Read the transcript of John Mearsheimer’s interview on Piers Morgan Uncensored.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
JOHN MEARSHEIMER: Well, it’s hard to see how Trump gets a good deal.
First of all, I would dispute your claim that this is a stalemate and people are getting slaughtered on both sides. I think if you look carefully at what’s happening on the battlefield, the Russians are clearly winning. They’re steadily moving forward and capturing all sorts of strategic territory. They’re inflicting, in my opinion, many more casualties on the Ukrainians than the Ukrainians are inflicting on the Russians.
And all of this is to say, I think the Russians are in the driver’s seat. They believe that they have the military capability to win this war. The second point I’d make is that in terms of actually getting a deal, Putin believes that Ukraine in NATO is an existential threat.
And Putin is demanding that the United States and Ukraine accept the fact that Ukraine will never be either a de jure or a de facto member of NATO. Furthermore, Putin is demanding that Ukraine and the West, and here we’re talking mainly about the United States, accept the fact that he has annexed, or Russia has annexed, four Ukrainian Oblasts plus Crimea. Getting the West to accept that, and certainly getting Ukraine to accept that, is going to be extremely difficult, if not impossible.
And the same thing is true with regard to a neutral Ukraine.
So I find it hard to believe how Trump is going to be able to agree to the principal demands of Putin for settling this conflict.
So I don’t think you’re going to get a meaningful peace agreement here. I think what you’re going to get is a frozen conflict. At some point I think the conflict is going to peter out and you’ll have a frozen conflict.
But the end result of that is that the potential for that frozen conflict to turn into a hot conflict once again will be ever present.
PIERS MORGAN: Yeah, I mean it’s almost impossible to imagine, having taken Crimea, if Putin is able to hang on to the territory he’s taken in this phase of his war with Ukraine, that he’s not going to want more. Ultimately. I mean, why wouldn’t he try and get more? It would be in his nature to do so, wouldn’t it?
JOHN MEARSHEIMER: I agree completely. I think he’s taken about 20% now. He’s taken four Oblasts in the easternmost part of Ukraine plus Crimea.
And I think that he will try to take roughly 40% of Ukrainian territory. I think he’ll try to take Odessa. I think he’ll try to take Kharkiv. And I think he’ll probably try to take two or three other Oblasts.
And what he will attempt to do is turn Ukraine into a dysfunctional rump state and put Russia in a position where it controls a huge swath of territory in eastern Ukraine, including Odessa, which will then prevent Ukraine from having access to the Black Sea.
And the fact is, Piers, every time people in the West and Ukrainians talk about bringing Ukraine into NATO, that just gives the Russians greater incentive to take more territory and to do more to wreck Ukraine.
So this situation, in my opinion, is disastrous for Ukraine. It’s disastrous in the extreme for Ukraine, but it also means that it’s going to be exceedingly difficult for President Trump to get any kind of meaningful peace agreement with the Russians.
Trump’s Proposed Deal
PIERS MORGAN: Well, he’s already come out and explained one way he may try and do this. He wrote on his True Social platform on Wednesday, “I’m going to do Russia, whose economy is failing, and President Putin a very big favor.
Settle now and stop this ridiculous war. It’s only going to get worse. If we don’t make a deal soon, I have no other choice but to put high tariffs, taxes, tariffs and sanctions on anything being sold by Russia to the United States and various other participating countries. Let’s get this war, which wouldn’t have started if I were president, over with.
We can do it the easy way or the hard way, and the easy way is always better. It’s time to make a deal.”
Now Putin responded by telling a Russian state TV journalist, “We believe the current president’s statements about his readiness to work together, we are always open to this and ready for negotiations, it would be better for us to meet based on the realities of today to talk calmly.”
And he described his relationship with Trump as “businesslike, pragmatic and trustworthy.”
I mean, unusually diplomatic from Putin there, but Trump wielding the card of big tariffs in particular that he’s just done very successfully with Colombia in one of the shortest showdowns in history, obviously a very different situation with Putin.
But is he right in saying that Russia’s economy is failing and that actually if America did really turn the screw economically on the sanctions, it could make Putin come to the table?
JOHN MEARSHEIMER: I think that Trump’s comments are divorced from reality.
First of all, as I said before, the Russians are in the driver’s seat on the battlefield. There’s nothing that Trump can do to turn the tide on the battlefield. And this of course is why he emphasizes putting greater economic sanctions on the Russians.
But this is not going to work because there’s hardly any room for more economic sanctions because we have so thoroughly sanctioned the Russians.
Don’t you think Joe Biden, who was deeply committed to defeating the Russians in Ukraine, has put almost all of the possible sanctions on Russia? And the answer is yes, he has.
So it’s not like there are these sanctions in the back closet that Trump can turn to and then bring the Russian economy to its knees. And furthermore, the Russian economy is not doing badly. And by some accounts, it’s doing quite well.
So the idea that he’s going to really damage the Ukrainian, excuse me, the Russian economy, I believe doesn’t make any sense.
But furthermore, let’s assume that he can really hurt the Russian economy.
The question you want to ask yourself is what will the Russians do?