Merry Xmas one and all. Yesterday on Xmas Eve ‘offensive realist‘ Professor John Mearsheimer met up with Judge Andrew Napolitano on his Judging Freedom show for a half-hour discussion of US foreign policy – if that’s not too grand a term – under its forty-seventh president, second in a row to display signs of dementia.
In publicising the event, John offered this:
The Judge and I talked about: 1) the appalling erosion of free speech in the West, 2) President Trump’s renewed interest in Manifest Destiny — focusing this time on conquering Greenland and making it part of the United States, 3) inflicting massive pain on the civilian populations in Cuba and Venezuela for no good reason, 4) US piracy on the high seas, and the related danger of provoking conflict with China, 5) the Israel-firster Mark Levin’s claim that Trump is our first Jewish president, 6) the consequences of the growing hostility toward Israel inside the Republican Party, and 7) Prime Minister Netanyahu’s sixth meeting with Trump since he moved into the White House, which appears to be about convincing the president that it is time to attack Iran again.
2025 has been a bad year, but there is little reason to think 2026 will be an improvement.
It opens with the EU, its executive ever more autocratic under Ursula the Terrible, sanctioning former Swiss Army Colonel Jacques Baud, featured by me in the early stages of the war and guilty of The Wrong Take On Ukraine. It ends with why Bibi is unlikely to get the tangerine’s backing for another strike on Iran – might an Israeli false flag op shift the mood in the White House? – in his sixth meeting with Trump in less than a year.
In between is the usual Judge ‘n John mix of factuals, erudition, video clips of the clowns, and ably reasoned argument. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I disagree with John on Israel running US foreign policy; a view he states for the umpteenth time around the 23:00 mark. It derives from a worldview which for all its strengths fails to descend to sufficient granularity – one giveaway being his repeated use of “we” – when speaking of America’s national interest.
In other words, a worldview which fails to reckon with class.
Those who say Israel rules the US are not all antisemites. Some, like John Mearsheimer, I take seriously despite seeing them as wrong on this matter while another is Jeffrey Sachs, an outstanding Jewish analyst. And, it must be conceded, Brian Berletic’s words …
When people tell me Israel controls the US, I ask how. They tell me AIPAC. But the arms industry spends far more. So do the Banks, Big Pharma, Big Agriculture. A cartel of industries fund think tanks producing papers which become policies and bills that the media sell to the American people. That’s how it works and the Israel lobbyists are a tiny fraction of that. if Israel truly controlled the US, all its forces would be in the Middle East. But they’re also in Ukraine and South Asia because the US is waging proxy war in all three.
… blur the fact of an Israel lobby embedded in Banks, Big Pharma, Big Agri etc, making the distinction less tidy than he implies. No one should doubt the power of the lobby but, and this is the point, no one should doubt either that it derives in the last analysis from the alignment, for reasons given here and here, of US deep state agendas with those of a Greater Israel. The ‘Jewish State’ has every reason to fear that, should this alignment weaken for any reason, its viability as an ethno-supremacist entity will cease. Such is the recurring nightmare – ask Ian Paisley – of settler colonies down the ages: of being cut loose before they are ready, which for Israel is never, by the mother ship.
Road to WW3. Part 1: Iran
I’ve said before and I’ll say it again that baby should not be thrown out with bathwater. Once we allow for that flaw in ‘offensive realism’, and to lesser extent in the judge’s libertarianism, both men routinely offer analyses vastly superior to those of the West’s corporate media. This one is no exception.
I’ve said before and will say it again – have yourself a merry Xmas one and all.
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What will be interesting is to see how the EU reacts to the eventual Russian victory and the ‘peace’ settlement, which will not be to the EU’s liking. Already there is a pronounced split – at first only with Hungary, but now including Slovakia and Czechia. The dispute over Russias frozen funds introduced Italy, France and Belgium into the ranks of dissidents. Will this be progressive, or will they lapse back into subservience? Will that even be possible in a post war attempt to regain credibility? Will the EU fracture or dissolve? Will U vdL and Kallas be indited for treason or corruption or both? If the EU collapses will NATO follow, or will Trump collapse NATO unilaterally? As usual, there are more questions than answers, as someone once sang. But it will be a bloggers paradise. Can’t wait.
(I can’t bring myself to think about Palestine in this context – too heartbreaking).
What looks set to become an abject humiliation for Europe, including but not confined to the EU, is the real prospect of the US grabbing Greenland. Easy to dismiss as more Trump braggadocio but from a US realpolitik perspective it makes sense as unipolarity devolves to the ‘spheres of interest’ of three world powers. There’s nothing Europe can do about it and, while Russia will have to share Arctic mineral wealth, she can live with that and will not be minded to rescue Denmark after decades of lies, insults, broken promises and flat out theft from Europe.
It didn’t have to be this way. Europe’s capitals, London and Copenhagen included, chose after the fall of the USSR to lead peoples and economies – for reasons given here – into US vassalhood instead of pursuing independent policies to allow robust but respectful relations with China, Russia and, yes, a USA which now treats them with well deserved contempt.
Our liberal media imply all will be better once Trump is gone but hard material realities show that to be yet more idealist vacuity. For all my caveats about the prof, a dose of his ‘offensive realism’ at Le Monde, Spiegel and Guardian wouldn’t go amiss.