TRUMP IS REPEATING AMERICA'S BIGGEST MISTAKE! JOHN MEARSHEIMER REVEALS WHY!

[00:00:00]And if you listen to President Trump talk, he says that it's not going to be American ground troops that do the invading. It's other troops from the region that are going to do the invading, the the ground operation. So, I scratch my head and say, "Well, who is that? Are they going to send in the IDF?" No. I mean, they're bogged down in southern Lebanon and the Israelis uh are too smart to invade Iran. That's not going to happen. So, who's going to do it? And it looks like if anybody, it's going to be the Kurds coming out of Iraq who invade Iran. But the Kurds are not going to do that unless they're crazy.

[00:00:46]And if they do invade, it's not going to have [clears throat] any meaningful consequence. The Kurds are our ground force option? This is not serious. 8,000 troops in the region are ground force option? I don't think so.

[00:01:02]Furthermore, if President Trump were foolish enough to try and seize an island or to land somewhere on the coastline of Iran, many American soldiers would die.

[00:01:16]Uh this would be [laughter] a highly uh dangerous operation. The Iranians would go to great lengths to retaliate and drive those American forces off the beaches. Uh and the question you have to ask yourself is what does the cost-benefit analysis look like for President Trump? There'd be zero benefit, right? What is he going to gain by invading an island or you know, establishing a beachhead on the Iranian coast? What are the gains from that? I don't see any. And the cost? The cost is that many Americans will die in what almost everybody will see as a futile military operation.

[00:01:57]Uh and he'll pay an even greater political price for that.

[00:02:01]So, why would he do that? So, I don't see any ground force option.

[00:02:08]You know, Chris, just to elevate for a second here. We started with a strategic bombing campaign that lasted 40 days. It failed. We were running out of munitions and despite all the talk about all the damage we were doing to Iran's missile and drone capability, that proved not to be true. So, we quit after 40 days. Then we went to the blockade. That lasted just a little over 2 months and then we quit when we signed a memorandum of understanding cuz the blockade didn't work.

[00:02:39]Then Trump welched on the deal on the June 17th memorandum of understanding and we started engaging in this tit-for-tat war which we're now involved in.

[00:02:51]And that's not working as we've just talked about. That's not working. The one thing we haven't done Oh, by the way, we have actually reinstituted our blockade. We're back to the maritime blockade as well, which didn't work last time. But on July 14th, President Trump reinstituted the naval blockade.

[00:03:15]So, we have that at play now with the tit-for-tat. But it looks like the tit-for-tat's not working out very well as we talked. So, people are now talking about using land power. We've used air power, we've used naval power, that didn't work. Let's use land power.

[00:03:33]This is not a serious option. If it was a serious option, we would have tried it a long time ago. We didn't try it a long time ago because it doesn't stand any chance of working. The point is, Chris, we have no military option here. This is why Trump signed the June 17th MOU because we had no option. The Iranians were winning the war.

[00:03:57]And then the question you have to ask yourself is, have the dynamics changed since then? Is there evidence that the United States has turned the tide and that we now have found a theory of victory? The answer is clearly no, unless you and I are missing something and they have some secret strategy in mind that they haven't told us about and I don't think that's the case.

[00:04:20]>> Isn't there always a temptation go back to LBJ and the Vietnam War uh when it was clear and it was clear fairly early on in the Vietnam War uh that the United States was in serious trouble, then you get the heavy bombing campaign of North Vietnam.

[00:04:39]This this uh fantasy that the escalation of force is going to solve your problem uh has been characteristic of these uh imperial adventures in Iraq, Afghanistan and as I said earlier in Vietnam, although it's not tethered to reality.

[00:05:01]>> Well, a couple points on Vietnam uh first of all, there's no question that the Johnson administration starting in March of '65, March of '65 is when the bombing campaign began uh big time. Uh this is uh Rolling Thunder and then shortly thereafter we put combat troops. This is on March 8th, '65. We put combat troops for the first time into Vietnam.

[00:05:30]And it we escalated and escalated up until March 31st of 1968. You remember very well that that's when LBJ who uh was uh the president said that he was not going to run for another term. He was clearly a defeated man.

[00:05:49]Uh we had failed.

[00:05:51]Now, it's very important to understand that all along the way from March '65 up until '68, uh the key decision-makers, including Johnson himself, did not have a lot of faith in the military option that we were pursuing. They were desperate, but they were well aware that there were tremendous limits to what we could do against the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong with military force.

[00:06:19]They were not wildly optimistic.

[00:06:22]Nevertheless, they escalated.

[00:06:25]And I think that you see a similar situation here. I think after the initial bombing campaign failed, after about 2 weeks, we understood that we were in a very difficult position. I believe that we will eventually discover that the key policy-makers inside the administration understood pretty early in this war that we did not have a good military option.

[00:06:57]Nevertheless, we've escalated. And this is exactly what happened in Vietnam.

[00:07:02]There's no question that the leaders understood that we did not have a good military option, but they escalated. And as you remember, we ended up with about 530,000 combat troops in Vietnam. Just think about that. 530,000 combat troops in Vietnam by March of '68 when Johnson decided that the war was a lost cause.

[00:07:28]Um and he stopped the bombing campaign.

[00:07:32]Of course, Nixon and Kissinger then came in, and they thought that maybe they could find a way to win the war. Uh Nixon said that he had this secret plan to get out of the war, but not really.

[00:07:48]What he really wanted to do was see if he could greatly reduce the American military commitment and we could still win the war. But of course, that didn't happen.

[00:07:59]And we were forced to quit, just like that was in '72 of course, we quit. And what happened with Johnson is he quit in '68. And if you look at Trump and what happened, he quit once on June 17th. And I think what's going to happen here is he's going [clears throat] to be forced to quit again. Not altogether unlike what happened in Vietnam. Again, Johnson wanted to quit March '68 and Nixon was eventually forced to quit at the end of '72. We just had no military strategy for winning against Vietnam. We had no military strategy for winning in Afghanistan. We had no military strategy for winning in Iraq.

[00:08:43]Uh and we have no military strategy for winning here.

[00:08:48]But your point is that once you get into these things, very hard to get out. No question. And you look for ways to escalate.

[00:08:57]And it's kind of like a wing and a prayer. You know, maybe something will happen that we don't foresee. And if we just double down, maybe, you know, we'll be lucky.

[00:09:09]And I think there's just a lot of that going on. I think that's what President Trump was thinking after June 17th.

[00:09:15]He figured that memorandum of understanding I signed, it's a surrender document. I really don't like it. I'm sure the Israelis and uh the Israel lobby and neoconservatives and the hawks in the United States were telling him he made a mistake signing that June 17th MOU. And he probably said, "Ah, let's try something else. Maybe if I go back to, you know, putting pressure on the Iranians, I can get them to cut a deal. And uh here we are. But again, there is no deal to be had, just as there was no deal to be had in Vietnam.

[00:09:52]If you took five of the smartest strategists in the United States uh and you could ramp back in a time machine to March of 1965, and you told those five strategists, "It's your responsibility to come up with a brilliant strategy to win the Vietnam War." The end result would be the same. And if they were really brilliant strategists, they would have told LBJ not to go in. And if he had nevertheless gone in, they would have told him to immediately get out, because there was no way to win the Vietnam War. We had no theory of victory. And again, I think that most of the policy makers at the time understood that.

[00:10:35]>> I mean, how much how much time do we have left before the global economy craters? It's already pretty stressed out. The shortages of cooking oil in India, fertilizer, uh helium for microchips.

[00:10:51]I had read before the memorandum of understanding that some economists were saying by July that if if there if there wasn't an opening of the strait, that we could have for a global depression. As I mentioned in the introduction, the strategic reserves have uh been heavily depleted, and not just in the United States, countries like Japan as well. How much more time do we have?

[00:11:19]>> Let me tell you how I read um the oil situation.

[00:11:24]Uh I think what's happened is that with a set of workarounds, uh we have been pretty successful at minimizing the damage that has been done so far.

[00:11:40]Uh and there are three major workarounds that I see.

[00:11:45]First, as I told you before, of the 20 million barrels that used to come out of the Gulf, 7 million are actually still cutting off coming out. So, when people say that the flow of oil out of the Gulf has been completely cut off, those 20 million barrels have been completely cut off, that's not true. 7 million are coming out uh through Yanbu and Fujairah. That's Yanbu in Saudi Arabia and Fujairah in the UAE. And furthermore, as you know, the canal has been I mean, the strait has been opened up at different points.

[00:12:25]And um >> [snorts] >> and and some ships have come out when that strait was opened up, including Iranian ships.

[00:12:34]So, the 20 million barrels have not completely disappeared. That's one point you want to keep in mind. The second point is, and this is quite remarkable, the Chinese have greatly reduced their demand for oil uh by about 5 million barrels a day.

[00:12:58]Uh it's it's amazing how they've done that, and how they've done it we're not sure.

[00:13:06]Uh but the fact is that the Chinese demand for oil has gone down 5 million barrels.

[00:13:15]So, when we talk about those 20 million barrels coming out, there's 5 million, right? 5 million that are not needed because the Chinese have produced their demand and there's 7 million that are coming out from the UAE and Saudi Arabia. And then, getting back to what you were mentioning, there's all that oil that's been released from the strategic reserve.

[00:13:41]And that adds up to another maybe 3 million barrels a day as best I can tell.

[00:13:50]So, when you add all these things together, you can see that we have been able to weather the crisis in the Gulf reasonably well up to now.

[00:14:04]Now, what scares people is that the strategic petroleum reserve is running down and we're running out of oil that's available in that strategic reserve to float into world oil markets.

[00:14:19]Furthermore, there is the danger, as I was talking about before, that Fujairah and Yanbu will be completely shut down and then there'll be no oil or hardly any oil coming out of the Gulf.

[00:14:33]And then there's the Chinese demand for oil, which is the wild card.

[00:14:39]What if the Chinese all of a sudden decide that they need more oil and the demand for oil from China begins to go back where it was on February 27th. If those three things happen, then you're in deep trouble. But it's hard at this point to say exactly how this plays itself out.

[00:15:02]I mean, for example, if President Trump continues the tit-for-tat campaign this coming week and he doesn't go after Iranian infrastructure in the process. He doesn't go after Iranian bridges and power capabilities or power stations, then maybe the Iranians will not shut down the Red Sea and maybe oil will start to come out of Fujairah or will continue to come out of Fujairah. I'm not sure whether Fujairah is completely shut down at this point. And that really matters for the overall question of oil supply.

[00:15:40]And then what the Chinese do is just very hard to say.

[00:15:45]So all this is to say we're in a sense flying blind here.

[00:15:49]>> I mean really it sounds like there are two roads that we can take. One if the United States does continue to attack infrastructure, we are headed for a humanitarian disaster in the Gulf.

[00:16:08]If it doesn't, then it leaves open the possibility of some kind of a negotiated settlement that is even more advantageous to Iran than the memorandum of understanding. Are those the two kind of scenarios that that face us?

[00:16:31]>> Yeah, I think that's right. I mean I don't Again, I don't see a land invasion as feasible or as turning the tide.

[00:16:43]I don't think we have any meaningful theory of victory at this point in time.

[00:16:50]And I think what's happening here is that we have this tit-for-tat strategy or tit-for-tat campaign taking place between the United States and Iran. And the question is how does it play itself out? And I think we'll know a lot a week from now. It all remains to be seen what the United States does. And I think that if President Trump uh does this coming week as he promised he would, which is to go after Iranian power plants and bridges and maybe even oil facilities in a serious way, then the consequences war uh >> [snorts] >> the Gulf states will be disastrous uh and uh I wouldn't be surprised if the Iranians even uh attack targets in Israel. And I think it will have a seriously negative effect on the flow of oil into global oil markets because I think almost certainly uh Fujairah and Yanbu will be shut down.