Mearsheimer on Trump’s latest deals in the Middle East

As I seem to have new occasion to comment at least once a month, Über-Realist John Mearsheimer continues his habit of being irritatingly plausible in his takes on foreign policy. Here he manages to give a explanation of why Trump’s recent actions in Middle East diplomacy that pain a coherent picture without falling into the trap of claiming that Trump knows what he’s doing in the process of international diplomacy. (1)

Mearsheimer emphatically makes the point there that Trump doesn’t know what he’s doing in Ukraine diplomacy and doesn’t understand all the issues involved. He has a gloomy but practical view of Ukraine’s current situation and the prospects for the immediate future.

This is his latest weekly interview with the somewhat grumpy-style Andrew Napolitano: (2)

He also comments in that one about how ridiculously amateurish the Trump 2.0 regime’s diplomacy over Ukraine is.

It can be confusing to distinguish the short-term and long-term perspectives in some of the discussions like this. Russia has made the determination – right or wrong - that Ukraine becoming part of NATO would be substantial threat to their security and position in the world – and they are likely to continue this war until they decide they have captured enough Ukrainian territory that they can make the remainder of Ukraine basically a failed state for the indefinite future.

The EU countries are assuming that the US can no longer be counted on to back Europe in a possible future military confrontation with Russia. In that perspective, it makes sense for European countries to back Ukraine with financial and political support in their war against Russia. But they aren’t in a position to become direct combatants inside Ukraine against Russia. And since the perceive a need to concentrate on building up their own military forces over the next five years, that means they also have a cynically practical temptation to keep the fighting in Ukraine going for as long as possible.

Any short-term hope of achieving a ceasefire in Ukraine that would have a reasonable chance of being stable for any extended period of time would require the active and competent participation of a US Administration, a willingness by the Putin regime to forgo conquering further territory in Ukraine, and some kind of credible security guarantee for the ceasefire. None of those conditions look to be immediately possible. Ukraine obviously has a very legitimate reason to keep fighting so long as they can. So this is unlikely to be settled any time soon.

Or, as Mearsheimer puts it to Napolitano:

[T]he Kremlin, I am sure understands from listening to [British Prime Minister Keir] Starmer and others like [US Special Envoy to Ukraine] Keith Kellogg and [French President Emmanuel] Macron and so forth and so on, is that there's no way you're going to get a peace agreement anytime soon And that this one is going to be settled on the battlefield.

In the Napolitano interview, Mearsheimer notes that Trump 2.0 has done two things that the Netanyahu government in Israel definitely did not want: recognizing the new government of Syria while also dropping sanctions against it, and ending the bombing campaign against the Houthis in Yemen. But Mearsheimer sees little likelihood that the Peace President will take meaningful steps to restrain Netanyahu’s genocidal war against the Palestinians, though the realist Mearsheimer is also emphatic that the US has a moral obligation to end support for a genocide.

Notes:

(1) Prof. John Mearsheimer: Israel OWNS the Trump Administration, Israel is a LIABILITY for the US. Afshin Rattansi YouTube channel 05/15/2025. <https://youtu.be/g5Ngr21EgVk?si=XSWhy99WQoxah0_1> (Accessed: 2025-15-05).

(2) Prof. John Mearsheimer: An Istanbul Peace Conference? Judging Napolitano-Judging Freedom YouTube channel 05/15/2025. <https://www.youtube.com/live/rXS5QWu2iuA?si=GUqezk3C2ZBkfRjn> (Accessed: 2025-15-05).