John Mearsheimer : The Ukraine War is OFFICIALLY LOST! Here’s Why...

[00:00:00]completely exhausted. He said, not fraying, not we're losing confidence, but completely exhausted in that environment. What can be done with this situation?

[00:00:09]>> This one's going to be settled on the battlefield. There's not going to be any negotiated settlement. I think that at some point Ukrainians will quit the fight. The Russians will win on the battlefield. It will not be a decisive victory. and you'll get an armistice and there'll be negotiations that underpin this armistice that takes place or frozen conflict. Call it what you want, but you're not going to get a meaningful peace agreement. And you're going to have poisonous relations between the Russians on one side and the Ukrainians and the West, probably to include the United States on the other side for as far as the eye can see. But uh the idea that you're going to get some sort of negotiated settlement where both sides live happily ever after is not going to happen. I find it hard to believe that Lavrov is now saying these things. Why the Russians ever trusted the Americans uh is beside me. They should have learned a long time ago that you can't trust the United States. Same thing is true with the Iranians. The Iranians don't trust the United States. Just look at what's happened with the memorandum of understanding. Uh do you think that the United States in its present state is capable of uh negotiating and signing a deal and sticking to that deal? I don't think so. Uh remember it was President Trump who pulled out of the JCPOA, not the Iranians.

[00:01:37]U and uh with regard to the memorandum of understanding, it's the United States who's not lived up to its side of the deal. Uh the Iranians, as we were talking about before, have lived up to their side of the deal. And if you look at article five, it makes it very clear that they control the strait. And the strait includes the uh Omani channel. Uh so it's the Americans here who are playing games. And the West has played games with the Russians for a long long time now. Uh you and I know that very well. So this is hardly surprising to hear Lavrov saying it. Although, as I said, I'm surprised Lavrov waited this long.

[00:02:19]>> Yeah.

[00:02:21]>> You know, one of the things that that may have finally because he's the consmate diplomat and maybe that's the reason why he wanted to keep, you know, a door cracked open for I don't know, a return to sanity perhaps. But maybe one of the things that's pushing him in this direction is some developments inside of Ukraine. Now, I I think that the last time you were on our show, we talked about this, but there is this new uh public relations campaign in Europe, especially that the tide is turning, that actually uh the Russians have been stopped. Their forward momentum has been stopped and they're no longer advancing uh and the Ukraine side is doing more and better and things are going good.

[00:02:57]But if that was the case, then one would imagine that the recruiting capability is not going to be as much of a problem.

[00:03:03]And Gary's been showing you for a year when you've been on here about people being grabbed from the streets and thrown into vans and all this kind of stuff. Well, in Lviv just a couple of days ago, that has advanced into now riots. Hundreds clashed. This is this is Ukrainian media now. This is not propaganda. Hundreds clash with military recruiters as Ukraine draft backlash grows. Violent mobilization clash in Lviv sparks official backlash. You can see huge numbers of people, not just the the family members or the girlfriend or the wife or the guy being tried to track, but now then they're coming out in mass and there was violence and you can see in that lefthand corner picture there that they were destroying some of the vehicles. I think a bus also got hit. Uh and then this this is what happened this morning. Let me see if I can show you this one here. Uh this was a uh an apology that some of the people who were riding were forced uh by the police to to make this video. Watch this.

[00:04:24]So, yeah. So, he's like, "No, no, they're fighting for us." You can you see all these guys. I mean, it looks like a lineup. You can imagine they're probably machine guns behind the the uh the screen there. But uh I I I'm thinking that's not going to be very effective to convince the population inside of Ukraine that no, this is fine.

[00:04:40]This is going on. You see even more of those. But let me ask you that if you're getting rights in the western part of Ukraine uh and and from my information here, they they were uh there the Ukraine side wasn't doing this kind of stuff in Western Europe because or Western Ukraine because they that was where they had the very pro Ukraine people that weren't there. They were getting a lot of this out of the eastern side on their side of the line of contact, but now it's going to the western side. What does that tell you?

[00:05:10]>> I think your point about the fact that it is taking place in western Ukraine, not in central or eastern Ukraine, is a very important one. You would not expect this in western Ukraine because it's filled with ethnic Ukrainians who you would expect to be very nationalistic and very patriotic and therefore willing uh to commit to the fight. But look, Danny, you and I have been arguing for a long time that from uh from Ukraine's point of view, continuing this war makes absolutely no sense. You and I have argued for a long time that it would be in Ukraine's interest to shut this war down. And what the West is doing is it's using Ukraine as a battering ram to weaken Russia. And the West is not suffering any casualties. They're not Americans dying or Europeans dying, but it's Ukrainians who are dying in massive numbers and is in what is effectively not only a lost cause, right? But it's a situation where it's in their interest or it has been in their interest for a long time now to just shut this thing down and get the best possible deal. And of course, the longer it goes on, the deal that they're ultimately going to get looks worse and worse. This is Danny Davis and John Mirshimemer's argument for god knows how long.

[00:06:37]>> I think I think what's happening here is that a number a good number of Ukrainians have begun to figure this out that you know that pe you know a lot of people like to say that people with your views or my views are anti- Ukrainian, right? that were pro-Russian. And of course, as we've talked about, this is ludicrous, right?

[00:07:00]>> Yeah.

[00:07:00]>> Uh this war from a Ukrainian point of view would have been that's never started. And certainly once it started, they should have shut it down. This is what the Istanbul agreements were. The fact the Ukrainians walked away was crazy. And it should have been shut down after that. Certainly after the offensive uh the big of 2023 failed. But you know it's very hard to make that argument in the west and I think until recently it was very hard to make that argument in Ukraine. Um, but you know, just I I always like to talk about the Vietnam War, but if you go back to the Vietnam War, um, starts in March 65, that's when we send the first combat troops. And on March 31st, 1968, March 31st, 1968, that's when LBJ says he's not going to run for another term. He's going to stop the bombing. And it's at that point quite clear that Johnson recognizes that we have lost. Okay. And then Nixon wins in the fall, November of ' 68. He comes into office in January 69. And he said he had a secret plan to end the war, which he did not have.

[00:08:19]>> A secret not even known to himself.

[00:08:21]>> Yes. And and not not only that, Danny, but Nixon and company were very slow to withdraw American forces at first because they actually wanted to win the war. They thought that maybe they could find a magic formula. Okay. Now what happens in terms of the American soldiers who were waging the war is that you see between 65 and 68 maybe early 69 people are willing soldiers are willing to fight and die in large numbers and they are not putting up any resistance at all. They're committed to the cause.

[00:09:07]But then after Johnson's famous speech, March 31st, 1968, and then after Nixon comes into power and it's clear we have lost the war. Okay, getting the American soldier to fight is a very difficult task. And we have all sorts of problems with fragging where enlisted men who think that officers who are too audacious are risking their lives for a lost cause are willing to throw hand grenades into their tents when they're sleeping at night. So what I'm saying to you is when you go into a war and you think there's a good chance you can win, you'll get a lot of support from the soldiers on the battlefield. They'll fight uh like wild dogs and you'll get people who are willing to serve. But once they see it's a lost cause and this is not working out, they don't want to be the last person to die in a lost cause, >> right? That mentality really kicks in.

[00:10:19]>> And I think there's no question there's a huge propaganda campaign that's taking place here which is trying to cut against the view that that Ukraine is going to lose this war. But I think more and more Ukrainians understand that that's not the case. That this is a lost war. And if this is a lost war, and you're the average Ukrainian citizen who's 21 or 25 years old, whatever, and they come around to put you in a uniform and send you to the front lines, you're not going to want to go. It's a very different situation between the June 4, 2023 offensive against the Russians where the Ukrainians are full of piss and vinegar and they think they're going to drive through Russian lines, cut to the Sea of Azop and so forth and so on.

[00:11:10]Then you can get people to volunteer.

[00:11:12]But if you look at what's been happening, right, it's analogous to what happened in Vietnam in 1969, certainly 197071.

[00:11:22]We had huge problems with our soldiers.

[00:11:26]Huge problems. Most people know nothing about this. The relation >> you served during that time. So you you do have some knowledge.

[00:11:34]>> Yeah. I mean I was not in Vietnam, but I knew exactly what was happening.

[00:11:38]Everybody who was in the American military was cognizant of the problems uh that we were having uh because people thought that we were in a war that was a lost cause. and many Americans were dying. There are 58,000 names, I think, on the Vietnam wall in Washington DC.

[00:11:56]And you didn't want to be one of those names. Uh if you >> not the last one.

[00:12:01]>> Yes, that's exactly right. So I I actually think what's happening here in Ukraine u is that people uh uh are beginning to understand. And by the way, Danny, just on this point, General Zillusni wrote an important op-ed in the Telegraph, the British newspaper uh that basically said, "Don't believe these arguments that Russia is losing the war and we're going to win." I don't know if you've seen it.

[00:12:30]>> Oh, well, no, I didn't see that one. I hope you should make a point of looking at Zulus's uh uh op-ed. And for the viewers who don't remember this, Zulusni was previously the commanding Ukrainian general before General Sirki and uh they sent him to Britain. Uh Zilinski sent him to Britain to be Ukraine's ambassador to Britain. But he is first and foremost a general and a former commander. and he is not buying this argument that uh uh that's being propagandized in the west and in Ukraine itself that the tide has turned and uh Ukraine is got the Russians on their back feet and >> and by the way I've got some some news from an insider source inside of Ukraine that says that Zolution definitely does want to run for president and has was asked by the current uh regime government whatever not to run and he refused to to take their offer and apparently is going to run whenever that whenever that does happen. So, um we'll see what that happens to. Uh listen, I I know we're already at the end of the time. Do you have time for one more question or do you need to go?

[00:13:40]>> Sure. No.

[00:13:40]>> Okay.

[00:13:41]>> I do have time for one more question.

[00:13:43]>> Okay, one more because and I think this is really important. You just talked about the the analogous to to the decline in the end of the Vietnam War and how the political leadership finally came to the recognition on the political side. Whereas clearly the soldiers and the people have come to that point, the political side still hasn't. We just had in the NATO summit in Ankura, you had uh Belimir Zalinsky come back and you get President Trump sitting right there next to him and says, "Hey, how's about this?

[00:14:09]How's about we get this uh contract where we can make missiles and we'll build it right here in Ukraine and that will solve a lot of our problem." But as you know better than nearly anyone, the if you signed that this morning, it's going to be like two to five years before the thing is even able to produce anything in the event that Russia doesn't blow it up in the meantime. But the fact that they're thinking about, hey, let's do something that's going to be years into the future here. Uh what does that tell you?

[00:14:36]>> Look, it's very clear, Danny, when a country in the modern world gets into a war, it is very difficult. Maybe I should say extremely difficult to get out. Just to go back to Vietnam. Very important to understand what happened here. Kissinger and Nixon wanted to win the war. They wanted to stay in as long as we could and find a clever strategy that would allow us to defeat the North Vietnamese. Nixon gave the impression that he was going to get us out of there quickly, put an end to the war, but that did not happen. Think about Afghanistan, 20 years. And there were many people, especially in the American military, who did not want to get out, right? We'd still be there if uh if Trump then Biden hadn't made the had not made the decision to get out, right? Uh, as you know, I if you're in the American military and you're at the top level, you don't want to be responsible for losing a war and you want to stay in for as long as you can and hope some sort of uh miracle happens and you win the war and you're constantly searching for ways to to win. And and by the way, this is exactly what you see happening with regard to Ukraine. You remember last year we were talking about the fact that it looked like Trump was withdrawing American support for uh for the Ukrainians and that the burden of supporting Ukraine was going to be shifted onto the shoulders of the Europeans and Trump was out of it and so forth and so on. But if you look at what happened at the G7 conference in France, this was in June, mid June, and you look at what just happened at the NATO summit, it's quite clear that Trump is back working with the Europeans and working with the Ukrainians to accelerate the drone war against Russia. It's really quite amazing.

[00:16:59]The if you look at the June 17th declaration after the G7 meeting, uh it was said explicitly that the G7 countries are going to continue to support and accelerate their efforts to help Ukraine wage the long range drone war. Accelerate, right? And if you look at what happened in the NATO meeting, it's basically the same thing. Trump is showing enthusiasm about what uh what the Ukrainians are doing, what Zilinski is doing, and saying we should help them. And of course, the CIA has been involved in this forever and ever. I mean, whatever Trump is doing, whichever direction he's blowing from day to day matters little because down below the deep state, and here we're talking about the CIA is up to its eyeballs in terms of helping uh Ukraine wage this drone war against Russia. And of course, this gets back to Lavrov. Why is Lavrov now saying you can't trust the Americans?

[00:18:01]It's because they now seem to fully realize maybe after the G7 meeting and the NATO meeting that the Americans and the Europeans, not just the Europeans, but the Americans and the Europeans and the Ukrainians uh are at war with Russia. You know, we're basically at war with Russia here.

[00:18:21]If you really think about it, we are helping to plan the drone attacks.

[00:18:27]That's quite clear. The CIA is deeply involved. And furthermore, we give them weaponry. Uh we're helping them develop their drone capability, their intelligence capabilities. And uh question you have to ask yourself, of course, and this is a subject for another day, is where all this leads.

[00:18:45]Because again, to get back to your original question, what you're basically saying is we don't seem to be giving up here. uh whether you're talking about Iran or whether you're talking about uh uh Russia, you know.

[00:18:58]>> So, so in 30 seconds or less, do you think that eventually if we don't change, Russia will make good on its threat and attack military facilities and drone factories, etc. in Western Europe?

[00:19:11]>> It depends on two things, Danny. How well suited the Russians are for developing the capability to uh limit the drone attacks. Can can they develop defenses uh that minimize the effect of the drone attacks? That's one thing. Uh and second, what happens on the battlefield? If the Ukrainian military were to collapse next month, uh that would have a significant effect >> uh on events. So, I think it's it's impossible to say. if Danny uh they are unable to uh keep the drones uh from doing great damage. They're unable to limit the damage uh because we're accelerating our efforts to help the Ukrainians and that works. If that happens uh and they don't win a quick victory on the battlefield, I think that they will go after targets in in Europe.

[00:20:08]You know, we don't have sponsors because we hate to hit you over the head with ads. I don't like them. So, show a little love back. Subscribe, like, and send this to somebody you care about.