John Mearsheimer debates Piers Morgan on the current Middle East war

I always feel like I need to offer an apology every time I praise Über-Realist John Mearsheimer.

Because his general “offensive realism” international-relations viewpoint always seems too cynical and simplistic somehow. But doggone it, he not only looks at the right factors in issues like the current Middle East war. He’s also an actual expert on Israeli foreign policy and the American politics of Israel. And he seems happy to play the role of public intellectual, without the kind of dumbing-down of content that is too often association with that role.(He ain’t no Jordan Peterson, in other words!)

About halfway through this interview¹, I almost started feeling sorry for Piers Morgan - almost – because he was talking stock war slogans and Mearsheimer was talking real-world foreign policy.

This screenshot gives a good summary of the general tone of the discussion. Piers Morgan: here’s the latest Israeli talking point, what about that, huh, huh? Mearsheimer: Are you deliberately offering silly straw-man arguments to be provocative, or are you really this clueless? (My summary characterization, not exact quotes.)

In the latter part of the interview, Piers turns to Ukraine and displays how little he seems to understand about the realities of that war. And there he takes an even more knee-jerk hawkish position that he does on Israel.

Mearsheimer patiently explains to him:

Look, your problem, Piers, is that you're living in the last months of 2022 when the Ukrainians were on a roll, and it looked like they were going to do very well against the Russians.

If you look at what happened in 2023 and what's happened now in 2024, the first nine months of this year, it's quite clear that the balance of power has shifted decisively in the Russians’ favor. And there is nothing we can do to rescue the situation. There are no magic weapons that we can give to the Ukrainians that are going to allow them to win this war.

They're going to lose the war. There's nothing we can do about that. You don't seem to understand that given the fact that there's nothing can do about it. It makes sense from a moral point of view to end the war as quickly as possible.

At the end, Piers tries to provoke him by claiming that what he’s talking about is totally immoral. Because he argues that as long as the Ukrainians want to keep fighting, the West is morally obligated to give Ukraine whatever weapons they want. “Give [Ukrainian President Zelenskyy] everything and let him win.”

Has this guy ever even read a book about an actual war? Does he really think that allies in a war normally give each other whatever one of the countries requests? Or is he just a product of the Murdoch press empire?

Mearsheimer doesn’t take the bait and responds:

I don't know what you're so upset about Pierce because the fact is the US government agrees with you. You and the US government and the West European governments and the east European governments are going to fight to the last Ukrainian. [Piers: “Good.”] And I think this is from a moral point of view and, from Ukraine's point of view, the wrong thing to do.

My favorite moment is when Piers tries out the braindead neocon argument that Hitler is on the border – as he always is in the neoconservatives’ imagination - and the West has to put everything into fighting him.

Like I said, I almost feel sorry for Piers on this one. Almost.

And I aspire to someday master Mearsheimer’s facial expression that says calmly, “Are you out of your frigging mind?”

1. "Morally Reprehensible!" John Mearsheimer On Israel, Hezbollah, Trump & Ukraine. Piers Morgan Uncensored YouTube channel 09/24/2024. (Accessed: 2024-25-09).