HORIZONS: w/ John J. Mearsheimer – The Return of Great-Power Politics (Transcript)

This is not what’s happening.

What’s happening is what you described. During the unipolar moment, there was no great-power competition, as I emphasized before. And what the United States decided to do, instead of engaging in great-power competition, was to remake the world in its own image, to pursue a very liberal foreign policy, what I call “liberal hegemony.” And the end result of this is we got into the forever wars. It was disastrous, and as a result, most Americans lost interest in fighting those foolish wars.

But what was more important was that you moved away from unipolarity into multipolarity with the rise of China and the resurrection of Russian power under Vladimir Putin. And the end result is that once you were in a multipolar world, after 2017, the United States had to focus on great-power competition.

And of course, it abandoned in large part its mission of trying to remake the world in its own image. Because not only had it failed, but there were more important issues on the table than spreading liberal democracy. And the more important issues involved great-power competition.

So, as you correctly pointed out, Vuk, we’ve had a switch here in American foreign policy that is due largely to a change in the structure of the international system, the movement from unipolarity to multipolarity. But also it is due to the fact that liberal hegemony was a colossal failure. Instead of remaking the world in America’s image, we got bogged down in the forever wars.

The Russia-China Alliance: A Strategic Blunder

VUK JEREMIĆ: Well, you famously argued that pushing Russia into China’s arms was a strategic blunder of the highest order. Well, today this alliance appears cemented with Moscow and Beijing deepening their military and economic cooperation, if not integration.

Well, looking at the structural forces that are now at play, what, if anything, could possibly peel Moscow away at this stage or drive a wedge between China and Russia? Or must the West accept this bloc as a permanent or a very long-lasting, if you will, feature of the new global order?

JOHN J. MEARSHEIMER: Let me just start at the most general level. There are three great powers in the system. The United States is still the most powerful state, but the peer competitor to the United States is not Russia, it’s China. China is number two, and it’s not far behind the United States in terms of military power. Russia is the weakest of the three great powers.

And in a world like that, it makes eminently good strategic sense for the United States to be allied with Russia and to make sure that Russia and China are not tightly tied together. They’re not allies. As a result of the Ukraine war, we have driven the Russians into the arms of the Chinese. And we have this situation today where Russia and China are close allies, which is not in America’s strategic interest, as you noted.

Now, I would argue that Trump and his lieutenants understand that this situation doesn’t make sense. And I believe that what Trump wants to do is, number one, end the Ukraine war and number two, have good relations with Moscow. He wants U.S.-Russian relations to improve so he can peel the Russians away from the Chinese.

By the way, this is a situation that’s similar to what Kissinger and Nixon did in 1972. You remember that? Well, right. In that case, we peeled China away from the Soviet Union because it made no strategic sense for us to face both China and the Soviet Union as adversaries when there was an opportunity to make China an ally of the United States. And that, of course, was accomplished after ’72. And I believe that what Trump wants to do is peel Russia away from China now.

Now, your question is, how likely is it that this will succeed? And my argument would be it’s extremely unlikely that it’s going to succeed in the foreseeable future. In the distant future, it may work. But the problem is that Trump is having an extremely difficult time ending the Ukraine war and improving relations with Russia in a meaningful way.

And the reason for that is that inside the West, this is especially true in Europe, but it’s also true inside the United States, there is acute Russophobia. Hatred of Russia is endemic to the governing classes in Europe and in large part in the United States. So it makes it very difficult for Trump to improve relations with Russia.

Furthermore, if you’re the Russians, do you trust the West? Do you trust the United States? I don’t think so. And even if you trust Donald Trump, the problem that you face is Donald Trump is not forever. This is his second term as president, and after 2028, he’s no longer going to be President of the United States, and his successor may be another Russophobe.

So, from Russia’s point of view, it makes eminently good sense to continue to have good relations with China. And, of course, from China’s point of view, it makes eminently good sense to have close relations with Russia. So it’s hard to see how we rectify this strategic situation that makes no sense for the United States.

Europe’s Fractured Future

VUK JEREMIĆ: Well, this particular reality places immense pressure on Europe, with the United States increasingly fixated on the Asia-Pacific and also on Latin America. The European capitals are vigorously debating, advocating most of them, a strategic autonomy, whatever that may mean.

Well, given the continent’s, I’m talking about Western Europe in particular, 80 years of reliance on the American security umbrella, how realistic do you think is the prospect of Europe emerging as an independent pole rather than remaining a theater for great-power competition outside of Europe?

JOHN J. MEARSHEIMER: There’s been a very powerful tendency since the Cold War ended, although you even saw evidence of it during the Cold War, to refer to Europe as if it were a single political entity, almost as if it were a state of its own. This is a mistake. Europe is comprised of a large number of sovereign states.

And the reason you could pretend that there was this political entity called Europe was because you had two institutions, NATO and the European Union, that brought the Europeans together underneath the American security umbrella. But what’s happening here is that the American security umbrella is either going away completely or it’s seriously weakening.

And the question one then has to ask him or herself is whether this means that Europe will come closer together, that Europeans will work more closely than ever because the United States security umbrella has gone away or has significantly diminished. My argument is that the opposite will happen, that European relations will become more fractious.

Having the Americans in Europe in a serious way went to great lengths to serve as a glue that kept the Europeans together. You take the American security umbrella away, and there’s going to be fractious relations between European countries, and it’s going to become impossible to talk about Europe as if it were a single actor.

Furthermore, you do not want to underestimate the extent to which there are going to be poisonous relations between Europe on one hand and Russia on the other hand. For as far as the eye can see, the catastrophic consequences of the Ukraine war cannot be underestimated. First of all, with regard to what’s happened to Ukraine, this is an utter disaster for Ukraine. But furthermore, it has poisoned relations between Russia and Europe for the foreseeable future.

I believe that once the shooting stops, relations between Europe on one side and Russia on the other side will be poisonous. And the end result will be that you will get fractures in Europe as a result of this situation with Russia. There will be countries in Europe that will want to have more friendly relations with the Russians. And there will be countries in Europe that want to have even more hostile relations with the Russians.

And of course, the Russians will have very powerful incentives to exploit these divisions in Europe and sow dissension in Europe. So moving forward, I would argue that Europe is going to look less like a whole political entity than it has in the past because of, number one, the fact that the American security umbrella is either going away or is going to be significantly diminished. And number two, because of the poisonous relations between Europe and Russia that are likely to set in after the shooting stops in Ukraine.

Middle Powers and the Limits of Hedging

VUK JEREMIĆ: Well, let’s move away for a moment from the great powers. We are witnessing assertive diplomacy from the emerging middle states, like Brazil, India, Saudi Arabia or Turkey, for instance. And these nations seem intent on hedging rather than aligning with a single bloc.

So how much genuine agency do you think these states possess? In other words, can they maintain this independence or this hedging attitude, if you will, long term, or will the gravitational pull of the U.S. and China in particular eventually force them to choose sides?

The Monroe Doctrine and Middle Power Hedging

JOHN J. MEARSHEIMER: Well, I think there’s no question that most states in the international system prefer to hedge and not get directly allied with either China or the United States in this security competition which is heating up between these two great powers. And you especially see this in East Asia, where all sorts of countries have economic relations of the first order with China, and they want to maintain those good economic relations. And therefore, they’re fearful of getting too close to the United States.

But at the same time, they understand that if they get threatened by China, they have no choice but to ally with the United States. So what they want is they want their cake and eat it, too. They want a hedge. They want to have good relations as much as they can with China and with the United States.

The problem you face with regard to any particular country is that if China becomes a serious threat to your survival or the United States becomes a serious threat to your survival, you really have no choice but to side with the other country. Because security always trumps prosperity, which is a way of saying economic relations are always subordinated to security relations when your survival is at risk.

And therefore, you see that countries like Japan and South Korea, the Philippines, Australia, have all moved very close to the United States. But in places like Southeast Asia, what you see is a lot of hedging taking place.

Now, some of the countries that you mentioned are very interesting cases. Let’s just start with Brazil. Brazil is in the Western Hemisphere. The United States has this policy called the Monroe Doctrine. And the Monroe Doctrine says that there is no way Brazil can form an alliance with China. And I think the Brazilians understand full well that they can have economic intercourse with China, but they have no choice but to be friendly to the United States, to not ally with China.

This is true of every country in the Western Hemisphere. And anybody who has any doubts about that should remember what happened to Cuba when it allied with the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

India is the most interesting case of all because over the past roughly 25 years, US-Indian relations have improved greatly. And because India has a border conflict with China, it was moving ever closer to the United States. But as a result of the Ukraine War, what has happened is that President Trump has played hardball with India for trading with Russia, and he has put 50% tariffs on India.

And I would argue that President Trump has poisoned relations with India. So what’s happened here is that India is hedging in a serious way. And if anything, it’s leaning towards China, not towards the United States, which is the direction that it was headed in in recent years. So you see that India actually has quite a bit of agency and it’s reacted to American policy in ways that’s not in the American national interest and is largely a result of President Trump’s foolish policies that grow out of the Ukraine war.

Now, with regard to countries like Turkey and Saudi Arabia, I think that they will clearly lean towards the United States moving forward in large part because neither China nor Russia has that much influence in the Middle East. The United States is the great power that really throws its weight around in the Middle East at this point in time. And therefore those two countries, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, when push comes to shove, ally with the United States.

However, I would argue that as China gets more powerful and as it develops a blue water navy and power projection capability into the Persian Gulf, what countries like Saudi Arabia and countries like Iran do in the future remains an open question. It could be the case that Saudi Arabia moves away from the United States and develops much closer strategic relations with China. That remains to be seen.

But one wants to remember that the strategic balance, the balance of power between China and the United States is shifting and China is becoming increasingly powerful and it is developing significant power projection capability which will affect how countries around the world react to either China or the United States.

The Crumbling of Post-1945 Institutional Architecture

VUK JEREMIĆ: Let’s move to the international organizations which we still have around, although they are crumbling or they seem to be really struggling amidst this great power reinvigorated competition. The paralysis in the UN Security Council comes to mind. The fragmentation of the WTO comes to mind. They seem to suggest that the post-1945 institutional architecture is crumbling under the circumstances.

You have long argued that institutions merely reflect the balance of power in the world. So if these forums are indeed deadlocked beyond repair, some would say what mechanisms remain to facilitate basic diplomacy between the big powers, but also for the rest of the world?

JOHN J. MEARSHEIMER: Well, let me make two sets of points, Vuk. First of all, during the unipolar moment, you had one great power and that one great power was the dominant power in the international order, right? In those international institutions that comprise the international order. But we’ve moved from unipolarity to multipolarity and you now have three great powers.

And as you pointed out, that’s going to fundamentally alter the politics that take place inside those international institutions. The United States is no longer the only great power. It does not run the rules-based order the way it did during unipolarity. It has to worry about its competition with China and with Russia in the context of those international institutions.

And by the way, this is not unlike the situation that existed during the Cold War when the Soviet Union and the United States were both great powers and they vied with each other, they competed with each other inside the context of international institutions like the United Nations, right? And this all changed again with the coming of unipolarity.

But now we have left unipolarity behind and we’re in multipolarity. So these international institutions that exist, and they still exist, the United Nations has not gone away, the WTO has not gone away, the Non-Proliferation Treaty has not gone away. But the fact is it’s going to be increasingly difficult over time and it’s already difficult to get a lot of cooperation among the three great powers in these international institutions. So the basic thrust of your question is on the money.

The Rise of Bounded Orders

My second point is that what you want to understand is that what China is doing and what the United States is doing is creating their own bounded orders. These are smaller orders, but powerful orders that are designed to wage security competition.

And if you think back to the Cold War, you want to remember that inside the Soviet-led world, inside what was then called the communist world, the Soviets built their own order. It involved institutions like COMECON, the Warsaw Pact and so forth and so on. And inside the West, the United States built its own order. These were not international orders, these were bounded orders. They were designed to wage security competition.

And what you see happening today, let’s just take China as an example, is that it is building its own bounded order. Think about Belt and Road, think about BRICS, think about the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, think about the AIIB. These are all institutions inside a Chinese-led order that do not include the United States. And of course the United States has its own bounded order.

So very importantly, what’s happening here is that the international order and the international order is comprised of institutions that include all the great powers. Those institutions are weakening. However, we are seeing the development of bounded orders, one led by China, the other led by the United States, that are designed to wage security competition between those two great powers.

Economic Interdependence and Strategic Vulnerability

VUK JEREMIĆ: Well, let’s stay at this fracturing of governance which is very visible these days in the global economy, for instance, in markets where security concerns are overriding economic efficiency, as you have always claimed it would. And it’s very evident these days in the decoupling of high-tech supply chains and high-tech being a big driver of global growth and of domestic economies around the world. It’s a very significant thing, in my opinion.

Does this then validate the argument that high levels of economic interdependence are actually dangerous instead of stabilizing? And how much economic pain do you think the great powers are willing to absorb to secure their supply lines?

JOHN J. MEARSHEIMER: Well, a couple points here. First of all, many people believe that economic interdependence causes peace. And the argument is that economic interdependence promotes prosperity. And if countries are becoming prosperous economically, why would they dare to start a war and put an end to that prosperity? This makes no sense at all.

So over past years, when I’ve argued that the United States and China are likely to end up in a dangerous security competition, many of my interlocutors would argue that’s wrong because of all the economic interdependence between China and the United States. You’d never get a serious security competition. There’s no choice. You’d get war.

I used to remind people that you had a great deal of economic interdependence in Europe before World War I, but you still got World War I. So don’t count on economic interdependence producing peace. So my bottom line here with regard to the war and peace question is that I don’t think economic interdependence causes war, and I don’t think it causes peace. I don’t think it matters very much. It may matter on the margins in certain cases, but it doesn’t matter very much.

Now, where economic interdependence matters today, especially to the United States, is that the United States is dependent on China for certain materials. And this gives China great leverage over the United States. And what I’m talking about here is mainly rare earths and magnets, rare earth magnets.

As you remember, when President Trump first came to office earlier this year in January 2025, he almost immediately decided to play hardball with China. He was talking about levying massive tariffs on China and making China dance to his tune. This did not last long because the Chinese reminded President Trump that the American economy was heavily dependent on rare earth materials and was heavily dependent on rare earth magnets.

And the Chinese told President Trump in no uncertain terms that they would cut off those rare earths to the United States if the United States played hardball. And the end result is that President Trump backed off. He’s no longer playing hardball with the Chinese, and that’s because the Chinese have significant leverage over us, and that’s because we are dependent on China.

This is one of the results of economic interdependence. It’s a result of these supply chains that the United States depends on that China acts as a key player inside of. So what we’re trying to do, the United States, is rectify this situation, but that’s very difficult to do.

So you see that in the present situation, it’s not that economic interdependence has caused war or facilitated peace, but what economic interdependence has done is it’s put the United States in a situation that is not good from a strategic point of view. The United States does not want to be in a situation where it depends on China for rare earths or for rare earth magnets, but that’s where we are. So economic interdependence has real limits, as the United States is now finding out.

Multipolar Miscalculation and War Flashpoints

VUK JEREMIĆ: History suggests that multipolar systems are prone to miscalculation. You mentioned Europe and the First World War due to the sheer complexity of the board. So scanning the board, the global board today, where do you see the highest risk of a hot war erupting by accident? Is Taiwan the obvious primary flashpoint, as many would say, or are we overlooking other dangerous fault lines?

East Asia’s Three Major Flashpoints

JOHN J. MEARSHEIMER: Well, let me talk about East Asia and Taiwan, and then let me go to Europe, where I think there’s huge potential for trouble moving forward.

First of all, with regard to East Asia, there are three major flashpoints between China and the United States in that region. The first, which you mentioned, is Taiwan, which is obviously very dangerous. The Chinese are deeply committed to getting Taiwan back. They believe that Taiwan is sacred territory and it belongs in China, so they’re committed to taking Taiwan back.

At the same time, there’s no question from a strategic point of view, the United States and Japan and other countries in East Asia do not want China to take Taiwan back. The United States and Japan are deeply committed to making sure Taiwan remains independent. So you can see that Taiwan is a dangerous flashpoint for sure.

But there are two other flashpoints that really worry me greatly. One is the South China Sea. The Chinese believe that the South China Sea basically belongs to them. It’s not international waters, as the United States and its allies say, it’s Chinese waters. So there is real potential for conflict in terms of who controls the South China Sea.

And then there’s the East China Sea, where these small, tiny islands, which the Japanese call the Senkaku Islands and the Chinese call the Diaoyu Islands, are disputed territory. Japan now occupies those islands, and Japan believes those islands belong to them. The Chinese disagree completely. The Chinese are convinced that those are Chinese islands.

And furthermore, you have a dispute over who controls the East China Sea. The Chinese want to dominate the East China Sea, and the Japanese don’t want them to. So again, you have these three major flashpoints in East Asia: the South China Sea, the East China Sea, which of course includes the Senkaku or Diaoyu Islands, and then, of course, Taiwan.

Europe’s Six Dangerous Flashpoints

But let’s go to Europe. First of all, even if you solve or stop the fighting in Ukraine, you’re going to end up with a frozen conflict in Ukraine. And there’s always the danger that that frozen conflict will once again turn into a hot war. You’ll go from a cold war to a hot war. So Ukraine by itself will remain a dangerous flashpoint in Europe.

But I would argue there’s six other dangerous flashpoints in Europe which are closely related to the competition between Russia on one side and Europe and the United States on the other. And those six potential flashpoints in Europe are the Arctic, where you want to remember, seven of the eight countries that are physically located in the Arctic are NATO countries. The Russians are outnumbered seven to one. And there are all sorts of potential problems that could lead to conflict in the Arctic.

Then there’s the Baltic Sea, then there’s Kaliningrad, then there’s Belarus, then there’s Moldova, and then there’s the Black Sea. I could tell you a story, as I’m sure you could tell me a story, about how you get a possible war between Russia on one side and one or more European countries on the other side in each of those cases.

So Europe is going to remain a very dangerous place when it comes to the possibility of war for the foreseeable future, just as East Asia is going to remain a very dangerous place.

Internal Polarization and Rational State Action

VUK JEREMIĆ: I was really relieved when you said six. I thought that, you know, Balkans got to be one of those six. I was really relieved when your list stopped short of listing the Balkans, because in the past you’ve proved so much of a prophet with regard to what might be happening in the world.

But let’s go beyond that. Realism—you’re a great bard of realism, great scholar of realism—it typically assumes, if I’m not mistaken, that states act rationally to survive, regardless of their internal politics, for instance. And the deep polarization, the exceptional polarization in the United States these days is undeniable.

So how does this internal dysfunction impact America’s ability to act as a rational balancer in the world? And can a divided hegemon, still the strongest country in the world, as you said, effectively maintain the credibility of its security commitments abroad?

JOHN J. MEARSHEIMER: Let me just start by saying that I do assume in my theory, as almost all realists do, that states act rationally. But states sometimes do not act rationally. My argument is that they normally act or routinely act rationally. But there are occasions where states do not act rationally.

And you want to remember that theories are simplifications of reality and no theory can explain every case. So a good realist theory will account for most cases, but there will be cases where states act in a non-rational or irrational way.

And the question that you’re asking, which is a very important question, is whether the conflict inside the United States between the red side of the political spectrum and the blue side of the political spectrum will cause the United States to act in non-strategic or non-rational ways. And I think the answer is it will not.

And there are two reasons for that. The first is that there’s not a lot of difference between the two sides with regard to foreign policy, especially as it applies to great power politics. Many people argue that the Republicans and the Democrats are basically the “uni-party” when it comes to foreign policy. They basically think and act in very similar ways.

So this political divide in the United States, which is clearly poisonous—I do not want to make light of it, and there’s no question the United States is in trouble on the home front, so I’m not denying that—but in terms of foreign policy, I don’t think you see that big division inside the United States reflected in our foreign policy. So I don’t think that domestic politics will cause us to act irrationally for that reason.

But the second point I would make to you as a good structural realist: I believe that structure is largely determinative. It largely determines how states act. And the United States faces a serious threat from China and it has a deep-seated interest in containing China. And I think that this point is recognized by people on the left and people on the right, or people on the blue side of the equation and people on the red side of the political equation.

Containing China is seen as a strategic imperative by almost everyone in the foreign policy elite inside the United States. Now this is not to deny that people will have different views on how exactly to contain China. You’re always going to have a situation like that. This was true during the Soviet Union. There was widespread agreement in the United States that we needed to contain the Soviet Union during the Cold War. But how you did that was not always an issue on which people agreed.

And I think that’ll be true with regard to China. But I think if you look at U.S. foreign policy toward China moving forward, I don’t think it’s likely that the United States will act irrationally or in a strategically foolish way. That is always a possibility. Again, I want to emphasize that no theory can predict every case, and sometimes states act in ways that contradict what a basic theory says.

But I think with regard to how the United States deals with China, I think it’s highly likely that we will behave in a strategically smart or rational way moving forward.

Trump’s Ukraine Policy: Aberration or Strategic Correction?

VUK JEREMIĆ: But then Donald Trump and his attitude towards the war in Ukraine is then just an aberration. That was a pretty dramatic change from the government of Joe Biden to this government of the United States in terms of how they approached this crucial conflict in Ukraine.

So I’m a bit confused. Is it that, after—are you trying to say that after Trump things are going to go back to the one-party consensus on the foreign policy, that Trump is not going to have a lasting effect on some strategic shifts of how the U.S. deals with the world?

JOHN J. MEARSHEIMER: Look, I think the present U.S. policy toward Ukraine is not rational. That driving the Russians into the arms of the Chinese does not make strategic sense. There’s no question about that. And what Trump is trying to do is to rectify that situation. Trump is trying to act in a strategically smart way.

The problem is that it’s very difficult because of the Russophobia in the West for Trump to accomplish his goal. But again, I think Trump is acting in a strategically smart way, in a rational way. But the United States in a very important way is stuck in a rut. It’s stuck in a policy. It’s stuck with a policy that does not make strategic sense.

And this policy, by the way, was started during the unipolar moment. What the United States was trying to do during the unipolar moment was spread liberal democracy and spread liberal institutions to Eastern Europe and make Eastern Europe and Western Europe a whole. That was the idea behind our policy towards Ukraine. It was during the unipolar moment that this policy was set in train.

But then we transitioned out of unipolarity into multipolarity and you had this U.S.-China competition. But the United States was then stuck in this war in Ukraine, which did not make strategic sense. It was irrational at that point in time to be driving the Russians into the arms of the Chinese. We were no longer in unipolarity. We were in multipolarity.

And the Biden administration acted, I think, in an irrational way, a non-strategic way, by exacerbating tensions with the Russians and then, actually, I believe, doing hardly anything to prevent a war from starting in Ukraine in 2022. This was strategically foolish.

And again, the point I’m making is that I think that Trump is trying to rectify that situation. Trump is acting in a rational fashion, in my opinion. Whether he’s able to fix that problem is another matter.

VUK JEREMIĆ: Professor John Mearsheimer, one of the world’s most powerful strategic thinkers and definitely one of the world’s most powerful narrators and explainers of complex developments and structural forces in the world. It was an immense privilege talking to you again, sir. Thank you very much for this interview.

JOHN J. MEARSHEIMER: Thank you very much for your kind words, and thank you very much for having me on the program. I enjoyed it thoroughly.

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