The following is the full transcript of Judge Napolitano of Judging Freedom in conversation with political scientist and international relations scholar Prof. John Mearsheimer on “Ukraine’s Last Chance for Peace”, on May 22, 2025.
Opening Discussion on Israel and the Middle East
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, May 22, 2025. Professor John Mearsheimer joins us now. Professor Mearsheimer, thank you very much for accommodating my schedule. I want to spend the bulk of our time on Ukraine, but before we get there, a few questions about Israel and the Middle East. Do you believe the Western press about the rift between President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu, or do you think this is some sort of a deception foisted upon us by either the White House or the Israelis?
PROF. JOHN MEARSHEIMER: I don’t think there’s a serious rift. I think there’s no question that Trump wants to do a number of things in the Middle East that Netanyahu does not want him to do. But the question is whether Trump is willing to get tough enough with Netanyahu to create a real rift. And there’s no evidence that’s the case.
And of course, the two issues here are, number one, Iran, where Trump wants to cut a deal and Netanyahu is basically making it impossible for him to cut a deal. And then, of course, the other issue is Gaza, where I believe that the Trump administration would like to put an end to what’s going on in terms of the genocide in Gaza, but Netanyahu and the lobby won’t let him.
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Witkoff. Steve Witkoff, Trump’s negotiator, who Max Blumenthal says has been described by the Iranian negotiators as ill-informed and distracted, maybe his mind is on Ukraine, I don’t know. Nevertheless, told ABC News last weekend that Trump is a humanitarian. Isn’t that laughable?
PROF. JOHN MEARSHEIMER: It’s laughable. I mean, you make much on the show regarding the question of whether the war in Ukraine is now Trump’s war. I 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, and he owns the genocide in Gaza as well. And to argue that he’s a humanitarian is preposterous.
The Humanitarian Crisis in Gaza
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: The Secretary General or the Under Secretary 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 Thursday, Ray 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. So it’s clear that the Israelis, Smotrich, Gabir and some nut job that we’ll 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.
PROF. JOHN MEARSHEIMER: I 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. It’s truly shocking. And when you look at what the Western elites are doing, they’re hardly doing anything to prevent it. It’s just truly amazing. It’s sickening. I don’t know what else to say. I didn’t think anything like this would ever happen. But it is happening.
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: All 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.
VIDEO CLIP BEGINS:
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Every child in Gaza is the enemy. We are at war with the Gazan entity, the Gazan terror entity, which we ourselves established in Gaza, in Oslo and in the disengagement, the disengagement that Prime Minister Netanyahu voted in favor of. That is the enemy. Now, every such child to whom you are now giving milk in another 15 years will rape your daughters and slaughter your children.
We need to conquer Gaza and settle it. And not a single Gazan child should remain there. Let’s stop telling ourselves this deception just to score points in this game between pro-Bibi and anti-Bibi. This isn’t about left or right. It’s about winning this war and it’s about justice. When will we learn? When will we learn?
VIDEO CLIP ENDS:
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: You’re saying that this attitude is prevalent amongst the Israeli public?
PROF. JOHN MEARSHEIMER: I think that that’s exactly right. I don’t see any evidence that there’s an uprising in the Israeli public against the genocide. There are lots of protests in Israel, but those protests have to deal with the hostages and relations between the IDF and the government. But they don’t have to do with stopping the genocide.
I mean, you want to file all of this under the Nazification of Israel. That’s where it should be filed. This is a country that’s gone completely off the rails. And the more that you see it in operation, the more it looks like the Germans under Hitler. This is just hard to believe. We’re talking about eradicating all of the Palestinians in Gaza, murdering them. This is hard to believe. This is the sort of things that the Germans did. It was supposed to be never again.
I don’t see any evidence that people in Israel believe in the principle of never again, certainly when it applies to the Palestinians and people in the West are hardly lifting a finger. This is a categorically reprehensible situation.
Iran Negotiations and Hamas
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Steve Witkoff, of whom we spoke a few minutes ago, after his first negotiation with the Iranians, left them with the impression that a significant amount of enriched uranium would be in the deal.
And they were surprised and ecstatic. And then of course, he moved the goalposts and now reduced that number down to zero. Where are they going to go with these negotiations? Whether he’s distracted, whether he’s ill-informed, he’s now taking orders from the Zionists around Trump, of which he’s one and moved the goalposts. Never mind the 3.2, it’s now zero.
PROF. JOHN MEARSHEIMER: Yeah, I mean, I think Witkoff initially allowed, in his initial statements, he allowed for Iran to have an enrichment capability because Witkoff, who was a smart man, understands that that’s the only way you’re going to get a deal. The problem is that Israel and the lobby and the far right inside the national security establishment in this country, in the United States, don’t accept that. They think that Iran cannot have any enrichment capability.
And the lobby, of course, is enormously powerful. And the message was sent to Trump as well as to Witkoff that Iran could not have nuclear enrichment. And he was forced to do a 180 degree turn, which he has done. And what that means is you’re not going to get an agreement if we stick to that position, if Witkoff sticks to that position, as Iran has insisted, that it has to be able to keep some enrichment capability.
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: The American who negotiated directly with Hamas for the release of the IDF young man from New Jersey. Young man’s name is Edan Alexander. I forget the American’s name. His first name is Adam, not Hochstein. It’s another Adam said when was being criticized by the Netanyahu regime. We don’t need Israel’s permission to engage in any negotiations. And then he was silenced. The negotiation succeeded. The boy is free. They had an opportunity to free him in March. Netanyahu blocked it. This one, freed in May, couldn’t block. But this fellow who did the negotiation, not Witkoff, was silenced. I’m going to guess you’re not surprised.
PROF. JOHN MEARSHEIMER: No, of course not. By the way, there’s stories in the media that Witkoff got that person released. Witkoff played the key role in getting that Israeli American release. But the quid pro quo was that Witkoff had promised Hamas that it would produce a ceasefire and that’s why Hamas released this Israeli American prisoner. And of course, once he was released, the Israelis and the Americans welched on the deal.
The Ukraine Conflict
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: And the Israelis enforced their blockade. But for these three food trucks and two trucks of shrouds repellent. Switching gears, what is your take on the Trump-Putin phone call? Do the Americans understand the Russian mentality?
PROF. JOHN MEARSHEIMER: Well, I don’t know if it really is necessary to understand the Russian mentality. Common sense tells you. Just common sense tells you that if the Russians are winning on the battlefield and a ceasefire will give the Ukrainians an opportunity to regroup and improve their position on the battle, the Russians would be nuts to agree to a ceasefire.
And the Russians have made it clear since they know they’re winning on the battlefield, that they’re not going to agree to a ceasefire. They have said this ad nauseam for months now. They keep saying we won’t accept a ceasefire until all the elements of a peace agreement are in place. But we refuse to listen to them. And the end result is that we continue to demand ceasefire and they continue to say no ceasefire.
My sense is that after Monday’s conversation between Putin and Trump, that Trump now understands and the Americans now understand that calling for a ceasefire is fruitless and that we really have no place to go at this point in time.
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: How close is Ukraine to the end game here?
PROF. JOHN MEARSHEIMER: It’s very hard to say. There’s no question when you look at what’s happening on the battlefield, that every week the situation deteriorates. And the Ukrainians surely know that at some point in time, all that weaponry and all that money that is in the Biden pipeline is going to evaporate. And Trump has made it clear that he’s not going to go back to Congress and do what Biden did before him.
So not only are the Ukrainians going to continue to lose even with that Biden largesse, at some point it’s going to run out and the situation is going to deteriorate further. It’s hard to imagine the Ukrainians hanging on until the end of this year.
Why Ukraine is the West’s Fault
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Why is Ukraine the West’s fault?
PROF. JOHN MEARSHEIMER: Why is Ukraine the West’s fault? It’s very simple. The Russians made it clear when we first announced that Ukraine was going to become a member of NATO in April 2008 that they viewed this as an existential threat, to use Bill Burns terminology. He was then the US Ambassador to Moscow. This was the brightest of red lines for Moscow. Putin told us in April 2008 that he would wreck Ukraine before he would let it come into NATO.
Nevertheless, the West, and here we’re talking mainly about the United States, continued to push forward to bring Ukraine into NATO. In February 2014, a crisis broke out. And what did the United States do? It simply doubled down. Our basic view was we could shove NATO expansion down the Russians throat. That’s NATO expansion into Ukraine, just as we had shoved NATO expansion down their throat in 1999 and in 2004.
But Putin made it clear that this was a bridge too far. We refused to accept their position and we continued to push hard. And in February of 2022, the war that is now taking place broke out. Therefore, we are principally responsible because we pushed NATO expansion into Ukraine, which is the major cause of this war.
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: To what end did we push NATO expansion into Ukraine?
PROF. JOHN MEARSHEIMER: Well, we thought we could get away with it and we wanted to create a NATO that covered all of Europe right up to Russia’s border. We had gotten away with it. The 2004 expansion included the Baltic states. And we thought that given that we had forced the Russians to accept the Baltic states and NATO in 2004, that we could do the same with Ukraine after 2008.
And the Russians again made it clear that that was unacceptable. But for us, we had an open door policy with regard to NATO and we thought it was perfectly acceptable to have Ukraine and Georgia and other countries that were part of the former Soviet Union in NATO. The Russians felt differently.
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Once came this attitude that we could use Ukraine as a battering ram with which to drive Vladimir Putin from office. This Victoria Nuland theory.
PROF. JOHN MEARSHEIMER: Where did it come from? Yes, I think that we believe that once the war started, we could defeat the Russians. If you look at the run up to the war, the three months before the war started, this is December 2021, January 2022, and then most of February of 2022. It’s very clear that the Russians were trying to cut a deal with us and to avoid war. We did virtually nothing to avoid a war. It’s really quite remarkable.
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Were we communicating with the Russians in that era? Unlike the last two years of Biden’s presidency.
The Failed Negotiations and American Miscalculations
PROF. JOHN MEARSHEIMER: The answer is hardly at all. And then the war starts and the Russians immediately reach out to the Ukrainians to talk about negotiations to end the war. This is right after it starts. The Russians want to end it. The Ukrainians agree, and the famous negotiations in Istanbul start. And as you well know, who ends those negotiations, it’s not the Ukrainians, it’s not the Russians, it’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.
Now, you want to ask yourself what’s going on here? What’s going on is we thought that we could defeat the Russians. This 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. We thought we had the Russians and Putin right where we wanted them. We thought that we had armed and trained the Ukrainians to the point where they could hold their own on the battlefield. And furthermore, economic sanctions would deliver a really staggering blow to the Russians. And 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.
That was the basic mindset that we had. And 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. This is what the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff says. In the fall of 2022, the Biden administration tells him to close his mouth and continues to push forward with the war. And the question is why? Because 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. Of course, we were categorically wrong. One could say catastrophically wrong. And the people who are paying the price for our foolishness are the Ukrainians.
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: So two years after the coup in 2014, two Republican senators visited Ukraine. John McCain and Lindsey Graham. Here’s what they said.
VIDEO CLIP BEGINS:
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Your fight is our fight. 2017 will be the year of offense. All of us will go back to Washington and we will push the case against Russia. Enough of a Russian aggression, it is time for them to pay a heavier price. I believe you will win. I am convinced you will win. And we will do everything we can to provide you with what you need to win.
VIDEO CLIP ENDS:
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: No, there was no war going on. Or was there in 2017, Donald Trump was relatively new in the White House. McCain, whom he hated, was making these statements. Graham, who repeated everything McCain said, said what he said. Who was calling the shots?
Trump’s Approach to Russia and Ukraine
PROF. JOHN MEARSHEIMER: Well, 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, but he was unable to improve relations with Russia. And in fact, the Blob, the foreign policy establishment, forced him to start arming Ukraine. It was Donald Trump, not Barack Obama, who started arming Ukraine. And of course, we were training Ukraine, Ukrainian units at the same time.
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: But can you decipher what Senator Graham was talking about? You will win the war. And he’s surrounded by these guys in uniform and carrying weapons. What war?
PROF. JOHN MEARSHEIMER: Well, 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. That’s what he’s talking about.
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Okay.
PROF. JOHN MEARSHEIMER: In 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. That is what he is referring to. We usually refer to that as just a conflict, and the war is what happens after February 2022. But he’s referring to the conflict in eastern Ukraine. And we are training up and arming the Ukrainians to win that fight in eastern Ukraine after 2014 and before 2022.
Ukraine’s Future and Diplomatic Options
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Wow. And you believe that Ukraine is on its last leg now, I’ve already asked you that. Where are negotiations going to go between the United States and Russia? The Kremlin must be laughing at us. We’re a co-belligerent. How can we be a mediator?
PROF. JOHN MEARSHEIMER: Well, the negotiations are going to go nowhere. That’s what Monday’s telephone conversation between Putin and Trump shows us. And it basically looks like Trump is now going to walk away from the problem. I mean, what else is he going to do? He has two choices here. He can either accept Russia’s demands or he can walk away.
I 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 Ukrainians. But he said he’s not going to do that. So he has two choices. He can concede to the Russians their major demands, which he’s not going to do, or he can walk away. And I think he’s going to walk away. This one’s going to be settled on the battlefield and the Russians are going to win.
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Can the Europeans replace the Americans if and when Trump walks away?
PROF. JOHN MEARSHEIMER: Absolutely not. The Europeans have been doing everything they can since this war started to help the Ukrainians. They 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.
But furthermore, even when the Europeans and the Americans were working together under Joe Biden to support the Ukrainians, even then the Ukrainians were losing. So 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. It’s just not a serious argument. Once you take us out of the equation the Ukrainians are doomed and I would argue they’re doomed even with us in the equation.
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Professor Mearsheimer, thank you very much. My dear friend you were mentioned so favorably earlier this week and I am deeply grateful for the time that you gave us. Thank you Professor. Have a nice holiday weekend. We’ll see you next week.
PROF. JOHN MEARSHEIMER: Thank you. And you too. Have a nice holiday.
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Thank you. All the best.
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: And coming up at 4:00 this afternoon Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.
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