John Mearsheimer - The state of the 1st World

In this interview Political scientist and international relations scholar Professor John Mearsheimer talks about the recent war in Ukraine, and the potential for conflict in Taiwan.Show more

John Mearsheimer argues for what he calls 'offensive realism', which holds that conflicts between states are driven by the need to maximize power in relation to other states. This is in contrast to the heterodox liberal framework, which John Mearsheimer contends was only tenable under the recently ended ‘unipolar’ era. Using this framework, John Mearsheimer famously predicted the recent Russian invasion, arguing that it was an inevitable outcome of NATO's eastward expansion.

The discussion also turns to the situation in Taiwan and why a conflict in Asia may be more likely than a European conflict during the new Cold War.
This is an important, thought-provoking, and at times controversial discussion—essential viewing for anyone trying to understand the confusing and tumultuous geopolitical climate we find ourselves in.

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),
"Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities" (2018).

Sections:
Introducing John Mearsheimer
What is realism?
Does realism = 'might makes right'
Were America's actions wise after WW2?
Domestic vs International politics
Why Liberalism needs nationalism
Why the U.S. should work with Russia against China
How John predicted Russia's invasion
America's failed Democratic export to Russia
Why in 2017 liberal foreign policy died - Unipolar vs Multipolar
The war in Ukraine is a vestige of American Hegemony
What makes a multipolar world so dangerous
American willpower
The U.S. defends Taiwan
Does America have the capacity?
The role of military technology and the quantity/quality trade off
Free enterprise vs Central command in war time
How the foreign policy establishment defeated both Trump and Obama
Can we avoid a war with China?"