John Mearsheimer: preference

Transcript context

…The following is a conversation with John Mearsheimer, a professor at University of Chicago and one of the most influential and controversial thinkers in the world. He teaches, speaks and writes about the nature of power and war on the global stage, in history and today. Please allow me to say, once again, my hope for this little journey I’m on. I will speak to everyone on all sides with compassion, with empathy, and with backbone. I’ll speak with Vladimir Putin and with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, with Russians and with Ukrainians, with Israelis and with Palestinians, with everyone. My goal is to do whatever small part I can to decrease the amount of suffering in the world by trying to reveal our common humanity. I believe that in the end, truth and love wins. I will get attacked for being naive, for being a shill, for being weak. I’m none of those things, but I do make mistakes and I will get better. I love you all. This is a Lex Fridman podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here’s John Mearsheimer. Can you explain your view on power in international politics as outlined in your book, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics and in your writing since then? Yeah, I make two sets of points there. First of all, I believe that power is the currency of international relations, and by that I mean that states are deeply interested in the balance of power and they’re interested in maximizing how much power they control. And the question is why do states care so much about power. In the international system, there’s no higher authority, so if you get into trouble and you dial 911, there’s nobody at the other end. In a system like that, you have no choice but to figure out for yourself how best to protect yourself. And the best way to protect yourself is to be powerful, to have as much power as you can possibly gain over all the other states in the system. Therefore, states care about power because it enhances or maximizes their prospects for survival. Second point I would make is that in the realist story or in my story, power is largely a function of material factors. The two key building blocks of power are population size and wealth. You want to have a lot of people and you want to be really wealthy. Of course, this is why the United States is so powerful. It has lots of people and it has lots of wealth. China was not considered a great power until recently because it didn’t have a lot of wealth. It certainly had population size, but it didn’t have wealth. And without both a large population and much wealth, you’re usually not considered a great power. So I think power matters, but when we talk about power, it’s important to understand that it’s population size and wealth that are underpinning it. So there’s a lot of interesting things there. First you said nations in relation to each other is essentially in a state of anarchism.…

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