In Gaza and Ukraine: US and Europe fail
Months have passed since Donald Trump became President of the US, and political analysts and observers anticipated the termination of conflict, chaos and devastation in Gaza and Ukraine, but no peace has so far materialised. At the same time, the world has been attempting to tackle the ramifications of the trade wars President Trump has been waging on several fronts, wars that are giving birth to some new bi- or multi-polar global order that promises to replace the uni-polar American system that has been leading the world since WWII. I wrote in detail on this topic in my last editorial, under the title 'US declines… New world order arises'. I also shed light on the rise of China and the BRICS alliance which have together gone above and beyond the US and its European allies in their G7 alliance.
One cannot help wondering why a resolution of the conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine is staggering. American political scientist and international relations scholar John Mearsheimer discussed this very matter on 22 May with Andrew Napolitano on the latter's podcast Judging Freedom. Professor Mearsheimer is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor at University of Chicago. Following are excerpts from the interview:
Judge Napolitano: Do you believe the Western press about the rift between President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu?
Professor Mearsheimer: 'I don't think there's a serious rift. I think there's no question that Trump wants to do a number of things in the Middle East that Netanyahu does not want him to do. But the question is whether Trump is willing to get tough enough with Netanyahu. The two issues here are: Iran where Trump wants to cut a deal and Netanyahu is basically making it impossible for him to cut a deal. Then the other issue is Gaza where I believe that the Trump administration would like to put an end to what's going on in terms of the genocide in Gaza, but Netanyahu and the lobby won't let him.'
Secretary General of the UN for Humanitarian and Relief Affairs Tom Fletcher said earlier this week that 14,000 Gazan babies would die of starvation or malnutrition by the end of this week… So it's clear that the Israelis are in favour of the starvation of children and are using it as a weapon with which to conquer Gaza.
'It's not just these particular leaders who support this policy, in the side of Israel you hardly see any protests among the Israeli public regarding this genocidal policy. It's truly shocking! And when you look at what the Western elites are doing, they're hardly doing anything to prevent it. It's just truly amazing! It's sick! I don't know what else to say. I didn't think anything like this would ever happen, but it is happening.'
Switching gears, what is your take on the Trump Putin phone call? Do the Americans understand the Russian mentality?
'I don't know if it really is necessary to understand the Russian mentality. Common sense tells you that if the Russians are winning on the battlefield and a ceasefire will give the Ukrainians an opportunity to regroup and improve their position on the battlefield, the Russians would be nuts to agree to a ceasefire. And the Russians have made it clear that they're not going to agree to a ceasefire. They have said this for months now, they keep saying: 'We won't accept a ceasefire until all the elements of a peace agreement are in place'. But we refuse to listen to them…. My sense is that, after Monday's conversation between Trump and Putin, Trump understands that calling for a ceasefire is fruitless.'
How close is Ukraine to the end game?
'There's no question when you look at what's happening on the battlefield that every week the situation deteriorates, and the Ukrainians surely know that at some point in time all that weaponry and all that money that was in the Biden pipeline is going to evaporate. And Trump has made it clear that he's not going to go back to Congress and do what Biden did before him. So not only are the Ukrainians going to continue to lose, the situation's going to deteriorate further. It's hard to imagine the Ukrainians hanging on until the end of this year.'
Why is Ukraine the West's fault?
'It's very simple; the Russians made it clear when we first announced that Ukraine was going to become a member of NATO in April 2008, that they viewed this as an 'existential threat'… Putin told us in April 2008 that he would wreck Ukraine before he would let it come into NATO. Nevertheless the West, and here we're talking mainly about the United States, continued to push forward to bring Ukraine into NATO. In February 2014, a crisis broke out and what did the United States do? It simply doubled down… We continued to push hard, and in February 2022, the war that is now taking place broke out. Therefore we [the US] are principally responsible because we push NATO expansion into Ukraine, which is the major cause of this war.'
To what end did we push NATO expansion into Ukraine?
'Well, we thought we could get away with it and we wanted to create a NATO that covered all of Europe right up to Russia's border. We had gotten away with the 2004 expansion, included the Baltic States and we thought we could do the same with Ukraine… We thought it was perfectly acceptable to have Ukraine and Georgia and other countries that were part of the former Soviet Union in NATO.'
Once came this attitude that we could use Ukraine as a battering ram with which to drive Vladimir Putin from office, this Victoria Nuland theory, where did it come from?
'I think that we believed that once the war started we could defeat the Russians. If you look at the three months before the war started, that is December 2021, January 2022 and most of February 2022, it's very clear that the Russians were trying to cut a deal with us and to avoid war. We did virtually nothing to avoid a war.
'The war starts and the Russians immediately reach out to the Ukrainians to talk about negotiations to end the war, the Russians want to end it, the Ukrainians agree. The famous negotiations in Istanbul start, and as you well know who ends those negotiations? It's not the Ukrainians, not the Russians; it's the Americans and the British in the form of Boris Johnson who comes in and tells the Ukrainians that they should walk away from the negotiations… We thought we could defeat the Russians, this is why we didn't try to prevent the war, and why once it started we didn't go along with Putin's efforts to stop the war. We thought we had the Russians and Putin right where we wanted them… Furthermore economic sanctions would deliver a really staggering blow to the Russians, and that combination of economic sanctions plus defeat on the battlefield would knock the Russians out of the ranks of the great powers… Of course we were categorically wrong, one could say catastrophically wrong, and the people who are paying the price for our foolishness are the Ukrainians.'
Truth on the ground is that President Putin was able to successfully lead Russia politically and militarily, and was able to turn the economic sanctions into wins when he opened new fronts with China and his new allies. This jeopardised the plans of the US and its European allies.
But what is the hope for the future of the conflict in Ukraine? One wonders along with Judge Napolitano. According to Professor Mearsheimer, there is no hope in negotiations owing to the firm conditions that Russia has put in place, including Ukraine's neutrality and its never joining the EU nor NATO, in addition to an international recognition of the affiliation of Crimea and the four oblasts to Russia. Given these conditions, it looks like Russia is sitting in the driver's seat and it would not trust any negotiations. 'I think Trump is going to walk away, and this one's going to be settled on the battlefield,' Professor Mearsheimer said.
Watani International
6 June 2025 Comments
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