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John Mearsheimer on Ukraine, China, and the Israel Lobby

Tucker Carlson Interview Analysis - July 31, 2025​

Executive Summary​

In this extensive interview, renowned political scientist John Mearsheimer delivers his unvarnished assessment of three critical geopolitical issues: the Ukraine war, America's strategic blunders with China, and the unprecedented influence of the Israel lobby on U.S. foreign policy. Mearsheimer argues that the U.S. foreign policy establishment has suffered catastrophic failures across multiple domains, driven by hubris, incompetence, and the capture of policy by special interests.

Ukraine: A Doomed War with Predictable Origins​

Russia's Inevitable Victory​

"The Russians are winning the war. And there's no way that Ukraine can rescue the situation. If you look at the balance of power in terms of weaponry and in terms of manpower, the number of soldiers that each side has, the Ukrainians are in a hopeless situation."

"It's going to be settled on the battlefield and the Russians are going to win an ugly victory and you're going to have a frozen conflict."

Mearsheimer argues that Ukraine's military collapse is evident to anyone willing to see it: "If you look at what's happening on the battlefield, it's quite clear that the Ukrainians understand that their defenses are slowly but steadily collapsing."

The Root Cause: NATO Expansion​

"I believe is the taproot of this war, it's analogous to America's Monroe Doctrine. The United States under no circumstances would allow the Soviet Union to put missiles in Cuba or to locate a naval base at Cien Fuegos in Cuba."

"But yet we think we have the right to move NATO far enough eastward to include Ukraine and then put NATO assets including American military assets in Ukraine. And this is not of concern to the Russians. They shouldn't care."

Why No Negotiated Settlement is Possible​

Russia's three non-negotiable demands make peace impossible:

  1. Ukraine must be neutral (no NATO membership)
  2. Ukraine must be demilitarized
  3. Recognition of Russian annexation of Crimea and four eastern oblasts

"So in other words, you're asking Ukraine to give up about 20% of its territory, and the Ukrainians won't do that. And they won't agree not to be in NATO. And they will not agree to disarm in some meaningful way. So there's no way you get a settlement."

The Absurdity of the "Russian Threat" Narrative​

"Please tell me how this army is going to overrun all of Ukraine, then overrun Eastern Europe, and then overrun Western Europe. This is a laughable argument."

Mearsheimer notes the contradiction: "Over three plus years, they have been unable to conquer all the territory in those four oblasts that they've annexed."

China: America's Self-Inflicted Strategic Disaster​

The Lunacy of Engagement Policy​

"What we do is we adopt a policy of engagement with China. Engagement is explicitly designed to turn China into a very wealthy country. This is a country that has over four times the population of the United States and you're talking about making it very rich. For a realist like me, this is lunacy."

"You are in effect creating a peer competitor. In fact, you may be creating a country that is more powerful than the United States."

The Foreign Policy Elite's Delusion​

"The foreign policy establishment in the United States almost to a person including hawks like big new Brzezinski and Henry Kissinger said that China can grow economically. We can integrate it into institutions like the World Trade Organization and so forth and so on and it will become a democracy and we will all live happily ever after."

Creating Our Own Rival​

"By 2017, there are three great powers on the planet. And one of those three great powers is a peer competitor. And we helped create that peer competitor on the foolish belief that if we turned China into a rich country, it would become a liberal democracy."

The Israel Lobby: Unprecedented Foreign Influence​

An Unparalleled Relationship in History​

"We have a special relationship with Israel that has no parallel in recorded history. There is no single case in recorded history that comes even close to looking like the relationship that we have with Israel."

"When a great power like the United States has conflicting interests with another country, it almost always, except in the case of Israel, acts in terms of its own interests. America first. But when it comes to Israel, it's Israel first."

No Exceptions: Always Israel First​

When asked if he could think of any moment in 40 years where the U.S. chose its own interests over Israel's:

"No. No. I can't think of anything that fits that description."

The Lobby's Power and Methods​

"We have this thing called the Israel lobby, which I of course have written about with Steve Walt, which goes to great lengths to push the United States to support Israel unconditionally."

"The lobby is an incredibly powerful interest group. It has awesome power and it basically is in a position where it can profoundly influence US foreign policy in the Middle East."

Gaza: Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing​

Defining the Current Atrocities​

"I think that what the Israelis are doing fits that description [of genocide]. It's where one country tries to destroy either all or a substantial portion of another group, another ethnic or religious or national group for the purposes of basically destroying that group identity."

The October 7th Opportunity​

"October 7th happens and what the Israelis see is an excellent opportunity for ethnic cleansing... it's an excellent opportunity to go to war in Gaza and drive the Palestinians out of Gaza and solve that demographic problem that they face."

From Ethnic Cleansing to Genocide​

"They start with the goal of ethnic cleansing. They don't believe they want to murder all of the Palestinians in Gaza. They just simply want to drive them out. But the problem is they don't leave. And then the question is what do you do? And what they do is they continue to up the attacks, increase the attacks, kill more and more people in the hope that they will drive them out."

The Foreign Policy Establishment's Systemic Failure​

Incompetence, Not Strategy​

When asked why the foreign policy establishment made such obvious strategic blunders:

"I think you're underestimating how much strategic sense the American foreign policy establishment has. So they're just so incompetent they didn't see that coming."

The Absence of Accountability​

"Look at what's happening on campuses, right? Here you have these students out there protesting, protesting a genocide, right? Many of the students who are out there protesting are Jewish. This cannot be emphasized enough. Many of them are Jewish. And all of a sudden, they're turned into raving anti-semites."

The Silencing of Dissent​

Mearsheimer describes how his own work with Stephen Walt was systematically suppressed:

"We originally wrote an article and we at one point thought the article would never be published... What invariably happens in these cases is that down at the lower levels of a journal or a newspaper, people will be interested in somebody writing something on the Israel lobby or writing a piece that's critical of Israel, but then as it filters up the chain of command and people at the top see it, they kill it."

Looking Forward: America's Declining Position​

The Consequences of Strategic Failure​

"It will be a devastating blow for us to lose the war in Ukraine. And when foreign policy elites get desperate, they do reckless things or they talk in reckless ways."

"Once this war becomes a frozen conflict, we're going to have to worry about it reescalating. Because the fact that it is a defeat for the West and that we have been humiliated will give people incentives to try to reverse the tide to rescue the situation."

The Broader Pattern​

"We are addicted to war... We believe that military force can solve all sorts of problems. We believe that the United States can use that military force to spread liberal democracy around the world. We can spread democracy at the end of a rifle barrel."

Key Insights​

  1. Ukraine represents a catastrophic strategic failure where NATO expansion provoked a war the West cannot win

  2. China's rise was deliberately facilitated by American policies based on delusional thinking about democratization through trade

  3. The Israel lobby exercises unprecedented influence over American foreign policy, consistently prioritizing Israeli interests over American ones

  4. Gaza represents active genocide enabled by American complicity and media silence

  5. The foreign policy establishment operates without accountability despite decades of strategic disasters

  6. America's global position is declining due to systematic policy failures and the creation of peer competitors

This interview reveals the depth of American strategic dysfunction and the capture of foreign policy by special interests, painting a stark picture of a superpower in decline due to its own elite failures.