John Mearsheimer: Trump’s Mideast morass deepens - YouTube

Sunday, September 20, 2026 12:31 AM

Friends + Interlocutors,




Posted today, here’s another informative, up-to-the-minute discussion between Tom Switzer and John Mearsheimer. I don’t think you can get a better analysis on the subject of the Middle East and Ukraine wars. It starts off with the Houthis and Saudi Arabia and ends up with Ukraine.

Americans are more fixated with the Middle East and Iran, while Europeans leaders are focused on Russia and Ukraine. Americans don’t see how Ukraine really affects them, whereas Trump’s Israeli-inspired Iran war is affecting them directly and immediately in terms of the price of gasoline and inflation.

Both conflicts were entirely unnecessary and avoidable, having been ignited by the foreign policy machinations of the Neocon/Neoliberal establishment in Washington some years ago. The whole world is now paying the price. It remains to be seen if the Europeans will be so foolish as to set off another European war over Ukraine.

Tom Switzer writes an introduction:

The most revealing development in Donald Trump’s war with Iran may not be taking place in Tehran at all. It is happening hundreds of kilometres away, on Yemen’s Red Sea coast. In the past week, the Iran-backed Houthis have seized strategically important territory across Yemen’s Red Sea coast. From there, they have greater capacity to threaten shipping through the Red Sea and, crucially, Saudi Arabia’s ability to export oil.

There are reports that the Trump administration is considering a large-scale operation against the Houthis. But how can the United States defeat the Houthis?

Plus, the latest on the Russia-Ukraine standoff. At what point does military attrition become a threat not merely to Ukraine’s army but to the viability of the Ukrainian state itself?

John Mearsheimer is professor of political science at the University of Chicago and the author of The Tragedy of Great Power Politics.

Patrick
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