Here he is with his normal weekly interview with Judge Napolitano. (1) (I recommend ignoring the ad for buying "precious metals" at the start.)
For anyone who would seriously like to see a peaceful world, with nuclear stockpiles reduced at least to far below their current humanity-destroying-potential levels, and with international cooperation on managing a half-rational climate policy, the "realist" foreign-policy outlook is a frustratingly mixed phenomenon.
There are several schools of realist international-relations (IR) thinking like structural realism and neoclassical realism. Within the former, there are defensive-positionalist structural realists based on “balance of threat” theory (like Stephen Walt) and offensive Structural realism like Mearsheimer’s, the latter emphasizing the dynamic of the international system which produces expansionist tendencies, especially among great powers. (2)
But Mearsheimer has been closely following both Ukraine situation closely since at least 2014 and the US relationship with Israel for more than two decades. And his analyses have held up remarkably well. So this makes his takes on current foreign affairs consistently provocative but often frustratingly lacking in any promise of Happy Endings. I think this makes him a Hegelian, at least in the sense of Hegel’s famous quote: “history is not the soil in which happiness grows. The periods of happiness in it are the blank pages of history." (Lectures on the Philosophy of World History)
And if you find Mearsheimer be a bummer on the topic of the Russia-Ukraine War, you may want to consume something tranquilizing before watching this one emphasizing the current situation of the US and Israel (3):
One thing I found striking was the suggestion (starting just after 50:00 in the second video) that the Biden Administration is now so entangled in the conflicts in Ukraine and in-and-around Israel, the latter of which could easily become much worse, has led the Administration to give more of a priority to try to postpone escalation in confrontations with China. Mearsheimer has expressed his agreement with the US strategic priority adopted by the Obama Administration in 2011 to focus on China as its biggest strategic challenge.
For him, that shift means the US should be trying to improve rrelations with Russia to try to maake them a partner in balancing against China. That goal seems to be receding for the US at the moment.
[T]he fact is the United States remains deeply committed, profoundly committed, in the Middle East, profoundly committed in Ukraine and profoundly committed in East Asia, although East Asia is number three in terms of the attention the administration gives to those three issues.
Because it's so bogged down at the moment in the Middle East and in Ukraine. ...
[53:00:] Can I just make two quick points about China …? But, you know, there's a lot of talk that with Kurt Campbell in power [as Deputy US Secretary of State] now, we're going to get tough with the Chinese and the Chinese have good reason to worry.
I think you want to understand that if you're the United States at this point in time the last thing you want is trouble in East Asia, right? If anything you want to do everything you can to dampen the tensions in East Asia. Because you are up to your eyeballs and alligators in Ukraine, you were up to your eyeballs in alligators in the Middle East, and we have limited industrial capacity, right? So getting into a fight in the South China Sea or over Taiwan would be in my opinion catastrophic for the United States.
The second way to cut at this is just to talk about the industrial base. … The Russians and the Chinese both have impressive industrial bases and they have the ability to produce huge numbers of weapons the American industrial base shrunk during the unipolar moment [1989-2011] and we don't have the capability to produce lots of weapons.
Nevertheless there are huge demands on us from the Israelis, from the Ukrainians. And don't forget there's this whole Asian scenario. So if the United States were to get into any kind of protracted conflict with China in the South China Sea or over Taiwan today, it would probably run out of ammunition very quickly.
We have a huge problem here, right? So there are just real limits to how tough we're going to get with the Chinese, right? And, again, if anything, what we're going to try and do is keep keep things [in East Asia] at a much lower level tension. [my emphasis]
Notes:
(1) Prof. John J. Mearsheimer: Ukraine’s Dangerous Last Gasp. Judge Napolitano-Judging Freedom YouTube channel 03/14/2024. <https://www.youtube.com/live/IxoWXV0Uk8Q?si=O0_O2K_4D1NEFv3r> (Accessed: 2024-16-03).
(2) Wivel, Anders (2017): Realism in Foreign Policy Analysis. Oxford Research Encyclopedia 09/25/2017. <https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.475> (Accessed: 2024-16-03).
(3) The West in Decline - John Mearsheimer, Alexander Mercouris & Glenn Diesen. The Duran YouTube channel 05/16/2024. <https://youtu.be/UNoUHzd1LcM?si=K88aaA1EUpdfA03v> (Accessed: 2024-16-03).
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