Transcript: West Destroying Itself in Ukraine & Gaza: John Mearsheimer

Read the full transcript of political scientist and international relations scholar John J. Mearsheimer in conversation with Norwegian political scientist Glenn Diesen on “West Destroying Itself in Ukraine & Gaza”, Oct 8, 2025.

GLENN DIESEN: Welcome back to the program. We are joined today by Professor John Mearsheimer to discuss the extent to which the West may undermine its own position in both Ukraine and in Gaza. And who better to speak with than Professor Mearsheimer, who already back in 2014, wrote the very famous article “Why the Ukraine Crisis is the West’s Fault: The Liberal Delusion that Provoked Putin.” And also with the 2007 book “The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy,” advancing the argument that US policies in the region does not necessarily serve US interest, or while you’re very specific, it does not serve the US Interest. So welcome back. It’s great to have you on.

JOHN J. MEARSHEIMER: Thank you, Glenn, as always, pleased to be here.

Defining a Pro-Ukrainian Policy

GLENN DIESEN: So I thought a good place could be to start with Ukraine because, among the political media establishments in the West, there seems to be a consensus that a pro-Ukrainian policy entails demand for NATO membership, sending weapons, opposing unfavorable peace agreements. But since 2014, if not well before then, this policy seems to consistently take Ukraine in a position from bad to worse. How would you define a pro-Ukrainian policy? Because often this is almost assumed to be a fixed pro-Ukrainian policy.

JOHN J. MEARSHEIMER: Well, in the public discourse, in the mainstream anyway, the belief is that the Ukrainians are actually doing quite well. And it’s the Russians who are in trouble. Their economy’s in trouble, they’re not doing well on the battlefield. And therefore, if we support the Ukrainians or we continue to support the Ukrainians vigorously, they can rescue the situation and they can prevail on the battlefield and in terms of a final political settlement.

And that this will be a devastating blow to the Russians because they will effectively lose the war. And this may be a convenient way to get rid of Putin. And there’s all sorts of reasons, people argue, to think that this is a realistic alternative.

I think they’re delusional. The Ukrainians are in deep trouble. The Russians are doing quite well. I mean, all you have to do is look at the smile on Putin’s face at the recent Valdai conference, where you, of course, were present, to recognize that the Russians think they’re in the catbird seat.

And then if that’s not enough for you, you can look at the recent op-ed that General Zaluzhny wrote talking about where the war is at and where things are headed. And it’s quite clear that he understands that the Ukrainians are in deep trouble. They’re outnumbered. He understands it’s a war of attrition, and he understands that if it goes on, the Ukrainians are going to lose. He says that in so many words. He’s not predicting victory.

I remember when he wrote his first op-ed a few years ago in the Economist. He understood that Ukraine was in some trouble then, but he thought that sophisticated technologies could rescue the situation. He’s not making that argument now. He has no magic formula, and he knows the Ukrainians are doomed.

The Reality on the Battlefield

And almost all the reports that come out on what’s happening on the battlefield, both from the Ukrainian side and the Russian side, paint a picture where the Ukrainians are up against the ropes. They’re just in really deep trouble. They’re scrambling to hold the Russians off in the Pokrovsk area. But to do that, they have to remove forces from other points along the line, along the front line, and that weakens them there.

And the biggest problem they face, and again, there’s just lots of evidence from both sides to support this, the biggest problem they face is that they don’t have enough forces to populate the front lines. They have to leave large gaps in the front lines, which, of course, the Russians exploit and penetrate.

So the conventional wisdom just doesn’t make any sense. And as you and I and Alexander have talked about before, the end result of all this is just that more Ukrainians are going to die and they’re going to end up losing more territory.

If the Ukrainians were smart, they would have cut a deal long, long ago and they’d be much better off for it. Would they get a good deal? No, they wouldn’t get a good deal. There are no good deals to be had. The question at this point, from a Ukrainian perspective, is what’s the least bad deal?

And the least bad deal is just to stop this right away and do everything you can to accommodate the Russians so that they don’t further wreck your country. I mean, the fact is you lost the war. And when you lose a war, you have to make huge concessions to the winner. And what you want to do is minimize those concessions as much as possible, especially with regard to lost territory, and that involves working with the Russians.

This is a bitter pill for the Ukrainians to swallow. It’s a bitter pill for the Europeans and the Americans to swallow as well. But the question is, what’s the alternative? And the answer is there is no alternative other than to continue the war, which is a worse alternative. So this one should have been shut down, in my opinion, long ago, but it wasn’t, and now is the time to do that.

Ukrainian Recognition of Reality

GLENN DIESEN: Well, what you’re saying is more or less reflected in an interview given by Alexei Arestovich, I think a few days ago, he gave an interview, and I thought it was fascinating, so I mentioned it before. That is, he was asked what he would do if he would become president, so how would he end the war?

And instead of talking, being tough on Russia, he said, well, the first thing I would do is get on a plane to Moscow, reassure them that Ukraine will never again be used as a threat against Russia.

I would agree to the territorial concessions and go through all our relations since 1991 and sort things out.

I mean, this is, so the Ukrainians seem to recognize what’s happening. And again, as you correctly argued, the very smiling and joking Putin in Valdai, he also seems very confident that this is reaching an end point.

But the Europeans, they can’t be, they must know what’s happening. I assume the Americans surely know, given that they’re trying to hand over the war to the Europeans. But what is the European game plan here? Because we heard some people like the German intelligence chief argue that we have to keep the war going for another five years so we can prepare ourselves for a possible future war.

Is this what the Europeans are planning, joining the war after they’ve weakened Russia as much as possible? I mean, it’s hard to, they surely must know what’s happening on the battlefield. I know that the journalists do not always, well, they’re not always honest. They have to keep the narrative going to keep support for the war. But behind the scenes, the political leadership across the West, they know. They must know what everyone else seems to be recognizing.

European Delusions About the Russian Threat

JOHN J. MEARSHEIMER: I don’t know, Glenn. I go back and forth on this one. Sometimes I just think they’re completely delusional. Other times I think that they really do think the Ukrainians can turn the tide on the battlefield. I sometimes think they also really believe that the Russians are a mortal threat to conquer more territory in Eastern Europe and maybe even in Central Europe, that they’re a threat to Germany, for example.

I don’t know how anybody who knows anything about Russia, war and balances of power could possibly think that Russia is in a position to conquer territory in Eastern Europe, substantial territory in Eastern Europe, and move into Central Europe.

Not only have the Russians never expressed any interest in even conquering all of Ukraine, it’s just important to emphasize that there is no evidence that Putin has ever said he was interested in conquering all of Ukraine. And in fact, he’s made a number of statements that indicate he doesn’t want to go near Western Ukraine, and for good strategic reasons.

But he’s never threatened to conquer the Baltic states or Poland. And furthermore, if he tried to do that, he’d be in a war with NATO, which from his perspective, would be sheer lunacy.

So in terms of what Putin’s intentions are, of course you can never be 100% certain, but all the evidence points in the direction of a leader who is interested in conquering territory in eastern Ukraine, a substantial portion of it, and then turning Ukraine into a dysfunctional rump state. That looks to me what he’s interested in doing.

And then if you want to talk about capabilities which matter enormously here, there’s the Russian army, which has had a hell of a lot of trouble conquering the eastern fifth of Ukraine. Does it look like it’s poised to overrun all of Europe? Does it look like they have enough troops to do that? Does it look like they have highly skilled troops who are capable of heading to Dunkirk? I think they don’t for one second.

So I just sort of shake my head in amazement when I listen to Western European leaders and even Eastern European leaders talk about the Russian threat. It just bears little resemblance to what I see there.

But anyway, it does appear that a lot of these European leaders have convinced themselves of this narrative that the Russians are the second coming of the Third Reich, and that the Russian army is the Wehrmacht, and they’re acting accordingly.

And what they’re doing as a result is that they’re using Ukraine as a tool to wear down this incredibly formidable Russian army that they see. They think that it’s good that the Ukrainian army is bleeding the Russian army white.

I think from Ukraine’s point of view, again, as we were saying before, this is a total disaster. The last thing the Ukrainians want to do, in my opinion, is get in the business of bleeding the Russians white. They’re not going to do that in the end. They’re going to bleed themselves white. And all for what purpose? To protect the Europeans against a threat that doesn’t exist.

This is all, to use a phrase that we used to use when I was young, this is bonkers. It’s just crazy. And nevertheless, it is where we are.

Putin’s Perspective on Ukraine

Glenn, let me make one other point. I just want to go back to your point about Ukrainian leaders going to Moscow and talking to Putin. I think Putin would cut a deal. I’ve watched Putin very closely for a long time now. And you go back to his very famous July 12, 2021 article where he talked about how he thinks about Russians and Ukrainians. He basically views them as blood brothers and blood sisters.

This is not somebody who hates Ukrainians and wants to kill Ukrainians. On the contrary. And if you look at how he’s waged the war, he’s not really waged an intense punishment campaign that’s aimed at killing civilians.

There’s no question he has an interest in turning Ukraine into a dysfunctional rump state because the West wants to use Ukraine to defeat Russia, and he cannot allow that to happen. But I do not detect that nationalist fervor has taken over in Putin’s mind. And he views the Ukrainian people as mortal enemies who have to be destroyed or have to be weakened to the point where they have a terrible life and their state is wrecked and so forth and so on.

I believe that he would like to work out a modus vivendi with the Ukrainians. I believe he would like to do that for two reasons, just to repeat. One is because I think he doesn’t have an animus against the Ukrainians who again, he views as blood brothers and blood sisters.

Furthermore, it makes eminently good strategic sense for him to work out some sort of modus vivendi with the Ukrainians. The last thing he wants to do is conquer a portion of Ukraine and then face a huge civil war or insurrection inside of the territory that he conquers and have a constant state of poisonous relations with the Ukrainian state that’s left after this conflict ends.

It would make much more sense from Putin’s point of view to put this war in the rearview mirror and to work out good relations with the Ukrainians. I’m not saying that he could do that, but I think that is in his interest. So if someone like Arestovich goes to Moscow and talks to Putin, I think there is a reasonably good chance they could work out a deal.

# The Dangers of Escalation

GLENN DIESEN: Yeah, well, I think there’s some concern also about overreach, because you do want peace that results in an acceptable status quo, not something that is permanent thorn in the side of others, which has to be rectified at a later point.

Also, there’s some reports suggesting that up to 3 million Ukrainians fled to Russia during this war. And you don’t want to alienate them too much either in terms of waging a war on the Ukrainian people, which is why they’re defining it as a war with the Ukrainian states. My point there isn’t to excuse anything, but to point the limitations of what Russia can actually do.

Then, I mean, the same with this idea that Russia will annex Poland into the Russian empire like it’s the 19th century and march on Paris. It’s quite absurd. Well, even if Putin would be this mad, you know, he’s not actually a dictator. He does have a public who has to, who needs to support him. It’s going to be very hard to explain to the Russian public why they need to march on Paris or the rest of the political class in Russia and even more importantly, the international partners.

Yes, I mean, one of the reasons why we haven’t been able to isolate Russia in the international system is because the world outside NATO to a large extent see this as a proxy war against Russia where NATO is using Ukraine since 2014. But you know, what would the BRICS countries say, the SCO countries, China, India or the global south if Russia would start to march on Germany? And I mean, it would be absurd, but it’s… I think this is why political leaders often have to communicate in cliches and emotional rhetoric because if they flesh out their argument, it doesn’t make any sense by any stretch of the imagination.

Historical Lessons from Soviet Occupation

JOHN J. MEARSHEIMER: But sorry, I just want to say also, and I think I’ve made this point with you and Alexander before that the Russians or the Soviets occupied Eastern Europe and it was a hornet’s nest. They had a major insurrection in East Germany in 1953. They had to go into Hungary in 1956, they had to go into Czechoslovakia in 1968. They almost went into Poland three times. And then they had to deal with the Romanians, the Albanians and the Yugoslavs, which was, those were three major thorns in their side.

You know, they’ve been there, they’ve done that and it did not work out very well. The idea that, you know, they would want to reconquer or reintegrate these countries into a new Warsaw Pact, just not a serious argument.

And by the way, I saw Putin the other day was talking about the American experience in Afghanistan. And of course the Soviets had a similar experience in Afghanistan. And the major lesson I’m sure that Putin learned from Afghanistan is you don’t want to go into other countries and try to occupy them and run their politics. It’s a prescription for disaster.

We live in the age of nationalism. Nation states want self-determination, they want sovereignty. They don’t want the Russians coming in and telling them what their politics should look like any more than the United States or any other country wants another country to occupy their territory and try to run their politics. Putin understands this. All the evidence is clear that he understands this. And therefore, I think these arguments that he’s interested in recreating the Soviet empire, something like a new Warsaw Pact are just arguments that make no sense at all.

The Nationalist Question in Ukraine

GLENN DIESEN: No. And I think the nationalist argument was why many people warned against the, well, toppling the government back in 2014. Because in Eastern Ukraine, all the ethnic Russians, the Russian speakers, once you try to put Russia into NATO’s orbits and begin to crack down on the language, cultural rights, religious rights, suddenly the nationalist identity began to defect to the Russian side because they see themselves to some extent as being Russian.

So this was a terrible idea. They should have kept building Ukrainian national identity as independent from Russian, but not anti-Russian. Once it became anti-Russian, I think, yeah, there was civil war and Russians would come in on the side of the eastern Ukrainians.

But I did want to ask you about the incrementalism in this war, though, because what we’re doing today we would never have dared to do back in 2022. I mean, the HIMARS F-16s, long range strikes. I see General Donahue casually talking about invading Kaliningrad. You know, the Europeans now want to seize Russian ships because of… Well, I don’t know why. And of course, now Trump is talking about he might approve the Tomahawks.

Again, this would be American missiles working on American intelligence. It’s uncertain to what extent Americans would be involved in launching them as well. But where is all of this going? Because I do get the impression sometimes that the Russians are now losing a bit patience. Well, with the Europeans, definitely. But also the idea that they might be able to strike a deal and to improve the bilateral ties with the Americans.

I’m not sure if you see it the same way, but again, incrementalism in war is a dangerous thing that you start at one point and then gradually move to much, much more extreme position. How do you see the threats ahead of us?

Shocking Escalations and Cold War Parallels

JOHN J. MEARSHEIMER: Yeah, this is a great question. Let me make a number of points here. First of all, I think the two developments that have taken place in this war that shocked me the most were the Ukrainian invasion of Kursk, where the Ukrainian military was backing from NATO, invaded Mother Russia. This is like for me, truly shocking.

And then there was that attack on the strategic bomber force inside of Russia. I mean, you’re talking about the Ukrainians who are fully supported when it comes to these attacks by the United States and by Britain and by NATO more generally. Attacking one leg of the nuclear triad. For somebody like me who grew up in the Cold War, this is unthinkable.

I honestly did not think that we would allow that to happen, that we would make it 100% clear to the Ukrainians that they could not send land forces, ground forces into Mother Russia and they could not go anywhere near Russia’s triad. I mean, in the Cold War, you fully understood that that was flirting with disaster. Doesn’t even capture it right. We’re talking about nuclear war. This is a country that has thousands of nuclear weapons.

I mean, the idea that you’re going to scare the Russians, that you’re going to attack their homeland, this is, you know, in the Cold War, this was unthinkable. I would just note to you, Glenn, one scenario we used to talk about in the Cold War was what happened if the Soviets attacked, the Warsaw Pact attacks in Central Europe, and their forces are shattered by NATO forces. NATO forces were quite formidable.

So what happens if the Soviet forces shatter? Do you, NATO then drive eastward? Do you start heading towards the Soviet border? I don’t think anybody would have advocated that. But here you have a situation where you’re in Ukraine, which was then part of the Soviet Union, you’re in Ukraine, you’re doing everything you can to make Ukraine a de facto member of NATO. And then you take Ukrainian forces and they go marching into Mother Russia. Wow. And then you attack one leg of the strategic triad.

Again, I think from the perspective of a person, meaning me, whose brain was grooved during the Cold War, this is really shocking. So that’s the first point I’d make.

Second point I’d make is there’s no question that we have gone up the escalation ladder. We have ended up doing things, many of which you described and some of which I described, which show that we are really deeply committed in this fight and we have been willing to take the gloves off. There have been some limits, for sure, but those limits have slowly but steadily been undone, as you described it and as I described it.

So the question I ask myself, given that I think the Russians are going to win this war and how deeply invested the west is, what are we going to do? Are we just going to accept the fact that the Russians won, or are we going to escalate or are we going to try and do something to stop a Russian victory? I tend to think there’s not much we can do, but we’re going to be desperate.

This is going to be, assuming that the Russians win, this is going to be a stunning defeat for NATO. Very important to understand that. A stunning defeat. NATO has committed itself to defeating the Russians, and in the beginning, we believed that we could bring the Russians to our knees. We were going to knock the Russians out of the ranks of the great powers. And that’s not going to happen.

And assuming that the Russians win, which I think is likely to happen, you have to ask yourself, what are we going to do? And then you have to marry that to the question, what are the Russians going to do if we start to go up the escalation ladder? The answer is they’re going to go up the escalation ladder with us. And then the question is, where does this all end?

So I would say that you can make a good case. I mean, who knows for sure how this is going to play out, but you can make a good case that truly dangerous times lie ahead, that the question of who wins this one in itself is important, but it’s not the end of the story.

The question of whether or not NATO or the west can accept defeat, I mean, just take Trump. I think Trump has largely tried to wash his hands of this conflict, but if it looks like the Russians are going to win and it’s going to be a significant defeat for NATO, the people around Trump are going to put enormous pressure on him to do something.

And as we all know with Trump, the last person that talks to him sometimes or many times has a lot of influence, and he could end up doing something foolish which will prompt the Russians to do something escalatory. And again, who knows where it ends?

European Rhetoric and the Risk of Collapse

GLENN DIESEN: It’s now, we’ve spoken in the past as well. Well, what’s going to happen towards the end of the war when Ukraine begins to collapse, when that desperation sets in? I fear, yeah, that unwilling to accept defeat, there’s going to be some very crazy escalations on NATO side.

And if you listen to the rhetoric, especially from the Europeans these days, there’s some top level lunacy there, though. I mean, this idea they’re going to seize all the Russian funds, they’re going to seize the Russian ships. Why not start to intervene directly into the war? I mean, the Chancellor of Germany speaking about having to build the biggest army so they can fight Russia, this is just over, so over the top.

But I did want to switch a bit to the Middle East, though, because I know this is also something you’ve been following for many, many years, given that you’ve written books on this, on the Israel lobby. But how do you define the US interest in Middle East, though? And why do you think it conflicts with why the support for Israel conflicts with US interests?

I ask because you often get the argument that on this vast Eurasian continent, you have Western Europe as the bridgehead on the western side of the Eurasian continent, you have Japan, South Korea and other allies as a bridgehead on the eastern side. And Israel was supposed to be a powerful bridgehead in the, in more southern parts.

And Biden once said that, you know, if there was no Israel, we would have to create it because this is how America projects its power there in the Middle East. But so why is it that you don’t think that the US and Israel policy or interest are joined at the hip?

The Israel Lobby and America’s Strategic Liability

JOHN J. MEARSHEIMER: Well, I mean, the argument that Israel is a strategic asset is not a serious argument. It’s a strategic liability. It’s an albatross around their neck. The reason that you have a remarkably powerful Israel lobby that works overtime to get the United States to support Israel unconditionally is because Israel is a strategic liability. If you didn’t have an Israel lobby, we’d have a fundamentally different relationship with Israel. We treat it as a normal country.

The fact is Israel has done little to foster American interests in the Middle East. The principal reason that we were attacked on 9/11, hardly anybody talks about this in the mainstream media because it’s critical of Israel. But the fact is that Osama bin Laden, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks, both of them have said that their main motivation for attacking the United States was US support of Israel against the Palestinians.

And if you look at the history of US behavior in the Middle East since 1948, the year that Israel was created, Israel has never been an asset in any of the wars that we fought or in terms of our diplomacy in the region, just doesn’t matter very much at all. And in fact, it’s a liability. And if you look at what’s going on today, it’s definitely a liability.

America’s Complicity in Genocide

And it’s not just a strategic liability, which is what I’ve been focusing on in my comments up to now, it’s also a moral liability. The fact is, because we support Israel unconditionally, we’re complicit in a genocide. Israel is an apartheid state. And it’s an apartheid state that’s executing a genocide. And the United States supports it unconditionally, there’s no way that Israel could execute this genocide without our support.

A recent study just came out from Brown University that says that we have basically provided Israel with $31 billion worth of support since October 7th two years ago. Think about that. Over the past two years, since October 7th, when Israel has been committing this genocide and waging war against Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, the West Bank, and so forth and so on. During this period, we have given them $31 billion worth of assistance. Over $20 billion is in direct military and economic aid. And the other approximately $10 billion is the cost of our military operations in the region that were designed to support Israel. This is truly stunning. $31 billion.

Netanyahu’s Control Over American Presidents

And there’s no way that any president, whether it’s Joe Biden or Donald Trump, can get Benjamin Netanyahu to do what they want. Benjamin Netanyahu had Joe Biden wrapped around his finger, and he now has Donald Trump wrapped around his finger. As I like to say, if you look around the world and you look at how Donald Trump treats every country on the planet except Israel, what you see is him slapping them all around all the time. He seems to enjoy slapping U.S. allies around more than U.S. adversaries.

If you just watch him operate with the Danes. Is there a more loyal ally on the planet than Denmark? I don’t think so. But look at how he’s treated the Danes. Trump is a classic bully who likes to beat up on almost everybody except Israel. We treat Israel fundamentally differently than we treat every other country on the planet.

Why is this the case? Is it because it’s a great strategic ally? Not at all. If you look at American public opinion, the American public recognizes that they want to cut off, the majority of people want to cut off the flow of aid to Israel. Majority of people think Israel’s committing a genocide in Gaza. Nevertheless, we support Israel unreservedly. And why is that the case? It’s because of the power of the Israel lobby.

So the idea that Israel is this great bulwark that is shoring up American interests, and if it didn’t exist, we would have to create it, it’s not a serious argument. And if Joe Biden and Donald Trump had the American national interest at heart, if they were American firsters, which they’re not, they would treat Israel very differently. Donald Trump is not an American firster. He’s an Israel firster. And the same thing was true with Joe Biden.

And the end result of this is they’re not doing what’s in the American national interest. And if they were doing what was in the American national interest, and what is the correct thing to do morally, they would have shut this genocide down a long time ago, and we would treat, we, meaning the United States would treat Israel as a normal country.

The Collapse of Western Reputation

GLENN DIESEN: Yeah, well, for political realists, which I would put myself in the camp, there’s often a focus on material power. But there’s something that can be said about the collapse of our reputation over what’s happening in Gaza as this liberal veil to run an empire has been very much cast aside. And I mean, it’s not just Israel, but the US, its reputation is also taking quite a beating around the world. And not just around the world, but at home as well, an uproar among our own populations.

Also here in Europe, there’s the whole crisis of political legitimacy. I mean, it does have huge ramifications in the international system, as you see now with European leaders. They don’t enjoy very high approval rating or legitimacy this time around.

But I did want to ask, though, about the Trump peace plan, because he has a, oh, I forgot what it’s called. The Enduring Peace plan. That’s the one he always needs, the big, beautiful bill, the grand awards. He’s great at his branding and marketing. But he’s gone from building a Riviera in Gaza, ethnically cleansing the whole region, to now have this new peace plan. It might not be something actually very different because it entails disarming Hamas, which is a key thorn in the side of Israel and a key reason why it’s struggling there. What do you make of this peace plan? Because it has received some support. I heard at Valdai the Russians or Putin said that the Russians would support it as well. But it doesn’t seem like a very good plan. What do you make of it?

Trump’s “Peace Plan”: An American-Israeli Document

JOHN J. MEARSHEIMER: Well, it’s important to emphasize that it’s not just an American plan, it’s an American-Israeli plan. I mean, the Israelis didn’t want any plan at all. The Israelis are bent on continuing the genocide because the genocide is their principal instrument for either driving the Palestinians out of Gaza or murdering all of them. The principal Israeli goal in Gaza is to ethnically cleanse Gaza. The Israelis want a greater Israel that has hardly any Palestinians, maybe even no Palestinians in it.

Just very important to understand that because when people talk about Gaza, they say Israel has two goals. One is to get the hostages back and two, to defeat Hamas. I think those are two of their goals, but their principal goal is to ethnically cleanse Gaza, to drive all the Palestinians out. Very important to understand the two great ethnic cleansings of the Palestinians took place in 1948 and 1967 in the context of two wars. And the Israelis understand full well that the best opportunity to cleanse comes in a war.

So what happened on October 7 was a golden opportunity for Netanyahu and company to cleanse the Palestinians. And they went right to work at that task. They were bent on driving the Palestinians out. And they thought that they could achieve that end by punishing the Palestinians in Gaza, by killing large numbers of Palestinians and destroying their homes. And then they would leave. They would go to Jordan or Egypt or both, and the Israelis would have a Palestinian-free Gaza and then they would go to work on the West Bank.

Israel’s Failed Ethnic Cleansing Campaign

But what you want to understand, Glenn, is they failed. They did not succeed in driving the Palestinians out. I mean, they’ve executed a genocide, there’s no question about that. And the Palestinians have been concentrated in a handful of areas in Gaza Strip, but they have not driven them out. There’s no country that will take them. And Egypt has gone to enormous lengths to make it clear that it is categorically unacceptable for the Israelis to drive the Palestinians into the Sinai, which of course is owned by the Egyptians.

So the Israelis have failed. And we’ve reached the point because there is so much protest around the world, including inside the United States, against what the Palestinians are suffering, what the Israelis are doing, that Trump felt compelled to try to shut this one down. That’s what’s going on here. Just very important to understand that Trump would like to end this. He can’t end it because Netanyahu has him tied around his finger. But anyway, he’s making an attempt and he came up with a plan. He talked to lots of Arab leaders and so forth and so on.

But before the plan was finalized, the Israelis moved in. Netanyahu, mainly through his principal advisor on these issues, Ron Dermer, met with the Americans and the Israelis, and the Americans crafted the final document. This is the 20-point plan that came out two Mondays ago. And then they presented that as a fait accompli to the Palestinians and to the Arab leaders and basically to the rest of the world, the Russians included.

It’s not like the Palestinians had any say in this. It’s very important to understand that the final document was prepared by the Israelis and the Americans and it was presented to the Palestinians as a fait accompli. And Trump told them that if they don’t accept it in four days time, that all hell was going to break loose and he was going to do horrible things or the Israelis were going to do horrible things to the Palestinians. So this is the context in which this plan was developed.

Why the Plan is a Non-Starter

If you look at the plan, it’s a non-starter. It’s not serious. The Palestinians lose at every turn. First of all, the Palestinians have to give up the hostages within 72 hours. All the hostages have to be given up. And as everybody knows, the hostages provide leverage for the Palestinians. It’s the only real leverage they have, but they have to give them up in 72 hours.

Then the plan also calls for Hamas to completely disarm, completely disarmed to include destroying the remaining tunnels. And most estimates are that more than 50% of the tunnels still remain, but they have to be destroyed so the Palestinians are left naked.

And then there’s the Israeli withdrawal. The Israelis withdraw in phases, and they pretty much withdraw when they think it’s appropriate to withdraw. This is the Israelis, and you know where that’s going to lead. They’re not going to withdraw. And even once you reach the final withdrawal point in this plan, the Israelis control the perimeter around Gaza. They’re inside Gaza along its borders. They control the perimeter. So those are three big problems.

A Neo-Colonial Plan

But then you come to the really big problems. First of all, who gets to govern Gaza. And the answer is basically the colonial powers, also known as Britain and the United States, and they may bring in some Arab forces as part of a stabilization force to keep things under control, and they may have some Palestinian technocrats who help in the process. But it’s basically, this is a neo-colonial plan. I don’t use that word neo-colonial hardly ever. But when you read this plan, it looks like a neo-colonial plan. Let’s bring in Tony Blair.

GLENN DIESEN: Tony Blair. Yeah. That was icing on the cake, wasn’t it?

The Trump-Blair Gaza Plan: A Colonial Enterprise

JOHN J. MEARSHEIMER: I mean, are we serious here? So Tony Blair and Donald Trump are going to run Gaza. This is Donald Trump, who a month or so ago was talking about the Riviera on creating the Riviera on the Mediterranean, which basically was embraced by the Israelis because they understood it would mean getting rid of all the Palestinians and turning Jared Kushner loose to develop Gaza and turn it into the Riviera. But he’s going to be in charge now along with Tony Blair. Oh, my.

So the Palestinians are not going to govern, at least in the short term. In the long term, the Palestinian Authority will govern. But first, the Palestinian Authority has to go through a re-education process. This is hard to believe because the Palestinian Authority is basically subservient to Israel and the United States.

Mahmoud Abbas, who heads up the Palestinian Authority, has zero legitimacy among Palestinians. The idea that he’s got to be re-educated is one that I find hard to understand. The Israelis ought to let the Palestinian Authority in immediately, as should the Americans. But they’re not. And you know why they’re not? Because they don’t want the Palestinians to run Gaza. They want Tony Blair and Donald Trump and in effect the Israelis to run Gaza. So in terms of running Gaza, the Palestinians are screwed in this deal.

And then we get to the really big question: what is the final settlement here? What’s the end result? It’s referred to in the 20th and final point of the document as the “political horizon.” What’s the political horizon? And the answer is there is no clear political horizon.

They mention the possibility of a Palestinian state, but the plan does not commit to that. The plan basically says the Palestinians themselves are interested in a state of their own. Okay, we knew that. We didn’t need to be told that. But does the plan call for a Palestinian state? No. Are the Israelis going to allow a Palestinian state? No.

For anybody who’s been listening, Benjamin Netanyahu has been running around lately saying there is going to be no Palestinian state. If there’s going to be no Palestinian state, what is the political horizon? What is the alternative? And nobody says anything about that in the plan.

So basically, this is a plan that calls for Hamas to disarm itself, give back all the hostages, allow Israel to effectively stay in the Gaza Strip, and then there’s no self-determination. This neocolonial enterprise is what we get for the foreseeable future.

GLENN DIESEN: So capitulate or we kill you. That’s the deal. And once you capitulate, then you don’t have the tunnels, you don’t have the weapons, then we can kill you anyways. I mean, it’s a horrible deal.

Genocide and Western Complicity

JOHN J. MEARSHEIMER: It’s horrible. It’s absolutely horrible. It’s abhorrent. The Israelis are monsters. This is a genocide. If you look at all of the human rights groups and international organizations and Holocaust scholars and genocide scholars who have looked at this case and said it’s a genocide, I don’t know how anybody can deny that it’s a genocide.

And if you don’t want to use the word genocide, it’s at least a case of mass murder. This is absolutely horrible what’s happening to the Palestinians. And again, the United States is complicit in this. If we had Nuremberg Two, Joe Biden and his lieutenants and Donald Trump and his lieutenants would be in the dock. I don’t know what to say.

The Absence of Strategy and Western Decline

GLENN DIESEN: Well, I just have one quick final question. I was thinking about the absence of strategy. I mean, initially, I can see why there was strategy to all of these things—to use the Ukrainians to knock out Russia, to solve the Palestinian issue by force or ethnic cleansing or genocide. But, you know, strategy means you should set an objective, determine how you will achieve those objectives, and you have to include how your opponents will likely respond to your actions. I don’t see much strategy anymore.

And it seems as if there’s a decline now of the West, which has been intensified by these two conflicts in particular. I mean, the US and Europe do not look like they did back in 2014 either. How do you explain this, the wider geopolitical decline? I mean, security, economic, moral, political stability. I know there’s a lot packed into that little question.

But the West has changed a lot over the past decade, especially the past four or five years at least. Is it just that we’re losing these conflicts, or how do you make sense of this? Because if you look around Europe, the way politicians talk now, I mean, they’ve become quite nasty. And I guess optimism about the future is pretty much gone, and the relevance is quickly declining. It’s a very different mood here than it was not that long ago. How do you make sense of this?

The Decline of Western Leadership

JOHN J. MEARSHEIMER: I think your description of what’s happened here is on the money. There’s no question about that. It’s not an easy question to answer. I mean, something has gone badly wrong.

You know, if you go back to the Cold War and you sort of look at the leadership in countries like Germany and France and Britain, the leaders were not without their faults, for sure, but they’re far more impressive than the leaders that you have today. You go back to think about Germany—Helmut Kohl, Helmut Schmidt, Willy Brandt. I mean, these were very smart, strategically oriented leaders. This is not, again, to say they didn’t make mistakes, but an impressive lot. And the same thing is true in France with people like de Gaulle and so forth and so on, and Britain.

And then you look at the leaders today, and you look at how much trouble they’re in. And, you know, it’s one thing to get into trouble, but these people seem to then double down. These leaders doubled down instead of making smart strategic adjustments.

Just to give you an example, if you go to the Ukraine war, they thought in the beginning that they had a clever strategy that would defeat Russia. And it was a two-step strategy. The first step was that you stop the Russians on the battlefield, you stymie them on the battlefield. And you can do that with the Ukrainian military. Because between 2014 and 2022, you’ve trained up and armed the Ukrainians. The Ukrainians have a quite formidable military force by 2022.

And, you know, people lose sight of that. The Ukrainian military in 2014 was a basket case. But we understood that—we in the West—and we went to great lengths to train up and to arm that Ukrainian force so that by 2022, it was a quite formidable force. That was the first step.

But the second step is the economic sanctions. That was the real killer. The West thought that the sanctions—these are going to be the most formidable sanctions the world had ever seen—that those sanctions would cripple the Russian economy and cripple Russia. And the combination of the Ukrainian army holding off the Russians on the battlefield, coupled with these crippling sanctions, would bring the Russians to their knees. That was the strategy.

And one could argue that it was a plausible strategy in the context of 2022. There were a lot of people who thought that it would work, and these were not crazy people. But it didn’t work. In fact, it backfired. And if anything, it was the European economies that were hurt and the Russian economy did quite well.

You would expect then that the European elites or the Western elites more generally would change the strategy, that they would begin to think about how to deal with the Russians in a different way because their war-winning strategy turned into a war-losing strategy. But that’s not what happened.

Apropos our earlier conversation on the show today, what we are doing is doubling down. They’re talking about more sanctions. They continue to talk about secondary sanctions, Glenn, when there’s no possibility of secondary sanctions being implemented, much less working. But they continue to talk about sanctions and they continue to talk about rescuing the situation on the battlefield, despite the fact, as General Zaluzhny says, things are going south for the Ukrainians.

There’s just sort of no ability to correct the course that you’re on. And I find this actually quite remarkable. And it’s, I think, a function of the quality of the leadership. And the question is, why is this the case? I mean, how did we end up in this situation?

And by the way, I haven’t even talked about the United States, where you look at Biden and Trump and you look at their conduct of foreign policy and you compare that to the foreign policy of previous presidents. And you can only shake your head in amazement because both Biden and Trump have done a terrible job executing American foreign policy in very different ways. They’ve pursued flawed policies, but nevertheless, you do wonder what’s gone on here.

The Unipolar Moment Delusion

I think just saying a few words about the European case, I think what happened is that during the unipolar moment, the United States and its allies came to think that they had found the magic formula for dealing with the world, that liberal democracy was the wave of the future, that liberal democracy could do no wrong, and that if you put an authoritarian state up against a liberal democracy, the liberal democracy would win every time.

And furthermore, all these authoritarian states were destined to fail in the long term because, as Frank Fukuyama told us, liberal democracies have the wind at their back. And that, you know, things are moving in their direction. There may be some bumps along the road, but eventually we will win out. The arc of history is moving our direction.

And I think if you look at the leaders in Europe today, they were raised in that world. They came of age during the unipolar moment, and they came to believe that the West is the best and that there was really no alternative to the West. And they just continue to think that you could pursue the same old policies that really, in the end, will prevail, that we’re on the right side, and they just have no ability to adjust and to realize that the world in which they came of age—the unipolar moment—is gone. It’s all over with.

The United States is not the sole pole. It’s not the single great power on the planet. And furthermore, you not only have countries like Russia and China that are now great powers, you have a rich history of failure by the West, especially by the United States in its various escapades during the unipolar moment. This is how you got the forever wars.

But they seem to be incapable of coming to terms with the fact that we now live in a multipolar world. We don’t live in a unipolar world where the United States and the West are in the driver’s seat. We live in a multipolar world. And furthermore, so many of those policies that they love and that they thought were wonderful during the unipolar moment have proved to be failures.

And what we got during the unipolar moment were lots of forever wars. And if they would take a few minutes to think about it, they would understand that they’re in a forever war in Ukraine. This is what’s happening there. But they just don’t seem to understand.

Mass Psychosis and the Collapse of Worldviews

GLENN DIESEN: When I see one strategy not working and there’s a failure to do any course correction, I increasingly look towards explanations where it’s not based on reason or rationality anymore. I mean, I think you’re onto something there. I mean, if the entire worldview is falling apart—that is, how the world works, our place in it—if all of this is shattering, I mean, you have almost mass psychosis.

I don’t mean to be hyperbolic, but, you know, in academics we should try not to overstate something. But you do see a bit of a strange psychological phenomenon here. When you have large groups of people developing false beliefs, these intense emotions, and pursuing behavior which doesn’t correspond with reality—I mean, people do panic when their worldview falls apart.

And as a world order comes to an end, it’s—yeah, I don’t think it’s always reasonable to explain what is actually happening among the political elites. But yeah. Before we wrap up, do you have any final thoughts?

The West’s Complicity in Gaza

JOHN J. MEARSHEIMER: Yeah, I do. I do. Glenn, I want to make one final point on this. I think what really illustrates the bankruptcy of the west is the reaction to the Gaza genocide. The west prides itself on believing in and purveying liberal values. And I’m going to make this clear. I’m a champion of liberal values. And the fact that I live in a liberal democracy or was born and raised in a liberal democracy like the United States, I consider it to be a wonderful thing.

So I’m not at all an enemy of liberalism or liberal values. I just want to make that very clear. But that leads me to be, and I’m choosing my words carefully here, extremely critical of what the Israelis are doing in Gaza and the way the west. And here I’m talking mainly about the United States, but not only the United States is supporting the Israeli genocide.

But you want to think about what’s going on here. This is the west, this is the liberal west that is complicit in a genocide. And this is not some hidden genocide. This is not like Cambodia. This is out in the open. It’s so clear what is happening in Gaza and what is the west doing now?

If you look at the publics, it’s a different story. But if you look at the elites, and your question had to do with the governing elites. If you look at the governing elites, the foreign policy establishments in the west, in the United States, in Europe, especially in places like Britain and Germany, it is to me truly stunning that we’re complicit over a two year period in a genocide that’s taken place out in the open.

If you really believe in Western values or liberal values, as our leaders say they do, what in God’s name are they doing supporting the Israelis? They should have shut this one down as soon as it started. This should have never happened. But it has happened and the elites just don’t seem to understand.

And by the way, you want to remember, it’s not like the public down below is clamoring to continue the genocide. On the contrary, I just read an article in the Wall Street Journal this morning that said in Britain the government is at a loss because it can’t figure out how to stop the daily protests that come in support of the Palestinians. It talks in the article about almost daily protests in support of the Palestinians.

And of course, if you look at public opinion in the United States, on both the right and the left, all sorts of people understand that this genocide has to be stopped. So you have elites that have publics below them that would support in a second shutting down the genocide. But they’re not shutting down the genocide. And just to go back to the point I made a minute ago, they’re complicit in the genocide.

How can this be? And don’t these people understand what the consequences of this are going to be? Don’t they understand when people outside of the west look at them, they see hypocrites of the first order. Liberal values, you say. You know, you believe in liberal values, you believe in human rights, you believe in the Genocide Convention. The hypocrisy here is stunning. And more importantly than the hypocrisy is the complicity in the genocide.

Self-Inflicted Wounds and Strategic Failures

So this is where we are today. The west is in so much trouble. And in many ways it’s a self inflicted wound. I mean, there’s no question that when you move from unipolarity to multipolarity, it’s going to be a very complicated process and there are going to be all sorts of startup costs getting adjusted to this new world. So I understand that, you know, international politics is a messy business. It’s tough to be a leader, right?

I wouldn’t want to be a leader of any one of these countries under any circumstances at any time. It’s very tough to be a political leader, we all understand that. But if you look at how the leaders in the west have behaved in recent years, I mean, starting with Ukraine and now throwing in Gaza, it’s just hard to believe how foolish Western leaders have been from both a strategic point of view and from a moral point of view.

GLENN DIESEN: Yeah, well, this was the post Cold War political elites. They seemed that they genuinely believed that they belonged to the history books because they were essentially delivering perpetual peace through this liberal hegemony. And to now see them in panic and their first impulse is to excuse genocide in order to continue to support it. Or Chancellor Scholz of Germany said, “Israel is doing our dirty work.”

I mean, this is, there’s no recovering from this. It’s quite horrific. I mean, but I guess goes back to my point, I think it does reflect a crisis in their view of their place in history, in the world. And I don’t think they appreciate what actually they have gotten themselves involved in.

JOHN J. MEARSHEIMER: I agree 100% with that. History is not going to judge them well, not for one second. It’s really quite stunning the situation that they’ve put themselves in and us, because we are part of the west.

GLENN DIESEN: Agree. Well, thank you so much for your time and I look forward to seeing you soon in debate or discussion with Jeffrey Sachs. So I will look forward to that. And thank you again so much for your time.

JOHN J. MEARSHEIMER: My pleasure, Glenn, as always. And I too look forward to talking to you and especially to Jeff about spheres of influence.