John Mearsheimer at the EU Parliament on Russia and the West

John Mearsheimer recently delivered a speech to the European Parliament and answered questions. The whole presentation runs to roughly 1 ¾ hours. (1)

The Indian transcript provider service called The Singju Post provides a full transcript. (2) It prints out to 32 pages, so it’s not a quickie read.

This particular address was sponsored by the Foundation of the Patriots for Europe EU parliament grouping, which is a collection of rightwing parties, including Austria’s FPÖ, Belgium’s Vlaams Belang, Francie’s National Rally, the Fidesz parts of Hungary’s authoritarian ruler Viktor Orbán, Italy’s Liga, and Spain’s Vox.

The fact that Mearsheimer accepted their invitation to address the Parliament does not mean he’s endorsing their program. He does interviews with podcasters who cover big range on the political spectrum. Some of the “Patriots” group surely didn’t like everything he says there. Benajmin Netanyahu’s Likud Party is an “observer member” of the group – and they certainly do not consider Mearsheimer to be on their wavelength!

Mearsheimer’s overview

What he does is to give a picture of what is quickly coming to be called the new world order. Which has noting to do with the rightwing-paranoid “New World Order” conspiracy theory that people like Pat Robertson were pimping in the 1990s. (3)

Mearsheimer’s “offense realism” theory of international relations focuses on the geopolitical dynamics driving the behavior of great powers in particular. He sketched out his broad picture of the current moment early in his EU speech, with particular reference to the challenges it presents to Europe:

The present situation in Europe stands in marked contrast to the unprecedented +stability that Europe enjoyed during the unipolar moment, which ran from 1992 - which is the year after the Soviet Union collapsed—until about 2017, when China and Russia emerged as great powers, transforming unipolarity into multipolarity.

We all remember Francis Fukuyama’s famous article, “The End of History,” written in1989, which argued that liberal democracy was destined to spread across the world, bringing peace and prosperity in its wake. That argument was obviously dead wrong, but many in the West believed it for more than twenty years. Few Europeans imagined in the heyday of unipolarity that Europe would be in so much trouble today.

So the question on the table is: what went wrong? The Ukraine war, which I will argue was provoked by the West and especially the United States, is the principal cause of European insecurity today. Nevertheless, there is a second factor at play: the shift in the global balance of power in 2017 from unipolarity to multipolarity, which was sure to threaten the security architecture in Europe.

Still, there’s a good reason to think this shift in the distribution of power was manageable. But the Ukraine war, coupled with the coming of multipolarity, guaranteed big trouble, which is not likely to go away in the foreseeable future. [my emphasis]

The three major “poles” that he sees are the US, China, and Russia.

In his explanation, European stability during the unipolar moment of 1992-2017 – 25 years, not a bad run as such things go – was not primarily due to the EU, though that has understandably been a favorite narrative for Europe. “But this is wrong,” he says. “While the EU has been a remarkably successful institution, its success is dependent [during that period] on NATO keeping the peace in Europe.“ [my emphasis]

That is a notably more favorable evaluation of the EU than what we see and hear from pundits and commentators in the US! It also is not something that would be likely to please the “Patriotis” group who invited him, because they represent and nationalist and “euroskeptical” type of politics.

Mearsheimer’s speech is a useful recap of the major shifts in US-Russia and Europe-Russia relations from 1992 until today. He gives a good sense of how complicated and tangled the issues over Ukraine are. And he doesn’t offer a rosy optimistic outlook on how Europe and the US will handle them.

He speaks elsewhere about the appallingly bumbling diplomacy of the Trump 2.0 regime around the Russo-Ukraine War. Trump himself seems to have nothing resembling a strategic view of foreign policy. For Trump, it’s pretty simple: you give my family a billion or two, and I’ll give you something you’re asking for.

But when you consider the complications that Mearsheimer describes that would have to be addressed if some practical near-term halt to the fighting were to be ended without Ukraine having to cede huge chunks of its country to Russia, the idea that an Administration this flaky at the business of diplomacy could arrange such a thing is very hard to imagine.

And this is going to mean a real challenge for Europe to manage the war and minimize the damage it is likely to do. As he puts it:

There’s no way these opposing positions, the Russian position and the Ukraine plus West position can be reconciled to produce a peace agreement. Thus, the war will be settled on the battlefield.

Although I believe the Russians will win and are close to winning now, the Russians will not win a decisive victory where they end up conquering all of Ukraine. I want to be very clear on that.

Instead, it’s likely to be, as I said, an ugly victory where Russia ends up occupying somewhere between twenty percent to forty percent of pre-2014 Ukraine, while Ukraine ends up as a dysfunctional rump state covering the territory that Russia does not conquer.

Moscow is unlikely to try to conquer all of Ukraine because the Western sixty percent of that country is filled with ethnic Ukrainians who would mightily resist a Russian occupation and turn it into a nightmare for the occupying forces.

All of this is to say that the likely outcome of the Ukraine war is a frozen conflict between a Greater Russia and a rump Ukraine backed by Europe. [my emphasis]

This is not good news. Still, Mearsheimer is often depressingly accurate in his assessment of practical possibilities.

Mearsheimer’s warnings about the likely difficulties Europe will experience in its foreign policy in the coming years because of the unresolved issues around the current war is also something that “Patriots” adherents like the Italian Lega, the Austrian FPÖ, the German AfD, and the French National Assembly who have a fairly straightforwardly pro-Russian orientation in foreign policy probably would prefer not to hear.

Mearsheimer also identifies five “flash points” that could lead to big problems or crises between Russia and Europe: the Arctic, where “seven of the eight countries that are physically located in the Arctic are NATO members” with Russia being the eighth; the Baltic Sea, where the non-contiguous Russian city of Kaliningrad is located; Belarus; potential EU member Moldova, which includes the Russian-occupied Transnistria region; and, the Black Sea, in which Crimea is a key naval basing point for Russia.

And he addresses the current state of US-EU relations:

That move alone has the potential to put an end to NATO, which is another way of saying an end to the pacifier in Europe. What has happened in Ukraine since 2022 makes that outcome more likely to repeat. Trump has a deep seated hostility to Europe, especially its leaders, and he will blame them for losing Ukraine.

He has no great affection for NATO and has described the EU as “an enemy created to screw the United States.” That’s Trump talking about the United States [and saying that it’s] an enemy designed to screw the United States. And he has three point five more years left in office.

Furthermore, the fact that Ukraine lost the war despite enormous support from NATO is likely to lead him, President Trump, to trash the alliance as ineffective and useless. That line of argument will allow him to push Europe to provide for its own security and not free ride on the United States.

In short, it seems likely that the results of the Ukraine war coupled with the spectacular rise of China will eat away at the fabric of the transatlantic relationship int he years ahead, much to the detriment of Europe. [my emphasis]

This Deutsche Welle report featuring Nina Haase, Michaela Küfner, and Dominik Tolksdorf (the latter from the German Council on Foreign Relations) gives a glimpse at the current European maneuvering around the Russo-Ukraine War and dealing with the diplomatically dysfunctional Trump 2.0 Administration. (4)

Notes:

(1) John Mearsheimer addresses the European Parliament on the topic of "Europe's Bleak Future". The American Conservative YouTube channel 11/17/2025. <https://youtu.be/wnnOQefj0Uc?si=qdBnHADxFt6vuEy9> (Accessed: 205-29-11). The American Conservative is what it’s title suggests. But it is often sympathetic to foreign policy “restrainer” ideas like those of Mearsheimer. It is also provides a transcript of the main speech: <https://www.theamericanconservative.com/mearsheimer-europes-bleak-future/>

(2) Transcript: John Mearsheimer Addresses European Parliament on “Europe’s Bleak Future” The Singju Post 11/21/2025. <https://singjupost.com/transcript-john-mearsheimer-addresses-european-parliament-on-europes-bleak-future/> (Accessed: 2025-26-11).

(3) Michael Lind dissected Roberton’s 1995 book by that name in 1995, Rev. Robertson’s Grand International Conspiracy Theory. New York Review of Books 02/02/1995. (Behind subscription) <https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/02/02/rev-robertsons-grand-international-conspiracy-theo/> (Accessed: 205-29-11).

(4) A rift in the alliance? Trump’s Ukraine peace plan and Germany's response - Berlin Briefing Podcast. DW News YouTube channel 11/28/2025. <https://youtu.be/kaf1QGHsxz0?si=JJJLe25--sAlxzWi> (Accessed: 205-29-11).