The Great Delusion with Professor John Mearsheimer

10:44PM Feb 19, 2022

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Good evening, everybody. Welcome. Thank you all for being here for this talk by John Mearsheimer, who I'll introduce in a moment. Before I do, I just want to acknowledge a few folks that have joined us our Dean mark. Well, she just got his own round of applause. Andrew nazioni from the Scowcroft Institute. Next to him is Mr. Rice Hickman, a local community leader. Thank you for joining us. Greg Goss, my boss and department, Head of International Affairs and a number of my colleagues from international affairs, and a number of students from the Bush School. So thank you all for coming. It is my pleasure. Tonight. I'm John Schuessler, by the way I am in the Department of International Affairs. I'm an associate professor in that department. But I'm here tonight to introduce our speaker John Mearsheimer. John is Dr. Wendell Harrison, Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, where he's been since 1982. He is best known academically as an offensive realist, a scholar of offensive realism, which is an important body of thought in international relations theory. In terms of public debate, applying theory to practice, he's left his mark on many of the important debates of the post Cold War period and before, including the causes of the Ukrainian crisis, the folly of invading Iraq, the Arab Israeli peace process and the US Israel relationship, nuclear proliferation, the return of great power politics, so on and so forth. And on a personal level, I met John in 1999, when I enrolled at the University of Chicago, I'm so proud to welcome him here. And he taught me two things, which I think you'll see tonight, one, keep it simple, stupid, simple arguments can be powerful. And number two, engage with the idea don't attack the person, which is incredibly important. So it is with great pride that I introduce Dr. John Mearsheimer.

Thank you very much, John, for the kind introduction. And thank you all for the invitation here. I think this is the fourth time I've been to Texas a&m. I always enjoy coming here, despite the fact that it is not easy to get here. And I'm thrilled that you all came out to hear me talk. I often tell people that I'm a Marxist at heart. That is to say, a Groucho Marx is. And I would never want to belong to a club that would have me as a member. And for somebody who has that mentality, it's always very humbling. When you see people come out to hear you talk or people read your books and articles and write you and tell you that you know, you've had a profound influence on how they think about the world really is humbling. And I'm deeply appreciative that so many people take what I say and what I write seriously. Today, what I want to talk about is my new book, The Great delusion, liberal ideals and international realities. This book came out officially on September 25th, which of course was two days ago, it was about 10 years in the making, really seven years of pretty much straight, hard work. And I've spent a lot of time thinking about the ideas in the book. And I'm excited about throwing them out for you to analyze. And when we go to the q&a, you shouldn't hesitate to come after Me, as John alluded to, and as I can tell you, I actually love combat. I love arguing with people. And I love people who think I'm wrong. What could be more boring to deal with people who think you're a genius, right? So if as I go along here, I make arguments that you don't understand or you think, just wrongheaded, you should not hesitate to stand up and let me know what you really think. Okay. Basic story. After the cold war ended, the United States pursued a policy that I called liberal hegemony. And the main aim of that strategy was to remake the world in America's image. The policy has failed miserably. If you look at US foreign policy from the end of the Cold War till now, and especially since 2001. It's marked by a whole series of abject failures. And I'll talk about that at great length. And the $64,000 question is Why Why was there all this optimism in the early 1990s? Why did people think we had the wind at the back are back and we're going to be able to remake the world in our own image. And today, things

don't look good at all what went wrong? And my argument is that to understand what went wrong, you have to understand the relationship between nationalism and realism and liberalism. And I believe, again, that we have followed what is essentially a liberal foreign policy. This is called liberal hegemony, and that it has been defeated at almost every turn by nationalism and realism. Okay, now, the way I want to proceed is, first of all, I want to talk about what liberalism is. They don't want to talk about what nationalism is. And when I talk about liberalism and nationalism, I'm not going to say anything about international politics, at least in any meaningful way. I just want to give you a sense for what liberalism is. The United States is a thoroughly liberal country. It is a liberal democracy, both Republicans who we sometimes refer to as conservatives, or liberals, and Democrats or liberals. I'm using the term liberal in the John Locke, Ian sense of the term, the United States was born as a liberal democracy, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, these are thoroughly liberal documents. We are a liberal people. Okay. But what exactly does that mean? It's very important that you understand it, because you have to understand what liberalism is to understand liberal hegemony and what went wrong, then, it's very important to understand what nationalism is. Jon's argument is very simple here. Nationalism is the most powerful ideology on the planet. And in a contest between liberalism and nationalism, nationalism wins every time. And what I want to do is explain to you what liberalism is, what nationalism is, and why nationalism defeats liberalism. Then what I want to do is talk about what liberal hegemony is, what does it mean to say that the United States is interested in remaking the world and its own image, so I'll describe that, then I want to talk about why we pursued liberal hegemony. And of course, I've kicked you off by telling you that the United States is a thoroughly liberal country. But there's more to the story, then I want to tell you what our track record is want to describe our failures in the Middle East, with regard to NATO expansion in Russia. And with regard to engagement and China, just talking about the evidence that we goofed. Then I want to talk about why liberal hegemony fails. And this, again, is basically a story about nationalism and realism trumping liberalism. And then I want to make the case for restraint, what I think is a wise foreign policy. Okay. Let me start with what is liberalism, there to bedrock assumptions that underpin liberalism. One is that it's individualistic at its core. And number two is that there are real limits to what we can do with our critical faculties to reach agreement on first principles or questions about the good life. What exactly am I saying? You have to decide when you think about politics, whether you think human beings are first and foremost, individuals who form social contracts.

Or you think that human beings are fundamentally social animals who carve out room for their individualism. This is very, very important to think about, right? Liberalism is all about individualism. Liberal theorists are known as social contract theorists, because they believe that individuals come together and form social contracts. So the focus is on the individual. The assumption underpinning liberalism is not that human beings are social animals from the get go. That's the first point. The second point is that liberalism assumes that we cannot use our critical faculties, we cannot use reason to come up with truth about first principles, think about issues like abortion, affirmative action, you cannot get universal agreement on those issues. Right. And I'll talk about this more as we go along. But the roots of liberalism are traced back, in my opinion to the religious wars in Britain between Catholics and Protestants. And the fact is, you cannot use your critical faculties to determine whether Catholicism is a superior religion to Protestantism, or vice versa, or whether atheism is superior to both of them were Judaism or Islam. barrier to Catholicism and Protestantism who knows? Right? You just can't reach agreement, there are real limits to what we can do with our critical faculties. Okay, so these are the two bedrock assumptions. One, you focus on the individual. And number two, you accept the fact that you can't reach universal agreement. Now, central question, how should politics be arranged to deal with this potential for violence? You say you're so what does he mean potential for violence? The fact is that Catholics and Protestants were killing each other in huge numbers, not only in Britain, but all over Europe. People today, she isn't Sony's killing each other, because they can't agree on whether she ism or Sony ism is the correct interpretation of Islam. Or communist versus liberals. People can agree on first principles. And when they can't agree on first principles, if they feel really strongly about them, there is potential for violence. So when you have all these individuals running around, who don't agree, they may agree in some cases, but don't universally agree. There's tremendous potential for violence. So liberalism is basically an ideology that's based on conflict. And the question is, how do you solve that conflict? There's a three part solution. And this should be dear to all of your hearts. The first is, you focus on individual rights. Remember the importance of the individual, you know, the Declaration of Independence, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Those are natural rights. Those are inalienable rights. This means that every person on the planet has a particular set of rights, sometimes defined as freedoms. This is to say, you if you want to be Protestant, have the right to practice that religion. And if I want to be a Catholic, I have the freedom I have the right to be a Catholic. The name of the game is to recognize that everybody has these freedoms to choose. This makes perfect sense when you think about Catholics killing Protestants, right? Are Jews killing Muslims or whatever group you want atheist, killing believers, communist killing,

whatever, right? The point is, you want to focus on the individual, and let the individual choose for him or herself, what kind of life they want to lead, you want to let them lead as much as possible, their version of the good life. And very important, every person on the planet has that right. And let me get ahead of myself here, just put this seed in your brain. If you focus on individualism, and inalienable rights, you go almost automatically, from an individualistic ideology, to a universalistic ideology. Right? Because again, you're focusing on the individual, you're saying, Every individual has a set of rights, every individual on the planet, that individualistic ideology becomes a universalistic ideology. But we're talking about the individual here. The second is you purvey the norm of tolerance. We talk about tolerance all the time. Universities are really big on tolerance. We're supposed to tolerate opinions that we don't like. You bring in speakers or you allow speakers to come in who say things that you find reprehensible. Tolerance really matters. But the fact is, the tolerance only takes you so far, because you're dealing with people who sometimes are so committed to their beliefs. You know, somebody who believes that abortion is murder is willing to murder a doctor who practices abortion, right. So you need a state that's the third element of the equation. You need a state that's effectively in nightwatchman that make sure that those people over there who want to live as Protestants don't attack those people who want to live as Catholics, or vice versa. This is the liberal solution. This is what America is all about. individualism. We talk about it all the time. We talk about rights, everybody has rights. My kids over the years have always reminded me when I tell them that they have to do XY and Z, that they have rights, and I cannot interfere with their rights. Right. It's the way we're educated from the get go. And of course, we're remarkably tolerant people as societies go, not completely but That's of course why we have a state. Right? You got to have a police force. You got to have a system of courts, right? So that's, that's what liberalism is all about right? Liberalism focused on the individual right pervades the norm of tolerance and accepts the fact that you need a nightwatchman state. Now, let's talk about nationalism. different animal. Nationalism is based on the assumption that human beings are social animals. We are born and we are heavily socialized into tribes. We are not born in the state of nature. We are not individuals born and left alone in the woods. We are born into groups. We are very tribal. So you see in terms of starting assumptions or bedrock assumptions, what underpins nationalism, what underpins liberalism very, very different. And individualism, takes a backseat to group loyalty. Right? Somebody around the world kills an American. ISIS kills an American, it's fundamentally different than killing a Saudi or killing a Brit. Because you're killing one of us. Isn't the tribe, right? You're an American. Americans look out for other Americans. We are social animals from the get go. And aside from the family, the most important group member I said that you're born into and heavily such socialized into particular groups, putting aside the family, the most important group in today's world, is the nation. I'll say more about that in a second. What's nationalism? Here's my simple definition. It's a set of political beliefs, which holds that a nation, a nation, a body of individuals, with characteristics that purportedly distinguish them from other groups should have their own state. Think of the word nation, state, nation, state, nation state embodies what nationalism is all about, says the world is divided up into these tribes called nations, and each one of them wants its own state. If you think about the world today, just look at a map of the world today. It is completely covered with nation states.

Nothing but nation states. If you went back to 1450, and you looked at a map of Europe, there isn't even a single state on that map over time, with the growth of the state, and then the growth of the nation state. You move to a world that is filled with nothing but nation states. Look at the Palestinians and the Israelis. The Jews. Believe in Zionism, what is Zionism all about? It's all about having your own Jewish State Theatre Hertzel, who is a father of Zionism. His most famous book is called the Jewish state, Jewish nation state. What do the Palestinians want to state solution? Palestinians want their own state? Palestinians are a nation, they want their own state. The planet is filled with nations, many of which have their own state, almost all of which want their own state, nation state. Right. That's what nationalism is all about. Take it a step further. Nations place enormous importance on sovereignty, or self determination, which is why they want their own state. The Palestinians don't want the Israelis deciding what their politics should look like. Palestinians want their own state, Jews want their own state. Germans want their own state. Americans want their own state, because they believe in sovereignty. He saw this with Donald Trump. Remember? Well, Donald Trump ran in the campaign on a platform that he referred to as America first. Just think about that America, first America, particular nation, take care of us first. And he has made it very clear that he does not want anybody interfering in our sovereignty. And he was saying yesterday, he doesn't think we should be interfering in the sovereignty of other countries. Right? That's recognition of the power of nationalism. Right? So nations want their own state. And then once you get nation states, they place enormous importance on sovereignty or self determination. Who are these Russians to be interfering in our elections? United States is a sovereign country. No country like Russia or any other country for that matter has the right to interfere in our elections? It's the basic argument. That's what nationalism is. is really all about. Okay, so you get a feel for the difference between liberalism and nationalism. Liberalism focuses on the individual. And therefore, because it emphasizes individual rights, which everybody has has a universalistic dimension. Nationalism is particular Ristic at the core, fundamentally different. Okay, so what's liberal hegemony? I've given you the definition of liberalism, and the definition of nationalism that I've worked out, let me talk a little bit about liberal hegemony. It's basically an attempt to remake the world in America's image. And it has three components. The first is spreading liberal democracy all over the globe. And the reason that I put three stars up there is it is the most important of the three. This is the idea that we want to turn every country into a liberal democracy, we want every country on the planet, to have the same political system that we do here in the United States.

Second goal is we want to integrate more and more countries into the open international economy. This is where we have an emphasis on free trade, lots of economic intercourse, right? Free capital flows, and so forth and so on, you know, the whole story. And then third is we want to integrate more and more countries into international institutions, like the World Trade Organization, the IMF, NATO think NATO expansion, the TPP Trans Pacific Partnership, which the Obama administration was building in which President Trump cashiered okay. The liberal story places a great emphasis on institutions. It places a great emphasis on an open international economy, and most importantly, on spreading democracy. Just to give you feel for this, Donald Trump ran against liberal hegemony. Right, and liberal hegemony, to be clear, was supported by both Republicans and Democrats, as I like to say, the Republicans especially but the Democrats also like to make the argument that there's a big difference between the two parties on foreign policy. This is not a serious argument. This is Tweedledee and Tweedledum. Hardly any difference between the Republicans and the Democrats. There's a real difference between Donald Trump and both of them. Remember, Donald Trump ran the table in the Republican primaries by criticizing the Republicans performance on the foreign policy front for decades and criticizing the Democrats in the general election. Donald Trump said, I'm not interested in spreading liberal democracy across the globe. And in fact, he was quite comfortable making nice with dictators. Second, he was not interested in supporting an open international economy. In fact, he is showing today that he is willing to put tariffs on China, Canada and our European allies. And as far as international institutions are concerned, he said NATO is obsolete. He was contemptuous of the World Trade Organization. contemptuous of the European Union does not like the IMF does not like the World Bank does not like NAFTA, cashiered, the TPP that's Donald Trump, he ran against this, but Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George HW Bush, they embrace this after the Cold War ended. And by the way, it was the failure of this policy. It's the failure of American policy that helped put Donald Trump in the White House. For those of you who say to yourself, how could this man have ever been elected president, the United States, I'm telling you an important part of the story. Right? It's the failure of the foreign policy elites in this country to produce over the past 30 years. Okay. What are the benefits of liberal hegemony is very important. And why didn't go down this road and part is due to the fact that foreign policy elites in the United States had a story to tell about how this was going to lead to all sorts of wonderful consequences. First of all, if you turn every country on the planet into a liberal democracy, you basically eliminate significant human rights violations. We don't need our to pee or any more of these policies that are designed to run around the world, protecting human rights because human rights are no longer threatened, because the world is comprised of nothing but liberal democracies. Second, and maybe even more importantly, liberals tend to believe and again, I'm using liberals to include Democrats and Republicans. They believe in what's called Democratic Peace theory. That is that liberal democracies don't fight each other. So if you can create a world of nothing but liberal democracies, they don't fight each other. breaks out. And problems like proliferation and terrorism are taken off the table. And it's just the world peace, love and dope. Can't get much better than that, right. And then finally, it makes the world safe for liberal democracy. As you all know, inside every liberal democracy, there are going to be elements who don't like liberal democracy. When I was a kid, this was the Communist Party in the United States. Well, if there's no Soviet Union out there, that's a communist state that can interact with those communists in the United States, that you don't have to worry about those communists in the United States getting support from abroad. So what we do is we make the whole planet, nothing but liberal democracies, and that really ameliorates the problems that any of these liberal democracies have On the homefront, because there's no foreign power that can assist them. This is a Woodrow Wilson like argument made by the likes of George Bush, right? So these are the three great benefits of liberal hegemony. And this is what propelled people to pursue this policy of remaking the world in America's image, which mainly means spreading liberal democracy. Now, why did the US pursue liberal hegemony?

First of all, as I said to folks before, the United States is a profoundly liberal country. It's what makes the United States a wonderful place. You should understand here, that I am not arguing that liberalism is a bad thing, period into story. I actually think that liberal democracy is the best political system you can possibly have. And I thank my lucky stars that I was born in the United States of America, a liberal democracy and raised in a liberal democracy, I would want it no other way. My argument is that liberal democracy is the best of all possible political systems that you can have. But as a foreign policy, liberalism is bankrupt. Right? So you understand the argument. I'm making it but this is a fundamentally liberal country. And realists like me, John Schuessler, Jason Steele, they can tell you this. realists like me, and them have a tough time in America, because liberals don't like realists, right? That's why so many people don't like me, right? Because I'm a realist on foreign policy grounds. Right. Right. So this is a profoundly liberal country. And just to go back to that slide, when you start trying to sell these kinds of arguments in the early 1990s, it's very easy to do. Americans just gravitate to these arguments, because it is a liberal country. Second, American nationalism supplied an unhealthy dose of hubris to the equation. So very important part of the story. John told you that nationalism is the most powerful political ideology on the planet. What I'm telling you also, I didn't say this before, but tell you now, the United States is very nationalistic country. If you go to the library here, University of Chicago, Harvard, you name it, right? There are whole wings of the library that are filled with books about American liberalism. There is probably one shelf worth of books on American nationalism, because we never talk about ourselves as a nationalistic country. We are very nationalistic. Let me just say a few words about this. Madeleine Albright canonical liberal, right? Loves liberal hegemony is famous for saying this. America is the indispensable nation. We stand polar. And we see further. This is pure, unadulterated nationalism. America is America as opposed to the other. Right, that America is the indispensable there's the word nation, nation, as a nationalism. We we are the indispensable nation, we stand taller, and we see further. Right, we are superior, you will know where the city on the hill, right? We have the right, we have the responsibility. And we have the capability to transform countries all around the world into liberal democracies. Right? This is nationalism. So what I'm saying to you here, let me just give you another example, American exceptionalism, you will surely all believe in American exceptionalism. And if any of you plan to run for political office in the United States, you better say you believe in American exceptionalism, Andrew Cuomo just got himself in trouble for denying that and Barack Obama flirted with that argument. And he quickly backed off. Well, if you believe in American exceptionalism, you believe in American nationalism, because exceptionalism is what nationalism is all about. Right? So what you have here is a country that is fueled by both nationalism and liberalism. Right. So it is hardly surprising that this country is going to go on a rampage and try to remake the world. And then finally, and this is a very important part of my argument, I believe you can only pursue liberal hegemony in unipolarity. The reason is, if you're in bipolarity or multipolarity, you have other, you have other great powers to deal with. And you have to act according to the dictates of realism. Right? By polarity means two great powers multipolarity three or more unipolarity. There's only one great power lift, there's only one great power. You don't have to worry about great power politics. This is where the United States was at the end of the Cold War, we were Godzilla. We were incredibly powerful relative to everybody else in the system. Tremendous amounts of power. Charles Krauthammer called this the Unipolar Moment. So here we are, we're incredibly powerful. And we think that liberal democracy is the wave of the future. We think we have the wind at our back. And we think the idea of spreading liberal democracy, given how powerful we are, it's going to be easy, and we don't have to worry about balance of power politics. 1991 Soviet Union disappears.

It was a weak lead even before it disappeared. China hasn't risen yet. There's nobody else out there, we'd have to worry about the balance of power. So we are free to pursue liberal hegemony. If you're in a bipolar system, or a multipolar system, I'm getting way ahead of myself now think rise of China think resurrection of Russian power. Not much room for liberal hegemony, you're talking about balance of power politics, pivot to Asia, that you know the story. But here, if you have unipolarity, and the soul poll, that's uncle sugar, the soul pole is profoundly liberal. Right. And profoundly nationalistic. You're off to the races. And that's what happened in starting in the early 1990s.

Hang on just one second. Move it with this. Yeah, liberal hegemonies trackwork. Just want to talk a little bit about this. These are the failures of American foreign policy. Talking about the Bush Doctrine in the greater Middle East, Afghanistan. You think we're going to turn Afghanistan into a liberal democracy? Just to question when we turn it back over to the Taliban, longest war in American history. AraC total disaster led to the creation of ISIS, hundreds of 1000s of people died. around Iran now has significant influence in Iraq, Syria, we played a key role in unsettling the regime in Syria, that's worked out really well. Libya, we played a key role in toppling Colonel Qaddafi power that's really worked out very well. We're deeply involved in the war in Yemen now, which is a human rights catastrophe, the Americans would be embarrassed for their disgraceful behavior, supporting this war supporting the Saudis. You look at our track record in the greater Middle East failure after failure. And Donald Trump, to his credit, pointed this out in the campaign. And the American people fully understand this. The elites in this country don't because they're deeply invested in these wars. But dismal track record, Ukraine crisis and US Russian relations, of course, inside the elite, we blame the Russians. The Americans never blame themselves for anything. But actually, what happened here is that the United States decided when the Cold War and did that we would take NATO, and we would take the EU, and we would march them eastward, right up to the border of Russia. And what we would do is we would help solidify the democracies that had emerged in Eastern Europe after the Cold War, we would get the countries in Eastern Europe embedded in international institutions like NATO and the EU, we would get them hooked on capitalism, and we would make sure they were liberal democracies. By the way, those countries that weren't liberal democracies, we would foment revolutions. Remember the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, the Rose Revolution in Georgia, right? So whole part of a piece. It's all part of the story. realist like me, George Kennan, we all said, Are you crazy? You think you could take a military alliance that was a mortal enemy of the Soviet Union during the Cold War and marched right up to the Russians border, and they're just going to sit there and take it. And of course the Russians scream bloody murder about NATO expansion. From 1995 forward, we didn't listen. Right. But it eventually blew up in our face, Georgia 2008, Ukraine 2014, we are principally responsible for creating the crisis that led to Russia recapturing Crimea or capturing Crimea, depending on your view. And for the war in Ukraine today, the Russians have basically said, You're not going to make Ukraine a Western Bulwark on our border not going to happen. We'll wreck it before we let that happen. And they said the same thing about Georgia. From an American point of view, this makes eminently good sense. You've all heard of the Monroe Doctrine, right? You know what the Monroe Doctrine says, no distinct, great power from Europe or East Asia, is allowed to come in to the western hemisphere with military force and form an alliance with any country in this region. That's, that's the Monroe Doctrine. I'm old enough to remember the Cuban Missile Crisis. We went ballistic, when we found out the Soviets had put missiles in Cuba. And then later they were talking about building a naval base at sea and play goes, who do these people think they are? Don't they understand that this is the Western Hemisphere. They are not allowed to move military forces into this region. We still have sanctions on Cuba. God knows how many years since 1959. This has been going on because the Cubans had the audacity to form a military alliance with a distinct great power. Well, as my mother taught me, when I was a little boy, what's good for the goose is good for the gander, if we can have a Monroe Doctrine. Are you shocked that they had a Monroe Doctrine or they have a Monroe Doctrine you're shocked at the Russians don't like the idea of us marching NATO right up to their border, you shouldn't be.

You shouldn't be great powers, I can tell you from studying a lot of military history are remarkably sensitive about their borders. And the idea that an enemy is going to creep right up to their borders, and they're just going to stand there and say, Oh, that's okay. We live in a world of peace, love and dope. That's not the way international politics works. That's realism 101, slamming liberal hegemony. It's also well about nationalism. Right? Because the United States is interested in interfering in the politics of both Russia and China. And this brings us to engagement with China. Our goal from the beginning has been to turn China into a liberal democracy that involves interfering with their politics. Do you think they were happy about that? No, they weren't. Let's go back to the goose in the gander. You've been watching all these Americans screaming bloody murder about the fact the Russians are interfering in our election. Well, don't you think the Chinese or the Russians are going to scream bloody murder when we try and interfere in their politics? They are surprise of surprises. But of course, liberals in here I'll get I'm talking about Republicans and Democrats view us as a benign, hegemonic, we're benign, hegemonic, we only have good intentions. And we just want to make the world look like us. And of course, once that happens, we all live happily ever after. Didn't work out that way. Just look at that giant disaster zone, called the Middle East. Look at the hundreds and hundreds of 1000s of people who've died. We have a lot of blood on our hands. US Russian relations, we bear principal response, the principal responsibility to deterioration those relations. And with regard to engagement, it's been a failure. Principle Architects like Kurt Campbell. Now admit that's true. We failed. policy has been an abject failure.

So the question is, why did it fail? I'm not going to go into this any detail, but

power of nationalism, right. I was one of the leading opponents. There weren't many in the sort of foreign policy establishment. What I was one of the leading opponents of the Iraq war, I think it was because I was in the American military from 1965 to 1975, which is coterminous with the Vietnam War. And I heard that these people were thinking about vaiting a wreck. They said, if they lost their mind, right? There's no question the United States military is an incredibly formidable fighting force. And we can topple regimes almost anywhere in the world, maybe China and Russia left out, we can go into a ram going rack or in a series and topple regimes. But the problem is, what do you do once you own the place? Right? What do you do? You agree that is a liberator the first day week, maybe even the first month? Right? All sorts of people were glad we got rid of Saddam Hussein, but then we got to stay to do social engineering. And this prescription for big trouble. Remember what I told you about sovereignty? Remember what I told you about self determination? You think the Iraqis wanted us telling them what color toilet paper they could use? I don't think they liked it at all. And we had resistance, serious resistance. You want to wreck Russia tone will invade Ukraine. That'll be printed. I'm going to Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, let him reestablish the Soviet empire in Eastern Europe, you think that'll make them more powerful, they'll be up to their eyeballs and alligators. I remember in 1979, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, virtually everybody in the national community security community was aghast, oh, my god, the Soviets are on the march, this is the end of the world, I think you got it all wrong. They just jumped into a giant tar pit. When you're involved in your arms race with a country like the Soviet Union, what you want them to do is go in Afghanistan, just like you want us to go into Vietnam, you want to do that one again, almost tore this country apart, almost wrecked their military. Who told the Chinese when I first started going there in the early 2000s, but you want to tell the Americans, you're counting on them to win the war on terror. Tell them they got to stay in Afghanistan, Iraq until they win the war, they'll be there forever, grinding up their military wrecking their economy. You know what the lesson here is stand of those places unless you absolutely have to go in. But we had exactly the opposite worldview, because we had foreign policies based on liberalism. Right, we thought we had a right and responsibility and the capability to do all this social engineering, power of nationalism, you never want to underestimate it. And you want to understand that as Americans, you are very nationalistic, and you ain't special. Everybody else on the planet is very nationalistic, and nationalism is all about self determination and sovereignty. And if you don't like people interfering in your politics, don't be surprised that they don't like you interfering in their politics. Talk about the power of realism. Again, when you're dealing with China, and you're dealing with Russia, you're dealing with very powerful countries, and you start moving military alliances, as you start moving military forces up to their borders, you get in their face, you're asking for serious trouble. I just talked to the Chinese sometime, but how they think about those American naval and air forces right off their coast, it really bothers them, they don't like it at all. I don't blame them. Right. As an American, I'm glad we're there, I want to contain the Chinese, you're very clear about that. I'm a real realist, I don't want to cut the Chinese any slack. But I understand why they get upset. But again, liberal hegemony doesn't buy that line of argument. Now, I want to talk about overselling individual rights in a liberal liberalism, just very quickly on overselling individual rights. The fact is that we make a really big deal about the importance of rights here in the United States. But if you look around the world,

most people don't really think that individual rights matter that much. And a thoroughly liberal country like the United States, you can sell that kind of argument up to a point. It's very hard to do abroad, especially in countries where people price security. If you go to Russia today, and you talk to people about liberal democracy and rights, they will tell you, almost all of them, we tried that in the 1990s. And Russia was turned into the wild west. We're much happier with Putin and the political system that we have soft authoritarianism, it's much more suited for us. And we don't care that much about rights, we have some rights, we understand their limits. But we don't want your political system we've been there, we tried that it didn't work. So what I'm saying to you is in a lot of countries, when you invade them, and you think you can do social engineering, or for the purpose of turning them into liberal democracies, what you discover in almost all those cases is that being turned into a liberal democracy, where individual rights are prized, is not that important. It's not to say it's unimportant, but people are just not craving for individual rights. And in many cases, they're just craving for stability. If you're an Iraqi, and it's 2003. And Uncle sugar pays you a visit, he topples the regime, right, and then chaos breaks out over the next couple of years, you're not going to be worried too much about creating a liberal democracy, not going to be worried too much about individual rights. You're just going to be worried about what you can do to stabilize the country so that you and your family don't get killed. Right. So you just want to understand that. We tend to oversell individual rights. And when you marry that, with the power of nationalism and the power of realism, you get into real trouble. My final point has to do with a liberal liberal liberal liberalism. Remember when I told you about liberalism to begin with, I told you that liberalism was predicated on the assumption that you could not read universal agreement on first principles. Remember I told you that and therefore you develop sort of a live and let live political order. That's what liberalism is. It's a modus vivendi, a form of politics, you'll let people decide for themselves. He wants to be a Protestant, I want to be a Catholic. He wants to be a Jew, I want to be a Muslim. You let people do what they want. Okay? Because you can't reach universal agreement. If you think about it. Liberal hegemony is based on intolerance. It says, everybody has to be a liberal democracy. My view is if you have soft authoritarianism in Russia, so what? That's their choice? Why can't they have a soft authoritarian system? Why do we have to say everybody has to look like us? Isn't this antithetical to the basic liberal enterprise? I think the answer is yes. Case for restraint very quickly. If I'm running foreign policy, and you can rest assured that will never happen. But if I was running American foreign policy from the early 90s, forward, I would have pursued a policy of restraint. I would have abandoned liberal hegemony which mainly means abandoning the policy of spreading democracy around the world. Okay. I think that that was the key mistake that we made. Right. We thought that liberal democracy was going to take root everywhere. For those of you young people who haven't read Frank Fukuyama or Francis Fukuyama, his famous article, The End of History, you really should read it. The two most important articles that were written when the Cold War ended, were Francis Fukuyama is the end of history. And Charles Krauthammer is the Unipolar Moment. And basically what Frank Fukuyama said, is that we spent the first half of the 20th century defeating fascism, we spent the second half defeating communism. And now that we had won those two battles, all that was really left standing was liberal democracy. And the world was slowly but steadily going to evolve into a system of liberal democracies. And Frank says at the very end of the piece, that the biggest problem that we're going to face in the future is probably boredom. boredom, why boredom because once you have a world as populated by all liberal democracies, you get peace.

And Krauthammer wrote this piece called The Unipolar Moment that he said this is a unique moment in world history in the United States is by far the most powerful state on the planet. We have this tremendous military and we ought to use it to reshape the world in our own interest. You marry Krauthammer, his argument with Fukuyama, his argument, Fukuyama says we've got the wind at the back our back. Krauthammer says we have this big stick that we can use to facilitate the process. And you're off to the races. Right. And this, of course, is exactly what happens. But I would have abandon that. And I would have concentrated instead on maintaining a favorable global balance of power, which mainly means containing the rise of China. As you would expect from a realist like me, what I really care about is not what kind of political system the state has, I just care how much power it has. And my principal goal as an American is to make sure we are the most powerful state on the planet. And as many of you know, in my lexicon that means to make sure we are hegemonic in the region in the Western Hemisphere, we want to be regional hegemonic in the Western Hemisphere, and make sure that there is no hegemonic in Europe, or in East Asia or in the Gulf. So I believe in primacy, that's my definition of primacy to be the most powerful state in the system. But I'm not interested to go back to my first point and spreading liberal democracy. Again, I think liberal democracy is a wonderful thing. If every state in the world was a liberal democracy, I think that would be good for the people who live in those countries. But my view is because I believe in sovereignty, it's up to them to decide what they want. Final point I want to make to you here on this slide is liberalism abroad, leads to liberalism at home.

This is what the founding fathers understood. If you're in a permanent state of war, right? It's going to have consequences for liberalism home because you're going to create a national security state, and you're gonna have a state that spies on people and does all sorts of other things. So I think from a point of view of civil liberties, this foreign policy is bankrupt. Final point, the end of liberal hegemony. You remember what John said to you very early in the talk. I said that You could only have liberal hegemony in unipolarity. Because in unipolarity, the soul pole, which is the United States does not have to worry about great power politics, because by definition, you can't have great power politics when there's only one great power. Well, we are now transitioning out of unipolarity into multipolarity, this is very clearly reflected in a document on the country's national security strategy that the White House issued in December of 2017. And then the Pentagon in January of 2018, issued a similar document on our national security strategy in both these documents make it clear that multipolarity is here that unipolarity is over with in great power politics is what we're going to be mainly concerned with in the future. And that has to do with one the rise of China, which I think for all of you young people in the audience will be the most important issue of your lifetime. And then the second issue is the resurrection of Russian power. After Putin came to office in 2000. Russia is a declining great power. You don't want to overestimate Russian power, right? China is the real threat to the United States here. But nevertheless, the Russians are back and the Russians have 1000s of nuclear weapons, and they can cause us a lot of trouble. And we are at loggerheads with them over the Ukraine crisis. So we want to pay them serious attention. But what I'm saying to you here is that I think with the coming of multipolarity, liberal hegemony will go away. Now, if I'm wrong, and we remain in a unipolar world, because the Chinese rise doesn't continue, and Russia begins to fall apart again. And we are once again the unit poll, then we're back to arguing against liberal hegemony and making the case for restraint. But I don't think that people like me are going to have to make the case for restraint in the future, in large part because of the rise of China. I would say this is my concluding point, that I have very mixed emotions about that. On one hand, I welcome the rise of China and the resurrection of Russian power, because it means that liberal hegemony is going away. But on the other hand, what it means is that the United States is now facing a potential peer competitor. And I think all things considered, I'd rather have liberal hegemony as a problem to deal with, rather than have China and Russia as twin problems to deal with. Thank you. John has to be wired up, but I don't

you want to take from the audience?

Sure. Sure.

Okay. So I'm supposed to conduct the q&a, but I just know that John would not be happy, if he didn't get a question or two from you all. So we're gonna kind of wing it in a moment and just take whatever comes from the audience. But I wanted to get one question in good, but you, you kind of answered it in your last sentence, which really bothered me, but

alright, let's go to the audience.

So the, the key implication of your book, or one of them is that if the US has too much power, it acts stupidly. So in your other made, you know, the big book tragedy of great power politics, you kind of counsel maximizing power, right, this is the good thing to do for security purposes. But the upshot of this book is if you have too much power, you lose all restraint and discipline, so shouldn't to kind of go to your point, shouldn't we be hoping for some measure of American decline? Aren't we only smart when we have a competitor?

Yeah, yeah, there's a lot. There's a lot of points in here. First of all, you know, there's this very famous saying by Lord Acton that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. You do have the sense watching the United States that there is this phenomenon of too much power, right, the state can have too much power in it becomes careless and it does foolish things. This is an interesting concept that I have not thought long and hard about and I don't understand what the theory is that underpins it. I think there's just a lot of empirical evidence for it. I watch the Israelis, for example, the Israelis, I think, do not behave terribly smartly, because they know the United States has their back almost no matter what they do. And I think Israel from its own perspective would be better off if it didn't have the United States to back it at every turn, because the Israelis can make a mistake, and the Americans will pull their chestnuts out of the fire. And if you take the United States of America today, the United States of America is the most secure great power in the history of the world. And you realize, from 1990, up until 2014, for sure, right? We were the most secure great power in the history of the world. We're separated from the rest of the world by two giant moats, we have 1000s of nuclear weapons. And it's the Unipolar Moment, which means we have no great power competitors. really quite remarkable. So we are free. And picking up on John's point, we are free to run around the world and do all sorts of stupid things. And it has no consequences. It really doesn't have any great consequences to the United States, because we're just so powerful. But it will get to the point when you're really powerful, you're free to do foolish things. And states seem to do that, then the question is why and there? I don't have a good answer. So when you should write a paper, answer this question, and send it to me and to John,

well, if you weren't popular before, I guess, advocating for decline, right. Well, you'll certainly help but,

um, but I want to, I want to be clear, you're just getting to my last slide. I'm not advocating Yeah, no, I'm sorry. Right. I'm, I'm, I'm deeply worried about the rise of China. Right, I'd prefer that China not rise, and we'll be stuck with liberal hegemony again, right and fighting that battle. But But I do believe states my final point on this, I do believe states should maximize their power, their relative power, you want to be as powerful as possible. But as John knows, and many of you probably know, my argument is you cannot be a global hegemonic. Jon's argument is you can dominate your region of the world. And then the name of the game is to prevent other countries from dominating their region of the world. But the idea that you can be a global, hegemonic is not possible. And liberal hegemony is a way of saying you could be a global hegemonic, and it's because the United States thought it was a benign. It was a benign hegemonic, but you only think you're a benign hegemonic, if you believe that liberalism is much more powerful than nationalism. And again, John's argument is never want to underestimate you never want to underestimate the power of nationalism. And understand that that that power, right, is what makes it very hard for any hegemonic to be seen as benign by other countries.

Okay, I'm going to wander and why don't you Why don't you take a question if I need to?

I'll take, I'll take Greg

and then the person, right. Yes. So, John, two things you say nationalism is the most powerful force in the world today. But when I look at a place like Afghanistan, or Iraq, I don't see a national uprising against American occupation. I see strong group feelings, but not that are coterminous with the way these borders are drawn. And at least in the Middle East, it seems to me that that is both sub state identities, like being a Pashtun in Afghanistan, or Superstay identities like being a Shia Muslim, that are animating people's, both mobilizing people. So you can talk a little bit about how those identities spin and your notion of nationals. The second thing is, in some ways, not surprisingly, it's a very structural argument. unipolarity drives liberal agenda. It presents an opportunity presents an opportunity, but But it's 911 a real driver. Because up until 911, we kind of got liberalism in Eastern Europe, and changes Latin America, the things that Uchiyama talked about in the article, without doing right. We didn't invade Latin, we didn't invade Eastern Europe, to make them democratic days, for all sorts of historical reasons. They defaulted to democracy like, but after not allowed, we decided that places that didn't have that deep ball had to be forced into the ball. So how does it fit into this arm?

Just let me take him in reverse order. You'll remind me of the first one if I forget. These are both terrific questions, just on the second one to reinforce your point. You remember Wesley Clark wanted to use military force force ground forces in the Balkans the Clinton administration refused to commit ground forces in the Balkans, because we were so skittish. And you remember the 1991 Gulf War, George HW Bush of this institution had a really difficult time selling that war, because people said, Oh, my God, we're going to use ground forces. And they were thinking in kind of John Mearsheimer type terms, right? Well, this is to say the Greg is right that, that 911 represents a big change. And let me just unpack it a bit. What 911 does is it forces us to go into Afghanistan, I think there is no president to can't go into Afghanistan to topple the Taliban, no matter what the price we will pay, no matter the price we would pay, okay. We go into Afghanistan, and we score with appears to be a stunning victory in a short period of time, we put Karzai in power, and we the Americans basically get out. So it looks like we have found the magic formula for toppling regimes, and then getting at a town. And just to build on this some more. Think about the Bush Doctrine. The Bush Doctrine said that we're going to use military force against Iraq. But that's not the last place, we're going to use military force. We're going to go into Iraq, we're going to repeat the Afghan model, then we're going to do Iran or Syria, when the Israelis caught wind, in early 2002, that we were thinking about doing Iraq after Afghanistan, the Israeli sent a high level team to the United States to say, Are you crazy, Iraq is not the appropriate target. It's Iran. The administration said the Bush administration, George W. Bush administration, and the neoconservatives said to the Israelis, relax, we're going to do array, we're going to do a rack, and then we're going to do either Syria or Iran. And we may not even have to do around because they'll throw their hands up, because they'll see that we can float like a butterfly and sting like a bee, which is what we did in Afghanistan. So I would just unpack your point about 911. And say, it's not just 911, it's what we thought was the Afghan model that would lead us to be able to transform the entire Middle East at the end of a rifle barrel. And by the way, you wouldn't have to use military force more than one or two times before everybody was throwing their hands up. The problem was that we did not decisively defeat the Taliban, as you know, they were going to come back from the dead. Right. And then we went into Afghanistan. That brings me to your first question. Look, I was an adamant opponent of the Iraq War. And I knew a lot of academics were also adamantly opposed. And I think there were two arguments against going into Iraq. One was the argument I'm making here, which is the nationalism argument. And the second argument, which is more consistent with what you're saying, and I think is correct, is that there were powerful centrifugal forces inside of Iraq. There were Shia. There were Sunni's, there were Kurds, and then there were factions within those different groups. And you're saying to me, John, that doesn't look like a national state, especially when you look at the Kurds. And I think that that's true, right. But I do believe that there was a lot of nationalism in Iraq, and that you got an insurgency against the United States, because we were seen as occupiers. That was one foot dropping the other foot dropping wars, the centrifugal forces. And you could go to countries like Afghanistan, as well, where you don't have one unified nation state. And as you will know, you can go to Europe and see much the same thing go to a place like Spain. Look at Catalonia. Look at the Basque region. Look at what's happened in Great Britain today. But these are all manifestations of nationalism. Right? These a lot of these centripetal I shouldn't say all of many of these. conflicts inside existing nation states are the result of nationalism at play.

The gentleman behind Greg. You should stand up just so everybody can hear you. And talk loudly just

like the conclusion which you may see me like, I see that the premises don't follow the confusion, especially like nationalism, is it good to say our fields nationalism and I'm not sure we're using nationalism here. So because the way I see again, so what he is saying, there are four main main ethnic group, not against them, and it was 50 years old. So to make like, a balanced perspective, he said, he points out the basic rules of oppression and resistance against view the column and a lot of resistance against the parliament all over the country. But you didn't say what did you use and support the professionals? Making sure that you're in the power? I've been doing baby supported? I've been Americans actually, who would like part of this agenda. They did they supported to write a constitution.

That's why we say the prison basic you should cut to your point.

Yeah. So what they say I think the nationalist us say, Okay, we failed, because we we actually, this corporate wishes, I didn't see that that's

me ask you a question. The British had a rich experience in Afghanistan, and they were basically run out. The Soviets, you know, in the 1980s, had a rich experience in Afghanistan, and they were run out. The Americans have run into tremendous resistance. Is this nationalism, Afghani nationalism? What is what is it?

Is it's more like a trend as a system? I think it's important to use this as like, if you personally a look from this user, actually. I don't see.

Okay, I want to get to the questions. But I would just say to you, I think it is nationalism. Right. But that's not to say you don't have a fractured nation state. Right. You had a fractured nation state in the United States. That's what we fought a civil war 1861 1865. I'm not arguing that these are homogeneous nation states where there's never any disagreement, but I think virtually all groups dislike intensely the idea of a foreign country coming in and occupying them. But we can talk later, just because I want to get other people. Okay. Sir. So,

suddenly, there seem to be significantly missing an electric knife as well as the general theory. When it comes to Neo realism. Over the past several decades, we have the explosion of non state actors. So my questions are trends along how do non state actors affect what you've gone over tonight, when you introduce them into this scenario, as well as Neo realism. And regards to I see two things happening that is hurting us more towards an international system, because of non state actors, you have non violent non governmental organizations like Human Rights Watch, which provide quantifiable evidence for intergovernmental organizations like the UN to apply pressure. And then you have violent actors such

for who, for who to apply pressure for

the international system, so like the United Nations in the US, and it took off from its organization. Okay. And then you got the violent ones, terrorism, obvious examples among the Pirates of Africa, which forces international cooperation. So when you introduce non state actors who are not applying for the balance of power or vying for their own power of international scheme, how does this affect realism? How does it affect what you talked about tonight? Okay.

Good question. First of all, realism is a theory that focuses exclusively on great powers. Right? It's a theory about great power politics. And there's no room in realism for non state actors. And realism, like any theory doesn't explain everything in the world. It explains, I think, a great deal, but not everything about great power politics, and even politics involving minor states. But it doesn't have much to say about non state actors. Then the question is, how important do you think non state actors are? And my view is non state actors don't matter very much at all. Pirates. Is this a serious concern of mine? No. I think terrorism is a completely overhyped problem, you're more likely to die slipping in your bathtub or choking on a peanut than being killed by terrorists than the United States. You kind of wonder what are people thinking? And then you talk about Human Rights Watch. I have great respect for human rights watch. I don't want to this what Human Rights Watch does, it's the liberal in May. But the idea that, you know, these organizations have a lot of influence on international politics, the United Nations. The United Nations is a toothless institution. It's always been a toothless institution, whether that's good or bad, we can debate but I I just don't see. non state actors mattering very much. I'll give you 30 seconds to come back and tell me why I'm wrong.

John, I think you have time for one more question. So you might not want to. I'm sorry, but I just don't think we can do rebuttals if you're going to get to any other questions. So

give him 30 seconds, I won't respond to him, I'll let him have the last word.

So looking at the past 100 years, we see more and more. While it's not great, we still have international and more and more influencing the International League of Nations to the United Nations. We're looking into the future, should great power politics and new realism evolve to accept this greater played in international systems,

you should ask me a question because I gave you the last word. In the rear, if you could stand up, please.

So I have a major disagreement. Because you you carry liberalism, as kind of like the main goal of the American system,

spreading, spreading, spread, spreading liberalism,

I think, problem with your thesis is that it is not spreading the realism. That's not the main focus of the American hegemonic system. It is spreading neoliberalism, which is, you know, it was the second point in terms of like, what, when, when you were explaining, you know, the focus or the, you know, the goal of, you know, the liberal, which is basically, you know, spreading the American economic model, you know, the capitalist model. I think the contradictions that you see, in the, you know, this concept of, you know, liberal, hegemonic is that is the those wishes come in, because there's a professed, liberal, hegemonic goals, which is spreading democracy. And there's the real, because I like to talk about you being a realist, the realist, the real goal of the American system, is spreading capitalism. And I think that is the cause of all these encounters, that you see is part of.

That's an excellent point, just to sort of reiterate what I said. And put this gentleman's point in context. Remember, I said there were three goals that the liberal hegemon has had the one where I had three stars was to spread liberal democracy. And the second was to promote an open economic order. And the third was to get more and more countries incorporated into international institutions, which, by the way, is linked to the second one. Now, this gentleman is basically saying to me, John, all your emphasis on spreading democracy and saying that's the most important goal is wrong, that the most important goal is the second goal, which is sort of what people on the left tend to argue, which is to focus more on economics, and say that capitalism and capitalists in the United States, what they really want to do is they want to spread free markets, and neoliberalism to use your rhetoric for the purpose of making America rich. And of course, many people in the developing world think this is ended up doing enormous damage to their economies and to their countries. And there is a lot of truth in that. For sure. I don't have the time to spell it out here. But I think that you're right, that this is very important. I just think you're wrong when you say this is more important than spreading liberal democracy. Right. And, but I have a difficult time making that argument to you now, to support your point, actually, and contradict my point. If you think about engagement with China, how does engagement with China work? Right? Remember, when is China begins to rise, you have two policy possibilities. One is you can try to contain China. That's the realist view. That's me. Or the liberal view is you engaged China, remember, I had engagement up here? What exactly does engagement mean? When I spell it out, it's more in line with his argument than mine. This is the way it goes. The idea is that if we can get the Chinese hooked on capitalism, and everybody's getting richer and richer, and we can embed them in institutions where they learn to respect the rules, the end result is that they will become a liberal democracy. So if you look at Kurt Campbell's piece, he was very important policymaker. Who pushed engagement? Right? If you look at his piece, if you look at other pieces on engagement, he argues engagement failed, because even though we got them hooked on capitalism, we got them incorporated into institutions, we failed to turn them in to a liberal democracy. But this is all the way of saying that the principle goal was to turn them into capitalist countries, get them hooked on capitalism, get them into the open international order. And then what would follow is liberal democracy, which is more in line with what you're saying, but I think they're wrong. And I think you're wrong. But I think in the end, there's not a whole heck of a lot of disagreement between us because we do agree all three of those things go together. And my basic argument is that this enterprise fail, and a lot of it has to do with what you're talking about. This this book, by the way, I tell people to read it. Sorry, just kidding. I

know I'm not 10 More seconds, John.

Every time I talk, I always say why didn't we leave another hour? But anyway, just very quickly, there's this book. It's called the Global I think it's called the globalization paradox by Dani Rodrik da ni aro Dr. Dani Rodrik. Yeah. Yeah. That people should read that really sort of talks about how hyper globalization, apropos your comments about neoliberalism led to all sorts of bad consequences. Anyway, I wish I had more time. But thank you very much for the excellent questions.

Thank you. Please join us out in the lobby for reception. And thanks again to John