is saying things like, we need to prove Putin wrong. Doesn't she, the orchestrator of the coup in 2014, the maven, if you will, of all this Ukraine bloodshed, understand what you just said, that the Ukrainian government and military are on their last legs. Well, she understands they're in deep trouble and she's desperate to rescue the situation. And the question is, how do you rescue the situation? My basic argument is that you can't rescue the

situation. Ukraine is going to lose this war. In fact, as I've argued, Ukraine has already lost the war. And the only interesting question is how much more they lose over the coming months uh but she's desperate and she knows that if Ukraine loses she will not only have egg all over her face she will have blood on her hands because she is one of those people who is principally responsible for creating this disaster and she she's, you know, just hoping that some sort of miracle comes along so that she's rescued at the last moment. But I don't think that's going to happen. Here she is over the weekend, Chris. Cut number eight. Ukraine, as we saw in the news, has been forced to withdraw from Avdeyevka. Kharkiv,

one of Ukraine's proudest eastern city, a Russian-speaking city, is bombarded daily in an effort to disable it. And Ukraine's economy is still fragile, with almost 100% of tax revenues going to defense now. Vladimir Putin, in addition to planning anti-satellite weapons in space and bearing responsibility for the death of his most popular opponent, Alexei Navalny, thinks he can wait Ukraine out. And he thinks he can wait out all of us.

We need to prove him wrong. We need to prove him wrong. The old Cold War attitude. So two issues that I want to raise with you. One, she says that Kharkiv is being bombed. It is by the Ukrainians. It's in eastern Ukraine, and they're bombing their own Russian-speaking people. She's been extremely, she's being extremely, extremely deceptive there too. The head of the Ukrainian intelligence, I forget the general's name, you may know him or know of him, said that Navalny died of a blood clot. He even said, I'm sorry to disappoint you, he wasn't murdered. She must know these things.

Well, I think there's little doubt at this point that Navalny died of a blood clot. I mean, these charges that Putin murdered him never made any sense from the beginning. It would have been foolish in the extreme for Putin to murder Navalny because, first of all, he did not have a large following in Russia. Second of all, he was behind bars and not in a position to cause any trouble. great victory in Avdivka, and it made no sense at that point in time to take that issue off the front page by murdering Navalny. So I think that that charge is crazy, and the argument that he died of a blood clot makes perfect sense. With regard to Kharkiv, you want to remember, this is very important, that the Russians initially controlled Kharkiv at the start of the war. And what then happened is that the Ukrainians took it back.

And they took it back because the Russians didn't have the manpower. This is in the summer of 2022, a few months after the war started. The Russians didn't have the manpower to hold on to Kharkiv. And it was a real feather in the Ukrainians' cap that they took this territory back. But there's a lot of evidence that the Ukrainians are not going to be able to hold on to Kharkiv and that the Russians are going to retake it. So we want to keep our eye on that one moving forward, because this is just more evidence of how the situation only gets worse over time for Ukraine. And of course, it explains Macron's behavior and it explains Victoria Nuland's rhetoric.

The New York Times published a piece over the weekend. I'm going to guess you read it. It was about 10,000 words. It sounded like it was a puff piece leaked by the CIA, but among many statements in there was the reporting that the CIA has 12 bases in Ukraine, that it's had them for over 10 years, and that from these bases it is training Ukrainian troops to fire American weapons with American ammunition at the Russian soldiers and into Russia. I'm going to suggest to you, Professor Mearsheimer, if there's 12 CIA bases in Ukraine that have been there for 10 years, the Russians know all about them, know where they are, know who's there,

and know what's going on there. Question. Are we waging war against Russia? Yes. I mean, if you had any doubts, all you have to do is read that article. We are not, except maybe in rare instances that you and I don't know about, pulling the triggers or pushing the bombs. But otherwise, we are so deeply involved in this war that it's really kind of hard to believe. And when you read this article, which talks about those 12 bases, and by the way, at the end of the article, they say there are two additional bases, so a total of 14 bases. And we look at all the training we've done and all the intelligence we're providing the Ukrainians with, all the planning that we're helping them with, it's unequivocally clear that

we're deeply involved. And we have been, as you said in your comments, for a long time. Now, I want to emphasize that when Putin invaded on February 24, 2022, He made it clear then and before he invaded that Ukraine was becoming a de facto member of NATO. We, of course, denied that. And we said that it's probably the case that Ukraine will never become a part of NATO. In fact, if you read this piece, it is very clear that by the time Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022, it was a de facto member of NATO. And Putin indeed had very good reasons to fear Ukraine becoming a part of NATO, to fear Ukraine becoming a Western bulwark on his border. How foolish for NATO was it to and Sweden in the last year? I don't think it makes a whole heck of a lot of difference. I think that it's not going to

enhance the power of the alliance in any meaningful way, except for American military power. The alliance is kind of a paper tiger these days. I mean, if you look at the British, for example, the British Army is the smallest it's been since 1714. Think about that. The smallest it's been since 1714. 1714, 60 years before the American Revolution. That's correct. And that is a simple fact. And if you look at the performance of the British military on a variety of other fronts, they've tested two Trident missiles, both of which have failed. The German military is in terrible shape. The fact is,

is Barack Obama and Donald Trump both emphasized the Europeans don't spend enough money on defense. And if you don't spend enough money on defense, you're not going to have formidable defensive capabilities. And the NATO countries, except for the United States, don't have formidable military capabilities. If we were ever to get into a fight, we meaning NATO, with the Russians in Ukraine, the only side that would really matter or the only country that would really matter for NATO is the United States. The rest of our allies are just not very formidable. Oh, by the way, Denmark just gave all its artillery to Ukraine. So Denmark has no artillery. I mean, this is what you're talking about. I wonder who arranged that, Tony Blinken

or Jake Sullivan. You'll know who this is. Chris, play cut number 11, please. And after we listen to what he says, I'm going to ask you why he felt he had to say this. NATO is not and will not be party to the war. That remains the case. We do not want Russia's war against Ukraine to become a war between Russia and NATO. We agree on this with all our allies. This also means no German participation in the war. To put it bluntly, as German Chancellor, I will not be sending any members of the German armed forces to Ukraine. Our soldiers can count on that.

And you too can count on that. Is this in response to the nonsense from the President of France? Absolutely. Count und Art. States is not going to send ground forces in either. It was just Macron who said that, and it really went nowhere. No other country supported Macron. And the reason is twofold. Number one, as I just said to you, we do not have the capability, except for maybe the United States, to fight a major war in Ukraine against Russia at this point in time. But the more important reason is the threat of nuclear escalation. And Putin today made it clear that if Ukraine becomes a battlefield where NATO is on one side and Russia is on the other side, there is a good chance that it will escalate to the nuclear level. We, of course, know that. And for that reason, we are definitely not sending ground forces into Ukraine. Here's President Putin with that clarity. They should eventually understand that we also have weapons and they know it.

I just said it now myself, weapons that can hit targets on their territory. Everything that the West is coming up with now, what they threaten the world with, it can result in a conflict with the use of nuclear weapons and therefore the destruction of civilization. Are you surprised he had to speak in such cold and harsh terms? No, I think it made good sense for him to send that message clearly. And I think what it illustrates is that you have a situation where the French leader looks foolish and Putin, in contrast, looks like he is acting in a responsible way. He didn't, you know, stand up and say, I'm going to

start a nuclear war if you did this. He was just reminding the West that this is a serious business, that he views NATO expansion into Ukraine as an existential threat, and that if we were to put ground forces into Ukraine, that there is a good chance that nuclear weapons would be used. And of course, he's correct. There is a good chance. It's not for certain that that would happen, but there is a serious possibility. And I'm glad that he made that comment because it reminds anybody in the West who wants to put NATO forces into Ukraine that this would be a terrible idea. You are expert in a number of things, not the least of which is the power of the Israeli lobby in the United States. Can the Israeli lobby in the United States possibly defend what happened earlier today in Gaza, where hundreds of people were lined up to get flour and water from food trucks,

and the IDF mowed down more than 100 of them. Before you reply, here is a clip, number one, Chris, from a man that was there with English translation. We have come here to get our hands on some aid. I've been waiting here since noon yesterday. At about 4.30 in the early morning, trucks started to trickle in. The Israelis just opened random fire on us as if it was a trap.

Once we approached the aid trucks, the Israeli tanks and warplanes started firing on us. If this continues like this, we do not want any aid delivered at all. Every convoy coming means another massacre. Every convoy coming needs another massacre. Let's start with the military logistics of that, and then you can tell me if you think the Israeli lobby is in a position to defend that.

Why would they be attacking civilians as they line up to get food, but for the war crime of ethnic cleansing and genocide? Well, it's not perfectly clear what exactly happened, so we want to be careful here. What the Israelis say happened is that the crowd became rambunctious and people began to approach the Israeli forces, the IDF forces, and that they were forced to open fire on them. I don't know whether that's true. You would expect the Israelis to make an argument like that. But even if the forces were there and the Palestinians who were there to get food got dispersed and started moving towards the Israelis, it's unacceptable that you would end up shooting 100 people or more than 100 people. So this is, I think, an absolutely horrendous situation. I mean, if you think about what's going on here, it's quite clear that the Palestinians

in Gaza are starving. And we are having a remarkably difficult time. And this includes the Biden administration, which is trying to get more food, more water, more fuel, and more medicine into Gaza. You would think that once this food and this other material gets into Gaza, that it would be dispersed in some responsible way. But that has not been happening. There's been all sorts of problems with the dispersal of food for reasons we could get into later. But anyway, here we have a situation where you finally get

a big load of food into Gaza and the Israelis end up shooting, for whatever reason, over a hundred of the Palestinians who were there desperate for food. This is a disastrous situation. And of course, I think as the facts come out, the Israelis are going to end up looking very bad. And it's going to have terrible consequences for them. And I think the lobby is going to have one heck of a difficult time trying to defend Israel. I mean, what is the lobby going to do? They can give Joe Biden all the money they want for his reelection, but the opposition to Joe Biden, look at the 100,000 Democrats in Michigan voting uncommitted when the opposition is the sitting head of their party who happens to be the president of the United States.

The opposition is coming from the human heart. All the money in the world is not going to overcome people's revulsion at what the Israeli government is doing to innocent civilians in Gaza. I think that's true. And I think there is absolutely no question that the longer this goes on, the worse the situation gets for Israel. And the more difficult it becomes for the lobby and the Israeli government and the American government to defend Israel's actions. And I think what you see with Biden is that he's beginning to panic. I think that Biden wants to do everything he can to get a ceasefire and to put an end to this war. I think that Biden is clearly interested in

getting more humanitarian aid into Gaza. He's working very hard to do that. The Israelis have been thwarting him. There's no question about that for the last few weeks. And this incident will just make it worse. And by the way, you want to understand that at some point the Israelis are going to invade Rafah. And I believe that once they finish in Rafah, they're going to pick a fight with Hezbollah in Lebanon. There's just all sorts of evidence of this. So this one is not going to end anytime soon. This is just going to go on and on. And as it does, more and more people are turning against Israel for good reason. And by the way, that includes many American Jews who think this is an absolutely horrendous situation. So Biden is in real trouble. And of

course, I don't want to minimize for one second the fact that the Palestinians are suffering in ways that are just, you know, hard to imagine. Before I ask you about the military and political wisdom of the IDF attacking Hezbollah, particularly given their prior experience, here is Joe Biden's diplomacy by ice cream uh cut number two can you give us a sense of when you think that c5 will start sir well i hope by the beginning of the weekend i mean the end of the weekend at least my my national security advisor tells me that we're close we're close it's not yet. And my hope is by next Monday. Well, A, that's a lot of ice cream on that cone.

B, my national security advisor tells me that we're close. Hamas and Israel both say he doesn't know what he's talking about. Yeah. Well, the Israelis have made it clear they don't think that we're close. And one would think after the incident we just discussed where over 100 Palestinians were killed in the process of trying to beat their starvation and get some humanitarian aid is just going to make the situation even worse. The thing you want to remember here, which underpins a lot of what is going on, is that Prime Minister Netanyahu has no interest in ending this war anytime soon,

because he's committed himself to defeating Hamas, and that can't be done quickly, if it can ever be done. So he has a vested interest in stringing this out. Plus, if the war ends, he's likely to be pushed out of power. Biden, on the other hand, has a profound interest, as we were talking about a few minutes ago, in ending this war as quickly as possible, because it's already done significant damage to his political situation in a year where he's up for re-election. But if it goes on and on, it's just going to do greater damage and minimize the chances that he'll get re-elected in November. How militarily wise or unwise is it for the Israelis to begin bombing Lebanon and taking on Hezbollah? Well, I think it's remarkably foolish, but the

Israelis are between a rock and a hard place. They have lots of people who lived on their northern border, which is in effect right next door to where Hezbollah is in southern Lebanon. Otherwise known as the West Bank. No, this is in Israel proper. This is not in the West Bank. This is in Israel proper. It's the northern part of Israel proper or, you know, 1967 Israel. And these folks have been forced out of their homes and into central Israel because of the shooting back and forth between the IDF on one side and Hezbollah on the other. So the Israelis are very interested in moving Hezbollah back to the Latani River and creating a giant buffer zone between Hezbollah on one side and the Israeli border on the other

side. But Hezbollah shows no interest in doing that, and the fighting back and forth or the shooting back and forth continues. So what the Israelis are talking about doing, and you see this especially with their defense minister, they're talking about, you know, picking a fight with Hezbollah and solving this problem militarily. And the talk seems to be that once the Israelis are done attacking Rafah and dealing with those last four battalions of Hamas fighters in Rafah, they will then turn to dealing with Hezbollah. The Americans, of course, are putting enormous pressure on the Israelis not to get into a fight with Hezbollah. In fact, we don't want them to get into a fight in Rafah. But as always, the question is,

can the Israelis, will the Israelis listen to the Gazans? Would the IDF presume to stop shipments of aid coming from Israel's benefactor and financer? Well, the thing is the Israelis can thumb their nose at us almost whenever they want. This is my point to you about Biden imploring them not to go into RAFA or Biden and the Secretary of Defense, General Austin, imploring them not to attack Lebanon. You can make it clear if you're an American policymaker what you want them to do. But you have no coercive leverage in large part because of the lobby. The lobby makes it almost impossible for us to really get tough with the Israelis. And the same thing is true with humanitarian aid. Biden, to his credit,

has been trying to get much more humanitarian aid into Gaza. And the Israelis have been slow walking the humanitarian aid. They've been making it very difficult for us to get lots of humanitarian aid in there. And then, of course, you had that incident today, which we discussed, which just makes the problem even worse. So you want to ask yourself, what is Biden now going to do? Between now and the next time I'm on the show with you, what do you think Biden will do to get tough with the Israelis? Probably nothing. Probably nothing. Yeah, exactly.

Here's the King of Jordan in one of those large transport planes pushing aid out over the Mediterranean Sea, and then the parachute opens up. The aid lands in the sea, and the Gazans go out in glorified bathtubs and pick the aid up and try and bring it to the seashore. We ran a clip of them climbing all over each other in order to get this aid. It was a very moving clip, but we got whacked by the people who decide what we can all show. And so we're not running that clip again, but it's terribly, terribly moving.

What is the lobby going to do to Joe Biden if he starts sending aid or says to Bibi, enough's enough. You're not getting any more spare parts as of Wednesday. What are they going to do? Give their money to Donald Trump as if he needs it? Well, money really does matter in American politics, as you know,

and a lot of money will be withdrawn from Biden and given to Trump. And furthermore, the media, in important ways, will turn on Biden. He will be severely criticized. And this is all happening in a political situation where Biden and Trump are neck and neck. A few thousand votes here and there may determine who becomes the next president of the United States. This is why Michigan is so important. And this is why all of those voters in Michigan who did not vote for Biden and were uncommitted present him with such a problem. If he doesn't win Michigan, he's not likely to win the 2024 election. So he's got 100,000 Democrats, Democrats that refused to vote for him in the Democratic primary. They voted for none of the

above or uncommitted when the president of the United States was on the ballot. Yeah. And by the way, there was a column in the New York Times by Charles Blow, who had gone to Michigan and investigated this whole issue. And the point that he makes in this column is that those people who voted uncommitted are deeply committed to making sure Biden is defeated in the fall. They're not just simply trying to send him a message now so that he changes his behavior so they can vote for him in the fall. No, that's not what's going on. Do they think they're going to find sympathy for Gozzins in the heart and soul of Donald Trump? No, they don't. And they understand full well that Trump is not going to be nice on this issue, or he's not going to be favorable to them on this issue. They fully understand that. But they believe that given that you're dealing with what they refer to as Genocide Joe, he deserves to be punished. He does not deserve to win. And if Trump ends up being the president,

so be it. This is the story that Charles Blow tells after talking to a large number of Arab Americans. Yeah. The sad state of affairs. And I'm not talking about politically. I don't want to get into the Trump versus Biden stuff, at least not yet. It's a sad state of affairs for the poor Gazans. I see no hope for them unless some state actor enters or unless Hezbollah soundly crushes the IDF. I don't know how this type of slaughter that we witnessed this morning can stop. Well, my great hope, believe it or not, is that my thesis, my thesis and Steve Walt's thesis about the power of the lobby is proof decisively wrong that all of these Israeli actions cause a firestorm in the United States and President Biden is forced to fundamentally

alter his position and basically stop this genocide. In my heart, I hope that happens. In my head, I don't think it's likely to happen. But again, I hope I'm proven decisively wrong. You live in Chicago. You may have a better feel for Michigan than we do here on the East Coast. Do you think Joe Biden would get reelected if he did a 180-degree turn on Israel? No, I think the lobby would move in on him. That's my point. The lobby would move in on him, and they'd go after him hammer and tong, and given that any election between him and Trump will be close, I think he would almost certainly lose. Well, then he can't get reelected because he can't win without Michigan,

and he can't win Michigan unless he changes his position on Israel and Gaza. I think that's basically right. As I've said on a number of occasions in the past, I think he's between a rock and a hard place. No matter what he does, he loses, and I think that he understands that. He made a fundamental mistake, Judge, early on when he embraced Benjamin Netanyahu and basically said he would give Israel cart wash. It was not in his interest. In my view, it was not in Israel's interest either. If anything, he should have from the get-go worked hard to rein the Israelis in, because what the Israelis are doing in Gaza is not in our interest strategically.

It's morally bankrupt. And it's not, in my opinion, in Israel's strategic interest. And it is a moral stain on their reputation that will not go away for a long, long time. Professor John Mearsheimer,, dear friend, the pleasure. Thank you very much for joining us. We'll see you again next week. Look forward to it. Thank you.

Thank you. Coming up at five o'clock Eastern, Scott Horton, Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thank you.