Another excellent analysis of the Putin-Trump summit

17 August 2025, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q31nwnbNMmo

John Mearsheimer, who is acceptable to the Establishment because he doesn’t say it’s evil but only “deluded” amd “mistaken,” did an otherwise excellent interview by Saagar Enjeti and Ryan Grim on August 17th, titled “John Mearsheimer BREAKS DOWN Trump Putin Summit”. He said

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I think the fundamental mistake, Ryan, is that the vast majority of people in

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the foreign policy establishment refuse to accept the argument that the Russians see Ukraine in NATO uh as an existential

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threat. [NO! It IS an existential threat to them. They aren’t just “imagining” this.] It it’s an existential threat for Putin and the people around him [NO! It is an existential threat to all of the people in Russia.]. And

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given that it’s an existential threat, they are willing to fight a war, a major

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league war [He’s talking here about WW3, but doesn’t mention it.], to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO or having security

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guarantees from the West. We can’t get it through our thick skulls here in the

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West that Russia views Ukraine and NATO as an existential threat.

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That is (with the exceptions I’ve noted) entirely true, but what it hides is also important, and I shall start here by focusing on what Mearsheimer hides, and why. Notice in his statement, that he is implicitly assuming that both in Russia and in the United States and its colonies (‘allies’), the Government truly DOES represent its public (the electorate). But that assumption has been scientifically, empirically, PROVEN to be a FALSE statement regarding the United States — that its Government actually represents, instead, ONLY the richest .01% of the richest .01% of the U.S. population, and MAINLY just the billionaires. This is the reason why Mearsheimer is acceptable to the Establishment: he hides the fact that his own country’s Government is only a FAKE DEMOCRACY. This, for example, is the reason why, after U.S. President Barack Obama’s Adminisration grabbed hold of Ukraine in February 2014, and very violently overthrew that country’s committedly neutral Government, and replaced it by a rabidly anti-Russian one, the U.S. Establishment’s Council of Foreign Relations’s (CFR’s) Foreign Affairs journal, on 18 August 2014 (its September/October issue), headlined Mearsheimer’s article, “Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault: The Liberal Delusions That Provoked Putin” and he presented The West’s (alleged) blunders. The journal’s next (November/December 2014) issue responded to it with “Faulty Powers: Who Started the Ukraine Crisis?”, the neocon Michael McFaul’s and the neocon Stephen Sestanovich’s critiques of Mearsheimer’s critiques of the U.S. Government. McFaul’s article said that Mearsheimer’s essay personalized to nations’ leaders what are actuallly national issues, and that “Russian foreign policy did not grow more aggressive [note that he wasn’t saying “more defensive”: he was assuming that Russia is “aggressive”]; it [Russia’s foreign policy] changed as a result of Russian internal political dynamics.” McFaul ASSUMED that the reason for Russia becoming ‘more aggressive’ wasn’t that America’s coup in Ukraine was posing a mortal danger to Russia’s national security, but just some “Russian internal political dynamics.” Sestanovich’s article said that, ever since at least 1993, “Mearsheimer was already worrying about a war between Russia and Ukraine, which he said would be a disaster’ [NOT an ‘opportunity’ — such as for those two and their fellow-necons to supposedly free Ukraine from Russia].” Sestanovich said that “the mere fact that Russia has a leader bent on conquest is not by itself an indictment of the United States.” He was, like McFaul, lying to assume that the aggressor in the Ukraine matter is Russia instead of the U.S. However, Mearsheimer, for his part, also IGNORED AMERICA’S AGGRESSION in the Ukraine matter, just as much as his critics McFaul and Sestanovich did. He didn’t attribute America’s wrong behaviors that he described, as their being AGGRESSIONS against Russia, but instead as their being ERRORS. This is how stupidly the ‘respectable’ political ‘scientists’ debate such issues: they deceive, on all sides of the issue that they debate. Mearsheimer unfortunately belongs in this league. So, his 2014 article that McFaul nd Sestanovich attacked, closed by saying:

The United States and its European allies now face a choice on Ukraine. They can continue their current policy, which will exacerbate hostilities with Russia and devastate Ukraine in the process — a scenario in which everyone [except the billionaires who control and profit from America’s armaments-makers etc. — but he ignores them] would come out a loser. Or they can switch gears and work to create a prosperous but neutral Ukraine, one that does not threaten Russia and allows the West to repair its relations with Moscow. With that approach, all sides win.

Is he really so stupid as to ignore all of the U.S. Government’s (and its think tanks’) statements, that the goal of America’s Russia-policy is to defeat Russia — definitely NOT the “win-win” intention and intended result that Mearsheimer implies that it is? I doubt it. Far likelier is that he knows that if he were to be honest about the U.S. Government’s intentions, he would be written off and no longer pumped by the Establishment that he keeps blaming for its ‘incompetence’ — even while he benefits indirectly FROM them. His disingenuousness repels me, but occasionally he says things that include real insights. For example: the close I just quoted to his 2014 article was prophetic of exactly the situation that now exists regarding the war in Ukraine, that war which Obama — VERY INTENTIONALLY started in 2014.

His present analysis of the Trump-Putin summit likewise contains some authentic insights; and that is why I recommend this interview of Mearsheimer, by Grim and Enjeti.

However, I also ought to point out that Mearsheimer subliminally encourages the neocon U.S.-supremacist ideology; and here is a typical example of this from one of his speeches to alums at the University of Chicago, on 25 September 2015, “Why is Ukraine the West’s Fault? Featuring John Mearsheimer”:

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This is all about promoting democracy in Ukraine and in other places. As you all know, the United

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States runs around the world trying to topple regimes and put in their place democratically

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elected regimes, and for almost all of you, me included, it’s hard to be against promoting

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democracy, we all love democracy, but if you’re Vladimir Putin or if you’re part of the leadership

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in Beijing, when the United States talks about democracy promotion, that means toppling your

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regime, and you won’t be surprised to hear this, they don’t like that in Beijing and they

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don’t like that in Moscow. Right, they do not like that.

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So, it’s important, when listening to a speaker, or reading a writer, who is backed BY the Establishment (that is the Deep State — the country’s billionaires), their basic message is pro-Establishment, and especially so the more deeply that you understand what their message actually is. They are NOT anti-Establishment, even when they PRETEND to be.

So, with regard to someone like Mearsheimer, my recommendation includes that warning. Like I said: he hides the fact that his own country’s Government is only a FAKE DEMOCRACY. (I have here stated what I think would be a REAL democracy.)

NOTE: This is the third in a series that I am doing about the Putin-Trump summit. Here were the first two:

“The Reason for the Trump-Putin Summit’s Puzzling End”

“See this brilliant analysis of the Trump-Putin summit!”

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.