The Duran Podcast - An Endgame for the Ukrainian War w/ John Mearsheimer, Alexander Mercouris and Glenn Diesen

Episode Date: September 9, 2023

An Endgame for the Ukrainian War w/ John Mearsheimer, Alexander Mercouris and Glenn Diesen Bound to Lose. Ukraine’s 2023 Counteroffensive: https://mearsheimer.substack.com/p/bound-to-lose

Welcome to today's program. My name is Glenn Dyson. I'm a professor of political science. With me is Alexander Mercuris from the very popular and informative Durand podcast. And the guest today is John Meerschheimer. So, yeah, Merchheimer is a political realist, thus arguing that international politics is best understood as the security competition among the great powers. And since 2014, I would say Merchheimer, has been a leading voice, if not the leading voice, academic voice on the Ukrainian war. And his main argument has been very straightforward.

Russia considers NATO to be an existential threat in Ukraine, and Russia would therefore react much in the same way. The US will probably react if Russia or China put their military in Mexico. So thus, after the Western back coup in 2014, Merzheimer spent the next eight years, I would say, warning around the world that are the determined. to pull Ukraine into NATO meant that we have put Ukraine on the path to destruction by effectively provoking a Russian invasion. So I would say unfortunately, all his warnings and predictions came true.

But yeah, Professor Meersheimer, welcome. It's a great privilege to have you on. It's my pleasure to be here with the two of you. So we really want to start off the discussion by focusing on where we currently are in this. Ukrainian offensive. And yeah, you have a new article out with the title Bound to Lose, which is, of course, revealing, in which you argue that the big counteroffensive that we were arming the Ukrainians for was destined to fail. I was hoping you could elaborate and explain. Well, I think that what had happened here, Glenn, is that the war had settled

into a war of attrition. And in a war of attrition, The Ukrainians were guaranteed to lose. The Russians are just much too powerful in terms of the balance of manpower and the balance of military equipment, especially artillery, for the Ukrainians to win over the long term. I might also add that there are all sorts of questions about whether the West would remain committed to providing weapons for Ukraine. So they were potentially in real trouble in a war of attrition. And what they were doing was looking for a clever strategy to get out of that situation.

And they decided to launch what was a classic Blitzkrieg, which is that they would try to penetrate or break through the front lines, the so-called Sir Vecan line of the Russian defenses. And then once they were in the rear area of the Russians, they would affect the deep strategic penetration. In other words, they'd drive deep into the area that the Russians controlled and they'd reach the Sea of Azov. And this would split the Russian forces in half and put an end to the land bridge to Crimea. And then the Russians would be back on their heels. They'd agree to have a negotiation. And we would hold all the cards, we meaning the West and Ukraine.

And the end result would be that we'd get a favorable agreement. and put an end to this war. And my argument is that this was a pipe dream. This is not a serious argument. That's not to say that virtually everybody in the West in the mainstream, that doesn't include any of us at this point in time, but virtually everybody in the mainstream thought this was going to work. They thought that it was going to work swimmingly,

and the Ukrainians would end up defeating the Russians. And my argument in the paper that I just wrote, which, of course, you two have long agreed with, is that this was a pipe dream. It was just not going to work. And, of course, it hasn't worked. It's actually quite stunning how unsuccessful the Ukrainians have been. And what a godawful price they have paid. I mean, it's actually sickening to read the stories and watch the videos about the casualties in Ukraine. These are people who are being led to the slaughter.

And in fact, the West was pushing them to launch this offensive. There's all sorts of evidence that the Ukrainians were dragging their feet because they understood that it wasn't going to work. But nevertheless, we pushed very hard for them to launch this offensive on 4 June. And it's quite clear where we are. So that's my basic storyline. I think your article actually isn't, maybe the basic storyline, but it goes more deeply because one of the things that is so interesting, and I found so interesting about that article, is that you look at the question of Bleetskrieg, and you ask, how often does Blitzkrieg

succeed in these kinds of situations against a peer-equal adversary? and it doesn't succeed very often. I think only one instance, which was, if you like, the original Blitzkriek in 1940. Now, this one assumes, I assume, I've not had much dealings with military people at all. This was something which I would have assumed military people in Washington would know.

Did they know? If not, what caused them to get this so completely? wrong? I mean, were they providing wrong advice to the White House, to the administration, through NATO, or was it something that they just themselves got wrong, perhaps because they didn't take the Russians very seriously? Well, the truth is, Alexander, I learned all this stuff about Blitzkrieg and Armored Warfare during the Cold War when we focused on the central front. And the question at the time was whether or not the Soviets or the Warsaw Pact could launch an attack into Germany and end up on the beaches of Dunkirk in 48 hours. Now, very importantly, this was

seen as a fair fight. You had two massive armies on either side of the inter-German border. And we looked at the subject of Blitz Creek in the context of a fair fight in those days. What has happened with the end of the Cold War is that the United States has engaged in lots of unfair fights. The United States is very good at beating up on militaries that are far weaker than the American military. And we have not been involved in a fair fight that it involved launching a blitzkrieg. So you have all of these generals in the American military who comment on TV, who just have not thought long and hard about Blitzkrieg involving a fair fight, right? And they tended to think that this was an unfair fight because, as you emphasize in your shows, there's a widespread feeling in the West that the Russians are bankrupt militarily, that they're on the verge of breaking apart. They don't know how to fight, and the Ukrainians are on a roll, so to speak.

So in a very important way, I think a lot of people in the West, and this includes the generals, thought that this was an unfair fight. and that the Ukrainians could simply do to the Russians what the Germans did to the French in 1940. But anybody who looked at this carefully, looked at what the balance of forces really looked like, and I would emphasize this, listen to what the Ukrainians were saying about Russian capabilities. The Ukrainians were saying since at least January of this, this year, that the Russians were getting very effective at fighting on the battlefield. They were learning, and they had a steep learning curve. So the Ukrainians did not expect the Russians to fold. But in the West, I think, especially among these generals, there was a widespread

feeling that the Russians would fold and that this would be an unfair fight in the end. And of course, they were dead wrong. The other point that would make is that, you know, It is virtually impossible for anyone who wants to be accepted in the mainstream in the United States to make the argument that the Ukrainians are doomed and that the Russians have the upper hand. The discourse in the West, and this includes the United States and Europe, goes in a way that says the Russians are bankrupt, the Russians are evil, the Russians. are going to lose. The Ukrainians are the good guys and so forth and so on. And if you challenge that

conventional wisdom, you're in serious trouble. You're either called a Putin apologist or you're basically blackballed and not allowed to write op-eds or articles in the mainstream media. And it's very effective. So if you're a general officer or you're a pundit or you're a strategist and you want to comment on what Ukraine's likelihood is of winning against the Russians, you better say that the Ukrainians are going to win. And if you say the Ukrainians are doomed, you're going to be in a lot of trouble. And that incentive structure, I think, explains a lot of what is going on here. I wanted to ask, do you think also we to some extent began to believe some of our own information warfare or propaganda because I think many people wanted to repeat what was done in Kerson and Karkov.

Because in our media, it's portrayed as being this great big battles and huge victories for Ukraine. But again, if we look at it, I guess, you know, the battle of Kersen was, you know, the Russian had to pull back because they feared that all the rare was vulnerable, that the Ukrainians could take out the dam, or the bridges so they wouldn't be able to retreat. And we have the same force structure of the Russians in Kharkov when they were very, you know, they didn't have that many troops back then in the middle of 2022. So a very limited ability to defend such a huge territory. So they also did what you can call a tactical withdrawal. But again, in our media, it was a great battle, victory.

It proved that one side was competent, the other one was a failure. But of course, the military has changed. We're not fighting Russia of the summer of 2022. We're fighting in September of 2023. How do you see the Russian capabilities and their intention having changed over the past year? Well, two quick points. One is, I think we misread what happened, we meaning the West, the mainstream media, misread what happened in Harkiv and Hirsong, as you described it.

And if you looked carefully at what happened, these were not great Ukrainian victories. In fact, if you go to Hirsand, as both of you know very well, before the Russians withdrew, they really hammered the Ukrainians. The Ukrainians suffered enormous casualties on the West Bank of Hirs. on the West Bank of the Nieupper in Hearson before the Russians evacuated. The Russians were not pushed out, right? And you see a similar situation in Harkiv. So these were not great victories that presaged what was going to happen in the counteroffensive.

The counteroffensive, the situation that the Ukrainians were facing in the counteroffensive was fundamentally different than the situation. they faced in those two big campaigns in 2022. And people just misread this. But look, here's what happened. First of all, the Russians learned. And this is a lot like World War II. If you look at the Red Army in July of 1941, it does not look very competent.

And indeed, it is not very confident. But if you look at the Red Army in July of 1914, It's a fundamentally different army. It is much more competent, and we all know how that war started out and how it ended. So the Russians had a steep learning curve, and this is not peculiar to the Russian army. All armies start off rusty, and then they improve as the war goes on. Just look at what happened to the American Army in World War II. We performed horribly in North Africa when we first landed there, the Battle of Catholic

It was a disaster. But slowly but steadily we learned. And by the time, you know, we had to break out at Sanlo in the summer of 1944, we were a quite competent army. So the Russians were going to get better, period. And again, the Ukrainians were telling us that that was happening. That's point number one. Point number two is that the Russians mobilized lots of forces. And now they have lots of people who are enlisting in the army. And this is a growing army. It's getting bigger and bigger. It's suffering much less casualties than the Ukrainians. And the end result of this is that the Russian army has gotten much more formidable relative to the Ukrainian army over time. And this, from a Ukrainian point of view, this situation only gets.

It's worse because the Russian army is going to get bigger and bigger. The Ukrainian army has been badly damaged. It's really quite amazing. The casualties they've suffered, not only in terms of manpower, but in terms of weaponry as well. So this is, I think, basically what's happened here. The Russians have clearly been on a massive learning curve. The question is, what about us? Are we going through a learning curve ourselves?

I mean, we've supported Ukraine, we've pushed Ukraine into this offensive. The offensive is not turning out well. Are we learning any lessons from it here in the West? Are we starting to absorb some of the military lessons, but perhaps more importantly, some of the political lessons? I say that because I read all the time in the media arguments about tactics, about the fact that Ukraine needs to change its tactics, go on to combined arms tactics.

I've never really understood much of this, not having any sort of military background, but it doesn't seem to me that this offers any sort of solution. But if we're going to reduce everything to a discussion of tactics, when the strategic picture is going wrong, then it seems to me that we're not really learning the underlying lesson, which is that Ukraine cannot win this war.

Well, if you ask me, whether we in the West, and this does not include us, but they're in the mainstream, if you ask me whether we have a steep learning curve, the answer is no. The only interesting question is whether that learning curve is flat or it goes up a little bit. And I think the fact is that it is close to flat. I've watched the American National Security establishment at work since the Cold War ended, and we've gone from one fiasco to another. It's truly amazing.

The fact that hardly anybody seriously questioned whether this offensive would work is just hard to believe. And a really good example of this Alexander has to do with General Millie. As you know, Millie said last fall after they hear Son and Harkiv, offenses were successful, that this is the time to cut a deal because Millie understood they were lucky, right, that they were dealing with an over-extended Russian army at the time. They had two victories under the belt, right? But the situation was just going to get worse with time. So Millie was saying, cut a deal now.

Millie was shut down immediately. Everybody told him that, you know, his comments were basically Russian propaganda, aiding the Russians, hurting the Ukrainians, and so forth and so on. And what he should do is act as a cheerleader. This is quite remarkable. And I don't see the situation fundamentally different today than it was back then. I hope I'm wrong. I mean, we really don't know what's going on behind closed doors. I mean, we can hypothesize what the battles look like and we can make plausible arguments but exactly how many people are acting in a common sensical way is hard to say at this point and i would note by the way it's certainly not going to include Biden Jake Sullivan and uh Tony blinking I mean I think all three

of them are basically hopeless on this front but uh but maybe someone like bill burns uh is speaking to power here. But who knows? I was curious because this, I guess one of the strength of the West was supposed to be our openness, the ability of military leaders, academics, journalists to ask critical questions to get the best policies possible. And I guess it's been one of the problems that do we either have, you know, either be a cheerleader in your words or effectively be pushed aside and, you know, have your articles

scraped from the internet. And I saw this interesting interview by a former president, Nikola Sarkozy, where he kind of made, will hint it towards this, because he argued that there was a key mistake for the West to bet everything on defeating Russia in this offensive, simply saying we didn't have any plan B if it doesn't work. No one even wanted to discuss the prospect of negotiating with the Russians. And again, this was what happened to him, he was also labeled a Putinist for pointing out this key weakness. But it kind of takes me where to go from here?

Because obviously the Russians are building up a big, powerful force in the rear. The Ukrainians tend to be falling a bit apart. And also the West were having some war fatigue and also our weapons storage are empty. So where do we go from here? Because the way I see it, either we have to escalate in the form of more powerful weapons or striking deeper inside Russia or entering the war directly or we have to start talking to Russia. But again, after a year of a half of fighting, the possibilities which were in front of us in March

and April of last year aren't really here anymore, I think. So it just seems Russia, Ukraine, they both see an existential threat. The West, we kind of gamble the entire liberal hedger. Germanic order on this war. So what is the possibility of any political settlement coming out of this? Let me just make a couple points, and I won't answer all your questions, which are terrific. And then you guys can come back at me and offer your opinions, and we can talk more about the issues I don't address. But I want to start by just emphasizing that it's important to note that Sarkozy was at the infamous April 2008 book. NATO summit where the decision was made to bring Ukraine into NATO. And Sarkozy and Merkel, she was the

German leader at the time. He was the French leader, of course. Both of them were adamantly opposed to bringing Ukraine into NATO because both of them understood what would happen. Just very important to understand that. So Sarkozy has, he saw the light in the beginning, right? And of course, what's happened to him is that he's been, in effect, smeared for speaking in a common sense of a way, which is what happens. Now, a couple points about where do we go from here. First of all, it's very important to understand that the West has no way of winning this war. And Ukraine has no way of winning this war. There's no magic formula here.

You know, people talk about combined arms this and combined arms that maneuver warfare. Oh, let's give them F-16s and A-Tacombs and those magical weapons will rescue the situation. This is all nonsense. There's no magical formula here that the West can apply. The interesting question to me is, what do you do if you're playing Russia's hand at this point in time? right if if the west wants to negotiate what what are you willing to do do you accept the status quo on the ground or a slightly altered version of the status quo where you get all of zapparisia all of the donbass and so forth and so on that those areas are you know that those four o blasasas

that you now do not completely control. You get them, but that's it. That's the deal. And then you accept the fact that Ukraine may be part of NATO down the road or that the relationship between NATO and Ukraine will remain intact. Is that a deal that you're willing to accept? I think the answer is no. I think if you're the Russians, you do not trust the West. at all. You do not trust anything, they say. And what you do is you try to get yourself into a position where you accept the fact that the tie, the link between NATO and Ukraine is not going to be broken. We're not going to walk away from this. And then the question is, how do you weaken Ukraine to where it's truly a dysfunctional rough state and where your security, Russia's security,

is maximized in the future. And I think from a Russian point of view, that means continuing the war. It means taking more territory. I think they want to take the four oblasts, that are further to the west of the four oblasts that they've already annexed. I think the only only way, and I'd be very curious to know what you folks think about this, I think the only way you can avoid that and you can basically freeze the status quo on the ground is if NATO and Ukraine agree to completely sever, and I'm choosing my words carefully here, completely sever the security relationship between the two sides. There is no more Western security commitment or security guarantee to Ukraine. There is no more possibility of Ukraine

becoming a member of NATO. It's taken off the table. I think if you can convince the Russians that that is going to happen, then you may be able to freeze the situation on the ground and get some sort of peace agreement. But I don't see that happening. And that's why I think the Russians are incentivized to continue taking more territory. As Alexander often says on his show, every time the West says they're doubling down on bringing Ukraine into NATO, that gives the Russians greater incentive to destroy Ukraine. It's kind of crazy, but that's where we are. So I'd be curious to know what you folks think about those comments. Very interesting comment.

First of all, I think that the Russians probably, when I say the Russians, the Kremlin, Putin, the people around him, probably would be willing to begin a negotiation. I think that this isn't just because Putin is somebody who likes to negotiate and he tends to see negotiation diplomacy as an area. where he's strong. But I think at some level, what he's concerned about, what he wants is, what the Russians wants, is to assert an independent position in the world. They want Russia to be secure, but they also want it to be independent. They wanted to be sovereign. So they don't want to cut themselves off completely from the West. If they can come to some kind of long-term, sustainable understanding with the West, then they would be open to a negotiation about Ukraine. But it would not just be about Ukraine.

This is what I personally think. I think it would also have to extend, firstly, to the question of certainly no NATO membership for Ukraine. I think that is an absolute red line for the Russians. It has been ever since 2008. It has been that before 2008. Bill Burns said as much. But I think they will also want some guarantee that this whole situation won't repeat itself again in the future. And that means looking at the security arrangements in Europe.

Now, they offered those two draft treaties in December 2021, going back before then, back in, I think it was in fact 2008. They made proposals about making the OSCE, the leading security institution in Europe. They might be prepared to enter into substantive discussions about this, but it is going to be extremely difficult. And I have to say that might be something the Russians are prepared to do. I'm not convinced from everything I've seen and heard that the United States is. and some countries in Europe, and I'm sorry to say, mine, Britain, I think would be strongly opposed to this. So this is, I'm answering a question now, but that's what I think.

But aren't you saying that the West is not going to be willing to sever its security relationship with Ukraine and therefore satisfy the Russians? Well, I think they might conceivably say, right, well, we accept that Ukraine isn't going to join NATO any time soon, which is what they've said before. But I don't think that's going to be enough to satisfy the Russians. I think if that's all we're prepared to say, and that for the moment, that's the only indication that we have that they're prepared to say anything. I think the Russians will say, no, that isn't enough. And if we offer Ukraine what we call security guarantees, which fall short of NATO membership, but which the Russians see again as perhaps an entry point for future NATO membership for Ukraine, the Russians will again say, sorry, that's not enough.

We have to talk about NATO. We have to talk not just about Ukraine and NATO, but also the general way forward, a general security architecture guarantees for our security on our western borders, which is paramount to us. And I think you can understand where the Russians are coming from. Ten years ago, it would have been different if in Bucharest we'd not made that offer to Ukraine. Then, you know, they wouldn't probably have said that we're worried about the general security situation. in Europe if we'd implemented the Minsk agreements, which of course did not even mention NATO. It's purely about internal domestic arrangements within Ukraine. It was not about, it was not

overtly about Ukraine's foreign policy alignments and commitments, but we didn't do that. We didn't, we didn't persuade the Ukrainians that their interest lay in implementing the Minsk agreement. Because we didn't do those things, it's exactly what you said. Trust has collapsed. Even if we say, no Ukraine in NATO, the Russians will come back and say, well, that's very good. We can perhaps agree a ceasefire and an armistice, but if we're going to have a long-term solution to this problem in Ukraine, a peace agreement, something we can be satisfied with, and which will work for you, we need something more that addresses the security questions in Europe as well. If I can just make a quick point here, if you look at Putin's speeches, various speeches,

before February 24th, 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine, it's very clear that he sees Ukraine becoming a de facto member of NATO. And so when the Americans say, or the West says that Ukraine is not going to become part of NATO, in a formal sense, that may be true, but it's kind of meaningless, right? The fact is that Ukraine was before the war becoming a de facto or was a de facto member of NATO. And there's a huge amount of evidence to support this, and Putin was pointing it out. And that tells me, given the lack of trust, that we have to completely sever our security ties with Ukraine. A number of my friends have said to me, listen, John, maybe what we can do here is say Ukraine will never become part of NATO.

But that doesn't mean we can't continue to provide weapons to Ukraine and to train the Ukrainians. And my argument is this is a non-starter. This is not going to work, especially after what happened with the Minsk negotiations, where people like Angela Merkel and others have now admitted that they bamboozled the Russians, that they took Putin to the cleaners, as we used to say when I was a kid. the Russians don't trust the West at all. So there has to be a complete severing of the security links. And I find it hard to imagine us doing that.

I agree with what you said, because I think that the Russians, their main apprehension about any deal now will be, again, remembering the seven years of the Minsk agreement that we will simply freeze the conflict and then rearm the Ukrainians and then fight another day. So I think, but to resolve it, I think at the minimum, it has to address the foundation of the conflict, which is the issue of neutrality. So there has to be at least no NATO membership. If there's any wiggling room beyond that, I'm not sure. But again, they were close to an agreement which both the Turks and the Israeli, of course, confirm in early 2022. But now that the fighting has gone on and things have changed.

And I think this is one of the dilemmas of the conflict as well, because in the West we're fighting with. Ukrainian. So for this reason, the costs and benefits of war, they're slightly skewed. We don't have that many costs. So I think the best way for Russia to impose costs on us would be if the longer we let this go, the more territory they will take. But of course, the more territory the Russians take, yes, it creates incentive for us. If we think they're going to lose Odessa, this more likely we'll sit down today. But the more territory Ukraine loses, the more complex any possible settlement would be. I think right now, there could be some territorial compromise. For example, the Russians could accept altering the administrative borders of Saperosia and Keroson, given that they don't

control the western part of the deeper river. So there could be some room now, but again, if the Russians start taking territory, yes, we will have more incentive to compromise, but it will be more difficult to actually find a solution. So I, but no, I agree with Alexandra as well on this issue of it has to be linked to the European security architecture because I think the origin of this would be from the early 90s because we created two separate system. We said based on the Charter of Paris for a New Europe in 1990 and then development of the establishment of the OSC in 94, we said here is a, you know, a Vestphalian system for Europe where we have everyone is included in the system, you know, sovereign equality, indivisible,

security, Europe without dividing lines, all of this. And then at the same time, we began to expand NATO, which we did recognize what contradicted our obligations with this Westphalin model. And that's essentially setting the foundation for a hegemonic peace. So you have this conflicting models, and we've never actually addressed or resolved this. So I think we have to kind of go back to the 90s and address some of these problems. The issue is it's very difficult to do these things during war. because we built up this hype now and these narratives.

But I also agree with you on the 2008 because it shouldn't be this controversial. People said that the Germans and French are offering a map to the Ukrainians and Georgians for joining NATO. But there was an interview with the former, who was then the NATO Secretary General, Jabht Hoop Schaeffer. And he said also, this was a terrible idea. We should never have offered NATO membership to Ukraine and Georgia in 2008. And he said, not only did the Europeans oppose it, he says Bush's own administration, Condoleezza Rice, Robert Gates, they all said, well, this isn't a good idea at all. But again, Bush wanted it.

He pushed it through. And again, this is why Merkel called it the Russians would interpret as a declaration of war. Obviously, we knew this was going to happen. So we kind of have to, but it's hard to do this in the middle of a war to suddenly develop understanding. for the other side's arguments, I think. It's also important to emphasize that when the NATO expansion debate took place in the 1990s in the United States, there was huge opposition inside the establishment to NATO expansion

on the grounds that it would lead to a disaster like the one that we're seeing in Ukraine today. And this included Bill Perry, who was Bill Clinton, the Secretary of Defense, who has subsequently said that he considered resigning over NATO expansion, because he understood that instead of trying to work out some sort of security architecture with the Russians that would produce a lasting peace in Europe, we were doing exactly the opposite. We were pursuing a policy that was ultimately going to end up in disaster. But those folks lost, right?

And the Richard Holbrooks and the Tony Lakes, who pushed very hard for NATO expansion, won the day. And then it became like a snowball going down a hill. And it was almost impossible to stop. And here we are today. And then the question is, can you do 180-degree turn? I mean, if I can just ask, I mean, coming to a. subject where you know you are you've written so much about i mean is it the fundamental problem that there was an that that continues to be and has been an inability amongst many people in

Washington to accept the fact that russia despite its enormous diminution after the cold war remains a great power that it is still as it stands today if not a great power at least a major power, which is able to exert a very great deal of power in order to secure its immediate surroundings and its security and its territory. Because it seems to be that this is one of the fundamental problems in Britain, at least. We stopped taking the Russians seriously after a certain point. We stopped thinking of them as a major power any longer. We thought that they were just another country, you know, perhaps a bit more powerful than some, but not so powerful that he could effectively and successfully say no to whatever it was we wanted. I think that's right on the money.

I think that's correct. But let me put your comment in a broader context. I think that during the unipolar moment, the United States was clearly the most powerful state on the planet. It was far more powerful than China and Russia then than it is now and every other country. And at the same time, we in the United States especially, but in the West, more generally, have a very poor understanding of the limits of power. You can be extremely powerful, which the United States was, but they're limits to what you can do with that power. I learned this as a young boy slash man when I was in the American military from 1965 to 1975, which was co-terminous with the Vietnam War, right? So I was in

that 10-year period when the Vietnam War took place. And I often said to myself over that period, how is it that the United States, which is one of the two most powerful states in the world, the Soviet Union being the other at the time, how is it the United States can't win this war against North Vietnam, which is a remarkably weak country compared to the United States? And the fact is that they're real limits to what you can do with military power. And we saw this again in Iraq and especially in Afghanistan. Afghanistan. If you think about it, we were in Afghanistan for 20 years and we lost the war. The United States lost the war in Afghanistan. And nobody would argue that the Taliban can hold a candle to the United

States. So I think it's very important to understand that there are just limits to what you can do with military power. In the West, that lesson was never learned. And given the fact that we were so powerful, we thought we could just slap people around. We could slap other countries around. We could tell them to jump and their only question would be how high. And that's not the way international politics works. And the end result is when you take your arguments about how we thought about Russia and you marry them to my argument about the lack of appreciation of the limits of power, you find yourself in the situation that we're in today. I heard you commented on this before that you can make these mistakes.

This is a curse of being a great power. You can afford making mistakes costs. You can absorb the cost. But of course, after a while, this begins to snowball. And the problems will become too great. But I guess a key concern of mind is we don't seem very restrained anymore. I keep, for example, with these escalations now against Russia, we seem to dismiss it that, yeah, we can strike inside their territory.

Well, what are they going to do? But we don't seem to appreciate that they also faced with a dilemma. Yes, they don't want to start a direct war with NATO, but also if they don't respond, you know, they might involve NATO to escalate further. And I don't see much debate about this. I even saw it feels sometimes we, in an Orwellian way, we reinvented our language to make it possible to express dissent. I even saw you were here in Norway giving a speech and it would say that, oh, we can't give in to Russian nuclear blackmail. But we used to call this deterrence.

But if we respect the deterrent of the adversary, that's blackmail now. And, you know, we have this kind of things where we have one language for us and one for them. So, you know, we can, we are allowed to, they decide interfere in domestic affairs. We promote democracy. They do coups. We support democratic revolutions. They invade. We do humanitarian interventions. They violate sovereign, well, territorial integrity. We support self-determination.

So we created this dual lingo now where we can't even compare with the adversary. So I'm just, do you see any problems going forward? The ability, I guess, security dilemma sensibility, recognizing the concerns, the legitimate concerns of Russia, that we don't stumble into something unforeseen. There's no question. We do not recognize the legitimate security concerns of the Russians. We just don't. The United States is filled with policymakers and pundits and strategists who are incapable of putting themselves in the shoes of the Russians. If I say to people that the Russians view NATO expansion as an existential threat, they will say, it's not an existential threat, to which my response is whether you think it's an existential threat is largely irrelevant.

What matters is what they think, and they think it's an existential threat. And they'll go back to saying it's not an existential threat, and therefore the Russian shouldn't see it that way, and it's illegitimate and so forth and so on. And then if you bring up arguments about the Monroe Doctrine and how the Americans would view this if, you know, a country move right up to America's borders, they just refuse to hear it. And there's a whole rhetoric, a whole discourse that they've invented, you were getting at this, that obscures what's really happening here, just on the nuclear coercion point. I know the literature, the international relations literature on nuclear coercion, I believe there's not a single example in history since nuclear weapons were invented in 1945.

There's not a single example of a country succeeding at nuclear coercion. And in fact, it's hardly ever even been tried because coercion is where you threaten to use nuclear weapons to get someone to change their. behavior. What Putin is doing is not nuclear coercion, it's nuclear deterrence, right? When he brandishes the nuclear sword in subtle ways, or his lieutenants do that in subtle ways, they're just trying to deter the West and deter Ukraine from crossing certain red lines. That's not coercion, right? But coercion has become part of the lexicon when we talk about the Russians. And there's this discourse out there that's suited for pursuing the policies, the foolish policies that we're now bound to. And arguing against that and changing the language, extremely difficult.

There's just going to get anywhere on that. I think you've put your finger on a very, very important thing. because I've come across this as well. People tell you, well, the Russians have no, they don't have any reason to think that NATO is a danger to them. And then you say, but, you know, they think that. That is what they believe. And there's an unwillingness to accept this.

And it's unrealistic not to accept it, because that is the reality of what the Russians think. And you have to deal with those realities. And it's not a moral position to disregard realities or an idealistic position to disregard realities. It is simply an unrealistic position to disregard realities. You're not being realistic in the way you conduct foreign policy if you conduct it in that way. And the result is the wall that we see and these devastating loss of life and all these awful videos in which all of these people are killed. because we are not being realistic about what the Russians are concerned about.

They are concerned about their security. They have historic reasons to be. And, of course, they have particular reasons to be concerned about their security, given that we made various undertakings to them or what they took to be undertakings to them at the end of the Cold War, which they feel that we didn't honour. So it's not surprising that they think that way, and they have a right to think that way, whether we think that they are right to think that way or otherwise. And there's a point which I've struggled to get people to understand many, many times. Now, I should say, my nationality is Greek, and as a Greek, we are very accustomed to the fact that there are great powers in the world, that great powers have their interests, that we all.

have to recognize the fact that there are great powers and that the great powers work best, and international security is strongest. When the great powers respect each other, understand each other, and work together to secure peace. And that's not what we have been doing in the West over the last 30 years. Look, I agree with you, but I just want to come at what you said from a slightly different angle. It's very important to understand that in the West, we divide the world into good guys and bad guys. And we view ourselves, this is certainly true in the United States, is good guys.

So NATO expansion into Eastern Europe, into Ukraine, should not be a threat to the Russians in the minds of most American foreign policy elite. because we are the good guys. We do not have malign intentions. But the problem is, if you're the Russians and using NATO, which is a military alliance and was identified with the Cold War and was adversarial at the time, when you see that marching up to your border, that's going to pose a serious threat, especially when you talk about including countries like Ukraine in NATO. We don't see it that way. I once debated Michael McFaul, who of course was the American ambassador to Russia at a very critical juncture. And he told me that he told Putin and Putin's lieutenants on numerous occasions that they had nothing to fear from NATO expansion.

Because it was not directed at containing Russia. And he, of course, admitted that the Russians didn't see it that way. But he viewed us as the good guys, right? The West is a benevolent force, and NATO expansion is designed, in his mind, to make Europe more peaceful. It's not designed to pick a fight with the Russians. And he genuinely believed that. But, of course, from a Russian point of view, NATO expansion up to their border is an existential threat. But he just didn't see it that way.

And the end result is that we have gotten ourselves into a heck of a lot of trouble because we have failed to understand how the Russians actually think about NATO expansion. It's interesting what you said about this, viewing oneself as the good guys, because this was an interesting comment made by Ronald Reagan once in the 80s where he said that when he found out, well, when we're close to nuclear war, he made the argument that I was shocked to find out that they actually considered us to be a threat. I mean, we've been raised that, you know, we're good guys. We love freedom. And he just assumed that the Soviets would see it the same way, that, of course, they would see themselves as the bad guy.

And us is the good one. It's a strange mentality. It's in human nature, of course, that, you know, you tend to see yourself as being the good guy, but still, this inability to recognize that you could be a threat to someone else. And it's a very hard argument to make as well. I try to put that forward in media that, you know, they consider us a threat. It's like, you know, traitor, how dare you? We're the good guy. So it's very hard to get that message across that, you know, there's two sides, competing interests.

But this is, of course, the problem of ideology. But I was curious with the, I was looking in the NATO debates from the 19, well, especially 1994, the congressional debates. If you search for the word insurance policy, you see this term popping up all the time. And I guess this was something, you know, Madeline Albright also said. She said, you know, we need an insurance policy. Yes, it will cost a bit to expand NATO. However, if we ever get a challenge from the Russians in the future, you know, at least we'll

have a bigger and more powerful NATO with all the Eastern Europeans on our side, well, not all of them. But this is the term insurance policy was used over and over again. And this was what James Baker criticized because he came out and said, listen, this is, you know, should be common sense. If you try to expand NATO as an insurance policy against the Russians, they will, this will cause, it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy, will cause what we're trying to prevent. And so again, I'm just a bit taken back by how open the criticism of NATO expansion was in the 90s. I mean, George Kennan, Jack Matlock, you mentioned before William Perry, but he wasn't the only one. He made the comment that the almost entire administration of Clinton recognized this would create huge tensions with Russia,

but the sentiment was, well, they're weak, so it doesn't really matter. But yet, today it's become a very controversial. A difficult thing to argue that expanding military lines towards the Russian border somehow would be seen as a threat. It's, I don't know, it becomes extraordinary. That is my only point. Yeah. But again, as you say, it's very important to emphasize that lots of people in the 1990s understood that this would lead to disaster in the end. And these were mainstream people.

many of them were liberal Democrats. It wasn't like, you know, you had the right wing of the Republican Party opposed to NATO expansion. All sorts of people were opposed to NATO expansion. But the Russians were remarkably weak, as you both well remember in the 1990s, so it was easy to make it happen. But at the same time, you really didn't need NATO expansion for security reasons because the Russians were not a threat. But of course, this has all gone to hell in a handbasket over time. Because, of course, the other thing is that expanding NATO leads to commitments. If the other side does see it the other way and pushes back, which is exactly what they're doing in Ukraine now, then, of course, you might find yourself making commitments or, well, not to Ukraine exactly, but you've made some kinds of commitments to Ukraine, commitments that you can't. to fulfill and perhaps most dangerous for a country like Ukraine. It might have thought that it had been promised things and might have been led to do certain things in reliance upon those

promises, which are going to put Ukraine a country like Ukraine, in fact Ukraine specifically, in an impossibly dangerous and difficult and disastrous situation. And Ukraine has been destroyed precisely because this policy of NATO expansion was pushed forward in the way that it was, whatever the motivations of the people who were pushing it. The Ukrainians shape their policies on that basis, and we now see what's happened to them. What's very interesting is if you look at public opinion polls in Ukraine, going back to the April 2008 Bucharest summit, there was not that much enthusiasm for joining NATO inside of Ukraine. It was really in Poland, where you saw and in the Baltic states, a profound interest in getting into the alliance.

And, of course, you had lots of lobbying inside the United States during the 1990s and early 2000s. to get those countries into the alliance. But Ukraine was not that keen on getting into the alliance. And even when they began to move down the road after 2008, public opinion in Ukraine was not that enthusiastic about joining the alliance. What really mattered was that Zelensky flipped on this issue in a big way in 2000. And that led, I think, in large part to the disaster that we face today. NATO actually has a document which came out in 2011, so the year after Yanukovych was elected.

And it's an interesting document because it points out that, well, a key problem for NATO-Ukrainian relations is they can hardly find any polls which show that more than 20% of Ukrainians want to join NATO. And now that they also put their neutrality into the constitution and the government doesn't want it, the people doesn't want it, that this was seen as a huge obstacle. So it's again, one of these narratives that the Ukrainians wanted to escape the clutches of the Russians and they were knocking on the door of NATO. It wasn't really the case, though, until the regime change of 2014. But I wanted to ask, before we run out of time and lose you, do you? Do you have any predictions for where are we going with this? I mean, from how this war will end territories lost. Also, NATO, sorry, there's a lot of questions.

I've heard some people say NATO at least now is stronger than ever. But I've spoken to people like Colonel Douglas McGregor who argues that, no, actually, it will be very weak. And once the war is over and the Europeans will maybe feel duped. So I was just wondering how you read where are we going forward from here. Well, it's somewhat difficult to say. I don't think there is any prospect of a meaningful peace agreement on the horizon. I think I'll be in the ground and there'll be no meaningful peace agreement. I think to have a meaningful peace agreement, getting back to our earlier discussion, NATO, I mean, Ukraine has to be a truly neutral country. And I don't think that's going to happen. I think we're going to remain joined at the hip with Ukraine for the foreseeable future. And that is going to poison relations for as far as the eye can see.

So I don't foresee any meaningful settlement of this crisis. It is possible that the war will be shut down and there'll be some sort of cold peace. in the next year or two, I'm not sure. But there'll be the ever-present threat that it will start up again. And in that context, the Russians will be doing everything they can to weaken Ukraine and to weaken the West's commitment to Ukraine. And the West, of course, will be doing everything it can to weaken Russia. So I foresee a huge amount of trouble moving forward, even if the war is temporarily shut down and you have some sort of meaningful ceasefire.

It's just hard for me to see how you end this because I just don't think the West, and here we're talking mainly about the United States, is going to be willing to make Ukraine a truly neutral state and its security relationship with you. Ukraine. So I'm very pessimistic about the future here. I think one cannot underestimate just what a foolish decision we made trying to bring Ukraine into NATO. It was a blunder of massive proportions. And, you know, how you shut this down, I just don't see how you do it. Maybe you guys have some ideas on what can be done, but I'm just remarkably pessimistic about this. And what I find so tragic about all of this is if there had been no decision to bring Ukraine into NATO in April 2008, Ukraine, I believe, would probably be intact today. Indeed, even Crimea would be part of Ukraine today. There is no evidence that the Russians were interested in conquering territory in Ukraine.

The idea that they wanted to pursue a greater Russia is a myth that we've created since the war started. The idea that this was some imperial power that was bent on reestablishing something along the lines of the Soviet Union is a laughable argument. There's no evidence to support that. In fact, one can argue that Putin, if anything, dragged his feet in terms of responding to the West, that he did everything possible to avoid a shooting war with the West. He understood it was not in Russia's interest to have a shooting war. But he couldn't get to first base with the West, which is another way of saying he couldn't get the first base with the Americans. You know, in December 17th, on December 17th, 2021, the Russians sent the letter to NATO and to President Biden demanding that some sort of arrangement be worked out where Ukraine would not be in NATO, where it would effectively be a neutral country.

And he paid his letter hardly any attention. We just rushed them off and then got the war on February 24th, 2022. We were just unwilling to cut a deal of any sort. But anyway, I'm very pessimistic about where we are and where we're headed. And I'm just hoping that this will be the case where I'm proved wrong. And somehow we find a magical formula to put an end to this. But I just don't see it happening. Can I say I share your pessimism and for similar reasons?

I mean, if we really are convinced that we are the good guys, which, by the way, I agree about that also, and it's not just Americans who think like that. In Britain, we talk in that way all the time now as well. Well, if we think in those terms, then, of course, that in itself makes negotiations all but impossible. because if we are the good guys, by definition, the other side of the bad guys, and how can you negotiate like that with people that you consider to be bad guys? And we've got ourselves trapped in all sorts of arguments that I don't think have validity, that NATO has this open door, which must be protected at all times.

And I'm very pessimistic about all of this. I think it is going to be very difficult to get out of these self-created conceptual traps. Now, I'm going to say one last thing, which is that, and this is just my very last point, just to ask, which is that, of course, what that means is that for the foreseeable future, we're going to have a situation where the United States and Russia, the Western Russia, are locked in a permanent adversarial relationship. and that's not going to be good for them. Absolutely not, and they know it, by the way. But I can't see how it's going to be good for us either, given that the world is a much more complicated place than it was in the Cold War.

Years ago, I used to do a history degree, and I remember Bismarck saying that if you want a diplomacy well, you have to be prepared to play on all 64 pieces. of the chessboard. If we're not going to be able to play on the Russian, sorry, the Russian square of the chess board, we are restricting massively what we can do going forward in the world. And that is not going to turn out well for us. That is what I think. Yeah. We could definitely use a Bismarck at this point in time. There's no question about that. But there is no Bismarck. on the scene. I just want to make one additional point that I wanted to make earlier that I think is

important to emphasize. I think the Russians are obviously going to be hurt by this war. Ukraine is effectively being destroyed, and the Europeans are going to be badly hurt by this war, especially on the economic front, but even I believe on the political front. I think this war is ultimately going to be a disaster for Europe to include Russia, of course. I think the United States is in a situation where it can cause lots of trouble and it does not pay much of a price, which is very important to understand that. The United States is an incredibly powerful country. It has an incredibly powerful economy. And it's not clear to me that the United States is going to pay much of a price for this. It's very rich, so it can continue to funnel money into the war in terms of its soldiers dying.

None of its soldiers are dying. It's basically Ukrainians who are doing the dying. So there's not that much incentive for the Americans to shut this one down. I think as time goes by, there will be greater incentive for the Europeans to shut this one down, because the drain on their resources, the political costs will grow with the passage of time. And for the Ukrainians, there's a very powerful incentive to shut this one down, and I think even for the Russians. But for the Americans, I think it ultimately doesn't matter that much, because it is such a rich country and it has such a wonderful geographic location from a strategic,

point of view, that it can run around the world doing all sorts of foolish things and not pay a significant price. It's others who pay the price. And this is why, of course, the Europeans were foolish to follow the Pied Piper, right? And the British are the worst on this front. When the Americans say jump, the only question the British ask is how high? This is a prescription for real trouble because the British are going to pay a much greater price for this foolish endeavor than the Americans are. So I think it's going to be very hard to get the Americans to act in smarter ways towards Ukraine over time. I think it's the sheer power of the United States, the sheer sense of security that Americans have that allow them to pursue these foolish policies.

And that's one of the principal reasons that I'm just very pessimistic here. I think even if the Europeans begin to see the light, given that the Europeans are so heavily dependent on the American security umbrella, right, the Americans can push them around and get them to adopt American positions, which are not suitable for shutting this conflict down. I mean, the idea of the Americans actually saying, we're going to cut our ties with Ukraine, and we're going to help create a neutral Ukraine. We're going to go back to the Ukraine that existed before 2014. I find that unimaginable.

Yes, exactly. Deeply depressing, because it's the right thing to do, right? But I find it hard to imagine us doing this. The United States is an incredibly hawkish country. It's an incredibly hawkish country. And I say that as a realist. It's not like I'm a peace, love, and doper. I'm a realist, right?

But most of my country men and country women are about five notches to the right of me in terms of basic hawkishness. And so I don't see us backing off. And I think we can get, again, the point I'm trying to make here is, given our geographical location, given our wealth, given our resources, we can afford to pursue foolish policies in ways that other countries can. I have to agree. I also want to make a comment on what you said about this, that the Russians wanted to avoid the war, because many people, because of the media, we have might not have missed it as well, because when they went in, we have this big narrative that they were going to invade all. Ukraine, but they went in with less than 200,000 men. And it seems like a key objective was to simply use military force where diplomacy had failed,

which was to get its commitments from the Minsk agreement, which had been stolen for seven years. Because what's not well reported now is the first day after the Russian invasion on the invasion on the 25th of February, the Russians already started to reach out on the first day to the Ukrainians to negotiate. And the Ukrainians actually came out and said, yeah, sure, we can, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we can start negotiating with no conditions. And then on the same day, on the 25th of February, Ned Price, the spokesperson for the Americans, came out,

said, well, we don't accept no conditions. This is not acceptable. Russia has to get out first and, you know, capitulate, and then we'll start negotiating. And this was kind of, and then a month later he made a point that this war is much bigger than Ukraine. So he kind of showed that after that, of course, escalation doesn't make the Russians innocent.

That's not my point. but simply that this was not the goal, this war of attrition to annihilate Ukraine. This became the escalation. But also just a quick comment on because you are a realist. And often people confuse amoral with immoral. But the realist, they tend to see morality more in terms of maximizing security. But this is the dark side, I guess, of living. liberal ideals or any idealism of human freedoms is because if you see the world as being

competition between competing interests as a pragmatist, then of course the solution is, you know, if I'm compromise, you negotiate. However, if the world is divided between good values, bad values, between good and evil, now suddenly any compromise becomes appeasement. You know, it's a good appeasing evil, this cannot be. So this is the, I think, the danger why the world needs more Mersheimer's. if you will, more realists who see, doesn't see it all in ideology, because it makes conflicts very difficult to get out of. But if I, and just one more point on this, Glenn, if you look

at Putin's behavior up to February 24th, 2022, and even immediately after the invasion, he is clearly very reticent to get into the war to begin with, and very very, very, very, interested in ending the war as quickly as possible. The idea that Putin is a highly aggressive individual who was bent on conquering Ukraine and turning it into part of a greater Russia is not a serious argument. In fact, I would make the argument that he was too reticent to engage the West militarily along the road to February 24th, 204th, 20th. He was doing everything he could to avoid a war. He did not want a war.

He understood that this would not be good for Russia. He was not interested in Ukraine, conquering Ukraine. There's not a scintilla of evidence to show that he was interested in conquering Ukraine. This paper that he wrote in July of 2021 that some people point to is evidence that he was bent on creating a greater Russia that Ukraine was going to be his first conference. He says nothing of the sort. He makes it clear in that document that he recognizes that Ukraine is an independent country and that there's a rich history of good relations between Ukrainians and Russians and that this should be continued in the future.

They're bent on conquering Ukraine. But anyway, the narrative we now have in the West is that he's the second coming of Adolf Hitler, that he's bent on conquering Ukraine. when he's done conquering Ukraine, he's going to go into Poland, the Baltic states and so forth and so on. This is a laughable argument. There's no evidence to support it. You know, some people say, I should say there's little evidence to support it. They say to me, John, don't say there's no evidence to support it. Say there's little evidence, which I say, there's no evidence, and I'm going to say it's no evidence.

The idea that this guy was the second coming of Adolf Hitler is a laughable argument. And the West is principally responsible for causing this conflict. And of course, the Ukrainians had agency. And in particular, Putin had Zelensky had agency. And he played his hand foolishly. He went along with the Americans. And it was like a tag team with the Americans and the Ukrainian leaders taking us into this war. It's very depressing, very depressing.

Again, Ukraine could be a sovereign state intact today had there been no decision in April 2008 to bring it in to the alliance. Sarkozy and Merkel understood that at the time. And why we have pursued this policy so vigorously since then, it's just hard to fathom. Any final words before we... Very depressing. Can I say, I mean, you know, I agree and I am absolutely sure that if we had not offered Ukraine membership of NATO in 2008, the war would never have happened. And we would have had a peaceful Ukraine and a peaceful Europe. So all of that has been thrown away. And I don't think that there was ever a proper debate or discussion. I don't think anybody really. argued it through, and I think even Merkel and Sargazi gave too much at that meeting, given that they knew that it would be a mistake to do. I think Alex, Alexander, I think that most people, and I would even put myself in this category,

and I'm reluctant to say this as a good realist, but I think most people thought a great power war in Europe, of the sort we're seeing now was not possible. In other words, I believe that they understood that bringing Ukraine into NATO would lead to trouble. But the idea that Russia would invade Ukraine and the West would come in on the side of Ukraine, I think most people thought that was unimaginable. I didn't think it was unimaginable, but I had difficulty imagining it. I didn't, you know, we had had such a long period of peace in Europe that, at least involving

the great powers, that it was hard to recognize that this would be the end result. But here we are. I'm going to quickly make an observation there because I was following Ukrainian politics quite closely at that time, especially after the Orange Revolution. And anybody who was following the internal politics of Ukraine, and this is, This is before 2008 could see that there were problems. I mean, there was a major governmental crisis in 2007. The president deploying the military to the capital

and problems with the constitutional court and inability of Ukrainian leaders from the different sections to work with each other. And European leaders who were going into, and out of Kiev all the time, much more than the American ones, should have been aware of all of this and should have understood that the situation in Ukraine itself was becoming extremely unstable, and that this push to get Ukraine into NATO was creating tensions within Ukraine. And I would say this.

I mean, I did not anticipate or predict the current events, not. at all in the run up to this particular conflict, the one we're in today, I thought that there would not be one. I thought that the Russians would not act in the way that they did. But there was a real danger, even before 2008, that this situation not handled properly might result in a major crisis inside Ukraine, which against their wishes might draw the Russians in, that I think was predictable. And perhaps not in the United States, which was, as you rightly say, an ocean away. But in Europe, in Germany especially, they should have been aware of it. So, yeah, let me just finish up by saying, thank you so much.

This has been, yeah, great privilege. So Professor John Mearsheimer, yeah, not every day. We get to speak to the professor. So thank you so much. My pleasure. It was wonderful meeting you two. I love the discussion. And I hope we can do it again down the road.

And I hope the subject matter then will be a more positive one than the subject matter on the table today. There is so much that we can discuss and I'm sure we'll find good positive things to talk about. And it was a tremendous, tremendous program and discussion as well. Likewise.