Transcript: Why China Cannot Rise Peacefully – John J. Mearsheimer

I guarantee you that your behavior would be very different with that $5 million in your pocket than it is with virtually no money in your pocket. What I’m saying is when the structural environment changes, your behavior changes.

And what we’re hypothesizing here is a situation where the structure that China operates in changes. It becomes a giant Hong Kong. And then the question is, how will the leaders, whoever they are, behave at that distant point in time? And again, we can’t answer that question empirically.

It’s a theoretical question. All this is to say, you need a theory of great power politics to answer the question of whether or not China can rise peacefully.

Structure of the Lecture

My talk has three parts. First part is, I’m going to lay out my theory of great power politics. In the second part of my talk, I’m going to give you a synoptic view of American foreign policy from 1783 up until the present.

And of course, what I’m going to try and do is convince you that that synoptic view of American foreign policy is consistent with my theory. Because I have a deep seated interest in giving you some confidence that my theory makes sense. Then in the third part of my talk, I’m going to make the argument that China is likely to imitate the United States.

In other words, I’m going to try and convince you that China will behave the way the theory predicts, just as the United States behaved the way the theory predicts. And of course, I’ll also have to talk about how the United States will react to China. And the argument I’ll make is that it’s consistent with my theory and it’s consistent with the story I told you in the second part of my talk.

Theory of Great Power Politics

Okay, so those are the three parts of the talk. Let me start first with my theory, which I’m sure some of you know, but I’ll go over in more detail just to make it very clear how I think about great power politics. I start off with five simple assumptions about how the world works.

First of all, I believe that states are the principal actors in international politics, and there’s no higher authority that sits above those states. As many of you know, in international relations speak, we call this anarchy. Anarchy does not mean murdering man.

Anarchy is simply the opposite of hierarchy. It says that there is no higher authority of any consequence that sits above states. States are basically like pool balls on a table.

Some are bigger than others for sure, but they are the principal actors and there’s nothing above them. Anarchy, assumption one. Assumption two is that all states have some offensive military capability.

Of course, it varies from state to state. The United States, as I don’t have to tell you, has an enormous amount of offensive military capability. Country like Israel has significant offensive military capability.

A country like Jordan, on the other hand, or Switzerland, or Belgium, has much less. But the point is that all states have some offensive military capability. Come to the third assumption, which is of great importance, and I’m going to spend a lot of time talking about, because it’s central to my argument.

And that has to do with intentions. You know, in international relations, we often talk about intentions and capabilities. Second assumption had to do with capabilities.

The third assumption has to do with intentions. My argument about intentions is that no state can be certain about the intentions of other states. Now, why is this the case? It is because it is very hard to discern intentions, because intentions are inside the heads of people.

And you can’t see them, and you can’t measure them. To give you an example, during the Cold War, the United States dedicated an enormous amount of time and intellectual effort to trying to assess the Soviet threat. We had little trouble figuring out what Soviet capabilities were.

We could count the number of armored division equivalents, we could count the number of SS-18s, we could count the number of bear bombers, you name it, right? Those were material capabilities that you could see, you could know, you could count. We had one whale of a difficult time trying to figure out what Soviet intentions were. And we had huge disagreements.

There were many people who argued the Soviet Union is a status quo power. There are other people who argued it was a revisionist power. How could you tell? You couldn’t get inside Nikita Khrushchev or Leonid Brezhnev’s head and see what those intentions were.

It’s impossible to tell what intentions are. So my point here is, states are uncertain about the intentions of other states. Now, some people don’t agree with that, and they think there’s enough information in the ether at any particular point in time that you can figure out what those intentions are.

My Sunday punch response to that is to say, all right, I’ll give you the fact that we can understand what intentions are now. But my response is that we can’t know what the future intentions of any state will be. So even if you believe that we can figure out the intentions of a state today, you cannot figure out the intentions of a state in the future.

Because again, as I said earlier on, we don’t even know who’s going to be running, Poland or China or Jordan in the year 2015. So you can’t know future intentions. Let me give you an example that has nothing to do with international relations that drives this home.

It’s a depressing example, and it has to do with divorce. As you all know, when any two people get married, they invariably love each other. And they invariably think that the person they’re marrying is a wonderful person who has benign intentions towards them.

But the fact is, in the United States, we have a divorce rate that’s close to 50%. And I don’t know what the divorce rate here is in Canada, but I’m sure it’s non-trivial. What this tells you is that a lot of people get married, thinking that the person they’re marrying has benign intentions.

When in fact, that person over time turns into Attila the Hun. And doesn’t turn out to be someone with benign intentions. If you ever think about it, it’s a very depressing thought.

When you get married, you can never be certain that the person you’re marrying won’t turn out to be someone with malign intentions towards you. For whatever reason, this is the point that I’m making. You cannot be certain about intentions.

So I’ve laid out three assumptions here. One is that there’s no higher authority that sits above states, that’s anarchy. Two, all states have some offensive military capability, although it varies from case to case.

And number three, you cannot know the intentions of other states, especially over the long term. So that’s assumption one, two, and three. Assumption four and five are very straightforward.

Assumption four is that the principal goal of states is to survive. And the reason that survival is the principal goal. Note now, I did not say it’s the only goal.

I said it’s the principal goal. It’s the principal goal because if you don’t survive, you can’t pursue any other goals. Common sense 101.

So survival is the principal goal. And then the fifth assumption is that states are basically rational actors. They’re strategic calculators.

States are quite good at coming up with reasonably smart strategies for ensuring their survival. That’s the rational actor assumption. So those are the five assumptions.

Now what I do is I take those five assumptions, I put them in the blender, and I hit the on switch. And what I get when I do that is I get three forms of behavior. In other words, those five assumptions, when mixed together, produce three forms of behavior.

And let me lay them out for you in some detail. First, you get fear. States in the international system fear each other.

And here we’re talking mainly about great powers. They fear each other. And they fear each other for two reasons that will make eminently good sense once I explain.

They fear each other, first of all, because there’s always a possibility you’ll end up living next door to a state that has, one, a lot of offensive capability, and two, malign intentions. If you live in Europe in 1900, you can never be sure that that growing behemoth in the neighborhood called Germany won’t turn into Imperial Germany or Nazi Germany. So you get nervous.

Second reason that states fear each other is if you get into trouble in the international system, as we say in the United States, you dial 911, you know who’s at the other end? Nobody. It’s an anarchic system. There’s no higher authority.

The Realist Perspective on International Relations

States quickly figure out that they operate in a self-help system because there is no 911, you have to take care of yourself. Third form of behavior, which is of enormous importance, is that the best way to survive in this system is to be really powerful. The best way to survive in this system, to put it in colloquial terms, is to be the biggest and baddest dude on the block.

As I like to say when I speak about this subject in America, how many of you go to bed at night worrying about Canada or Mexico attacking the United States? The answer is nobody does. Why? Because we are so powerful, nobody would dare think about attacking us. We are surrounded by weak neighbors to our north and our south, and we have fish to our left and our right.

This is an ideal strategic situation if you’re interested in surviving. You want to be really big and really powerful. When I grew up as a boy in New York City, and I was out there on the playground, I was kind of weak and meek, and I fell prey to bullies.

I used to dream about being Floyd Patterson. Most of you are too young to remember who Floyd Patterson was. He was the heavyweight boxing champion of the world at the time.

I wanted to be Floyd Patterson out there at recess. Why? Because that was the best way to survive on that playground. Nobody would have dared fool around with me if I were really big and muscular instead of small and weak.

So the name of the game, if you’re interested in surviving in an anarchic system where you can’t be certain about the intentions of other states, and those states may have a lot of military capability, is to be really powerful. It’s not because you like pounding out other states or being an aggressor. Just for the sake of being an aggressor, it’s because it is the best way to survive.

The Concept of Regional Hegemony

Now what does it mean to be the most powerful state in the system? I think it means that you want to be the hegemon. But to say you want to be the hegemon doesn’t tell you very much. You have to unpack that a bit.

I think the best way to survive is to be a regional hegemon. You cannot be a global hegemon. The globe is simply too big, and there’s too much water.

The United States of America has gotten itself into a whole heck of a lot of trouble over the past 20 years. I’m sure most of you have noticed this. We’ve gotten ourselves into a whole heck of a lot of trouble because we’ve had these dreamers running the ship estate who believe that we can be a global hegemon and run the world.

Can’t do it. You end up in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, and the ending of those stories is not happy. But you can be a regional hegemon.

You can dominate your region of the globe. So my argument is that the best way to survive is number one, be a regional hegemon. And number two, make sure to put it in Pentagonese.

That’s a foreign language. Make sure you do not have a peer competitor. What does that mean? And make sure that there’s no other state in the international system that is a regional hegemon.

Freedom to Roam

Now, you’re probably saying to yourself, why does it matter to the United States if China is a regional hegemon or Germany is a regional hegemon? It all revolves around the concept of freedom to roam. Now, you’re saying to yourself, what is he talking about, freedom to roam? Have you ever wondered why the United States is wandering all over God’s little green acre, sticking its nose in everybody’s business? It’s not simply because the United States is so powerful. It’s also because we are free to roam.

And we are free to roam because we have no security threats in our own backyard. And what the United States cares about greatly is not allowing a situation to develop where a country dominates Asia, where it dominates Europe, the way we dominate the Western Hemisphere, because it will then be free to roam. Think about the United States and Asia roaming up and down the Chinese coast.

Troops stationed right off the Chinese mainland. Aircraft carrier battle groups steaming into the waters right off the Chinese coast. American aircraft running up and down the Chinese coast.

Think about all the troops we have had since 1944 in Europe and keep there today, right? We’re free to roam. We don’t have to worry about security threats here. What is an ideal situation from an American point of view is to have a situation where China or Germany or the Soviet Union have to worry about threats in their backyard so that they’re not free to roam.

So my bottom line in my theoretical discussion is that the best way to survive in the international system is to, number one, be a regional hegemon, dominate your region of the globe, and, two, make sure that nobody else dominates their region of the globe the way you dominate yours. Those are the two goals.

American Foreign Policy Since 1783

When the United States first got started in the late 1700s, it was comprised of 13 measly colonies strung out along the Atlantic seaboard. The Founding Fathers and their successors marched across North America to the Pacific Ocean. They murdered huge numbers of Native Americans who got in their way.

They stole their land, which is today the southwest of the United States. We stole from Mexico. As you Canadians know, we had our gun sights on you throughout most of the 19th century.

In 1812, we paid you a visit because we wanted to make you part of us. You worried throughout the century that there would be a return visit. One of the main reasons that Ottawa is today the capital of Canada and it’s not Toronto is that Ottawa is far away from the border with the United States, and Toronto was right up next to it.

And you did expect us to pay a return visit, and for good reason. You knew we had a voracious appetite. You understand that there’s no country in modern history that has a record of conquest that even comes close to approximating ours.

And we were not only interested in coming to the north and taking you over, we were also interested in going further south. And in fact, we’d own all the Caribbean now if it hadn’t been for the slavery issue. Northern states did not want more slave-holding states in the Union, and of course the sugar industry, which was in the Caribbean, was even more labor-intensive than tobacco and cotton.

So there were more slaves down there, and there was no way the northern states would tolerate us incorporating those areas into the United States. But we had our gun sights on them. We wanted to establish hegemony in the Western Hemisphere.

And the best way to do that, the first thing we had to do, was we had to carve out this powerful state. And of course, that was done by 1853 with the Gadsden Purchase, which was the last conquest of, or acquisition of, territory here in North America. The other thing we had to do, was we had to get rid of the British, and the Spanish, and all those Europeans.

As many of you know, in 1823, old President James Monroe told the Europeans, no uncertain terms, this is our hemisphere. We’re not strong enough to throw you out now. We’re eventually going to throw you out.

And after we throw you out, you’re not welcome back here, because this is our hemisphere. In 1898, with the Spanish-American War, we finally finished the deal. We threw the Spanish out, and we were a regional hegemon.

First regional hegemon in modern history. We dominated, and continue to dominate, the entire Western Hemisphere.

America’s Response to Peer Competitors

Now, as I told you, great powers have two goals. One is to establish regional hegemony. And number two, make sure you don’t have a peer competitor. Fortunately, there were no potential peer competitors in the 19th century, when we were in the process of establishing hegemony here in the Western Hemisphere.

But in the 20th century, there were four potential peer competitors. Imperial Germany, Imperial Japan, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union. As you all know, the United States played a critical role in putting all four of those countries on the scrap heap of history.

We entered World War I in April 1917, at a point where it looked like Germany might actually win the war. And we played an important role, certainly not the key role, but we played an important role in helping to finish off Kaiser Bill and Company. Then in World War II, we basically beat the Japanese single-handedly.

In fact, it was with our left hand, and we were right-handed. And we played a key role in defeating Nazi Germany. But of course, the Soviet Union played the most important role there, but we helped.

And then during the Cold War, we played the central role in containing the Soviet Union. And in 1989, 1990, 1991, when the Cold War was ending and the Soviet Union was going down the toilet bowl, we helped usher it away. Very glad to do that.

The United States does not tolerate peer competitors. It’s always glad to get rid of them. And shortly after the Soviet Union disappeared, the Bush administration made it clear that we were number one in the world, and we planned on staying that way.

So what I’m telling you is that if you look at my basic theory, and you look at how American foreign policy has actually been since 1783, not the story that Americans tell. You know the story that Americans tell about what a wonderful liberal state we are, and so forth and so on. I mean, it’s nonsense, right? This is a state that Adolf Hitler admired.

He said, these people know how to create Lebensraum, right? This is the real America, right? This is why Canadians lived in fear throughout the 19th century. But anyway, my point to you is that American foreign policy, when looked at correctly, looks very much like my theory says it should.

China’s Rise and Its Implications

How do you think China is likely to behave as it gets more powerful? Well, first of all, don’t you think that China is going to want to be the most powerful state in Asia by far? If we work so hard to be the most powerful state in North America, and in the Western Hemisphere more generally, don’t you think they’ll want to be the most powerful state in Asia? You don’t think the Chinese remember what happened when they were weak? You don’t think they remember what the Europeans, the Americans, and especially the Japanese did to them? When they were weak, it was not pretty. Not pretty at all. And they fully understand what the consequences are of being weak.

If you ask somebody from China which of these two choices they’ll take, one, you can be 20 times more powerful than Japan, or Japan can be twice as powerful as you. Which one do you take? This is not even a serious question. They want to be 20 times more powerful.

They want to be 50 times more powerful than Japan. For good security reasons, the best way to survive in the international system is to be really powerful relative to your neighbors, because then nobody screws around with you.

And they fully understand it. And they have every intention of making sure that they are really powerful. I told you what the United States also did via the Monroe Doctrine is that it pushed the European powers out.

You don’t think the Chinese are going to want to have a Monroe Doctrine? You think the Chinese are going to be perfectly content having the United States Navy, and the United States Air Force, the United States Army, and the United States Marines right off their coast? You think they’re going to be happy about that? Most of you are too young to remember the Cold War, but the United States of America used to go ballistic when the Soviets would do anything in Cuba. What are these people doing? This is our hemisphere. Who are they to come here? Monroe Doctrine.

My mother taught me when I was a little boy. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. It’s good for us to have a Monroe Doctrine.

Probably good for them to have a Monroe Doctrine too. And there’s all sorts of evidence today that the Chinese, you know, would really kind of like to push the Americans away from their coastline. This is surprising? Not surprising at all.

They’re going to try and dominate Asia. Try and push us away. Just the way we pushed the Europeans away.

Just the way we carved out this big and powerful state. They’re interested in survival. They know how the game is played.

America’s Response to China’s Rise

Then you’ve got to ask yourself, how’s the United States likely to respond? I told you what the theory says. We don’t tolerate pure competitors. That means we are not going to be happy about them dominating Asia the way we dominate the Western Hemisphere.

And we’ve got a historical record here. Imperial Germany, Imperial Japan, Nazi Germany in the form of Soviet Union. You don’t think we’re going to react to China the same way? I bet you were all shocked when Barack Obama said last year that he was pivoting to Asia.

Oh my God, what is he doing pivoting to Asia? He’s pivoting to Asia because people in the American national security community understand that this country is getting bigger and more powerful. And we don’t tolerate pure competitors. Right? Now what about China’s neighbors? How do you think they’re likely to behave? I think it’s quite clear where they’re headed.

You can already see the balancing coalition beginning to form. Go home and Google Japan and India. Two countries that are geographically separated by a huge distance.

The Balancing Coalition Against China

JOHN J. MEARSHEIMER: Japanese and the Indians have basically jumped into bed together. They’re beginning to play a lot of kissy face. And the reason is quite simple. They’re both scared of China. Very scared of China.

Singapore? Very scared. The balancing coalition will be South Korea, Japan, of course the United States, Taiwan, Singapore, Vietnam for sure, India and Russia. And all of China’s neighbors will be very, very nervous.

Because China will be very big and very powerful. So my argument is that what you’re going to get is you’re going to get an intense security competition between China on one hand and the United States combined with China’s neighbors on the other. And again, I think you can already see the signs of the balancing coalition beginning to form.

This is going to be a very dangerous situation.

The Security Dilemma

Let me just take this one step further and talk about a very familiar concept in the international relations literature. And that’s the security dilemma.

As many of you students know, the security dilemma says that the steps that states take to defend themselves invariably appear offensive in nature to the other side. And a really good example of this is the whole notion of containment. From our perspective, containment is a very defensively oriented strategy.

We are containing China. But if you’re sitting in Beijing and you look at this balancing coalition that is forming around you, that is surrounding you, it doesn’t look like containment. It looks like encirclement.

So you go back to the period before World War I when Britain, France, and Russia formed the Triple Entente. Germany saw that as encirclement. If you go back to the Cold War when we put together balancing coalitions in Europe and in Asia because the Soviet Union extended from the center of Europe all the way out to the Pacific Ocean.

So we had balancing coalitions in both theaters. The Soviets viewed this as encirclement. We viewed it as containment.

Anything that the Chinese do today to defend themselves, if they decide they’re going to increase defense spending, they’re going to build an aircraft carrier, they’re going to build a stealth aircraft, we automatically categorize that step as offensive in nature. And by the way, to go back to capabilities and intentions, because you can hardly ever figure out intentions, you look at capabilities and as the capabilities go up, you assume worst case intentions. This is underlying the security dilemma.

So the point that I’m making to you is that as the Chinese take different measures, perfectly legitimate on their part. I’m not being critical of the Chinese at all here. You want to understand that.

This is not a cultural argument or an argument that says the Chinese are the bad guys, the Americans are the good guys, or the Americans are the bad guys. My story is that states that are interested in survival have to be very powerful. This is the tragedy of great power politics.

You just have no choice in the structural environment that I described up front. But the point is, from China’s point of view, they’ve got to do certain things to protect themselves from the Americans and their neighbors. And anything they do to protect themselves we will interpret as offensive, and we will rise to the occasion and build what we think are defensive capabilities to offset their perceived offensive capabilities.

Of course, from their perspective, our measures will be offensive in nature. So it’s going to get very messy in Asia if China continues to rise and becomes a giant Hong Kong. And again, you want to remember, when that happens, China’s going to have a lot more military capability then than it has now.

China is basically a paper tiger now. It’s not a match for the United States militarily. We’re talking about a situation where it is a match for the United States.

Theoretical Limitations

Now, let me conclude by talking about my theory and build on what Michael said when he introduced me. My theory, like all social science theories, is right some of the time, but not all of the time. Remember, he talked about that article that was written about me that said why John Mearsheimer is right on some issues.

I would rephrase that a bit and say why John Mearsheimer’s theory is right some of the time, but not all the time. I believe, I can’t prove this, but intuitively, I believe my theory is right about 75% of the time. I think that’s about as good as you can get in social science with a theory.

75%. You can’t account for all the cases. Sometimes factors that you leave on the cutting room floor when you develop your theory jump up and bite you in the hiney, and your theory doesn’t work.

You want to be aware that my theory doesn’t work all the time. Given the story that I have just told you, let’s hope that this is one of those times where John’s theory is wrong. Thank you.

Q&A Session

I’ll let you run your own session. I will take questions for as long as they will let me. Because I love to go back and forth.

I’ll call on people that you stand up and it would be nice if you identified yourself and if you would restrict your comment or your question to one minute, just so we can maximize the number of people who ask questions. Because we’re dealing with one fundamental problem here which is that I love to talk. So I’m not good at giving short answers.

So if you ask short questions, that will help a lot.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Hi, Craig Hunter with the National Capital Branch of the Canadian International Council. And if I follow through on your theory, wouldn’t it be rational for countries like Japan, Vietnam and all the people in the area around there to say we would be better off if the U.S. kept its distance and we invested, each of us, in a small military to dissuade China from growing without having a huge threat from the most powerful country in the world and then maybe keep China not having to build its military as fast or not seeing the big advantage in that.

JOHN J. MEARSHEIMER: Okay, everybody heard the question. Two points. One is that from the neighbor’s point of view China is the threat, not the United States.

Because the United States is a distant great power. If you go to Asia today, especially go to a place like Singapore, their great fear is that we’re going to leave. It’s not that we’re going to go on a rampage and try and dominate Asia.

Their great fear is that we won’t be there for them. China lives right next door. So China is the real potential threat.

Second point I would make is the problem that Japan and Vietnam and the Philippines face is that they’re not big enough to build the military capability to deter China. And they need the United States. Let me just unpack this a bit.

It’s important to understand that China is not a status quo power. First of all, China wants Taiwan back. Secondly, as you know, the Chinese have this dispute with the Japanese over these little islands, the Senkaku Diaoyu Islands.

Even more importantly, there’s a huge dispute over who controls the South China Sea, involving a number of countries, Vietnam and the Philippines most prominently. So all of those countries that are China’s neighbors, given the size differential between them and this potential behemoth, are looking for help. And the best place they see to get help is the United States, which going back to my first point, they don’t see as a potential threat.

So in many ways, the biggest problem that we face, and this, by the way, explains Obama’s great emphasis on the pivot to Asia, is that our Asian allies are worried that we have lost their mind over the last 20 years and are fighting these crazy wars in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, and we won’t be there for them. And what Obama’s trying to do is reassure them.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Hi, my name is Victor Raduco, and I’m from Ottawa. I just wanted to make a point and hear your comment on this. But to my way of looking at things, states aren’t individuals. They’re collections of different interests. And when you look at the relationship between the United States and China, as it’s developed since normalization, but especially since 1978, you see tremendous stakes in the other side in both countries, economic stakes, even security stakes in some regards, if you think of issues like U.N. Security Council negotiating on certain issues and so on. How did you factor that into your analysis of this dynamic that you spoke of, which is informed by your international relations background?

JOHN J. MEARSHEIMER: Yeah, excellent question. It is very important to understand that my theory makes a number of simplifying assumptions about how the world operates. And one of the assumptions that I make, which is completely consistent with what you say, is that I effectively assume that states are black boxes. The rhetoric that you used is, I treat states like they’re individuals, which I think is correct, and I just have different rhetoric.

It’s a black box, right? And what you’re saying to me, quite correctly, is that states are comprised of heterogeneous groups and individuals, and they don’t always act as if it’s a unified person. That’s a fair representation of your view. Let me marry that comment with what I ended my talk with.

I said that my theory is right, in my opinion, 75% of the time, and it’s wrong 25% of the time. And some of the factors that I leave on the cutting room floor, and domestic politics would be a good example, right? Kind of what you’re getting at. Those things, as I said, sometimes jump up and bite you in the hiney, and the theory is wrong.

So I’m not saying that there aren’t circumstances where you might not be proved right and me proved wrong. But I think most of the time, I’m right and you’re wrong. Regrettably, I say that regrettably, okay? But let me make one other point to buttress my case over yours.

And that is that I do believe when great powers are involved in intense security competition with other great powers that really, really threaten to rule the roost, that those domestic political considerations get pushed aside and states do act like black boxes, okay? So I think my theory is more likely to be right than wrong in a case like the one we’re dealing with here today. But that’s not to say that’s axiomatic.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Hi there. My name is Jeff Collins. I’m a PhD student at Carleton U. And my question has to do less about China, more in fact on the U.S. as a regional hegemon. And again, to take that long-term 50-year view, Western Hemisphere, Americas, I was wondering if you can comment on Brazil and its rise as an economic and military power in the south. And potentially, is there any tensions you see in view of your theory down the road in relations between the U.S. and Brazil?

JOHN J. MEARSHEIMER: Yeah, good question. I mean, I think there’s only one country in this hemisphere that has the potential, I underline the word potential, to become a great power, and that’s Brazil. It has a very large population. If it ever got its economy together and really began to grow and looked something like the United States of America, then we would have to think long and hard about how to deal with Brazil.

You understand it is not in America’s interest to see a strong and powerful Brazil in this hemisphere. Hardly any Americans will ever say that publicly. It is like Canada.

If all of a sudden you had a huge population explosion and you were already rich, right, and you began to look like you were as powerful or more powerful than the United States, we would not be happy. We would not be happy, right? And the same logic applies to Brazil. But fortunately, I say this as an American, it doesn’t look at this point like Brazil any time soon is going to pose a threat to the United States in this hemisphere.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Hi, my name is Erica. I’m a PhD student at the University of Ottawa. I’d like to thank you for your talk and for your contribution to our discipline. So we can all just kind of, like, accept your assumptions, and that’s what the discussion is today. So taking into consideration all the assumptions of neorealism, can you speak a little bit about, like, the empirical or current situation of Chinese-Canadian economic relations? Because although, like, economics is kind of divorced from security, in your view, it still does inform, like, material capabilities. So I was just wondering, like, the Chinese move into North America through the economy and specifically the Alberta oil sands, and, like, your view on, like, the American kind of what the response would be or…

JOHN J. MEARSHEIMER: Yeah. There are a number of questions bundled up in your question or a number of issues bundled up in your question. And let me try and parse them out and deal with them.

First of all, there’s the whole question of how Canada thinks about China in this story. I usually don’t talk about Canada. I usually talk about Europe in this regard.

And let me just digress for a second here. When you talk about American grand strategy, there are three areas of the world that are worth fighting and dying for. One is Europe, two is Northeast Asia, and three is the Persian Gulf.

Those are the three areas that matter. The first two areas, Europe and Northeast Asia, matter because that’s where great powers are. The third area, the Gulf, matters because that’s where oil is, OK? Historically, Europe has been our number-one priority.

Always been our number-one priority. We were attacked at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, by Japan. Despite the fact that it was the Japanese that attacked us at Pearl Harbor, we had a Europe-first policy before the war, before Pearl Harbor, and after Pearl Harbor, because Nazi Germany was the real threat.

Europe has always been more important to us than Asia. It’s the numero uno area of the world for us Americans. Other than the Western Hemisphere, which I’ll get to in a minute.

What’s happening here is an unprecedented sea change is taking place. Asia’s going to be number one. The Persian Gulf is going to be number two.

The Pivot to Asia and Global Power Dynamics

And it’s very important to understand that those two are inextricably linked, because as you know, India and China get all that oil and gas from the Middle East. And Europe is going to drop to a distant third. Europe is a museum anyway, most of you know that.

You go there, it’s just a lot of old people. It’s yesterday’s story, right? But here’s the question you want to ask yourself. If you’re Europe, if you’re the countries in Europe, how do you think about the China threat and the story that I just told you? Most Europeans understand that when you pivot to some place, you’re pivoting away from some place.

Think about that. We’re pivoting to Asia. Then you’ve got to say to yourself, where are they pivoting away from? Well, the Europeans have triple-digit IQs. Maybe a museum, but they have triple-digit IQs. And they have figured out that the place we’re probably going to pivot away from is Europe. So the question is, are they going to help us in Asia? Not a chance.

A bunch of Europhiles will tell you, oh, yeah, they’re going to help us. But they’re not going to help us. These people are bankrupting themselves. The great fear is that they’re going to drive themselves off a cliff with the Euro sometime in the next couple of years. The idea that they’re going to build military forces and go to Asia with it, it’s not going to happen. The United States is going to be in Asia.

I told you what the balancing coalition looks like. You can already see signs of it. This then, to go back to this excellent question, raises the issue of what is Canada going to do? Are you going to be with us? Are you going to Asia? Are you building ground forces? Are you building air forces? Are you building naval forces? Or are you going to free ride?

See, I think a good case can be made, just to go over to the Europeans again. The smart thing for the Europeans to do is not get involved, trade with the Americans, trade with the Asian countries, China included, and just get rich. States are selfish actors. You all know that, right? I hope you do.

But states are selfish actors, and they want to get rich, so you all can get rich. You don’t want to go fight wars in Asia. Let the Americans do the dirty work, right? Get rich.

Canada’s Position and Relations with China

So it’s a very interesting question. I’m going to take this a step further. I was up in Canada a few years ago. I used to be good friends with the foreign minister because of my opposition to the Iraq war. And I came up here a couple times, and I remember I was talking to somebody one night who was telling me how cozy the Canadians were getting with the Chinese and how he expected that relationship to increase with the passage of time. And I said to him at the time, I said, if China continues to rise, you better be very careful because that will drive the United States stark raving crazy.

This is the freedom to Rome argument. The United States does not want China roaming into the Western Hemisphere. This gentleman asked me the question about Brazil. Let’s hypothesize a situation where Brazil gets really powerful and Brazil invites China to build a base or station naval forces in Brazil. You don’t think that can happen? Just look at where we are all over the planet, right? It could happen. That would not make us happy.

It would not make us happy if Canada got too close to China. But then again, you want to think about what Canada’s role will be if my story is correct. And again, as I said to that gentleman, I said in my concluding comments, I may be wrong.

Economic Interdependence Theory

This brings me to my final point, just about economic interdependence. I’ve given this talk, I guess, 35 times in China, and the argument that’s always used against me, first and foremost, there are three arguments used against me. One is China won’t grow. Two is that China is a Confucian culture. They’ll rise peacefully because of Confucian culture. I don’t pay attention to those arguments.

The main argument used against me, the serious one, is economic interdependence, right? And this is embedded in the question that was just asked me. And this is the argument that the United States and China, right, and China and its neighbors have such economic interdependencies that there’s no way they can fight a war because who in their right mind would kill the goose that lays the golden eggs? So when you talk about theories that might undermine my theory, economic interdependence theory is oftentimes the number one argument. In the interest of letting these gentlemen ask questions, I won’t tell you why that theory is wrong.

[AUDIENCE LAUGHTER]

Q&A Session

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Well, thank you, Professor Mearsheimer. That’s actually my question. [AUDIENCE LAUGHTER] So my name is Marko Papic, and I work for BCA Research, which is based in Montreal, so we came down here to hear you talk. And our clients are sovereign wealth funds, central banks, and large institutional investors. And I’m the social science guy in the room with a bunch of economists.

And I’ve been telling this story for basically now two years, almost verbatim. And the one challenge I have from our clients, who are, of course, mostly investors and they make a lot of money off of China, and a lot of them are in Singapore, including central banks and, again, sovereign wealth funds. They tell me, look, I mean, over the past ten years, our trade with China has increased four or five times, whereas our trade with the US has remained stagnant. Why, in God’s name, would we, you know, kill the golden goose? So you don’t get to get away from this question. In fact, you’re going to help me do my job. How do I defend this theory of yours, or ours, if I may presume that? And how do I explain this to these investors that they’re, in fact, wrong? I have an answer, but I’d like to hear how you put it.

JOHN J. MEARSHEIMER: Well, first of all, there are differences between the United States and Canada, as I tried to point out with regard to the previous question. And with regard to the earlier question about different interests, I mean, businessmen and businesswomen in the United States and Canada and in China think about international politics in very different ways than most strategists do. Very important to understand that.

Capitalists are interested in making money, and there’s nothing wrong with that, of course, but that’s just the way they think. And when someone like me or someone like you comes along and says it’s going to be a messy world if China continues to grow, they don’t want to hear that because they just want to keep making money, they want to keep doing deals, right?

Now, the question is, what this really boils down to is, how do you think about the relationship between politics and economics? Where is the balance of power? And effectively, what you and I are saying is that economics matters a lot. We would be fools to deny that, and we would be fools to deny that there are going to be certain circumstances where economics trumps politics. There will be some circumstances like that.

But in most cases, I believe politics trumps economics, which is another way of saying security considerations trump economic considerations.

And just to give you two examples, the Chinese have made it clear that Taiwan is of such importance to them that if Taiwan were to declare its independence, they would go to war now over Taiwan. Even though they would end up killing the goose that lays the golden eggs, right? What they’re saying is that politics is more important than economics.

The Senkaku or Diaoyu Islands, right? Just look at what’s happening to Japanese-Chinese trade relations as a result of this conflict over a bunch of rocks in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It’s kind of hard to believe, but it just shows you how powerful, how powerful politics are.

Take this a step further. There’s a whole literature on nationalism in Japan. And almost everybody agrees that given the fact that communism doesn’t have much legitimacy in China, the communist system doesn’t have much legitimacy, and they don’t have a democracy, it’s very difficult for the elites to maintain the existing political order.

And the best way for them to do that is to fuel nationalism. Nationalism provides the glue that keeps things together. All of this is to say, and you see this playing itself out in the recent controversy over these islands with Japan, is that nationalism politics is front and center.

So my argument is that with regard to the United States and with regard to China’s neighbors, countries like Japan, countries like Vietnam, economics matters, and economics will sometimes have a dampening effect. But politics ultimately triumphs, and that’s why I think you’ll get a security competition.

But my final point is I’m not sure, I’ve not thought long and hard about this, I’m not sure, and I’d be curious, we could talk afterwards, your thoughts on it, how this plays out in the Canadian case. Because Canada is just in a very different situation than the United States, right? Canada has all sorts of incentives to free ride and not to get involved in trying to contain the Chinese in any major way, right? I’m not saying it should ultimately do that, but it has incentives not to do that, and it has incentives to trade with China, just as Europe does. So I’ll leave it there.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Hi, Patrick Salonius, the Carleton International Policy Forum. Obviously you believe in your theory with quite a bit of conviction, but I wish, if you could please speculate, and the simple answer might be no, but you said your theory is right, you believe about 75% of the time. How could China ever fit into that 25%? Is there any scenario you could envision where perhaps your theory might not go quite according to plan?

JOHN J. MEARSHEIMER: Yeah, I think the most powerful argument against me, I’d make it a threefold argument, okay?

First of all, nuclear weapons. Best single argument against me is nuclear weapons. I have a whole set of counter responses to that, but there’s no question that nuclear weapons make everybody very skittish, and nobody wants to get vaporized, and so the response to me is to say, John, would you please get serious? Great power politics of the sort you describe made a lot of sense when you were in a non-nuclear world. We live in a nuclear world, and this is not going to be World War III or anything like that, okay? So that would be argument number one.

Argument number two against me is the economic interdependence argument, the argument we were just playing around with. I have to concede that there is a certain amount of truth in that argument. If everybody’s getting rich, their powerful incentive is not to kill the golden goose.

Third argument to make is the nationalism argument, and that is to say, as I often do, and this is why I oppose the Iraq War, the most powerful political ideology on the face, contrary to what most of you think and what most Americans think, is not democracy. It’s nationalism. Nationalism is all about self-determination, and nationalism makes it extremely difficult for any one country to invade other countries and conquer them.

So the United States could, you know, conquer this piece of territory and that piece of territory, and you could have all this territorial expansion in the good old days when there was no nationalism. But in the age of nationalism, territorial conquest is a prescription for huge trouble, right? You want to invade Afghanistan? Be my guest. Want to try Vietnam? French did it, we did it, Vietnamese did it. We learned one lesson. Stay out, right?

Going into Iraq? Oh, my God. Are these people serious? The idea that the United States of America is going to go into a country in the Middle East and do social engineering at the end of a rifle barrel in the age of nationalism? Not going to happen. Therefore, China is not going to be able to do much in terms of conquest, right? Look what happened when they went into Vietnam in 1979. They got their snouts whacked.

So bottom line argument is, a lot of truth in what John has to say, but the three countervailing forces, nuclear weapons, economic interdependence, and nationalism.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Thank you very much. My name is Andrew Blanco. I’m a master’s student here at University of Ottawa. Both the United States and China are countries that depend heavily on foreign resources. China has been heavily investing in Africa, and if we accept that for the United States, it doesn’t want a peer, how concerned should the United States be about the level of investment of China in Africa?

JOHN J. MEARSHEIMER: Well, I don’t think Chinese investment in Africa matters much to the United States. In my opinion, Chinese economic growth matters to the United States, maybe to the extent that investment in Africa contributes to that, we should care. But I think Africa per se is not the big issue.

I think the big issue from a strategic point of view, and I tried to make this clear about 10 minutes ago, is the Persian Gulf. I think that the Indians and the Chinese are increasingly dependent on oil from the Persian Gulf, and they’re going to be deeply involved there, and of course we are already deeply involved there.

I believe, by the way, and you should just think about this, whether you agree with me or not, but one of the things that disturbs me greatly about our present relations with Iran and the fact that those relations are likely to never improve at the rate we’re going, is that we are in effect going to drive the Iranians into the arms of the Chinese.

If you think about the world the way I do, you start thinking about Chinese influence in the Persian Gulf, and from an American point of view, we want to minimize Chinese influence in the Persian Gulf. But I think we’re now pursuing policies that are going to have exactly the opposite effect, especially with regard to Iran. So I don’t see Africa, which has never been an important strategic area for the United States, as the key in the story.

The Global Chessboard: China’s Strategic Challenges

I think the Middle East, and the fact that the Middle East and Northeast Asia or East Asia are inextricably bound like that is the key story. I want to make one final point to you. When you folks think about the rise of China over time, what you want to do is you want to hypothesize a map in your head.

And first of all, there is the western Pacific, or the east coast of China. This is where you have the South China Sea, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, you know, that area. That’s where we, the Americans, are going to have our greatest problems with the Chinese.

As they get more and more powerful, that is the bailiwick that they control. The second big bailiwick you want to think about is as you go through the Straits of Malacca into the Indian Ocean and into the Arabian Sea, and you start heading towards the Persian Gulf. Everybody have that picture in your head? You’re coming out of the western Pacific, you’re coming through Southeast Asia, through the Straits of Malacca, and now you’re underneath Burma, you’re underneath India, you’re underneath Pakistan, heading towards the Middle East, or heading towards Africa.

And your question, that’s where we, that’s our sweet spot, right? That’s where they’re in real trouble, right? Because first of all, we have the Indians on our side. Secondly, we have an incredibly powerful navy. And they’ve got to get their goods and resources from Africa back to China, right? And from the Persian Gulf back to China.

And that’s where they have problems. And of course, to stick with the map, this is what drives them up into Central Asia. Because Central Asia is land that abuts China.

And therefore, you don’t have to come underneath to the Indian Ocean. So, even if they invest in Africa and in the Middle East in a really big way, until they have a navy that can project power, right, we basically have the upper hand once you’re outside of the western Pacific.

Q&A Session

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Speaking of cartography, Nisa Mali, graduate student at the University of Ottawa, the concept of regional hegemony seems to assume that naval routes are going to remain constant. What do you think the impact will be of the opening of the Arctic Seaway on the way in which the world is divided into regions and hemispheres?

JOHN J. MEARSHEIMER: I honestly don’t think it’ll have much effect at all. I mean, I could be wrong on that. But I’m just… I don’t see how it would change the regions. Tell me what would be… Tell me what’s the most glaring example of how regional dynamics or regional boundaries change in your story.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Well, if you cannot go through the Arctic, then you’re dividing the world into essentially north-south lines. But you can turn the map like this.

JOHN J. MEARSHEIMER: Okay, but tell me a region that changes. What looks differently? The western hemisphere doesn’t look the same anymore. Europe doesn’t look the same. I mean, what changes?

AUDIENCE QUESTION: I guess my question would be, would that change how you conceive of China as a regional peer versus a threat within your own region?

JOHN J. MEARSHEIMER: No. To be honest, I really care about two things. One is how many people you have. This is why I like the fact that Canada has few people compared to the United States, to be very honest. And how much wealth you have. And the thing that scares me about China is that they have a lot of people. And if it turns into a giant Hong Kong, oh my God, right? It’s just so powerful. So I care about China independent of, you know, the ice cap melting. I just care about it because it has a lot of people and a lot of wealth.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Alex Streisbeed, former student here at University of Ottawa in Carleton. You spoke a bit about how American foreign policy during the Soviet, or during the Cold War, was heavily focused on Europe, you know, NATO, in order to contain the Soviet threat. What do you think is the likelihood of some sort of collective security organization rising in Asia to counter China? Or do you think it’s mostly going to be bilateral agreements between the US and various partners?

JOHN J. MEARSHEIMER: This is actually a great question. My friend Steve Wall talks about this issue all the time. In the Cold War, it was very easy to put together a balancing coalition in Europe called NATO, because the threat was concentrated in the center of Europe, on what we used to call the IGB, the inter-German border, right? So you had this very powerful and effective multilateral alliance called NATO.

In Asia, on the other hand, where the threat, the Soviet threat, was not as great, and where the geography was complicated, you had, apropos this gentleman’s questions, bilateral relationships, right? The US had a treaty with Japan. The US had a treaty with Korea. There was no equivalent of NATO to speak of in Northeast Asia, where the Soviet threat was concentrated.

Now we fast forward to the present, and his question is, if John is right, and you have this Soviet threat that leads to a security competition, are we going to put together, in Asia, an alliance that looks like NATO? Or are we going to continue the old way of doing business with a series of bilateral agreements between the United States and X and the United States and Y?

Steve Waltz’s point is that geography is going to make it very difficult to constitute an effective NATO-like alliance. Just to give an example, if there’s a war over the Senkaku Islands, and let’s say the Japanese and the Chinese are shooting at each other, and the Americans come in, Vietnam is a faraway place. India is a really faraway place. Is India going to come all the way out through the Straits of Malacca to help out Japan? You know what I’m saying? So the geography is really complicated, and I don’t know what the answer is to your question, and I think it’s a great research question.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Roy Sengupta, I’m also with the Carlton International Policy Forum. You spoke a bit about nationalism and how it’s a powerful ideological force in today’s world, and we can see that with Senkaku Islands, I guess. My question is perhaps more of a political ideological question, and more of a human rights question, in the sense that do you believe that the Chinese regime, in a sense, has pivoted from the old communism and Maoism in a sense to an almost fascistic or fascist sort of state, whereby there’s, again, a corporatist nature of an economic system whereby the state has capitalist allows capitalists to make profits and, but at the same time, asks them to do certain political objectives for the state. And also we see in Tibet and Xinjiang, do you believe that the Chinese government risks or has already fallen into a sort of ethnic nationalism whereby the Han Chinese have almost are moving into places like Tibet and Xinjiang, causing various ethnic tensions there, and perhaps human rights abuses. And so what role do you believe that the Chinese government’s ideology will play, both on international sense, but also on a human rights sense in its own domestic country?

JOHN J. MEARSHEIMER: Yeah. First of all, on whether China has evolved into a fascist state, I usually have an opinion on every subject, and I have clear frameworks in my mind that allow me to sort of play around with arguments. I have never been able to figure out what fascism is. I don’t mean that to be facetious. I don’t have a good, clear definition in my mind of what it is. I mean, I know that Mussolini’s Italy and Hitler’s Germany were fascist states, and people say that about Japan, but I have never got a really good conceptual framework in my mind. So I’m going to beg off on the question, on that part of the question. I’m not saying you’re wrong, but I don’t know whether it’s a fascist state.

It is an authoritarian state, right? And it is an authoritarian state in a society that has a lot of those characteristics that push states towards democracy. And it’s obvious that the Chinese are not interested in instituting democracy at this point in time, and therefore, as I said before, you have a political system or regime that does not have a lot of legitimacy and is likely to have less legitimacy over time, right? And that’s why I said I think they will play the nationalism card.

With regard to, you know, areas like Tibet, Shinkang, I think there’s no question that the Chinese government in Beijing is deeply concerned about, excuse me, the irredentist movements in these areas and would like to do everything it can to snuff them out. And I think there’s no doubt that they’re moving Han Chinese into those areas. Are the Chinese willing to violate human rights? I think if the circumstances deem it necessary, they’ll do it.

I would make the same argument with regard to the United States. You know, states oftentimes, as you know, do terrible things, not only to their own people, but to other people. And if the leaders of the Chinese state believe that there are powerful centrifugal forces at play inside of China that threaten to destroy the state, they’ll do what they think is necessary.

The principal goal of every state is to survive. And that includes the Chinese. And if there are centrifugal forces inside the state that threaten their survival, it usually leads to terrible things.

I actually attended a talk yesterday at the University of Chicago on mass murder. It was somebody who was writing a dissertation on the causes of mass murder. And if you look at that literature, which I don’t know very well, it’s quite clear that mass murder is usually not done for ideological reasons. It’s usually done for strategic reasons. And it’s because people are very fearful and they feel that their survival is at stake and they lash out. I’m not defending that, but I’m just saying that you can understand how in the Chinese case there might someday be massive violations of human rights.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Thank you. I’m a PhD student in the School of Political Studies. Thanks a lot for the amazing speech. I really enjoy listening to you. I’ve been reading a lot, but it’s always good to have you in person. I will start by saying, well, first I agree with you on at least one thing.

JOHN J. MEARSHEIMER: Only one?

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Well, at least, at least. In hoping that in fact your prediction will not come into reality.

JOHN J. MEARSHEIMER: I’m with you 100%. Excellent. I love going to China, by the way. I’m intellectually, not to interrupt you, I’m intellectually much more at home in China than I am in the United States. Culturally, it’s like I’m on a different planet. I can’t even read my own name in Chinese. But I have a wonderful time every time I go to China, and that’s why I do hope I am dead wrong.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: But then your speech is mainly theoretical. You’re giving us all those facts and those representations of the past of the United States and of the present state of affairs and international affairs.

JOHN J. MEARSHEIMER: It’s a theoretical question. Exactly.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: And I think that we should be very cautious about taking for granted the representation that you are suggesting.

JOHN J. MEARSHEIMER: I agree with that.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: First, because as Professor Schmidt here has written about presentism, I think that you use a lot of representation from the past in a way it fits well in our current situation to understand past events or past evolution, developments, to understand the current situation. So to make an argument about the current situation. And then also because in fact, I believe that realism, because your theory, we can just make it more explicit that you’re talking about realism, the theory of realism, which has been dominant in IR since many decades, if not since its inception, has not been a really good predictive tool in the past decades. During the Cold War, for example, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, realism was not a good predictive tool on how great power will react. And then you use realism to predict what will happen in Europe after the end of the Cold War. Well, the prediction was not yet realized. And I would like to point out, or I would like to suggest that the problem with this theory is in fact it takes rationality for granted. It takes rationality as something which is the same for everybody. So we might like, you pointed out nuclear weapons, you pointed out community of securities. I think that the cultural or like constructivist argument that’s saying people don’t think the same like everywhere because they construct their own representation of reality might be an interesting point too.

JOHN J. MEARSHEIMER: The main problem I have is I’m suffering from early Alzheimer’s and I can’t remember all the good questions you asked. I’m only joking about the early Alzheimer’s.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: So to make it short, don’t you think that rationality like needs to be understood in a more complex way? Don’t you think that there’s like so much factors right now that should influence the way we understand rationality?

JOHN J. MEARSHEIMER: Okay, let me just go through a couple of his points which were excellent points and really deserve lengthy answers which we don’t have the time for. First of all your point that I do pay a lot of attention to the past in formulating my theory. I think that’s certainly true. But what you try to do or at least I try to do in developing a theory about any subject is develop it so it can explain a lot of the past, can explain the present and can be used to predict the future. Do you follow what I’m saying?

So the fact that there’s a lot of the past in my theory is of course true because I want to be able to explain the past because there we have the facts for the past and the present. We don’t have the facts for the future. So of course I go right to the American case and try to make the argument that American behavior fits with my theory, past and that theory. So I think that’s true but I think it’s kind of the nature of the beast.

Rationality and Theory Limitations

JOHN MEARSHEIMER: The only place where that would not be true is if you were a strategist or theorist in 1948 and you decided to study nuclear deterrence. We don’t have much history of nuclear weaponry so you’re kind of starting fresh, but that’s not true of me. You pointed out that my theory didn’t or my realist theory doesn’t predict a number of cases.

You talked about the Cuban Missile Crisis. You talked about the future of Europe. As I’ve tried to make clear here, there are cases that my theory doesn’t account for or to put it in slightly different terms, cases where states act in ways that contradict my theory and I don’t dispute that.

With regard to the future of Europe, I don’t think that’s true. I think I’ve been unfairly criticized on that one. Not by you, of course. But I think, in fact, I think I can make the argument that I was basically right about Europe but let’s just say you’re right. The point is that the theory doesn’t always work and this brings us to his third point about rationality. I think of all the assumptions in my theory, the one that is the weakest is the rational actor assumption.

After having lived in the United States for the past 20 years, I’m beginning to wonder about that theory. No, to be serious, I think that states sometimes do not act strategically and I think that, in large part, accounts, that rational actor assumption, in large part, failure of the rational actor assumption, it counts in large part for what I call 25% of the cases. I think that you’re right.

The Value of Theoretical Frameworks

JOHN MEARSHEIMER: Thanks. Point I would make, just before this gentleman goes, point you want to keep in mind about social science theories is they’re very crude instruments and it’s just the nature of the beast. I just want to proselytize for one second before I go to this gentleman.

The world is enormously complicated. It really is enormously complicated and what theories do is that they simplify reality. The beauty of dealing with me, right, is not whether I’m right or wrong. The beauty of dealing with me is that I have a very simple theory that you can grasp and you can figure out why you agree with me or disagree with me, right?

And that allows you to think about this incredibly complicated world in more helpful ways. Again, I’m not saying that you then agree with me and that helps you think about the world but it helps you figure out in your own head how you think about the world because I believe that I force you to think about what factors are most important just like the previous gentleman who wanted to fight with me on the rational actor assumption. That’s exactly what you want to do.

But what’s happening here is that we’re operating in an incredibly complicated world and we theorists, and I believe you’re all theorists because I believe we cannot operate on a day-to-day basis without theories in our head. The only difference is between those people who admit they have theories and those who don’t, right? You all have theories. There’s no way you can negotiate the world without theories.

The world is just too complicated. You need simplified theories, right? But anyway, anytime you simplify an incredibly complicated reality, you’re going to leave on the cutting room floor factors that will occasionally, as I’ve said on two previous occasions, jump up and bite you in the hiding. And that just tells you your theories are of limited utility.

Their theories are essential but of limited utility. They’re essential but of limited utility. Sorry.

China-Russia Relations

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Joshua Dyer from the University of Helsinki. I was wondering if you could sort of elaborate on how your theory helps us understand what we can predict in the future or what to know to expect from the future of your Chinese-Russian relations. I say this because I feel like they have somewhat of a unique relationship in comparison to sort of the other states in China’s neighborhood being that they border with one another, both BRIC nations.

They sort of tiptoe around each other to make sure not to sort of step on each other’s toes in the UN Security Council. Things like this. So I was wondering if you could sort of elaborate on that.

JOHN MEARSHEIMER: Yeah. I think that when you talk about the balancing coalition against China, you will remember I said that it would include Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Vietnam, Philippines, Australia, India, and I said Russia, right?

AUDIENCE QUESTION: If I could interject one second. Also, they have a very different relationship with the U.S. in comparison to these other states. The Russian-U.S. relationship being quite different from Japan-U.S. relations.

JOHN MEARSHEIMER: Oh, absolutely. Australia-U.S. relations.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: I think really my main interest, my main point.

JOHN MEARSHEIMER: Well, as you know, Russia, which was then the Soviet Union, was our principal adversary during the Cold War. But you also want to remember that the United States fought against Vietnam in one of the bloodiest wars of the 20th century in the years 1965 basically to 75.

And the Vietnamese are really anxious to jump in bed with us. They’d like us to come back to Cam Ranh Bay. They’d like us to help them with the South China Sea.

So there you have a former mortal enemy, right? Vietnam and the United States that are coming together. And I believe, as is evidenced by my description of what I thought, the balancing coalition will be that the United States and Russia will be allies against China. It has to do with geography, right? Russia shares a border with China.

They almost fought a war in 1969 along the Ussuri River over a border dispute. And I think that as China continues to grow and it begins to push out, it begins to throw its weight around in the neighborhood, the Chinese will end up facing both the United States and Russia in this balancing coalition. You don’t see that now, right? As I’ve said a couple times here, you can see the balancing coalition already beginning to form.

And remember I said for anybody who has any doubts, you should go home and Google India and Japan. But you don’t see evidence in the Russian case, right? And this is in large part because the United States is doing things in the greater Middle East that angers both the Chinese and the Russians. So the Russians and the Chinese kind of act together.

You all know that the Russians and the Chinese together are making it impossible to get a U.N. resolution for dealing with Syria, right? And that’s because both China and Russia feel like they were stiffed over Libya. They both abstained from the vote in the U.N. on Libya. So the Chinese and the Russians are good friends today in certain ways.

But what I’m predicting, I want to underline that, what I’m predicting is that will all change. And eventually the Russians, like the Japanese and the Indians, will come over to the balancing coalition. But only time will tell whether that’s true.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Thank you.

JOHN MEARSHEIMER: You’re welcome.

Closing Remarks

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Professor Mearsheimer is a remarkably modest man who only claims accuracy in 75% of his predictions.

I’m less modest. I claim 100% accuracy in my predictions. And I think I have empirical evidence for this.

At the beginning of this talk, I predicted that it would be incredibly broad-ranging, incredibly challenging, deeply unsettling, provocative, and exciting. And I think all of those predictions have been confirmed. And for confirming my genius in social science.

But more importantly, for giving us an amazing afternoon of food for thought and analysis, I’d like to join me in thanking John Mearsheimer.

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