Nov. 19, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
33:19
Prof. John Mearsheimer : Ukraine and Reality
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Thursday, November 20th, 2025.
Professor John Mearsharmer will be with us in just a moment on Ukraine and reality.
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Professor Mearshamer, welcome here, my dear friend.
Thank you for accommodating my schedule.
Much appreciated.
Before we get to Ukraine and reality, can you tell us why the United States of America is planning a coup in Venezuela and what 18,000 troops are doing at the ready in Puerto Rico?
I think the explanation, the main explanation, is that the United States does not tolerate left-leaning governments, either in South America or Central America.
And as soon as they see a government that they think is considerably to the left of center, we move in to replace that government.
We have a rich history of doing this.
And ever since Chavez won in Venezuela a decade or so ago, the United States has had its gun sights on Venezuela and nothing has changed.
We want to get rid of Maduro and we would prefer to put in place a right-wing government.
If you have any doubts about this, all you have to do is look at our relationship with Cuba since 1959 when Fidel Castro took over there.
We've had our gun sites on Cuba ever since.
We cannot stand the fact that Cuba has a government that is to the left of center.
Cuba doesn't pose any national security threat to the United States.
The Cuban Missile Crisis is a long time ago, 65 years ago.
Does Venezuela pose any threat to the United States whatsoever?
No, not in my opinion.
There are a lot of people, though, who think it's an ideological threat.
In other words, they believe that we're in such a precarious position in the Western hemisphere and maybe around the world as well, that if there is a left-wing government in this hemisphere, even if that left-wing government is not cavorting with a distant great power like the Soviet Union, the mere fact that there is a left-wing government in this hemisphere is categorically unacceptable.
And we go after it hammer and tongue almost every time.
So the people of a country democratically choose their leaders like Lula in Brazil, a hard left guy, but a very prosperous country with a major economic base.
Venezuela, not prosperous, but potentially so.
We're going to use force to change their government.
Sounds like Afghanistan, doesn't it?
Look, we do not believe in sovereignty.
It's just very important to believe, to recognize that.
The United States thinks it has the right.
It has the responsibility.
And it has the capability to intervene in the domestic politics of every country on the planet when it sees fit.
This is the way we operate.
This is a gross violation of the UN Charter.
And everybody understands that if you violate sovereignty all the time, you make for a much less peaceful world.
But that doesn't matter to us because we're interested in remaking the world in our own image.
Professor Mircharmer, you are a graduate of United States Naval Academy at West Point and you were an officer in the Air Force.
I don't know how you got from West Point to the Air Force, but I know that happens and it's legitimate and proper and that's what you chose.
You certainly are familiar with the military regimen and respect for authority.
Is it lawful in the military to obey an unlawful order?
Go kill that guy.
See that guy right there?
I'm ordering you, sergeant, to go and kill him.
Can the sergeant, if that guy's not engaged in violence and not a member of a military against which country we've declared war, can the sergeant lawfully disobey that order?
Yes, there's no question about that.
Let me just give you a little bit of background on this.
Very important to understand that militaries are giant killing machines.
If you're trained in the U.S. Army, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy, U.S. Marines, in most jobs that you have in those services, you're trained to kill people.
That's what militaries do.
And given that militaries are trained to kill people, and there's a very powerful tendency to engage in wanton violence, you want to have a set of rules that are drilled into everybody's heads so that people think twice before they engage in murderous behavior.
I'm not talking about normal combat.
I'm talking about killing civilians, killing prisoners of war, and so forth and so on.
And it's very hard when militaries are engaged in combat to keep a lid on things because there's a powerful tendency in those institutions, as you can understand, to do things that are unlawful.
So we have these laws.
We drill them into people's heads, and everybody understands what those laws are.
And it's all designed to keep warfare as humane as possible.
And along come people who say that when you get into combat, you can do pretty much anything you want.
You want to execute a Mylai massacre?
Go out and do it.
Well, of course, you don't want a situation like that.
You want to do everything you can to prevent a Mylai massacre.
And that's the reason you have these laws as to what kind of killing is legitimate in a war and what kind is not.
Is it legitimate?
Is it?
I'm going to ask you to veer into the philosophical with this part of the question.
Moral.
Is it lawful for the President of the United States to order the United States military to kill unarmed civilians who are not engaged in violence on their speedboats in the Caribbean because he thinks they're drug dealers?
I do not think it is.
And there are lots of other people who don't think it is either, including British military intelligence, MI6.
As you know, the British are not cooperating with this.
This is the British, right?
Our buddies.
But MI6 will not cooperate with us in the Caribbean because they fully understand that what we're doing is unlawful.
It's murderous behavior.
And President Trump can say that he has some sort of written mandate to do this, which says it's okay.
But hardly anybody believes that except for the people around him and his fervid supporters of the body populace.
I wish you would release the mandate.
This killing, which is now up to 81 people, two survived, but 81 are dead, has provoked members of Congress who themselves are former military or former CIA to make a video in which they encourage members of the military not to obey unlawful orders.
Originally, it was thought that this tape was AI, but the people that are in it admit that they made it, so it is not AI.
The president has reacted, as you might expect, saying that it's sedition and punishable by death.
I would argue that it's free speech and it's an accurate statement.
There's what President Trump said in CAPS seditious behavior and CAPS punishable by death and CAPS.
I would argue that it's not only free speech, it's an accurate statement of the law.
But before you respond, it's about a minute and a half long.
Here we go.
I'm Senator Alyssa Sawkins.
Senator Mark Kelly.
Representative Chris DeLuzio.
Congresswoman Maggie Goodlander.
Representative Chrissy Houlihan.
Congressman Jason Crowe.
That was a captain in the United States Navy.
Former CIA officer.
Former Navy.
Former paratrooper and Army Ranger.
Former intelligence officer.
Former Air Force.
We want to speak directly to members of the military and the intelligence community who take risks each day to keep Americans safe.
We know you are under enormous stress and pressure right now.
Americans trust their military.
But that trust is at risk.
This administration is pitting our uniformed military and intelligence community professionals against American citizens.
Like us, you all swore an oath.
To protect and defend this Constitution.
Right now, the threats to our Constitution aren't just coming from abroad, but from right here at home.
Our laws are clear.
You can refuse illegal orders.
You can refuse illegal orders.
You must refuse illegal orders.
No one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our Constitution.
We know this is hard.
And that it's a difficult time to be a public servant.
Whether you're serving in the CIA, the Army, or Navy, the Air Force, your vigilance is critical.
And know that we have your back.
Because now, more than ever.
The American people need you.
We need you to stand up for our laws, our Constitution, and who we are as Americans.
Don't give up.
Don't give up the ship.
Any problem with that, Professor Mearsheimer?
Pretty straightforward to me, and I would assume it's pretty straightforward to you as well.
Yes, it is straightforward to me.
First of all, it is speech, free speech, political speech.
And secondly, it is an accurate statement of the law.
Now, a lot of our friends, friends of yours and mine who are formerly in the military, say that this will cause a disruption in the ranks, that individual soldiers can't decide for themselves whether an order is lawful or not.
But my goodness, we have the experience of this word will mean a lot to you, Nuremberg.
I was just following orders is not a valid excuse to killing or harming nonviolent and innocent people.
Well, the implication here is that there are thousands of orders that are given every week.
And, you know, a huge chunk of those orders are going to be illegal orders.
And you're going to have insurrection in the ranks.
You're going to have chaos in the ranks.
I don't think that's the way this works.
I think that every once in a while, you'll get an order that is clearly illegal.
People understand that.
And they can question that order.
And if the person up on top, the commander who issued the order, has a good explanation for what's going on, he or she can give that to the subordinate who is asking whether the order is illegal or not.
But you certainly don't want to have a situation where people down the chain of command simply have to obey an order that they think is clearly illegal.
If you're, again, at My Lai and somebody tells you to go in there and massacre all these innocent Vietnamese people, do you want a situation where you just axiomatically do that?
Of course you don't want that.
So I think that most of these cases, which are not going to be large in number, but most of these cases are pretty clear-cut.
And you can have a discussion up and down the chain of command about whether or not the law is illegal or the ruling or the command is illegal or not.
Before we get over to Ukraine and reality, I'll show you the other side of this, which is CNN, a CNN reporter buttonholing the Speaker of the House of Representatives just about 15 minutes ago.
The president posted that Democrats who urge service members to not follow illegal orders should be punished, it should be seditious, conspiracy, and punishable by death.
Give me a response to that.
Look, I know the DOJ and the Pentagon are looking into the legality of all that, but what I can address is what everybody knows.
That was wildly inappropriate.
It is very dangerous.
You have leading members of Congress telling troops to disobey orders.
I think that's unprecedented in American history.
And as the father of a young man who is at the Naval Academy, going to be joining the service, I know young soldiers, airmen, sailors, they don't need that kind of nonsense from people in Congress.
It is very dangerous.
let others define what it is, but it's wildly inappropriate.
Well, what do you think?
Oh, I don't hear you, Professor.
Do you hear me now?
Yes, now we hear you.
Sorry.
He misrepresented what the issue at hand is.
said that these senators and congressmen are telling soldiers and sailors and airmen to disobey orders.
And that's not what's at issue here.
It's not disobeying orders.
It's disobeying illegal orders.
That's the issue.
And the question Johnson should ask, answer, is whether or not he believes that service people should disobey unlawful orders or not.
That's the question.
Right.
I don't think he wants to answer that.
Let's jump over to Ukraine.
If Ukraine is on its last leg, as many of us believe, Ukraine military, if the Russian military is very, very close to achieving the Kremlin's goals, why would the Kremlin entertain peace negotiations now?
Because it looks like they're going to get everything they want in the peace negotiations.
You want to think about what's happening here.
This war, apropos what you were saying, is being won on the battlefield by the Russians.
And the Americans recognize this.
And as a consequence, the Americans are willing to cave to almost all of Russia's demands, as best we can tell.
Now, whether the Ukrainians and the Europeans ultimately cave is another matter.
But the United States is just facing up to reality, given what's happening on the battlefield, given the fact that there are a number of other problems that the Ukrainian government is facing, one of which is that the United States is not funding Ukraine anymore and that the Europeans can't come up with the cash to fund Ukraine.
And given the fact that there's this major corruption crisis that is undermining Zelensky's standing in Kyiv, and given the fact that Russian aircraft, Russian cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and drones are destroying infrastructure in Ukraine, given all those factors, the writing's on the wall.
And the Americans say now is time to cut a deal.
And they're willing to cut a deal, the Americans are, that gives the Russians pretty much everything they want, as best I can tell from what you read about the deal in the paper.
Can the corrupt holdover President Zelensky enter into an agreement that peacefully cedes territory to Russia without exposing himself to elimination by the Benderists, the Hartbright nationalists that have surrounded him since the beginning of his presidency?
Well, I put it in more general terms.
I find it hard to imagine anybody in Ukraine surrendering to these terms.
I mean, you want to understand that the Ukrainians have to have to give up lots of territory to Russia.
Furthermore, they're going to have to, according to newspaper reports, have the side of the size of their military.
In other words, cut their military in half.
They're not going to be allowed to deploy certain weapons, weapons that can hit Russia, for example.
There are going to be real limits on the amount of assistance the West can give to Ukraine.
And here we're talking about military assistance.
There's nothing in the newspapers about Ukraine being a NATO, but it has to be the case that Ukraine can't be in NATO and can't have meaningful security guarantees from the West.
So I think the Russians are going to get all of their principal demands.
Does Secretary of State slash National Security Advisor Marco Rubio want peace in Ukraine, or does he belong to the Victoria Newland school of let's use Ukraine as a battering ram with which to drive Vladimir Putin from office?
Well, I think Rubio, in his heart of hearts, wants peace, but he wants peace on Ukraine's terms or the terms that the neoconservatives people like Victoria Newland have been pushing forward.
He's a hawk for sure in his heart and in his head as well, I'm sure.
But the fact is that the Ukrainians are losing.
There's nothing that can be done to rescue the situation.
And Donald Trump, not Marco Rubio, is the president of the United States.
And Trump wants to cut a deal.
He's had enough of this.
Trump recognizes that Ukraine can't win the war.
The Russians are winning the war, and they're about to knock out the Ukrainians.
I mean, that's what's happening here.
The Ukrainians are on the ropes.
Whether they go on for another month or two does not matter very much.
They cannot sustain this conflict indefinitely.
And Trump is recognizing reality.
And not surprisingly, he sent Witkoff, not Marco Rubio, to negotiate with the Russians.
And not surprisingly, Keith Kellogg, who is a superhawk on Ukraine, has announced his resignation.
I'm sure he saw the proposal that's on the table, was mortified, understood that he had lost, and said it's time to quit.
Before we go, moving over to Gaza, since you and I spoke last, the United Nations Security Council has given its blessing to the Donald Trump, Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner's so-called peace plan, also not negotiated by Marco Rubio.
And the Israelis, of course, are ecstatic to the point where Danny Dannon, the U.S., or the Israeli ambassador to the UN, physically hugged and embraced Mike Waltz, the American ambassador to the UN.
Why are the Israelis so happy at this proposal?
Probably because they wrote it.
Well, they wrote it, but it's also ideal from their point of view.
I mean, this UN resolution, which incorporates President Trump's 20-point plan, is a travesty.
It's disgraceful.
First of all, with regard to the Palestinians, there's no self-determination in there.
It's not like the Palestinians are going to get a state of their own or they're going to have any say on how Gaza is administered.
And furthermore, if you look at who's going to be in charge in Gaza as a result of this UN resolution, it's the United States and Israel.
And this is the tag team that's been perpetrating a genocide since October of 2023.
So in other words, what you're doing is you're taking the two principal perpetrators of the genocide, the United States and Israel, and you're putting them in charge.
And by the way, you're creating this board of peace that is going to run things.
It's going to be the supreme decision maker in Gaza.
And who is the head of this board of peace?
Donald Trump?
This is hard to believe.
And then we're going to bring in an international stabilization force.
I doubt that international stabilization force will ever go in there because Hamas has said that it's not going to disarm.
And it's hard to believe that that stabilization force will go in there with the principal mission in mind of disarming Hamas and doing Israel's dirty work for it.
I just find that hard to imagine.
So this just makes no sense at all.
I'm shocked that the resolution was not vetoed by the Russians and the Chinese.
And I'm shocked that the resolution was enthusiastically supported by all these countries in the Arab and Islamic world.
You would think that given the extent to which the Palestinians are being screwed as a result of this resolution, and that's being screwed after two years of going to genocide, that these people in the Arab and Islamic world, or these leaders in the Arab and Islamic world, would see fit to oppose the resolution and try to create a new resolution.
And this is what the Russians wanted to do, by the way, create a new resolution that led to some sort of self-determination, some sort of meaningful political horizon for the Palestinians and didn't cater to the Israelis and the Americans.
But that didn't happen.
Is Netanyahu happy about the extraordinary reception that Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, received in Washington, D.C. this week?
I don't think he was wildly enthusiastic about it.
I don't think the Israelis are happy with the fact that we've agreed to give the Saudis F-35s.
But the Saudis are not a problem for Israel.
The Gulf states are not a problem for Israel.
The Israelis worry more about places like Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, and Jordan.
Those are the principal concerns.
And of course, Iran.
That almost goes without saying.
But the Saudis don't matter that much.
As you know, the big talk for the past two or three years has been whether or not you're going to get an Abraham Accord involving Saudi Arabia, the United States, and Israel.
And the fact that that conversation was taking place just tells you that the Saudis are not a major problem for the Israelis, unless they get sophisticated F-35s.
That'll make the Israelis very nervous.
But that game hasn't played out yet.
And the Israelis will go to great lengths to undermine that deal.
And if they don't undermine it, they'll make sure they get compensated in the extreme in terms of more and more weaponry and more and more money simply because we gave Saudi Arabia 48 F-35s.
I want to play for you a clip, an interview with John Kiriaku.
You may know who Mr. Kiriaku is.
He's a retired CIA agent.
He's the only person that went to jail over the Bush-Cheney torture regime because he revealed the torture and the name of the torturers, as repulsed as he was by what he was forced to witness.
Obviously, he's out of jail now.
This was a number of years ago.
But he makes a rather startling claim about the Israelis.
And I'd like your opinion on it, Professor Mer Shermer.
Chris, cut number three.
The reason, though, I'm told, that Donald Trump decided to bomb Iran was that the Israelis said for the first time, if you don't bomb Iran to take out these deep bunkers, we're going to use nuclear weapons.
And they had never threatened that before.
And so Trump said, bombing Iran might actually save us from the start of World War III if it keeps the Israelis from using nuclear weapons.
So according to your source, the Israelis told the President of the United States that if he did not use the United States military power to bomb the nuclear facilities in Iran, Israel, acting on its own, would use nuclear weapons.
Yeah.
Do you see why there's a problem with that statement, John?
Yeah.
Because they've never admitted that they've had them.
That's right.
So you're telling me that they just admitted to the president of the United States that they have nuclear weapons and we still do not have them in the IAEA treaty.
I mean, if Israeli nuclear whistleblowers are to be believed, yeah, they've had them.
They started working on them in the 50s.
They got them around the late 60s or the early 70s.
Look at Mordecai Venunu.
You know, he wasn't charged for treason for nothing.
Credible, Professor Mearsheimer?
Oh, it's certainly credible.
I mean, I have no hard evidence to support what John said.
I'm not saying I doubt him, but I have no hard evidence.
But logically, it makes perfect sense.
You want to remember that the Israelis believe, they firmly believe that Iran with nuclear weapons is an existential threat.
And they believe that this nuclear enrichment capability that we attacked on June 22nd, this is the United States attack on June 22nd of this past year, is the beginnings of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons.
So they were deeply, deeply interested in taking that out.
We also know they can't take it out themselves.
They couldn't do it Ford out what we did or at Natans.
They just couldn't do it.
They don't have the capability.
They don't have the bombs that can go down that far.
So if they can't take out this existential threat with conventional weapons, but they can do it with nuclear weapons and maybe think they can do it with a small nuclear weapon.
I think the chances that they would do it are quite high.
I think if down the road there's evidence that Iran is acquiring nuclear weapons, there's really solid evidence that Iran is acquiring nuclear weapons.
And of course, this was not the case this summer.
And the Israelis can't take out that capability with their conventional forces.
I would bet a lot of money that they'll use nuclear weapons.
Again, they view this as an existential threat.
And when it comes to using military force against their adversaries, the Israelis almost know no bounds at all.
We've seen that in recent years.
The word restraint is not a word that is meaningful when you talk about how the Israelis behave militarily.
So I think this is a real threat, not just now, but this is a real threat moving forward.
Does the United States have any leverage over Israel when it comes to the Israeli threat or capability of using nuclear weapons?
Well, two points.
One is we hardly ever have any leverage over the Israelis, period.
But let's just put that aside.
If the Israelis believe, and I do believe that they think this is truly an existential threat, then whether or not we have leverage in other circumstances is not going to matter in this circumstance.
They're going to think that their survival is at stake.
That's the key to understanding what's going on here.
When you talk about an existential threat, you're talking about a threat to your survival.
This gets back to Ukraine.
Putin views Ukraine in NATO as an existential threat.
He views it as a threat to Russian survival.
Many Westerners don't believe that, but the Russian elite believes that.
But coming back over to the Israeli case, I don't think Netanyahu is the only person in Israel who thinks like this.
They believe that Iran with nuclear weapons is a threat to Israel's survival.
This is something that represents another possible holocaust.
And if you're thinking about Iranian nuclear weapons in those terms, using your own nuclear weapons is not difficult to imagine.
And by the way, Judge, it's very important to understand that Iran doesn't have nuclear weapons, so it can't retaliate.
going back to Ukraine.
One of the reasons that I was always very fearful in the first year of the war that Russia might turn to nuclear weapons because it was doing so badly on the battlefield at the conventional level is that if Russia used nuclear weapons in Ukraine, Ukraine did not have the capability to retaliate.
It had no nuclear weapons.
You have an analogous situation going back to the Israeli-Iran case, because if Israel were to use nuclear weapons, small nuclear weapons against Iran that could get their enrichment capability or a potential bomb that they were developing, they would be very tempted to do that because they would have no fear that Iran could retaliate with nuclear weapons of its own.
And of course, no other country in the world is going to come to Iran's rescue with its nuclear arsenal.
So again, this is a very dangerous situation.
And I think it's a very dangerous situation moving forward.
Professor Mir Sheimer, thank you very much, my dear friend.
Much appreciated.
I appreciate you accommodating my schedule.
We have a short week next week, but I hope we can spend a little time with you before the Thanksgiving holiday is upon us on Thursday.
Yes, I'll see you next Wednesday, the day before Turkey Day.
Oh, excellent.
Thank you, Professor.
Have a great day and a great weekend.
All the best to you.
And the same to you, Judge.
Thank you.
Coming up at four o'clock today, I think in Moscow, but somewhere in Russia for sure.