John Mearsheimer: belief

Transcript context

…You’re kind of a big deal in China. I love it. The Chinese are my kind of people. They’re realists, right? They speak my language. It’s the United States that is not very realist. American leaders have a very powerful liberal bent and tend not to see the world in realist terms. I believe, by the way, just going back to our discussion of NATO expansion, I think our inability to understand that NATO expansion was anathema to the Soviet, to the Russians, was due in large part to the fact that we just during the unipolar moment, didn’t think of international politics from a realist perspective and didn’t respect anyone who thought about international politics from a realist perspective. If those various American administrations starting with the Clinton administration had put their realist hat on, they would’ve understood that NATO expansion into Ukraine was not a good idea, but we had this thoroughly liberal view of the world that dominated our thinking, and it’s gone away somewhat since we’ve moved into Multi-polarity, but not completely. And this makes me a little nervous to pick up on your point. I mean, the United States is thinking about the world in ways that are somewhat different than the Chinese who are real as par excellence. So that’s fascinating. So the Chinese are pragmatic about thinking of the world as a competition of military powers, all the ways in which you described the realist perspective. So that’s a hopeful thing, right? If we can achieve stability and a balance of powers through that military competition.…

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