John Mearsheimer

And my sense is that Putin is a straight shooter.

He's also very knowledgeable about history, and he has simple theories in his head about how the world works.

And I think he would level with you, and all you would have to do is just, you know, figure out what all the right questions are.

And that would not be hard to do, right?

You could ask him, why was he so foolish?

For example, why was he so foolish as to trust Poroshenko, Hollande, and Merkel?

In the Minsk Accords, you know, why, after his famous talk at Munich in 2007, where he made it clear that he was so unhappy with the West, did he continue to, you know, in a very important way, trust the West?

Why didn't he mobilize the Russian military before late September 2022?

You know, once the negotiations that we were talking about before involving Istanbul and Naftali Bennett, once they broke down, you know, why didn't he immediately mobilize more of the Russian population to fight the war?

Just all sorts of questions like that.

And then you could ask him questions about, you know, where he sees this one headed.

What's the best strategy for Russia if...

The Ukrainians will not agree to neutrality, right?

You know, people like John Mearsheimer say you'll probably take close to half of Ukraine.

Is that true?

Does it make sense to take Odessa?

Yeah.

I mean, one really important question that I would ask him is if the United States had basically not driven you into the arms of the Chinese, if there had been no war over Ukraine and the United States and its European allies had gone to considerable lengths to create some sort of security architecture in Europe that resulted in you

Vladimir Putin having good relations with Ukraine.

What would your relations with China be?