John Mearsheimer Discusses Global Order and Great Power Politics at Valdai Club
Valdai Discussion Club Conference Hall (42 Bolshaya Tatarskaya St., Moscow, Russia), October 18, 11:00-12:30
List of speakers

On October 18, 2016, the Valdai Club held a discussion with John Mearsheimer, Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago and one of the key proponents of modern political realism.

The discussion was centred on the probability of a war between great powers, a topic broadly discussed by international scholars and hyped in the media. Professor Mearsheimer began by noting that he did not believe in prospects of a war similar to WWI or WWII. He added that due to the presence of nuclear weapons, it is almost impossible to win a world war having decisively defeated the opponent, and therefore, any war between great powers would be a limited one.

Despite entrenched tensions between the United States and Russia, the most likely conflict will be between the United States and China, Mearsheimer continued. The reason for that is that China is potentially a very powerful country and is poised to dominate all of Asia, the way the United States dominates the western hemisphere, which is unacceptable for the United States. No country in Europe, including Russia, poses a similar threat to the US interests, he said.

Mearsheimer attributed many of the failures of the US foreign policy to the paradigm of liberal internationalism, which began to dominate the American foreign policy discourse after the end of the Cold War. The United States wants to spread its institutions, built during the Cold War, around the planet to preserve its global dominance. This has led the United States to wage wars in different parts of the world every two or three years, which Mearsheimer called foolish.

Equally foolish on the United States’ part is driving Russia to a close alliance with China, he added, something Washington does by alienating Moscow. According to Mearsheimer, relations between Russia and the US will improve over time, while the relations between Russia and China will deteriorate, and confrontation between the United States and China is inevitable.

“My hope is that China continues to rise and the United States will realize that bad relations with Russia is a bad idea,” Mearsheimer said.

He added that the American liberal internationalists’ biggest problem is that they do not understand the language of political realism that their interlocutors in Moscow or Beijing speak. A prime example is former US ambassador to Moscow Michael McFaul who did not believe that NATO expansion was aimed at containing Russia, the way it was seen from Moscow and as the realist paradigm states.

Mearsheimer noted that liberal internationalism still dominates in the United States, Western Europe and countries like Japan and South Korea, with realist scholars treated there as “dinosaurs.” However, he believes that the period prior to 2014 was only a “holiday from realism”, and realist thinking will make a comeback. It is gaining more and more traction and is already the mainstream in Russia and China, he concluded.