John Mearsheimer on great power competition in the world of 2020 and beyond

John Mearsheimer, one of the top theorists of the "realist" theory of international relations, in this talk from this year gives a general description of his theory of great power competition in the current global context. John Mearsheimer: The plague and the future of international politics 06/26/2020

As I often say, I have a love-hate relationship with the "realist" viewpoint. On the one hand, the Realists at their best in taking coldly pragmatic looks at the behavior of nations, including the US. Which means that they don't have much patience with US pretensions of special moral virtue in international affairs, especially when it comes to military bases and interventions. They don't subscribe to any kind of American Exceptionalism, because they don't see the US as a "exceptional" great power at all, except in the sense that it is currently the most powerful country in the world in terms of economics, population, and military power. (Although Mearsheimer's does not take a theoretically a militarist view of national power; see below.)

As he says here just after 53:30, "the United States is a ruthless great power. I have no illusions about the United States' behavior. Most Americans, as you know, think that the United States is an exceptionally benign country and everybody should love the United States. That's not my view of how great powers operate, the United States included."

The discussions is hosted by the Brazilian Curso de Relações Internacionais, Centro Universitário de Brasília (UniCEUB). People south of the US-Mexico border would generally not find Mearsheimer's comment there surprising.

What especially interested me in this talk is what he says about Russia at 33:00:

Russia is a declining great power. Of the three great powers that exist today, it is the weakest. Remember what I said to you in the beginning, when I started talking about the distribution of power and the multipolar world that we now live in, the United States is more powerful than China, and China is more powerful than Russia.

Russia does not have a bright future. It has significant demographic problems. It's shrinking in size, population-wise. It has significant economic problems.

The idea that Russia is a threat to dominate Asia or Europe is not a serious argument. There is not going to be a Greater Russia.

The key part of the latter argument is the fact that Russia is heavily dependent on oil and gas exports. It's a petrostate, in other words. And as Mearsheimer notes, Russia has not been able to make sufficient progress in "modernizing" its economy to significantly reduce that dependence.

The framework he uses is that population and total national wealth are the most important elements in understanding a country's role in the international balance of power.

Russia has large amounts of nuclear weapons, which gives great military destructive power. But that doesn't translate directly into its great-power status rank. The ability to destroy the US, or China, and human life all over the world in an full-blown nuclear war does not directly give it greater wealth or economic power.

But military power can translate into the ability to prevent other countries frdom becoming "peer competeitors".

Mearsheimer seems to me to be more of a determinist than his fellow realist Stephen Walt. And his description of the likely future course of US-China relations is heavily shaped by his theory of great powers and "regional hegemons".

But his work is challenging and informative. Even when it's irritating. Including this talk.