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John Mearsheimer

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2023-11-18

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2023-11-18

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1. “There are two reasons. One is, first of all, we thought it was a wonderful thing to bring more and more countries into NATO. We thought that it facilitated peace and prosperity. It was ultimately all for the good. And we also thought that countries like Ukraine had a right to join NATO. These are sovereign countries that can decide for themselves, and the Russians have no say in what Ukraine wants to do. And then finally, and this is a point I emphasized before, we were very powerful and we thought we could shove it down their throat. So it's a combination of those factors that led us to pursue what I think was ultimately a foolish policy.”

   2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

2. “Yeah, I agree with you 100%. And just, you know, I always think of Michael McFoll at Stanford, who was the American ambassador to Russia, I think, between 2012 and 2014. And he told me that he told Putin that Putin didn't have to worry about NATO expansion because the United States was a benign hegemon. And I asked my what Putin's response was to that. And Mike said that Putin didn't believe it. But Mike believed that he should believe it. And that we could move NATO eastward to include Ukraine. And in the end, we'd get away with it because we are a benign hegemon. But the fact is, that's not what Putin saw. Putin saw us. As a malign hegemon. And what Mike thinks or any American thinks doesn't matter. What matters is what Putin thinks.”

   2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

3. “Understand that it's just it befuddles me. I think it has to do with the fact that Americans are not very good at putting themselves in the shoes of other countries. And if you're going to be a first-class strategist in international politics, you have to be able to do that. You have to put yourself in the shoes of the other side and think about how they think so you don't make foolish mistakes.”

   2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

4. “Yeah, and we talked before about 1812 when Napoleon invaded and Moscow got burned to the ground. We talked about World War I, where the Russians were actually defeated and surrendered. And then we talked about 1941 to 1945, where although thankfully the Soviets prevailed, it was a close call. I mean, the casualties, the destruction that the Soviet Union had inflicted on it by the Germans is just hard to believe. So they are sensitive. You can understand full well, or at least you should be able to understand full well why the idea of bringing Ukraine up to their border really spooked them. I don't understand why more Americans don't.”

   2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

5. “1989 certainly after december nineteen ninety one when the soviet union fell apart up until I would argue about 2017 we were incredibly powerful and even after 2017 up to today the United States remains the most powerful state in the system and because of our geographical location we are in a terrific situation to survive in any great power competition so you have a situation involving the United States that's different than the situation involving Russia they're just much more vulnerable than we are and therefore I think Putin tends to be more sensitive about security than any American president in recent times”

   2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

6. “You think back to what it looked like in the 1990s is you know better than I do, it was in terrible shape. The Chinese talk about the century of national humiliation. One could argue that for the Russians that was the decade of national humiliation. And it took Putin, I think, quite a bit of time to bring the Russians back from the dead. I think he eventually succeeded, but it took a considerable amount of time. And I think he understood that he was not playing a particularly strong hand. He was playing something of a weak hand and he had to be very careful, very cautious. And I think he was. And I think that's very different than the United States. The United States was the unipol. It was the most powerful state in the history of the world, most powerful state relative to all its possible competitors from roughly”

   2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

7. “I think that's clear. Yeah, I think as I emphasized early on in our conversation that leaders, privilege, security, or survival over everything else. And by the way, he gave a number of talks and press conferences in addition to writing that famous article that you referred to on July 12, 2021. So we have a pretty clear record of what he was saying, and I would argue what he was thinking in the run-up to the war in February 2022. And if you read what he said, it's quite clear that he privileged security or survival. He was deeply concerned about the security of Russia. And Russia is a quite vulnerable state in a lot of ways, especially”

   2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

8. “It's very hard for me to answer that question because I don't know him and I've not studied him carefully in terms of his overall performance over the course of the 23 years that he's been in power. I've studied him as a strategist and I've studied how he deals with the West and deals with the international system more generally since 2014. And I think he is a first class strategist. This is not to say he doesn't make mistakes and he admits he's made some mistakes. But I think that the West is dealing with a formidable adversary here. And I don't see. Any evidence that he's either lost speed off his fastball or that power has corrupted his thinking about strategic affairs.”

   2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

9. “No, he's made it clear that anybody with a triple digit IQ understands that it's nuts to think about recreating the Soviet Union. He thinks it's a tragedy that the Soviet Union fell apart, but as he made clear in that essay, the July 12, 2021 essay, and has made clear in speeches before, immediately before he invaded Ukraine, he accepted the breakup of the Soviet Union, and he accepted the status quo in Europe, save for the fact he did not accept the idea that Ukraine would become part of NATO.”

   2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

10. “Yeah, to put it in more general terms, What we were trying to do was turn Ukraine into a western bulwark on Russia's border, and it really was a NATO expansion alone. NATO expansion was the most important element of our strategy, but the strategy had two other dimensions. One was EU expansion, and the third was the color revolution. We were trying to foster orange revolution in Ukraine, and the basic goal there was to turn Ukraine into a pro-Western liberal democracy. And that meant that you'd have Ukraine, if it worked, as a pro-Western liberal democracy that was in the EU and that was in NATO. This was our goal. And the Russians made it. Clear that Ukraine and NATO was unacceptable.”

    2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

11. “But we were wrong, and it all blew up in our face in 2014. And when it blew up in our face in 2014, what did we do? Did we back off and say, well, maybe the Russians have some legitimate security interests? No, that's not the way we operate. We continued to double down. And the end result is that in 2022, you got a war. And as I've argued for a long time now, we, the West, are principally responsible for that, not Vladimir Putin.”

    2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

12. “Bucharest summit where NATO said that Ukraine would be brought into the alliance, Angela Merkel and Nicholas Sarkozy, the German and French leaders respectively, opposed that decision. Angela Merkel later said that the reason she opposed it was because she understood that Putin would interpret it as a declaration of war. Just think about that. Merkel is telling you that she opposed NATO expansion into Ukraine because she understood correctly that Putin would see it as a declaration of war. What did the United States and its friend in Europe do? They continued to push and push we thought that we could push NATO expansion down their throat after 2008, the same way we did in 1999 and 2004.”

    2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

13. “That in august two thousand eight, remember the Bucharest summit is april two thousand eight and august two thousand eight you had a war between Georgia and Russia and that involved at its core NATO expansion. So the Americans and their allies should have understood by at least August 2008 that continuing to push to bring Ukraine into NATO was going to lead to disaster. And I would note that there were all sorts of people in the 1990s like George Kennan, William Perry, who was Bill Clinton's Secretary of Defense, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Paul Nitza, and so forth and so on, who argued that NATO expansion would end up producing a disaster.”

    2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

14. “Neighborhood, it's hardly surprising that the Russians did not want NATO on their doorstep. They made that manifestly clear when the Cold War ended and they exacted a promise from us that we would not expand NATO. And then when we started expanding NATO, they made it clear after the first tranche in 1999 that they were profoundly unhappy with that. They made it clear in 2004 after the second tranche that they were profoundly unhappy with that expansion. And then in April 2008, when NATO announced that Ukraine and Georgia would become part of NATO, they made it unequivocally clear, not just Putin, that that was not going to happen. They were drawing a red line in the sand. And it is no accident.”

    2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

15. “NATO was a mortal enemy of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. It's a military alliance which has at its heart the United States of America, which is the most powerful state on the planet. It is perfectly understandable that Russia is not going to want that military alliance on its doorstep. Here in the United States, we have, as you well know, what's called the Monroe Doctrine. And that basically says no great powers from Europe or Asia are allowed to come into our neighborhood and form a military alliance with anybody in this neighborhood. When I was young, there was this thing called the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Soviets had the audacity to put nuclear-armed missiles in Cuba. We told them in no uncertain terms that that was not acceptable and that those missiles had to be removed. This is our backyard and we do not tolerate distant great powers coming into our neighborhood. Well, what's good for the goose is good for the gander. And if we don't like great powers coming into our”

    2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

16. “NATO expansion into Ukraine, which was the principal cause of the war. People in the West don't want to hear that argument because if it is true, which it is, then the West is principally responsible for this bloodbath that's now taking place. And, of course, the West doesn't want to be principally responsible. It wants to blame Vladimir Putin. So we've invented this story out of whole cloth that he is an aggressor, that he's the second coming of Adolf Hitler, and that what he did in Ukraine was try to conquer all of it. And he failed, but with a little bit of luck, he probably would have conquered all of it. And he'd now be in the Baltic states and eventually end up dominating all of Eastern Europe. As I said, I think there's no evidence to support this.”

    2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

17. “To conquer the country, you then have to occupy it. But the idea that 190,000 troops was sufficient for conquering all of Ukraine is not a serious argument. Furthermore, he was not interested in conquering Ukraine, and that's why in March 2022, this is immediately after the war starts, he is negotiating with Zelensky to end the war. There are serious negotiations taking place in Istanbul involving the Turks and Naftali Bennett, who was the Israeli prime minister at the time, was deeply involved in negotiating with both Putin and Zelensky to end the war. Well, if he was interested, Putin in conquering all of Ukraine, why in God's name would he be negotiating with Zelensky to end the war? And of course what they were negotiating about was”

    2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

18. “No evidence he was interested in conquering all of Ukraine. There was no interest beforehand that he was interested in conquering any of Ukraine. And there's no way that an army that had hundred ninety thousand troops at the most could have conquered all of Ukraine. Just impossible. As I like to emphasize, when the Germans went into Poland in 1939 and the Germans, you want to remember, were only intent on conquering the western half of Poland because the Soviets who came in later that month were going to conquer the eastern half of Poland. So the western half of Poland is much smaller than Ukraine. And the Germans went in with 1.5 million troops. If Vladimir Putin were bent Unconquering all of Ukraine, he would have needed at least two million.”

    2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

19. “Yeah, yeah. And the idea is that he is bent on creating a greater Russia, and even more so he's interested in dominating Eastern Europe, if not all of Europe. And that Ukraine was the first stop on the train line. And what he wanted to do was to conquer all of Ukraine, incorporated into a greater Russia, and then he would move on and conquer other countries. This is the conventional wisdom. My view is there is no evidence, let me emphasize, zero evidence to support that argument.”

    2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

20. “Clearly, the conventional wisdom is that Putin is principally responsible. Putin is an imperialist. He's an expansionist.”

    2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

21. “Absolutely. All you have to do is read the hunger plan, right? And they also had a plan, what is it called, Grand Planned East? I forget the exact name of it, which made it clear that they were going to murder many tens of millions of people. And by the way, I believe that they would have murdered all the Poles and all the Roma. I mean, my view is that the Jews were number one on the genocidal hit list. The Roma or the Gypsies were number two, and the Poles were number three. And of course, I just explained to you how many POWs they had killed so they would have ended up murdering huge numbers of Soviet citizens as well. But people quickly figured out that this was happening. That's my point to you. And that gave them, needless to say, very powerful incentives to fight hard. Against the Germans and to make sure that they did not win.”

    2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

22. “POWs than they had murdered Jews. And this is not to deny for one second that they were on a murderous rampage when it came to Jews, but they were also on a murderous rampage when it came to Soviet citizens and Soviet soldiers. Those Soviet soldiers quickly came to understand they were fighting for their lives. If they were taken prisoner, they would die. So they fought like wild dogs.”

    2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

23. “and you're the infamous Treaty of Breslatovsk where the Soviet Union then, because it went from Russia to the Soviet Union in October 1917, the Soviet Union surrendered large amounts of Soviet territory because it had suffered a humiliating defeat. My argument for why the Russians, let me take that back, why the Soviets fought like wild dogs in World War II is that they were up against a genocidal adversary. You want to understand that the Germans murdered huge numbers of Soviet POWs. The overall total was 3.7 million. And by December of 1941, remember the invasion is June 41. By December of 1941, the Germans have murdered 2 million Soviet POWs. At that point in time, they had murdered many more.”

    2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

24. “No, I think there's a great deal of truth in that, but let's just unpack it a bit in the case of the Soviet Union in World War II. The counter argument to that is that in World War I, the Russian army disintegrated. And if you look at what happened when Napoleon invaded in 1812, and you look at what happened in 1917, and then you look at what happened between 1941 and 45, the Napoleon case looks a lot like the Hitler case, and it fits neatly with your argument. But World War I does not fit neatly with your argument because the Russians lost and surrendered.”

    2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

25. “They could have knocked the Soviets out that way. I'm not sure that in the end I believe that. I think in the end the Soviets would have won no matter what. But I'm not 100% sure of that.”

    2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

26. “Unfortunately, we're not going to run the experiment again, but one could argue that had they concentrated, as the generals wanted to do in going straight from Moscow that they would have won. I mean, what Hitler wanted to do is he wanted to go into the Ukraine. I mean, Hitler thought that the main axis, there were three axes, the northern axis went towards Leningrad, the central axis, of course, went to Moscow, and then the southern axis, Army Group South, headed towards Ukraine and deep into the Caucasus. And Hitler believed that that should have been the main axis. And in fact, in 1942, the Soviets, excuse me, the Germans go back on the offensive in 1942. This is Operation Blue. And the main axis in 42 is deep into the Ukraine and into the Caucasus. Fails, but one could argue that had they done that in forty one, had they not”

    2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

27. “Yeah, I've always had the since they came terrifyingly close to winning. You could make the opposite argument that they were doomed, but I... I'm not terribly comfortable making that argument. I think the Wehrmacht by the summer of 1941 was a finely tuned instrument for war. And the Red Army was in quite terrible shape. Stalin had purged the officer corps. They had performed poorly in Finland. There were all sorts of reasons to think that they were no match for the Wehrmacht. And if you look at what happened in the initial stages of the conflict, that proved to be the case. The Germans won a lot of significant tactical victories early on.”

    2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

28. “Internally, internally, for sure yeah, people had doubts. They didn't think the Wehrmacht was ready, and given the fact that World War I had just ended about 20 years before, the thought of starting another European war was not especially attractive to lots of German policymakers, including military leaders. And then came France, 1940. In the run-up to May 10, 1940, there was huge resistance in the German army to attacking France. But that was eventually eliminated because they came up with a clever plan. The Mannstein plan? If you look at the decision to invade the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, which is the only case where they fail, they succeeded in France, they succeeded in Poland, they succeeded at Munich in 1938. Soviet Unionists where they fail. There's hardly any resistance at all.”

    2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

29. “Pros and cons to every decision. The question is did he think that he could win a quick and decisive victory? And he did. I mean, as did his generals. It's very interesting. I've spent a lot of time studying German decision-making in World War II. If you look at the German decision to invade Poland on September 1st, 1939, and you look at the German decision to invade France on May 10th, 1940, and then the Soviet Union on June 22nd, 1941. What you see is there was actually quite a bit of resistance to Hitler in 1938 at the time of Czechoslovakia, Munich. And there was also quite a bit of resistance in September 1939.”

    2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

30. “We're talking about interstate relations here. and realism is a theory about how states interact with each other. And there are many other dimensions to international politics. And if you're talking about someone like Adolf Hitler, right, why did he start World War II is a very different question than why did he start the Holocaust or why did he push forward a Holocaust? I mean, that's a different question. And realism doesn't answer that question. So I want to be very clear that I'm not someone who argues that realism answers every question about international politics, but it does answer what is one of the big, if not the biggest questions that IR scholars care about, which is what causes security competition and what causes great power war.”

    2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

31. “Yeah, yeah, and Stalin's popular in many quarters inside Russia. And Stalin murdered more of his own people than he murdered people outside of the Soviet Union”

    2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

32. “And that really mattered. And it made him very effective. It's also worth noting that he was a remarkably charismatic individual. I find that hard to believe because every time I look at him or listen to his speeches, he does not appear to be charismatic to me. But I've talked to a number of people who are experts on this subject who assure me that he was very charismatic. And I would note to you, if you look at public opinion polls in Germany, West Germany, in the late 1940s, this is the late 1940s after the Third Reich is destroyed in 1945. He is still remarkably popular in the polls.”

    2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

33. “I think that as a result of defeat in World War I and all the trials and tribulations associated with Weimar Germany and then the coming of the Great Depression, all of those factors definitely account for his coming to power. I think that one of the reasons that he was so successful at winning over the German people once he came to power was because there was a great deal of resentment in the German body politic. And he played on that resentment. That surely helped him get elected too. But I think having studied the case, it was even more important once he took over. I also believe that one of the principal reasons”

    2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

34. “the question of what led to Hitler is a very different question than the question of what led to World War II once Hitler was in power. I mean, after January 30th, 1933, he's in power. And then the question of what is driving him comes racing to the fore. Is there resentment over the Versailles Treaty and what happened to Germany? Yes. Did that matter? Yes. But my argument is that structure was the principal factor driving the train in Hitler's case. But what I'm saying here is that there were other factors as well, resentment being one of them will to power or the fact that he was a congenital aggressor in my lexicon certainly mattered as well. So I don't want to dismiss your point. About resentment.”

    2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

35. “Hitler. Now, if you want to call that a will to power, you can do that. I'm more comfortable referring to Hitler as a congenital aggressor and referring to Napoleon as a congenital aggressor, although there were important differences between the two because Hitler was probably the most murderous leader in recorded history and Napoleon was not in that category at all. But both of them were driven by what you would call a will to power. And that has to be married to the structural argument in Hitler's case and also in Napoleon's case.”

    2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

36. “And I believe that there is a good chance you would have had World War II in the absence of Hitler, right? I believe that Germany was very powerful. It was deeply worried about the balance of power in Europe. And it had strong incentives to behave aggressively in the late 1930s, early 1940s. So I believe that structure mattered. However, I want to qualify that in the case of Adolf Hitler because I do think he had what you would call a will to power. I've never used that word to describe him before, but it's consistent with my point that I often make, that there are two leaders or there have been two leaders in modern history who are congenital aggressors. And one was Napoleon and the other was”

    2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

37. “Well, I think that Nazi Germany was driven in large part by structural considerations. And I think if you look at imperial Germany, which was largely responsible for starting World War I, and of course Nazi Germany is largely responsible for starting World War II, what that tells you is you didn't need Adolf Hitler to start World War I.”

    2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

38. “I'm not a defensive realist. I'm an offensive realist. And my argument is that states look for opportunities to gain more power, and every time they see, almost every time they see an opportunity to gain more power, and they think the likelihood of success is high and the cost will not be great, they'll jump at that opportunity.”

    2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

39. “Yes, inside the structural realist world, right? And you have A handful of realists who believe that the structure of the system fosters competition for sure, security competition, but it really rules out Great Power War almost all the time. So it makes sense to care about the balance of power, but to focus on maintaining how much power you have. That's the defensive realism. Maintaining how much power you have, not trying to gain more power because the argument the defense of realists make is that if you try to gain more power, the system will punish you, the structure will punish you.”

    2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

40. “And Hans Morgenthau, who was influenced by nature and therefore had that will to power logic embedded in his thinking about how the world works, right? He was a human nature realist. A structural realist, and I believe it's not human nature. It's not individuals in some will to power that drives competition and war. What drives competition and war is the structure of the system. It's anarchy.”

    2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

41. “Yeah, let me just back up a bit on that one. And you were talking about will to power before. The first big divide. Between realists is structural realists and human nature realists.”

    2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

42. “And people are getting prosperous. Our countries are getting prosperous as a result. But nevertheless, in the famous July crisis of 1914, this economic prosperity is unable to prevent World War I because security concerns or survival is more important. So there are going to be lots of situations where prosperity and survival come into conflict. And in those cases, survival will win.”

    2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

43. “If they think it's necessary to kill the golden goose. Because of security concerns, they will do it. The point is that economic interdependence at its root has prosperity as the core variable. In the realist story, the core variable is survival. And survival always trumps prosperity. So if you go back to the period before World War I, we're in Europe. It's 1913 or early 1914. What you see is that you have an intense security competition between all of the great powers on one side you have the triple alliance and on the other side you have the triple entente. You have these two alliances and you have an intense security competition between them. At the same time you have a great deal of economic interdependence. It's amazing how much economic intercourse is taking place in Europe among all the actors.”

    2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

44. “They will obey the rules that dictate that war is not acceptable. So if you get them to accept the UN rules on when you can and cannot initiate a war, then you'll have a more peaceful world. So those are the liberal theories. And as you can tell, they're very different from realism as articulated by somebody like me.”

    2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

45. “I think that's right. Yeah, that's right. So that's democratic peace theory. The second theory is economic interdependence theory, and that's the argument that in a globalized world, like the one that we live in and have lived in for a long time, there's a great deal of economic interdependence. And if you and I are two countries, or if you and me are two countries or economically interdependent and we're both getting prosperous as a result of this economic intercourse, the last thing that we're going to do is start a war, either one of us, because who would kill the goose that lays the golden eggs? It's that kind of argument. So there you have an argument that economic interdependence leads to peace. And then the third liberal argument has to do with institutions, sometimes referred to as liberal institutionalism. And this is the argument that if you can get states into institutions where they become rule-abiding actors,”

    2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

46. “Than non democracies. And you can't support that argument. You can find lots of evidence to support the argument that democracies don't fight other democracies. So the argument, I believe that you have to make if you're going to support democratic peace theory, the main argument you have to make is that liberal democracies have a healthy respect for each other. And they can assess each other's intentions. If you're a liberal democracy and I'm a liberal democracy, we know we have value systems that argue against aggression and argue for peaceful resolution of crises and therefore given these norms, we can trust each other. We can know each other's intentions. Remember, for realists like me, Uncertainty about intentions really helps drive the train.”

    2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

47. “Can't make that argument that you're making about democracies because if you're saying that democracies are inclined toward peace and that the electorate picks leaders who are inclined towards peace, then you have to show that democracies are in general more peaceful.”

    2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

48. “Very liberal argument. A realist like me would say that it doesn't matter whether a state is a democracy or not. All states behave the same way because the structure of the system, getting back to our earlier discussion about international anarchy, the structure of the system leaves those states no choice, whether they're democracies or autocracies. And again, the liberal view this first liberal theory is that democracies don't fight other democracies and therefore the more democracies you have, the more peaceful the world.”

    2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

49. “The first and most important of the liberal theories is democratic peace theory. And this is a theory that says democracies do not fight against other democracies. So the more the world is populated with democracies, the less likely it is that we will have wars. And this basic argument is inherent in Francis Fukiama's The End of History. He argues that democracy triumph first over fascism in the 20th century. It then triumphed over communism. And that means that in the future we have more and more liberal democracies on the planet. And if you have more and more liberal democracies in those democracies don't fight each other, then you have a more peaceful world. That was his argument.”

    2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

50. “Is an instrument of statecraft and liberals on the other hand have what I would say is a more idealistic view of the world. This is not to say that they're naive or foolish, but they believe there are aspects of international politics that lead to a less competitive and more peaceful world than most realists see. And I'll lay out for you very quickly what are the three major liberal theories today that I think will give you a sense of the more optimistic perspective.”

    2023-11-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source