Renowned political scientist Prof. John Mearsheimer warns that Ukraine is facing its final opportunity to negotiate a lasting peace amid the ongoing conflict. He emphasizes the urgency of diplomatic solutions to prevent further destruction and loss of life. As tensions remain high, the world watches closely, hoping for a resolution that can bring stability to the region.
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02:07who Max Blumenthal says has been described by the Iranian negotiators as ill-informed and
02:14distracted. Maybe his mind is on Ukraine. I don't know. Nevertheless, told ABC News last weekend
02:20that Trump is a humanitarian. Isn't that laughable?
02:25It's laughable. I mean, you make much on the show regarding the question of whether the war in Ukraine is now Trump's war.
02:36I would argue the same question can be applied to the genocide in Gaza. And as I've said before, I believe that Trump not only owns the war in Ukraine now, he owns the genocide in Gaza as well.
02:50And to argue that he's a humanitarian is preposterous.
02:54The Secretary General or the Undersecretary General of the UN for Humanitarian and Relief Affairs, Tom Fletcher, said earlier this week that 14,000 Gazan babies would die of starvation or malnutrition by the end of this week, which is today or tomorrow. Today, as we're taping this is Thursday.
03:20Ray McGovern reports that five aid trucks, the Israelis allowed five aid trucks in, three carrying food, two carrying shrouds. Our friend Aaron Mate cites sources on the ground that five aid trucks is the equivalent of four little crackers per person in Gaza.
03:46So it's clear that the Israelis, and some nutjob that will run for you in a minute, are in favor of the starvation of children and are using it as a weapon with which to conquer Gaza.
04:02I would just say to you, it's not just these particular leaders who support this policy inside of Israel, you don't see hardly any protests among the Israeli public regarding this genocidal policy.
04:23It's truly shocking. And when you look at what the Western elites are doing, they're hardly doing anything to prevent it.
04:32It's just truly amazing. It's sifting. I don't know what else to say. I didn't think anything like this would ever happen, but it is happening.
04:41All right. To turn your stomach a little bit, this is a former member of the Knesset and former member of Prime Minister Netanyahu's party, Chris Cutt, number 10.
04:49We need to conquer Gaza and settle it. And not a single Gazan child should remain there.
05:19Let's stop telling ourselves this deception just to score points in this game between pro-Bibi and anti-Bibi.
05:27This isn't about left or right. It's about winning this war, and it's about justice.
05:32When will we learn?
05:34When will we learn?
05:36You're saying that this attitude is prevalent amongst the Israeli public.
05:41I think that that's exactly right. I don't see any evidence that there's an uprising in the Israeli public against the genocide.
05:51There are lots of protests in Israel, but those protests have to deal with the hostages and relations between the IDF and government.
06:02But they don't have to do with stopping the genocide.
06:05I mean, you want to file all of this under the Nazification of Israel.
06:09That's where it should be filed.
06:11This is a country that's gone completely off the rails.
06:14And the more that you see it in operation, the more it looks like the Germans under Hitler.
06:20This is just hard to believe.
06:21We're talking about eradicating all of the Palestinians in Gaza, murdering them.
06:28This is hard to believe.
06:30This is the sort of things that the Germans did.
06:32It's supposed to be never again.
06:34I don't see any evidence that people in Israel believe in the principle of never again,
06:41certainly when it applies to the Palestinians.
06:44And people in the West are hardly lifting a finger.
06:47This is a categorically reprehensible situation.
06:50Steve Whitcoff, of whom we spoke a few minutes ago after his first negotiation with the Iranians,
07:02left them with the impression that a significant amount of enriched uranium would be in the deal.
07:10And they were surprised and ecstatic.
07:12And then, of course, he moved the goalposts and now reduced that number down to zero.
07:18Where are they going to go with these negotiations?
07:22Whether he's distracted, whether he's ill-informed, he's now taking orders from the Zionists around Trump,
07:29of which he's one, and moved the goalposts.
07:34Never mind the 3.2.
07:35It's now zero.
07:36Yeah, I mean, I think Whitcoff initially allowed, in his initial statements, he allowed for Iran to have an enrichment capability
07:50because Whitcoff, who was a smart man, understands that that's the only way you're going to get a deal.
07:55Well, the problem is that Israel and the lobby and the far right inside the national security establishment in this country,
08:03in the United States, don't accept that.
08:05They think that Iran cannot have any enrichment capability.
08:09And the lobby, of course, is enormously powerful.
08:12And the message was sent to Trump, as well as to Whitcoff, that Iran could not have nuclear enrichment.
08:20And he was forced to do a 180-degree turn, which he has done.
08:24And what that means is you're not going to get an agreement if we stick to that position,
08:30if Whitcoff sticks to that position.
08:33Because Iran has insisted that it has to be able to keep some enrichment capability.
08:37The American who negotiated directly with Hamas for the release of the IDF young man from New Jersey,
08:45the young man's name is Eden Alexander, I forget the American's name.
08:49His first name is Adam, not Hochstein, it's another Adam,
08:53said when was being criticized by the Netanyahu regime,
08:59we don't need Israel's permission to engage in any negotiations.
09:03And then he was silenced.
09:05The negotiation succeeded.
09:07The boy is free.
09:09They had an opportunity to free him in March.
09:11Netanyahu blocked it.
09:13This one freed in May, couldn't block.
09:15But this fellow who did the negotiation, not Whitcoff, was silenced.
09:20I'm going to guess you're not surprised.
09:23No, of course not.
09:25By the way, there's stories in the media that Whitcoff got that person released.
09:32Whitcoff played the key role in getting that Israeli-American released.
09:36But the quid pro quo was that Whitcoff had promised Hamas that it would produce a ceasefire.
09:46And that's why Hamas released this Israeli-American prisoner.
09:50And, of course, once he was released, the Israelis and the Americans welched on the deal.
09:59And the Israelis enforced their blockade.
10:02But for these three food trucks and two trucks of shrouds repellent.
10:07Switching gears, what is your take on the Trump-Putin phone call?
10:12Do the Americans understand the Russian mentality?
10:17Well, I don't know if it really is necessary to understand the Russian mentality.
10:25Common sense tells you, just common sense tells you, that if the Russians are winning on the battlefield,
10:32and a ceasefire will give the Ukrainians an opportunity to regroup and improve their position on the battlefield,
10:43the Russians would be nuts to agree to a ceasefire.
10:47And the Russians have made it clear, since they know they're winning on the battlefield,
10:52that they're not going to agree to a ceasefire.
10:54They have said this ad nauseum for months now.
10:58They keep saying, we won't accept a ceasefire until all the elements of a peace agreement are in place.
11:05But we refuse to listen to them.
11:08And the end result is that we continue to demand ceasefire.
11:14And they continue to say, no ceasefire.
11:16My sense is that after Monday's conversation between Putin and Trump,
11:22that Trump now understands, and the Americans now understand,
11:25that calling for a ceasefire is fruitless,
11:30and that we really have no place to go at this point in time.
11:33How close is Ukraine to the endgame here?
11:39Pardon me.
11:41It's very hard to say.
11:43There's no question, when you look at what's happening on the battlefield,
11:46that every week the situation deteriorates.
11:49And the Ukrainians surely know that at some point in time,
11:53all that weaponry and all that money that is in the Biden pipeline is going to evaporate.
12:00And Trump has made it clear that he's not going to go back to Congress and do what Biden did before him.
12:07So not only are the Ukrainians going to continue to lose,
12:12even with that Biden largesse,
12:15at some point it's going to run out and the situation is going to deteriorate further.
12:20It's hard to imagine the Ukrainians hanging on until the end of this year.
12:28Why is Ukraine the West's fault?
12:31Why is Ukraine the West's fault?
12:33It's very simple.
12:34The Russians made it clear when we first announced that Ukraine was going to become
12:39a member of NATO in April 2008, that they viewed this as an existential threat.
12:46To use Bill Byrne's terminology, he was then the U.S. ambassador to Moscow.
12:52This was the brightest of red lines for Moscow.
12:56Putin told us in April 2008 that he would wreck Ukraine before he would let it come into NATO.
13:03Nevertheless, the West, and here we're talking mainly about the United States,
13:07continued to push forward to bring Ukraine into NATO.
13:13In February 2014, a crisis broke out.
13:17And what did the United States do?
13:19It simply doubled down.
13:21Our basic view was we could shove NATO expansion down the Russians' throat.
13:26That's NATO expansion into Ukraine.
13:28Just as we had shoved NATO expansion down their throat in 1999 and in 2004.
13:35But Putin made it clear that this was a bridge too far.
13:39We refused to accept their position, and we continued to push hard.
13:45And in February of 2022, the war that is now taking place broke out.
13:51Therefore, we are principally responsible because we pushed NATO expansion into Ukraine, which is the major cause of this war.
14:00To what end did we push NATO expansion into Ukraine?
14:06Well, we thought we could get away with it.
14:09And we wanted to create a NATO that covered all of Europe right up to Russia's border.
14:16We had gotten away with it.
14:18The 2004 expansion included the Baltic states.
14:22And we thought that given that we had forced the Russians to accept the Baltic states and NATO in 2004,
14:30that we could do the same with Ukraine after 2008.
14:35And the Russians, again, made it clear that that was unacceptable.
14:38But for us, we had an open-door policy with regard to NATO.
14:43And we thought it was perfectly acceptable to have Ukraine and Georgia and other countries that were part of the former Soviet Union in NATO.
14:53The Russians felt differently.
14:58Once came this attitude that we could use Ukraine as a battering ram with which to drive Vladimir Putin from office,
15:05this Victoria Nuland theory.
15:08Where did it come from?
15:12Yes.
15:13I think that we believe that once the war started, we could defeat the Russians.
15:20If you look at the run-up to the war, the three months before the war started,
15:26this is December 2021, January 2022, and then most of February of 2022.
15:34It's very clear that the Russians were trying to cut a deal with us and to avoid war.
15:41We did virtually nothing to avoid a war.
15:44It's really quite remarkable.
15:46Were we communicating with the Russians in that era, unlike the last two years of Biden's presidency?
15:53The answer is hardly at all.
15:56And then the war starts, and the Russians immediately reach out to the Ukrainians and talk about negotiations to end the war.
16:05This is right after it starts.
16:07The Russians want to end it.
16:08The Ukrainians agree, and the famous negotiations in Istanbul start.
16:13And as you well know, who ends those negotiations?
16:18It's not the Ukrainians.
16:20It's not the Russians.
16:21It's the Americans and the British in the form of Boris Johnson who come in and tell the Ukrainians that they should walk away from the negotiations.
16:30Now, you want to ask yourself, what's going on here?
16:33What's going on is we thought that we could defeat the Russians.
16:37This is why we didn't try to prevent the war and why, once it started, we didn't go along with Putin's efforts to stop the war.
16:46We thought we had the Russians and Putin right where we wanted them.
16:50We thought that we had armed and trained the Ukrainians to the point where they could hold their own on the battlefield.
16:55And furthermore, economic sanctions would deliver a really staggering blow to the Russians.
17:03And that combination of economic sanctions plus defeat on the battlefield would knock the Russians out of the ranks of the great powers, and it would end up with Putin falling from power.
17:14That was the basic mindset that we had.
17:17And again, as I've said a long time ago on this show, you want to remember that General Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in the fall of 2022, said that Ukraine, after successes on the battlefield, had reached the high water mark, and it was time to negotiate an end to the war.
17:36This is what the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff says in the fall of 2022.
17:40The Biden administration tells him to close his mouth and continues to push forward with the war.
17:48And the question is why?
17:49Because we thought that it was not the high water mark for the Ukrainians, that things would only improve over time, and we would, in effect, finish the Russians off as a great power.
17:59Of course, we were categorically wrong.
18:01One could say catastrophically wrong.
18:05And the people who are paying the price for our foolishness are the Ukrainians.
18:10So, two years after the coup in 2014, two Republican senators visited Ukraine, John McCain and Lindsey Graham.
18:22Here's what they said.
18:24Your fight is our fight.
18:26Your fight is our fight.
18:282017 will be the year of offense.
18:312017 will be the year of offense.
18:34All of us will go back to Washington, and we will push the case against Russia.
18:39We will return to Washington, and we will restore sanctions against Russia.
18:46Enough of a Russian aggression.
18:49It is time for them to pay a heavier price.
18:53It is time for them to pay a heavier price.
18:57I believe you will win.
18:59I am convinced you will win, and we will do everything we can to provide you with what you need to win.
19:06Yeah, beautiful.
19:08No, there was no war going on, or was there in 2017?
19:15Donald Trump was relatively new in the White House.
19:20McCain, whom he hated, was making these statements.
19:23Graham, who repeated everything McCain said, said what he said.
19:28Who was calling the shots?
19:30Well, the thing is that you want to remember that when Donald Trump came into office, he tried to improve relations with Russia, and he had no interest in starting a war in Ukraine.
19:47But he was unable to improve relations with Russia.
19:51And, in fact, the blob, the foreign policy establishment, forced him to start arming Ukraine.
19:58It was Donald Trump, not Barack Obama, who started arming Ukraine.
20:03And, of course, we were training Ukrainian units at the same time.
20:09But can you decipher what Senator Graham was talking about?
20:14You will win the war, and he's surrounded by these guys in uniform and carrying weapons.
20:19What war?
20:21Well, a lot of people called the war that was taking place or the conflict that was taking place in eastern Ukraine, in the Donbass, after 2014, a war.
20:35That's what he's talking about.
20:36Okay.
20:37In other words, when the crisis breaks out in February of 2014, it eventually, actually, it rather quickly leads to a civil war in the eastern part of Ukraine, the Donbass area.
20:51That is what he is referring to.
20:54We usually refer to that as just a conflict, and the war is what happens after February 2022.
21:00But he's referring to the conflict in eastern Ukraine.
21:04And we are training up and arming the Ukrainians to win that fight in eastern Ukraine after 2014 and before 2022.
21:15Wow.
21:17And you believe that Ukraine is on its last leg now.
21:21I've already asked you that.
21:23Where are negotiations going to go between the United States and Russia?
21:28The Kremlin must be laughing at us.
21:31We're a co-belligerent.
21:32How can we be a mediator?
21:35Well, the negotiations are going to go nowhere.
21:39That's what Monday's telephone conversation between Putin and Trump shows us.
21:46And it basically looks like Trump is now going to walk away from the problem.
21:51I mean, what else is he going to do?
21:53He has two choices here.
21:54He can either accept Russia's demands or he can walk away.
22:02I mean, there is a third option, which I think is untenable, and he's made it clear it's untenable, which is that he can become Joe Biden number two, and he can continue to try to support the Ukrainians.
22:13But he said he's not going to do that.
22:15So he has two choices.
22:16He can concede to the Russians, their major demands, which he's not going to do, or he can walk away.
22:22And I think he's going to walk away.
22:24This one's going to be settled on the battlefield, and the Russians are going to win.
22:29Can the Europeans replace the Americans if and when Trump walks away?
22:35Absolutely not.
22:36The Europeans have been doing everything they can since this war started to help the Ukrainians.
22:44They just don't have the weaponry in the closet to pull out and give to the Ukrainians to make up for what we're giving the Ukrainians.
22:54But furthermore, even when the Europeans and the Americans were working together under Joe Biden to support the Ukrainians, even then the Ukrainians were losing.
23:05So if you take us out of the equation, the idea that the Europeans can replace us and we can stymie the Russians and even push them back is ludicrous.
23:17It's just not a serious argument.
23:19Once you take us out of the equation, the Ukrainians are doomed.
23:23And I would argue they're doomed even with us in the equation.
23:28Professor Mearsheimer, thank you very much, my dear friend.
23:33You were mentioned so favorably earlier this week, and I am deeply grateful for the time that you gave us.
23:43Thank you, Professor.
23:44Have a nice holiday weekend.
23:47Thank you, and you too have a nice holiday.
23:50All the best.
23:51And coming up at 4 o'clock this afternoon, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.
23:58And coming up at 4 o'clock this afternoon, we'll see you next week.