John Mearsheimer, world-renowned scholar of international relations, joins us to discuss the state of play in the Middle East, East Asia, and Eastern Europe. We also examine the relationship between realism and morality, the nature of the China threat, and the origins of “offshore balancing.” *The Trialogue Podcast is hosted by the Stimson Center and produced by University FM.
John Mearsheimer, world-renowned scholar of international relations, joins us to discuss the state of play in the Middle East, East Asia, and Eastern Europe. We also examine the relationship between realism and morality, the nature of the China threat, and the origins of “offshore balancing.”
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*The Trialogue Podcast is hosted by the Stimson Center and produced by University FM.
(Transcripts may contain a few typographical errors due to audio quality during the podcast recording.)
[00:00:00] Peter Slezkine: I'm Peter Slezkine, Director of the U.S.-Russia-China Trialogue project at the Stimson Center. Since the middle of the 20th century, relations among the United States, Russia, and China have had an enormous impact on each country separately and on the world as a whole. The purpose of the Trialogue is to better understand this extraordinarily complex and consequential relationship by directly engaging with experts from all three countries.
In this show, guests from across the political spectrum and from every corner of the globe share their views in their own voice. While the Stimson Center seeks to provide access to a wide variety of perspectives, it does not endorse any particular position. We leave it to the listeners to judge the validity and value of the views expressed by the guests.
My guest today is the-world renowned international relations scholar, John Mearsheimer, who needs no further introduction. We recorded this episode a couple of weeks ago before Hamas in Israel agreed to an outline of a deal, which now seems to be going forward, at least in its initial phase. Any progress on this front would be great news.
The first part of our conversation, which focuses on Israel in the Middle East, remains relevant, even though the situation has changed. Professor Mearsheimer describes Israel's ultimate ambitions as he understands them, and he explains how he weighs realist and moral considerations in his analysis of international affairs. We then turn to China and Eastern Europe. I hope you enjoy the episode.
Professor Mearsheimer, welcome to the podcast.
[00:01:39] John Mearsheimer: I'm glad to be here, Peter.
[00:01:41] Peter Slezkine: So, I thought we could take a tour of three regions of the world — the Middle East, East Asia, and Eastern Europe. Perhaps, let's start with Israel in the Middle East. Is there any limit to how far Netanyahu will go? Is there anything holding him back? What are the limits to Netanyahu's ambitions?
[00:02:03] John Mearsheimer: Let me just describe to you what I think Netanyahu's ambitions are, and I think they're the ambitions of many Israelis. I think that Israeli leaders are bent on creating a greater Israel, and that Greater Israel obviously includes the West Bank and Gaza, and of course, Greenline Israel, or the Israel that was created in 1948.
But I think their ambitions go beyond that territory. And I think they want to conquer Southern Lebanon, probably up to the Litani River and incorporate that into Israel. I think they'd like to conquer territory in Southern Syria as well. And I think, given their druthers, and if they had the capability, they take territory on the East Bank, i.e., Jordan, and they take territory in the Sinai, if they could. So, I think the Israelis clearly want leaving Israel.
The second thing is they want to make sure that they get virtually all the Palestinians out of Greater Israel. The problem that Israel now faces is that inside the occupied territories plus Green Line Israel, you have, approximately, as many Israeli Jews as you do Palestinians. And this is just unacceptable. So, the Israelis want to drive the Palestinians out of Greater Israel. And of course, that's what they're up to in Gaza.
And then the third objective of the Israelis is to make sure that all their neighbors are as weak as possible. And that's done in a variety of ways. One is to have those countries highly dependent on the United States so that the United States has enormous coercive leverage over those countries. And the two countries that fit in that category at this point in time are Jordan and Egypt. They're both economic basket cases. They depend on the United States. And therefore, the United States can coerce them into being nice to Israel.
But then there are other countries that they just want to break apart. They want to fracture them. They want to cause significant unrest inside those countries and make sure they're not a cohesive hall and, therefore, a threat to Israel. And they've been, I think, very successful with regard to Syria on that front. I think that's what they want to do in Iran as well. They want to break apart Iran. They want to greatly weaken Iran by making it look like Syria.
And then I think the final piece of the story is that the Israelis, and this was true of the Zionists, going back to when the state was first created, have long understood, they need a great power patron. And in recent decades, this is not always the case, but in recent decades, the United States has become their principal patron. And the United States and Israel are now joined at the hip.
So, when you talk about what Israel is doing in the Middle East, you almost have to talk about what Israel and the United States are doing in the Middle East. It's not just Israel. And indeed, there's no way that Israel or Prime Minister Netanyahu could be conducting the foreign policy that he now is pursuing without American support. And that means American economic support, American military support, and diplomatic support. So, keeping the United States closely tied to Israel is of enormous importance.
Those are the goals that Israel has. And the question you have to ask yourself is, can Israel achieve those goals, moving forward?
[00:05:50] Peter Slezkine: Well, it seems like they've been pretty successful in weakening their neighbors or their greater regional potential competitors, starting with Iraq, and then through Iran, Syria, Lebanon. Do you think that, ultimately, they will come into conflict with Turkey?
[00:06:10] John Mearsheimer: Very hard to say. I think the two big question marks are Turkey and Egypt. I think there's a greater possibility they'll come into conflict with Egypt. And let me explain to you why I think that's the case, and then I'll turn to Turkey and tell you why I think it's unlikely that they'll come into conflict with Turkey. With regard to Egypt, you have to understand that the Israelis are conducting a genocide in Gaza. And this is all for the purpose of driving the Palestinians out of Gaza. They want the Palestinians out of Gaza.
[00:06:43] Peter Slezkine: And the only place to go is Egypt. And Egypt would not be happy about the fact.
[00:06:47] John Mearsheimer: Yes, exactly. And what the Egyptians are doing is they're moving military forces into the Sinai and they're strengthening their military posture in the Sinai to make it clear to the Israelis that they will resist the expulsion of the Palestinians out of Gaza into Egypt. And it's important to understand that this thwarts Israel's only real hope at this juncture of expelling the Palestinians, which is, I believe, the principal goal of Netanhayu’s campaign in Gaza.
[00:07:21] Peter Slezkine: So, you think the entire Gaza campaign, which ultimately was aimed at expelling the Gazans, is impossible on those terms?
[00:07:32] John Mearsheimer: It's impossible unless they can find a place. It will accept the Palestinians, number one. And number two, they can get the Palestinians to leave. And those are two immensely difficult tasks. The Palestinians, to take these in reverse order, remember the Nakba, and they remember what happened in 1967, when huge numbers of Palestinians were expelled from the West Bank, and therefore the Palestinians are deeply committed to remaining, even if it increases the risk that they will die remaining in Gaza, that is. But furthermore, the Israelis and the Americans working together can't find a country that will accept the Palestinians. There was talk that Indonesia and Libya were candidates. And I think Sudan was a possible candidate. But all of those countries have made it clear that they're not going to facilitate the expulsion of the Palestinians.
[00:08:28] Peter Slezkine: This really sounds like Germany's plans to resettle Jews to Madagascar.
[00:08:32] John Mearsheimer: Yes. I think of that all the time. I mean, I know a great deal about the Holocaust, and I actually teach on the Holocaust, but what the Germans initially wanted to do, apropos your comments about the Madagascar plan, were to expel the Jews from Europe. They did not initially intend to murder them. But then when the Madagascar plan became impossible to execute, and they invaded the Soviet Union on June 22nd, 1941, and ended up with huge numbers of Jews under their control, they decided that because they had no place to send them, that they would murder them.
And I think you see a somewhat analogous situation in Gaza. Think, if you go back to the month or two after October 7th, just go from October 7th up to about December 7th, I think the Israelis thought that they could really hammer, really punish the Palestinians in Gaza, and that would drive them out. In other words, I don't think the Israelis initially set out to execute a genocide. I think they initially set out to expel the Palestinians. They saw this as an opportunity, much like they saw in 1948 and 1967 as opportunities to drive the Palestinians out.
So, they started bombing the cities in Gaza and killing significant numbers of Palestinians. But what happened is the Palestinians didn't leave. So, the Israelis upped the punishment campaign. They increased the punishment campaign. This is after December of 2023. And again, the Palestinians didn't leave. And the Palestinians have still not left, and the Israelis are continuing to inflict massive punishment on the Palestinians in the hope that this will drive them out. But it's not working.
And what's happened is that what's called a punishment campaign that started, that was designed to expel the Palestinians, has, I think, effectively morphed into a genocide. And because the Palestinians are caught in this iron cage or in this large concentration camp, what the Israelis have ended up doing is executing a genocide. And they just kill more and more people every day. And when you look at the consequences of the famine that is taking place and so forth and so on, God only knows how many people will end up dying. So, it does bear resemblance to what happened to the Jews. I don't want to overstate the case because there are a lot of important differences, for sure. But there are also a lot of similarities.
I'd also note just one quick point on this. I have been shocked from the very beginning at the rhetoric that Israeli leaders use when they talk about Palestinians. It really reminds me of how the Germans, the Nazis, talked about the Jews. I mean, it's just despicable, sickening rhetoric. I can't believe that Israeli Jews, right, who are, in many cases, descendants of Holocaust survivors were part of that same people would talk like that. But this is what's happened. It's just, again, hard to believe.
[00:12:01] Peter Slezkine: So, genocide, a term you've mentioned a number of times, is a legally defined category, one that seems to be applicable in this situation, or at least a number of international bodies have determined that it is. Is your criticism of Israel mostly moral? Or do you think, as a realist, that they're pursuing impossible objectives? Because you are famous as a hardheaded analyst of power. Is Israel wrong to do what it's doing in those terms?
[00:12:33] John Mearsheimer: I think that there's no question that almost every person, me included, has a moral compass and a strategic compass in his or her head. I'm one of the purest realists in the land, as your comments indicated. There's no question about that. But I do have a moral compass in my head.
[00:12:58] Peter Slezkine: So, what are the red lines in realism for you?
[00:13:01] John Mearsheimer: Well, the way I look at it is that, in a lot of cases, realism or what realist logic dictates and what is morally correct are going to be in sync. In other words, if you're fighting an Adolf Hitler and you're the United States of America, it makes good strategic sense and it makes good moral sense, okay? Then, there are cases where realism just doesn't apply at all and you are free to do what is morally correct because basic balance of power logic is not at play. And the best example of that is during the unipolar moment when you had the Rwanda genocide, it was of no strategic consequence to the United States, whether it intervened or not. So, it was free to intervene on moral grounds. And I was in favor of intervening in Rwanda in 1994 on purely moral grounds. And I thought there was just no strategic interests involved. And almost everybody agreed on that point. And I think we made a fundamental mistake not intervening. So, I do have a powerful moral impulse hardwired into me, along with this, sort of, strategic logic in my head.
[00:14:21] Peter Slezkine: Wait. Isn't there also a third situation where the extermination of all of your enemies is actually the wisest course, from a purely pragmatic realist, power maximizing perspective? I mean, historically, of course, this is something that happened all the time on smaller scales than the modern age. But where, I mean, it's in from the Bible to tribes in New Guinea and the Amazon, you find enemies, you exterminate them all. The Mongols, obviously, were masters of this and terribly successful as a result.
[00:14:54] John Mearsheimer: Well, I've actually written about this. I wrote a piece called War in International Politics, which appeared in international security in the spring, where I've actually addressed this issue. And I think it does not make strategic sense to, in effect, kill every single enemy on the planet, from a strategic point of view. I think there are situations where countries are going to pursue murderous policies because they think it is in their strategic interest.
I think a good example of that would be the bombing of Japan in World War II. I think that, you know, by the spring of 1945, when we were close to Japan and in a position to bomb Japan and we wanted to bring Japan to its knees and avoid invading the Japanese home islands, one could make a powerful argument that it made sense to try to bomb Japanese cities to bring the Japanese to their knees and get them to surrender. And we actually tried that, and we killed massive numbers of Japanese civilians when we bombed their cities. I often point out that the first night that we bombed Tokyo, which was the night of March 10th, 11th, 1945, we killed more people that were killed at either Hiroshima or Nagasaki, if you want to think about that.
So, the United States waged this massive punishment campaign against Japanese cities because we thought that it would bring the Japanese to their knees. And there are many people who argue that the dropping of two nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki actually put an end to the war, because we were having an incredibly difficult time getting the Japanese to finally surrender.
So, there are situations where the moral arrow and the strategic arrow point in different directions. Another really good case of that is World War II, where we allied ourselves with Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union for the purposes of defeating Nazi Germany. One could make the argument that it was morally incorrect to befriend Joseph Stalin, treat him as Uncle Joe, portray the Soviet Union as a democracy, provide assistance to the Soviet Union, and so forth and so on. It was a morally wrong policy, but it made strategic sense.
So, there's just no question apropos your point, that there are going to be cases where the strategic logic and the moral logic are at odds. And I'm making the argument that, in those cases, the strategic logic will win almost every time. And the reason is that the strategic logic is inextricably bound up with the survival of the state. And survival is the principle goal of any state, because if you don't survive, you can't pursue any other goal. So, if a state thinks that it has to do something that's morally wrong because it's in its strategic interest, it will do that.
[00:17:56] Peter Slezkine: So, Israel is acting predictably according to your frame of analysis. It has the advantage at the moment over all of its neighbors. It has the powerful patron in the United States in unlimited leeway for, perhaps, a limited period of time. And it is acting extremely aggressively on these advantages.
[00:18:20] John Mearsheimer: I don't think it's in its strategic interest. I mean, there's no question what the Israelis are doing, certainly, with regard to Gaza and even the West Bank. That is morally reprehensible. But I do not think that what Israel is doing is in its strategic interest. I think that they have not driven the Palestinians out. They have not defeated Hamas. And they still have that problem.
Furthermore, Israel has done enormous damage to itself, not simply in terms of its reputation, but it's damaged its economy. I believe that, over time, a large number of secular Israelis who are very important for the economy will leave the country. And furthermore, it's still surrounded by enemies. Hezbollah may have been weakened, but Hezbollah has not gone away. With regard to Iran, I think Israel has increased the chances that Iran will get nuclear weapons, not decrease those chances. And if you look at what's happening with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan and the alliance they've formed and the fact that Pakistan has put its nuclear umbrella over Saudi Arabia, this should be deeply concerning to the Israelis and the Americans, because this will give Iran an even greater incentive to acquire nuclear weapons. The Israelis are having all sorts of problems with the Houthis. And over time, the Houthis will get more missiles.
And I think the only place where the Israelis have been successful, and it's really the Americans who did the heavy lifting, is in Syria, right? And I think that what happened in Syria, the overthrow of the Assad government, has worked to Israel's advantage in an important way, in good part, by the way, because it cut off the supply line between Iran and Hezbollah. But other than that, just fighting endless wars, engaging in genocide, and not solving these problems, and in fact, creating new problems. Just think about all the fronts that Israel's fighting on. They talk about fighting the seven-front war. This is not good.
It's funny. I am a realist, as you know. And I also went to West Point and spent 10 years of my life in the military. And one of the things that I learned over time is that having a highly militarized society that fights wars all the time is not healthy for the body politic. You just want to avoid this.
When I hear Benjamin Netanyahu talking about turning Israel into Sparta, I just, sort of, say to myself, “Has he lost his mind? Is this what you want?” And this gets back to the knob of your question about strategic interest versus moral interest. And we're focusing here, of course, on the strategic interest. It's not in Israel's strategic interest to turn into Sparta, nor is it in its moral interest to turn into Sparta. And I think what the Israelis have to do, and I fully understand that they're in a very difficult position, given demographics, is they have to figure out some sort of way to create a modus vivendi, not only with their neighbors, but also with the Palestinians, because going forward like this is a prescription for disaster.
[00:21:44] Peter Slezkine: So, I suppose Israeli action, according to you, morally reprehensible and strategically counterproductive. Should they also be worried about losing what you have called the Israel lobby? What have long been very powerful taboos are now being broken regularly by major right wing figures like Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and others. Obviously on the left, the entire young generation is outraged. So, do you see a qualitative change in the power of the Israel lobby? And do you think that its influence will wane in the next five, 10 years?
[00:22:27] John Mearsheimer: Well, the way I think about this, Peter, is that you have to look at the lobby's influence on public opinion first. And second, you have to look at the lobby's influence on policy. These are two different matters. And of course, the lobby has a deep-seated interest in making sure there's a favorable discourse in the public about Israel. And the public opinion is pro-Israel. Furthermore, has a profound interest in making sure that U.S. foreign policy supports Israel unconditionally.
I think that the lobby has been remarkably successful at making sure that U.S. policy supports Israel unconditionally. Nothing has changed on that front. You know, Steve Walt and I wrote our famous article in 2006, and then we wrote the famous book in 2007 on the Israel lobby. And I think it's had zero effect on policy, right?
[00:23:32] Peter Slezkine: But there's clearly been a change in the discourse when you guys published that article and then book. It was an absolute outrage. Now, both parties are having open conversations about this subject, the lobby is being named, and it is tearing both parties apart.
[00:23:50] John Mearsheimer: You're exactly right. The change has taken place down below in the body politic. And as you say, you see it in both parties, you see it in the New York mayoral race. I mean, it's quite remarkable, the things that Mamdani says about Israel and about arresting Benjamin Netanyahu.
And what's really quite striking is that huge numbers of Jews, especially younger Jews, are super critical of Israel and critical of the lobby. So, when we talk about the lobby, sort of, losing younger people, and even losing a lot of older people, right, it's very important to emphasize that they're losing lots of younger Jews.
By the way, this is why we call it the Israel lobby and not the Jewish lobby, because when Steve and I wrote the article in the book, virtually all about defenders, people who would defend us in public, there were not many, but virtually all of them were Jewish.
[00:24:58] Peter Slezkine: All Jews are supporters unconditionally of Israel, and many of Israel's unconditional supporters are the Huckabee type who have different roots and different reasons for backing Netanyahu's policies.
[00:25:11] John Mearsheimer: Yeah. You know, I remember a number of years ago, it was a good number of years ago, but Daniel Pipes, who was an ardent supporter of Israel, and of course, he’s Jewish, said that Israel's strongest supporters in the United States are not Jews. They're Christian Zionists.
[00:25:30] Peter Slezkine: Well, you just have to listen to every statement by Huckabee to have that confirmed.
[00:25:36] John Mearsheimer: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Mike Huckabee is quite amazing.
[00:25:40] Peter Slezkine: Well, so let's leave that for later and turn to East Asia and China. Do you think there's any possibility of a deal on trade or Taiwan? It seems that Trump is interested that the Chinese might be, although I know that you assume that there are, sort of, structural conditions present for long term confrontation competition. So, do you think there are any off ramps in the short term?
[00:26:07] John Mearsheimer: Allow me to say that, I think, in the short term, because the United States is pinned down in the Middle East and pinned down in Ukraine, the last thing that it wants is a major crisis in East Asia. So, I think that if you look at American policy over the past few years, even under Joe Biden, but certainly under Donald Trump, they've both gone to great lengths to make sure that a crisis does not occur in East Asia because there's no way we could handle in a sophisticated way or in an easy way a crisis in East Asia.
[00:26:47] Peter Slezkine: Did you think the Biden administration was doing everything it could to avoid this? Because the Chinese, of course, think that Biden was playing with fire and brought things as close to a head as they have been in decades.
[00:26:58] John Mearsheimer: No, I don't think that's true. I think that the Biden administration was careful not to provoke the Chinese too much. Look, there's no question that, with the rise of China, China is going to try to dominate Asia the way we dominate the Western Hemisphere. They would be crazy not to. I often say that, if I were the national security advisor in Beijing, I would tell Xi Jinping what we want to do is push the Americans out beyond the first Island chain, push them out beyond the second island chain. We want to have our own Monroe doctrine and we want to dominate the region. That's not to say we want to conquer every country in the region. Indeed, there's no need to conquer any more countries in the region. But we want them to know who is the boss, and we are the boss.
So, I think they want to dominate Asia for good strategic reasons. And we, on the other hand, plus a number of East Asian countries, like Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Australia, Vietnam, and so forth and so on, all want to make sure that China does not dominate Asia. And that means you're going to have an intense security competition. And Biden understood that. Trump understands that. The Chinese understand it.
The question is, how do you manage that security competition? And I think, if you look carefully, the Biden administration, and certainly, the Trump administration, was interested in making sure that things did not heat up too much in East Asia simply because we were so thoroughly pinned down, both in the Middle East and in Ukraine.
But Chinese, on the other hand, have significant economic problems, which translate into political problems, for obvious reasons. And the Chinese do not have a vested interest in getting into a fight with us now, certainly, over Taiwan, where they don't have the military capability to take Taiwan.
So, I think, if you look at East Asia, it's been relatively quiet. And I want to underline the word “relatively” because I think that you were getting at the point that maybe I'm overstating the case, especially with regard to the Biden administration. I accept that.
[00:29:11] Peter Slezkine: I think, when Pelosi was flying into Taiwan, half of the Chinese internet was up at night hoping that her plane would get shot down.
[00:29:21] John Mearsheimer: But I would just say to you, Biden did not want Pelosi to go to Taiwan.
[00:29:26] Peter Slezkine: Right. But he also four times had what they later dubbed slips of the tongue, which made the Chinese nervous about the American commitment to back Taiwan. But I take your point that, overall, strategically, there was no interest in the U.S., or it seems in China, to come into full confrontation. Each side is bogged down and has problems of its own, the U.S. externally and internally, China, internally.
So, I wanted to get back to your basic proposition. What is the problem with China extending its influence regionally? And why must we actively oppose them? So, you were saying that they could create their own mine reduction. It seems like there are basic, sort of, geographical factors that make that impossible. So, the U.S. is dominant in a western hemisphere that is separated from the rest of the world by two giant oceans. There are no significant competitors in our area. Whereas, China has India on one side, massive subcontinent, huge number of people separated by the Himalayas, always been separate from China for thousands of years and unlikely to be dominated by China in the future, I imagine. Japan, separated by water, huge population, historically has posed more of a threat to China than vice versa. And Russia gets along with China now, but is obviously anxious about Siberia, has shown that it is willing to resort to force, has huge nuclear arsenal. And China cannot take Russia for granted. So, it seems like China is contained within its own region, even absent American pressure.
[00:31:06] John Mearsheimer: Yeah. I don't agree with that. I think there is something to the argument that East Asia is not the Western hemisphere. I think that's true, but I still think that you're overstating how much balancing behavior there can be against China in the absence of the United States.
And let me explain in more detail what I mean. I think, first of all, India's not in East Asia. I don't mean to split hairs here, but the argument is that China's a threat to dominate East Asia. And you're absolutely right about India, there's no way that China is going to dominate Asia.
[00:31:46] Peter Slezkine: I just mean, sort of, various factors that would keep China's attention focused on problems on its periphery, and India is obviously always an issue to be considered. It's not a threat to China itself, but neither can it be subjugated and will always have to be accounted for, I imagine.
[00:32:07] John Mearsheimer: Well, as you know, the United States is a hegemon in the Western Hemisphere. And we are powerful enough that we can deal with problems in other areas as well, right? And if China's a hegemon in East Asia, that means it's pretty much free to roam. It has a lot of ability to move forces out of East Asia because it's so powerful by definition and deal with other countries like India.
And let me just say a few words about India. There are, sort of, three ways that India and China interact with each other. One is in the Himalaya Mountains, you know, where they have this border dispute. But that's really in the middle of God's country. It's not like you're going to have a massive conventional war similar to what's going on in Ukraine or similar to what we saw in World War I or World War II. It would be a border conflict. I'm not saying it's likely you're going to have that border conflict. But it's not a great problem for China.
[00:33:03] Peter Slezkine: Right. It's at sea on China's route to Africa that India is potentially an obstacle.
[00:33:10] John Mearsheimer: Yeah. And let me just say a word about that. I believe that the Chinese are not simply interested in becoming the hegemon in East Asia. They want to develop a blue water navy and significant power projection capability, especially a navy that can project power and protect the lines of communication into the Persian Gulf, from East Asia to the Persian Gulf. And that means going through the Indian Ocean. So, apropos what you said, if you talk to the Indians, they will tell you that their great long-term fear vis-a-vis China is China coming with a powerful navy through the Indian Ocean. But that's not East Asia, right?
And the third area that's very important, and we saw this in the spring of this year, is Pakistan. You remember Pakistan and India were in this conflict. It wasn't a full scale war, by any means. But there was a terrorist act inside of Kashmir, and India and Pakistan started firing at each other. And what we saw there was that China and Pakistan are close allies. And that's China and Pakistan versus India. So, from an Indian perspective, you have to worry about the Chinese in terms of the Himalaya border dispute in terms of the Indian Ocean and in terms of Pakistan. And China, of course, has to worry about all three of those scenarios as well, which is what you were getting at. But my point is, if you're talking about dominating East Asia, India cannot do much to prevent that.
Now, what about Japan? Japan is a rather small country compared to China. And it's an island, and it would be very easy for the Chinese to blockade Japan to cause the Japanese all sorts of problems in the absence of the United States. Russia is in East Asia, but Russia's mainly a European country. It's places like Ukraine, Belarus, the Balkans, and so forth and so on. Even the caucuses, all these areas, the Arctic matter enormously to the Russians. The far east, you know, East Asia, not that important. The Russians don't have that much military might out there.
But the other point that I would make to you in this context is, if you look at the geography, Japan, India, and Russia, Vietnam, these countries are spread out all over, coming together to form a balancing coalition against China. I would argue as well, not impossible. You're too young to remember this, fortunately for you, but during the Cold War, when we had to contain the Soviet Union in Europe, we did it on what was called the inter-German border, right? On one side there was East Germany, and right underneath it was Czechoslovakia. And then on our side, the NATO side, was West Germany. And there was this dividing line between the east and the west. And we have all these army and air forces nose to nose on the inter-German border. And it was very easy to contain the Soviet Union or the Warsaw Pact. And it was very easy for them to contain us because we were right next to each other and we were shoulder to shoulder with our allies.
So, the balancing coalition was very cohesive. But if you talk about balancing against China, it's just a much, much thornier issue. And the best way to illustrate this, Peter, is to think about Taiwan. If a war were to break out over Taiwan, who would come to Taiwan's defense? I believe we would, axiomatically. Would South Korea? I don't know. Would Japan? Probably. What about Australia? Have you ever looked at a map? Australia is a long distance from Taiwan. Australia is not exactly Godzilla, right? So, who's going to be in the fight for Taiwan on our side? And all of this just highlights the difficulty because of geography, of putting together a balancing coalition.
Then the final point I'll make to you is, China is a behemoth, right? They have a huge number of people. I know they're depopulating, but everybody else is depopulating as well. They have a huge number of people. And they have become economically very successful. And they're terrific at developing cutting-edge technologies, which are of enormous importance in terms of measuring the balance of power.
During the Cold War, the great advantage that we had over the Soviet Union was largely economic. That wasn't so true in the late ‘40s and through most of the ‘50s and early ‘60s. But by the mid-1960s, there was evidence that the Soviet economy was in deep trouble. And from the mid-1960s, up until 1989, when the Cold War ended, and certainly 1991, when the Soviet Union falls apart, the Soviet economy was really… it was in trouble, from the mid-’60s up until the end of the Cold War. The American economy, on the other hand, was racing forward, developing all these sophisticated technologies. Once we got away from machine tools, iron and steel, and so forth and so on, and got into all these information technologies, we had a huge advantage over the Soviets. This is why Marshal Ogarkov archive was so spooked by Star Wars and all these other systems that the Reagan administration was developing. Well, if you look at the situation today with us versus China, who are you betting on with your money, when you look at developing AI, quantum computing, and so forth?
[00:39:06] Peter Slezkine: I agree with that completely. I think that the great advantage of the West in the United States in particular during the Cold War with the Soviet Union was on the economic front and in technology. And that, now, China, in those two domains, presents a substantial challenge and may have already surpassed the United States in strategic areas.
But that seems to be a different arena of competition than the, sort of, regional balancing dimension. And that they might even be zero sum, that the more resources you expend on aircraft carriers, submarines, and missiles in the Pacific or on Taiwan, the less you have left to spend in the U.S. on high-tech industrial capacity. I know that, sometimes, these sorts of military buildups can be used as excuses to get the industrial machine running, but still, in a world of limited resources, you're either building weapons that you will base in Japan or Korea or you are focusing on your own economy.
[00:40:09] John Mearsheimer: I don't think it's either/or. And I think, if you look at the American experience, right, during the Cold War, we had a flourishing economy for almost all the Cold War. There were a few blips on the screen, but the United States economy boomed.
[00:40:25] Peter Slezkine: But you can say that that's from… I mean, it's hard to run the experiment of how the economy would've looked absent American involvement all over the world in pursuit of anti-communist containment, because the U.S. was already the most powerful economy in the late 19th century, two world wars absolutely devastated the richest regions elsewhere. So, the United States, after 1945, was going to be utterly dominant on the economic fronts, no matter what policy it pursued. And perhaps, if the U.S. had not dedicated so many resources to wars in Korea, Vietnam, and a frontline shoulder-to-shoulder, as you said, in Europe, it would've remained powerful for even longer and we might not be in the position we are today where we are, perhaps, at the end of that long rope that we had available in 1945.
[00:41:19] John Mearsheimer: Look, I think, if you look at the American economy and you look at our ability to develop sophisticated technologies, it's truly impressive. The argument I'm making to you is that we have a competitor, China, that is also truly impressive in terms of developing sophisticated technologies. And the point I would make to you is I don't see the economy and strategic considerations or military considerations in the either/or terms that you do.
And I think that developing sophisticated technologies is of enormous importance for developing sophisticated military capabilities. This was the point that Marshal Ogarkov was making. This is what the Soviets understood very clearly by the 1980s, is that the United States was much better than the Soviet Union in terms of developing sophisticated technologies that could be employed for military use and would give the American military a huge advantage.
[00:42:22] Peter Slezkine: Although, aren't we now more in the Soviet position? So, the U.S. had the industrial, economic, and technological wherewithal to then produce fabulous weapons that put pressure on the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union had a declining and hollowed out economy, and nonetheless was trying to match the U.S. on the military plane and failed spectacularly as a result.
And if we assume that China's, sort of, industrial base is more powerful than ours and we nonetheless seek to prioritize military competition in China's own backyard, then we are putting a strain on ourselves and are closer to the Soviet Union in the analogy that you just made.
[00:43:05] John Mearsheimer: I don't think so. I think we remain on the cutting edge. There are certain problems that the American economy faces that have military implications. One is that we have eviscerated our industrial base over the course of the unipolar moment and now in the early days of the new multipolarity.
And I think that, if you look at the war in Ukraine and you look at how the Russians have done, the fact that the Russians have an impressive industrial base and are able to produce the weaponry to fight the Ukraine war and that we do not, and the Europeans do not have an equivalent industrial base, is a huge liability for us, just to come to East Asia.
I think the Chinese, like the Russians, have a significant industrial base. They can pump out lots of weaponry. And we cannot. And again, we're using up lots of our weaponry in the Middle East and in Ukraine. So, if the United States and China were to get into a war over Taiwan, I would imagine that, after a month or two, we would be in really serious trouble because our industrial base has been run down to the point where we can't produce massive numbers of weapons that are required to wage that war.
[00:44:27] Peter Slezkine: So, wouldn't that be an argument in favor of returning to more defensible positions, as we seek to rehabilitate and revive our industrial base rather than actively balancing in an area where the other side has the advantage at the moment?
[00:44:44] John Mearsheimer: I think about it slightly differently than you do. I would reduce our commitment in the Middle East. I would reduce our commitment in Ukraine. And I would fully pivot to East Asia to compensate for the problem that I just described. I do think that a case can be made along the lines that you're arguing that, given where we are in East Asia and given the fact that we're not getting out of the Middle East, we're not getting out of Ukraine, that what we ought to do is cut our losses in East Asia and accept Chinese domination on the region.
I don't think we would do that. And I think it would be a colossal mistake. I think that, this is my realist worldview, that the most important threat to the United States, the only really serious threat to the United States on which you should expend blood and iron, outside of the Western Hemisphere, is a potential regional hegemon. We fought against Imperial Germany, Imperial Japan, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union. We went to great lengths to contain all four of those countries from dominating either Europe or Asia because it was in our interest. And I think the same basic logic applies to China. I believe it's in our interest.
That's why I think it's remarkably foolish on our part that we haven't fully pivoted to East Asia and that we're pinned down in the Middle East and pinned down in Ukraine. But we do have problems as a result of that, number one, and number two, as a result of the fact that we don't have an industrial base. So, I recognize those two problems, for sure.
But where I think I disagree with you is I do believe that, in terms of developing sophisticated technologies, we remain first rate. But again, our problem is we have a competitor now that's not the Soviet Union, that's China. And the Chinese are truly impressive. And if you have any doubts about that, all you have to do is walk around the campus here at the University of Chicago and go over to the hard sciences part of the campus where physics and engineering are taught, and you will see that there are huge numbers of Chinese students over there.
[00:47:05] Peter Slezkine: Yeah. Well, I just came back from Beijing last weekend. The railway system, the digital economy are all quite impressive. But I agree with the need to prioritize and the fact that China is a principal and, perhaps, the only competitor. But it seems like the high tech and economic and industrial competition can be waged without regard to China's presence in East Asia in the immediate security dimension.
And to continue the conversation in a slightly more theoretical key, I know that you are an advocate of offshore balancing. And I am, sort of, a more radical restrainer than you. And my sense is that that was originally a British strategy that made sense, given the small island's proximity to Europe and their sensitivity to the potential of any hegemon arising on the continent.
That strategy was universalized by Mackinder as geopolitics, taken up in the middle of the 20th century by Americans who described the domination of the Eurasian heartland by any single power as the ultimate strategic nightmare. But then after World War II, that nightmare became reality, at least on paper, that the Communist block extended from Eastern Europe to East Asia.
Nonetheless, I don't think that the U.S. faced in the ‘50s a significant conventional security threat from the communist block. It did not end up unable to access sufficient resources for its economy to thrive. And as we discovered, subsequently, an empire of that size is already straining to hold itself together. So, immediately, Yugoslavia splits off a decade later, China splits off. Ultimately, the whole thing falls apart. So, again, given the United States’ size and position, is it not a mistake to apply, kind of, the English perspective and adopt this offshore balancing strategy when it seems like these problems can just take care of themselves if we focus on our own internal strength in the dominance of our own region?
[00:49:28] John Mearsheimer: Let me ask you a question because I'm not clear what you're saying about the Cold War. Are you saying that we should not have committed American military forces to Western Europe, we should not have built up NATO, and we should not have sought to contain the Soviet Union in Europe?
[00:49:46] Peter Slezkine: I have an essay coming out in Foreign Affairs in a few days saying that NATO was rotten from the start. So, I do think that that was probably a waste of resources. I agree with George Kennan and Walter Lippmann and others who at the time made the argument that the economic and political planes should be the priority. And if the United States had focused on the Marshall Plan and extending that approach of incorporating Western Europe into the American economic sphere, getting them to adopt our technological standards, our industrial standards, the dollar and so forth, that Stalin's appetite was limited. He was telling the French and communist and Italian communist parties to make trouble, but not to take over. That, probably, some balance would have been created in Europe, a lot of trouble could have been avoided in Asia, and American strength would have remained and been maintained, and we might have avoided some of the problematic transformations within the United States that you mentioned earlier, the transformation into a war state, a garrison state, which Cold War containment ultimately demanded.
[00:51:01] John Mearsheimer: I mean, this is not the place to go into this in great detail, since we do want to talk about Ukraine, the president warned Ukraine, but let me just make a couple points. One, I do think that Stalin and the Soviets wanted to work out a modus vivendi with us in the mid-1940s. I think, obviously, the Soviet Union was so exhausted by the war. So much destruction had been wrought on the Soviet Union that the last thing they wanted to do was take the Red Army and head for Dunkirk and end up occupying all of Europe, instead of just the eastern half. So, Stalin wanted to cut a deal, and I think we were just not willing to do that, right?
[00:51:48] Peter Slezkine: So, that's the thing, that Yalta could have worked if the Americans had not decided that it was somehow a humiliating compromise, that from the Soviet side, what they wanted was aligned in the same end.
[00:52:01] John Mearsheimer: Well, again, I think the Americans could not come to accept the idea that there would be some sort of modus vivendi with the Soviets. So, I'm agreeing with you on that.
But the second point I would make is that, you well know, the Soviets of the Red Army was principally responsible for winning World War II. And by 1945, you had this huge army in the Soviet Union that had destroyed Germany. We, of course, had participated in that enterprise. But Germany was destroyed. France had been occupied since the summer of 1940 and was in wreck. And Britain was in no position as an offshore balancer and as an exhausted country to do much to contain the Soviet Union.
So, the problem that we face, I'm still saying we could have worked out a modus vivendi, but the problem that we face is that there's this massive Red Army there, and we don't know what Stalin's intentions are. We cannot be sure. And you need some sort of ability to contain that Soviet Union. And I think…
[00:53:16] Peter Slezkine: But that just assumes that, kind of, frictionless momentum, not to interrupt, but just the communist block, even at the extent that it reached, started fragmenting immediately. Let's assume in the worst case scenario, as it might've been imagined in ‘45, that Stalin's intent was actually to take over all of Europe. And Europe is prostrate. The Red Army is ready and poised to advance, and they go all the way to Portugal. That would've created a huge problem for the Soviet Union, for Stalin. He would've had his hands full, seeking to manage these populations. And ultimately, I imagine the whole thing would've collapsed without any interference on the American part.
[00:53:57] John Mearsheimer: It did eventually collapse. And the point I'm making to you is that the Soviet Union had an incredibly powerful military at the end of World War II. And there was nobody to check it. No European country could check it, contain it, right?
[00:54:15] Peter Slezkine: Right.
[00:54:17] John Mearsheimer: And because it's impossible to tell what the intentions of another state are today, and certainly in the future, you want an insurance policy. You want some forces in Europe to contain the Soviet Union, right? So, I'm arguing you could have had a modus vivendi, but you still needed an American commitment. You didn't need a huge American commitment, but you needed some military commitment.
And by the way, we had a nuclear monopoly up until ‘49. And then, really, we had nuclear dominance through most of the early 1950s. So, we could have relied on nuclear weapons to do the trick. And furthermore, as you're pointing out, I don't think Stalin was interested in going to Dunkirk or, in your rhetoric, going to Portugal.
So, that's point number two. But point number three is I fully understand what you're saying about the problems that the Soviet Union had managed in its empire. It started, in my opinion, inside the Warsaw Pact in East Germany in ‘53, then there was Hungary in ‘56.
[00:55:28] Peter Slezkine: Yugoslavia even earlier.
[00:55:29] John Mearsheimer: Yeah, Yugoslavia. But Yugoslavia was, sort of…
[00:55:32] Peter Slezkine: Never quite then, yeah.
[00:55:34] John Mearsheimer: Given geography, you know, it's like Albania. It doesn't matter that much. The countries that really matter for the Soviet Union are East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Hungary, to a lesser extent. Those are the big four. And as I said to you, 53 East Germany, 56 Hungary, 68 Czechoslovakia. And they almost, the Soviets almost went into Poland three separate times.
[00:56:00] Peter Slezkine: Right. Not to mention China and then border clashes that almost amounted to real war there and actual nuclear threats.
[00:56:08] John Mearsheimer: Absolutely, right? I mean, this is again ranging for a field here, but the domino theory. When I was young and, you know, we got mixed up in the Vietnam War, the principal strategic justification for our involvement was the domino theory. And it was the idea that all these communist countries were cohesive whole, communism was this wildly attractive ideology, and once one domino fell and that domino became communist other dominoes would fall and the whole world would be communist.
And of course, this was ridiculous. And in fact, the Sino-Soviet split, not to mention the troubles that we were just talking about in Eastern Europe, starting with Yugoslavia, showed that nationalism is a much more powerful force than communism. And the fact is that nation states want sovereignty. The East Germans, the Poles, the Czechs, the Hungarians, the Chinese, they all wanted to determine their own fate. They did not want the United States of America or the Soviet Union or any other country telling them how to run their politics. But that's not the way we thought early on in the Cold War.
But your point, the containment would've been relatively easy, given these problems, I think, is correct. And by the way, just to take it a step further, I sent to you earlier in our discussion that there's now a great deal of evidence, and Marc Trachtenberg, a brilliant historian, is writing a book on this whole subject. By the mid-1960s, the Soviets knew and we knew that the Soviet economy was in trouble, and that it was only going to get worse with time, and that the problems were structural in nature and could not be fixed.
So, we were dealing with an adversary that was getting weaker with the passage of time, because you don't have to be a Marxist to understand that the foundation of military might is economic might. So, if the Soviet economy is slowly but steadily crumbling, its military might is going to follow that path. And of course, that's happening. And then we get back to the problems that you described and I built on, concerning all those fractures inside the Warsaw Pact or inside Eastern Europe. And the Soviet Union was not 10 feet tall. But you could not make that argument during the Cold War. There was just so much threat inflation.
[00:58:37] Peter Slezkine: But I think it's partly this intellectual history of geopolitics and British grand strategy. The U.S. foreign policy establishments adopted a strategy that was born in Britain and made sense for its geographic position but did not necessarily hold water for the U.S., which is a vast continent, oceans away. And that, potentially, rival empires, once they grow to the size to seem threatening, are already too large to cohere for very long, or at least have all sorts of internal problems to deal with. And that, instead of recognizing that fact, the United States built a counter empire to contain the Soviet Union, creating its own internal contradictions.
[00:59:26] John Mearsheimer: Well, this is a big topic. And I'll just make one point on it, which I think reinforces, to some extent, what you were saying. When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979, virtually everybody in the national security establishment in the United States was aghast. They thought this was the end of the world. “Soviets are on the march. Oh, my god. We're weak. We accepted détente. Where's this going to all end up?” So, forth and so on. I argued exactly the opposite. This is wonderful news to the United States.
The Soviets should have been thrilled that we went into Vietnam. “You want to go into Vietnam? Be my guest. Good luck.” Right? And I remember when the Chinese went into Vietnam in 1979. That's the last war they fought. The French had been there. That didn't work out very well. We had been there. That didn't work out very well. They went into Vietnam in 1979, and they got their stout whacked, right? You want to stay outta these places.
[01:00:27] Peter Slezkine: So, why wouldn't you tell the Chinese, “Okay, go, try to take Taiwan. See if you can blockade Japan. Seek to economically dominate India. Be my guest. It's going to tear you apart.”
[01:00:38] John Mearsheimer: Well, we're talking about invading countries, right? So, we're not talking about invading Japan. Taiwan's a different issue. The question is, what would happen if they invaded Taiwan? And they could capture it relatively easily. Would there be significant resistance from the Taiwan East? Would it look like Vietnam or Afghanistan? I actually think not.
I think, if the Chinese were to go back into Vietnam, they'd be up to their eyeballs and alligators. I think there are certain countries you just don't want to go into. I'm not sure that Taiwan fits in that category. But just tying my point about the Soviets going into Afghanistan to Ukraine, from a Chinese perspective, American involvement in Ukraine is manna from heaven, just like American involvement in the Middle East is manna from heaven.
So, from a Chinese perspective, they should hope the Ukraine War goes on forever because the United States will be pinned down in Ukraine, which will weaken its ability to pivot to Asia and to deal with China.
[01:01:50] Peter Slezkine: Well, let's then pivot to Europe. There's no more Red Army, and they are not poised on the Rhine. We are all the way off in Ukraine. So, what is the state of play? Where are we headed? Trump put out a post about returning to the 91 border, which may have been tongue in cheek. But how do you think this ends? And what should be the United States policy?
[01:02:14] John Mearsheimer: I believe that the Russians are going to win an ugly victory. I do not believe that the Russians have ever had any interest in conquering all of Ukraine. I think they fully understand that would be a remarkably foolish thing to try to do, for reasons we have just been talking about.
All of those ethnic Ukrainians would resist a Russian occupation from the get-go. And the Russians would be dealing with a resistance movement that would be impossible to defeat. So, if you are playing Putin's hand, you want to take, at most, 40% of Ukraine, the Eastern 40%. I think you want to think about taking places like Kharkiv, places like Odessa, and so forth and so on. But you do not want to go further west. That would be disastrous.
And by the way, the Russians will have their hands full if they take, let's say, the Eastern 20% or the Eastern 40% of Ukraine. Those areas have to be rebuilt, reintegrated, or integrated into Russia. It'll be a colossal task. But nevertheless, the Russians are not going to take all of Ukraine. And in the end, there's going to be a Ukrainian rump state. I've long argued that it will be a dysfunctional rump state, but it will be a rump state. And Ukraine is going to lose a huge chunk of territory. Donald Trump's claim, notwithstanding, there's nothing that can be done to reverse that.
Furthermore, I think that this will be a situation that gives the Russians very powerful incentives to keep Ukraine weak and to keep Ukraine dysfunctional so that it can't join NATO or can't join the EU.
And I think, finally, you're not going to get a meaningful peace settlement. This is going to end up as a frozen conflict, because the Ukrainians and the Europeans, and many people in the United States, are simply not going to accept Russian conquest and annexation of 20% or 30% or 40% of Ukraine. They will refuse to accept that. And people in the West and people in Ukraine will go to great lengths to undermine Russia's position in those areas of Ukraine that it annexes. And of course, the Russians will fight back. And the end result is you'll have poisonous relations between Russia on one side and Ukraine and the west on the other side for the foreseeable future. So, this is why I say, in the end, Russia will win an ugly victory.
[01:05:16] Peter Slezkine: When you say that Russia in the West will have a contentious relationship for the foreseeable future, what do you imagine the West to be? The transatlantic relationship is obviously undergoing profound revision, at least during this administration. So, do you think the West will remain a cohesive hole, going forward, or will it fragment or will it be reimagined on different grounds that are not those of the Cold War?
[01:05:48] John Mearsheimer: Well, when you talk about the West, you have to focus not simply on fractures in transatlantic relations, which you were emphasizing, but you have to also focus on fractures inside of Europe. I mean, today, we talk about Viktor Orbán versus France, Britain, and Germany. But I think with the passage of time, you'll see significant differences between countries like Germany and France or Germany and Britain.
So, there're going to be problems inside of Europe, in terms of relations among the various states. And there're going to be transatlantic problems that you are getting at. On top of all that, you want to understand that the Russians are going to have a deep-seated interest in fostering those bad relations inside of Europe and across the Atlantic Ocean. The Russians will do all sorts of things to make the West less cohesive.
So, I think you're getting at the fact that it's going to be increasingly difficult to talk about the West because it's not going to be a cohesive poll, which it has pretty much been for a long time now, certainly under Joe Biden. Exactly what it looks like is just very hard to say. But I think there will be a significant number of countries in the West that will be committed to undermining Russia's position.
You want to remember that, if I'm right, and I think I am right, that Russia's going to win an ugly victory. It's still going to be a victory. It's going to be a devastating defeat for NATO. It's going to be a devastating defeat to the West. It's going to be a devastating defeat for the United States. You remember what happened when we left Afghanistan at all the flack that President Biden took as a result. The same thing will happen here if, at one point, the Ukrainians can't fight anymore and Russia wins this ugly victory. So, this will cause lots of problems in the West, right? And more importantly, it will give us a very powerful incentive not to quit and to look for ways to get at the Russians.
[01:08:02] Peter Slezkine: I mean, I think that's more true of the European elites than of the U.S. because there is not as much American presence in Ukraine, at least overtly as there was in Afghanistan. So, we're going to be spared the scenes of people holding onto helicopters and Saigon or planes in Afghanistan. But for Europe, of course, the political leadership has staked itself entirely to this Ukrainian project. And when they say that the conflict is existential, it is a ludicrous statement if taken literally to mean that Russian tanks may arrive in Paris or Berlin. But if it is, sort of, an indication of a European union's future, then it does seem like the stakes are perhaps existential for them. And that's another reason, as you say, for them not to cut bait and to keep this going indefinitely.
[01:08:59] John Mearsheimer: I agree with a lot of what you say, but let me just emphasize that, if you look inside the United States, I think, and I'm choosing my words carefully here, that the overwhelming majority of people in the American national security establishment have the same view of Russia as the Europeans do. I think that Trump is an outlier. Trump, and I think JD Vance, is also an outlier. But you do not want to underestimate how remarkably hawkish almost everybody is. There's just very few people who think like Trump and Vance and me and Tucker Carlson and a handful of other prominent people on this whole subject. I mean, there's been something of a shift over time, but not a major shift. And you want to remember…
[01:09:50] Peter Slezkine: Although Trump is President, Vance is perhaps the next president. Tucker Carlson has one of the biggest platforms in all of American media. And you are the star of all of international relations. So, the cast of characters you just named are far from fringe.
[01:10:03] John Mearsheimer: I fully understand that, but I'm just saying to you, you don't want to underestimate how much flack Trump is going to take from the foreign policy establishment. The Lindsey Grahams of the world, right? The Council on Foreign Relations, the New York Times, all these people who are deeply committed to Ukraine in the United States. And he's going to take a lot of flack. It's going to be incredibly messy.
I've often said, and I want to reiterate it here, if we had not made the decision in April of 2008 to bring Ukraine in to NATO, in all likelihood, Ukraine would still be intact today inside its pre-2014 borders, there would not have been this war, and relations between Russia on one side and Europe on the other and Russia on one side in the United States on the other would be much better. But because of the April 2008 decision and the fact that we doubled down at every turn, that's what's really remarkable. If you go back to the April 2008 decision, we decided, meaning NATO, that we're going to bring Georgia and Ukraine into the alliance. And then in August of 2008, a few months later, a war breaks out in Georgia that revolves around this very issue of Georgia being in NATO. You would think that NATO leaders would've understood that this is a high button issue.
Then when the crisis breaks out — not the war, the crisis — February 22nd, 2014, you would think that Western leaders would've said, “The Russians are really serious here. This is a dangerous problem. We've got to figure out some sort of way to live together.” But that's not what happens. We double down. And we do nothing to prevent the war that breaks out in February 2022. And then when there are peace negotiations immediately after the war breaks out, we in the West, the United States, the British especially, sabotaged those negotiations, which look like they may reach fruition.
And we continue to double down, except for Trump, I understand. But it's really quite remarkable. And the end result, the worst of all this is that Ukraine has been destroyed. All the people on the other side of this debate for me assume the moral high ground and argue that people like me are moral credence, that we're selling the Ukrainians down the river.
[01:12:37] Peter Slezkine: Well, we established your moral credentials in the first part of this interview. So, I think you're safe now.
[01:12:43] John Mearsheimer: Yes, we did. But I believe that the morally correct thing to do was not bring Ukraine in to NATO. What's happened to Ukraine? It's an unmitigated disaster. Oh, my god. I can't believe it. And it's a result of that April 2008 decision and all the subsequent decisions to double down.
And this is the West at play, especially the United States. And all the people who have cheer-led this whole enterprise, they're the ones who have blood on their hands, in my opinion, not people like me who said we should have never tried to bring Ukraine in NATO, and who have argued all along that the Ukrainians should cut a deal and not continue fighting so that they lose more territory and more Ukrainians die. And by the way, I would say that, when we finally find out how many Ukrainians have died in this war, people are going to be stunned by how large the number is.
[01:13:39] Peter Slezkine: Well, then one final question. When are you going to start selling hats that say Mearsheimer has been right about everything?
[01:13:47] John Mearsheimer: I’m not going to do that.
[01:13:49] Peter Slezkine: You're not going to give Trump a run for his money in merchandising?
[01:13:52] John Mearsheimer: No. And plus, it's not true. I've not been right about everything. I've been wrong on a number of occasions. As you well know, Peter, the world is incredibly complicated. And when you try to analyze it and you try to make predictions, I think, if you're as rational as possible, if you pay careful attention to facts and logic, you'll get it right most of the time.
[01:14:16] Peter Slezkine: Well, I think it's precisely that modesty that has made you more right than wrong. Well, on that note, thank you so much for joining me.
[01:14:24] John Mearsheimer: It was my pleasure, Peter. I enjoyed talking about all these topics.
[01:14:31] Peter Slezkine: Thanks for listening to the Trialogue Podcast. Make sure to subscribe to the show so you don’t miss out on any episode. The Trialogue Podcast is hosted by the Stimson Center and produced by University FM.