Welcome to Pushback. I'm Aaron Mate. Joining me is John Meersheimer. He is R. Wendell Harrison,

distinguished service professor of political science at the University of Chicago, now writing on

Substack. Professor Mearsheimer, thanks so much for joining me. It's my pleasure to be here, Aaron.

I want to get your response to this from the Wall Street Journal.

This just came out.

And it says this about the state of Ukraine's widely hyped counteroffensive and the Western efforts to encourage it.

It says this, quote, when Ukraine launched its big counteroffensive

this spring, Western military officials knew Keeve didn't have all the training or weapons

from shells to warplanes that it needed to dislodge Russian forces. But they hoped

Ukrainian courage and resourcefulness would carry the day.

They haven't, unquote.

So that's from the Wall Street Journal, basically admitting that the West pushed Ukraine into

this counteroffensive, knowing that Ukraine did not have what it needed to come anywhere

close to success.

I'm just wondering, having long predicted that this U.S. effort to drive Ukraine into NATO,

turn Ukraine into a NATO proxy would lead to Ukraine's decimation, your response to this

candidate mission in this establishment news outlet.

Well, it seems to me that anybody who knows anything about military tactics and strategy

had to understand that there was hardly any chance that the Ukrainian counteroffensive would

succeed.

I mean, there were just so many factors that were

arrayed against the Ukrainians that it was almost impossible for them to make any significant

...