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June 13, 2025 - Uncensored - Piers Morgan
54:29
20250613_playing-with-fire-john-mearsheimer-ian-bremmer-on-
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Putin's Escalation and Humiliation 00:09:40
I don't view it as a war.
I view it as a genocide.
It's imperative that the genocide be shut down as quickly as possible.
Prime Minister Nanyatu cares a lot more about his own well-being than the sanctity of human life.
Iran now really has a lot of pressure to come to a political resolution with the hated Satan, the United States.
The long-term future for Ukraine is very bleak.
Donald Trump is slowly but steadily moving away from the Ukrainians and the Europeans, and he's getting closer to Putin.
Firing nuclear weapons at the United States is fundamentally different than firing nuclear weapons.
He could use nuclear weapons in Ukraine and we would not retaliate.
You think Russia could use a nuclear weapon in Ukraine and America would just stand by and let that happen?
NATO would stand by and let that happen.
Ukraine's audacious drone attack on a series of major air bases inside Russia was described by some pro-Kremlin commentators as Putin's Pearl Harbor.
Well, that could be interpreted in many ways, a major humiliation for Russia, a dangerous escalation by Ukraine, or a seismic moment that changes the way we think about war.
Could of course be all three.
President Trump is clearly losing patience with Putin, who he now says has gone crazy, but continues to hold the cards which allow Ukraine's fight to go on.
So where does it all leave us?
How involved should the US and Europe be in whatever comes next?
And for how much longer can Israel continue its increasingly brutal assault on Gaza?
John Minazi, political scientist and Eurasia group president in Bremer.
Ign, great to have you.
Your uncensored debut.
Indeed.
I have not been on with you before and I'm delighted to join you.
It's great to have you.
I get your weekly email, which I've told you when we met in Perse, I find it completely fascinating.
And mainly because there's a lot of extremes that rage around social media and people latch on to the extremes.
A lot of it is very venomous.
A lot of it is very ad hominem and so on.
What I love about your email is it's the opposite.
You don't even use capital letters.
It's like everything is just, you're trying to calm everything down and have a kind of more moderate, rational overview of what may be really going on.
And I appreciate that.
So it's great to have a lot of people.
I have a lot of venom personally, Pierce, you know me.
And so, I mean, if I can do the opposite of all caps where people are screaming at you and grabbing you by the lapels and trying to force an agenda down your throat, I try to have my update be the exact opposite of that.
And I'm glad it's succeeding with you.
It is.
It is.
Let's go through some of the big things facing us.
I mean, I've read what you said about it.
What Ukraine did to Russia last week was utterly fascinating.
In a way, it was their version of what I guess the Israelis did to Hezbollah with the pages.
Hezbollah.
Yeah, a similar kind of extraordinary new technological form of warfare.
If anything, it was almost more impressive in that they took out two dozen of these planes worth $100 million each.
Clearly humiliating for Putin, but the way they were able to do it by sending these drones, quite cheap drones, a few hundred dollars each, right into the heart of Russia and then to unleash them and directly target incredibly expensive planes was remarkable, wasn't it?
What does it tell you with that and what happened with the attack on Hezbollah?
What does that tell you about the way warfare is going?
Well, it is changing geopolitics.
I mean, go back to Hezbollah.
There was a belief that the Israelis could not afford to go after Hezbollah because it would cause unacceptable risk to their own national security beyond their own borders, that they couldn't poke too hard at Iran, their core adversary in the region, because of what Iran could unleash against Israel through Hezbollah, and also what Iran could do against Israel directly.
Neither of those two things are true anymore.
You saw, I saw over the course of literally just a few days, Hezbollah was completely decapitated by superior Israeli technology.
And that also made Iran much more vulnerable, so much so that Iran now understands that the only thing preventing Israel from engaging in major strikes against Iran itself is the United States,
is President Trump telling the Israelis he doesn't want them to do it, which means Iran now really has a lot of pressure to come to a political resolution with the hated Satan, the United States.
That's all because of new military and technological capabilities that Israel can field today with a lot of American support that they couldn't field a few years ago.
And so, yeah, now we're seeing this in the Russia-Ukraine war, which, by the way, has much broader implications for the rest of the world.
And in a way that I think is very shocking and startling to everyone, starting with Putin.
Yeah, I mean, the big question, it seems to me, is what will Putin now do?
You know, he will be feeling humiliated, wounded, on the back foot.
None of those things historically with Putin are necessarily a good thing.
He is likely, as he's already doing, to respond with excessive force.
He's been doing that ever since, with some enormous attacks.
But there is a genuine fear.
I don't think there's a fear he will deploy nuclear weapons.
I don't think he's that stupid.
And I don't think he wants to die.
But I do think there's a genuine concern that he might test everyone's resolve with another invasion maybe of Moldova or someone like that.
I mean, I don't understand why he wouldn't try that, to flex his muscles to try and get back into the ascendancy.
So I think there are two different pushes on Putin right now, one of which is the one you just identified, that he's been humiliated, needs to show that he has fist in his glove, because he has not been able to deter the Ukrainians from taking increasingly extraordinary military strikes at him.
And he's not been able to deter the U.S. and NATO from providing the intelligence support, the military support to afford the Ukrainians to do that.
So his deterrence, Putin's deterrence, has failed.
He is not seen as credible in being able to hit back enough to scare these guys, to scare us, you know, the U.S. and the UK.
He's not scaring us.
On the other hand, it was the day after this spectacular Ukrainian attack that Putin still sent mid-level, but operational diplomats to Istanbul to meet with the Ukrainians.
He could have canceled that easy.
He didn't.
And not only did he not cancel it, but they talked about prisoner exchanges, which are now, some of which are now going forward.
And he also even talked a little bit about what the preconditions would need to be for a ceasefire.
And he took a baby step closer to what would be seen by the Americans as an acceptable position.
Only a baby step.
We're nowhere close to a ceasefire.
But that's interesting.
So on the one hand, Pierce, I see Putin today having more of an understanding than he did a week ago that this war going on and on for years and years might not be solely in Russia and Putin's advantage.
That there might be some credible threats that the Ukrainians can make against him that he now needs to factor in.
That's one point.
But the second point...
And the point that, of course, we've seen play out over the last week, is also that Putin needs to show that he's going to be able to give out a lot more damage.
And that has not just been about missile strikes in Kharkiv and in Kiev, because he's done that before.
It's not just about targeting civilians because he's done that before.
Now it looks like he's opening a new offensive in Nepopetrovsk, which the Kremlin is saying today is a buffer zone and is actually not part of either Crimea or the four territories that the Russians have illegally annexed.
It's actually a part of Ukraine beyond that.
I can also see the Russians, as you suggest, in Moldova.
They've got some troops in Transnistria, which is this breakaway region that's on the other side of Odessa off the Black Sea.
What if that were 10,000 troops undermining Moldova, which is not in NATO, though they'd like to be, and also putting more pressure on Ukraine?
All of those things, I think, are likely.
So unfortunately, you know, what had been a comparatively stable, albeit very brutal, balance in the war over the last three, six months, I think we've made it a little bit more likely that we get a ceasefire.
And we've also made it maybe more than a little bit more likely that we get escalation from the Russians.
Those are the two things I think that have happened there.
Trump, Ceasefire, and Russian Ambitions 00:08:47
Of course, how Trump decides to react is going to be essential.
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Yeah, I was about to ask you about Trump, because obviously famously before the election, he said he'd resolve this in 24 hours.
Clearly, Putin was not prepared to go along with that time scale, but he has started talking in a more critical way about Putin, saying he's gone crazy and so on.
It seems to me that Trump's patience is running pretty thin with Putin.
But the question then becomes, what does he do to force pressure on Putin?
Is it financially?
Now, I read an interesting report last week that actually, despite all the sanctions, the American kind of war economy isn't doing too badly.
It's not really punishing them enough to change their plans.
Yeah, the Russian war economy, clearly, I agree.
Right.
So that isn't really working.
So sort of more of that doesn't seem to be the answer.
You know, he's not going to put American boots on the ground.
Where should that pressure be applied, do you think, which would put maximum actual pressure on Putin to come to the ceasefire table?
So Biden tried the stick for a couple of years, gave a lot of weapons to Ukraine, was in lockstep with NATO, put a lot of sanctions on the Russians, and it didn't work, didn't do anything to convince Putin he needed to stop or slow down.
Trump tried the carrot, reached out to Putin, said he'd go to the Kremlin for Victory Day, said he'd take off sanctions, said he would invest in critical minerals with the Russians in the Arctic and other places, would coordinate on national security.
All Putin had to do was accept a ceasefire like the Ukrainians had, and the carrot didn't work either.
And you're right, Trump is pretty frustrated.
But I think that Trump's frustration, which a couple months ago might have led to, that's it, I'm out, I'm not involved anymore, no more support for Ukraine.
That's not where Trump is today.
The fact that Zelensky has caved to Trump, to Trump's pressure, that's where Trump has had success, and accepted a ceasefire with no preconditions and accepted a critical minerals deal that the Ukrainians didn't want to sign.
Now Trump can say when he comes to the NATO summit in the coming weeks, look how much more money the Europeans are putting into Ukraine.
Look how much more they're spending on defense.
Look how much the Ukrainians are not taking advantage of me.
This isn't, you know, just the Americans giving them taxpayer dollars.
This is the Americans interested in defending our economic interests going forward.
So we're going to continue to provide intelligence to Ukraine because we want to defend that.
We're going to continue selling weapons to the Europeans and to the Ukrainians because we want to ensure that this war does not lead to Ukraine falling.
And the Europeans are in a much more comfortable position today with Trump on that, not on trade, but on Ukraine than they were when Zelensky visited the Oval Office just a month and a half ago.
So yeah, I agree that I think that Trump is getting sick of it.
It's going to wash his hands.
I don't think that Trump is going to suddenly go all in against Putin.
I think he's going to say the Pope can try his hand at negotiations.
President Erdogan of Turkey can try his hand at negotiations, but he's not going to leave the Europeans and NATO broadly in the lurch.
And for all of the liberals that have been happy to criticize Trump as a Putin asset, it's going to be very hard for them to square that with the way that Trump behaves in the coming weeks.
Yeah, I think that's right.
There's been so much said about this war since it erupted.
And I've had a lot of passionate debates with people, John Mearsheimer and others, who've argued strongly that what Putin did was a defensive act of aggression, that he genuinely believed that NATO was breaching its pledges not to encroach right up to the Russian border, and that he felt he had no choice but to invade Ukraine and to create, if you like,
a new form of border by taking the Southeast Corridor, which it looks like he probably will end up with.
What do you think of that argument?
I mean, it certainly hasn't persuaded me in the sense that I believe Putin is a ruthless Russian dictator who actually wishes the Soviet Union had never been broken up.
And if he could take other countries around him, he would do so in a heartbeat.
So I think he would be aggressive anyway.
We saw that with Georgia.
We saw it with Crimea and so on.
But is there validity, do you think, to the argument that so many put forward that he was acting entirely consistently with his repeated warnings to NATO not to encroach in the way that subsequently, through their language, it appeared they were doing.
I'm glad you asked me, Pierce, because like so many criticisms that you don't agree with, but you find compelling, it's because there is more than a kernel of truth.
I do think the West is to be blamed for the way they handled Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union.
I mean, the United States led the charge in creating the G7 plus one, the NATO-Russia Council.
Neither of those things were meant to integrate Russia.
They were, in fact, both set up to show that Russia was still outside of the club.
So at no point were the Russians rebuilt.
There was no Marshall Plan for Russia.
There was no effort to truly engage.
There was not enough money and political capital spent.
It was formulaic.
It was symbolic.
It was because the Russians fell into America's lap, essentially.
The U.S. won the Cold War without firing a shot.
It wasn't like World War II when the Americans became not only winners, but leaders, because we almost lost everything, right?
That's not what happened when the Soviet Union collapsed.
So I think that the Russians blame the United States for not integrating them, for not caring about them, for lying to them about the fact that they wanted them to be part of the West.
But I don't think it's NATO enlargement that is the problem here.
I do think that countries have the right to join a defensive alliance if they so choose.
I think the problem is that Ukraine was not brought into NATO.
I think what happened with Ukraine is exactly what happened to Russia with the G7 plus one.
It's exactly what happened with Turkey with the EU, is you say, oh, we're interested in bringing you in, but we're never going to give you a membership action plan.
We're never going to actually make it real.
So what Putin does is understands weakness.
And he understood weakness in 2014 when he illegally annexes Crimea and he illegally sends his little green men and denies it into Southeast Ukraine.
And the response, the collective response of the West is to do nothing, just like the collective response in Georgia in 2008 was nothing.
So Putin understood this isn't NATO.
Ukraine's not in NATO.
And so if I go after them, they're still going to send their leaders to Moscow to meet me during the World Cup.
They're still going to do business.
They're going to build Nord Stream 2.
So then in 2022, you know, he doesn't see a red light with NATO.
He sees a flashing yellow light with a country that's not a part of NATO.
And so he goes in.
He lies, of course.
They all say, oh, we're not going to war.
West's Weakness Fuels Territorial Losses 00:03:05
That's propaganda.
Lies to the face of the German chancellor, the French president, American cabinet members, lies to their faces and goes in and brutally assaults Ukraine with an intention to completely overturn and overthrow that democratically elected country.
So I am sympathetic to arguments that fundamentally say that the West didn't care about and mistreated Russia.
But I think we need to recognize that it is a show of weakness of the West that gave the Russians everything they needed to do, not just to attack Ukraine, but they're going to end up with a significant piece of it, right?
Yeah, I completely agree.
Well, actually, before I move on to Israel, just finally on Ukraine, if you're looking ahead, say we're looking ahead towards the end of the year and we reach some kind of conclusion here.
How does that conclusion look?
I mean, it seems to me Putin is not going to give up any of the land he's taken.
But there may be a deal there where he keeps what he's taken and that's it.
Do you think that is the most likely way this now ends?
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That's the most likely good outcome.
I'm not sure it's the most likely outcome.
I mean, the Russians, I think at this point, are still planning for significant offensives through the summer.
They're showing no interest or willingness to engage in serious negotiations.
And as much as Ukraine has shown very capable technological prowess on the battlefield, they're still having a much harder time actually recruiting young men to fight.
And they are losing territory.
And the scale of that territorial loss, which has been very, very incremental, does seem to be speeding up a bit.
Gaza Conflict and Technological Allure 00:07:08
So I worry that Russia might be able to turn this war more significantly in their favor over the coming three, six months.
Now, there will be no constraints on what Ukraine tries to do against Russia in that environment.
And what we've just seen with successes against the strategic bombers and a failure against the Kursk Bridge, but what else might they be able to do as they make more and more accurate drones powered by AI and they make them smaller and smaller, more miniaturized?
You know, could that be a threat against cabinet members of Putin, against oligarchs, against family members of Putin, against Putin himself?
And how much damage can they do to Russia's military capabilities as a global military power?
That I fear, unless we get to a ceasefire soon, we're going to learn the answer to that question.
And I don't know that we want to learn the answer to that question.
So the dangers of escalation here, especially for the Europeans who are very much on the front lines of a proxy war, these things are very real.
They're very, very real.
Yeah, they are.
Let's just turn briefly to Israel-Gaza, which we could talk about for hours, but we haven't got hours, sadly.
But it seems to me, from the very start of this war, from the appalling attacks of October the 7th, I've just taken a view for a long time that Israel not only had a right to defend itself, but given the rhetoric from Hamas afterwards that they would keep trying to do this again and again, it had a duty to defend its people.
But I did also simultaneously ask a question of most guests.
What would that response look like and what is proportionate to what happened?
And no one could really answer that question.
And eventually I began to answer it myself at the start of this year onwards, and then particularly when the blockade began, where it seemed to me there was a policy of starvation, which constitutes, by most people's criteria, a war crime.
And indeed, two former Israeli prime ministers have called it that.
But also, there's now just, it seems a never-ending bombardment and destruction of Gaza with no real plan for what happens at the end of this, other than Smodric, the finance minister, is now basically openly talking in genocidal language of clearing out all the Palestinians.
And we're seeing 22 settlements now expanded in the West Bank and so on, even though the international community views them as illegal and so on.
So where do you feel we are with this?
It seems to me that Smodric and these guys, who are very hard right, and really Netanyahu owes his position to these people.
I don't think he would have been back in power as prime minister without the support of people like Smodrich.
That they're being sucked into an agenda that many feared at the start might be what Israel's real agenda was, which was to use what happened to its advantage by clearing out Palestinians.
I think we're learning, and it's not a new lesson, that Prime Minister Netanyahu cares a lot more about his own well-being than he does about the sanctity of human life.
And that's why he's doing everything he can to keep this coalition together, even though that includes influence and power by a couple of men on the far right, Ben Gavir and Smotrich, who say things that belong in no civilized society and no democracy in the world.
We had hoped that we had gotten past that.
And of course, we see that that is not the case.
I also think that, of course, the attacks of October 7th were appalling and terrorism and should be condemned.
And there are still hostages that are being held and they should be released.
And that call is made every day.
And pressure needs to be brought to bear to release those hostages.
You'll never see me saying anything different.
But that doesn't mean that every civilian living in Gaza should be held hostage as a consequence of that.
And the reason why October 7th happened in large part is because the Israeli prime minister was not paying attention adequately to border security in Gaza.
He had sent the IDF to the West Bank, where he was fighting a more proximate political battle in favor of the settlers who were supported by his far right.
And most Israelis asked the question after October 7th, asked who's responsible.
They say Hamas and the prime minister of Israel.
Listen to the Israelis.
You don't need to have your guess on from all over the world.
The first thing you do is listen to the Israelis have one of the most robust and diverse democracies in the world politically.
And you can hear all of those opinions every day.
And their level of anger at their own leadership is far greater than what you hear in my country or your country.
So, look, this is all, it's a horrible tragedy.
And the willingness Of the world to help the Palestinians has for decades been near zero.
Not the Americans, not the Europeans, certainly not the Gulf Arabs or the Egyptians.
And so, you know, today, I go to the Persian Gulf, so do you.
You've got a lot of friends over there.
All those countries are super interested in seeing, we go back to the Ukraine issue, they see how incredible these Israeli drones are, their intelligence, their AI, and they want access to that.
What's more important to them, that, or making sure they get a second state for the Palestinians?
And the answer is the former.
That's why the Abraham Accords were done.
So, I mean, the unfortunate revealed preference of almost everyone with power around the world is that the Palestinians don't matter.
And as a consequence, we can see what happens in Gaza without a lot of pushback that would make the Israelis pay attention.
And that's where we are.
Yeah, I think that's entirely accurate.
Ian, it's been brilliant to have you on Orcensa.
Please come back again.
I've really enjoyed it.
Great to see you, Piers.
My pleasure.
Thank you very much.
Well, now for his perspective on the latest in Ukraine, Israel, and to respond to Ian Bremer's view of the world, I'm joined by political scientist and international relations scholar, Professor John Mearsheimer.
Professor Mirshaw, great to have you back on Orcenson.
It's great to be here, Piers.
So look, I know that you were listening to what Ian Bremer had to say.
June 1st Strike and Nuclear Fears 00:14:45
I guess the key question here is we've seen a lot of developments since you and I last spoke about four months ago, but significantly in the last week.
First, the incredibly audacious attack by Ukraine using the drones that they sent on trucks into the heart of Russia, which was obviously extraordinarily successful.
But also, the inevitable attacks back now from Russia, launching 315 drones in one of its largest strikes on Kyiv, the capital, causing a lot of damage, injuring a lot of people, and so on.
This is entirely predictable, I would say.
But where does this leave us in where this war now is, do you think?
I think these attacks had zero effect on the outcome of the war.
These were pinpricks at the most.
The idea that these attacks have shifted the balance of power in any meaningful way is not a serious argument.
My guess is that they probably destroyed or crippled somewhere on the order of four or five aircraft.
But how is that going to affect this war?
It's just not going to have any effect.
What really matters here and what people are not talking about enough is the fact that the Ukrainians struck at Russian strategic nuclear forces.
They hit one leg of the nuclear triad.
Now, they only destroyed a handful of bombers, but the mere fact that they went after Russian strategic nuclear forces is downright scary.
And lots of people have made that point very clearly in the higher levels of the administration.
And I believe, by the way, Piers, this is why President Trump called President Putin on June 4th.
You remember the attacks took place on June 1st.
I think that Trump was scared that the Russians would do something that would cause a lot of trouble simply because the Ukrainians, who we were surely helping, hit Russian strategic nuclear forces, hit one leg of their nuclear triad.
But in terms of the actual war and what's happening here, this is a meaningless attack.
Well, you say meaningless.
I mean, there's been reports that it could have been as many as two dozen aircraft hit, each valued at $100 million.
That's not meaningless.
And I would secondly say the more significant aspect of it was it was humiliating for Putin, who would never have seen this coming, must have been deeply shocked at the scale of the raid and how successful it was.
So notwithstanding the fact you're probably right, it doesn't really change the bigger picture of the war, but it certainly was a humiliating blow to Putin.
I mean, that surely we can agree on.
I'm sure it was humiliating, but humiliation means virtually nothing in how this war turns out.
You can humiliate Putin every day of the week, and it's not going to have any effect on the battlefield.
And what happens on the battlefield is what matters here.
What is happening on the battlefield, in your estimation?
People say Ukraine, through this drone attack, is showing that it has the resolve and indeed the technical expertise to potentially repel Russia for a lot longer than people thought.
Others think that the scale of Russia's attacks since that drone attack suggests they're going to move very aggressively now through the summer to try and exploit the better weather conditions and to really get a grip of this war.
What's your assessment?
Well, I think if you look at what's happening on the battlefield, the Russians are gaining more and more territory every day, and they're destroying more and more Ukrainian forces.
And if you look at the underlying balance of power, it's clear, even from Western sources, that the Ukrainians are in really deep trouble.
The Royal United Services Institute in London put out a study in February of this year.
And if you look at the numbers carefully, it's quite clear that the Ukrainians are outnumbered at least three to one, maybe 3.5 to 1 on the front lines.
If you look at the amount of artillery on both sides, you look at the number of drones on both sides, and you take into account the fact that the Russians have these smart bombs that are doing massive amounts of destruction to frontline forces on the Ukrainian side, it's hard to imagine how the Russians don't win this war.
It may take them longer than some people think is the case, but nevertheless, the Russians are going to prevail in the end.
And you want to remember, Piers, at the same time, the Trump administration is basically withdrawing its support for Ukraine.
So the long-term future for Ukraine is very bleak.
What does victory look like to Russia?
What are they actually trying to achieve here?
Some think they're making a play now to take over the whole of Ukraine.
Others think they may even expand and attack Moldova, for example.
Others think that actually they've always just wanted this southeast corridor.
They believe that is what they need to protect themselves from, as they see it, the NATO encroachment in recent years.
What is your view of what the actual end game looks like for Russia?
Well, I don't think they're going to take over all of Ukraine.
First of all, they'd need hundreds of thousands more forces to do that, because you want to understand that once they began to move into western Ukraine, assuming they were able to conquer that, they'd need huge numbers of troops to deal with the insurrection that surely would ensue.
I think they will stay out of the western half of Ukraine because it would be a hornet's nest.
And again, they don't have the forces to do that.
I think they now control about 20% of Ukraine, for Oblast plus Crimea.
And I think the great danger is that if we don't settle the war now, they'll end up taking four, five, maybe even six more Oblasts.
And Ukraine will end up losing close to 40% of its territory instead of 20%.
So I think, and I've argued this for a long time, that it's in Ukraine's interest to settle this one immediately, accept the fact that they've lost about 20% of their territory, but go to great lengths to prevent losing more territory.
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Right, but how do they do that?
Because they lost Crimea, and then we had all the reassurances from Russia that they wouldn't want any more of Ukraine.
And then there we were, 2022, they attack mainland Ukraine, and they've now seized 20% of it, as you say.
Why would Ukraine trust Russia as far as it could throw it in terms of doing any kind of settlement, which allowed Russia potentially to just come back and attack again down the road, as it did after Crimea?
Well, the thing is that the Russians have made it clear that they would like to settle this war, and they have a set of terms that they're demanding that the Ukrainians and the West agree to.
I think it's quite clear that if the Ukrainians and the West agreed to those terms, and I could lay them out for you, that the Russians would end the war and settle with 20%, because the terms that the Russians want would leave them in a secure position and they would have no incentive to take more territory.
The problem, though, is there's no way the Ukrainians or the West will accept Russia's terms.
This is why you can't get any kind of meaningful peace agreement.
And it's also why the Russians won't agree to a ceasefire.
So this war is going to be settled on the battlefield.
And the end result is, I think, will happen is that Ukraine will end up losing more territory.
But it's in large part, just to reiterate what I'm saying, because the political terms that the Russians are demanding are unacceptable to the Ukrainians.
In terms of Donald Trump's position on this, he famously said, of course, he would resolve all this in one day.
That day came and went very quickly with no resolution.
He now has said that Putin's gone absolutely crazy and is playing with fire.
You know, I think Putin has to be careful with Trump.
Trump can be an unpredictable player in these situations.
If he feels like Putin is basically trying to embarrass Trump by ignoring everything that he says, I could see Trump doing something that may surprise people.
I think, Piers, up until June 1st, there was a lot of support for what you are saying.
I think after the attacks on June 1st, and here we're emphasizing the Ukrainian attacks on Russia's strategic nuclear forces, Trump came to understand that we're playing with fire here, that striking at Russian nuclear forces was very dangerous and very foolish.
And Trump had, on June 4th, this is three days after the June 1st attacks, he had an hour and 15-minute conversation with Putin.
That's a relatively short conversation when you take into account translations.
And at the end, when Trump posted on Truth Social, he said that the two of them had a good conversation and that he understood that the Russians were going to retaliate against Ukraine in a really serious way.
Now, Trump usually says when he has a conversation with anybody, certainly with somebody like Trump, with somebody like Putin, that it's a wonderful conversation.
He's very positive.
Trump's report of the conversation was not very positive.
And he said that he understood the Russians were going to attack Ukraine in a serious way as a result of what happened on June 1st.
And Trump did not say that was unacceptable.
I think, based on what we've seen since June 1st, is that Trump has changed his tune.
He understands the Ukrainians are going to lose.
And he understands supporting the Ukrainians when they pursue policies like they did on June 1st when they attacked those strategic bombers is not good for the United States.
So I think that Donald Trump is slowly but steadily moving away from the Ukrainians and the Europeans and he's getting closer to Putin.
The one thing I would say back at that, which may contradict what you just said, is that very unusually, Trump did not condemn what Ukraine did on June the 1st.
He actually very, very noticeably did not, which suggests that he didn't really have that big a problem with what Ukraine did.
Well, I don't think he wanted to humiliate Ukraine, but I think more importantly...
Well, it's never stopped him before.
I mean, look, this is a guy who's humiliated the president of Ukraine in the Oval Office.
I don't think he worried about humiliating him.
It just seemed to me that it was very notable that the President of the United States did not condemn that attack right into the heartland of Russia on, as you say, you know, very sensitive military aircraft.
No, I think what's more important, Piers, is that he said that the United States had nothing to do with it.
He went to great lengths to distance the United States from that attack because he understands full well.
Keith Kellogg understands full well.
His former national security advisor, Mike Flynn, understands full well that this was a remarkably foolish move on the part of the Ukrainians.
And it was not in the American national interest for an ally of ours like Ukraine to attack strategic nuclear forces belonging to Russia.
So I think what you see here is Trump distancing himself from the Ukrainians, not supporting them in any way.
But let me throw a little spanner in the works of your argument.
Which is this, which is whenever things get a bit hot or red lines get crossed, Putin tends to start rattling his nuclear saber.
And everyone knows he's got 6,000 nuclear warheads and that NATO collectively has more, actually, but America has slightly less than that.
But he also understands the principle of mad, mutually assured destruction.
And I've never thought there is a cat in hell's chance of Vladimir Putin launching a nuclear strike at anybody, because the first thing that would happen would that he'd be dead.
Within seconds, there would be a retaliatory strike that would kill him.
And Vladimir Putin, nothing about his life has been anything other than amassing material goods to enrich himself.
Why would a guy like that want to vaporize himself in seconds?
So I've never believed any of his threats to use nuclear weapons.
And there's certainly no suggestion from credible people that he's thinking of doing so now.
So why was it such a mistake for Ukraine to launch such an incredibly audacious attack, which was so successful, which humiliated Putin and made people realize that maybe Ukraine aren't finished after all?
Just again, Piers, this was not so successful.
These are the kind of arguments that people in the West were blown up by drones that were put on trucks right into the heart of Russia.
How could that not be a success?
I don't believe that many as many planes as you said were...
Apparently it was 24.
I heard it was two dozen.
I heard it was two dozen reported, I think, in the New York Times.
And each one was worth $100 million.
I don't believe that.
But even if you're right, it doesn't matter on the overall course of the war.
The question is, what effect is this going to have on the battlefield?
And the answer is, it's not going to have any effect on the battlefield.
It's just a public relations stunt.
Risks of Nuclear Exchange in Ukraine 00:08:07
That's what it is.
But there's one side effect, and that is that they hit the strategic nuclear forces of Russia.
Now, you say this doesn't matter at all because Putin would never use nuclear weapons.
You can't know that.
You can't know what will happen in the future crisis.
Why would he?
And given this.
Why would what?
Why would he use nuclear weapons, given that he would immediately get vaporized?
Because he would not immediately get vaporized.
He could use nuclear weapons in Ukraine and we would not retaliate.
You think Russia could use a nuclear weapon in Ukraine and America would just stand by and let that happen?
That NATO would stand by and let that happen.
They would allow a Russian dictator to use nuclear weapons on a European sovereign country.
I certainly believe that we are not going to use nuclear weapons if Russia uses nuclear weapons in Ukraine.
Of course we are.
I don't know anybody who argues, yes, we'd get incinerated.
The logic that you're going to be able to do is apply to us.
Yeah, but the whole point of MAD.
No, they wouldn't.
Well, the whole point of MAD is that both sides understand if somebody press that button, everyone gets incinerated.
That's the point of it.
Mutually assured destruction.
That's why no one uses them.
No, that's not the way.
No, that's not the way it works when it comes to Ukraine.
Ukraine has no nuclear weapons of its own.
The Russians can use nuclear weapons against Ukraine.
They cannot retaliate.
And we would not initiate nuclear use against Russia and response because we would end up getting incinerated in your story.
We would be mad.
But so would they.
No.
They would use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, knowing full well that it would be extremely unlikely that we would retaliate with nuclear weapons of our own.
I would think it would be 100% likely.
100% likely.
Otherwise, Russia could fire nuclear weapons at anybody.
And no one's going to stand for that.
Why would they?
No, it cannot fire nuclear weapons at anybody.
Firing nuclear weapons at the United States is fundamentally different than firing nuclear weapons at Ukraine.
This is a very different situation.
Why is it?
Because the United States has nuclear weapons and Ukraine does not.
And if you hit the United States with Russian nuclear weapons, the United States will retaliate against Russia and you'll be in a general nuclear war.
If the Russians use nuclear weapons against Ukraine, Ukraine cannot retaliate and we're not going to start a nuclear war on their behalf.
It's a fundamentally different situation.
The other point I'd make to you is you do not want to underestimate the risk that great powers are willing to take when they're backed into a corner.
Your belief is the Russians would never use nuclear weapons.
Why would they do that?
Well, the fact is when great powers are backed into a corner, they sometimes pursue remarkably risky strategies.
And one could hypothesize a situation where the Russians use nuclear weapons in a very limited fashion against NATO, understanding full well that there might be some retaliation or there's likely to be some retaliation,
but understanding that in that circumstance, because they're desperate, it makes sense to try to get both sides out on the slippery slope to use limited numbers of nuclear weapons to send a message to the West that they're playing with fire.
That could happen.
Is it likely?
No.
But I certainly would not say there's never any chance that the Russians, or Putin in particular, would use nuclear weapons.
I think he'd like people to think that he would, but I don't think he would in a million light years.
Well, I don't think I know many people who agree with you.
Almost everybody I know, hawks and doves in the strategic nuclear community, believe that there is some reasonable possibility if Putin was backed into a corner that he would use nuclear weapons.
Your argument, there's zero chance that he'd use them is not an argument that most people I know would make.
Well, the difference between your argument and mine is I do not believe that Europe and the United States would simply stand back and watch Russia nuke a sovereign democratic country in Europe and do nothing about it.
I just refuse to believe that.
What would be the point of having any nuclear deterrent if you just allow a Russian dictator to nuke a European country?
Well, the fact is that nuclear weapons are of virtually no utility in this particular case, right?
Because the United States, as much as it cares about Ukraine's survival, is not going to risk its own survival.
That's what you're talking about.
If the United States initiates nuclear use against Russia, it is risking its own survival.
And the United States is not going to risk its own survival for Ukraine's survival.
No, but I think that the United States and European leaders, if they haven't already, should make it crystal clear to Vladimir Putin that if he ever tried to use one, he would risk his own survival instantaneously.
I think they can make that argument if they want, but they have no formula for showing how they can take Putin down if he uses nuclear weapons in Ukraine.
There's just no way to do it.
You can talk like that, but you actually have to tell me how you think it can be done, how Putin can be taken down.
And if you're telling me he can be taken down because we can nuke Moscow and kill him in the process, I'm telling you that's an incredible strategy in large part because we would get incinerated in the process and we do not want to get incinerated and therefore we will not use nuclear weapons to defend Ukraine.
And you might say, well, we'll use conventional forces.
We've been using conventional forces in that conflict to help the Ukrainians since 2022.
And the end result is the Ukrainians are losing the war.
We can't do anything at the conventional level, at the conventional level either to help the Ukrainians.
The Ukrainians are basically screwed.
And it's about time people recognized that fact and came to the understanding that the best thing that could be done for the Ukrainians is to cut a deal now to prevent Ukraine from losing more territory and to prevent more Ukrainians from dying.
So you just let the old Russian dictator take what he wants and move on.
We have no choice.
Do you think the Germans in 1945, when Hitler was sitting in the Führer bunker, had any choice but to accept the fact that they were going to lose the USA?
Well, that's not the analogy I'd used.
They were going to lose to the Soviet Union?
Well, the analogy I would use would be to go back to 1939 and say we had a lot of choices then as to whether to surrender to the Nazis or not, and we chose not to.
This is not 1939.
You have a war taking place that's been going on since February of 2022.
And we're not going to get directly involved in the fighting.
And given that we're not going to get directly involved in the fighting, and given that we do not have the material resources to give the Ukrainians to help them turn the tide on the battlefield, right, we should recognize where we stand and where the Ukrainians stand.
And we should cut a deal.
Let me end just by quickly asking you, if I may, Professor Mirshaimer, about Israel and the war in Gaza.
How do you view that war at the moment?
I don't view it as a war.
I view it as a genocide.
And I think it's imperative that the genocide be shut down as quickly as possible.
Israel's Genocide and Global Reputation 00:02:52
I would think that someone like you and someone like me, who both cherish liberal values, are appalled by what's happening in Gaza.
This is absolutely horrible.
And it's going to be a stain on the West's reputation for decades, if not centuries to come.
And everything should be done to shut this down.
But instead, what's happening is that the United States mainly, but the West more generally, continues to support the genocide in Gaza.
I don't understand this at all.
It's not in our interest.
It's morally bankrupt as a policy.
And it's doing egregious damage to Israel.
The idea that this is good for Israel is not a serious argument.
Not only is it not good for Israel, it's not good for Jews around the world.
I don't understand why this one hasn't been brought to an end already.
Just a remarkable situation.
Like you, Piers, I believe in never again.
And I think that it's long past the point where this war or this genocide should have been shut down.
Yeah, actually, there was a very powerful column by Thomas Freeman of the New York Times today speaking as a Jew saying that he really thinks this Israeli government now is no longer doing anything that would benefit either Israelis or Jews around the world.
In fact, quite the reverse.
Yeah, I read the column and I agree with him completely.
And by the way, there are now many Israelis, including former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who are running around making exactly that same argument.
They understand that this is disastrous for Israel.
You want to remember that Israel was created as a safe haven for Jews.
It was a place that you could go to if you were Jewish and you were threatened in another area of the world and feel safe in Israel.
The exact opposite has happened now.
And in fact, people feel so unsafe in Israel that they're leaving.
And furthermore, all of this is leading to attacks against Jews in places like the United States and Europe.
This is a disastrous situation.
And my final point on this would be, this is a blight on Israel's reputation that is never going to go away.
It's a terrible situation.
Yeah, I agree.
Professor Mircheimer, always great to have you on Uncensored.
Always enjoy talking to you.
Thank you very much.
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