YouSaid · the spoken record

John Mearsheimer

lines on the record: 214
first: 2023-11-18
most recent: 2023-11-18
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Start to die, they'll lose their appetite for this. And the Israelis, surely know at this point in time that even if they finish off Hamas, even if I'm wrong and they're able to finish off Hamas, another group is going to rise up to resist the occupation. The idea that you can use with Ziv, Yabatinsky called the iron wall to beat the Palestinians into submission is delusional. It's just not going to happen. The Palestinians want a state of their own. They don't want to live under occupation. And there's no military solution for Israel here. There has to be a political solution. And the only viable political solution is a two-state solution. I mean, you can't go to democracy. You can't go to a situation where you give the”
2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The question is, is that Should they continue until they have finally defeated Hamas? There are all sorts of reports in the media, including in the Israeli media, that they're not going to be allowed by the United States to continue this offensive for much more than a few weeks. The Israelis have been saying it would it's going to take in the best of all possible worlds a number of months, if not a year, to finish off Hamas. Well, it doesn't look like they're going to have enough time to do that. I doubt whether they can finish off from us even if they're given the time. I think they're going to run into fierce resistance. And when they run into fierce resistance in large numbers of Israelis going to die.”
2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think at this point in time that's their principal goal. I do believe, and there have been hints over time, Jimmy Carter has said this, that Hamas can be convinced that a two-state solution, assuming that the Palestinians get a viable state of their own, that Hamas would buy into that. Can we say that with a high degree of certainty? No. But I think the Israelis should have pursued that possibility. They should have worked with Habas. They should have worked with Hamas to do everything they can to facilitate a two-state solution. Because I think ultimately that's in Israel's interest. Now, the Israeli government and most Israelis at this point in time, I believe, don't agree with that.”
2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In terms of the people who live in Gaza to include the elites and the people who live in the West Bank to include the elites, they would much prefer to move to some sort of situation where the Palestinians have a state of their own. I think in the case of the PA under Abbas, they would accept a two-state solution. I think what at this point in time Hamas wants is a one-state solution, but they want peace. All of them want peace, the two different sets of leadership in Palestine and the Israelis.”
2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I don't believe that. I mean, just to take the Netanyahu government or any Israeli government that maintains the occupation, what you want is you want a Palestinian population that submits to Israeli domination of Greater Israel. You don't want resistance. You don't want an intifada. You don't want what happened on October 7th. In fact, I think one of the principal reasons that the Israelis are pounding Gaza and killing huge numbers of civilians, punishing the civilian population in ways that clearly violate the laws of war is because they want the Palestinians to understand that they are not allowed to rise up and resist the occupation. That's their goal. So I think the Israelis would prefer that the Palestinians roll over and accept submission.”
2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“and he became a proponent of a two state solution. And that's true of Mahmoud Abbas, who runs the PA in the West Bank. It's not true of Hamas at this point in time. They want a one state solution. They want a Palestinian state. And of course, the Israelis want a one-state solution too, which is a Jewish state that controls all of Greater Israel. So, the question is can you get some sort of agreement? And I think to get to the nub of your question, given what's just happened, it's almost impossible to imagine that happening anytime soon.”
2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How could you possibly get the Israelis now to agree to a two-state solution? I think for the foreseeable future the animosity inside Israel towards the Palestinians is so great that it is impossible to move the Israelis in that direction, and the Israelis here are the key players, more so than the Palestinians, because it's the Israelis who control greater Israel. It's the Israelis who you have to convince. Now, I want to be clear here. You also ultimately have to get around the fact that Hamas is not committed to a two-state solution. But I think that problem could be dealt with. It's important to understand that Arafat and the PLO was once adamantly opposed to a two-state solution, but Arafat came around to understand that that was really the only hope for settling this.”
2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When I was a young boy, the political center of gravity in Israel was much further to the left than it is today. And it is in a position now, the political center of gravity, where there's hardly any support for two-state solution. And Netanyahu and the rest of the people in his government were in favor or are in favor of a greater Israel. There's just no question about that. Well On top of that, you now have had a war where as you described, huge numbers of civilians have been killed. And you already had bad blood between the Palestinians and the Israelis. And you could imagine how people on each side now feel about people on the other side. So even if you didn't have this opposition inside Israel to a two-state solution.”
2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I think it's disastrous I mean The only way you're going to get peace here is if you have a two-state solution, where the Palestinians have a sovereign state of their own and there is a sovereign Jewish state and these two states live side by side. American presidents since Jimmy Carter have understood this full well, and this is why we have pushed very hard for two-state solution. Indeed, many American Jews and many Israelis have pushed for a two-state solution because they think that that is the only way you're going to get peace between the two sides. But what's happened here is that in recent years, the Israelis have lost all interest in a two-state solution. And it's in large part because the political center of gravity in Israel has steadily moved to the right.”
2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They had to understand. I mean, You had Operation Cast Lead in 2008, 2009. It started, I think, right after Christmas 2008, and it ended right before President Obama took office in January 2009. The Israelis periodically do what they call mowing the lawn where they go into Gaza and they pound the Palestinians to remind them that they're not supposed to rise up and cause any problem. So there's no question in my mind that the Hamas forces understood full well that the Israelis would retaliate and they would retaliate in force as they have done.”
2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Probably about two years and the Abraham Accords with regard to Saudi Arabia are relatively new phenomenon. I don't think that's the main driving force here. I think the main driving force is that the Palestinians feel oppressed as they should and that this was a resistance move. They were resisting the Israeli occupation.”
2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I think the main reason was that you had this suffocating occupation. I think as long as the occupation persists, the Palestinians are going to resist. As you well know, this is not the first time there has been a Palestinian uprising. There was the first intifada, there was the second intifada, now there's October 7th, and their uprisings besides those three. This is not terribly surprising. A lot of people hypothesize that this attack was due to the fact that the Israelis, the Saudis, and the Americans were working together to foster another Abraham accord and that the Palestinians would in effect be sold down the river. I think given the fact that this was in the planning stages”
2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is a story during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy put out the word, no aircraft under any circumstances are to penetrate Soviet airspace. And he then found out a few days later that some guy hadn't gotten the message and had penetrated in an aircraft deep into Soviet airspace. And this supports your basic point that bad things happen. And again, the overarching point here is we've never done this before, thankfully. Therefore, we don't have a lot of experience as to how it plays itself out. It's really a theoretical enterprise because there's no empirical basis for talking about escalation in a nuclear crisis. And that, of course, is a wonderful thing.”
2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, once you do that, you have a great power award of NATO versus Russia, which is another way of saying you have the United States versus Russia. We're now in a great power war. They have nuclear weapons. We have nuclear weapons. They've used nuclear weapons. What is the happy ending here? And just to take it a step further and go back to our earlier discussion about moving NATO up to Russia's borders. The point I made, which you surely agree with, is that the Russians are very fearful when they see NATO coming up to their border. Well, here's a case where not only is NATO come up to their border, but they're in a war with NATO right on their border. What are the escalation dynamics look like there? You know what the answer is? Who knows? That should scare the living bejesus out of you, right?”
2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Quick, terrifying, yeah. The question then is what does the West do? Now, Macron has said, and Biden is also, I think, implicitly made this clear, we would not retaliate with nuclear weapons if the Russians were to attack with a handful of nuclear weapons in western Ukraine. But then the question is what would we do? And if you listen to David Petraeus, what David Petraeus says is that we should attack the Russian naval assets in the Black Sea. attack Russian forces in Ukraine.”
2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Let's just talk about this in the context of the Ukraine war. If the Russians were losing, as I said before, which is not the case anymore, but in 2022 it did look like that. If the Russians are losing and they turn to nuclear weapons, the question is how do they use them? And they would use them in Ukraine. And because Ukraine has no nuclear weapons of its own, Ukraine cannot retaliate. It's not a mutual assured destruction world. It's a case where one side has nuclear weapons and the other doesn't. That means that the Russians are likely to think that they can get away with using nuclear weapons in ways that would not be the case if they were attacking NATO. And therefore it makes nuclear use more likely. Okay, that's point one. Point two is let's assume that the Russians use two or three nuclear weapons in a remote area.”
2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A manipulation of risk strategy in Europe if we were losing to the Warsaw Pact during the Cold War. Both Henry Kissinger and Robert McNamara said after leaving office that they would not have done it. They would have not initiated nuclear use, even limited nuclear use. That's what we're talking about here. rather be red than dead that was the argument Too risky, that's exactly right. But if they had used one nuclear weapon in your story or three or four in my story, Everybody would have said oh my God, we've got to shut this one down immediately. I only tell you this story or lay out this scenario as an answer to your question of how you use nuclear weapons in a mad world. And this is the answer.”
2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it's because of the threat of escalation. Again, your point is we're in a mad world. I accept that. And if you have limited nuclear use, right, we understand hardly anything about nuclear escalation because thank goodness we've never had a nuclear war. So once you throw both sides out on the slippery slope, even if you only use one nuclear weapon in your scenario, you don't know what the escalation dynamics look like. Everybody has a powerful incentive to put an end to the conflict right away. I might add to you that there were people who believed that we would not even initiate”
2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's the one scenario where I think where Russia would have used nuclear weapons. And the question is, how would Russia have used nuclear weapons? Again, we're assuming that the Russians are losing to the Ukrainians. I believe they would have pursued a manipulation risk strategy. They would have used four or five, three or four, who knows, nuclear weapons.”
2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In other words, we were manipulating risk. And the last clear chance to avoid Armageddon rested with them. And then we would tell them that if you retaliated with a handful of nuclear weapons and you didn't cease your offensive against West Germany, we would a small another nuclear tech. We would explode a handful more of nuclear weapons, all for the purposes of showing you our resolve, right? So this is the manipulation of risk strategy and a lot of the language I just used in describing it to you is language that Thomas Shelley invented. Right. Now, fast forward to the present, if Russia were you.”
2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If the Warsaw Pact were to invade Western Europe, and here we're talking about West Germany, and NATO was losing the war, we said that we would use nuclear weapons. How would we use nuclear weapons given that we were in a mad world? The argument was that we would use a handful of nuclear weapons against the Warsaw Pact, not necessarily against their military forces, could be in a remote area. We would use a small number of nuclear weapons. To signal to the Soviets that we were deadly serious about putting an end to their offensive. and that we were throwing both sides out on the slippery slope to oblivion.”
2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But let's stick to the capital letters. We're in a world of mutually assured destruction. There's no question that in that world it's unlikely that nuclear weapons would be used. But the way you use nuclear weapons in that world is you use them for manipulation of risk purposes Demonstration effect. You put both sides out on the slippery slope. Now, what exactly am I saying here? Let me talk about NATO doctrine during the Cold War. We lived in a mad world. United States and Soviet Union or the Warsaw Pact and NATO both had an assured destruction capability. So you had mutual assured destruction.”
2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There is no question that the presence of nuclear weapons makes it much less likely. I'm choosing my words carefully here, much less likely that a great power would aggress against another great power. It doesn't take that possibility off the table, but it makes it much less likely because of the reasons that you articulated. But with regard to nuclear use, It's an interesting question how you think about nuclear use in a mad world. I mean, your point that we're in a mad world is that's mad capital MAD as well as MAD.”
2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Furthermore, I argued in 2014 that it made eminently good sense not to continue to push to bring Ukraine into NATO because the end result is that Ukraine would be destroyed and Ukraine is being destroyed. So I was deeply interested at the time in making sure that that didn't happen for the good of the Ukrainians, not to mention because stability in Europe is a net positive for almost everybody involved. But people did not listen to me then either.”
2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That I would use nuclear weapons to defend myself, and given the consequences of nuclear use, you would be reluctant in the extreme to attack me. So that's why I argued in 93 that if Ukraine kept its nuclear weapons, that made war down the road much less likely. And I believe I was correct. And in fact, Bill Clinton, who played the key role in forcing Ukraine to give up its nuclear weapons, now says he has sent it publicly. You can find it on YouTube that he made a mistake doing that.”
2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you're interested in deterring an adversary, if I'm worried about you coming after me, the best way to deter you is to have military might. And if you're Russia and I'm Ukraine, I'm far weaker than you. And having a nuclear deterrent would be very effective at convincing you not to attack me. Because if you attack me, you're threatening my survival. And that's the one circumstance where it is likely.”
2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know if you know this, but in 1993, I argued that Ukraine should keep its nuclear weapons. I was probably the only person in the West who made that argument. And my argument in 1993, this is in foreign affairs, was that there may come the day when Russia thinks about invading Ukraine. And should that day come, it would be very helpful for preventing war if Ukraine had nuclear weapons.”
2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You realize I have from the beginning argued for different policies that were all designed to prevent this war from ever happening.”
2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, one really important question that I would ask him is if the United States had basically not driven you into the arms of the Chinese, if there had been no war over Ukraine and the United States and its European allies had gone to considerable lengths to create some sort of security architecture in Europe that resulted in you, Vladimir Putin, having good relations with Ukraine. What would your relations with China be? And how would you think about that? So there are just plenty of questions you could ask him”
2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Did he continue to, you know, in a very important way, trust the West? Why didn't he mobilize the Russian military before late September 2022? Once the negotiations that we were talking about before involving Istanbul and Naftali bin, and once they broke down, why didn't he immediately mobilize more of the Russian population to fight the war? Just all sorts of questions like that. And then you could ask them questions about, you know, where he sees this one headed. What's the best strategy for Russia if the Ukrainians will not agree to neutrality? People like John Mearsharma say you'll probably take close to half of Ukraine, is that true? Does it make sense to take Odessa?”
2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think if you get an interview with Vladimir Putin, there's just all sorts of questions you could ask him. And my sense is that Putin is a straight shooter. He's also very knowledgeable about history, and he has simple theories in his head about how the world works. And I think he would level with you. And all you would have to do is just, you know, figure out what all the right questions are. And that would not be hard to do, right? You know, you could ask him why was he so foolish. This is, for example, why was he so foolish as to trust Poroshenko, Holland, and Merkel in the Minsk accords? Why after his famous talk at Munich in 2007, where he made it clear that he was so unhappy with the West?”
2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“limited war in all sorts of ways the Israelis for example have killed more civilians in Gaza in one month than the Russians have killed over 18 months in Ukraine the idea that Vladimir Putin is waging a punishment campaign and killing on purpose large numbers of civilians is simply not true All this is to say that I would imagine that if Putin leaves office and someone else comes in to replace him, that's someone else will be at least, if not more hardlined than him in terms of waging the war and certainly will not trust the West any more than he has.”
2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Be overthrown. He was not likely then to be overthrown. And I think as long as his health holds up, I think he will remain in power. My second point is if he doesn't remain in power and he's replaced, I would bet a lot of money that his replacement will be more hawkish and more hardline than Putin is. I actually think one could argue that Putin was too trusting of the West before the war started. And number two, I think one could argue that he has not waged the war against Ukraine as vigorously as one might have expected. He was slow to mobilize the nation for war, and he has pursued”
2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, a lot of people thought when They were having all that trouble. The Russians were having all that trouble with Prigozhin and the Wagner group that Putin was vulnerable and was likely to be overthrown. And what would happen is a peace-loving leader would replace Putin. I made two points at the time, and I would make those same two points now. Number one, he's not likely.”
2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That would be wonderful news. My prediction that this war is going to go on for a long time and end in an ugly way is a prediction that I don't like at all. So I hope I'm wrong.”
2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When you're the leader of a country in an anarchic system, You have to be very careful not to let your trust in a foreign leader take you too far, because if that foreign leader betrays you or betrays your trust and stab you in the back, you could die. And again, you want to remember that the principal responsibility of any leader, I don't care what country it is, is to ensure the survival of their state. And that means that trust is only going to buy you so much. And when you've already betrayed the trust of a leader, you really are not going to be able to rely on trust very much to help you moving forward. Now, you disagree with that. I hope you're right. And if they can shut down the Ukraine-Russia war, it would be wonderful if I'm proved dead wrong.”
2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Remember they were doing that in March, and the Americans came in and the British came in. And they scotched a potential deal.”
2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And he believes that the level of trust now between Russia and the West is virtually zero. As a result of this experience over Minsk, I only bring this up because it cuts against your argument that leaders could pick up the phone and talk to each other and trust each other, at least somewhat, to work out a meaningful deal. If you're Putin at this point in time trusting the West is not an idea that's going to be very attractive at all. In fact, you're going to distrust anything they say.”
2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“French leader and Porschenko, who was the Ukrainian leader. Those were the three key players besides Putin. Again, Holland from France, Merkel from Germany, and Porschenko from Ukraine have all explicitly said they were not seriously interested in reaching an agreement in all of the discussions with Putin. They were bamboozling him. They were trying to trick him so that they would buy time to build up Ukraine's military. Putin is profoundly upset about”
2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think leadership matters here. I mean, one of the real problems here is that there's no trust on the Russian side. And that has to do with the Minsk agreements. The Minsk agreements, which were designed to shut down the civil war in eastern Ukraine, in the Donbass really mattered to the Russians. And there were four players involved in the Minsk process, four main players, Russia and Ukraine, of course, and in Germany and France. And I believe the Russians took the Minsk Accords seriously. I believe Putin took them very seriously. He wanted to shut down that conflict. And Angela Merkel, Francois Hollande, he was the”
2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“or healthy economic relations to use a better term between Ukraine and the West is possible. I think the Russians have a vested interest in if it's a neutral Ukraine, they have a vested interest in that Ukraine flourishing, but that then brings us back to the territorial issue.”
2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think you could probably get away with that. I think the tricky question there that you would have to answer is what about EU expansion? Right. And I think EU expansion is probably a no-no for the Russians because most people don't recognize this, but there is a military dimension built into EU expansion. It's not purely an economic alliance or relationship or institution, whatever word you want to use. There's a military dimension to that. And in the run-up to the war, actually in the run-up to the 2014 crisis, when it first broke out, Russians made it clear they saw EU expansion as a stalking horse for NATO expansion. So EU expansion is tricky. But I think your point of close economic relations between”
2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I want them literally, I want to conquer them literally. But my point to you is if we can begin to talk about cutting a deal now, you may be able to head that kind of aggression off at the pass. In other words, you may be able to... limit Putin and Russia to annexing the four oblasts that they've now annexed plus Crimea. That's the best I think you can hope for. But the point is you have to get the Ukrainians to accept that. You have to get the Ukrainians to accept becoming a truly neutral state and conceding that the Russians keep a big chunk of territory. It's about 23% of Ukrainian territory that they've annexed. I find it hard to imagine any Ukrainian leader agreeing to that.”
2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If I'm playing Putin's hand and this war goes on, I'm thinking about taking four more Oblas. I want to take about forty three percent of Ukraine and annex it to Russia, right? And I certainly want Odessa and I certainly want Kharkiv. And I want the two O boss in between as well.”
2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Two things have to be done here, in my opinion. One is Ukraine has to become neutral. And it has to completely sever all security ties with the West. It's not like you can say we're not going to expand NATO to include Ukraine, but we're going to continue to have some loose security arrangement with Ukraine. None of that has to be completely severed. Ukraine has to be on its own. Okay. And number two, Ukraine has to accept the fact that the Russians are going to keep the four oblasts that they've now annexed and Crimea. The Russians are not going to give them back. And what you really want to do, if you're Zelensky or who's ever running Ukraine in this scenario that we're positing, is you want to make sure the Russians don't take another 4 oblas to include Kharkiv and Odessa, right?”
2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If we say there's a sliver of a chance that you can do this, and I do think there is a sliver of a chance, let me just embellish your point.”
2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Bennett tells the story very clearly that they had made significant progress in reaching an agreement. This is Zelensky on one side and Putin on the other. Bennett is talking in person to both Putin and Zelensky. And what happens to produce failure? The answer is the United States and Britain get involved and tell Zelensky to walk. They tell Zelensky to walk. If they had come in and encouraged Zelensky to try to figure out a way with Putin to shut this one down and worked with Bennett and worked with Erdogan. We might have been able to shut the war down then, but it was the United States.”
2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think if the United States is involved, the answer is definitely no. You have to get the Americans out. And then I think if you have Zelensky and Putin talking, you have a sliver of a chance there. The Americans are. Real problem. Look, let's go back to what happens right after the war starts, okay? Because I said before, we're talking March, early April of 2022. The war starts on February 24th, 2022. And as I said to you, the two sides were negotiating in Istanbul, and they were also negotiating through Naftali Bennett. And the Bennett track and the Turkish track were operating together. I mean, they were not at cross purposes at all. What happened?”
2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that includes in terms of transatlantic relations. So you'll have this continuing security competition between Russia on one side and Ukraine and the West on the other, even when you get a frozen peace or you get a frozen conflict and the potential for escalation there will be great. I think this is a disaster.”
2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm sad to say I don't have a good answer to that. I don't think there's any real prospect of a meaningful peace agreement. I think it's almost impossible. I think the best you can hope for at this point is some point in the shooting stops. You have a ceasefire and then you have a frozen conflict. And that frozen conflict will not be highly stable. And the Ukrainians in the West will do everything they can to weaken Russia's position and the Russians will go to great lengths to not only damage that dysfunctional rump state that Ukraine becomes, but the Russians will go to great lengths to sow dissension within the alliance.”
2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source