The Duran Podcast
Point of No Return in Middle East & Ukraine - John Mearsheimer, Alexander Mercouris & Glenn Diesen
Hi everyone, Glenn Deeson here and I'm joined today by Alexander Merkurs and John Merchheimer. And as predicted, the escalations continue in both the Middle East and Ukraine and also as predicted Israel and Hezbollah has begun bubbling each other now with missiles and drones. And the Paris that might have been taking a step back now at the brink of a wider regional war. However, I suspect this might be temporary. However, this is something, of course, I would like to get your opinion on. And meanwhile, in Ukraine, the escalation has also predictably continued. As it seems to keep moving towards a direct Russia-NATO war, at least that's how I see it. Less predictable, however, was this type of escalation as nobody, I think, predicted Ukraine with seemingly the support of NATO would invade Russia, that is the Kursk region. So I thought that perhaps we should start with the Ukraine war because, yeah, key reason for why no one predicted the invasion of Kursk is that, well, at least to me, it does make much sense, I guess. And as we saw from Western Ukrainian and Russian observers, they all seem to recognize it made no sense. But again, it boosted morale among the Ukrainians and it allegedly humiliated Putin as, well, Western media keeps telling us and they seem to be very excited about. So suddenly overnight, the narrative seemed to be changed and this was suddenly a great success. And Putin was on his back foot. Anyways, I thought this is a good topic to begin with. How would you see the issue of the Kursk invasion? Is this a massive mistake or a great success? How should we read this situation? I usually start, but this time I'll defer to Alexander and come in behind him. Well, I think the way to describe Kursk is as a massive gamble which probably almost certainly will not pay off unless the Ukrainians can somehow wangle out of it a bigger Western escalation, which takes us back to the point that you were making at the start of the program, Glenn. That's my own view. I mean, militarily. Now, I'm not a military person as I constantly say, but I do follow the wall very closely in an exhausting thing it is. But militarily, to me at least, it makes absolutely no sense at all. The Ukrainians massively overextended, overstretched. They're finding it very difficult now to hold even the most important locations. Their logistics are starting to break down. This reports that thousands of people are deserting. The desertion rate apparently is risen. They're losing their positions. And yet, instead of consolidating and trying to defend what can be defended, they attacked in Kursk. And what were they trying to achieve? Well, it's difficult to say I, when I looked at this, it looked to me as if there's only one thing that they could go for, which is the nuclear power station there. The Russian authorities have essentially said the same thing. It was a very, very unlikely thing to capture. They're still there. They didn't capture it, but they're still there. And it looks as if they're very, very overextended. So if that's right, then it doesn't make much military sense. It was a gamble that, for the moment, at least hasn't worked, but it might be something which they still think they can leverage to get somebody in the West, you know, the Western governments, ultimately the United States to come to their rescue, to say, you know, that we're in Kursk, we've achieved all of this. We're still fighting. We've still got energy. We're still able to hit the Russians in places that matter. All we need is for you to come and support us even more. Give us permission to use your missiles to strike deeper inside Russia and somehow, in some way, never fully explain. That's all going to come right. That's what it looks like to me. I don't disagree with that, but want to come at it from a different angle. I think it was crazy for the Ukrainians to invade the Kursk region, and I think, if anything, it's going to speed up their defeat. And as Glenn intimated at the beginning of his comments, probably the reason that the Russians were surprised is that they didn't think the Ukrainians would be foolish enough to try to launch this offensive. Now, the question is, why am I saying this? This is a good old-fashioned war of attrition. This is Joe Frazier in Muhammad Ali standing toe-to-toe, trying to beat the living daylights out of each other, and to put it in slightly different terms, here we have two armies that are trying to bleed each other white to get one to raise up its hands and quit before the other does. And in a war of attrition like this, what really matters is the casualty exchange ratio. And if you look at what the Ukrainians did, they were in a situation where they were losing on the Eastern Front. There's just no question about that. And the casualty exchange ratio on the Eastern Front clearly favored the Russians. So what the Ukrainians did is they weakened their forces on the Eastern Front, cobbled together a strike force that then went into Ukraine. And the first question that pops into my brain when something like this happens is what happens to the casualty exchange ratio on the Eastern Front and what is the casualty exchange ratio going to look like in the Kursk region? Well, if you weaken your forces on the Eastern Front, which of course the Ukrainians do and the Russians do not, that means that the casualty exchange ratio is going to shift even further towards the Russians because your forces are weakened, they're spread out more thinly and the Russians are in a better position to attack Ukrainian positions. And of course, that is what's happening. Then look at what's happening in the Kursk region. What's happening is very simple. The Ukrainians are taking the offensive. And when you take the offensive in modern warfare, especially in a war of attrition, that means you get out of your holes, you get out of your trenches and you start moving across open territory. That means you're exposed to the adversary. Now, you may be able to get away with that if you have air cover, but the Ukrainians do not have air cover. In fact, the Russians command the skies. And furthermore, they have a gazillion drones up there. So you have these Ukrainian forces, they're out in the open on the move and are providing a rich target set for the Russians. And the Russians, of course, who get caught with their pants down, there's no question about that. What they do is they bring in lots of drones, they bring in lots of tack air and they bring in lots of artillery. And they start pounding those Ukrainian forces that are out in the open. Unsurprisingly, there have been many thousands of Ukrainian casualties and they've lost an enormous number of armored vehicles. And one analyst estimates that they've been losing two times as many armored vehicles per day in the Kursk Offensive than they were normally losing on the Eastern Front. This is really quite shocking at first glance. But once you think about, it's not that shocking because they're now out in the open. You want to remember, the Ukrainians are not out in the open on the Eastern Front. They're dug in, they're fighting from well fortified positions for the most part. This is no longer the case when you're on the offensive. So the Ukrainians are suffering greatly in terms of the casualty exchange ratio. But you may say, well, John, what about the Russians? Aren't they suffering? Well, the answer is no because there were hardly any Russian forces in the area for the Ukrainians to kill. Why do you think the Ukrainians were able to invade this territory and capture so much land? The reason is quite simple. There were hardly any Russians there to contest them. So the Russian casualty levels are actually quite low. I don't want to make light of the fact that probably quite a few Russian soldiers died or were badly wounded, for sure. But compared to the Ukrainians, small number. So what's happened here, if you put all these pieces together, is that the Ukrainians have weakened themselves on the critically important Eastern Front. And if anything, the casualty exchange ratio there will shift in favor of the Russians even more than it was before, August 6th. And then if you look at what's happening in the Kursk offensive, I think this is just a disaster. The last thing you want to do is sort of get out of your holes and start moving out in the open, as I said before. So if anything, when you put these two fronts together, the Eastern Front and the Kursk Front and you ask yourself, what's the bottom line? I think the Ukrainians have speeded up the rate at which they're going to lose this war. And of course, they are going to lose this war, which was manifestly clear even before August 6th. That's my basic take on this current movement. Or can I just say that I also agree with all of that also? I think that's entirely correct. And if you follow events very closely, I think everything that you've just said, the facts buried out. By the way, the commentator that you mentioned, who says that they're losing, that the Ukrainians are losing armor twice the rate that they were in other places before, he is very, very pro-Ukrainian. He's not someone who is at all. He's not a critic of Ukraine, but he's not happy with this operation. I think Alexander, you're getting to the point now where it's difficult for even the most supportive of Ukraine, those individuals, to deny what's happening on the battlefield. The writing is on the wall. But it seems that, again, this is a war of attrition. In the war of attrition, you really want to, as you point out, exhaust adversary. It seems to me that Ukraine's defensive lines would be the best approach to do this because they have this multi-layered defensive line. So it costs a lot for the Russians to break through, both in manpower and in terms of equipment. And every time the Russians break through, the Ukrainians can just fall back to the next pre-prepared line. So they had this in Donbass, but instead, this is what's surprising to me with this Kursk invasion, because they go into this wide-open, low-populated areas with hardly any Russian soldiers. And as you said, they're out in the open, they can be knocked out, not to draw too strong parallel, but when Napoleon and Hitler went into Russia, a key problem is protecting their supply lines. Now, obviously, this is a much smaller invasion, but nonetheless, a key problem has been to be able to supply these forces, because they're inside Russian territory. And we see not only are they exposed to Russian drones and missiles, but the Russians have been able to knock out the fuel supply, which puts the grinds them to a halt. And they can't really defend these areas because they don't get engineering equipment into Russian territory, either, where they can effectively dig in and hold this position. So I think that the part of the calculation of the Ukrainians was they go, they storm into Russia, Russia after divert all its troops towards Kursk to stop this down. Instead, it looks like the Russians are just taking out the different troops and stabilizing the front lines. Meanwhile, taking a huge advantage of what's happening now in Donbass, just as one example, if you look at Prokrosk now, these towns, which just keeps falling one after another, they say, "Nova Grodimkad, this, within the three days, this is a very strategic area right before Prokrosk." The Russians took it, they didn't even have to, usually, have to destroy an entire town in order to move forward. Now, they just sent in infantry and they took the town almost undamaged in three days. It's completely absurd if you've seen what's happened in the past. So they gave up all this well-defined defensive line in order to go on defensive. And I can see what they wanted to go for, but I'm not sure how now that it seems this has been a failure. Is it possible to walk this back, because they're already in there? Do they have to double down on failure or what is the likely push by the Ukrainians now? Oh, John. No, go ahead. Go ahead. No, what I was going to say was that I rather expected that they would pull back. I thought that they tried to go in and do something quickly and then pull out again. For all the reasons that John and you, Glenn, have been saying. And I know there were other people who thought this as well. And, by the way, on the point about fortifications, I'm in contact with the forming marine office. So, Jim Webb, he's been writing since the summer. What the Ukrainians need to do is to build up more fortified positions, embed themselves in fortified lines, and give up the idea of offensives, think in this very conservative way. But he also, by the way, says they also need to start serious negotiations. I think that's right. But the Ukrainians don't do this. And I think what is probably driving this, and it's probably explains why the Ukrainians cannot leave Cusque now that they are there, is that far too much of the way they conduct their war is about image management, appearing to retreat without being pushed out is something that they can't bring themselves to do. And I still think that they find the idea of negotiations, real negotiations, based on the actual realities impossible to concede, conceive of. Prime Minister Modi went to Kiev. Apparently, he said to them, you know, I'm prepared to help you if you want to negotiate. Cusque has just given an interview to the Indian media in which he says that he wants all of Ukraine's post-1991 territory back. So, until that mindset changes until they finally think in a different way, I think that I don't think they're going to retreat from Cusque. I don't think they're going to fall back. I'm beginning to wonder whether we're ever going to see any kind of negotiations whilst the present government is in power. Let me make three quick points. One is, if I'm playing the Russians hand, I do not want them to retreat. I want them to stay there, and I want them to take the offensive. I want them to stay on the offensive. I want them to have a simple model, one that the French had going into World War I, attack, attack, attack. Because if I'm a Russian commander, that's advantageous to me. Second point I would make, I think all three of us would agree that the Ukrainians would have been smart not to launch the infamous counter-offensive in the summer of 2023, and back then stayed on the defensive as well. That was foolish in the extreme, because again, the casualty exchange ratio drastically favored the Russians, and they ended up capturing hardly any territory, which is what they were trying to do. The third point is, a lot of people like to compare the cursed offensive by the Ukrainians with the Battle of the Bulge, but I think it's not really the best analogy. I think the best analogy is Operation Blue, which was the German offensive in World War II against the Soviet Union in 1942. Remember, in 1941, the Soviets go in with Operation Barbarossa, and there are three big prongs, one that goes toward Leningrad, one that goes towards Moscow, and one that goes into Ukraine. After that fails in December of '41, come the second year of the campaign, which is 1942. The Germans decide that they're going to drive deep into the Caucasus. They're going to take that southern prong, concentrate on it, and drive deep into the Caucasus, and they do drive deep into the Caucasus, winning stunning victory after stunning victory. But what happens is, they outrun their logistical chain, and they're unable to supply the cutting edge forces, the forces that are at the Schwerpung. Furthermore, their flanks become exposed, and this, of course, is what leads to the Battle of Stalingrad, which is on their northern flank. So over the course of 1942, early 1943, what the Germans end up doing is getting clobbered and being forced to withdraw from this huge salient they had created early in 1942. And the Ukrainians are in a similar situation. They're having huge logistical problems supplying their forces, right? And slowly but steadily, the Russians are assembling forces that are going to crush them, and they're going to have to get out of there in large part because of fear that they'll be crushed by linking attacks. So they're in a hopeful situation, just like the Germans were in 1942. It looked initially like a big victory, but over time and over time really matters when you're analyzing what happens in warfare. Over time, the Russians are going to deal a decisive blow to those Ukrainian forces in the Kursk region. This is why I also criticized what I call the Western obsession with territory, because they keep celebrating all of this as victories, but as you said, with each new territory taken, they lose a lot of men, and also they get stuck there. So now with these huge casualty rates, what are they going to do with all the new recruits they're able to assemble? Everything has to be sent in to reinforce, and the deeper they get into Russia, the worse the situation gets. The less air support they have, or less air defense, which means they can be pummeled, the logistic lines become worse and worse, and it feels like all the benefits aren't really there. Of course, one of the objectives was to contribute to pulling NATO. Indeed, Zelensky kept making this argument that, look, we can invade Russia, they're not doing anything. All red lines are broken, so let us strike Moscow effectively with long range. But there's also this idea that it would panic the Russians. Instead, it looks like the Russians are taking it with great ease, instead taking advantage of this poorly defended front lines in the Pokrovs correction. Also, I know it's become common sense in the West's humiliation of Putin, but I see the opposite now. For the Russians, this used to be a war intervening in Ukraine to prevent NATO's incursion and protecting Russian speakers. They're defining it as a war of liberation as the Ukrainians backed by NATO has invaded their homeland. I mean, this is just a terrible, terrible idea, but you can't really say it. Because, well, again, everything is, if you say this is a bad, then you're seeing us crushing the morale of the Ukrainians and you're boosting the morale of the Russians. So everyone kind of has to nod and go along that, "Yeah, yeah, of course, celebrate this metrics of territory being taken, even though this doesn't seem to be the best way of measuring success." If I can just jump in and make a quick point on territory and link it to the casualty exchange ratio, one of the criticisms of people in the West who focus on territory is that the Russians have not captured altogether that much territory. And I think there's an element of truth in that, but the reason that is true is that the Russians are remarkably careful in terms of the tactics they use to make sure that they minimize Russian casualties. So, you know, you hear all this talk, not as much as you used to, but you're still here at occasionally where the Russians are sending wave after wave of untrained soldiers into this meat grinder, and therefore the Russians are suffering enormous casualties, especially when compared to the Ukrainian. If you look at Russian casualties, you look at the various indicators, that's simply not true. And the reason it's not true is that the tactics they are one are very clever tactics that are designed not to maximize the amount of territory they capture, but are designed to minimize the number of Russian casualties. So the Russian casualties remain quite low as wars of attrition go, whereas the Ukrainian casualties are through the roof. I don't know what the final count is going to look like, but I would not be surprised if when all is said and done in this war that the Ukrainians have suffered three times as many casualties as the Russian tab. I'm not saying that's for sure, because as both of you know, as well as I do, it's really tough to come up with solid numbers, but my guess is that the Ukrainians are just suffering much more than the Russians, suffering much greater casualties. And of course, this has a lot to do with the imbalance in artillery and air power as well. I don't want to make light of that, but I also think it has a lot to do with the fact that the Russians are not obsessed with taking territory. They understand it's a war of attrition. And what they're doing is minimizing their casualties and maximizing the Ukrainian casualties. I think you can see that visibly on the battlefronts now that so many of the best Ukrainian troops have been attrition out of the picture. I mean, they've been killed, or they're wounded, or whatever reason, they're no longer there. And the people who are replacing them are not the replacements that they were. And that, by the way, we're reading in the American, the British media, there's articles about this now that Ukrainian numbers are of men that they can put in the front lines are down, and that the quality of their soldiers is declining. And that's the product of attrition, which is not affecting the Russians at all in the same way. Now, what has to happen before people in the West understand this, because this is what I find so strange, because we have this situation, repeat itself time after time when we can see that the Ukrainian suffer this terrible attrition. And that doesn't seem to be any capacity on the part of some people in the West. Quite important people. Western governments are British government. We've had quite a lot of revelations about what is being discussed in London. It seems that in London, the new prime minister and his officials were related by these events, in course, they don't seem to understand at all that territory is not really the issue in the war, at least in the way that they imagined. They, on the contrary, went out of their way to try and associate themselves with this Ukrainian success. What has to happen before they suddenly understand that this is an attrition wall, a nautical in which, you know, the advantage is, you know, providing the metric of success is territory. Do we have to see a total Ukrainian defeat? Do we have to see hundreds of thousands of people killed? I mean, when will the penny drop? Does the Pentagon understand that? I would have thought that they would least would. But I think Alexander, as long as it's the Ukrainians who are doing the dying, dying and not Westerners, we are, we in the West are willing to continue this war forever. It's going to end it is one of two things. Either the Ukrainian military is collapsed, which is a serious possibility as we've discussed before on the show. It's not likely or for certain, but it's a serious possibility. That's one possible way of ending this war. And the other is that the Ukrainians come to the realization. There's no way they can win this. And if they do continue with the situation, it's just going to deteriorate. Again, this is an argument that three of us have been making for a long, long time. And it is possible that the Ukrainians will realize the power of the logic behind this argument and try to work out a deal. But I think absent those two possibilities, it's just hard to see how this one is shut down anytime soon. I think this is a expectation and excitement about territory is also quite harmful, because, you know, I made also point before that, Zelensky is often criticized for, you know, what's often well defined as PR stands. But one also has to keep in mind that these PR stands are necessary for him in order to put Ukraine back in the headlines and to make the West excited and send more weapons because, you know, we were all talking about how Ukraine was losing. And people kind of lost interest in it. And suddenly now it's top of the news. Ukraine is winning again. We're excited. We're going to send weapons. And, of course, it's all nonsense. It's going to end up much, much worse. But this is kind of the game they have to play as well, because of the way we in the West are responding to this. And I think it seems to me that a key problem is, again, how we defined this, as I mentioned before, you said that even the pro Ukrainians are now getting very worried. But from my perspective, what has been pro-Ukrainian, as you also said, the Hiroshima for 10 more than 10 years, is that they shouldn't go down this path that don't invite NATO onto your territory. This is not pro-Ukrainian. This will assure the destruction of Ukraine. And the same with this, you know, shutting down their media, political opposition, now banning the church or thugs churches. This is causing deep divisions in Ukrainian societies, making it more difficult now to defend themselves and maintain solidarity and similar to peace agreements. This is also people who said, "No, we should make peace with the Russians. Otherwise, we're going to end up with a worse deal." This will seem to be pro-Russian. And now the pro-Ukrainians were the one who essentially said, "No, no, let's not implement them. Let's choose war." Or the counter-offensive. This was also, you know, if you criticized it, then you were anti-Ukrainian. It just seems, for me, that it doesn't matter what outcome is. It's always just if you say that you push for this counter-fensive or now invasion of Kursk, it just shows that you're taking one side instead of the Russian side. It seems like whatever might be preferred by the Russians is immediately seen as being anti-Ukrainian. But I think over and over again, we keep seeing quite the opposite, that all these so-called pro-Ukrainian positions ends up just devastating the country. Imagine if we wouldn't have toppled the government or any of these terrible decisions. But nonetheless, everything horrible to Ukraine is always positioned as being pro-Ukrainian policies simply because Russia might benefit. The irony is, of course, if you threaten Russia, Ukraine will definitely not benefit. It's interesting, if you look at the Israeli case and the Ukrainian case, here are two countries that are in deep trouble. I know we're going to discuss the Israeli issue shortly, but Israel is in deep trouble. And what it's doing is doubling down, which is not what it should be doing. It should be thinking about how to get out of the mess that it's in, but it's not. It's just making a bad situation worse. And the same thing is true with the Ukrainians. And in both cases, you have the West, and here we're talking mainly about the United States, although not exclusively because the British and the Germans are joined at the hip with the United States in both of these instances. But anyway, we in the West are backing the Israelis as they dig deeper and deeper, and we are backing the Ukrainians as they dig deeper and deeper. And you really sort of wonder about the collective wisdom of the foreign policy establishment in the West, especially in the United States, from my point of view. What are these people thinking? It just seems to me that anybody who looks at these conflicts in a cold and calculating way, which is the way that we do, kind of hard to avoid the conclusions that we're reaching. I don't mean to sound like I'm patting the three of us on the back, but I just sometimes scratch my head and say, "Listen to this Western propaganda about both Israel and about Ukraine." With these people thinking, the facts on the ground bear a little resemblance to the story that they're telling. Well, I think this is absolutely correct. You don't need to be a genius to see that Ukraine is losing the war. It's obvious. What is this operation in Kusk actually achieved so far? It's captured one small town of 5,000 people and a couple of villages. You know, a large number of very little villages in a forested and thinly populated area, and it's costing Ukraine thousands of men. In the meantime, exactly as Glenn said, all the places like Buchrosk, a major logistical place, a big industrial centre, all of that is about to be lost. It doesn't need you to be an analyst of any great ability to see that, but you'll never see it discussed in that way. It's always discussed in this incredibly emotional terms, at least certainly Britain, it is, invocations of Churchill, talk about appeasement, not appeasing the dictator. It's always discussed in terms of political will. You know, if we have the will to give the support to Ukraine, that Ukraine needs whatever that support is. There's never any discussion, I noticed, ever about actual material possibilities, what number of weapons or what number of mounted money or what it would be needed to do to turn this thing around. It's never talked about in that way. It's always about will and emotion. It's never about the kind of analysis that, well, I think in our own different ways, each of us tries to do. When I was younger and began my PhD work and then my early career as an academic, I wrote about conventional deterrence and I studied the conventional balance in Europe. I studied the Israeli wars very carefully, 56, 67, 73, and I studied World War I and World War II. I know an enormous amount about how those wars were for it. And, of course, I was in the American military during the Vietnam War, so I take great attention to the question of how the United States might be able to win or maybe can't win that war and so forth and so on. And the one thing I learned in all those studies is that you have to have a theory of victory. You have to have a story that tells how you're going to win. And you have to be able to figure out what are the things that really matter on the battlefield that determine whether side A wins or side B wins. And if you look at the analysis that's done in the West, and this includes by these generals who were on television, as well as all of these civilian military experts who are trotted out to tell us what is likely to happen as a result of X, Y, and Z on these battlefields. Most of them do not have a good understanding of how wars are actually fought, and most of them do not have a theory of victory for winning wars of one sort or another. And I think this lack of depth, this inability to sort of analyze wars in a really sort of sophisticated or semi sophisticated way is really quite stunning. And the end result is you have these generals who are trotted out is, you know, great seers of the future, who end up with egg all over their face. I mean David Petraeus talking about the counter offensive and where it's going to lead, even when the counter offensive was clearly doomed, he was predicting victory. And you just sort of saying yourself, what's this guy thinking, where are we here, but that's the story in the West and that's why most people in the West think about these different wars so differently than we do. I think it's, I mentioned the doctor, I thought about my own PhD because I read a PhD on the post Cold War European security architecture organized around the US and NATO as inter democratic security institutions and I thought it was also interesting because I looked at it from the extent to which it either reduced or intensified the security dilemma to cut effectively Russia out of the new Europe, as long as it's organized around these so called them credit institutions and, and I found it interesting because you look at security dilemma again the security competition should really be the point of departure in any discussion of security that is. I noticed very quickly when I went to any conferences or anything to discuss the security dilemma, everyone was quite comfortable discussing how Russia undermines our security but as soon as you point out how we might undermine their security. It was almost as if it was treasonous like why why are you taking their side and for me it was a bit shocking because if you can't discuss the security concern of the other guy, how is it possible to find any political solutions. And it kind of dawned on me this is a fact it's like essentially the world we're living now we're not discussing political solutions and I can't remember ever opening any newspaper watching a TV program where they actually discuss. If the Russians are worried about this is how the security policy addresses this concern. Now how can we increase our security based on what they were never we never, indeed the whole concept of recognizing a Russian legitimate security concern is some kind of an appeasement and this is interpreted as being loyal to our side instead of taking their side that the great iron is we can't enhance our own security if we don't recognize that we also then can't always increase our security at the expense of theirs. And that's why I thought it's interesting to both you drew this link to Israel because it's the same there I mean if you care about Israel. It's always translated into if pro Israeli means you make excuses for the war they're fighting in Gaza and you want to delegitimize the other side so the Palestinians has mola Iran. But this is the opposite of which should have been doing because we're putting them on a path to suicide it seems. You know we should be looking at the legitimate security concerns they have not everything but the legitimate ones and address it to again reduce the security competition. But we're doing none of this instead is always if you're pro Ukrainian just do anything that's anti Russian and if you're pro Israel just push hard and ignore the rivals is for me it seems like a collision course. Yeah, on that topic I guess to what extent are we Alexander and john on the collision course now because many people are breathing out that you know the Israelis and Hezbollah and all that's taking a step back but are they really are taking a pause Are we standing here. I'm just going to express my my own quick view I was listening to Prime Minister Netanyahu when he came to the United States and he addressed Congress. And my own view I mean I've been listening to Netanyahu for a long time, much of what he said was not new but I got the sense that he very very much is looking to escalate and to have a wider wall. I don't think that he's done since that speech the assassination of honey in Tehran, the sabotaging of every attempt to achieve a piece that sees fire in Gaza. He's rhetoric against Iran he's previous attack on the embassy in Damascus. The latest events that we've seen over the last couple of days. All of that tells me that he wants a war he wants escalation. And we don't seem to be doing anything at all to tell him stop on the country. We and by the way in this I include the British for absolutely fully engaged in this whenever it comes to telling people we need us we need moderation we need restraint. It's the Iranians we address it too. Even though recently, maybe not always but in the last couple of months ever since the events last October. The Iranians could be exercising restraint. So we ask for more restraint from the party this exercising restraint. And we never asked the same from the side that isn't that's how it looks to me so given that this is the situation. I cannot see how it can end in any other way than in a smash. Now I'll be interested to hear what Professor Mays on has to say. Just before I talk specifically about the Middle East. I would know that both Zelensky and Netanyahu were trying to drag the United States into the wars. And in both cases the United States wants to stay out. Yeah, who is not acting all that differently from Zelensky. And one can argue that reason Zelensky invaded you being one of the reasons was to cause the Russians to retaliate in a way that would be American. So the United States has to be very careful that it doesn't get dragged into either one of those wars. Now I agree with Alexander but just to embellish his point a bit and talk a bit about what Netanyahu's nitty gritty incentives are. First of all, I think he wants to drag us into a war with Ukraine with Iran so that we bash Iran is weakened. And I think he's especially hopeful that we destroy its nuclear capabilities because as you both know, the Ukrainians are not far away from becoming a nuclear weapons state because they've been enriching uranium up to 60%. That's one reason. Another reason is he wants the war to continue. He doesn't want the war to end because he fears that if it ends he'll be toppled from power. Third reason and a very important reason he's bent on ethically cleansing Gaza and he'd like to ethically cleanse the West Bank as well. And the Israelis know that the best opportunity for cleansing comes with a big war. You want to remember that two big cleanseings that have taken place so far with the not in 1948 with the Israelis in the context of that war drove probably about three quarters of a million Palestinians in the country. And then the second big expulsion was in the wake of the 1967 war when they probably drove about 250,000 Palestinians out of the West Bank. So I think their belief is that if they can get a big war going that will provide the perfect opportunity to ethically cleanse Gaza and maybe even ethically cleanse some of the West Bank. That's one of the reasons I think Netanyahu really wants to get the Americans involved. The Americans of course are going to great lengths not to get involved. We're doing everything we can to tell the Iranians not to retaliate. And we're doing everything we can. I shouldn't say that that's incorrect. We're trying without really trying to put a ceasefire in place in Gaza. But, but I think Alexander may be right with regard to the Middle East that a big conflict is coming and that despite the best efforts in the United States. There's nothing we can do about it. I would know, Alexander, I know you've talked about this. The Iranians have not retaliated yet. But if you listen to them talk, it's hard to believe they're not going to retaliate at some point. And my sense there for what it's worth is the Iranians are waiting till the Americans draw down their forces in the region. And we in effect let down our guard and the Israelis do the same thing. And then they'll strike. But if the Iranians strike and again they indicate that they are going to strike and it is a significant strike. The Israelis are really going to go back at them. And furthermore, when the Iranians do strike, we the Americans and even the Europeans, the British and the French are committed to helping the Israeli. So we were going to get we are going to get dragged into the conflict. So we may have this, you know, big conflict that the United States is actually trying to avoid. I completely agree. And by the way, on the question of being dragged in, Israel is not just trying to drag in the United States. It's trying to drag in the Europeans as well. It's not been widely reported, but the Israeli foreign minister, Mr Katz had a meeting with the British and French foreign ministers and he said if Iran attacks Israel and Israel needs to conduct a counter attack against Iran. Well, you know, it's been told it's been promised in effect by the British and the French that they'll be there with Israel. Now that almost certainly was not true. I'm sure that the British and the French made no such promise that meeting. And in fact, when the actual eventual readout was provided by the Israeli foreign ministry, it sort of toned all that down. But apparently those words were in fact said. So you can see what's happening. The Israelis are trying to get as many people. They're trying to create in effect an international coalition around themselves to find Iran. I don't think they're going to get it. I don't think the British public, for example, is in any mood to get itself drawn into a war with Iran or with Russia for that matter, by the way. But I sense myself that Netanyahu wants his war and I think he's going to get it at some point. I don't know how it's going to play out with or how the steps that are going to get this there, but I think that's probably where he's taking us. And by the way, just to say your suggestion of why the Iranians are waiting. I think that's probably almost certainly right. I won't. I never thought of it before, but I think that's exactly the kind of waiting game that they like to play. And I think you probably hit the net on the head on that. Yeah, but you know, just to take this a step further, the question I would ask you two guys is, how does Israel win any of these conflicts? I mean, if you look at what happened with Hamas in Gaza, it's hard to argue the Israelis won, certainly given the goals that they have, which were to destroy Hamas and eliminate any sort of meaningful military threat from Gaza. They didn't succeed. And even if you look at the recent exchange between Hezbollah and Israel, how is that a military victory for Israel? How does that solve their problem? Hezbollah is still standing. Hezbollah, by the way, did not use any of its ballistic missiles to attack Israel. So it has this huge inventory of ballistic missiles and still drones and rockets and so forth and so on. The threat is still there. They're still going to continue to be firing at each other. Israel doesn't have escalation dominance. All of those people who have been displaced from the northern border of Israel into the center of the country still can't go back to their homes. So how did what happened yesterday? How does that represent a victory? I just don't understand. And if you go to war against Iran, tell me the story as to how that leads to victory. Does anybody seriously think that the United States and Israel pounding Iran is going to produce a military victory for Israel that it's going to put an end to the Iran-Israel conflict? Hard for me to see. So, I mean, the Israelis are doubling down. They're using military force as much as ever. But what is it buying them? It's been a general problem over the past 30 years. Whenever we go to war, we never defined victory, which is also implicitly the exit strategy. But I think for the Israelis, they're on the victory. If you eliminate the possible diplomatic solution of a Palestinian state, it's either apartheid or ethnic cleansing, and I think of Gaza primarily. Now, it's still maybe achievable if you have a major war. But I think if you look at what Netanyahu wants in any ceasefire agreement, not that necessarily is not being genuine, but it's always some kind of control over Gaza. So some way of putting it under their controls. I'm not sure how they will realistically achieve this. And obviously escalating now with Hezbollah, I don't see any possible pathway to victory. But this has become a common feature, the same as when we've been fighting Russia for two and a half years. And no one actually defined what it would mean to defeat the world's largest nuclear power. At what point would NATO march through Crimea without triggering a nuclear war? So I think it's across the border. This is the key problem. We never defined our victories. I just wanted to have a quick comment on what you mentioned before. This is pulling in NATO and the U.S. Because I think this is a key problem with the whole alliance system. And for about eight years ago, John Hertz, he wrote that the alliance systems replaced the right to make war with the responsibility to do so. And this is why Ukraine is an incentive to escalate because they can pull in NATO. This is why the Israelis have an incentive to escalate because they pull in the Americans. So why would you do any painful diplomatic solutions if you always have that powerful state in the back? So you're willing to take these huge compromises. Now compromise risks. And this has been a problem not just with Ukraine. Look at the Baltic states. This one reason why they never made any peace with Russia, they continue this belligerent policies because they have United States and NATO in their back. And without this, of course, you would have to try to at least overcome some of the Soviet legacy and find a way of living next to each other, but you don't have to when you have this big powerful army behind you. So I think this is the problem of visiting alliance systems for only protecting and defending, but it's also preventing anyone from making any compromises. So I think this has been the problem of Israel, not just now, but over the past decades. Why would it ever have to make any painful compromises with the Palestinians say it doesn't have to. It can always have the option of getting everything. I think so. Yeah, again, I don't think this isn't necessarily in their interest there to discourage them from making any compromises. The point on that, Glenn, is both of you know, Steve Walton. I wrote this famous book called the Israel lobby in US foreign policy. And the argument we made in the book was we have this powerful lobby in the United States, the Israel lobby that has a huge influence on American policy toward the Middle East, and especially towards Israel and especially towards the Israeli Palestinian conflict. And the end result is that the United States supports Israel unconditionally. And in the book and in our public presentations, we have always argued that the lobby is not good for the United States, that the policies that it's pushing are not good for American security. But we have also argued emphatically that the policies that the lobby is pushing, which is to support Israel unconditionally, are not good for Israel. So when you look at American policy towards Israel, it is important to understand that there are many policymakers over time, presidents in particular who have wanted to put significant pressure on Israel, not to do foolish things, not good for the United States, but not good for Israel itself. But those presidents could not put any pressure on Israel if any consequence in large part because of the lobby, because the lobby demands that the United States support Israel unconditionally. So here's a country, Israel, that is really in deep trouble, it is in deep trouble, and it is digging deeper and deeper. And what is the lobby doing here in the United States, and by the way, there's a lobby in Britain and lobbies all across Europe as well, which is one of the reasons all these governments support Israel no matter what it does. What all these lobbies are doing, right, is they're helping Israel dig that hole at a more rapid rate and get deeper and deeper into the ground. This is not smart, those lobbies, those so-called supporters of Israel, right, or to think long and hard about what's going on here. And Glenn, this gets back to your point about Ukraine, people like us are portrayed as being anti-Ukrainian, and all of these supporters of endless war in Ukraine are supposed to be the great defenders of Ukraine. Your point, which I agree with, and I'm sure Alexandra agrees with, is that this is completely backwards, and all these cheerleaders for Ukraine are leading it down the primrose path. I'm making the same argument with regard to Israel, right, if Israel's supporters were hard-headed strategists and were forced to think clearly about the policies they're pushing, they would say that it is not in Israel's interest. To continue digging deeper and deeper, any more than it's in Ukraine's interest. But the problem is that people like us just don't have much voice in the existing system. I think this is absolutely correct. All my lifetime, I hear about how Israel is winning, except of course it never wins. I mean, it's always a process of winning. You win every tactical battle, but at the end of it, at the end of the day, you find yourself in a far worse situation than you would have been in if you had been prepared at some point to compromise. They've had ample opportunities to do that. It's 67 in the various negotiations that took place in the 1970s at the Geneva Conference. I remember which has been floated for the 1970s after Camp David agreements, but they never do it because they never really feel that they have that pressure on them, that needs to negotiate, which is what Glenn was talking about. They can always hold out for whatever maximalist objective that they have. And in the end, where it's brought them to is the position in which they are now, where they've got an unwinnable war in Gaza, which they don't know how to end and they don't want to end, where their economy is. Very poor state. It's declining. Their credit rating is declining. Their army is exhausted. There's arguments between the prime minister and his generals with reports in the Financial Times saying that the prime minister is calling the generals cowards, which is incredible. But that's the Financial Times that's saying that. And they're drifting into a conflict with Iran, a very big country, potentially a very powerful one. Again, I can't understand what victory victory there would be. But nobody is making these points in that in the way that you've just made them, John. Nobody's doing that. Everybody looks at this purely in very tactical terms. Can we conduct a successful airstrike on Iran? As if that ultimately achieves anything, all it's going to do is to make the situation worse. And I don't know what has to happen before it changes. I think in Ukraine, where there is a major preponderance of power on the Russian side, and they can at least at some point bring the war to an end on some kind of basis that works for them. I think we can perhaps see a possible, but we can look forward one day to a day when there won't be a war there. But in the Middle East, I have to say I look upon events with dread. And I think for Israel, it's now an existential situation. I think that they're in a more dangerous position now than they have ever been in their history, all this winning. Where has it brought them? Two quick points. One is that the political center of gravity in Israel over time will move further and further to the right. If you just look at the demographics, and you see that the more extreme groups are having large numbers of babies. Furthermore, I think with the passage of time, more and more secular Israelis will leave and go to Europe or the United States, given what's happening inside Israel. So I don't think there's much hope that Israel will come to its senses. I think the Ben Gaviers and the Smotriches are the wave of the future. That's point one. Point two is, I just wanted to talk a little bit about how Israel's military situation has changed over time. As I told you, when I was young and studying conventional wars, I studied the Israeli cases. I mentioned the 56, 67, and 73 wars. I also, of course, studied the 48 war and the 82 invasion of Lebanon. In those days, the Israelis fought wars against other countries, and the wars mainly involved engagements on the battlefield. But the threat environment that Israel faces is fundamentally different today. It's not a conventional war with Egypt or a conventional war with Syria like it was in the old days. Now, the problem is they're facing these adversaries who are armed to the teeth with missiles, rockets, and cruise missiles, and they have no way of dealing with that threat. It's really quite amazing. Hamas is not a regular army by any means, right? Hezbollah. Hezbollah is not a country. Hezbollah is not Lebanon. It's an important element of the political equation in Lebanon, for sure. But Hezbollah is a political organization embedded inside of Lebanon that has all these missiles, rockets, mortars, and so forth and so on, and even some ground capability. And it just creates all sorts of problems for Israel. And now they're beginning to face problems with the Houthis, because the Houthis are getting the capability to hit Israel with missiles and with drones. And this capability will only grow with time. So if you look at what happened yesterday with Lebanon and Israel, there was no way that Israel could win the war against Lebanon. They can't invade Lebanon. I mean, they could invade Lebanon, but it will not have a happy ending, which is why they're not seriously talking about it. And they can't take out all of their missiles and rockets, and that leaves them vulnerable to these missiles and rockets. And by the way, the number of missiles and rockets that Hezbollah now has will grow over time. The accuracy of those missiles will grow. The yield of those missiles will grow. The intelligence capabilities of Hezbollah to sort of pinpoint targets that could then be programmed into these missiles and rockets will grow. And it's all the way of saying the threat from Hezbollah will grow the threat from Hamas, which has been obviously severely hurt will grow back. And the Houthis will come online. The Iranians are not going anywhere, whether they bomb them or not. So the Israelis are in this really dangerous threat environment. It's completely different. I think it's fair to say it's completely different than the threat environment that they faced in the early years, and which they could quite easily handle. They did not have much trouble, as you all know, winning the 56, 67, and even the 73 war where they initially got caught with their pants down, right, they had a formidable conventional military force that was good at winning those wars. But that threat environment has changed, and they have no way of winning these wars. Last, I guess, a question for me, though, is in terms of it looks like these two big wars can merge to some extent, because a key concern for me in terms of the West joining in or coming to the aid of Israel and larger regional war. It's something that includes the Houthis, Hezbollah, or the Palestinians, or against Iran, is that the Russians and Chinese, they look like very likely, at least the Russians would to some extent come to the aid. Simply because we kind of changed the rules of proxy wars as we're now assisting with the invasion of Russian territory, something that was unthinkable before. Now, obviously, one of the ways that the Russians are seeking to retaliate without triggering nuclear exchange or Third World War is by, yes, we've talked about supplying more weapons to anyone who opposed the West. Now, it seems to me if the West wants to get involved in a wider regional war in the Middle East, Russia suddenly has a lot of targets to pick in terms of supplying intelligence, weapons, any war planning, or any of the things we're engaged in the war against Russia. So, it seems dangerous for us at this time to start a huge regional war, especially after we exhausted so much of our own weaponry to fight Russia. So, what do you two see as or predict in terms of what would happen if we would actually come to the aid of Israel in a wider regional war? Would the Russians and the Chinese come in to assist the Houthis or the Iranians, any of the other actors? I'll defer to you, Alexander. Well, I think that there is going to be a major difference from what we saw before, because, of course, when the West got to some extent bogged down in Iraq, the Russians kept away. They wanted good relations with the West at that time. They were not in a strong position to intervene. They didn't have many regional friends. Now, everything has changed. They have the incentive, they have the means, and they have the friends. And I think that from their point of view, they probably would want to intervene, but they would want to intervene in a particular way, I think, they would not want an uncontrolled escalation in the Middle East, which could backfire on themselves. I think what the Russians would probably want and what they would try to do in the Middle East is gain leverage over us. And I think that's probably the way they would think, just as they gained leverage over the United States by supplying arms to North Vietnam in the 1960s, and were able to trade that to get concessions in the data on process. And I think with the Chinese, it's the same. And strangely enough, getting the Chinese under Russians involved in the Middle East might actually be a way of creating some kind of mechanism to bring this process under some kind of control. But that's not going to happen to happen very quickly, or very easily. I suspect Mr Netanyahu will get his war, and there'll be a massive smash, and it'll only be then that we'll see everybody, Russians, Chinese, Americans, all the others working together to pick up the pieces. I agree with that. I would just note that there's evidence that the Russians are already aiding the Iranians that they've been sending them air defense systems, electronic jamming capabilities and so forth and so on, to in effect help them stave off an attack from the Israelis. So the link is there. My guess is if a conflagration broke out, a shooting match broke out between the Iranians on one side and the Israelis and the Americans and the Europeans on the other side. The Russians would go to great lengths not to get directly involved in the fighting, but to do everything possible to help the Iranians and complicate things for the United States. I think you have a really interesting situation. This comment builds on what we were talking about before, where the Americans, the Iranians, and I think the Russians don't want a big war in the Middle East. It's the Israelis who really want a big war in the Middle East. And because the United States can't put any meaningful pressure on Israel to in effect cool its jets and stop this nonsense because of the Israel lobby, the Israelis might very well take us all down this road that we don't want to go down. You remember, you want to remember that on April 1, it was the Israelis who killed a number of people in the Iranian embassy in Damascus and precipitated the April 14 attack by Iran against Israel and then the Israeli attack against Iran on April 19. And then it was again the Israelis who on July 31 kill Haniye in Tehran and have precipitated what we think is going to be a major Iranian attack on Israel. So you can see the Israelis are doing everything they can in terms of concrete actions to drag us in, drag the Iranians in, and I think they wouldn't mind if the Russians got involved either. But all three of these other players other than the Israelis are interested in avoiding a big war and it'll be interesting to see just how successful the Israelis are pulling us all in. That breaks me back to my earlier point that if we really wanted to prevent or avoid Iran striking retaliating against Israel what we really should be doing is reach out to the Iranians and say okay we're going to put restraints on the Israelis. If you do the same but instead we see we're sending letters to the Iranians where we're blaming them for everything. We're not even condemning the Israeli attack and suggesting that everything in the region is therefore their fault for supporting terrorism without any of the context it just is we're signaling to the Iranians. You have no diplomatic partner we're not going to constrain them. So effectively leaving the use of force as the only one. Again I see the parallel to Russia in 2021 we kept telling the Russians you're not going to we're going to continue to build up in Ukraine or military force we're not going to implement means we're not going to give you any security guarantees anything you need to feel secure we're just going to continue to mount more and more weapons which could will probably be used against you to take the Crimea force. If you don't like it you're going to have to use military force this effectively the message we're sending them and I see the same with Iran now we're not giving them anything and this is always interpreted as being tough on them or this how we're deterring them but deterrence have to be balanced with something else by actually accommodating some of their concerns and they do have concerns but again I see what they want to do what they're doing exactly the opposite zone. I think one just very quickly Glenn and I'll exit it one problem here is that the Iranophobia and the Russophobia in the West is so off the charts that it leads naturally to dividing the world up into two groups, bad guys, good guys and if you divide the world up into bad guys and good guys and that's how you think about the world it's very hard to be a first class strategist right because you instead are thinking about the world in terms of right and wrong but instead and that's not what you want to do you want to pay really serious attention to what your adversaries legitimate interests are and take them into account when you fashion a policy but they are incapable of doing it. I think it's actually more difficult to do with regard to the Russians because the Russ and Russophobia and the Putin phobia is so potent, it's also true with regard to the Iranians. It's an amazing extent to which the Iranians are portrayed as the devil incarnate which makes it impossible for us to have any form of meaningful relations with Iran and do anything to put these problems that we have to bed. I completely agree. I think says was it tele wrong once said you know the worst, the worst thing a diplomat can fall into as an excessive zeal. I think we have far, far too much zeal. I think this is what we have and that's the problem it's clouding our judgment and it's making real diplomacy impossible because in this kind of atmosphere it's very, very heavy atmosphere. That's not an negotiate with the devil incarnate that's impossible. It's an appeasement and that's the word that's always brought out. Appeasement is not a specific event that took place in the 1930s in Europe. It's something that applies all the time everywhere in every place, but especially when the Russians and the Iranians are concerned. I've never discussed this before. I have to say, I think there has to be a major smash, a major crisis failure before. I think we come to our senses because I can't see any other way it's going to happen. Anyway, that's me. I'm sad to say I think you're right. A good example I think is the incoming EU foreign policy chief Kallas. She was making the point that Putin's a war criminal and we cannot diplomacy with war criminals as we were legitimizing it. We cannot talk to them and also suggesting that peace also or victory has to be breaking up Russia in smaller countries because then there will be better. The insane path we're currently on and criticizing it, of course, would mean that you're picking the wrong side. You're going with evil instead of good, so it's a very childish way of looking at international affairs. Any final words before we wrap this up? Well, I think we will see it. I'm sure we're going to see a big smash in the Middle East. I think my own view about Ukraine, and I think this follows what everyone else has been saying, is we've actually now passed the point of no return. In fact, I think we could be fairly soon in an endgame situation here and that an end to the war might not actually be that far off anymore. The endgame, of course, will be very complicated and very difficult and will present all kinds of other problems. But I think that, you know, the Middle East, it's different. And that might be the war that we're talking about more than Ukraine next year, just saying. I agree. I agree too. That's sort of my final word, just to agree with Alexander. Hopefully, we're all wrong. And this will end both wars quite peaceful soon, but yeah, I doubt it. Anyways, Professor Mersheimer, Alexander, thank you so much. I appreciate it every time. My pleasure, Glenn. Great to be with you. Great to believe with you both of you on this program. [MUSIC]