The Inevitability of War | Prof. John Mearsheimer

John speaks with Prof. John Mearsheimer about the nature of political realism and the fight for global power.

#Russia #Ukraine #America #China

John J. Mearsheimer is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, where he has taught since 1982. He graduated from West Point in 1970 and then served five years as an officer in the U.S. Air Force. He then started graduate school in political science at Cornell University in 1975. He received his Ph.D. in 1980. He spent the 1979-1980 academic year as a research fellow at the Brookings Institution, and was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University’s Centre for International Affairs from 1980 to 1982. During the 1998-1999 academic year, he was the Whitney H. Shepardson Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

His recent and most notable works include, "The Tragedy of Great Power Politics" (2001), "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" (2007), and "Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities" (2018).
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Conversations feature John Anderson, former Deputy Prime Minister of Australia, interviewing the world's foremost thought leaders about today's pressing social, cultural and political issues.

John believes proper, robust dialogue is necessary if we are to maintain our social strength and cohesion. As he puts it; "You cannot get good public policy out of a bad public debate."

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John Mearsheimer Socials

[MotherEarth]

People don’t want war, only politicians

[jespee]

“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”
― Sun Tzu

[cocoacrispy]

As always, what gets you in trouble are the things you think you know that you actually don't.

[pwcrabb]

Misleading title.
Inevitability is very different from his statement of non-trivial probability.

[Jan-qgiy]

Short and Brilliant!! So only one minor caveat: confrontation *not **_"decades ahead, "_* but *within this decade, * I'm afraid.

[cherubimcherubim]

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter said the United States has been at peace for only 16 of its 242 years as a nation, calling the country "the most warlike nation in the history of the world." From directly launching wars, backing proxy wars, stirring up inter-state hostilities to engineering "color revolutions, " the United States has been involved in most of the major warfares or military conflicts since WWII.

These wars and conflicts have devastated the invaded countries, killed millions of civilians, and displaced tens of millions.William Jones, Washington bureau chief of the U.S. publication Executive Intelligence Review, has said that Russia's main concern about NATO eastward expansion has never been heeded by the United States, "which is only interested in maintaining its hegemonic status in Europe, and which has been steadily retreating from that collaborative policy which the West committed itself to after the Cold War."

[Ozgipsy]

Mearsheimer has been a frightening conversation, John. He sees the world as Kissinger saw it, very strategic.

[themindsojourner]

Seeing how desperate the US for having a war in Asia is very disgusting

[samanthajones]

The faster the world de-dollars, the faster we can avoid WWIII.

[ngg]

Let’s bring the freedom of navigation to Hawaii Coast of California the Caribbean Long Island Gulf of Mexico. Let China Russia hold military manoeuvre there

[iamjordonbarnett]

You should get John and Peter Zeihan on a podcast to discuss this!

[denislim]

Let us not forget that John's is part of the US establishment whose perspective is US hegemony.

[npc]

War can be avoided if the dollar crashes.

[edwardlim]

Seems like Mearsheimer is suggesting it's ok to have nuclear war in open seas..

[Opressed]

You Phd's can elaborate as much as you want. At the end of the day, nobody knows sht about what's going to happen

[jacobmee]

US has no capacity to stop China in Asia, so what she does is to ask Taiwan become a block to stop China. The issue is Taiwan is too weak while China keeps growing.

[MichaelMyall]

US must back off, study history, learn diplomacy, and show respect.

[rationalthinker]

If Each Superpowers stick to their side of the Pacific ..there will be no wars . Remember SOUTH Vietnam...how many young US men were forcefully drafted to fight and sadly some mained and died in the jungles of Vietnam 10, 000 km from their home ...and for what?. Is South East Asia a more war torn place after the US left Vietnam... .? Instead South East Asia population enjoyed Peace and Economic development after a period of political adjustment ....from the 1980s till today..half a century of Peace when the US does not pivot to Asia..

[DajeilGelian]

Why the US empire can only be stopped by force to restart global development:

Empires like the US one are complex self-organizing systems that are constantly in search of cheap energy. This search drive is causing their intrinsic urge to expand and control sources of energy (energy=resources). These systems can never stop themselves, only the embedding system and competing systems can, and only by force. This is nature.

It has nothing to do with governments and presidents or any specific party or group of companies. If a system perceives it could expand along a specific dimension or sets of dimensions it will try to do so, and will push even violently if it sees a positive ROI.
Global peace is therefore only, and only possible through a multi-system balance, where expansion yields negative ROI.

As the US empire, for the last 30 years expanded into the Middle East and towards Russia it has now experienced a push back by two equally powerful systems: Russia and China, and a third one which is BRICS. The US empire systems could only be stopped by force in the Ukraine. It was honourable that Russia tried to end the empires expansion peacefully but it was in vain as the intrinsic drive can only be stopped by force- when the expanding system "feels" it cannot expand anymore.

However, the main reason for having multiple systems (poles) balancing each other are evolutionary market forces. Only plurality can lead to competition and innovation and thus progress. A world with one imperial system would be a global monopole and world dictatorship with no innovation and no evolution. And nature would very quickly see to an utter implosion of such a system.

So Russia did exactly the right thing from an evolutionary point of view. It stopped the empire's expansion and freed up secure space for the emergence of a innovative polypole global collaboration platform based on the Ricardo principle of free competition of natural competitive advantages : BRICS.
Everything else like is Taiwan China or not is secondary to that. It is not about the Ukraine or Taiwan or controlling the oil, it is about monopolistic stagnation v pluralistic evolution and prosperity.

This is why the US empire, the last European empire, must be stopped. Stopping it means also that the system will break down, as it is based on constant expansion.
When you take away the expansion space, the Hegemon will have to drain its existing domains of energy, as it happens in Europe and Japan, and that will lead to the inner break down of existing balances between the Hegemon and its colonies. Currently the US Empire controls ca 50 countries fully and some 40 dependencies partially.

These 90 countries pay a 5% (Piketty, 2012) free imperial rent to the Hegemon, which enables a low innovation and low productivity growth of the core, the Hegemon, in this case the US.

Once colonies leave, the Hegemon will try to compensate for losses from the the 5% (which are now around 1.25 Tn $ annually), by a combination of expansion wars and increased rent from the remaining colonies. The more colonies leave the control space the more the remaining have to pay. This at first leads to effects like inflation, then shortages, then the departure of sectors from the colonies and then higher taxes to pay for the Hegemon's rent and that invokes ever more protests and government changes, which are countered by regime change activities of the Hegemon which will become ever more open, for example in the EU, where the Establishment just installed their favourite successor to Macron, years ahead of his departure.

The real break down will only happen, when the alternative model shows its higher performance- for as long as you can tell people somehow they still live in the best of worlds they will not rebel.

But once they understand that BRICS is better and the imperial model drags them down- then the dissolution of the empire begins. This is why of course the Hegemon will fight any naturally competing system.

All so predictable- and amusing!

[helokitty]

We can imagine a war in south China sea that US navy is distroied and never been able to rebuilt fue to lack of skilled worker and high inflation