Thank you for your Substack, for joining Glenn and the Duran Duo. Credibility is a hot item these days as it is increasingly scarce. This is another vital conversation that leaves its audience wiser and confident in its rich content.
Just one point about Trump giving weapons to Ukraine while Obama did not which was mentioned in the video by Mr. Mearsheimer. Obama is often touted for not giving weapons to Ukraine, even though under his watch he backed the Ukrainian coup in 2014. With all the rhetoric that claimed Russia put Trump in office which the democrats used to delegitimize him and his presidency how can you say that he should be held totally culpable in this regard, since a refusal would be used to further claim he is no more then a Russian puppet?
IAEA: No trace of drones at the cooling tower in Zaporizhzhya After inspecting the nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhya, Ukraine, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has found no signs that it has been hit by drones.
The people from the IAEA also say that they consider it unlikely that the fire at the Russian-occupied facility started at the foot of the cooling tower.
A subject that I'd like to see developed is the attempted 'trump-proofing' of Project Ukraine: this idea that responsibility for Project Ukraine can be handed over to NATO rather than be US-led.
I'd have been interested in hearing JJM's opinion on how effective that 'smart move' might actually be. I think the idea seems to be that Trump/Vance will not be able to just passively let Project Ukraine die; they would instead have to actually sabotage it by interfering with NATO business.
How effective that 'trump-proofing' might be, or not be, should be of great speculative interest because if it is successfully ring-fenced by NATO it can literally become a permanent war, which is incredibly undemocratic as NATO effectively sits outside western 'democracies'; citizens have no opportunity to vote for any people who run NATO. Even US citizens are totally disenfranchised. Let's face it, If even President Trump can be neutralised, what chance have the rest of us got?
JJM has a tendency not to make points, or reveal personal opinions, but rather asks questions of others, which is a trait that presumably derives from his trying to get his students to think issues through, and arrive at the 'right' answer without him just telling them. Sometimes it would just be nice to hear his opinion, but on the other hand his deference is a nice personal quality to possess.
Excellent podcast and analysis, with a great trio of minds: Professor Mearsheimer, Professor Diesen, and Alexander Mercouris. I like that Dr. Mearshiemer was so engaged that he also asked Dr. Diesen and Mr. Mercouris insightful questions.
It’s clear to anyone who has been listening to John Mearsheimer that he’s been exactly correct in his assessment of the underlying causes of the war in Ukraine and he’s also exactly correct in his assessment as to how to bring that conflict to an end. It’s also clear that both John Mearsheimer and Steven Walt warned us by way of their book “The Israeli Lobby” as to the fact that by blindly following whatever the Israeli government’s short sighted, ilconceived objectives are would be “bad for the US and Bad for Israel”. What they warned the world about is playing out. It’s clear that the Biden administration should have nipped the escalation of violence and bullying on steroids of the Palestinians in Gaza in the bud before it started after 10/7/23. As a result of the short sighted, brutal nastiness perpetrated by Israel against the defenseless civilian population of Gaza and the other belligerent acts by the Israeli government in the form of assassinations of Hizbullah and Hamas leaders a wider regional war is becoming increasingly more likely. This is likely to be self defeating for the Israelis. I articulated exactly what Joe Biden should have done immediately after 10/7/23. When looking at the big picture, we as a species need to seriously change the way we conduct ourselves if we are going to survive into the 23rd century. - Without getting off topic, this is why I’ve developed a course which lays out the best way to think about the changes we need to make and how best to make them. - - As a kid I remember Walter Cronkite signing off on the CBS evening news with “and that’s the way it is” after a broadcast showing the horrors of the Vietnam war. It seemed incredible to me that only about 25 years after the horrors of the Second World War that the US was so amazingly foolish to be perpetrating atrocities in Southeast Asia. The same can be said of what we’re involved with now. It’s sickening. It’s truly hard to fathom. It was all avoidable. It will not end well.
I don’t agree that Russia has to take back Russian speaking Odesa by military force. Once a pro Russian government is established in Kiev a referendum can easily take place and this oblast could vote themselves into the Russian Federation without a shot being fired.
I’ve developed a “course” and it will be available to the public soon. This might sound a little crazy but it’s my opinion that my course is to humanity as John Mearsheimer’s theory of offensive realism is to international relations. Since I’m attempting to tackle the whole nine yards of what we’re up against it can’t be conveyed in the form of a simple theory. Given the fact that it covers a relatively wide array of topics it has to be conveyed in the form of a course. One of the many things that’s interesting about that which has been illuminated in my course is the fact that the people who end up at the top of our political systems tend to be narcissists. They tend to be narcissistic, “political animals”. In democracies they tend to be people who know how to manipulate the system so as to garner the most votes from the public. (Of course this is not the case with Kamala Harris since she has not actually been elected to an office higher than senator). And in the rough and tumble autocratic systems (like Russia and China) the leaders tend to be people who have a keen sense for the use of the system to gain power and maintain that power once it’s attained. At the end of the day we would be much better off enlisting the services of people who, while they might be forceful in the conveyance of their ideas, are also at their core empathetic, kind people. In addition to that set of characteristics it would also be very beneficial if these leaders were smart enough to listen to and take the advice of people like John Mearsheimer. We would be in a much better place if we had taken his advice on everything that he’s weighed in on. This includes his advice on both Ukraine and Israel. If one were to extrapolate the type of logic that John Mearsheimer uses in his analysis of international relations to the bigger picture we would be doing ourselves another big favor. This is the aim of my “course”.
I agree that many in the political arena are narcissistic to one degree or another, and of course narcissism covers a broad spectrum, and in certain cases even can be malignant. Are you saying in regard to Kamela Harris that due to her lack of political experience she wouldn't know how to manipulate the system to get votes? Also are you saying those that exert authoritarian power in their country are less narcissistic, and more empathic?
Well, my course basically starts off with an introduction which basically says that what I’ve come up with makes for the basis of a very good political platform for both the United States and for the world. It also makes for the basis for artificial intelligence’s operating system so that it is aligned with the long term most beneficial interests of the human race as a species. The first class of my course is a review of John Mearsheimer’s definition of a theory. The second class reviews what we as a species should be striving to achieve which is for everyone to be happy. This class reviews the Dalai Lama’s short talk on compassion and the TED Talk on the Harvard Study on Happiness. Happiness, both individually and collectively, is what we should be trying to achieve. The third class is a review of what we don’t want and that is to allow narcissists to run the show. This class consists of a video of M. Scott Peck talking about narcissism as being basically synonymous with evil, followed by a review of Frank Yoemans’ video titled “narcissists will be our undoing”, Brian Klaas’ Video on “why we choose bad leaders”, and Jason Stanley’s video on “fascism”. All of this is what we don’t want. The remainder of the course is geared toward the best ways to try to achieve what we should be trying to achieve and avoiding what we should be trying to avoid. (Part of that is a review of why it would be better to follow Isaac Asimov’s tactic of teaching rationality rather than superstition). The long and short of it is that as Isaac Asimov stated “we have the ability to write our own history - it’s just a matter as to whether we have the wisdom and will to write that history on the best way possible or if we are going to self destruct. So in answer to your question about narcissism most of the world’s top leaders are narcissists and this is not a good thing. I’ve studied just about everything there is to study about narcissism, so I know all about it. I didn’t mean to say that one system is more likely to result in a leader being more or less narcissistic than another. The bottom line is that under the DSM5 manual for psychiatrists there are 9 characteristics of narcissism and in addition one can be either an overt or covert narcissist. If you have 5 out of the nine characteristics you are considered to have narcissistic personality disorder NPD. That’s the gist of my “course” and in my humble opinion it makes a lot of sense. Whether anyone will pay any attention to it is questionable. But in my humble opinion that’s why we’re in so much trouble as a species and things aren’t looking too good. I’m a big fan of John Mearsheimer because he is the opposite of a narcissist. If we were smart as a species we would enlist the services of people like him to be our leaders. This is what my course is all about and it makes a lot of sense. And as crazy as it sounds, artificial intelligence needs to use my course as both its governor and sole ultimate objective or otherwise it will result in our undoing. - Thanks for your interest - I hope that clears things up!
Well, you certainly are an optimist in regard to making the world a better place. I do Ancestry and low and behold I come across a relative, a cousin to my grandfather whom I never knew since my grandfather died before I was born. My grandfather's cousin was Giuseppe Antonio Borgese, and I never heard his name mentioned growing up. I read one of his books, Marching Towards Goliath, and other things about him and I thought, God what an optimist. A mindset I do not have for the human species. A link to a brief summary of his perspective on things if you are interested . The summary ends with some of his thoughts and the last sentence reads, "Thus the destination which is in us, as it is inside the flock: of migratory birds, summons us to close the ranks and to spare one another; more than that, as was said, to “love one another”
You’re lucky to have scholars as ancestors. All of my ancestors were drunken ditch diggers. - What I would say to sum it up is that, at least for the international system and IR theory, John Mearsheimer is telling us what’s “going to happen” and I’m suggesting what we should at least “try to make happen”. Unfortunately he is exactly correct when he says “might makes right” in the international system. But I would argue, and I’m sure he would agree, as George Kennan argued that after world war 2, and after we made a series of horrendous mistakes in Vietnam, and especially during the unipolar moment, the US was in a prime position to lead by example. (This can be summed up with George Kennan’s interview with Charlie Rose which is on YouTube). Instead, because of the fact that Lyndon Johnson was a narcissist and George W. Bush was both a narcissist and not too bright, we continued to make bad situations much worse - here, there and everywhere. Our narcissistic leaders and short sighted stupidity has helped to manufacture the disastrous crisis in both Ukraine and Israel, both of which John Mearsheimer predicted would happen and told us how to avoid. And so basically to sum it up, what I’m suggesting should happen is possible but unfortunately not likely. And a result there are very dark clouds on the horizon. The first biggest and best step in trying to right the ship and get on the right side of history would to have leaders with a vision and some backbone to stand up to those people in positions of power and influence like the Israeli lobby in the US, the military industrial complex and what’s generally referred to as the “deep state” of which the blob is part. It’s my humble opinion that if the president of the United States were to stand up to these malevolent forces the majority of the American people would jump up and applaud. - And this is why I felt compelled to compile my “course” because it in and of itself is a guide, a roadmap, a playbook (whatever analogy you’d like to use) as to how best to wrap one’s mind around what we need to do to stand up to these malevolent forces and try to save ourselves from ourselves and save ourselves from artificial intelligence. - (I guess you might say I wanted to break the cycle of becoming just another drunken ditch digger and be more like your intellectual second cousin once removed).
I only found one scholar, the rest were master masons, both sides, and they were fortunate since the majority of people in Sicily at the time were peasants and their lowly status always defined them. It was a very classist society, and after Italy's unipolar moment, or unification, many Sicilians came to the US, since Italy basically sapped the life out of them with taxes and conscripting their young men into their military. Of course America let them in, but of course they had to deal with decades of prejudice, and down South they were even lynched. Many got sucked into WWI since those that preceded them from the north and west of Europe, a desirable lot, weren't called into service, and many if not most that served their adopted country are buried in a French cemetery with no one to visit their graves, and are no more then a name on a stone. That's how I look at history, piecemeal, personal, and never got into it on a level where one spoke of uni, or bi, or tri polar world. I thought Borgese and his one world order was nice, but totally implausible. What did we do with our unipolar moment that went from the 90's through 2 decades except destroy countries based on lies to service our needs and perhaps Israel's as well? That self serving mindset was really on display when Netanyahu arrived with his speech full of lies which met with thunderous applause for a man implementing a genocide, a man who would be behind bars if he wasn't.
It’s my opinion that we should try to identify what makes people truly happy and try to set that as a goal for everyone. The opposite of what makes people happy is nastiness and war. As a result we should enlist the services of leaders who do everything within their power to avoid nastiness and war.
Yeah, The Duran’s Alexander is one of my “go to” people re Ukraine.
Love the Duran! You and The Duran were my two first lifesaving buoys as the SMO began in 2022. There was no one else!
So glad you are making the rounds still. It bears repeating often. So many people still don’t get it!
Thank you for your Substack, for joining Glenn and the Duran Duo. Credibility is a hot item these days as it is increasingly scarce. This is another vital conversation that leaves its audience wiser and confident in its rich content.
Just one point about Trump giving weapons to Ukraine while Obama did not which was mentioned in the video by Mr. Mearsheimer. Obama is often touted for not giving weapons to Ukraine, even though under his watch he backed the Ukrainian coup in 2014. With all the rhetoric that claimed Russia put Trump in office which the democrats used to delegitimize him and his presidency how can you say that he should be held totally culpable in this regard, since a refusal would be used to further claim he is no more then a Russian puppet?
IAEA: No trace of drones at the cooling tower in Zaporizhzhya After inspecting the nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhya, Ukraine, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has found no signs that it has been hit by drones.
The people from the IAEA also say that they consider it unlikely that the fire at the Russian-occupied facility started at the foot of the cooling tower.
A subject that I'd like to see developed is the attempted 'trump-proofing' of Project Ukraine: this idea that responsibility for Project Ukraine can be handed over to NATO rather than be US-led.
I'd have been interested in hearing JJM's opinion on how effective that 'smart move' might actually be. I think the idea seems to be that Trump/Vance will not be able to just passively let Project Ukraine die; they would instead have to actually sabotage it by interfering with NATO business.
How effective that 'trump-proofing' might be, or not be, should be of great speculative interest because if it is successfully ring-fenced by NATO it can literally become a permanent war, which is incredibly undemocratic as NATO effectively sits outside western 'democracies'; citizens have no opportunity to vote for any people who run NATO. Even US citizens are totally disenfranchised. Let's face it, If even President Trump can be neutralised, what chance have the rest of us got?
JJM has a tendency not to make points, or reveal personal opinions, but rather asks questions of others, which is a trait that presumably derives from his trying to get his students to think issues through, and arrive at the 'right' answer without him just telling them. Sometimes it would just be nice to hear his opinion, but on the other hand his deference is a nice personal quality to possess.
Excellent podcast and analysis, with a great trio of minds: Professor Mearsheimer, Professor Diesen, and Alexander Mercouris. I like that Dr. Mearshiemer was so engaged that he also asked Dr. Diesen and Mr. Mercouris insightful questions.
It’s clear to anyone who has been listening to John Mearsheimer that he’s been exactly correct in his assessment of the underlying causes of the war in Ukraine and he’s also exactly correct in his assessment as to how to bring that conflict to an end. It’s also clear that both John Mearsheimer and Steven Walt warned us by way of their book “The Israeli Lobby” as to the fact that by blindly following whatever the Israeli government’s short sighted, ilconceived objectives are would be “bad for the US and Bad for Israel”. What they warned the world about is playing out. It’s clear that the Biden administration should have nipped the escalation of violence and bullying on steroids of the Palestinians in Gaza in the bud before it started after 10/7/23. As a result of the short sighted, brutal nastiness perpetrated by Israel against the defenseless civilian population of Gaza and the other belligerent acts by the Israeli government in the form of assassinations of Hizbullah and Hamas leaders a wider regional war is becoming increasingly more likely. This is likely to be self defeating for the Israelis. I articulated exactly what Joe Biden should have done immediately after 10/7/23. When looking at the big picture, we as a species need to seriously change the way we conduct ourselves if we are going to survive into the 23rd century. - Without getting off topic, this is why I’ve developed a course which lays out the best way to think about the changes we need to make and how best to make them. - - As a kid I remember Walter Cronkite signing off on the CBS evening news with “and that’s the way it is” after a broadcast showing the horrors of the Vietnam war. It seemed incredible to me that only about 25 years after the horrors of the Second World War that the US was so amazingly foolish to be perpetrating atrocities in Southeast Asia. The same can be said of what we’re involved with now. It’s sickening. It’s truly hard to fathom. It was all avoidable. It will not end well.
“prisoner of the only available system…” I know the feeling.
I don’t agree that Russia has to take back Russian speaking Odesa by military force. Once a pro Russian government is established in Kiev a referendum can easily take place and this oblast could vote themselves into the Russian Federation without a shot being fired.
I’ve developed a “course” and it will be available to the public soon. This might sound a little crazy but it’s my opinion that my course is to humanity as John Mearsheimer’s theory of offensive realism is to international relations. Since I’m attempting to tackle the whole nine yards of what we’re up against it can’t be conveyed in the form of a simple theory. Given the fact that it covers a relatively wide array of topics it has to be conveyed in the form of a course. One of the many things that’s interesting about that which has been illuminated in my course is the fact that the people who end up at the top of our political systems tend to be narcissists. They tend to be narcissistic, “political animals”. In democracies they tend to be people who know how to manipulate the system so as to garner the most votes from the public. (Of course this is not the case with Kamala Harris since she has not actually been elected to an office higher than senator). And in the rough and tumble autocratic systems (like Russia and China) the leaders tend to be people who have a keen sense for the use of the system to gain power and maintain that power once it’s attained. At the end of the day we would be much better off enlisting the services of people who, while they might be forceful in the conveyance of their ideas, are also at their core empathetic, kind people. In addition to that set of characteristics it would also be very beneficial if these leaders were smart enough to listen to and take the advice of people like John Mearsheimer. We would be in a much better place if we had taken his advice on everything that he’s weighed in on. This includes his advice on both Ukraine and Israel. If one were to extrapolate the type of logic that John Mearsheimer uses in his analysis of international relations to the bigger picture we would be doing ourselves another big favor. This is the aim of my “course”.
I agree that many in the political arena are narcissistic to one degree or another, and of course narcissism covers a broad spectrum, and in certain cases even can be malignant. Are you saying in regard to Kamela Harris that due to her lack of political experience she wouldn't know how to manipulate the system to get votes? Also are you saying those that exert authoritarian power in their country are less narcissistic, and more empathic?
Well, my course basically starts off with an introduction which basically says that what I’ve come up with makes for the basis of a very good political platform for both the United States and for the world. It also makes for the basis for artificial intelligence’s operating system so that it is aligned with the long term most beneficial interests of the human race as a species. The first class of my course is a review of John Mearsheimer’s definition of a theory. The second class reviews what we as a species should be striving to achieve which is for everyone to be happy. This class reviews the Dalai Lama’s short talk on compassion and the TED Talk on the Harvard Study on Happiness. Happiness, both individually and collectively, is what we should be trying to achieve. The third class is a review of what we don’t want and that is to allow narcissists to run the show. This class consists of a video of M. Scott Peck talking about narcissism as being basically synonymous with evil, followed by a review of Frank Yoemans’ video titled “narcissists will be our undoing”, Brian Klaas’ Video on “why we choose bad leaders”, and Jason Stanley’s video on “fascism”. All of this is what we don’t want. The remainder of the course is geared toward the best ways to try to achieve what we should be trying to achieve and avoiding what we should be trying to avoid. (Part of that is a review of why it would be better to follow Isaac Asimov’s tactic of teaching rationality rather than superstition). The long and short of it is that as Isaac Asimov stated “we have the ability to write our own history - it’s just a matter as to whether we have the wisdom and will to write that history on the best way possible or if we are going to self destruct. So in answer to your question about narcissism most of the world’s top leaders are narcissists and this is not a good thing. I’ve studied just about everything there is to study about narcissism, so I know all about it. I didn’t mean to say that one system is more likely to result in a leader being more or less narcissistic than another. The bottom line is that under the DSM5 manual for psychiatrists there are 9 characteristics of narcissism and in addition one can be either an overt or covert narcissist. If you have 5 out of the nine characteristics you are considered to have narcissistic personality disorder NPD. That’s the gist of my “course” and in my humble opinion it makes a lot of sense. Whether anyone will pay any attention to it is questionable. But in my humble opinion that’s why we’re in so much trouble as a species and things aren’t looking too good. I’m a big fan of John Mearsheimer because he is the opposite of a narcissist. If we were smart as a species we would enlist the services of people like him to be our leaders. This is what my course is all about and it makes a lot of sense. And as crazy as it sounds, artificial intelligence needs to use my course as both its governor and sole ultimate objective or otherwise it will result in our undoing. - Thanks for your interest - I hope that clears things up!
Well, you certainly are an optimist in regard to making the world a better place. I do Ancestry and low and behold I come across a relative, a cousin to my grandfather whom I never knew since my grandfather died before I was born. My grandfather's cousin was Giuseppe Antonio Borgese, and I never heard his name mentioned growing up. I read one of his books, Marching Towards Goliath, and other things about him and I thought, God what an optimist. A mindset I do not have for the human species. A link to a brief summary of his perspective on things if you are interested . The summary ends with some of his thoughts and the last sentence reads, "Thus the destination which is in us, as it is inside the flock: of migratory birds, summons us to close the ranks and to spare one another; more than that, as was said, to “love one another”
Well, narcissists will have a problem with that.
https://www.thefederalist.eu/site/index.php/en/federalism-in-the-history-of-thought/2275-giuseppe-antonio-borghese
You’re lucky to have scholars as ancestors. All of my ancestors were drunken ditch diggers. - What I would say to sum it up is that, at least for the international system and IR theory, John Mearsheimer is telling us what’s “going to happen” and I’m suggesting what we should at least “try to make happen”. Unfortunately he is exactly correct when he says “might makes right” in the international system. But I would argue, and I’m sure he would agree, as George Kennan argued that after world war 2, and after we made a series of horrendous mistakes in Vietnam, and especially during the unipolar moment, the US was in a prime position to lead by example. (This can be summed up with George Kennan’s interview with Charlie Rose which is on YouTube). Instead, because of the fact that Lyndon Johnson was a narcissist and George W. Bush was both a narcissist and not too bright, we continued to make bad situations much worse - here, there and everywhere. Our narcissistic leaders and short sighted stupidity has helped to manufacture the disastrous crisis in both Ukraine and Israel, both of which John Mearsheimer predicted would happen and told us how to avoid. And so basically to sum it up, what I’m suggesting should happen is possible but unfortunately not likely. And a result there are very dark clouds on the horizon. The first biggest and best step in trying to right the ship and get on the right side of history would to have leaders with a vision and some backbone to stand up to those people in positions of power and influence like the Israeli lobby in the US, the military industrial complex and what’s generally referred to as the “deep state” of which the blob is part. It’s my humble opinion that if the president of the United States were to stand up to these malevolent forces the majority of the American people would jump up and applaud. - And this is why I felt compelled to compile my “course” because it in and of itself is a guide, a roadmap, a playbook (whatever analogy you’d like to use) as to how best to wrap one’s mind around what we need to do to stand up to these malevolent forces and try to save ourselves from ourselves and save ourselves from artificial intelligence. - (I guess you might say I wanted to break the cycle of becoming just another drunken ditch digger and be more like your intellectual second cousin once removed).
I only found one scholar, the rest were master masons, both sides, and they were fortunate since the majority of people in Sicily at the time were peasants and their lowly status always defined them. It was a very classist society, and after Italy's unipolar moment, or unification, many Sicilians came to the US, since Italy basically sapped the life out of them with taxes and conscripting their young men into their military. Of course America let them in, but of course they had to deal with decades of prejudice, and down South they were even lynched. Many got sucked into WWI since those that preceded them from the north and west of Europe, a desirable lot, weren't called into service, and many if not most that served their adopted country are buried in a French cemetery with no one to visit their graves, and are no more then a name on a stone. That's how I look at history, piecemeal, personal, and never got into it on a level where one spoke of uni, or bi, or tri polar world. I thought Borgese and his one world order was nice, but totally implausible. What did we do with our unipolar moment that went from the 90's through 2 decades except destroy countries based on lies to service our needs and perhaps Israel's as well? That self serving mindset was really on display when Netanyahu arrived with his speech full of lies which met with thunderous applause for a man implementing a genocide, a man who would be behind bars if he wasn't.
It’s my opinion that we should try to identify what makes people truly happy and try to set that as a goal for everyone. The opposite of what makes people happy is nastiness and war. As a result we should enlist the services of leaders who do everything within their power to avoid nastiness and war.
We’d rather invite Netanyahu to speak before congress…