Jeffrey Sachs & John Mearsheimer: Spheres of Security to Prevent World War III (Transcript)

So this will be a very interesting discussion.

John has been right on so many things: of course on Israel and Gaza, of course on the Ukraine war. And another that brings me to this issue also, which is that in his magnum opus—if I could call it that, at least I consider it your magnum opus, John—The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, you wrote in the opening of that almost 25 years ago that while relations between the US and China were calm, this would not last.

So this is another of your predictions that was spot on: that as China rose, and you said it precisely, as China rose in power, the clash between China and the United States was also—I don’t know if you used the word “inevitable”—but you said it was going to happen. And when I would have viewed that as an economist back in 2000, I would have said, “Why? Why should it happen? The rise of China is a good thing and it will help the US, so no big trouble.”

Well, I would have predicted wrong. You did predict right. But I have one problem, and that’s the one that brings me to this discussion. Your book is called The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, and it predicts that, sad to say, we’re going to have clashes between the great powers. And those clashes can be much more than trade wars. They can be hot wars.

# The Nuclear Threat and Regional Hegemons

And that’s what leads me to a proposal that I’ve been writing about and thinking about in recent months: a sphere of security as a useful addition and improvement over the idea of a sphere of influence. So my idea also draws on your thinking, John, which is that there are regional hegemons, but there’s no global hegemon.

And you also say, I think absolutely rightly and very importantly, that there can be no global hegemons, that they’re too far away from each other for the United States to defeat China or China to defeat the United States or any of the great powers to defeat each other. We may have slightly different definitions of which are the great powers right now, but I would say that this is true of the four that I count as great powers: the United States, Russia, China, and India.

And I believe that we are not in a condition where there could be a global hegemon, much less any of those four really defeating the others. So what’s the problem? What’s the tragedy?

For me, the tragedy is that a conflict could escalate to mutual annihilation. And I regard that as a very serious risk, not as a casual risk or not as a remote possibility. So I have to say that a great deal of my thinking is based on the reality of the nuclear age. If you put that aside, what I believe probably loses force, although even with conventional weapons, a lot of people could die in a full war. That would be horrific.

So I don’t think it’s only the nuclear question, but for me, it is the nuclear question. I don’t want war between the United States and Russia or the US and China or China and India, or any pairwise combination of countries for whom a war could lead to escalation, leading to nuclear war, leading to global Armageddon.

And I take very seriously the Doomsday Clock of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, which is a heuristic and a graphic. But when it says we’re 89 seconds to midnight, I do not just brush that off as empty rhetoric. I think it is a reflection of how dangerous the world, in fact, is right now.

And you and I know that the nuclear war could be India and Pakistan. It could be Israel and Iran. There are many, many pairwise combinations that could lead to disaster. And one of the interesting things about the very powerful book of Annie Jacobsen last year called Nuclear War: A Scenario is that the first shot in her scenario comes from North Korea, but it quickly spirals into a full nuclear war between the United States and Russia because of mistakes. And mistakes when you have minutes for survival, which is in our nuclear age, is really a terrible fact.

# The Golden Rule Applied to Great Powers

Now, what to do about that? My basic proposition is that the big countries, the great powers, should stay out of each other’s lane and make a special effort not to be in each other’s faces. And that with that level of prudence and secured even in treaty form in various ways, but certainly secured through diplomacy, we have a chance to keep away from each other.

In basic terms, I really don’t think it would be a good idea for Canada or Mexico or Cuba again, or any Caribbean state or Venezuela to invite China or Russia to establish a military base. And if they did, they would quickly be reminded that we have a doctrine in the United States, the Monroe Doctrine, which goes back 202 years, that that’s a no-no, and we’re prepared to defend it as we were and came close to nuclear war in the Cuban Missile Crisis.

My basic proposition starts with the idea that what’s good enough for the United States should also apply to the United States. If we feel that way about our own neighborhood, we should understand that Russia really feels that way about its neighborhood and China really feels that way about its neighborhood.

As you know better than anybody, John, we don’t take Russia’s concerns into account at all. And you’ve been making that point for at least 11 years, since 2014. And I know well beyond that as well. And I would start with the Golden Rule. I’m just fine with the Monroe Doctrine with a footnote to it. And I think that it should apply to everybody.

# Sphere of Security vs. Sphere of Influence

So when I say “sphere of security,” what I mean is: stay out of each other’s neighborhoods with your military. This is very important because there’s another term that is widely used and widely disparaged. It has a long pedigree in international affairs. I don’t know exactly what it dates to. You could probably tell us: “sphere of influence.”

And sphere of influence is something different. It says, “Stay out of our neighborhood because I dominate Mexico and the United States and Cuba. Not only should you stay out of that neighborhood, I get to pick the governments. Actually, I get to interfere because that’s my sphere of influence.”

Now, that I don’t accept. And I believe that we should distinguish between a sphere of security where the great powers respect the other great powers and stay out of their lane, as I put it, or out of their face or out of their backyard, no matter—depending on which metaphor or simile you want to use.

But when it comes to how the great power acts in its own neighborhood, there I believe that the smaller countries do need a defense against the depredations of the larger countries. But I also think that that’s possible to a significant extent—not entirely, but to a significant extent—on norms and not on the presence of another great power on the border, which is so provocative that it leads to the kind of disaster we have underway in Ukraine.

# Historical Examples: The Two Roosevelts

Now, in the United States, we’ve run this experiment actually quite well. We’ve had two Roosevelts as president. The first Roosevelt was a true imperialist, a proud one, and he had the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. And if I could put it in the vernacular, if you don’t mind my saying so, it was: “We can kick the shit out of any country we want in the western hemisphere. They’re ours.” Of course, we should speak softly but carry a very big stick, as he famously said.

Franklin Roosevelt said something different. And by the way, they were sixth cousins, people should know. Not brothers or first cousins or fathers and sons. They were distant relatives, but they were actually close in that Teddy Roosevelt was a role model for Franklin Roosevelt, who became president roughly 33 years later.

And in his inaugural address on March 4, 1933, Franklin Roosevelt said that he wanted to have a “Good Neighbor Policy.” And he added specifics to it: “We will not intervene in your internal affairs. We will not overthrow you. We will not undertake covert regime change operations”—that your wonderful student Lindsey O’Rourke wrote about so brilliantly in her book on covert regime change, where she documented 64 U.S. covert regime change operations between 1947 and 1989.

Roosevelt said we won’t do it. And they didn’t do it during the Roosevelt administration. And I think that that’s not a unique period in history where a clearly dominant power exercised a kind of self-imposed restraint for the long-term good.

# The Confucian Peace

Another one which I want us to talk about, which is also discussed in your wonderful magnum opus, is the so-called “Confucian Peace,” or the “Chinese Peace,” which was a long period, roughly from the beginning of the Ming Dynasty in 1368 to the arrival of the British in the First Opium War in 1839, in which there were almost no wars between China, the clear hegemon of the region, and the smaller countries: Vietnam, Korea, and Japan.

And so that is a good neighbor policy over several hundred years. Of course, the Chinese wanted respect. They wanted to be known as number one. So they went and they kowtowed to the emperor. But the emperor didn’t demand anything of them. He didn’t demand unfair terms of trade. He didn’t demand territory. He didn’t occupy the other countries. He didn’t extract resources or slaves or demand land for settlements or anything else.

A bit of kowtowing and respect for the Celestial Emperor was quite enough to keep the peace for hundreds of years.

# A Practical Framework for Peace

So in short, and I’ll turn it back over to you, Glenn, I want the great powers to stay out of each other’s way and I want them to recognize that it’s not right for the United States to try to put a military base in Ukraine or in Georgia. It’s not right to try to arm the rimlands of China. It is dangerous to do so. It’s not necessary to do so. It doesn’t actually protect the smaller countries.

In fact, it makes them vassal states of the larger countries and makes them very vulnerable to manipulations of all sorts. And now Donald Trump comes along and demands all kinds of tribute. That is real tribute—not just pleasing him with smiles and praise, but money on the table.

So I would like the great powers to all have their Monroe Doctrine mutually respected and to have their Good Neighbor Policies mutually respected and to get on with decency and goodwill.

Final point: a sphere of security is not an economic exclusive zone. Quite the opposite. So Ukraine could trade with Europe. If Europe were a little bit different from how it envisions itself right now, it could join the European Union. I just add the footnote that since it’s militarizing so fast, we don’t know whether joining the European Union is really joining a military apparatus or not.

But the point is I don’t want to rule out trade. I don’t want to rule out investment. I don’t want to rule out tourism. I don’t want to rule out normal relations. I want to rule out missile systems, infantry, military bases, and threat points that can quickly escalate to war with a very short fuse because geographically you’re right in the face of the other side.

John Mearsheimer’s Response

GLENN DIESEN:

John.

JOHN MEARSHEIMER:

Thank you, Jeff, for those comments, and it’s wonderful to be here with two of my favorite international relations theorists on the planet. And I’ve been looking forward to this back and forth for quite a while now. I have enormous respect for Jeff. I want to make that very clear. And furthermore, I want to make it clear that he and I agree on all sorts of issues. We agree on the Israel-Palestine issue almost completely, if not completely.

JEFFREY SACHS:

I don’t know of any disagreement, John.

The Challenge of Defining Spheres of Security

JOHN MEARSHEIMER: And we agree on Ukraine, Russia. And I would note that I think that expanding NATO into Ukraine was a catastrophic mistake. So everything I say in my subsequent comments, please keep that in mind. And I also agree completely with Jeff that what we want to do, especially with regard to China and Russia, is avoid a great power war.

I think security competition is inevitable, as most viewers understand and as I’ll make clear as we go along. But I want to go to great lengths to make sure that security competition does not turn into a hot war between the great powers.

Also, before I get into the nitty gritty, I want to say that Jeff has actually invented a concept here which is “spheres of security.” He asked me at one point whether I thought other people had used this terminology. And I actually, as I said in my response to him, talked to Lindsey O’Rourke, who, by the way, is writing a book on spheres of influence. And I asked her whether she had seen any evidence of people talking about spheres of security. And she said no. And I think that’s true.

So Jeff has invented this new concept, which in my world is very important, and I’m sure that’s true in his world. But nevertheless, I’m now going to spend a little bit of time trying to knock down his concept of spheres of security.

Now, let me just start off by telling you what I think Jeff is doing, and I don’t think what I’m going to say here is controversial. And then I’ll point out what I think are the three main problems with what he’s trying to do in the realist world that I operate in.

Spheres of influence are geographical regions that great powers dominate, and they carve these spheres out, and they go to great lengths to keep other great powers out of the region. And they go to great lengths to manage the politics of the smaller states that are in the region because they’re very fearful that one of those smaller states may form some sort of alliance with a distant great power.

So this is a very realist view of international politics. Spheres of influence are all about competition.

From Spheres of Influence to Spheres of Security

Now, what Jeff is doing is introducing this concept of spheres of security, and he wants a situation where great powers recognize other states’ spheres. Not spheres of influence, but other states’ spheres or neighborhoods as areas that they should stay out of. In other words, we should stay out of Russia’s backyard or their neighborhood or their sphere, and they should stay out of ours.

And if that’s true, it in effect removes the incentives for us to interfere in the politics of minor powers, because we don’t have to worry about those minor powers forming any kind of military alliance with the distant great power.

So Jeff’s argument is that if you get a situation where people recognize each other’s spheres, their neighborhoods, and they give mutual, there’s mutual recognition of non-interference. You’re not going to interfere. That’s what it’s all about. In each other’s spheres. You’ll have taken a major step towards a more peaceful world.

Now let me just elevate this a bit and talk about what I think he’s doing at a more general level in my world, in the world of spheres of influence, which again is a very realist world. It’s basically a zero-sum world and where one state gains, another state loses. And this is captured in the famous security dilemma.

Just think about what the security dilemma says. The security dilemma says that anything you do to improve your security decreases the security of other states. Very zero-sum oriented. And that’s basic realism 101. And that’s what is at play in Jeff’s invention of this concept of spheres of security. He wants to move away from that in particular regions as much as possible.

Indivisibility of Security

And what he wants is a world in which you have indivisibility of security, especially in these regions. And let me just read to you, which Jeff says in his written work on this. This is what he defines indivisibility of security as: “One state cannot enhance its security at the expense of another.”

In other words, he wants a world where one state cannot enhance its security at the expense of another. That’s indivisibility of security. It’s very important to understand that is directly at odds with the security dilemma. The security dilemma again says that anything you do to improve your security diminishes the security of the other states in the system. And he’s cutting against that in a big way.

So that’s what he’s doing at the general level. But again, when you go down to the specific level, he wants to get away from spheres of influence. Because spheres of influence are where great powers interfere in each other’s sphere and that drives them to interfere in the politics of the minor powers in their region.

And he wants to create a world where there’s mutual agreement that you don’t interfere in the other side’s sphere, the other side’s neighborhood. And you basically allow the minor powers in your sphere to be neutral states. You stay out of their politics. To put it in Jeff’s rhetoric, you don’t behave like Teddy Roosevelt. You behave more like Franklin Roosevelt.

Three Problems with Spheres of Security

Now, I think there are three problems here. The first problem is I think it’s actually quite difficult in a lot of cases to define what a sphere is. Jeff talks about respective neighborhoods. I think if you’re talking about the Western Hemisphere or you’re talking about Eastern Europe, Ukraine, the Baltic states and so forth and so on, it’s reasonably easy to define what a sphere is. But there are lots of places in the world where it’s really very tricky.

And just take East Asia today, if you’re interested in granting the Chinese a sphere of security. What exactly are the geographical boundaries of that sphere? Does it include Southeast Asia? Does it include Northeast Asia? Is it all of East Asia? You could make that argument, but I think there would be a lot of states in the region, not to mention the United States, who would not accept that.

It’s much easier to accept the fact that Ukraine is a sphere for Russia, no question about that. And you can even make the case that it’s easy to do that for the United States in the Western Hemisphere. But I think one does not want to underestimate this problem.

And I’ll just give you one more example to illustrate what I’m trying to get at. Let’s just take Western and Central Europe during the Cold War. Obviously Eastern Europe is part of the Soviet Union’s sphere of influence. And obviously the Western Hemisphere is part of our sphere of influence. But whose sphere of influence is Central and Western Europe? Whose neighborhood is it in?

And the answer is that it’s probably not naturally a sphere of influence for either one of the superpowers during the Cold War. And of course they competed vigorously over Central and Western Europe in large part for that reason. They each wanted to make it their own sphere of influence.

But if you were to come up with some sort of mutual agreement on non-interference, I don’t know how you treat Southeast Asia today. I don’t know how you would treat Central and Western Europe during the Cold War. So it’s very tricky sometimes to define what is a sphere.

The Problem of Regions Outside Spheres of Security

This brings us to the second problem, which is related. Assuming that the world is not neatly divided into a series of spheres of influence that are all obvious and where you can reach agreement, that means that they’re going to be big portions of the planet that are not covered by Jeff’s logic. They’re not spheres of security.

And the question you have to ask yourself is, what’s happening outside Jeff’s spheres of security? And he does not say, you take realism or security competition or balance of power politics, call it what you want, off the table in those regions or in those areas outside his spheres of security. And that means you’re going to have security competition between the great powers outside of the spheres.

So the question you then have to ask yourself is whether you think that security competition is going to bleed into the spheres of security. I think Jeff is basically arguing that you can wall them off. In other words, you can wall off these spheres of security and that will go a long way towards producing a more peaceful world. And I understand that at first glance.

But then when you think about it, if you do have these two great powers that are competing vigorously with each other around the world, except in these spheres of security, don’t you think that eventually those great powers are going to look for opportunities to interfere in the other side’s sphere to gain advantage?

Because you’re in a world where balance of power politics works in large chunks of the earth. Jeff is not taking realism 101 off the table completely. He’s not saying that his point about indivisibility of security applies across the board. The security dilemma and zero-sum politics are still at play in certain areas.

And what I’m saying, as long as that’s the case, the incentives are going to be there for the great powers to interfere in each other’s spheres. And then you’re back to spheres of influence.

And very importantly, when you have a world in which one side may have an incentive to interfere in the other side’s sphere, then the other side has an interest in interfering in the other side’s sphere first. If you have a world where there are two great powers who have spheres, call them spheres of security or spheres of influence, they’re in these spheres. They have these spheres that they dominate.

Each side is going to want to eliminate the ability of the other side to dominate its sphere. And furthermore, you’re going to have very powerful incentives to make sure you control the politics of the minor powers in that sphere.

So what I’m saying here is that I think, Jeff, unless you can take realism 101 off the table, you run the risk that realist competition outside of your spheres of security will infiltrate those spheres of security and turn them into spheres of influence.

The Challenge of Mutual Security Guarantees

My third and final problem with your argument is you believe that you can give mutual security guarantees. I’ve used that language a few times, and it’s in your writings, it’s in your rhetoric, and that’s completely understandable. And it’s completely consistent with the story you’re telling.

In other words, what you want is you want these two great powers that have spheres to give security guarantees, mutual security guarantees, which is another way of saying guarantees that they won’t interfere in each other’s spheres. I think that’s very hard to do in international politics.

And the reason is that uncertainty permeates international politics. And furthermore, this is a very dynamic world. Change takes place all the time. If you think about the world of the 1990s and compare it to the world that we live in today, fundamental change has taken place.

And you and I are old enough to remember the Cold War. If you go back to the Cold War and then fast forward to unipolarity and then fast forward to multipolarity today, oh, my God. It’s just amazing how much change there has been in our lifetime. And we have not been on the planet that long.

So change is constantly taking place, and there’s just all sorts of uncertainty that goes along with that change. There’s uncertainty about intentions. I mean, who would have ever predicted that Donald Trump would be the president? When we were younger, we surely would have thought that was unthinkable, but here we are. And who knows who’s going to be the president ten years from now?

So when you talk about the intentions of states, you can never be too certain. And when you talk about capabilities, look at China. If you look at China in 1990 and you look at it in 2025, it’s like the difference between night and day in terms of capabilities.

JEFFREY SACHS: Oh, my God.

The Challenge of Security Guarantees in International Politics

JOHN MEARSHEIMER: This country is so impressive in terms of its economic might and now its military might as well. And a lot of people thought that was impossible. They thought China would grow economically, but not turn into the extremely powerful country that it now is, that it would become a peer competitor of the United States.

So what I’m saying to you is, in a world where there is lots of uncertainty, which is the world of international politics, where change takes place all the time, and very importantly, where there’s no higher authority that can make sure those security guarantees stick, make sure that if I give you, Jeff, a security guarantee and then violate it, I will be held to account. I will be punished. That doesn’t happen in international politics, as you know, because there’s no higher authority.

So my argument would be that given the limits of what a mutual security guarantee means, states have very powerful incentives to gain advantage whenever they can. To get yourself in excellent shape for a rainy day, things may go south in 10, 15, 20 years, who knows? But you want to make sure that when things go south that you’re in good shape. And the best way to do that is take advantage of the other side. And if you could take advantage of the other side inside its sphere, you’ll do it.

And that just sort of brings you back to a world of spheres of influence where great powers are competing with each other, not only to build spheres of influence, in my rhetoric, they’re competing with each other to build spheres. Just think about the Cold War competition in Western and Central Europe. And they’re competing with each other in terms of interfering in each other’s backyards. Just think of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Just think of all those efforts that we made during the Cold War to undermine the Soviet Union in its backyard.

So I think that your idea is excellent from a normative point of view. If we could get the world to work the way you want, that would be a good thing. I fully understand that. I fully understand how uncomfortable you are with my notion of tragedy and how you would love to transcend the tragic nature of international politics, as I articulated, fully understood. But my point is you can’t do that. And I think if you look at the historical record, there is really no evidence of us succeeding at this. And the reason is because I think the basic logic, the basic realist logic that underpins spheres of influence almost always trumps. Almost always trumps the basic logic that underpins your spheres of security. So I’ll quit there and turn it over to you, Glenn, and you, Jeff, to jump in.

Spheres of Interest vs. Spheres of Influence

GLENN DIESEN: I’ll just add some quick questions for the both of you before you answer each other. That is, the concept of sphere of security. It has some similarities to what President Medvedev proposed back in 2008. That was immediately after the Georgian war. He had a proposal to avoid another one, essentially Ukraine today. But he called it a sphere of interest.

And his argument was that a sphere of interest would be conceptually very different from a sphere of influence. That is, a sphere of influence suggests exclusive influence. So Russia should have exclusive influence in Ukraine, Georgia. And he said, this is not what we want or need. But he said the concept of a sphere of interest is different. This is recognizing that along our borders, we have, for historical reasons, privileged interests.

So the difference was that they would not demand exclusive influence. However, when foreign actors or other great powers operate along its borders in countries like Ukraine or Georgia, they would have to take into account Russian interest and also to accommodate Russia in those processes.

And so, again, this is, and I would just say implicitly it seems that we already practice this in some instances. For example, one could argue that Ukraine has the same freedom as Mexico because Mexico can form any economic partnership, any political partnership, but certainly Mexico doesn’t have the freedom as yet. John suggested to join a military bloc with the Russians or the Chinese.

But again, it seemed like this was also common sense in the West because if we remember back in 2008, the Europeans were quite concerned about what happens if we start to mess around too much in Russia’s backyard. Angela Merkel argued that it would be a declaration of war to pull Ukraine into NATO. But since those days, we kind of moved a bit away. We seem to use normative arguments how the world should be. That is, every country has the right to join any military block it wants, which is often confused with the recognition of how the world actually is, which is no great power would accept this and they would go to great length, even war, as we see, to avoid this.

Three Key Concerns About Spheres of Security

I guess my main concerns, three concerns would be given that this is kind of common sense, how would it be organized into a treaty? As you say, we have to take into consider your concerns when we are along historically sensitive areas along your border.

I guess the second would be also how do you prevent a sphere of security to become denigrate into a sphere of influence? That is if you say, well, NATO has no role in Ukraine because again, this is a threat to Russian security. Well, how do we prevent Ukraine from becoming an area of exclusive influence of Russia dominance? I mean this could also be a concern on the American side. I mean nobody recognizes you can’t establish military bases along the American border. But also nobody would want to see the U.S. for example, strip Venezuela of its sovereignty. So we don’t want, how do you prevent a sphere of security becoming a sphere of influence essentially?

And the last point was a bit what John was suggesting. How do you prevent countries from taking advantage? Because again, we’re not just pursuing peace. States are also pursuing security competition. And for the Europeans now, one of the reasons I think they don’t want the war necessarily to end is because not just for the Americans not to leave, but also, we’re having a proxy now we have hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians which we can pretty much use at will to fight the Russians. It’s very attractive to have that much influence in the neighboring country of a great power. So anyways, those were my main three thoughts, but I’ll hand it over to you.

Geography and Military Proximity in Modern Warfare

JEFFREY SACHS:

Yeah, well, there are a lot of issues on the table right now. Let me try to take a few of them first. Geography still matters in war. The time that it takes for a drone or a missile to reach the capital for a decapitation strike matters and is clearly seen to matter by the great powers.

The United States really did not want nuclear weapons in Cuba and Russia really does not want the United States military in Ukraine. And when they say it over the years they have said it, “We don’t want to be three minutes away from a missile strike.” They’re quite explicit about it.

One of the most destabilizing things that the United States did in my view is completely underrated. But I think it probably loomed just about as large as anything in the Russian mind, though you two would know better than I, and that is walking out of the ABM treaty in 2002 and starting to put anti-ballistic missile systems, the Aegis systems in Poland and Romania.

To my mind, this was not a small thing in the Russian thinking. This was seen, it’s claimed by Russian security experts as perhaps setting up for a decapitation strike as really undermining the balance of power, as really undermining deterrence. I credit that argument. I don’t brush aside that argument. I think the United States would go absolutely wild if Russia started building anti-ballistic missiles along our rim.

So I think while I don’t have the maps to show you here, I think we could do much better than we’re doing right now to understand that certain areas are just so provocative and so risky. And I would put Ukraine very high on that list. And I would put Georgia very high on that list. I would put the South Caucasus very high on that list.

I also want to recall that all the poobahs of American neocon foreign policy were the friends of Chechnya at the end of the 1990s. I doubt one of them knew where Chechnya really was, but they knew it could annoy the hell out of the Russians. And so they wanted to use Chechnya to weaken Russia. And this is what I say we need to avoid.

So I don’t want to claim that there is a clear rigid line, but I also don’t want to say that the lack of precision means that the idea is valueless. The idea actually should have a military component. If there were no military component to it, what I’m saying doesn’t really matter. I think that it does matter though. The proximity of the military of the other side really does matter in my view. And that’s the basic proposition.

The Soviet Occupation and the German Question

It raises a hundred issues I’d love to spend hours discussing with you. But why did the Soviet Union occupy Central and Eastern Europe after World War II? Of course the normal idea is, well, they wanted to make a global communist system. But I think the real reason was that they were afraid of Germany remilitarizing.

And the United States refused a neutral demilitarized Germany as a point of principle and instead established NATO and the Federal Republic of Germany as a core part of NATO and at German insistence. But frankly, I wouldn’t have gone with German insistence. I would have gone with the idea that Stalin had and that George Kennan had, that a neutral demilitarized Germany would have been a great benefit for everybody. And that I think could have brought the Cold War to an end much sooner.

Game Theory and Mutual Security

Let me turn to the third category problem that mutual security guarantees can’t last. And I want to say a couple of conceptual things. I know time is short, but we’re not in a zero-sum game. We’re in a negative-sum game. When we have an arms race, when we have a competition that can spill over to disaster, this is a negative-sum game.

As an economist I’m always desperately trying to find the efficient outcome. So people who know the Prisoner’s Dilemma game, the famous game, the so-called equilibrium or the Nash equilibrium of the Prisoner’s Dilemma, is not a zero-sum outcome, it’s a negative sum. Cooperation by both sides is better, but everybody has the incentive to cheat. So you end up with a cheat-cheat equilibrium or what they call the defect-defect equilibrium.

But that’s not zero-sum, that’s negative-sum. It offends an economist. We’re all for efficiency. In other words, you can make both sides better off by reaching the mutual accommodation. And then the endless question is, well, how do you enforce that when there’s an incentive to cheat?

And what game theory teaches us is several different things. One is that if you’re in repeated play, it’s more complicated than just one-off cheating. And so there is an incentive to stick by a treaty, not perfect, but it’s not zero either. And so the future casts a shadow over the decisions of the present.

The nuclear arms treaties actually have worked except when the US unilaterally walked out on them. That proves both John’s point and my point. John’s point is, well, the US walked out on them. My point is that the Soviets and the Russians actually obeyed them. And this is very important.

Kennedy and the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty

When President John F. Kennedy was trying to convince the American people of the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, he said, “Well, this is in Russia’s Soviet incentive and our incentive to stick by it because it’s mutually beneficial. It’s a positive sum compared to a nuclear arms race.” He convinced the Senate by an overwhelming majority, and the Soviets stuck by the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

He also said something very important that he was not looking for the miracle age when conflicts go away. I think that we’re in a nonstop struggle with the reality that John portrays. In other words, of course there’s cheating. Of course no treaty will last forever, but let’s stay alive the next 20 years. Let’s do the best we can.

Let’s sign treaties, try to abide by them, use the reputation effects. Game theory has established that there are many, many ways to have cooperation in an iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma. It’s reciprocity. It’s indirect reciprocity, as they call it, that you lose your reputation to others. It’s collective punishment which brings a higher level of governance above your head than the UN Security Council putting on sanctions and so on.

None of this works all that well, I admit. But it’s better to stay alive and try these things and make them work as best we can than to just say that we’re in a war of all against all almost as an inevitability, because I really don’t believe that.

And I think that the idea is, let’s do it now. Things will change, someone will violate this. Let’s go back to the logic of positive-sum games or negative-sum possibilities and redo it if we have to in the future. So I don’t deny the difficulties, but I also think that both the formal game theory, if you could say, and historical experience shows there are periods of peace that are actually constructed, and they’re constructed in part on treaties and mutual agreements.

And they last for a long time and then they don’t last, and then you have a big risk of war. I’m very worried that the logic of that, yes, it’s going to happen, war is going to happen. I just hate the nuclear reality of it right now, which is that I do believe in this concept of the nuclear revolution, that something’s really truly horrifically different now in our reality. We really have a nuclear sword of Damocles over our head. So we have to try even harder to get this right.

Competition Beyond Security Spheres

Then the third point that John mentioned, which was number two in his counting, which is that we would have continued competition elsewhere and I think a perfect case of that would be Chinese and US competition in Africa, for example. Everybody wants cobalt, everybody wants copper, everybody wants the resources, everybody wants the votes, perhaps in the UN, whatever.

And so Africa is not in either America’s or China’s or Russia’s or India’s sphere of security. It’s just far away. And so there will be competition there. Now, what would one say about that? I would say, yes, that’s true. I would of course try to avoid it. My main logic on that case would be to go to the Africans themselves and say, get into that union, because you’re a lot safer in an African Union of 55 countries than being picked apart by the major powers.

But I think Africa is exactly the kind of playground of competition that John is talking about. It’s real, it’s true, but it’s much less likely to devolve to nuclear war and much more likely to, it could even be local skirmishes or even wars or coups or other things, no doubt. But it is unlikely to be the trigger of a nuclear war because even literally there’s more time in space. It’s not in the other’s face.

The Reality of Cooperation

So bottom line for me is we do have mechanisms of cooperation that are imperfect but are real. We cooperate more than single period Prisoner’s Dilemmas or hawk-dove games in the jargon imply. We’re better at that because we know how dangerous they are. Being negative-sum means there’s really an advantage to holding to a cooperative outcome.

And we can use so-called trigger strategies which are if you break this agreement, I break 10 agreements in the future, or other kinds of means, treaties literally or reputational costs to make a difference.

And just to add one point on this, the West, the US and Europe thought, I believe, that when the Ukraine war escalated, Putin would be isolated worldwide. And they spoke as if, “Oh, the whole world knows this man’s a tyrant.” And of course it didn’t happen. The point that the three of us have been making constantly, President Putin is very well respected in well over 100 countries in the world.

Why? Because he’s not seen to have violated norms the way that the West portrays him as violating the norms. If you go to a leader in Africa or to a leader in Asia, they say, “Why did the US provoke this war?” They don’t see this as the unprovoked war that the US claims it to be or that Europe claims it to be.

Putin did not incur a high reputational cost from this war because in my view, in substance, what he did was provoked as John Mearsheimer explained to us all in 2014. And so, in my view, this is an example of reputation matters. But Putin didn’t lose reputationally only in the bubble of Western propaganda, not in the worldwide opinion, because it was seen to be a violation of a norm by the US.

Why are they so aggressive? Why are they pushing NATO? Why are they trying to be in Ukraine? Why did they overthrow a government in February 2014? And on and on.

Peace as a Process

And in that sense, it seems to me this idea that reputation can help to secure agreements, not forever, but better than just outright “we’re locked in struggle” viewpoint is a real point and a constructive point, and we should use it constantly because we need to stumble forward generation to generation without blowing ourselves up.

And I very much love President John F. Kennedy’s peace speech of June 10, 1963. I wrote a book about it because I like it so much. And one thing he says I think is very important. He says, “Peace is a process, a way of solving problems.” So it’s not a grand solution. It’s not the end of realism at all, but it is a process that we should use to our advantage, to our mutual advantage.

The Challenge of Security Competition in Multiple Regions

JOHN MEARSHEIMER:

I have a number of points I want to make to Jeff and to you, Glenn. First of all, just on the United States and China competing in Africa, I actually think the real competition will come in the Middle East, because as you know better than I do, Jeff, the Chinese economy depends very heavily on imported oil from the Gulf. And the Persian Gulf has long been an area of great strategic interest to the United States.

But if you think about it, competition between the United States and China in the Gulf bleeds into competition in that sphere of security that you want to create in East Asia. Because if I’m the United States and I’m competing with the Chinese in the Middle East, I know they have a blue water navy that is coming out of East Asia, going through Southeast Asia, through the Straits of Malacca and heading towards the Persian Gulf.

So what’s going on in East Asia, especially Southeast Asia, has an impact on what’s going on vis-à-vis the Chinese in the Middle East. So you can see where a competition in the Middle East, which, as you correctly pointed out, is not naturally a sphere for either one of those great powers, can have an impact on how the United States thinks about interfering or not interfering in East Asia, especially in Southeast Asia. This is the point that I was making before.

Just another quick point: you talk about how there have been long periods of peace, and I would not use the word “peace,” although I fully understand what you’re saying, Jeff. My argument is when you’re dealing with great powers, you have constant security competition. Sometimes that security competition is more or less intense. There’s no question about that. You’re not at each other’s throat every day.

But the name of the game is to make sure that the security competition remains a security competition and doesn’t turn into a hot war. I think all three of us are in total agreement on that point. And again, we live in a nuclear world and the last thing we want is a real war.

And my basic argument is that it’s important to understand, and I probably shouldn’t say this, but I’ll say it, but to accept my logic, because it’s so powerful and you want to work around it. In other words, what I’m saying is you can’t take my logic, my “tragedy of great power politics” logic off the table. It’s just baked into the system. And you want to recognize that and you want to work around it.

So that’s the argument that I’m making. I’m not making the argument that we want to go out and strangle the Chinese tomorrow and we just got to do more to hammer the Russians. That’s not my argument. My argument is: understand how this world works, understand the tragic nature of international politics and do everything you can to manage it.

JEFFREY SACHS:

But John, if I may, I don’t want to interrupt, but—

JOHN MEARSHEIMER:

No, go ahead.

JEFFREY SACHS:

In a way, that’s what I’m trying to do, which is to say, okay, at least keep a distance because you’re so prone to stumble into conflict. At least know, have the sense, don’t go to Ukraine and Georgia with NATO, for God’s sake. Why don’t Americans understand that? And we agree on that point. But I say it as a point of principle. Stay out of their neighborhood, for heaven’s sake. Exactly. For your reason, which is it’s so easy to stumble into crisis. Well, my response is: we’re in it.

JOHN MEARSHEIMER:

Actually, to put it mildly, my response is not directed at you, but it’s directed at those people who thought we could and can expand NATO to include Georgia and Ukraine. Yes, they do not accept my logic.

JEFFREY SACHS:

I do.

JOHN MEARSHEIMER:

I know, okay, but I’m just saying they don’t. And if they—my argument all along has been if you understood basic balance of power logic, you would not try to extend NATO into Ukraine and into Georgia because in my rhetoric, that is clearly a well-established sphere of influence for the Russians and they will fight to the death to prevent you from turning Ukraine into a launching pad for missiles that can hit Russia.

Spheres of Security vs. Spheres of Influence

JEFFREY SACHS:

So we’re in complete agreement on that. But the only point I’m trying to make to add a nuance is if we call it a “sphere of security” in Ukraine, not a “sphere of influence,” we free ourselves, I think, from a legitimate argument. But what about the Ukrainians? And my view is they have the right to trade with who they want, but they don’t have the right to host whoever they want militarily. That’s my point, and that’s the difference.

JOHN MEARSHEIMER:

Okay, well, as I said, I think that getting mutual agreement and making it stick is very difficult. I want to make another point, and I’m going to go to great lengths not to get into the weeds here. But Prisoner’s Dilemma is fundamentally different than the logic that I lay out. And the reason is that Prisoner’s Dilemma does not involve relative gains.

In other words, it is not concerned about what I gain as a prisoner versus what you gain as a prisoner, Jeff. I only care about what Jeff does in the Prisoner’s Dilemma in terms of whether it maximizes my utility. I get the best possible deal for myself, so I care about what Jeff does, so I get a good deal. What happens to Jeff in the end, I don’t care about. Whether Jeff ends up more powerful than me or not, it doesn’t matter in Prisoner’s Dilemma. All I care about is my own utility.

To put it in social science speak, my logic is fundamentally different. My logic is that I care greatly what happens to Jeff, how much power Jeff gains as a result of playing out the Prisoner’s Dilemma versus how much John gets. Relative power matters greatly. Or to put it in slightly different terms, relative gains underpins my realist logic, whereas absolute gains—you only care about your own gains in Prisoner’s Dilemma. So I think that Prisoner’s Dilemma is not analogous to what I’m talking about.

The German Question: Historical Lessons

Now, let me make two other very quick points. One is just on Germany. I actually think that we got the best solution. We basically cut it in half and we had the Cold War. Your argument is no, that we should have had a neutral Germany. We should have let Germany reunify after the war and it becomes neutral. It’s largely disarmed, sort of like what we did after World War I, but—

JEFFREY SACHS:

Without the punitive side.

JOHN MEARSHEIMER:

Okay, without the punitive side. But the problem is you cannot be certain what Germany will look like in 20 or 30 years. You cannot guarantee me that that unified Germany, even if it is neutral in 1945 or ’46, whenever, will be neutral in 1996 and I don’t want to take a chance. So I think we came up with the best solution. We just cut it into pieces.

And by the way, this raises the question of what you would have done with Germany in 1918, knowing what we now know. What would you do with Germany in 1918? It was an incredibly powerful state in 1918 in terms of latent power. Wow. And what do you do? Do you treat it in a benevolent way as Keynes advocated? And as you surely believe, do you bring it back into the so-called community of nations? You’ve just fought a war, a world war against this country.

If you could have divided it in half in 1918 and kept it divided, you would have avoided World War II. So you want to understand that this inability of ours to figure out what the future looks like gives states very powerful incentives to behave in ruthless ways at the moment so that they stave off disaster down the road.

The Danger of Offensive Capabilities Near Borders

My final point, I want to agree with you. And this is the whole business of geographical proximity and the idea of putting missiles in a place like Ukraine and even putting ABM systems in Eastern Europe. Those ABM systems, by the way, could have easily been used to launch offensive missiles against Russia.

JEFFREY SACHS:

Right.

JOHN MEARSHEIMER:

Look, in the Cold War in the 1980s, the Reagan administration was in power. And we now know, we knew it at the time, at least most of us did, that we were itching to develop a first strike capability against the Soviet Union. And given that they had a massive number of missiles, the way you did it was with a decapitation strategy.

And I remember people used to say, well, we won’t get all of the Soviet missiles. Some will be left and there will be—this was the phrase that was used at the time—a “ragged retaliation.” And the reason that we needed Star Wars was to deal with the ragged retaliation.

But remember we were talking about putting Pershings and ground-launched cruise missiles, medium-range missiles. This is with the Intermediate-Range Ballistic Missile Treaty or Missile Treaty. The INF was designed to eliminate—the Soviets were glad to have an INF Treaty because they viewed those Pershings and GLCMs in Western Europe as part of a decapitation strategy.

So you’re absolutely right that the idea that we could take Ukraine and use it as a launching pad against Russia was a prescription for disaster. And I think any good realist, and this includes the three of us, understands that that was asking for big trouble. And needless to say, we got big trouble.

And then of course, what do we do? We double down. We let Ukraine launch attacks exactly against Russia’s strategic nuclear weapons. Just think about that. Not only that, to take it a step further, we allowed Ukraine to invade Mother Russia. So you can fully understand why, from a Russian point of view, this is categorically unacceptable for Ukraine or for Georgia to be in NATO.

As you pointed out, and I think from your point of view and from my point of view, and certainly from Glenn’s point of view, this was a remarkably foolish move.

Hawk-Hawk vs. Dove-Dove: The Equilibrium Problem

JEFFREY SACHS:

May I just mention one point? And then I hope we could do another show to discuss Germany in 1918 and Germany in 1945, because it would be absolutely phenomenal. But the point I would make is that your model of relative power is perfectly, of course, rigorous and logical, but it is still an equilibrium of a negative sum in the sense that think of each side playing hawk or dove, of course, in the traditional way.

And because relative matters, both sides end up playing hawk. And that’s the point. In this uncertain world, if the other side plays dove, great. And if the other side plays hawk, you better play hawk. And that’s very much true in your sense, as it is in the Prisoner’s Dilemma.

And the point I’m making is that hawk-hawk is worse for both than dove-dove. The relativity is the same in both cases. One is an arms race or open war, in other words, costly waste of resources, either moderate or disastrous, and the other is peace based on a mutuality.

And your realist position, fully rigorous, is that the hawk-hawk position, even more than in a Prisoner’s Dilemma of the typical sort, is the equilibrium of that, because how could you dare play dove? And so getting to dove-dove, you say, is so hard and in an uncertain world and no higher authority and changing circumstances.

And I’m saying even in that situation, we can figure out how to make dove-dove stick for a while, because Metternich or Bismarck did it for a while until Wilhelm the Second kicked Bismarck out, or the Chinese, the Japanese, the Koreans and the Vietnamese did it for a few hundred years.

We can figure out ways to just back off enough so that we’re not maximally hawkish and we agree on the specifics. In Ukraine, for example, and I just want to generalize that in terms of clarification. It doesn’t sacrifice Ukraine to say you can’t join NATO because you can trade with us and we’re going to invest with you, and Russia’s not going to be able to claim that it’s their sphere of influence. But they are right to say, don’t put your missiles there.

The Problem of Uncertain Intentions

JOHN MEARSHEIMER:

But let me just tell you what I think the fly in the ointment is. Let’s assume that you and I are two states, right? And we’re both satisfied with the status quo. The last thing we want to do is aggress against each other or anybody else. We like the status quo, okay? And your point is that in that world, to behave as two doves is the smart thing to do. And it would be ridiculous for us to behave as hawk-hawk because we’re both satisfied with the status quo. So let’s be doves, right?

My point is I cannot be sure that you’re a dove, and you can’t be sure that I’m a dove. And even if you, Jeff, can be sure today that I’m a dove, you cannot be sure in a year or two years or three years that I will remain a dove, right? It’s the intentions that are so tricky here. I can’t be sure what your intentions are, and you can’t be sure what my intentions are.

So the safe thing to do is for me to assume that you’re a hawk, and the safe thing for you to do is to assume that I’m a hawk. And what that ends up is creating a tragic situation.

JEFFREY SACHS:

I know, but it’s not safe. That’s the problem. That’s the tragedy.

Assessing Soviet Intentions During the Cold War

JOHN MEARSHEIMER: Yes, that’s the tragedy. I’m not arguing that it’s safe. I know that’s not the argument. I know it’s a terrible situation. But, you know, I would just point out to you, Jeff, in the Cold War, right, when if you’re in the intelligence world and you were looking at the Soviet Union, this is in the Cold War, we actually got to the point where we could really assess Soviet capabilities very well.

You know, you can pretty much see everything that they had overhead satellites and the like, right? What we could never agree on, and we had huge debates that rage to this day, is whether or not the Soviet Union was a status quo power as you describe it.

I think your description, by the way, of what Soviet intentions were at the end of the Cold, at the end of World War II is correct. The last thing they wanted was a world war with the United States after what had just happened to them. They had more than enough security at that point in time because they had effectively solved the German problem. Again, as you were saying.

But if you go back to what the Americans were thinking at the time, there was a huge dispute in this country. Lots of people thought like you and I do, but lots of people thought the opposite, that they were primed to conquer all of Europe, they wanted world domination. This is what communism is all about. And so forth and so on. So the point is we couldn’t tell what their intentions were. And the end result is we looked at their capabilities and we assumed worst case about their intentions. And again, this is the tragedy.

JEFFREY SACHS: But they should have taken our course. That’s the point.

Spheres of Security and European Architecture

GLENN DIESEN: Well, we have to start to wrap this up. I just thought to finish on a positive note, I just—let me comment why I think this sphere of security is so very—well, I like it as an idea. And that’s because in Europe, all our efforts to develop a pan-European security architecture that is based on the Helsinki accords from ’75 to the Charter of Paris for a New Europe in 1990 to the establishment of OSCE in ’94, we always introduced two principles which were in conflict.

The one was indivisible security. So one should not enhance security at the expense of the other. But the second is everyone has the right to pursue their own foreign policy. Now this to some extent is contradictory because let’s say Ukraine should have the freedom to join NATO if it wants to. However, then of course this breaches the principle of indivisible security.

But you know, these two things, they can actually be harmonized. That is if you have a sphere of security, essentially this is the approach because then the indivisible security becomes a responsibility of the great powers. That is no one is forcing NATO to roll into Ukraine. This is again it’s a responsibility of the great powers.

And I think this is where NATO failed with its open door policy and NATO expansionism, almost like a law of nature. And what happened then is the Russia-NATO disagreements to create a common Europe or conflict was transitioned into a Russia-Ukraine conflict instead. Because now the Russians could make a deal with NATO. Now they had to stop the Ukrainians.

And I think for this reason we have war because NATO ignored indivisible security and then Russia ignored the sovereign rights of Ukraine to do what it wants. And anyways, I think therefore all our ambitions to have this pan-European security architecture, it kind of misses one component. And I think the sphere of security can help to fill this in.

But again, I also consider myself a very hardcore realist, but also with some idealistic inclinations. So I would like to hope that there’s some opportunities to reform there. Anyways, any final thoughts before we wrap up?

Closing Reflections

JEFFREY SACHS: No. Just how grateful I am always to learn from both of you and I hope we can come back and talk about some of these other issues because they’re really fascinating. And the history is very important because it helps to inform very much our way of understanding the present.

JOHN MEARSHEIMER: Yeah, I agree with that completely, Jeff. And I would also note that if you think about the future of Europe and the fact that the American pacifier appears to be disappearing and that the European states are going to be on their own more than ever, the whole question of how that plays out is directly relevant to what we’re talking about here today and actually even has some relevance in terms of what happened with Germany in 1918 and after 1945.

Just all sorts of big questions of an empirical nature or historical nature floating around out there that have lots of relevance for the future. So we should definitely talk about those issues.

JEFFREY SACHS: Great.

GLENN DIESEN: Thanks again.

JEFFREY SACHS: Great to be with both of you. Thanks so much.

JOHN MEARSHEIMER: Bye, all. Bye.

JEFFREY SACHS: Bye.

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