Rebuilding Gaza & a deal with Putin – Professor John Mearsheimer on Trump

Rebuilding Gaza & a deal with Putin – Professor John Mearsheimer on Trump

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Feb 13, 2025  Americano

Professor John Mearsheimer comes back on the Americano show with Freddy Gray to discuss how seriously we should take Trump's foreign policy. They cover the President's plans to rebuild Gaza, why Netanyahu and Trump won't agree on what to do with Iran and whether Trump can strike a deal with Putin.

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Donald Trump

President of the United States (2017–2021, 2025–present)

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===

Transcript

Freddy why should the neighboring states pay for what Israel and the United States did in Gaza because as a realist

you should accept that it's in their Regional interest it's not their Regional interest at

all why not you know the United States in Israel destroyed Gaza the Israelis

were executing a genocide I mean I you know Trump sits there with Netanyahu and

they talk about uh uh Gaza now being unlivable and they talk about all the

destruction in Gaza and the fact that the Palestinians cannot live there it has been so thoroughly wrecked and then

the question is who wrecked Gaza who did

this hello and welcome to the Americano show today I am delighted to be joined

by a favorite guest of our show and that's professor John mimer who is a

professor uh an international relations scholar at the University of Chicago and

we're going to be asking if Donald Trump's foreign policy makes any sense

uh because as you will have noticed over the last three weeks there has been a blizzard of foreign policy news coming

out of the White House major developments seemingly major developments uh so much so that it's

been quite hard to concentrate on what is going on uh for journalist let alone

people who aren't uh paid to follow this for a living John I'll start

by asking you what's what are your sort broad brush impressions of Trump's foreign policy in his second term has it

differed in any way to what you expected uh I think that basically uh

what Trump is trying to do at this point in time is to sort of create chaos uh on

all fronts make uh a number of wild

assertions uh put forward uh policy ideas that are never going to be

realized and I think the Hope on his part is that out of all this chaos that

he's creating he can come up with some sort of formidable Grand strategy uh

that solves all the big problems that the United States and the West faces uh

and in the end fashion a coherent Grand strategy that deals with these different

problems but uh at this point in time what we really have is him making a lot

of I think it's fair to say wild and crazy statements I mean the idea that Canada is going to become the 51st state

that we're going to take back the Panama Canal that we're going to grab Greenland uh that the United States is

going to go into Gaza and uh ethnically cleanse the Palestinians uh and then

turn it into the Riviera of the Middle East well all these ideas are basically

outlandish uh and and uh you would not expect you know a new president uh to

start off by making uh a whole set of comments like that uh and at the same

time and we can talk more about this I don't think he's done much of anything uh to fix the Middle East problem and

this is mainly the Gaza problem at this point in time or the Ukraine problem uh

you want to remember he said that he was going to come in and solve the Ukraine problem in one day and that maybe even

solve it before he moved into the White House we can talk about this again but if anything it looks to me like we're in

more trouble on Ukraine than we were before he became the president uh so uh

I'm not too sure uh how this all works out in the end he may have a grand strategy in mind uh that escapes me and

uh we may live happily ever after but at this point in time it sure doesn't look that way uh can I try and put a in a

small point in Trump's defense when you say he's proposing ethnically cleansing Palestinians has he actually done that

has he done that yeah no and he's not going to be able to do it that's my point no but has he proposed

that yes he well he's talked about pushing the Palestinians all of the

Palestinians by my count they're about or there were before this conflict

started on October 7th there were about 2.3 milli ion Palestinians in Gaza and

he's talking about clearing them all out and uh that would have to be done at the

end of a rifle barrel those people are not going to leave uh he has not said that he was going to push them out at

the end of a rifle barrel but that is implicit in what he says uh but he's

committed to getting rid of those people and he's now said that they're not welcome back uh in the beginning when he

first raised this idea he talked about uh pushing them out maybe

temporarily uh but now that's been taken off the table and the idea is that they're going to be pushed out

permanently and he's going to find new homes for them in places like Jordan and

Egypt well I want to get onto girls a bit more later but if we could stick for now with the uh the broad brush points

um you're a realist uh you are probably the world's World expert world's leading

expert on realism uh in international relations uh does it not strike you that

perhaps Trump is a much more realist foreign policy president than his predecessors uh he is asserting or

trying to assert uh control over the Western hemisphere in a more direct and

open way um than others and he is uh transactional and pragmatic in his

approach to Ukraine in the Middle East uh he is his tariffs are are direct and

strike me as faintly realistic uh in some ways um certainly not not in terms

of the economics but in terms of the hard power dynamics um what do you make of what I'm

saying I think there's no question Freddy that he definitely has realist

instincts uh you want to remember that when he became president in 2017 he immediately abandoned engagement

with China and switched to a containment policy uh and indeed he uh campaigned on

abandoning engagement and moving toward uh containment in 2016 and I believe that's a very realist

policy he's also made the argument that all these uh terrible forever Wars

should have never happened uh and that he was going to end them and that he was not going to engage in any more forever

Wars uh given those policy positions I applaud him I think he was on the money

uh but what we're talking about now is how he is acting since he moved into the

White House on January 20th you know what exactly is his Grand strategy uh

and I think that at this point in time it looks like uh it's hard to say

exactly how he's going to pursue those broad realist goals uh and I think if

anything it looks REM remarkably chaotic uh if you made me president of the

United States we don't have to worry about that ever happening uh I would not have come into office and started

talking about you know annexing Canada taking back the Panama Canal and so

forth and so on I would have put uh all my attention on trying to shut down the

Gaza conflict once and for all and also trying to shut down the Ukraine conflict

once and for all those should be the highest price priority issues uh and I don't think that uh he has paid much

attention to Ukraine uh and with regard to Gaza I think that his proposal to

ethnically cleanse Gaza and turn it into the Riviera of the Middle East is really

crazy uh and uh is not going to help the situation so he may have realist

instincts this is your point uh and uh he may be a marked improvement on his

predecessor and his predecessors in this regard I'm not going to argue against that but uh uh in terms of how he's

actually performed in the first three weeks and we do want to be aware of the fact that he's only been president for

three weeks uh and that's a very short period of time so you don't want to pass final judgment but I would just say I

don't think he's off to a good start how much uh weight do you put on rhetoric or

words or messaging uh uh when you study things from a realist point of view I mean could you not say that what Trump

says is less important than what America actually does and of course rhetoric and

Bluster is clearly part of his modus operandi well I think there's no

question that a lot of what he says everybody recognizes it doesn't mean

very much uh in and of itself in other words no I don't think anybody believes Canada is going to become the 51st State

uh where that we're going to invade Panama anytime soon uh so I I I think

there's no question that people understand that a lot of this is just Bluster it's the way Trump operates and

he does it at the domestic level as well as the foreign policy level but the point I would make to you Freddy is I do

think words matter and I think if you look at all the different things that he's been saying to different

audiences uh it's not clear that this is very helpful uh and we don't want to get

into the Ukraine case in great detail at this point in time but if you look at Ukraine he said a number of things to

the Russians that are quite offensive and are not going to engender trust in

him among Russian Elites especially Putin and I think moving forward if

anything he wants to do everything he can uh to create a situation where Trump

is trusted by Putin but if you look at what he says and how he says it uh I

don't think he's uh you know helping his cause Trump is helping his cause so

words do matter even for realist and uh and I think in that regard he's not been

terribly smart do you think that um the Israelis have a point when they say that

Trump is thinking out of the box this is what Netanyahu says uh and that is constructive because um there are no

other viable solutions for what to do about Gaza and uh when it comes to the

Palestinians uh attempts to accommodate uh them attempts to find

some kind of compromise have always failed going back to 1948 you're asking me is there a

solution to the Israeli Palestinian conflict uh that uh that that's been

there and we've just missed uh the answer is no uh there was no way you were going to solve this one

because the Israelis from the beginning have wanted all of Greater Israel uh

they were never interested in giving the Palestinians a state of their own this is a myth that we purvey in the west uh

so that we can support uh uh Israel fully so it's not like I think there is

a solution out there a viable solution uh the best that the Israelis were able

to come up with was where they basically locked uh the uh Palestinians in Gaza in

a GI an open air prison and they thought they could manage that problem uh and

that looked like it worked up until October 7th uh and now the question is what do you do moving forward and uh the

Israelis would like to cleanse Gaza that's been their that's been their policy goal since October 7th uh to

cleanse Gaza they want to get rid of all the Palestinians um and uh the question is

do you think this is a viable or an ethical solution uh I don't think it's a

viable solution because I don't think the Palestinians are going to leave uh you want to remember that the Israelis

have just spent the past 16 months uh executing what I call a genocide in Gaza

they have murdered huge numbers of Palestinians by almost all accounts they've made the place unlivable it's

really quite remarkable when you see the destruction that they have wrought in Gaza and never nevertheless the

Palestinians are still there and Hamas by Israeli accounts and by Tony

blinken's account is alive and well so what are we going to do now to fix the

problem what's the viable solution that Trump has what what does this thinking

outside of the box add up to there's no question he's thinking outside of the box but is what he is thinking logical

is it viable is it morally correct uh I don't think it's any of those things I

as an American certainly don't want to be associated with a policy that calls

for ethnically cleansing Gaza at the end of a rifle barrel uh and uh furthermore

I don't think you can do it the Israelis were unable to do it I don't think we're going to be able to do it Trump has made

it clear we're not going to go in there and do it so who's going to do it the Israelis well they've already tried what

do you think they've been doing for the past 15 months this is like you know people say if the hostages don't come

back on Saturday uh these are the Israeli hostages who are due to be

released this Saturday if they don't come back uh Netanyahu is going to restart the war and I say to myself okay

what does that mean the war was not going very well which is why the Israelis agreed to the ceasefire they

didn't agree to the ceasefire because Trump put great pressure on them they agreed to the ceasefire in large part

because the IDF the Israeli military put great pressure on Netanyahu to affect to

ceasefire because the IDF understood it could not defeat Hamas number one and

number two the Israeli Army was coming apart at the seams it was suffering great casualties in Gaza and furthermore

that this is an army that's configured for fighting short Wars not long Wars it was not configured to fight a war of

attrition over a long period per of time in Gaza so it was in deep trouble so the

Israelis agreed to a ceas fire and now we're talking about putting an end to

that ceasefire okay what's the magic formula that the Israelis have now come up with that's going to allow them to

deal with the Hamas problem that they couldn't deal with for the first 16 months of the war I just don't

understand uh so you know Trump is thinking outside the box but some times

thinking outside the box makes sense and sometimes it doesn't and in this case I don't think it makes

sense what I want to go back a little bit to where you said that the Israelis have always wanted a greater Israel um

isn't that a pretty controversial thing to say and and perhaps unfair um given

that you know there may be uh politicians in Israel today who wanted greater Israel and have done for a long

time um but Israel as a state has not always acted as though it has wanted a

greater Israel it has sought accommodation with the Palestinians and it has been

rebuffed no I don't believe that I believe these are myths that we tell ourselves in the west so that we can

continue to support Israel down the line I think the original zionists people who uh were interested

in creating uh a Jewish state which of course happened in May of 1948

understood full well that they could not take all the ter territory at once

simply because there were so many Palestinians uh in the area and uh not

nearly as many Jews and it would have to be done incrementally uh but the idea that the

Israelis were interested in a meaningful two-state solution uh and it was the

Palestinians who rejected those wholly generous offers by the Israelis is a

tall tale uh and I know we tell it in the west and when I make the argument that I'm making people think that you

know I'm an anti-semite or I'm hostile to Israel and so forth and so on but there's a whole literature written by

Israelis that makes it clear uh that the Israelis were never interested in

creating a Palestinian State and they wanted all of Israel they just understood that they'd have to do it

gradually they wouldn't be able to take all that territory all at once yeah well I would never accuse you

of anti-Semitism although I know uh a lot of people do but let's get back to

Trump rather than getting into a a discussion of Middle Eastern politics because what a lot of people are

speculating and this certainly looks like it might be playing out now is that what Trump was trying to do was pressure

the neighboring Arab states to come up with viable Solutions of their own possibly rebuilding Gaza themselves

paying for it uh and possibly trying to uh take care look after some of the

Palestinian people who have been displaced um Jordan seems to be

rebuffing Trump a bit more forcefully at the moment whereas Egypt uh has

suggested that it would like to come up with a reconstruction plan for Gaza so perhaps this is Bluster from Trump that

is working that's achieving leverage over those Arab states no I don't believe that at all it

it's actually United the Arab states in the region there's Universal agreement

among on the Arab states and uh uh Universal agreement in the Arab and

Islamic world that this is morally reprehensible that this is the

Palestinians land that the United States and Israel have absolutely no right to push them out uh and in no way are they

going to accommodate the United States and Israel we're isolated on this one I'm sure the the Europeans are with us

on this uh for the most part uh but uh outside of the Europeans there's no

support for what the United States uh wants to do uh in this case uh the last

thing Jordan wants is to create uh a huge Enclave for more Palestinians

inside its borders and uh Egypt is thinking the same way look the fact is

the United States is remarkably powerful and it has tremendous leverage over

Egypt and Jordan because in the past we worked out a deal with Egypt and Jordan

where we would give them huge amounts of financial aid if they played nice with

Israel we bought off for Israel we did this for Israel we bought off Jordan and

Egypt again there's a huge literature on this this is not something I'm making up but once we do that not only do we

guarantee at the time that Egypt and Jordan will play nice with Israel but it

gives us huge leverage over time and Trump fully understands that and he's

basically telling the jordanians and the Egyptians we have huge economic leverage

over you and we're going to use that leverage to force you we're going to coer you into accepting the Palestinians

and the question you have to ask yourself is whether or not the jordanians and the Egyptians will cave

and the jordanians made it clear yesterday the Jordanian president made it clear in a tweet after his meeting

with Trump that that's not going to happen and the uh General Cissy

the Egyptian leader canceled his trip uh to Washington because he doesn't want to

be humiliated by Trump and he wants to make it clear that he's not going to go along either so you have a situation

here Freddy the Palestinians are not going to leave the Egyptians are not going to take them the jordanians are

not going to take them and then if there ask yourself a simple question where does that leave us well I would say I

mean I'd go back to that point that the Egyptians are saying that they're going to propose a Redevelopment plan for Gaza

and to some extent Trump's move has exposed a certain hypocrisy among the Arab states which is that uh there is an

astronomical Bill uh to fix Gaza which neighboring states are not willing to

pay um and yet they are willing to uh condemn Israel to condemn the United

States they're not willing to take part in any solutions Trump is pushing them into uh coming up with Solutions Freddy

why should the neighboring states pay for what Israel and the United States did in Gaza because as a realist you

should accept that it's in their Regional interest it's not their Regional interest at

all why not you know the United States in Israel destroyed Gaza the Israelis

were executing a genocide I mean I you know Trump sits there with Netanyahu and

they talk about uh uh Gaza now being unlivable and they talk about all the

destruction in Gaza and the fact that the Palestinians cannot live there it has been so thoroughly wrecked and then

the question is who wrecked Gaza who did this and the answer is the Israelis

Benjamin nety who's sitting right next to Trump and Netanyahu did it in cahoots

with Joe Biden and the West and especially the United States we should

pay for rebuilding Gaza the Israelis should pay for rebuilding Gaza it's the

Israelis and the Americans who destroyed Gaza not the Egyptians or the jordanians if you enjoy what we do here

at spectator TV then why not subscribe to the magazine as well if you subscribe today you'll get 12 weeks for just 122

plus a free2 John Lewis and wait gift card you can sign up at spectator. co.uk

sltv offer well speaking of the United States paying for rebuilding Gaza that

is what Trump is proposing so if we take his proposal at face value um a lot of

people who support Trump or a lot of people who voted for Trump I'd say uh

did not imagine that uh occupying Gaza which is what he's proposing he said it

um repeatedly now would be part of the the foreign policy agenda and in fact it

goes against um what he appeared to stand for uh and appeared to stand for

in both elections in all three elections uh presidential elections that he's fought which is um America First and not

getting entangled in the Middle East or further entangled in the Middle East this would be a huge entanglement would

it not yeah I've seen a number of tweets from people uh who identify with the

Maga agenda protesting what Trump is doing saying what is he doing here my

response to that is Trump's Trump's proposal on Gaza is not a serious proposal the United States is

not going to ethnically Clans Gaza and then turn it into the Riviera of the Middle East this is about as likely as

Canada becoming the 550 first state Trump likes the Bluster he likes

to make all of these outrageous statements and then everybody pays huge amounts of attention to these statements

and they never add up to much you remember when he fell in love with the North Koreans uh and uh he was going to solve

that problem uh get rid of North Korean nuclear weapons how well did that work out the answer is not very well at all

and uh this one's not going to work out very well either uh this is a giant problem and by the way Freddy you know

Trump played a an important role in fashioning the

ceasefire that took place on January 19th this is the a ceasefire that took place on January 19th which of course is

the day before he moved into the white house uh he sent his mediator his uh

Middle East mediator uh Steve Whit cop to the uh Middle East to basically tell

nety who let's get a ceasefire so it looked like Trump was off to a good

start right we got a ceasefire uh in Gaza and most people not Netanyahu in

company but most people thought that was all for for the good but since he moved into the White House on January 20th

he's cut in the other direction and if anything he's done all he can to undermine the uh ceasefire agreement uh

and in my opinion that doesn't make sense from his point of view because a

ceasefire and trying to work out some sort of meaningful modus vendi with

Israel and the Palestinians is a much smarter thing to do than try to turn

Gaza into uh the Riviera in the Middle East do you think though it does make

sense from Trump's point of view that perhaps he knew that he had angered the Israelis he'd angered

Netanyahu um and that even perhaps beforehand he'd agreed with Netanyahu that he would change his position later

uh he angered them in the ceasefire and he changed his position later to be more accommodating to Israel uh once once he

was in power having achieved this ceasefire uh on the eve of his ignoration yeah I think that's a very

smart observation and I think you're probably right but is there any hard

evidence to support it no we don't know uh and as you know Trump is somebody who

says one thing one minute and then says the exact opposite a minute later so

it's hard to tell exactly what's going on I mean as I said at the top of the

show I do think that Trump is into sewing chaos and he operates on the

assumption that if you seow chaos that this uh will help him you know uh to

develop a solution uh to the various problems or develop solutions to the various

problems that uh the United States faces around the world uh and maybe that's

what's going on here maybe he's just bent on uh you know saying different things on different days I would note

though Freddy just very quickly that to contradict myself at first it looked

like when he was talking about turning Gaza into the Rivier of the Middle East that he was just posturing and this was

not serious but it now looks like he really believes that that he thinks that

this is a meaningful policy position to hold uh and that uh he for the time

being is going to stick to it uh I don't know how long he'll stick to it because it ought to be quite apparent to him uh

that he's not getting a lot of support in the Arab world uh and that uh Hamas

is not going to give up easily in Gaza and he's going to have to force them out

the Palestinians uh if he wants to uh put this grand plan of his uh into

operation isn't the uh real real politique if I can say that uh here all

about Iran and that uh witkoff Trump and Netanyahu they are

aligned uh to an extent on what they want to do about Iran um and that just

an hour before uh Trump Trump's press office released a statement about the uh

the plan to take over Gaza they released uh the agreement that Netanyahu and Trump seem to have reached on applying

maximum pressure on Iran um on effectively um pushing the Iranian

regime as hard as it as hard as they can no I disagree with that in fact uh

har rets had a headline story yesterday that made the point that uh what

happened in netanyahu's visit to the United States with regard to the Iranian issue was terrible news for uh Netanyahu

Netanyahu is not interested in maximum pressure we've tried maximum pressure before you want to remember that

President Trump in his first term walked away from the nuclear arms agreement uh

that the west and the Russians and the Chinese had fashioned with Iran this is the famous jcpoa that was the nuclear

agreement in 2018 Trump walked away from that and Trump said that we're going to instead

pursue a policy of maximum pressure to force Iran to agree to a better deal

well that failed uh and what he's doing now is he is telling Israelis he's

telling Netanyahu something he doesn't want to hear which is that the United States is not planning on using military

force to attack Iran that's what Netanyahu wants he wants the United

States and Israel operating as a tag team to go in and blast the nuclear

facilities in Iran Trump has made it clear he has no interest in doing that

and instead he's going back to maximum pressure the Israelis of course had to

agree in public with Trump's policy position but behind closed doors they're

adamantly opposed to it which is why haret had this headline yesterday saying that netanyahu's position on Iran was

undermined during his visit to Washington I take that point but what I

I suppose what I was getting at was the first Trump Administration uh made some strides it

wasn't all just Bluster and and and Bluff in the Middle East they did make some strides towards achieving uh the

Abraham Accords uh uh better negotiations between Arab states and

Israel and of course the the final piece of that puzzle not the final piece but a very important piece of that puzzle will

be uh an an accord between Saudi Arabia and Israel and that by applying maximum

pressure on Iran perhaps not going as far as Netanyahu wants um but they are pushing ahead with the the process that

they started in their first term I'm I'm not sure what you're saying here first of all with regard to Iran

Iran is now enriching uranium up to 60% as a result of walking away from the

jcpoa as a result of Trump's policy which was enthusiastically backed by Benjamin

Netanyahu we're now in a situation where Iran is about two weeks away where it

could from where it could enrich enough uranium for four or five bombs two weeks

away to go from 60% enrichment to 90% enrichment is easy that is saying we are

in much worse shape today with regard to a nuclear Iran than we were in 2018 when

Trump walked away from the jcpoa with regard to the Abraham

Accords uh I don't think the Abraham Accords matter for very

much anyway uh so there are these four Abraham Accords

what do they have to do with solving the Palestinian problem what do they have to do with solving the Hezbollah problem

what do they have to do with solving the Syrian problem what do they have to do with solving the Iranian problem the

answer is virtually nothing so you have good relations between the UAE and

Israel you have good relations between Sudan and Morocco in Israel does this

really matter were those countries at War war and all of a sudden those wars were shut down by the Abraham Accords I

think not and with regard to Saudi Arabia if you read what the Saudis are

now saying about Trump's plan to turn Gaza into the Rivier of the Middle East

it's quite clear that we're further than ever from having an Abraham Accord with Saudi Arabia now in the west people like

to talk about the fact that uh Abraham ACC cour was s Arabia is just around the

corner I would argue that if you look carefully at the evidence that's not true at all but even if you get an

Abraham Accord with Saudi Arabia what's the big deal is that going to help with all these different problems in places

like Gaza the West Bank uh has bah Syria and Iran I think the answer is no well

you you said earlier that words matter I would have thought Accords matter and uh diplomatic relations between countries

being good uh matters uh because it's better than being bad the question

Freddy is how much does it matter and the answer is it doesn't matter very much at all it matters for Saudi Arabia

and Israel but Saudi Arabia is not the big problem in the Middle East we don't

talk about the Saudi versus Israel conflict right or the Sudan versus

Israel conflict we talk about places like Gaza the West Bank the Palestinians Hezbollah Iran Syria and these Accords

have little to to do with those conflicts as we understand it president

Trump is uh quite concerned all the people around him are quite concerned about an apparent Iranian a threat to

assassinate him uh he said the other day that he's left instructions that if he is assassinated by Iran uh they will be

all held to pay or words to that effect um I mean I think Trump might be more

willing to uh nuke tyan than you're willing to Grant

well he has made it very clear that he does not want to quote him bomb the hell out of Iran uh you want to remember that

he was elected in 2016 and he was elected again in

2024 on the platform that he was not going to start any more Wars uh that's

the realist in Trump and I think that's all for the good uh I think there's no

question if it was clear that ran uh

assassinated President Trump and let's hope that never happens let's hope he's never assassinated period but if there

was clear evidence that Iran uh assassinated uh Trump as president

there's no question whether Trump left uh uh orders or not that his successor

would make uh Iran pay a god- awful price there's just no question about

that but there's no evidence that Iran is

trying to assassinate Trump that I know of uh if there's evidence they can show it to me and then I'll believe it but I

don't think I don't think that Iran would be crazy enough to assassinate Trump they surely can figure out what

the consequences would be for them uh and they would not be good and therefore I don't think they're out to assassinate

Trump so I think this is much to do about nothing think there are some people who think uh contrary to what

I've been saying before that Trump's uh agenda is um to actually uh you know go

to tan at some point to uh surprise Everyone by uh fashioning some kind of

agreement with Iran uh as he did with Kim yungun and and North Korea in his

first term uh and perhaps as Nixon did with China he sees himself as somebody who's capable of uh breaking these

surprising alliances the problem that he would face if he did that Freddy is he'd run into

the Israel Lobby uh I mean the Israel Lobby is deeply committed to making sure

that the United States and Iran remain mortal enemies uh at least as long as

Iran has the capability to enrich uranium uh and uh reprocess plutonium uh

and uh therefore I think if Trump began to play nice with Iran the Israel Lobby

would move in and make it very clear to him that that's unacceptable and he would change his behavior for viewers

who have not read your work on the Israel Lobby what exactly is the Israel

Lobby well it's uh a group of individuals and

organizations in the United States uh that are profoundly committed

to making sure that the United States supports Israel

unconditionally uh it's very important to understand that the United States has a relationship with Israel that has no

parallel in recorded history uh the United States and Israel despite the

fact they sometimes have different interests this is not to deny that they sometimes have the same interest but

they often have different interests and in those cases the lobby Works overtime

to make sure that the United States supports Israel uh unconditionally and

uh that's what the special relationship is all about and the lobby is I believe

the most powerful Lobby or interest group uh in the history of the United

States and it wields enormous influence and if any president

uh pursues a policy in the Middle East that the Israelis adamantly oppose you can rest assured that the lobby will go

to work on Israel's behalf and push that American leader uh to support Israel so

on the Iran issue you know Bill Clinton when he was president he started to play nice with the

Israelis uh and the lobby quickly moved in and told him the basic facts of life

which is he's not allowed to play nice with the Iranians because the Israeli government considers that unacceptable I

laid this out Steve Walton I laid this out uh in our chapter on Iran in the

book on the Israel Lobby well let's uh talk about whether

there's a Ukraine Lobby uh in Washington and what they might be thinking about

Trump's latest moves um Scott bessent is I think in Kiev at the moment uh talking to Ukraine there seems

to be some kind of deal uh on the cards which is that the US in return for

continuing to support uh Ukraine will get more obvious access to Ukrainian

minerals and um I wonder what you think about that because to some extent that's

a bit like what we were talking about earli on which is that Trump's uh much more

transactional um much more nakedly selfish if you like or or certainly

National interest driven uh foreign policy is at least more direct and clear

than uh the Biden administration's policy which was to S of Soto V talk

about um Ukraine's minerals and how important they could be um but really to

talk about but publicly to talk about democracy and the importance of Defending it and so on look if you're a good realist Freddy

uh you defend a country like Ukraine because you think it's in the American national interest uh and basically what

Trump is saying is that if you don't pay us back for what he claims is the $300

billion uh that we've given you to fight this war if you don't pay us back with

this mineral wealth we're going to cut off our assistance to you this is what you call transactional this is

completely at odds with basic realist logic I mean looks like we're in this to make

money uh and it's no accident the German Chancellor condemned Trump for making

this claim it making this line of argument it makes

us look like we're mercenaries uh just fundamental mistake and it's completely

at odds with realism uh Trump told us that he was going to settle the

Ukrainian conflict in one day uh and there is no evidence that we

are even close to settling the Ukraine conflict and if anything we're heading

in the other direction so he is failed so far now of course he's only been in

office for three weeks but uh there is no evidence that he has a plan for

shutting this war down uh and it looks like the war is going to go on and it

looks like he is doing everything he can to dump this war into the lap of the

Europeans uh uh and uh it looks like the Europeans are coming to recognize that

they don't have any choice but to accept much more of the burden of dealing with this War uh so this is just all this is

bad news all around bad news for the Ukrainian people bad news for the Russians bad news for the United States

bad news for the West because we're not uh G to shut this one down anytime soon

if it isn't realism what is it is it uh merism is it I've seen people calling it

national capitalism um is it something new entirely I don't know it's it's just you

know Trump sewing chaos it's it's hard to say as I've said

you know a few times here I'm not exactly sure what Trump is up to

uh you know it it just it doesn't make sense to me to say uh after all of the

attention the United States has paid to the Ukraine more after all the support

that the United States has given to Ukraine to all of a sudden turn around and say uh if you don't give us a huge

chunk of your mineral wealth we're GNA abandon you uh but if you don't right if

you if you do give us uh all of this mineral wealth we won't abandon you

we'll continue to support the war that's what he's saying that's certainly not a realist

perspective C not a morally correct perspective uh and it raises the

question what is he doing here you know why do this uh and I don't have a good

answer well uh I mean it might be to it might be answered by looking at his

relationship to uh Russia or his his approach to Russia his approach to Putin

and the Kremlin um he uh has appeared to be real a realist when it comes to

Russia's interests or understanding Russia's interests in the past uh Russia in recent days has released an American

hostage I think it's going to a prisoner I should say I think it's going to release another um something's going on

there is it not what can we interpret about that what's going on I mean I want to

know what the plan is the Russians have made it very clear

what they want and the question is what is Trump willing to to do to accommodate

the Russians what's the plan there's no evidence they have a plan uh there's no

evidence there are any meaningful contacts between the Russians and the Americans for purposes of shutting this

war down uh so I I I don't think that

releasing some prisoner makes any difference at all the question is what

is the deal what what does Trump think he can do to shut this war down and

there's no evidence that the Administration has the foggiest idea how they can shut this war down and instead

Trump is being has been saying outrageous things about the Russians that are if anything designed to erode

trust between the Russians and the Americans and there's not very much trust to begin with but you know he says

that the Russians have suffered a million death which is a ludicrous claim that their

economy is in shambles which is another ludicrous claim and he says that he's

going to do Putin a favor by shutting this war down for him that we're going to do Putin a favor do you think this is

going to make Putin think that Trump is somebody he can trust of course not and

Putin doesn't trust the West much at all and Trump is just making the problem worse uh so there's no concrete proposal

floating around uh there are no viable ideas coming out of the administration

on how to accommodate the Russians who happen to be in the driver's seat on the battlefield uh and instead what you're

getting are rather outlandish statements that if anything going to make it harder

to get a deal rather than easier well uh lastly Jun because I know I'm taking up a lot of your time here but I I would

like to ask you a bit about China which we talked a little bit about at the beginning you did anyway um is that I'd

like to put it to you that um the real strategic focus of the Trump Administration as we understand it so

far uh and even more so in this second term it seems is uh dealing with China

dealing with the rise of China uh confronting the rise of China and he has people like Elbridge Colby in his

administration who are very concerned about that uh and that you know when you look at the Panama Canal what he's

talking about in the Panama Canal that's very much a concern about China's belt and Road in which has now the Panamanian

leader has said he he will um get rid of the belum road I believe um if you look

at Greenland that's long been a strategic concern that China is um you know could break through in the Arctic

Circle and so on uh the real focus is China and if we want to make any sense of Trump's foreign policy we need to

think about what it's thinking about China I mean I think that there's no

question that the United States should be riveted on China and it should think

about how best to smartly contain China uh I think that being pinned down in the

Middle East and being pinned down in Ukraine makes it difficult for the

United States to focus uh its attention on dealing with China and therefore one

hoped that Trump would come in and shut down the conflict in Gaza shut down the

conflict in Ukraine and concentrate on fashioning a smart containment policy in

East Asia that has not happened as I said he is if anything making the

situation in Gaza worse uh and uh not doing much at all uh

to get us out of the Middle East and there's no evidence that he's going to

put an end to the Ukraine war so we're pinned down in these two places which causes us all sorts of problems in East

Asia furthermore uh if you look at what's happened in East Asia since he's

taken office uh there are all sorts of Articles beginning to appear that because of what he's done with

usaid uh our position in Southeast Asia uh we where we have long had problems uh

fashioning alliances that can help us contain China our situation there and

southeast Asia is getting worse uh and given Trump's uh tendency to slap uh

allies around it's not clear to me that he's going to do a really good job

fashioning a balancing Coalition in East Asia against China uh so I think the

situation in East Asia is actually not looking good at all and actually this time lastly I know

I said lastly last time uh but I would like like to ask you by answer sort of yes no question you don't have to answer

at length if you don't want to um a lot of people talk about the Trump Administration as

reversing America's decline um as a

superpower um it sounds to me from what you're saying that you uh believe he could be accelerating its decline uh do

you believe he's accelerating it or uh reversing it or checking it in some way

well when I think about decline Freddy I I think it in ter I think of it in terms of the balance of power um and uh I

think about how powerful the United States is in material terms versus how

powerful it is how powerful China and Russia are relative to the United States

uh and the reason that the United States has been declining in terms of its power over

time is because China has been rising so it's in terms of relative power that we

have been declining but in terms of absolute power if you look at the state

of the American economy the American economy is doing quite well it's

growing uh and I believe that if you look at uh the future right there's every

reason to think that the US economy will do very well but the question is how

well will the Chinese economy continue to do and if the Chinese economy were to

grow at a really significant rate in the years ahead then there would be relative

decline for the United States because relative to China we would be declining

even though our economy would be growing every year so I think American decline

mainly has to do with the Chinese economy now to take this a step further and I think this is a very important

point when we talk about containing China and we talk about dealing with the China CH dealing with China from an

American point of view the focus is usually on containment and putting together a balancing Coalition which

involves usually uh a focus on military force but there's another competition

that's taking place and that has to do with cuttingedge Technologies things like AI Quantum Computing uh super uh

Super Chips and so forth and so on and there is a wickedly intense competition

taking place there and that competition for high-end Technologies matters

enormously for the balance of economic power which of course for a good realist

like me is of great consequence so I think moving forward the key question is

how well does China to do with AI for example versus how well the United

States does with AI right and this will tell you a great deal about American

decline moving forward now all of this is to say just to go to the heart of

your point or your question I don't think that Trump is doing anything yet

that is eroding America's absolute power right or speeding up America's relative

decline what Trump is having great trouble with so far and again he's only

been three weeks into his administration is the diplomacy that comes along with military

power the United States has this enormous power it's still the most powerful State on the planet the

question is what is American diplomacy look like how is America using all that

power that it has to Fashion uh or to influence events around the

world that uh are in the American national interest and that's where I

have all sorts of doubts about what Trump is doing and of course I had all

sorts of doubts about what Biden was doing uh before Trump uh so I think that

in terms of power the United States is not in bad shape uh I think it's in

terms of how it uses that power that it gets itself into trouble and that's what

worries me about Trump professor John Mish thank you very much for coming on to Americano it's always a great

pleasure to have you on

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