In this conversation, John speaks with political scientist and international relations scholar Professor John Mearsheimer about the recent war in Ukraine, and the potential for conflict in Taiwan.

Mearsheimer argues for what he calls 'offensive realism', which holds that conflicts between states are driven by the need to maximize power in relation to other states. This is in contrast to the heterodox liberal framework, which Mearsheimer contends was only tenable under the recently ended ‘unipolar’ era. Using this framework, Mearsheimer famously predicted the recent Russian invasion, arguing that it was an inevitable outcome of NATO's eastward expansion.

The discussion also turns to the situation in Taiwan and why a conflict in Asia may be more likely than a European conflict during the new Cold War.

This is an important, thought-provoking, and at times controversial discussion—essential viewing for anyone trying to understand the confusing and tumultuous geopolitical climate we find ourselves in.

John J. Mearsheimer is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, where he has taught since 1982. He graduated from West Point in 1970 and then served five years as an officer in the U.S. Air Force. He then started graduate school in political science at Cornell University in 1975. He received his Ph.D. in 1980. He spent the 1979-1980 academic year as a research fellow at the Brookings Institution, and was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University’s Centre for International Affairs from 1980 to 1982. During the 1998-1999 academic year, he was the Whitney H. Shepardson Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

His recent and most notable works include, "The Tragedy of Great Power Politics" (2001), "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" (2007), and "Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities" (2018).

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00:00 Intro
00:54 Introducing John Mearsheimer
1:50 What is realism?
4:20 Does realism = 'might makes right'
6:49 Were America's actions wise after WW2?
9:40 Domestic vs International politics
11:13 Why Liberalism needs nationalism
14:30 Why the U.S. should work with Russia against China
19:15 How John predicted Russia's invasion
26:00 America's failed Democratic export to Russia
31:05 Why in 2017 liberal foreign policy died - Unipolar vs Multipolar
33:44 The war in Ukraine is a vestige of American Hegemony
35:09 What makes a multipolar world so dangerous
38:40 American willpower
39:05 The U.S. defends Taiwan
42:45 Does America have the capacity?
45:48 The role of military technology and the quantity/quality trade off
50:30 Free enterprise vs Central command in war time
54:37 How the foreign policy establishment defeated both Trump and Obama
1:02:00 Can we avoid a war with China?"
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