John J. Mearsheimer

And that's why people should take Karaganov's warnings so seriously.

Why?

Well, let me just start by reminding you that in his first term when he came into office, he had two goals, two major foreign policy goals.

One was to end engagement with China and move to a policy of containment.

And he was very successful at that.

But he also wanted to improve relations with Russia, with Putin in particular, and do everything he could to peel the Chinese and the Russians away from each other and get the Russians on our side of the ledger.

That was his goal.

But he was undermined by Russiagate.

It's very important to understand that.

So when Trump leaves office in 2021, relations between Russia and the United States have hardly improved at all.

Now, when he comes into office in January of 2025, at that point in time, his goal is to do in the second term with regard to Russia what he did in the first term, okay?

So he starts out on the right foot, and lots of people, me included,

believe he has all the right instincts and that he's in a position where he can significantly improve relations with Russia, which would certainly be in our interest and maybe even end the Ukraine war, which would be in everybody's interest, including Ukraine's interest.

but the problem that he runs into is twofold first of all he's ham-fisted when it comes to diplomacy he's just not good at the art of the deal at least at the diplomatic level almost yeah at all there's just no question about that at this point in time so he fails to shut down the war and of course he's facing huge resistance from inside the deep state

Because there are lots of people inside the deep state who don't want to reach an accommodation with the Russians.

And there are lots of people on the outside as well in the general foreign policy establishment who don't want to reach an accommodation with the Russians.

So that's point number one.

But point number two is he then gets deeply involved in the Middle East.

especially with the Iran war.

And in a very important way, he's now so consumed with Iran that he has hardly any time to pay attention to what's going on in Ukraine.