Great power politics is now back on the table.
Great power politics is now back on the table.
No, I like to refer to the Republicans and the Democrats as Tweedledee and Tweedledum. There's hardly any difference. I actually think the one exception is that former President Trump, when he became president in 2017, was bent on beating back the deep state and becoming a different kind of leader on the foreign policy front. But he basically failed.
No, I like to refer to the Republicans and the Democrats as Tweedledee and Tweedledum. There's hardly any difference. I actually think the one exception is that former President Trump, when he became president in 2017, was bent on beating back the deep state and becoming a different kind of leader on the foreign policy front. But he basically failed.
And he has vowed that if he gets elected this time, it will be different, and he will beat back the deep state. He will pursue a foreign policy that's fundamentally different than Republicans and Democrats have pursued up to now. And the big question on the table is whether or not you think Trump can beat the deep state and these two established parties. And I'd bet against Trump.
And he has vowed that if he gets elected this time, it will be different, and he will beat back the deep state. He will pursue a foreign policy that's fundamentally different than Republicans and Democrats have pursued up to now. And the big question on the table is whether or not you think Trump can beat the deep state and these two established parties. And I'd bet against Trump.
Yeah, I'll say a few words about it. When we talk about the deep state, we're talking really about the administrative state. It's very important to understand that starting in the late 19th, early 20th century, given developments in the American economy, it was imperative that we develop, and this was true of all Western countries, a very powerful central state that could run the country.
Yeah, I'll say a few words about it. When we talk about the deep state, we're talking really about the administrative state. It's very important to understand that starting in the late 19th, early 20th century, given developments in the American economy, it was imperative that we develop, and this was true of all Western countries, a very powerful central state that could run the country.
And over time, that state has grown in power. And since World War II, the United States, as you all know, has been involved in every nook and cranny of the world, fighting wars here, there, and everywhere. And to do that, you need a very powerful administrative state that can help manage that foreign policy.
And over time, that state has grown in power. And since World War II, the United States, as you all know, has been involved in every nook and cranny of the world, fighting wars here, there, and everywhere. And to do that, you need a very powerful administrative state that can help manage that foreign policy.
But in the process, what happens is you get all of these high-level bureaucrats, middle-level and low-level bureaucrats who become established in positions in the Pentagon, the State Department, the intelligence community, you name it, and they end up having a vested interest in pursuing a particular foreign policy.
But in the process, what happens is you get all of these high-level bureaucrats, middle-level and low-level bureaucrats who become established in positions in the Pentagon, the State Department, the intelligence community, you name it, and they end up having a vested interest in pursuing a particular foreign policy.
And the particular foreign policy that they like to pursue is the one that the Democrats and the Republicans are pushing. And that's why we talk about Tweedledee and Tweedledum with regard to the two parties you could throw in the deep state as being on the same page as those other two institutions.
And the particular foreign policy that they like to pursue is the one that the Democrats and the Republicans are pushing. And that's why we talk about Tweedledee and Tweedledum with regard to the two parties you could throw in the deep state as being on the same page as those other two institutions.
Two very quick points. First of all, I do believe that the people who are in favor of this foreign policy do believe in it. It's not cynical. They really believe that we're doing the right thing.
Two very quick points. First of all, I do believe that the people who are in favor of this foreign policy do believe in it. It's not cynical. They really believe that we're doing the right thing.
The second point I would make to you, and this sort of adds on to what Jeff said. Jeff said power has a lot to do with this. And as a good realist, I of course believe that. But it's also very important to understand that the United States is a fundamentally liberal country. And we believe that we have a right, we have a responsibility, and we have the power to run around the world
The second point I would make to you, and this sort of adds on to what Jeff said. Jeff said power has a lot to do with this. And as a good realist, I of course believe that. But it's also very important to understand that the United States is a fundamentally liberal country. And we believe that we have a right, we have a responsibility, and we have the power to run around the world
and remake the world in America's image. Most people in the foreign policy establishment, the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, they believe that. And that is what has motivated our foreign policy in large part since the Cold War ended. Because remember, when the Cold War ends, we have no rival great power left. So what are we going to do with all this power that we have?
and remake the world in America's image. Most people in the foreign policy establishment, the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, they believe that. And that is what has motivated our foreign policy in large part since the Cold War ended. Because remember, when the Cold War ends, we have no rival great power left. So what are we going to do with all this power that we have?
What we decide to do is go out and remake the world in our own image.
What we decide to do is go out and remake the world in our own image.
I want to be very clear. I am... Forever thankful that I was born in a liberal democracy, and I love liberalism. But the question here is, do you think that we can run around the world imposing liberal democracy on other countries, and in some cases, shoving it down their throat, doing it at the end of a rifle barrel? And my argument is, that's almost impossible to do. It almost always backfires.
I want to be very clear. I am... Forever thankful that I was born in a liberal democracy, and I love liberalism. But the question here is, do you think that we can run around the world imposing liberal democracy on other countries, and in some cases, shoving it down their throat, doing it at the end of a rifle barrel? And my argument is, that's almost impossible to do. It almost always backfires.
Think Iraq, Afghanistan, so forth and so on. And secondly, you begin to erode liberalism in the United States because you build a deep state, right? And you wanna understand that a lot of the complaints here about cracking down on freedom of speech and so forth and so on are related to the fact that we have this ambitious foreign policy. Those two things go together in very important ways.
Think Iraq, Afghanistan, so forth and so on. And secondly, you begin to erode liberalism in the United States because you build a deep state, right? And you wanna understand that a lot of the complaints here about cracking down on freedom of speech and so forth and so on are related to the fact that we have this ambitious foreign policy. Those two things go together in very important ways.
No, I don't think so. I think that what the United States should do is worry about its own national interest. In some cases, that's going to involve aligning ourselves with a dictator. If we're fighting World War II all over again, it's December 8th, 1941, you surely would be in favor of aligning with Adolf, not with Adolf Hitler, with Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union against the
No, I don't think so. I think that what the United States should do is worry about its own national interest. In some cases, that's going to involve aligning ourselves with a dictator. If we're fighting World War II all over again, it's December 8th, 1941, you surely would be in favor of aligning with Adolf, not with Adolf Hitler, with Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union against the
Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany. Sometimes you have to make those kind of compromises. As I said before, I love liberal democracy. I have no problem aligning with liberal democracy. But when you begin to think in the terms that you're thinking, you end up with an impulse to do social engineering around the world. And that gets you in all sorts of problems.
Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany. Sometimes you have to make those kind of compromises. As I said before, I love liberal democracy. I have no problem aligning with liberal democracy. But when you begin to think in the terms that you're thinking, you end up with an impulse to do social engineering around the world. And that gets you in all sorts of problems.
I mean, when Russia invades Ukraine, basically what you're saying is you wanna go to war on behalf of Ukraine against Russia? Are you in favor of that?
I mean, when Russia invades Ukraine, basically what you're saying is you wanna go to war on behalf of Ukraine against Russia? Are you in favor of that?
Well, in terms of China, I'm fully in favor of containing China.
Well, in terms of China, I'm fully in favor of containing China.
It's containment. I'm not interested in regime change. I'm not interested in trying to turn China into a democracy. Not going to happen, yeah. Not going to happen. We tried it, actually, and I thought it was foolish to even pursue a policy of engagement toward China. With regard to Russia, I don't think Russia is a serious threat to the United States.
It's containment. I'm not interested in regime change. I'm not interested in trying to turn China into a democracy. Not going to happen, yeah. Not going to happen. We tried it, actually, and I thought it was foolish to even pursue a policy of engagement toward China. With regard to Russia, I don't think Russia is a serious threat to the United States.
And indeed, I think the United States should have good relations with Putin. It's a remarkably foolish policy to push him into the arms of the Chinese. There are three great powers in the system, the United States, China, and Russia. China is a peer competitor to the United States. It's the most serious threat to the United States.
And indeed, I think the United States should have good relations with Putin. It's a remarkably foolish policy to push him into the arms of the Chinese. There are three great powers in the system, the United States, China, and Russia. China is a peer competitor to the United States. It's the most serious threat to the United States.
Russia is the weakest of those three great powers, and it's not a serious threat to us. If you are playing balance of power politics and you're interested as the United States in containing China, you want Russia on your side of the ledger. But what we have done in effect is we have pushed Russia into the arms of the Chinese. This is a remarkably foolish policy.
Russia is the weakest of those three great powers, and it's not a serious threat to us. If you are playing balance of power politics and you're interested as the United States in containing China, you want Russia on your side of the ledger. But what we have done in effect is we have pushed Russia into the arms of the Chinese. This is a remarkably foolish policy.
And furthermore, by getting bogged down in Ukraine and now bogged down in the Middle East, it's become very difficult for us to pivot to Asia to deal with China, which is the principal threat that we face.
And furthermore, by getting bogged down in Ukraine and now bogged down in the Middle East, it's become very difficult for us to pivot to Asia to deal with China, which is the principal threat that we face.
It's just not a threat. We're going to get to it.
It's just not a threat. We're going to get to it.
Do you want me to... Is it okay if I talk about this?
Do you want me to... Is it okay if I talk about this?
Okay. It is very important to emphasize, as David was saying, that Jeff and I agree on all sorts of issues, including Ukraine and Israel-Palestine, but we disagree fundamentally, as he just made clear, on China. And let me explain to you why I think that's the case, and then Jeff can tell you why he thinks I'm wrong.
Okay. It is very important to emphasize, as David was saying, that Jeff and I agree on all sorts of issues, including Ukraine and Israel-Palestine, but we disagree fundamentally, as he just made clear, on China. And let me explain to you why I think that's the case, and then Jeff can tell you why he thinks I'm wrong.
It has to do with security, whether you privilege security or survival, or whether you privilege prosperity. Economists, and I would imagine most of you in the audience, really care greatly about maximizing prosperity. For someone like me who's a realist, what I care about is maximizing the state's prospects of survival.
It has to do with security, whether you privilege security or survival, or whether you privilege prosperity. Economists, and I would imagine most of you in the audience, really care greatly about maximizing prosperity. For someone like me who's a realist, what I care about is maximizing the state's prospects of survival.
And when you live in an anarchic system, and in IR speak, that means there's no higher authority, there's no night watchman that could come down and rescue if you get into trouble. And this is the international system. There's no higher authority. In that anarchic world, the best way to survive is to be really powerful.
And when you live in an anarchic system, and in IR speak, that means there's no higher authority, there's no night watchman that could come down and rescue if you get into trouble. And this is the international system. There's no higher authority. In that anarchic world, the best way to survive is to be really powerful.
As we used to say when I was a kid on New York City playgrounds, you want to be the biggest and baddest dude on the block. And that's simply because it's the best way to survive. If you're really powerful, nobody fools around with you. The United States is a regional hegemon. It's the only regional hegemon on the planet. We dominate the Western Hemisphere.
As we used to say when I was a kid on New York City playgrounds, you want to be the biggest and baddest dude on the block. And that's simply because it's the best way to survive. If you're really powerful, nobody fools around with you. The United States is a regional hegemon. It's the only regional hegemon on the planet. We dominate the Western Hemisphere.
And what China has begun to do as it's got increasingly powerful economically is translate that economic might into military might. And it is trying to dominate Asia. It wants to push us out beyond the first island chain. It wants to push us out beyond the second island chain. It wants to be like we are in the Western hemisphere. And I don't blame the Chinese one bit.
And what China has begun to do as it's got increasingly powerful economically is translate that economic might into military might. And it is trying to dominate Asia. It wants to push us out beyond the first island chain. It wants to push us out beyond the second island chain. It wants to be like we are in the Western hemisphere. And I don't blame the Chinese one bit.
If I was the national security advisor in Beijing, that's what I'd be telling Xi Jinping we should be trying to do. But of course, from an American point of view, this is unacceptable. And we do not tolerate peer competitors. We do not want another regional hegemon on the planet. In the 20th century, there were four countries that threatened to become regional hegemons like us. Imperial Germany,
If I was the national security advisor in Beijing, that's what I'd be telling Xi Jinping we should be trying to do. But of course, from an American point of view, this is unacceptable. And we do not tolerate peer competitors. We do not want another regional hegemon on the planet. In the 20th century, there were four countries that threatened to become regional hegemons like us. Imperial Germany,
Imperial Japan, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union. The United States played a key role in putting all four of those countries on the scrap heap of history. We want to remain the only regional hegemon in the world. We are a ruthless great power. Never want to lose sight of that fact. And the end result of this is you get an intense security competition between China and The United States.
Imperial Japan, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union. The United States played a key role in putting all four of those countries on the scrap heap of history. We want to remain the only regional hegemon in the world. We are a ruthless great power. Never want to lose sight of that fact. And the end result of this is you get an intense security competition between China and The United States.
And it revolves around the concept of security, not prosperity. I think this is- Just very quickly. So what you see beginning to happen is that it's in all domains where the competition takes place, especially high tech. We do not want them defeating this.
And it revolves around the concept of security, not prosperity. I think this is- Just very quickly. So what you see beginning to happen is that it's in all domains where the competition takes place, especially high tech. We do not want them defeating this.
Defeating us in the high-tech war we are competing with them economically We are competing with the militarily and this is because the best way to survive is for us the United States of America to be the only regional hegemon on the planet
Defeating us in the high-tech war we are competing with them economically We are competing with the militarily and this is because the best way to survive is for us the United States of America to be the only regional hegemon on the planet
Jeff, what about the energy?
Jeff, what about the energy?
Just very quickly most of you have probably never asked yourself the question Why is the United States roaming all over the planet interfering in every country's business? It's in part because it's so powerful, but it's also because it's a regional hegemon Which means we have no threats in the Western Hemisphere so we are free to roam
Just very quickly most of you have probably never asked yourself the question Why is the United States roaming all over the planet interfering in every country's business? It's in part because it's so powerful, but it's also because it's a regional hegemon Which means we have no threats in the Western Hemisphere so we are free to roam
The great danger, Jeff, if China becomes a regional hegemon and doesn't have to worry about security concerns.
The great danger, Jeff, if China becomes a regional hegemon and doesn't have to worry about security concerns.
Then they behave like us. Can't we do better? That's exactly right. But my point to you, Jeff, is let's prevent that from happening by preventing them from becoming a regional hegemon. We don't want them to have freedom to roam. You were talking about them putting military bases in Mexico. That's our great fear.
Then they behave like us. Can't we do better? That's exactly right. But my point to you, Jeff, is let's prevent that from happening by preventing them from becoming a regional hegemon. We don't want them to have freedom to roam. You were talking about them putting military bases in Mexico. That's our great fear.
Jeff, that's because they're not a regional hegemon yet.
Jeff, that's because they're not a regional hegemon yet.
No, it's not just Taiwan. I mean, one could argue there's sort of three flashpoints in East Asia that you folks should keep your eye on. One is obviously Taiwan. Two is the South China Sea. And three is the East China Sea. And I think, David, that the place where a conflict is most likely today is not over Taiwan.
No, it's not just Taiwan. I mean, one could argue there's sort of three flashpoints in East Asia that you folks should keep your eye on. One is obviously Taiwan. Two is the South China Sea. And three is the East China Sea. And I think, David, that the place where a conflict is most likely today is not over Taiwan.
I could explain why I think Taiwan is not a serious problem at the moment or for the foreseeable future. The South China Sea is a very dangerous place. We could end up in a war for sure, even if we did not defend Taiwan. So Taiwan, you don't want to overemphasize. I agree with Jeff that we definitely don't want a war. And we certainly don't want a nuclear war.
I could explain why I think Taiwan is not a serious problem at the moment or for the foreseeable future. The South China Sea is a very dangerous place. We could end up in a war for sure, even if we did not defend Taiwan. So Taiwan, you don't want to overemphasize. I agree with Jeff that we definitely don't want a war. And we certainly don't want a nuclear war.
And he is absolutely correct that there's a risk of a nuclear war if a war breaks out of any sort between China and the United States. Many of us in the audience remember the Cold War, and this was an ever-present danger in the Cold War.
And he is absolutely correct that there's a risk of a nuclear war if a war breaks out of any sort between China and the United States. Many of us in the audience remember the Cold War, and this was an ever-present danger in the Cold War.
But my argument is that this is inevitable, because in a world where you don't have a higher authority and you care about your survival, you have a deep-seated interest, as any state in the system, to be as powerful as possible. And that means dominating your region of the world.
But my argument is that this is inevitable, because in a world where you don't have a higher authority and you care about your survival, you have a deep-seated interest, as any state in the system, to be as powerful as possible. And that means dominating your region of the world.
Well, we definitely view India as an ally. It's part of the Quad, which is this Rube Goldberg-type alliance structure that we put together in East Asia that includes Australia, Japan, the United States, and India. India is smartly maintaining its good relations with Russia. The Indians understand, like Jeff and I do, that the Russians are no great threat.
Well, we definitely view India as an ally. It's part of the Quad, which is this Rube Goldberg-type alliance structure that we put together in East Asia that includes Australia, Japan, the United States, and India. India is smartly maintaining its good relations with Russia. The Indians understand, like Jeff and I do, that the Russians are no great threat.
But from India's point of view, the real threat is China. And there are two places where India cares about China. One is on the India-China border up in the Himalayas, where they've actually had conflicts. And there's a real danger of war breaking out.
But from India's point of view, the real threat is China. And there are two places where India cares about China. One is on the India-China border up in the Himalayas, where they've actually had conflicts. And there's a real danger of war breaking out.
The second place, which is maybe even more dangerous, not at the moment, but will be over time, is the Indian Ocean, because the Chinese are imitating the United States. They not only want to be a regional hegemon, they want to develop power projection capability.
The second place, which is maybe even more dangerous, not at the moment, but will be over time, is the Indian Ocean, because the Chinese are imitating the United States. They not only want to be a regional hegemon, they want to develop power projection capability.
So the Chinese are building a blue-water navy that can come out of East Asia, through the Straits of Malacca, through the Indian Ocean to the Persian Gulf. And once you start talking about going through the Indian Ocean, the Indians get spooked. And that's when the Americans and the Indians come together.
So the Chinese are building a blue-water navy that can come out of East Asia, through the Straits of Malacca, through the Indian Ocean to the Persian Gulf. And once you start talking about going through the Indian Ocean, the Indians get spooked. And that's when the Americans and the Indians come together.
Let's let John in. Spicy. I just want to ask Jeff a question on this. My argument is that this is the way the world works.
Let's let John in. Spicy. I just want to ask Jeff a question on this. My argument is that this is the way the world works.
And it is. And it is. But if I'm describing how the world really works, how do you beat me?
And it is. And it is. But if I'm describing how the world really works, how do you beat me?
Two points. In my heart, I'm with Jeff. In my head, I'm not with Jeff. I wish he were right, but I don't believe he's right. To answer your question head on, I believe that there is no way out. We are in an iron cage. This is just the way international politics works. And it's because you're in an anarchic system
Two points. In my heart, I'm with Jeff. In my head, I'm not with Jeff. I wish he were right, but I don't believe he's right. To answer your question head on, I believe that there is no way out. We are in an iron cage. This is just the way international politics works. And it's because you're in an anarchic system
where you can never be sure that a really powerful state in the system won't come after you and inflict a century of national humiliation on you. So you go to great lengths to avoid that by trying to gain power at the expense of another power. And that leads to all sorts of trouble. Can war be avoided?
where you can never be sure that a really powerful state in the system won't come after you and inflict a century of national humiliation on you. So you go to great lengths to avoid that by trying to gain power at the expense of another power. And that leads to all sorts of trouble. Can war be avoided?
I like to distinguish between security competition, which I think is inevitable, and war, which is where security competition evolves into war. I think war can be avoided, and we were thankfully successful in that regard during the Cold War. And hopefully that will be the case in the US-China competition moving forward. Can I guarantee that? No. Does this disturb me greatly? Yes.
I like to distinguish between security competition, which I think is inevitable, and war, which is where security competition evolves into war. I think war can be avoided, and we were thankfully successful in that regard during the Cold War. And hopefully that will be the case in the US-China competition moving forward. Can I guarantee that? No. Does this disturb me greatly? Yes.
But again, this is just the tragic aspect of the world we live in.
But again, this is just the tragic aspect of the world we live in.
Let me answer your question about escalation potential, the Jordanians coming in. Israel faces three big problems, aside from problems with centrifugal forces inside the society. One is the Palestinian problem, which is both in Gaza and in the West Bank. That's one. Two is Hezbollah, and three is Iran.
Let me answer your question about escalation potential, the Jordanians coming in. Israel faces three big problems, aside from problems with centrifugal forces inside the society. One is the Palestinian problem, which is both in Gaza and in the West Bank. That's one. Two is Hezbollah, and three is Iran.
I think there is virtually no chance of what you described happening, which is if the Israelis were to go on a rampage in the West Bank, similar to what they've done in Gaza, that the Jordanians would come in or the Egyptians or the Saudis. They simply don't have the military capability. This is a scenario where the Israelis completely dominate.
I think there is virtually no chance of what you described happening, which is if the Israelis were to go on a rampage in the West Bank, similar to what they've done in Gaza, that the Jordanians would come in or the Egyptians or the Saudis. They simply don't have the military capability. This is a scenario where the Israelis completely dominate.
So in terms of escalation with regard to the Israel-Palestine problem, I don't think there's much potential. Hezbollah is a different issue, but mainly because it's linked with Iran, right? And Iran is the really dangerous flashpoint because, as you know, the Russians are now closely allied with the Iranians. The Chinese are moving in that direction as well.
So in terms of escalation with regard to the Israel-Palestine problem, I don't think there's much potential. Hezbollah is a different issue, but mainly because it's linked with Iran, right? And Iran is the really dangerous flashpoint because, as you know, the Russians are now closely allied with the Iranians. The Chinese are moving in that direction as well.
And if Israel gets involved in a war with Iran, we're going to come in, in all likelihood. Remember, when the Israelis attacked the Iranian embassy in Damascus on April 1st, on April 14th, The Iranians retaliated against it.
And if Israel gets involved in a war with Iran, we're going to come in, in all likelihood. Remember, when the Israelis attacked the Iranian embassy in Damascus on April 1st, on April 14th, The Iranians retaliated against it.
Yeah. But we were involved. We were forewarned, weren't we? Yes, we were forewarned. But the point is that we were involved in the fighting. We were involved with the Israelis, with the French, the British, the Jordanians, and the Saudis. We were all involved in the fighting. So this gets at the escalation problem.
Yeah. But we were involved. We were forewarned, weren't we? Yes, we were forewarned. But the point is that we were involved in the fighting. We were involved with the Israelis, with the French, the British, the Jordanians, and the Saudis. We were all involved in the fighting. So this gets at the escalation problem.
Now, to counter the Iranian escalation scenario, the fact is Iran does not want a war with the United States. And the United States does not want a war with Iran. And it's the Israelis, especially Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been trying to sort of suck us into a war.
Now, to counter the Iranian escalation scenario, the fact is Iran does not want a war with the United States. And the United States does not want a war with Iran. And it's the Israelis, especially Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been trying to sort of suck us into a war.
Because he wants us, the United States, to really whack Iran, weaken it militarily, and especially to go after its nuclear capabilities. Because as you well know, they are close to the point where they can develop nuclear weapons. So the Israelis are the ones who want us to get involved in a big war with Iran. That's the escalation flashpoint.
Because he wants us, the United States, to really whack Iran, weaken it militarily, and especially to go after its nuclear capabilities. Because as you well know, they are close to the point where they can develop nuclear weapons. So the Israelis are the ones who want us to get involved in a big war with Iran. That's the escalation flashpoint.
And the $64,000 question is whether you think the United States and Iran, kind of colluding, can work together to prevent the Israelis from getting a second.
And the $64,000 question is whether you think the United States and Iran, kind of colluding, can work together to prevent the Israelis from getting a second.
Well, if you believe that it matters who leads the next administration, that's true.
Well, if you believe that it matters who leads the next administration, that's true.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Yeah, I'll make two sets of points there.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
First of all, I believe that power is the currency of international relations, and by that I mean that states are deeply interested in the balance of power, and they're interested in maximizing how much power they control.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And the question is why states care so much about power.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
In the international system, there's no higher authority.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So if you get into trouble and you dial 911, there's nobody at the other end.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
In a system like that, you have no choice whatsoever.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
but to figure out for yourself how best to protect yourself.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And the best way to protect yourself is to be powerful, to have as much power as you can possibly gain over all the other states in the system.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Therefore, states care about power because it enhances or maximizes their prospects for survival.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Second point I would make is that in the realist story or in my story, power is largely a function of material factors.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The two key building blocks of power are population size and wealth.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
You want to have a lot of people and you want to be really wealthy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Of course, this is why the United States is so powerful.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It has lots of people and it has lots of wealth.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
China was not considered a great power until recently.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
because it didn't have a lot of wealth.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It certainly had population size, but it didn't have wealth.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And without both a large population and much wealth, you're usually not considered a great power.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So I think power matters.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But when we talk about power, it's important to understand that it's population size and wealth that are underpinning it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Yeah, well, anarchy basically means the opposite of hierarchy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Sometimes people think when you're talking about anarchy, you're talking about murder and mayhem, but that's not what anarchy means in the realist context.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Anarchy simply means that you don't have hierarchy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
There's no higher authority that sits above states.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
States are like pool balls on a table.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And in an anarchic world, there's no higher authority that you can turn to if you get into trouble.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And of course, the political philosopher who laid this all out was Thomas Hobbes.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And Hobbes talked about life in the state of nature.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And in the state of nature, you have individuals.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And those individuals compete with each other for power.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And the reason that they do is because in the state of nature, by definition, you have no higher authority.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And Hobbes's view is that the way to get out of this terrible situation where individuals are competing with each other and even killing each other is to create a state.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It's what he calls the Leviathan.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And that, of course, is the title of his famous book.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So the idea is to escape anarchy, you create a state.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And that means you go from anarchy to hierarchy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The problem in international politics is that there is no world state.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
There is no hierarchy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And if you have no hierarchy and you're in an anarchic system, you have no choice but to try to maximize your relative power to make sure you are, as we used to say when I was a kid on New York City playgrounds, the biggest and baddest dude on the block.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Not because you necessarily want to beat up on other kids or on other states, but because, again, that's the best way to survive.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And as I like to point out to people, the best example of what happens when you're weak in international politics is
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
is what the Chinese call the century of national humiliation.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
From the late 1840s to the late 1940s, the Chinese were remarkably weak.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And the great powers in the system preyed upon them.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And that sends a very important message to not only the Chinese, but to other states in the system.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Don't be weak.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Be as powerful as you can.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The will to power in an individual has a lot to do with individual psychology.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The story that I tell about the pursuit of power is a structural argument.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It's an argument that says when you are in a particular structure, when you're in a system that has a specific architecture, which is anarchy,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
the states have no choice but to compete for power.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So structure is really driving the story here.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Will to power has a lot more to do with an individual in the Nietzschean story where that concept comes from.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So it's very important to understand that I'm not arguing that states are inherently aggressive
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
My point is that as long as states are in anarchy, they have no choice but to behave in an aggressive fashion.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But if you went to a hierarchic system, there's no reason for those states to worry about the balance of power.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Because if they get into trouble, there is a higher authority that they can turn to.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
There is, in effect, a Leviathan.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Well, military might's what ultimately matters.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
As I said to you before, the two building blocks of power are population size and wealth.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
You didn't mention military money.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I did not.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
No, that's right.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And it's good that you caught that because if you have a large population and you're a wealthy country, what you do is you build a large military.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And it's ultimately the size of your military that matters because militaries fight wars.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And if states are concerned about survival, which I argue is the principal goal of every state in the international system,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
for what I think are obvious reasons, then they're gonna care about having a powerful military that can protect them if another state comes after them.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Yeah, I'm arguing it is obvious.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
If you're a state in the international system, do you want to be weak?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
If you live next door to Nazi Germany or Imperial Germany or Napoleonic France or even the United States, the United States is a ruthless great power.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
You surely recognize that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And if you're dealing with the United States of America and you're Vladimir Putin, you want to make sure you're as powerful as possible so that the United States doesn't put its gun sights on you and come after you.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Same thing is true with China.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
You want to be powerful in the international system.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
States understand that and they go to great lengths to become powerful.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Just take the United States of America.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
When it started in 1783, it was comprised of 13 measly colonies strung out along the Atlantic seaboard.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Over time, the various leaders of the United States went to great lengths to turn that country into the dominant power in the Western Hemisphere.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And then once that was achieved in 1900, we've gone to great lengths to make sure that there's no peer competitor in the system.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
We just want to make sure that we're number one.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And my argument is that this is not peculiar to the United States.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
If I'm China, for example, today,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I would want to dominate Asia the way the United States dominates the Western Hemisphere.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
They'd be fools not to.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
If I were Imperial Germany, I'd want to dominate all of Europe the way the United States dominates the Western Hemisphere.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Why?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Because if you dominate all of Europe, assuming you're Imperial Germany or Napoleonic France, then no other state in the area or in the region can threaten you because you're simply so powerful.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And again, what I'm saying here is that the structure of the international system really matters.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It's the fact that you're in this anarchic system where survival is your principal goal and where I can't know your intentions, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
You're another state.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I can't know that at some point you might not come after me.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
You might.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And if you're really powerful and I'm not, I'm in deep trouble.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Well, I think for many centuries now, the big divide within the world of international relations theory is between realism and liberalism.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
These are time-honored
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
bodies of theory.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And before I tell you what I think the differences are between those two bodies of theory, it is important to emphasize that there are differences among realists and differences among liberals.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And so when you talk about me as an offensive realist, you should understand that there are also defensive realists out there, and there are a panoply of liberal theories as well.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But basically, realists believe that power matters, that states compete for power, and that war is an instrument of statecraft.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And liberals, on the other hand, have what I would say is a more idealistic view of the world.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
This is not to say that they're naive or foolish,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But they believe there are aspects of international politics that lead to a less competitive and more peaceful world than most realists see.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
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 that is inherent in the liberal enterprise.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The first and most important of the liberal theories is democratic peace theory.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And this is a theory that says democracies do not fight against other democracies.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So the more the world is populated with democracies, the less likely it is that we will have wars.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And this basic argument is inherent in Francis Fukuyama's The End of History.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
He argues that democracy triumphed first over fascism in the 20th century.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It then triumphed over communism.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And that means that in the future, we're going to have more and more liberalization.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
liberal democracies on the planet.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And if you have more and more liberal democracies and those democracies don't fight each other, then you have a more peaceful world.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
That was his argument.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It's a very liberal argument.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
A realist like me would say that it doesn't matter whether a state is a democracy or not
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And again, the liberal view, this first liberal theory is that democracies don't fight other democracies.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And therefore, the more democracies you have, the more peaceful the world.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
You can't make that argument that you're making about democracies, because if you're saying that democracies are inclined toward peace,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
and the electorate picks leaders who are inclined towards peace, then you have to show that democracies are in general more peaceful than non-democracies, and you can't support that argument.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
You can find lots of evidence to support the argument that democracies don't fight other democracies.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So the argument I believe that you have to make if you're gonna 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
If you're a liberal democracy and I'm a liberal democracy, we know we have value systems
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
that argue against aggression and argue for peaceful resolution of crises.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And therefore, given these norms, we can trust each other.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
We can know each other's intentions.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Remember, for realists like me, uncertainty about intentions really helps drive the train.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But if you're talking about two democracies,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The argument there is that they know each other's intentions.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I think that's right.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Yeah, that's right.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So that's democratic peace theory.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The second theory is economic interdependence theory.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And that's the argument that in a globalized world like the one that we live in,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
and have lived in for a long time.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
There's a great deal of economic interdependence, and if you and I are two countries, or if you and me are two countries, and we're economically interdependent, and we're both getting prosperous as a result of this economic intercourse, the last thing that we're gonna do is start a war, either one of us, because who would kill the goose that lays the golden eggs?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It's that kind of argument.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So there you have an argument that economic interdependence leads to peace.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And then the third liberal argument has to do with institutions, sometimes referred to as liberal institutionalism.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And this is the argument that if you can get states into institutions where they become rule-abiding actors—
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
they will obey the rules that dictate that war is not acceptable.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So those are the liberal theories.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And as you can tell, they're very different from...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
realism as articulated by somebody like me.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
If they think it's necessary to kill the golden goose because of security concerns, they will do it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The point is that economic interdependence
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
at its root, has prosperity as the core variable.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
In the realist story, the core variable is survival.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And survival always trumps prosperity.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So if you go back,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
to the period before World War I. We're in Europe.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It's 1913 or early 1914.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
What you see is that you have an intense security competition between all of the great powers.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
On one side, you have the triple alliance, and on the other side, you have the triple entente.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
You have these two alliances, and you have an intense security competition between them, okay?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
At the same time, you have a great deal of economic interdependence.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It's amazing how much economic intercourse is taking place in Europe among all the actors, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And people are getting prosperous.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Our countries are getting prosperous as a result.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So there are going to be lots of situations where prosperity and survival come into conflict.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And in those cases, survival will win.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Yeah.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Let me just back up a bit on that one.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And you were talking about will to power before.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The first big divide...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
between realists is structural realists and human nature realists.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Nice.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And Hans Morgenthau, who was influenced by Nietzsche and therefore had that will to power logic embedded in his thinking about how the world works, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
He was a human nature realist, okay?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I'm a structural realist.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And I believe it's not human nature.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It's not individuals and some will to power that drives competition and war.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
What drives competition and war is the structure of the system.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It's anarchy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So you're not as romantic as the human nature realists.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Yeah, there's just a world of difference between the two.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It's just important to understand that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Yes, inside the structural realist world, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And you have a handful of realists who believe that the structure of the system is
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
fosters competition for sure security competition but it really rules out great power war almost all the time so
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It makes sense to care about the balance of power, but to focus on maintaining how much power you have.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
That's the defense of realism, maintaining how much power you have, not trying to gain more power.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Because the argument the defense of realists make is that if you try to gain more power, the system will punish you.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The structure will punish you.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I'm not a defensive realist.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I'm an offensive realist.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And my argument is that states look for opportunities to gain more power.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And every time they see or 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Well, I think that Nazi Germany was driven in large part by structural considerations.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
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,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
What that tells you is you didn't need Adolf Hitler to start World War I, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And I believe that there is a good chance you would have had World War II in the absence of Hitler, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I believe that Germany was very powerful.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It was deeply worried about the balance of power in Europe, and it had strong incentives to behave aggressively.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
in the late 1930s, early 1940s.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So I believe that structure mattered.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
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
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
modern history who are congenital aggressors, and one was Napoleon and the other was Hitler.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Now, if you want to call that a will to power, you can do that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
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
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
in recorded history, and Napoleon was not in that category at all.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Well, 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I mean, after January 30th, 1933, he's in power.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And then the question of what is driving him comes racing to the fore.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Is there resentment over the Versailles Treaty and what happened to Germany?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Yes.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Did that matter?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Yes.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But my argument is that structure was the principal factor driving the train in Hitler's case.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But-
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
What I'm saying here is that there were other factors as well.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Resentment being one of them, will to power, or the fact that he was a congenital aggressor in my lexicon certainly mattered as well.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So I don't want to dismiss your point about resentment.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And he played on that resentment.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
That surely helped him get elected too.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But I think, having studied the case, it was even more important once he took over.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I also believe that one of the principal reasons that he was so popular, and he was wildly popular inside Nazi Germany, is because he was the only leader of an industrialized country who pulled his country out of the Depression.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And that really mattered.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And it made him very effective.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It's also worth noting that he was a remarkably charismatic individual.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But I've talked to a number of people who are experts on this subject who assure me that he was very charismatic.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Stalin is still popular in many parts of Eastern Europe.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Yeah, yeah.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And Stalin's popular in many quarters inside Russia.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And Stalin murdered more of his own people than he murdered people outside of the Soviet Union.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
History is a multidimensional phenomenon.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
We're talking about interstate relations here.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And realism is a theory about how states interact with each other.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And there are many other dimensions to international politics.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And if you're talking about someone like Adolf Hitler, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
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?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I mean, that's a different question.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And realism doesn't answer that question.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So I want to be very clear that I'm not someone who argues that realism answers every question about international politics.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Pros and cons to every decision.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The question is, did he think that he could win a quick and decisive victory?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And he did.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I mean, as did his generals.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It's very interesting.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I've spent a lot of time studying German decision-making in World War II.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
If you look at the German decision to invade Poland on September 1st, 1939, and you look at the...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
German decision made France on May 10th, 1940, and then the Soviet Union on June 22nd, 1941.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
What you see is there was actually quite a bit of resistance to Hitler in 1938 at the time of Czechoslovakia, Munich.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And there was also quite a bit of resistance in September 1939.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Internally or you mean... Internally.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Internally, for sure.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Yeah.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
People had doubts.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
They didn't think the Wehrmacht was ready.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And then came France, 1940.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
In the run-up to May 10th, 1940, there was huge resistance in the German army to attacking France.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But that was eventually eliminated because they came up with a clever plan, the Manstein Plan.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
If you look at the decision to invade the Soviet Union on June 22nd, 1941, which is the only case where they fail, they succeeded in France, they succeeded in Poland, they succeeded at Munich in 1938.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Soviet Union is where they fail.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
There's hardly any resistance at all, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Yeah.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I've always had the sense they came terrifyingly close to winning.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
You can make the opposite argument that they were doomed, but I'm not terribly comfortable making that argument.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I think the Wehrmacht by the summer of 1941 was a finely tuned instrument for war.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And the Red Army was in quite terrible shape.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Stalin had purged the officer corps.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
They had performed poorly in Finland.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And there were all sorts of reasons to think that they were no match for the Wehrmacht.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And if you look at what happened in the initial stages of the conflict, that proved to be the case.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The Germans won a lot of significant tactical victories early on.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
That's possible.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Fortunately, we're not going to run the experiment again.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But one could argue that had they concentrated, as the generals wanted to do, in going straight for Moscow, that they would have won.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I mean, what Hitler wanted to do is he wanted to go into the Ukraine.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I mean, Hitler thought that the main axis...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
There were three axes.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The northern axis went towards Leningrad.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The central axis, of course, went to Moscow.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And then the southern axis, Army Group South, headed towards Ukraine and deep into the Caucasus.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And Hitler believed that that should have been the main axis.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And in fact, in 1942, the Germans go back on the offensive in 1942.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
42.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
This is Operation Blue.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And the main axis in 42 is deep into the Ukraine and into the Caucasus.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And that fails.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But one could argue that had they done that in 41, had they not gone to Moscow, had they concentrated on going deep into Ukraine and into the Caucasus, they could have knocked the Soviets out that way.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I'm not sure...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
In the end, I believe that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I think in the end, the Soviets would have won no matter what, but I'm not 100% sure of that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
No, I think there's a great deal of truth in that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But let's just unpack it a bit in the case of the Soviet Union in World War II.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The counter-argument to that is that in World War I,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Russian army disintegrated.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
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 41 and 45, the Napoleon case looks a lot like the Hitler case, and it fits neatly with your argument.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But World War I does not fit neatly with your argument because
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
the Russians lost and surrendered.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And you had the infamous Treaty of Brest-Litovsk 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
My argument for why the Russians, let me take that back, why the Soviets fought like wild dogs in World War II is,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
is that they were up against a genocidal adversary.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
You want to understand that the Germans murdered huge numbers of Soviet POWs.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The overall total was 3.7 million.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And by December, December of 1941, remember the invasion is June 41.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
By December of 1941, the Germans have murdered 2 million Soviet POWs.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
At that point in time, they had murdered many more POWs than they had murdered Jews.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And this is not to deny for one second that they were on a murderous rampage when it came to Jews.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But they were also on a murderous rampage when it came to Soviet citizens and Soviet soldiers, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So those Soviet soldiers quickly came to understand they were fighting for their lives.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
If they were taken prisoner, they would die.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So they fought like wild dogs, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Absolutely.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
All you have to do is read The Hunger Plan.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And they also had a plan—what is it called?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Grand Planned East.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I forget the exact name of it, which made it clear that they were going to murder many tens of millions of people.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And by the way, I believe that—
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
they would have murdered all the Poles and all the Roma.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I mean, my view is that the Jews were number one on the genocidal hit list.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The Roma or the gypsies were number two, and the Poles were number three.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And of course, I just explained to you how many POWs they had killed.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So they would have ended up murdering huge numbers of Soviet citizens as well.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But people quickly figured out that this was happening.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Mm-hmm.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
That's my point to you.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Well, clearly, the conventional wisdom is that Putin is principally responsible.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Putin is an imperialist.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
He's an expansionist.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
That's the conventional thinking.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Yeah, yeah.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And the idea is that he is bent on creating a greater Russia.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And even more so, he's interested in dominating Eastern Europe, if not all of Europe, and
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And that Ukraine was the first stop on the train line.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And what he wanted to do was to conquer all of Ukraine, incorporate it into a greater Russia, and then he would move on and conquer other countries.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
This is the conventional wisdom.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
My view is there is no evidence, let me emphasize, zero evidence to support that argument.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
There's no evidence he was interested in conquering all of Ukraine.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
There's no evidence beforehand that he was interested in conquering any of Ukraine.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And there's no way that an army that had 190,000 troops at the most...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
could have conquered all of Ukraine.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Just impossible.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
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...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
who came in later that month, were going to conquer the eastern half of Poland.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So the western half of Poland is much smaller than Ukraine.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And the Germans went in with 1.5 million troops.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
If
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Vladimir Putin were bent on conquering all of Ukraine, he would have needed at least 2 million troops.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I would argue he'd need 3 million troops because not only do you need to conquer the country, you then have to occupy it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But the idea that 190,000 troops was sufficient for conquering Ukraine.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
All of Ukraine is not a serious argument.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Furthermore, he was not interested in conquering Ukraine.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And that's why in March 2022, this is immediately after the war starts, he is negotiating with Zelenskyy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
end the war.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
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?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And of course, what they were negotiating about was NATO expansion into Ukraine, which was the principal cause of the war.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And of course, the West doesn't want to be principally responsible.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It wants to blame Vladimir Putin.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
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
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
to conquer all of it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And he failed.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But with a little bit of luck, he probably would have conquered all of it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And he'd now be in the Baltic states and eventually end up dominating all of Eastern Europe.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
As I said, I think there's no evidence to support this.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
NATO was a mortal enemy of the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It's a military alliance which has at its heart the United States of America, which is the most powerful state on the planet.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
it is perfectly understandable that Russia is not going to want that military alliance on its doorstep.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Here in the United States, we have, as you well know, what's called the Monroe Doctrine.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
When I was young, there was this thing called the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The Soviets had the audacity to put nuclear-armed missiles in Cuba.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
We told them in no uncertain terms that that was not acceptable and that those missiles had to be removed.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
This is our backyard, and we do not tolerate distant great powers coming into our neighborhood.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Well, what's good for the goose is good for the gander.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And if we don't like...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Great powers coming into our neighborhood.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It's hardly surprising that the Russians did not want NATO on their doorstep.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
They made that manifestly clear when the Cold War ended and they
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
exacted a promise from us that we would not expand NATO.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And then when we started expanding NATO, they made it clear after the first tranche in 1999 that they were profoundly unhappy with that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
They made it clear in 2004 after the second tranche that they were profoundly unhappy with that expansion.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
They were drawing a red line in the sand.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And it is no accident that in August 2008—
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Remember, the Bucharest summit is April 2008, and August 2008, you had a war between Georgia and Russia, and that involved, at its core, NATO expansion.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So the Americans and their allies should have understood by at least August 2008 that continuing to push to bring Ukraine into NATO...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
was going to lead to disaster.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
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 Nitze, and so forth and so on, who argued that NATO expansion would end up producing a disaster, which it has.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I would note that at the famous April 2008 Bucharest summit where NATO said that Ukraine would be brought into the alliance, Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy, the German and French leaders respectively, opposed that decision.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Angela Merkel later said that the reason she opposed it was because she understood that Putin would interpret it as a declaration of war.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Just think about that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
What did the United States and its friends in Europe do?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
They continued to push and push because we thought that we could push NATO expansion down their throat after 2008, the same way we did in 1999 and 2004.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But we were wrong, and it all blew up in our face in 2014.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And when it blew up in our face in 2014, what did we do?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Did we back off and say, well, maybe the Russians have some legitimate security interests?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
No, that's not the way we operate.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
We continued to double down.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And the end result is that in 2022, you got a war.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And as I've argued for a long time now, we, the West, are principally responsible for that, not Vladimir Putin.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Yeah.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
To put it in more general terms, what we were trying to do was turn Ukraine into a Western bulwark on Russia's border.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And it really wasn't NATO expansion alone.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
NATO expansion was the most important element of our strategy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But the strategy had two other dimensions.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
One was EU expansion, and the third was the color revolution.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
We were trying to force Orange Revolution in Ukraine, and the basic goal there was to turn Ukraine into a pro-Western liberal democracy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
This was our goal.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And the Russians made it unequivocally clear Ukraine was not going to become a Western bulwark on their border.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And most importantly, they made it clear that Ukraine in NATO was unacceptable.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
He's made it clear that anybody with a triple-digit IQ understands that it's nuts to think about recreating the Soviet Union.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
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,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And as he 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And I think he is a first-class strategist.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
This is not to say he doesn't make mistakes, and he admits he's made some mistakes, but
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But I think that the West is dealing with a formidable adversary here.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I think that's clear, yeah.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I think, as I emphasized early on in our conversation, that...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
leaders' privilege, security, or survival over everything else.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And if you read what he said, it's quite clear that he privileged security or survival.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
He was deeply concerned about the security of Russia.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And Russia is a quite vulnerable state in a lot of ways, especially if you think back to what it looked like in the 1990s.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
You know better than I do.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It was in terrible shape.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The Chinese talk about the century of national humiliation.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
One could argue that for the Russians, that was the decade of national humiliation.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And it took Putin, I think, quite a bit of time to bring the Russians back from the dead.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I think he eventually succeeded, but it took a considerable amount of time.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And I think he...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
understood that he was not playing a particularly strong hand.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
He was playing something of a weak hand.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And he had to be very careful, very cautious.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And I think he was.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And I think that's very different than the United States.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The United States was the unipole.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It was the most powerful state in the history of the world.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Most powerful state relative to all its possible competitors from roughly...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
1989, certainly after December 1991, when the Soviet Union fell apart, up until, I would argue, about 2017.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
We were incredibly powerful.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And even after 2017, up to today, the United States remains the most powerful state in the system.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And because of our geographical location, we are in a
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
terrific situation to survive in any great power competition.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So you have a situation involving the United States that's different than the situation involving Russia.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
They're just much more vulnerable than we are.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And therefore, I think Putin tends to be more sensitive about security than any American president in recent times.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Yeah, and we talked before about 1812 when Napoleon invaded and Moscow got burned to the ground.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
We talked about World War I where the Russians were actually defeated and surrendered.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And then we talked about 1941 to 1945 where although thankfully the Soviets prevailed, it was...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It was a close call.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And I mean, the casualties, the destruction that the Soviet Union had inflicted on it by the Germans is just almost hard to believe.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So they are sensitive.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I don't understand why more Americans don't understand that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It's just it befuddles me.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I think it has to do with the fact that Americans are not very good at putting themselves in the shoes of other countries.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And you really if you're going to be a first class strategist in international politics, you have to be able to do that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Yeah, I agree with you 100%.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I always think of Michael McFaul at Stanford, who was the American ambassador to Russia, I think, between 2012 and 2014.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And I asked Mike what Putin's response was to that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And Mike said that Putin didn't believe it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And but Mike believed that he should believe it and that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
We could move NATO eastward to include Ukraine, and in the end, we'd get away with it because we are a benign hegemon.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But the fact is, that's not what Putin saw.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Putin saw us as a malign hegemon.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And what Mike thinks or any American thinks doesn't matter.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
There are two reasons.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
One is, first of all, we thought it was a wonderful thing to bring more and more countries into NATO.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
We thought that it facilitated peace and prosperity.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It was ultimately all for the good.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And we also thought that countries like Ukraine had a right to join NATO.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
These are sovereign countries that can decide for themselves, and the Russians have no say in what Ukraine wants to do.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So it's a combination of those factors that led us to pursue what I think was ultimately a foolish policy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I'm sad to say I don't have a good answer to that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I don't think there's any real prospect of a meaningful peace agreement.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I think it's almost impossible.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I think the best you can hope for at this point is at some point the shooting stops, you have a ceasefire, and then you have a frozen conflict.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
uh and that frozen conflict uh will not be highly stable and the ukrainians in the west will do everything they can to weaken russia's position and the russians will go to great lengths to not only damage that
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
dysfunctional rump state that Ukraine becomes, but the Russians will go to great lengths to sow dissension within the alliance, and that includes in terms of transatlantic relations.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So you'll have this continuing security competition between Russia on one side and Ukraine and the West on the other, even when you get a frozen peace.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
or you get a frozen conflict.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And the potential for escalation there will be great.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So I think this is a disaster.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Three people in the room.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Well, I think if the United States is involved, the answer is definitely no.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
You have to get the Americans out.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And then I think if you have Zelensky and Putin talking, you have a sliver of a chance there.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The Americans are...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
a real problem.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Look, let's go back to what happens right after the war starts.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Okay.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
As I said before, this is, we're talking March, early April of 2022.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The war starts on February 24th, 2022.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And as I said to you, uh,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The two sides were negotiating in Istanbul, and they were also negotiating through Naftali Bennett.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And the Bennett track and the Turkish track were operating together.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I mean, they were not at cross purposes at all.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
What happened?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Bennett tells the story very clearly that they had made significant progress in
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
in reaching an agreement.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
This is Zelensky on one side and Putin on the other.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Bennett is talking in person to both Putin and Zelensky.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And what happens to produce failure?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The answer is the United States and Britain get involved and tell Zelensky to walk.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
They tell Zelensky to walk.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
If they had come in and encouraged Zelensky to try to figure out a way
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
with Putin to shut this one down and worked with Bennett and worked with Erdogan, we might have been able to shut the war down then.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But it was the United States.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Let me just embellish your argument, okay?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Thank you.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I need it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
If we say there's a sliver of a chance that you can do this, and I do think there is a sliver of a chance, let me just embellish your point.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Thank you.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I need all the help I can get.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Two things have to be done here, in my opinion.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
One is Ukraine has to become neutral.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And it has to completely sever all security ties with the West, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It's not like you can say we're not going to expand NATO to include Ukraine, but we're going to continue to have some loose security arrangement with Ukraine.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
None of that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It has to be completely severed.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Ukraine has to be on its own.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And number two, Ukraine has to accept the fact that the Russians are going to keep the four oblasts that they've now annexed and Crimea.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The Russians are not going to give them back.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And what you really want to do if you're Zelensky or who's ever running Ukraine in this scenario that we're positing is you want to make sure the Russians don't take another four oblasts to include Kharkiv and Odessa, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
If I'm playing Putin's hand and this war goes on, I'm thinking about taking four more oblasts.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I want to take about 43% of Ukraine and annex it to Russia, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And I certainly want Odessa.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And I certainly want Kharkiv.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And I want the two oblasts in between as well.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I want them literally.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I want to conquer them literally.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But my point to you is if we can begin to talk about cutting a deal now,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
you may be able to head that kind of aggression off at the pass.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
In other words, you may be able to limit Putin and Russia to annexing the four oblasts that they've now annexed plus Crimea.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
That's the best I think you can hope for.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But the point is you have to get the Ukrainians to accept that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
You have to get the Ukrainians to accept becoming a truly neutral state and conceding that the Russians keep a big chunk of territory.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It's about 23% of Ukrainian territory that they've annexed.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And I find it hard to imagine any Ukrainian leader agreeing to that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I think you could probably get away with that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I think that the tricky question there that you would have to answer is what about EU expansion, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And I think EU expansion is probably a no-no for the Russians because most people don't recognize this, but there is a military dimension, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
built into EU expansion.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It's not purely an economic alliance or relationship or institution, whatever word you want to use.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
There's a military dimension to that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And in the run-up to the war, actually in the run-up to the 2014 crisis when it first broke out, the Russians made it clear they saw EU expansion as a stalking horse for
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
for NATO expansion.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So EU expansion is tricky.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But I think your point of close economic relations between, or healthy economic relations, to use a better term, between Ukraine and the West is possible.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I think the Russians have a vested interest in, if it's a neutral Ukraine, they have a vested interest in that Ukraine flourishing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But that then brings us back to the territorial issue, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I think leadership matters here.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I mean, one of the real problems here is that there's no trust on the Russian side, and that has to do with the Minsk Agreements.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The Minsk Agreements, which were designed to shut down the civil war in eastern Ukraine, in the Donbass.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
really mattered to the Russians.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And there were four players involved in the Minsk process, four main players, Russia and Ukraine, of course, and then Germany and France.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And I believe the Russians took the Minsk Accords seriously.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I believe Putin took them very seriously.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
He wanted to shut down that conflict.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Angela Merkel, Francois Hollande, he was the French leader, and Poroshenko, who was the Ukrainian leader.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Those were the three key players besides Putin.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Again, Hollande from France, Merkel from Germany, and Poroshenko from Ukraine have all explicitly said
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
They were not seriously interested in reaching an agreement in all of the discussions with Putin.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
They were bamboozling him.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
They were trying to trick him so that they would buy time to build up Ukraine's military forces.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Putin is profoundly upset about these admissions by these three leaders.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
He believes he was fooled into thinking that Minsk could work.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
He believes that he negotiated in good faith and they did not.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And he believes that the level of trust now between Russia and the West is virtually zero as a result of this experience over Minsk.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I only bring this up because it cuts against your argument that leaders could pick up the phone and talk to each other and trust each other at least somewhat to work out a meaningful deal.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
If you're Putin, at this point in time, trusting the West is not an idea that's going to be very attractive at all.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
In fact, you're going to distrust anything they say.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Just remember they were doing that in March and the Americans came in and the British came in and they scotched a potential deal.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
When you're the leader of a country in an anarchic system, you have to be very careful not to let your trust in a foreign leader take you too far, because if that foreign leader betrays you or betrays your trust and stabs you in the back, you could die.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And again, you want to remember that the principal responsibility of any leader, I don't care what country it is, is to ensure the survival of their state.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And that means that trust is only going to buy you so much.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And when you've already betrayed
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
the trust of a leader, you really are not going to be able to rely on trust very much to help you moving forward.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Now, you disagree with that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I hope you're right.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And if they can shut down the Ukraine-Russia war, it would be wonderful.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
If I'm proved dead wrong, that would be wonderful news.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
My prediction that this war is going to go on for a long time and
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
A lot of people thought when they were having all that trouble, the Russians were having all that trouble with Prigozhin and the Wagner Group, that Putin was vulnerable and was likely to be overthrown.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And what would happen is a peace-loving leader would replace Putin.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I made two points at the time, and I would make those same two points now.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Number one, he's not likely to be overthrown.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
He was not likely then to be overthrown.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And I think, you know, as long as his health holds up, I think he will remain in power.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
My second point is if he doesn't remain in power and he's replaced, I would bet a lot of money that his replacement will be more hawkish and more hardline than Putin is.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I actually think one could argue that Putin was too trusting of the West before the war started.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And number two, I think one could argue that he has not waged the war against Ukraine as vigorously as one might have expected.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
He was slow to mobilize the nation for war.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And he has pursued a limited war in all sorts of ways.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The Israelis, for example, have killed more civilians in Gaza in one month than the Russians have killed over 18 months in Ukraine.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The idea that Vladimir Putin is waging a punishment campaign and killing on purpose large numbers of civilians is simply not true.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
All this is to say that I would imagine that if Putin leaves office and someone else comes in to replace him, that someone else will be at least, if not more hardline than him in terms of waging the war and certainly will not trust the West any more than he has.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Oh, I think if you get an interview with Vladimir Putin, there's just all sorts of questions you could ask him.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And my sense is that Putin is a straight shooter.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
He's also very knowledgeable about history, and he has simple theories in his head about how the world works.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And I think he would level with you, and all you would have to do is just, you know, figure out what all the right questions are.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And that would not be hard to do, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
You could ask him, why was he so foolish?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
For example, why was he so foolish as to trust Poroshenko, Hollande, and Merkel?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
In the Minsk Accords, you know, why, after his famous talk at Munich in 2007, where he made it clear that he was so unhappy with the West, did he continue to, you know, in a very important way, trust the West?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Why didn't he mobilize the Russian military before late September 2022?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
You know, once the negotiations that we were talking about before involving Istanbul and Naftali Bennett, once they broke down, you know, why didn't he immediately mobilize more of the Russian population to fight the war?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Just all sorts of questions like that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And then you could ask him questions about, you know, where he sees this one headed.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
What's the best strategy for Russia if...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The Ukrainians will not agree to neutrality, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
You know, people like John Mearsheimer say you'll probably take close to half of Ukraine.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Is that true?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Does it make sense to take Odessa?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Yeah.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I mean, one really important question that I would ask him is if the United States had basically not driven you into the arms of the Chinese, if there had been no war over Ukraine and the United States and its European allies had gone to considerable lengths to create some sort of security architecture in Europe that resulted in you
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Vladimir Putin having good relations with Ukraine.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
What would your relations with China be?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And, you know, how would you think about that?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So there are just plenty of questions you could ask him.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Well, you realize I have, from the beginning, argued for different policies that were all designed to prevent this war from ever happening.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I don't know if you know this, but in 1993, I argued that Ukraine should keep its nuclear weapons.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I was probably the only person in the West who made that argument.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And my argument in 1993, this is in foreign affairs, was that there may come the day when Russia thinks about invading Ukraine.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And should that day come, it would be very helpful for preventing war if Ukraine had nuclear weapons.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Well, if you're interested in deterring an adversary, if I'm worried about you coming after me, the best way to deter you is to have military might.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And if you're Russia and I'm Ukraine, I'm far weaker than you, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And having a nuclear deterrent would be very effective at convincing you not to attack me.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Because if you attack me, you're threatening my survival.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And that's the one circumstance where it is likely that
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
that I would use nuclear weapons to defend myself.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And given the consequences of nuclear use, you would be reluctant in the extreme to attack me.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So that's why I argued in 93 that if Ukraine kept its nuclear weapons, that made war down the road much less likely.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And I believe I was correct.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And in fact, Bill Clinton,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
who played the key role in forcing Ukraine to give up its nuclear weapons, now says, he has said it publicly, you can find it on YouTube, that he made a mistake doing that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Furthermore, I argued in 2014 that it made eminently good sense not to continue to push to bring Ukraine into NATO, because the end result is that Ukraine would be destroyed, and Ukraine is being destroyed.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So I was deeply interested at the time in making sure that that didn't happen for the good of the Ukrainians, not to mention because stability in Europe is a net positive for almost everybody involved.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But people did not listen to me then either.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
There's no question that the presence of nuclear weapons makes it much less likely, I'm choosing my words carefully here, much less likely that a great power would aggress against another great power.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It doesn't take that possibility off the table, but it makes it much less likely because of the reasons that you articulated.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But with regard to nuclear use,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It's an interesting question how you think about nuclear use in a mad world.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I mean, your point that we're in a mad world is, that's mad capital M-A-D as well as M-A-D, small letters.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But let's stick to the capital letters.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
We're in a world of mutual assured destruction.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
There's no question that in that world,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
it's unlikely that nuclear weapons would be used.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But the way you use nuclear weapons in that world is you use them for manipulation of risk purposes, demonstration effect.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
You put both sides out on the slippery slope.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Now, what exactly am I saying here?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Let me talk about NATO doctrine during the Cold War.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
We lived in a mad world.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
United States and Soviet Union, or the Warsaw Pact and NATO, both had an assured destruction capability, so you had mutual assured destruction.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
If the Warsaw Pact were to invade Western Europe, and here we're talking about West Germany,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
and NATO was losing the war, we said that we would use nuclear weapons.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
How would we use nuclear weapons given that we were in a mad world?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The argument was that we would use a handful of nuclear weapons against the Warsaw Pact, not necessarily against their military forces.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
could be in a remote area.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
We would use a small number of nuclear weapons to signal to the Soviets that we were deadly serious about putting an end to their offensive and that we were
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
throwing both sides out on the slippery slope to oblivion.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
In other words, we were manipulating risk.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And the last clear chance to avoid Armageddon rested with them.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And then we would tell them that if you retaliated with a handful of nuclear weapons and you didn't cease your offensive against West Germany, we would...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
launch another nuclear attack.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
We would explode a handful more of nuclear weapons, all for the purposes of showing you our resolve.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So this is the manipulation of risk strategy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And a lot of the language I just used in describing it to you is language that Thomas Schelling invented, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Now, fast forward to the present.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
If Russia were losing in Ukraine, that's the one scenario where I think where Russia would have used nuclear weapons.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And the question is, how would Russia have used nuclear weapons?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Again, we're assuming that the Russians are losing to the Ukrainians.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I believe they would have pursued a manipulation of risk strategy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
They would have used four or five, three or four, who knows, nuclear weapons.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Yes, exactly.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And basically, that would spook everybody.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Just the mushroom cloud.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Yeah.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It's because of the threat of escalation, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Again, your point is we're in a mad world.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I accept that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And if you have limited nuclear use, right, we understand hardly anything about nuclear escalation because thank goodness we've never had a nuclear war.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So once you throw both sides out on the slippery slope, even if you only use one nuclear weapon in your scenario, you don't know what the escalation dynamics look like.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So everybody has a powerful incentive to put an end to the conflict right away.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I might add to you that there were people who believed that we would not even initiate
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
manipulation of risk strategy in Europe if we were losing to the Warsaw Pact during the Cold War.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Both Henry Kissinger and Robert McNamara said after leaving
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
office that they would not have done it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
They would have not initiated nuclear use, even limited nuclear use.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
That's what we're talking about here.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
They would rather be red than dead, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
That was the argument.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Too risky.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Too risky.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
That's exactly right.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But if they had used one nuclear weapon in your story or three or four in my story, everybody would have said, oh my God, we've got to shut this one down immediately.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I only tell you this story or lay out this scenario as an answer to your question of how you use nuclear weapons in a mad world.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And this is the answer.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Let's just talk about this in the context of the Ukraine war.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
If the Russians were losing, as I said before, which is not the case anymore, but in 2022, it did look like that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
If the Russians are losing and they turn to nuclear weapons, the question is, how do they use them?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And they would use them in Ukraine.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And because Ukraine has no nuclear weapons of its own, Ukraine cannot retaliate.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It's not a mutual assured destruction world.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It's a case where one side has nuclear weapons and the other doesn't.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
That means that the Russians are likely to think that they can get away with using nuclear weapons in ways that would not be the case if they were attacking NATO.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And therefore, it makes nuclear use more likely.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
OK, that's point one.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Point two is let's assume that the Russians use two or three nuclear weapons in a remote area.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
My palms are sweating, by the way.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Just as a commentary.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It's terrifying.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Yeah.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The question then is what does the West do?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Now, Macron has said, and Biden has also, I think, implicitly made this clear, we would not retaliate with nuclear weapons if the Russians were to attack with a handful of nuclear weapons in Western Ukraine.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But then the question is, what would we do?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And if you listen to David Petraeus, what David Petraeus says is that we should attack the Russian naval assets—
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
in the Black Sea and attack Russian forces in Ukraine.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Well, once you do that, you have a great power war.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
You have NATO versus Russia, which is another way of saying you have the United States versus Russia.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
We're now in a great power war.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
They have nuclear weapons.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
We have nuclear weapons.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
They've used nuclear weapons.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
What is the happy ending here?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And just to take it a step further and go back to our earlier discussion about moving NATO up to Russia's borders, the point I made, which you surely agree with, is that the Russians are very fearful when they see NATO coming up to their border.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Well, here's a case where not only has NATO come up to their border, but they're in a war with NATO right on their border.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
What do the escalation dynamics look like there?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
You know what the answer is?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Who knows?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
That should scare the living bejesus out of you, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
You know, there's a story that during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy put out the word, no aircraft under any circumstances are to penetrate Soviet airspace.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And he then found out a few days later
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
that some guy hadn't gotten the message and had penetrated in an aircraft deep into Soviet airspace.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And this supports your basic point that, you know, bad things happen.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And again, the overarching point here is we've never done this before, thankfully.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Therefore, we don't have a lot of experience as to how it plays itself out.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Mm-hmm.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It's really a theoretical enterprise because there's no empirical basis for talking about escalation in a nuclear crisis.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And that, of course, is a wonderful thing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Well, I think the main reason was that you had this suffocating occupation.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I think as long as the occupation persists, the Palestinians are going to resist.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
As you well know, this is not the first time there has been a Palestinian uprising.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
There was the First Intifada, there was the Second Intifada, now there's October 7th, and there are uprisings besides those three.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So this is not terribly surprising.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
A lot of people hypothesized that this attack was due to the fact that the Israelis, the Saudis, and the Americans were working together to foster another Abraham Accord and that the Palestinians would in effect be sold down the river.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I think given the fact that this was in the planning stages for probably about two years and the Abraham Accords with regard to Saudi Arabia are relatively new phenomenon, I don't think that's new.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
the main driving force here.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I think the main driving force is that the Palestinians feel oppressed, as they should, and that this was a resistance move.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
They were resisting the Israeli occupation.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I mean, you had Operation Cast Lead in 2008, 2009.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It started, I think, right after Christmas 2008, and it ended right before President Obama took office in January 2009.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The Israelis periodically do what they call mowing the lawn, where they go into Gaza and they pound the Palestinians to remind them that they're not supposed to rise up and cause any problem.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So there's no question in my mind that the –
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The Hamas forces understood full well that the Israelis would retaliate, and they would retaliate in force, as they have done.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Uh, uh, I mean, the only way you're going to get peace here, uh, is if you have a two state solution.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Um,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
where the Palestinians have a sovereign state of their own and there is a sovereign Jewish state.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And these two states live side by side.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
American presidents since Jimmy Carter have understood this full well.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And this is why we have pushed very hard for two-state solution.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Indeed, many American Jews and many Israelis have pushed for a two-state solution because they think that that is the only way you're going to get –
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
between the two sides.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But what's happened here is that in recent years, the Israelis have lost all interest in a two-state solution.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And it's in large part because the political center of gravity in Israel has steadily moved to the right.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
When I was a young boy, the political center of gravity in Israel was much further to the left than it is today.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And it is in a position now, the political center of gravity, where there's hardly any support for two-state solution.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And Netanyahu and the rest of the people in his government were in favor or are in favor of a greater Israel.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
There's just no question about that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Well, on top of that, you now have had a war where, as you described—
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
huge numbers of civilians have been killed.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And you already had bad blood between the Palestinians and the Israelis before this conflict.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And you could imagine how people on each side now feel about people on the other side.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So even if you didn't have this opposition inside Israel to a two-state solution—
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
How could you possibly get the Israelis now to agree to a two-state solution?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I think for the foreseeable future, the animosity inside Israel towards the Palestinians is so great that it is impossible to move the Israelis in that direction.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And the Israelis here are the key players, more so than the Palestinians, because it's the Israelis who control greater Israel.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It's the Israelis who you have to convince.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Now, I want to be clear here.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
You also ultimately have to get around the fact that Hamas, right, is not committed to a two-state solution.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But I think that problem could be dealt with.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It's important to understand that Arafat and the PLO was once adamantly opposed to a two-state solution.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But Arafat came around to understand that that was really the only hope for settling this problem.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And he became a proponent of a two-state solution.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And that's true of Mahmoud Abbas, who runs the PA in the West Bank.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It's not true of Hamas at this point in time.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
They want a one-state solution.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
They want a Palestinian state.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And of course, the Israelis want a one-state solution too, which is a Jewish state that controls all of greater Israel.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So the question is, can you get
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
some sort of agreement.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And I think to get to the nub of your question, given what's just happened, it's almost impossible to imagine that happening anytime soon.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
No, I don't believe that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I mean, just to take the Netanyahu government or any Israeli government that maintains the occupation, what you want is you want a Palestinian population that submits to Israeli domination of greater Israel.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
You don't want resistance.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
You don't want an intifada.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
You don't want what happened on October 7th.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
In fact, I think one of the principal reasons that the Israelis are—
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
pounding Gaza and killing huge numbers of civilians, punishing the civilian population in ways that clearly violate the laws of war is because they want the Palestinians to understand that they are not allowed to rise up and resist the occupation.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
That's their goal.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So I think the Israelis would prefer that the Palestinians roll over and accept submission.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
In terms of
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
the people who live in Gaza to include the elites and the people who live in the West Bank to include the elites, they would much prefer to move to some sort of situation where the Palestinians have a state of their own.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I think in the case of the PA,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Under Abbas, they would accept a two-state solution.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I think what at this point in time Hamas wants is a one-state solution, but they want peace.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
All of them want peace.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
You know, the two different sets of leadership in Palestine and the Israelis.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So you think Hamas wants peace?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Sure, but on its own terms.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
That's the point.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
What does peace look like for Hamas?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
At this point in time, I think peace basically means a greater Israel controlled by Palestine or Palestinians.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I think at this point in time, that's their principal goal.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I do believe, and there have been hints over time, Jimmy Carter has said this, that Hamas can be convinced that a two-state solution, assuming that the Palestinians get a viable solution,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
state of their own, that Hamas would buy into that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Can we say that with a high degree of certainty?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
No.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But I think the Israelis should have pursued that possibility.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
They should have worked with Abbas.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
They should have worked with Hamas to do everything they can to facilitate a two-state solution, because I think ultimately that's in Israel's interest.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Now, the Israeli government and most Israelis at this point in time, I believe, don't agree with that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The question is...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
should they continue until they have finally defeated Hamas?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
There are all sorts of reports in the media, including in the Israeli media, that they're not going to be allowed by the United States to continue this offensive for much more than a few weeks.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The Israelis have been saying it's going to take, in the best of all possible worlds, a number of months, if not a year, to finish off Hamas.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Well, it doesn't look like they're going to have enough time to do that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I doubt whether they can finish off Hamas even if they're given the time.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I think they're going to run into fierce resistance.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And when they run into fierce resistance and large numbers of Israelis are going to start to die, they'll lose their appetite for this.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And they, the Israelis, surely know at this point in time that even if they finish off Hamas, even if I'm wrong and they're able to finish off Hamas, another group is going to rise up to resist the occupation.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The idea that you can use what Ziv Yabotinsky called the iron wall.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
To beat the Palestinians into submission is delusional.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It's just not going to happen.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The Palestinians want a state of their own.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
They don't want to live under occupation.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
There's no military solution for Israel here.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
There has to be a political solution.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And the only viable political solution is a two-state solution.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I mean, you can't go to democracy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
You can't go to a situation where you give the Palestinians equal rights inside of greater Israel, in large part because there are now...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
as many Palestinians as there are Israeli Jews.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And over time, the balance, the demographic balance, shifts against the Israeli Jews and in favor of the Palestinians, in which case you'll end up with a Palestinian state in greater Israel.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So, you know, democracy for all doesn't work.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The Israelis, I believe, are quite interested in ethnic cleansing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I think they saw this...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
This recent set of events is an opportunity to cleanse Gaza, but that's not going to happen.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The Jordanians and the Egyptians have made it clear that that's not happening.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The United States has now made it clear that that's not happening.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And the Palestinians will not leave.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
They'll die in place.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So ethnic cleansing doesn't work.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So you're really left with two alternatives, a two-state solution or a greater Israel that is effectively an apartheid state.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I mean, that's what the occupation has led to.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And all sorts of people have been predicting this for a long, long time.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And you've now reached the point, you know, here in the United States, if you say that Israel is an apartheid state, that's going to get you into all sorts of trouble.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But the fact is that Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and B'Tselem, which is the leading Israeli human rights group, all three of those institutions or organizations have issued
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
detailed reports making the case that Israel is an apartheid state.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Furthermore, if you read the Israeli media, right, all sorts of Israelis, including Israeli leaders,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
refer to Israel as an apartheid state.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It's not that unusual to hear that term used in Israel.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
This is disastrous for Israel, in my opinion.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And Steve Walton and I said this, by the way, when we wrote the Israel lobby, that Israel is an apartheid state, which is equivalent to Israel as an occupier, is not good for Israel.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And that brings us back to the two-state solution.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But as you and I were talking about a few minutes ago, it's hard to see how you get a two-state solution.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And the end result of this conversation is utter despair.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Well, that plus the fact that the Israeli government is filled with people who have no interest in a two-state solution.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
They're ideologically deeply committed to a greater Israel.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
They want all the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea to be a
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
part of a jewish state they're just ideologically committed to that and uh and of course as we were talking about before with regard to hamas hamas wants everything between the river and the sea to be a palestinian state and you know when you have two sides with those kinds of views right um
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
you're in deep trouble because there's little room for compromise.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So what you have to do to get this to work is you have to convince the Israelis that it's in their interest to have a two-state solution.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And you've already taken care of the PA on this front, the Palestinian Authority, but you've got to convince Hamas
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
that its maximalist goals are not going to work, and it's in its interest to follow in the footsteps of Arafat and accept a two-state solution.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But even if you do that at this point, let's say that there's a lot of willingness intellectually on both sides to do that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The problem is that the hatred that has been fueled by this recent coup
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
This ongoing conflict is so great that it's just hard to imagine how you can make a two-state solution work at this juncture.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
That's why I've sort of taken to saying, and I hope I'm wrong here, that on the two-state solution, that boat has sailed.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It's no longer possible.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Not probably.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Clearly the most controversial book I ever wrote.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Well, the argument that Steve Walt and I made, actually we wrote an article first and, uh, which appeared in the London review of books.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Uh, and then we wrote the book itself.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Uh, our argument is that the lobby is a loose coalition of, uh, individuals and organizations, uh, that push American policy in a pro Israel direction.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Uh,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And basically, the lobby is interested in getting Israel – excuse me, getting the United States – and here we're talking mainly about the American government – to support Israel no matter what Israel does.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And our argument is that if you look at the relationship between the United States and Israel, it's unprecedented in modern history.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
This is the closest relationship that you can find between any two countries in recorded history.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It's truly amazing the extent to which Israel and the United States are joined at the hip.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And we support Israel no matter what, almost all the time.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And our argument is that that is largely due to the influence of the lobby.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The lobby is an extremely powerful interest group.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Now, it's very important to understand that the American political system is set up in ways that allow interest groups of all sorts to wield great influence.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So in the United States, you have an interest group or a lobby like the National Rifle Association that makes it well nigh impossible to get gun control, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And so with the Israel lobby, you have this group of individuals and organizations that wield enormous influence on U.S.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
policy toward the Middle East.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And this is...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
not surprising given the nature of the American political system.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So our argument is that the lobby is not doing anything that's illegal or illicit or immoral or unethical.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It's just a good old-fashioned American interest group, and it just happens to be extremely powerful.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And our argument is that this is not good for the United States because no two countries have the same interests all the time.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And when our interests conflict with Israel's interests, we should be able to do what we think is in our national interest, in America's national interest.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But the lobby tends to conflate America's national interests with Israel's national interests and wants the United States to support Israel no matter what.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
We also argue, and I cannot emphasize this enough given what's going on in the world today, that the lobby's effects, the lobby has not been pushing policies that are in Israel's interest.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So our argument is that the lobby, right, the lobby pushes policies that are not in America's interest or not in Israel's interest.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Now, you're saying to yourself, what exactly does he mean by that?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
What every president since Jimmy Carter has tried to do, as I said before, is to foster a two-state solution, to push Israel, which is the dominant player
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
In greater Israel.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Push Israel to accept the two-state solution.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And we have run into huge resistance from the lobby whenever we tried to—let's be blunt about it—coerce Israel, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
In a perfect world where there was no lobby and—
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
An American president was free to put pressure on Israel, to coerce Israel.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I believe we would have gone a long way towards getting two-state solution.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And I believe this would have been in Israel's interest.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But we couldn't get a two-state solution because it was almost impossible to put meaningful pressure on Israel because of the lobby.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So this was not in Israel's interest and it was not in America's interest.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And that was the argument that we made.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And we, of course, got huge pushback for making that argument.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Well, first of all, I think you have to distinguish between Jews and Christians.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
You want to remember that there are a huge number of Christian Zionists who are deeply committed to Israel no matter what, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And then there are a large number of Jews.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The Jews are obviously the most important of those two groups in the Israel lobby.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But, you know, one of the arguments that we made in the book is,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
is that you should not call it the Jewish lobby because it's not populated just by Jews.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And Christian Zionists are an important part of that lobby.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But furthermore, there are a good number of Jews who are opposed to the lobby and the policies that the lobby purveys.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And they're
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
a number of Jews who are prominent anti-Zionists, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And they're obviously not in the lobby.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Or if you take a group like Jewish Voice for Peace, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Jewish Voice for Peace is not in the lobby.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So it's wrong to call it a Jewish lobby.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But with regard to
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
the American Jews who were in that lobby, I think that really this is all about nationalism.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It's not so much religion.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Many of those Jews who are influential in the lobby are not religious in any meaningful sense of that term, but they self-identify as Jewish in the sense that they feel they're part of a Jewish nation.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And that in addition to being an American, right, they are part of this tribe, this nation called Jews, and that they have a responsibility to push the United States in ways that support the Jewish state.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So I think that's what drives most, if not almost, all the Jews.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
This is not to say there's not a religious dimension for some of them, but I think that the main connection is much more tribal in nature.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Look, you can define anti-Semitism
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
any way you want, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And you can define antisemitism to incorporate anti-Zionism.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And I think we have reached the point where antisemitism
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
is identified today, not just with anti-Zionism, but with criticism of Israel.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
If you criticize Israel, people will say, some people will say, you're an anti-Semite.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And if that's your definition of anti-Semitism, it's taken an important term and stretched it to the point where it's meaningless, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So when Steve and I wrote the book,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
wrote the article and then wrote the book, all sorts of people said that we were anti-Semites.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
This is a ludicrous charge.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But what they meant was you're criticizing the lobby, you're criticizing Israel, and therefore you're an anti-Semite.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
OK, if that's what an anti-Semite is, somebody who criticizes Israel, you know, probably half the Jewish community, if not more in the United States, is anti-Semitic.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And, of course, you get into all these crazy games where people are calling Jews self-hating Jews and anti-Semites because they're critical of Israel.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But even people who are anti-Zionist, I don't think they're anti-Semitic at all.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
You can argue they're misguided.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
That's fine.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But many of these people are Jewish and proud of the fact that they're Jewish.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
They just don't believe that nationalism and Jewish nationalism is a force that should be applauded.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And you want to understand that in the American context, there is a rich tradition of anti-Zionism, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And these were not people who were anti-Semites, if you go back to the 30s, 40s, 50s.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And the same thing was even true in Europe.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
There were all sorts of European Jews who were opposed to Zionism.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Were they anti-Semites?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I don't think so.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But we've gotten to the point now where people are so interested in stopping any criticism of Israel that they wield this weapon of criticism.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
calling people anti-Semites so loosely that the term has kind of lost meaning.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So I think Netanyahu is wrongheaded to equate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Well, I think until there is a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there's no hope of putting an end to this nonsense.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
No, it's the silence people.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It's very important to understand that one of the lobby's principal goals is to make sure we don't have an open discourse, a freewheeling discourse about Israel.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Because they understand, people in the lobby understand that if you have an open discourse, Israel will end up looking very bad, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
You don't want to talk about the occupation.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
You don't want to talk about how Israel was created, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
All these subjects are ones that will cause problems for Israel.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
See, just to go to the present crisis, okay?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
When you have a disaster,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And what happened on October 7th is a disaster.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
One of the first things that happens is that people begin to ask the question, how did this happen?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
What's the root cause of this problem?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
This is a disaster.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
We have to understand what caused it so that we can work to make sure it doesn't happen again.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So we can work to shut it down and then make sure it doesn't happen again.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But once you start talking about the root causes, you end up talking about how Israel was created, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And that means telling a story that is not pretty about how the Zionists conquered Palestine.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And number two, it means talking about the occupation, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It's not like...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Hamas attacked on October 7th because there were just a bunch of anti-Semites who hated Jews and wanted to kill Jews.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
This is not, you know, Nazi Germany, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
This is directly related to the occupation and to what was going on inside of Gaza.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It's not in Israel's interest or the lobby's interest to have an open discourse about what the Israelis have been doing to the Palestinians since, I would say, roughly 1903 when the second Aliyah came to Israel or came to what was then Palestine, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
We want to talk about that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And we don't want to talk about, from the lobby's point of view, the influence that the lobby has, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It's better from the lobby's point of view if most Americans think that American support of Israel is just done for all the right moral and strategic reasons, not because of the lobby.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And when John Mearsheimer and Steve Walt come along and say, you have to understand that this special relationship is due in large part to the lobby's influence, that is not an argument that people in the lobby want to hear.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So the point is you have to go to great lengths for all these reasons.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
You have to go to great lengths to silence people like me and Steve Walt.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And one of the ways to do that is to call us anti-Semites.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I think the chapter or the section of the book where we talk about this charge of anti-Semitism is called The Great Silencer.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
That's what we call the charge of anti-Semitism, The Great Silencer.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Who wants to be called an anti-Semite?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
especially in the wake of the Holocaust.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Do I want to be called an anti-Semite?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Oh, my God, no.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And so it's very effective.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But, you know, it is important to talk about these issues, in my humble opinion.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And I think if we had talked about these issues way back when, it would have gone a long way towards –
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
you know, maybe getting a two-state solution, which I think was the best alternative here.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Yeah.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
We obviously, when we wrote the article, which we did before the book, gave the subject a great deal of thought.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I mean, what you say just now is music to our ears.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I'm talking about me and Steve.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I mean, I think that your point about dog whistles is correct.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
look, we went to great lengths to make it clear that this is not a cabal.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It's not a conspiracy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And in fact, in a very important way, the lobby operates out in the open, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Uh,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
they brag about their power, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And this was true before we wrote the article, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And we said in the article and the book, and you heard me say it here, first of all, it's not a Jewish lobby, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Secondly, it's not a cabal, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It's an American interest group.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I mean, you hit the nail right on the head.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
That's exactly right.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And there was nothing that we said that was anti-Semitic by any reasonable definition of that term.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And huge numbers of Jews have known me and Steve over the years, and nobody ever, ever said that we were anti-Semitic before March 2006 when the article appeared, because we're not anti-Semitic.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But look, you've got this interest group.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
right, that has a significant influence on American policy and on Israeli policy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And you want to talk about it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It's just important to talk about it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It's important for Jews, right, in the United States, for Jews in Israel to talk about this.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The idea that you want to silence critics is not a smart way to go about doing business, in my opinion.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
If we were wrong, if Steve and I were so wrong and our arguments were so foul, they could have easily exposed those arguments.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
They could have gone...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
into combat with us in terms of the marketplace of ideas and easily knocked us down.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The problem was that our arguments were quite powerful.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And instead of engaging us and defeating our arguments, they wanted to silence us.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And this is not good, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It's not good for Israel.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It's not good for the United States.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And I would argue in the end, if anything, it's going to foster anti-Semitism.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I think you don't want to run around telling people that they can't talk about Israel without being called an anti-Semite.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It's just not healthy in terms of the issue that you're raising, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But I still agree with you that it is a tricky issue.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I don't want to make light of that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
You know, I know that there's this piece of literature out there called The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And I fully understand that if you're not careful, you can come close to writing Volume 2, The Protocols.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But I don't believe that we wrote anything that was even close to that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And again, I think that a healthy debate on the issues that we were raising would have been not only in America's interest, but it would have been in Israel's interest.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Well, just to make a general point on this issue, in our conversation here today, you often talk about individual leaders and leaders.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
the word individual often pops up in your vocabulary.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I believe that we are ultimately social animals before we are individuals.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I believe we're born into tribes, we're heavily socialized, and that we carve out space for our individualism.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But we are part of tribes, or social groups, or nations, call them what you want, ethnic groups.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
religious groups.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But the fact is that these tribes often crash into each other.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And when they crash into each other, they end up hating each other.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
If you go to a place like Bosnia, right, the Croats and the Serbs, oh my God, and then throw in the Bosniaks or
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
which is the term for Bosnian Muslims.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And, you know, Muslims, Croats, Serbs.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Oh, and the tribes, you know, hate each other.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And in a funny way, that hatred almost never goes away.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And I guess there are some exceptions to that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
If you look at the Germans after World War II, they've gone a long way towards hatred.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
reducing, I wouldn't want to say completely eliminating, but reducing a lot of the hatred that existed between Germans and their neighbors.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But that's really kind of an anomalous case.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I mean, you go around East Asia today and the hatred of Japan in a place like China, the hatred of Japan in a place like Korea, just not to be underestimated.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And so, but I think a lot of it just has to do with the fact that you're dealing with social groups that have crashed into each other at one point or another.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And there are those lingering effects.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And by the way, this gets back to our discussion a few minutes ago about trying to get a two-state solution between the Palestinians and the Israeli Jews now that you have had this horrible war, which is ongoing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
is it possible that you could have another genocide yes and i would argue that what you had in rwanda was a genocide right the holocaust is not the only genocide i believe the word genocide is used too loosely today uh and as you know lots of people
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And I mean lots of people who are pro-Palestinian accuse the Israelis of engaging in genocide in Gaza.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I think what the Israelis are doing in Gaza represents a massacre.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I would use that term given the number of civilians that they've killed and the fact that they've been indiscriminate in terms of how they've been bombing Gaza.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But I would not use the word genocide there.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
For me, a genocide is where one side attempts to eliminate another group from the planet.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I think that what happened with the Holocaust was clearly a genocide and that the Germans were bent on destroying all of European Jewry.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And if they could have gotten their hands on
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Jews outside of Europe, they would have murdered them as well.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
That's a genocide.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And I think with the Hutus and the Tutsis, you had a similar situation.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I think with the Turks and the Armenians during World War I, that was a genocide.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But I have a rather narrow definition of what a genocide is, and I don't think there are many cases that qualify as a genocide.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The Holocaust certainly does, okay?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Now,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
What Hamas did doesn't even come close to what happened to European Jewry between, let's say, 1939 and 1945, although I'd date the start of the Holocaust to 1941 if we were looking at it closely.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But let's just say 1939 when they invade Poland, from 1939 to 1945.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
What Amos did pales in comparison.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It's hard to believe anybody would make that argument, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Yes, a lot of Jews died, but hardly alive.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Hardly any compared to the number that died, you know, at the hands of the Germans.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I mean, just no parallel at all.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And furthermore, Hamas was in no position to kill all of the Jews in the Middle East.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Just not going to happen.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Yes, but you don't see that with—I mean, that's not what Hamas is doing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I mean, I want to be very clear here.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I am not justifying Hamas's killing of civilians, okay?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Not for one second.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But I'm just saying—and by the way, just to go to the Israelis—
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And what they're doing in Gaza, right, as I said to you before, I do believe that is a massacre.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And I believe that's to be condemned, the killing of civilians.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
This is not legitimate collateral damage.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
They're directly punishing the population.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But I would not call that a genocide, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And I would not compare that to the Holocaust for one second.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I just want to be very clear on that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
No, they're purposely killing civilians.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
This is the iron wall.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
They're trying to beat the Palestinians in a submission, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
There's no way you kill this many civilians if you're trying to precisely take out Hamas fighters.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And by the way, the Israeli spokesman, the IDF spokesman, has explicitly said that we are not pursuing precision bombing and that what we are doing is trying to, you know, maximize the amount of destruction and damage that we can inflict on the Palestinians.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I think this is a major mistake on the part of Israel.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
First of all, it ends up being a moral stain on your reputation, number one.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And number two, it doesn't work.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It doesn't work.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The Palestinians are not going to roll over and submit to Israeli domination of their life.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The whole concept of the Iron Wall, Jabotinsky's term, was misguided.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And by the way, if you look at what the Israelis are doing, they're trying to do two things.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
One is the iron wall, and that's where you punish the civilian population in Gaza and get them to submit.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The other thing that they're trying to do is get Hamas.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
They want to destroy Hamas.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And the belief there is that if they destroy Hamas, they've solved the problem.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But as many Israelis know, including people on the hard right, even if you destroy Hamas,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
They are going to be replaced by another group, another resistance group, and that resistance group will employ terror.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Osama bin Laden made it clear that this was one of the principal reasons for attacking the United States, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
No, I think if you look at how we reacted to 9-11...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And how the Israelis are reacting to what happened on October 7th, there's quite a bit of similarity in that both sides, the Israeli side and the American side, are enraged, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And they lash out and they go on a rampage.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And the end result is not good.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Well, I don't think in either case you're going to turn the other cheek.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
From my offensive realist perspective or my realist perspective, that's what you should do, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Okay.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
My view is states are rational actors.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
They should be cunning, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
They should think about the strategic situation they're in and choose the appropriate response.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And what happens, and this is why my theory is not always correct, is that sometimes states are not rational and they misbehave, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I would argue in the Israeli case that it would have been good after October 7th, or starting on October 7th, if the United States had
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
tried to hold the Israelis back and countenanced a more moderate response, to take some time just to think about how to deal with this problem instead of lashing out.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I think
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Given what happened to the Israelis, given how shocked they were, given the level of fear, given the level of rage, they were going to lash out.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And I don't believe that was in their interest.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I think it would have made sense to think about it and to think about a smarter strategy than they're now employing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And I think, you know, the Americans blew it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The Americans gave him a bear hug and a green light and said, we'll give you all the weaponry you need and go out and do it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And I don't think that was the smart thing to do.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Look, in the wake of October 7th, the Israelis had no good strategy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It's not like there's a magic formula that they just didn't see, and we should have told them what the magic formula was.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
That's not true.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
They were, in a sense, caught between a rock and a hard place in terms of what to do.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But there are smarter things and dumber things, and I think the Israelis—
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
lashed out in ways that are counterproductive.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I think, you know, going on a rampage and, you know, killing huge numbers of civilians is not, it's obviously morally wrong, but it's also just not in their strategic interest, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I mean, because it's not going to buy them anything.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And in fact, it's going to cost them because people all over the planet are turning against Israel.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I saw an Israeli think tank today that has been tracking protests around the world, gave some figures for what it looked like between October 7th and October 13th in terms of the number of
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
protests around the world that were pro-Israel versus pro-Palestine.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And then it looked at the numbers from October 13th up to the present.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And I think the numbers were 69% were pro-Palestinian in the first six days after October 7th, 69%.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And I think 31%, take these numbers with a grain of salt, 31% were pro-Israel.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So I think it was 69% and 31%.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And since then, since October 13th, if you look at the number of protests around the world, 95% have been pro-Palestinian and 5% have been pro-Israel.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And what this tells you is that public opinion around the world has shifted against Israel.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And if you look at some of the demonstrations in places like London and Washington, D.C., it's truly amazing the number of people who are coming out in support of the Palestinians.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And all of this, again, is just to support my point that it was just not smart for Israel to launch this bombing campaign.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Right.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
You can make an argument for going after Hamas and doing it in a surgical way or a surgical way as possible.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But that's not what they did.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And again, my point to you is I think that this punishment campaign is not going to work strategically.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
In other words, they're not going to beat the Palestinians into submission.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
They're not going to finish off Hamas.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And at the same time, by pursuing this strategy, they're doing huge damage to their economy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
reputation around the world.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I think what you're missing here, just in the Israeli case, is that the Israeli government is not interested in a two-state solution.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And you want to remember that Benjamin Netanyahu, who looks very hawkish when you look at him in isolation, doesn't look so hawkish when you look at him compared to the rest of the people in his cabinet, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
He almost looks like a moderate.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
He's got a lot of people who are way out to the right of him.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And these people—and this, of course, includes Netanyahu—are not interested in a two-state solution.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So the question you have to ask yourself is, if you're Benjamin Netanyahu and it's July 7th, late in the—excuse me, October 7th, late in the day—
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
What do you do?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
You're not thinking about a two-state solution.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
You're thinking about an occupation that's not going to end.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And the question is, how do you deal with the Palestinians, given what's just happened?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Well, it was there.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Was he the person who was going to take advantage of it?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I don't think so.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Yeah, I think just on Ukraine, we should not have pushed Ukraine to join NATO.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Sure.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And once the war started, we should have worked overtime to shut it down immediately.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
March, yeah.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
March, right.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And you remember, by the way, not to go back to Ukraine in great detail –
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
In the fall, early fall of 2022, the war starts February 2022, there's March 2022, which we've talked about, which is the negotiations.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
In the fall of 2022, I think it was in September,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And the Ukrainians had won two major tactical victories, one in Kherson and the other in Kharkiv.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And at that point in time, General Milley, who was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said, now is the time to negotiate because this is the high watermark.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
for the Ukrainians.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Milley understood that things were only going to get worse.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And the White House shut Milley down and said, we're not negotiating.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So we have blown a number of opportunities here to head this problem off at the pass.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But that's my view there.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And with regard to the Israelis, my only point about Israel is that it would be better for Israel and better for the United States if we, the United States, was in a position, the United States was in a position to put pressure on Israel from time to time.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
As Steve and I say in the book, we should be able to treat Israel like a normal country.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The fact is that countries sometimes do stupid things.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
This includes the United States and Israel.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And if Israel is pursuing a policy that we think is unwise, we should be in a position where we could put pressure on Israel.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
That's our argument.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But anyway...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
We goofed both with regard to Ukraine and with regard to the Middle East, and we're now up to our eyeballs in alligators in both of those regions.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And as you described my view,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
This is not good because the area of the most strategic importance for the United States today is East Asia, and that's because China is there, and China is the most serious threat the United States faces.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I don't know.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
My argument is there will be, there is right now, a serious security competition.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And at the same time, there is a real possibility of war.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Whether or not we avoid it is very hard to say.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I mean, we did during the Cold War.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
We had a serious security competition from roughly 1947 to 1989.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And we thankfully avoided war.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Probably came the closest in 1962 with the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But we avoided it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And I think we can avoid it here.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Is it for sure?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Well, it's because there's this body of water called the Taiwan Strait, which is a big body of water.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And getting across water is very difficult, unless you can walk on water.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So geography still has a role to play in the 21st century?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Oh, yeah.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I think geography is very important.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Big bodies of water really matter.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
In an ideal world, you'd like to have the Pacific Ocean between you and any potential adversary, you know, 6,000 miles.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
6,000 miles of water, hard to get across.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
If you're a country and I'm a country and there's land between us, I can take my Panzer divisions and I can go right across the land and get into your country or attack your country.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And you, of course, can take your Panzer divisions and come across that same piece of land.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But if there's a big body of water between us, your Panzer divisions can't go across the water.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And then the question is, how do you get them across the water?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And that's very tricky.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And in a world where you have lots of submarines and you have lots of aircraft and you have missiles that are land-based that can hit those surface ships, it is very, very hard to attack across a body of water.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And all you have to do is think about...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
You know, the American invasion of Normandy, June 6th, 1944, coming in on Omaha Beach, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
That is correct.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
There's no question it's a top priority for them, and there's no question they mean it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
but it's also a top priority for us not to let them take Taiwan.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Why exactly?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Because it's an important strategic asset.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Many people will say it's because Taiwan's a democracy, but that doesn't matter that much.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It's because of two strategic reasons.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The first is that if we were to let Taiwan go,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It would have hugely negative consequences for our alliance structure in East Asia.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
To contain China, we need allies.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
We have an alliance structure.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And our allies, Japanese, South Koreans, Filipinos, Australians, they're all counting on us to be there for them.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And if we say we're not going to defend Taiwan, the Chinese attack, they're going to say, I bet if the Chinese attack us, the Americans won't be there for us.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So it would have...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
a damaging effect on our alliance structure, which we cannot afford.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Because containing China is a wicked problem.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It's a powerful state.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
You were getting to this before when you talked about China versus Taiwan.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So that's the first reason.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Second reason is you want to bottle up the Chinese Navy and the Chinese Air Force inside the first island chain.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
You don't want to let them get out.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
into the Pacific.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
You don't want them dominating the waters of East Asia.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
You want to bottle them up again inside the first island chain.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And you can only do that if you control Taiwan.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
If you don't control Taiwan, they get out into the Philippine Sea, into the Pacific and the Western Pacific and cause all sorts of problems.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Absolutely.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Well, what you want to do is you want to make sure that you deter...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
China from invading Taiwan.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
You want to avoid a war.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
You and I are in complete agreement on that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
We don't want a war, but we want to contain China.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
We do not want to let China dominate Asia.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
That's what the Americans are principally concerned with here.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And it's what China's neighbors are principally concerned with.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
This includes the Japanese, the South Koreans, the Filipinos.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Australians and the Taiwanese.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
They don't want and we don't want China to dominate the region.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So we have to contain it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But at the same time, and this should be music to your ears, we not only want to contain it, we want to make sure we don't end up in a shooting match with the Chinese because this could be disastrous.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So you have to have a very smart policy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
You have to build powerful military forces and you have to make sure you don't do anything that's provocative.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
On Taiwan, for example, the last thing you want is for the Taiwanese government to declare its independence.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Yes.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Because the Chinese have said, if Taiwan does that, we'll go to war.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And of course, we don't want that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So my view is you want to smartly build up your military forces and you want to do everything you can to contain China and at the same time not be provocative.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It's an interesting question.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
A lot of people think that to make deterrence work, right, you have to be able to beat the Chinese, and therefore you need a much bigger military.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And I don't think over time that's possible, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I think it's probably not even possible now to beat the Chinese in a war over Taiwan or in a war in the South China Sea.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I think what you want to do is make it clear to the Chinese either that there will be no winner.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
In other words, you don't have to win, but you want to make sure they don't win.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Okay, it's a lose-lose proposition if they go to war over Taiwan or what have you.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And if you can't do that, right, you think that they're so powerful that they're ultimately going to win, you want to convince them that victory would be a pyrrhic victory.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
In other words, they would pay a god-awful price to win the war.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
You follow what I'm saying?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So, excuse me, the best strategy for deterrence is you win.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Mm-hmm.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
China loses.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Second best strategy is a stalemate.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Nobody wins.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Third best strategy is they win, but they pay a godawful price.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And the fourth possibility, which you don't want, is they win quickly and decisively, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
If that's the case, then you don't have much deterrence.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Well, I don't tend to think of the world in terms of good guys and bad guys.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
As a good realist, I think that states are states.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
They're all black boxes.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I don't discriminate between democracies and autocracies.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But having said that, I am an American.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And as an American, I'm interested in the security of my country, the survival of my country.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So I want the United States to be the most powerful state in the world.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
which means I want the United States to dominate the Western Hemisphere.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I want us to be a regional hegemon, and I want to make sure that China does not dominate Asia the way we dominate the Western Hemisphere.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It's not because I think we're the good guys and they're the bad guys.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
If I were Chinese and I were in Beijing and I was Xi Jinping's national security advisor, I'd tell him what we got to do is make sure we dominate the world or dominate our region and then do everything we can to undermine America's position in the Western Hemisphere, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
That'd be my view.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So I guess you could say I do view the world in terms of good guys and bad guys because I'm an American.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
More like us and them.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Yeah, it's us and them.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
That's a nice way to put it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Yeah, it's us versus them.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Not so much good guys versus bad guys.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Okay, so you're hypothesizing a world where they dominate Asia.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And we dominate the Western Hemisphere.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Yeah.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I believe there would be a great deal of security competition, intense security competition between those two superpowers.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Well, conflict, let's use the word war.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So I distinguish between security competition and war.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And what I'm telling you is you'll have an intense security competition where there's no shooting.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Where if there's shooting, it's mainly proxies that are doing the fighting.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Much like the Vietnam War, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Or you could have a case where one of those superpowers
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
was involved in a war against a proxy of the other superpower.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Korean War, think the Korean War.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The United States fought the Chinese who were allied with the Soviets at the time.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But a war between the United States and China, just like a war between the United States
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
and the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
That's what you really want to avoid.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So I think you'd have an intense security competition, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
You'd have wars involving proxies of each of those two superpowers, and you would probably have some wars where one of the superpowers was involved in a proxy
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
with one of the other superpowers' proxies.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Yeah, well, that would assume the United States.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But you want to remember, you're hypothesizing a situation where China dominates Asia.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Yeah, it's already dominated Taiwan.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Where do you find the proxies?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Australia?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Well, the Middle East could be a good case.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I think in this scenario, if you're talking about a US-China competition-
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And you're talking about the Middle East.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I think it's the Gulf.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It's the Saudis, the Iranians, the Iraqis.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It's the oil.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I think that's possible, yeah.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I think that's possible, yeah.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I mean, I hadn't thought about it until you said it, but yeah, I think that that is possible.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Isn't that terrifying?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Yeah, well, in your scenario, where China already dominates Asia and we dominate the Western Hemisphere, I think you start talking about where the most likely places that the United States and China go head-to-head or fight through proxies.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I think it is the Gulf or the Middle East and the scenario that you posit.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It's an interesting question.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I mean, it is sort of an abstract theoretical level.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
My argument is that great powers act according to realist dictates and they understand those realist dictates and that could lead to cooperation or it can lead to war.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It depends.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I would say just in the case of the Soviets, a lot of people describe the
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Cold War as an ideological competition above all else.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It was communism versus liberal democracy or communism versus liberal capitalism, whatever.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I actually don't believe that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I believe the Soviets were realist to the core.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I believe Stalin was a realist par excellence.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
and that ideology did not matter much in Stalin's foreign policy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And I believe if you look at Soviet foreign policy after World War II, you know, throughout the Cold War, they were realist to the core.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And I think in those days, the Americans were realists, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
A lot of liberal ideology floating around out there, but the Americans were realists.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And I think one of the reasons you avoided
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
A shooting match between the United States and the Soviet Union from 1947 to 1989 was because both sides, I think, understood basic balance of power logic.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
U.S.-China competition is somewhat different.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
First of all, the Chinese are realists to the core.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I've spent a lot of time in China.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I basically have rock and roll.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I'm basically a rock and roll star in China.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The Chinese... You're kind of a big deal in China.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I love it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The Chinese are my kind of people.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
They're realists, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
They speak my language.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It's the United States that is not very realist.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
American leaders have a very powerful liberal bent and tend not to see the world in realist terms.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I believe, by the way, just going back to our discussion of NATO expansion, I think our inability to understand that NATO expansion was
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
was anathema to the Russians was due in large part to the fact that we just, during the unipolar moment, didn't think of international politics from a realist perspective and didn't respect anyone who thought about international politics from a realist perspective.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
If...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Those various American administrations, starting with the Clinton administration, had put their realist hat on.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
They would have understood that NATO expansion into Ukraine was not a good idea.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But we had this thoroughly liberal view of the world that dominated our thinking.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And it's gone away somewhat since we've moved into multipolarity, but not completely.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And this makes me a little nervous, right, to pick up on your point.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I mean, the United States is thinking about the world in ways that are somewhat different than the Chinese, who are real as par excellence.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Yeah, I actually think that's right.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I think if the United States, just let me talk a little bit about the United States to get at the issue you're raising.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
If the United States pursues a smart containment strategy, given what you just said and I said about the Chinese, I think we will avoid war.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The problem with the Americans is it's not just the liberalism.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It's the possibility that we will pursue a rollback policy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
In other words, during the Cold War, we pursued containment.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It was whenever anybody talked about American grand strategy towards the Soviet Union, it was containment, containment, containment.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
We now know from the historical record that the United States was not only pursuing containment, it was pursuing rollback.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
We were trying to roll back Soviet power.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
To put it bluntly, we were trying to wreck the Soviet Union.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And I would not be surprised moving forward with regard to China if the United States pursues a serious rollback policy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Because they may be a threat to us.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Yeah.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Well, I mean... Look, you don't respect the power of other nations.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
You fear the power of other nations.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Well, yes and no.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Look, your point is you want to empathize.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
You want to be able to put yourself in the shoes of the other side.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I agree 100% with that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It's very important if you're a first-class strategist to be able to do that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But at the same time, there is this competition for power taking place.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And what you want to do is maximize how much power you have relative to the other side.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And the other side wants to maximize how much power it has relative to you.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So you have this competition for power, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
that's taking place all the time.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And that's taking place at the same time you want to have empathy or you want to be able to put yourself in the shoes of the other side.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So those two things kind of go together, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Right, but if you build up your own power, you are building up your capability to hurt the other side.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Well, that I agree with.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I think that, you know...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The United States wants to make sure it has a big stick in East Asia for purposes of containing China and avoiding a war.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Again, I want to be clear.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I'm not advocating that we start World War III.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But the point is you want to have a big stick.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And you want to make sure that you don't overstep your bounds in terms of using that big stick.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
This is the danger with rollback.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Yeah.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Right.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
That you get too aggressive and you precipitate a war.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Right.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And you also just have to be very careful what you say.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And to go back to your favorite argument, you want to be able to have empathy or put yourself in the shoes of the other side.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Because if you do something, you want to think smartly about what that other side, how that other side is going to see your action and how they're going to react.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Well, occasionally you have to mention the stick.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
There is some truth in that, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Well, leaders matter.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
There's no question about that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
No question.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But just on rhetoric,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
you want to remember that Putin has on more than one occasion, very subtly rattled the nuclear sword.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And it has been very effective because Joe Biden has paid attention and Joe Biden wants to make sure we don't end up in a thermonuclear war.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And thank goodness he's thinking that way.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So all Putin has to do is mention the possibility of nuclear war, just to go back to Taiwan, switch areas of the world.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
If you're interested in containing China and you're interested in deterrence, and let's go back to those various scenarios where the Chinese win, we win, Chinese win, but they do it at a costly, at great cost.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
One could argue...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
that that discussion that I laid out before didn't take into account nuclear weapons.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And all President Biden or any of his successors has to do is just very subtly rattle or employ the nuclear threat.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And just sort of remind the Chinese that you start a war over Taiwan,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
it could easily escalate into a nuclear war.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
You want to understand, we both have nuclear weapons.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And if either one of us is put into a desperate situation, we may turn to those nuclear weapons.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And oh, by the way, Xi Jinping, you want to understand that we're out here in the water and using nuclear weapons in the water, it's not that...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It's not the same as using nuclear weapons on land.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So we may very well use them.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I'm not saying we will.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But anyway, a little saber rattling.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I don't view the United States as an empire.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Yeah, I think it's a country that incorporates different...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
regions or areas around the world into sort of a giant sphere of influence without incorporating those territories actually into the state itself.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So you had this thing called the British Empire and it
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
controlled areas like India, North America, and Kenya, just to pick a couple instances at different points.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Singapore would be another example.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Australia would be another example.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So these were all entities that were part of the British Empire, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And the United States has taken a stab at empire after the Spanish-American War, for example, with regard to the Philippines and Cuba and Puerto Rico.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But we never got serious about it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
There's never been an American empire.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
This is not to say the United States is not an incredibly powerful country that goes all around the world building military bases and stationing troops here, there, and everywhere.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
we're not running an empire the way the British Empire was run or the French Empire.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So the question for me is why did those empires go away?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
why'd the british empire go away if you ever look at a map of the world in 1922 after world war one it's truly amazing how much of that map is controlled by britain right they had a huge empire and it's disappeared probably by far the biggest in terms of area empire in human history i think so i think
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
That's right.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It almost has to be.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Crazy, yeah.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Now, I want to be clear.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The Americans have wielded maybe even greater influence than Britain did when it had its empire, but I don't believe we have an empire that bears any resemblance to the British Empire.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So the question is, what happened to that British Empire?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
What happened to the French Empire?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
What happened to the Belgian Empire?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
What happened to the Dutch Empire?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
These were countries that had colonies all over the planet, the Dutch East Indies, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Vietnam was, you know, French Indochina.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Where did those empires go?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Two factors finish them off.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Number one, nationalism.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Nationalism became a very powerful force in the 19th century.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It began to rear its head in the late 18th century and became a very powerful force in the 19th and certainly in the 20th century.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Nationalism is the idea that these different nations...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
that were part of the empire, like the Kenyans, wanted their own state, nation state.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
This is my point about the Palestinians, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
This is Palestinian nationalism.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
What is Zionism?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Zionism is Jewish nationalism.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Jewish nationalism.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Think of Theodor Herzl's famous book.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It's called The Jewish State
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Nation state, think of the word, nation state, that embodies nationalism, nation state, Jewish state.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Palestinians want their own state, two-state solution, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Can't beat the Palestinians into submission, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The Indians wanted their own state.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The Pakistanis wanted their own state.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The Kenyans wanted their own state.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Singapore wanted its own state.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Oh, the Americans wanted their own state.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
This is called the American Revolution, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So that's the first reason, nationalism, that these empires disappeared.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The second reason is that from a cost-benefit analysis, they no longer made any sense.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And it was the coming of the Industrial Revolution.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Once the Industrial Revolution comes, an empire is basically an albatross around your neck.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I would argue that the British Empire was an albatross around Britain's neck in most of the 20th century.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Some of my friends disagree with that and think there were all sorts of benefits from the British Empire.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But you want to remember that in the 20th century, the three countries that really were powerful were the United States, Germany, and the Soviet Union.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Those were the big three.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Did any of them have an empire?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
No.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
In the industrial world, you don't need an empire.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
What you need is a powerful manufacturing base.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
came and went, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I mean, right.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And all you have to do is just look at the British and the French in the Seven Years' War, 1756 to 1763.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The British win, they get Canada, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And that's why, you know, Quebec, Montreal, all these big French-speaking areas are now part of Canada, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So borders change and
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
You know, countries got established, the United States being one.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And remember, South America and Central America were once completely dominated by the Spanish and, in the case of Brazil, the Portuguese.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But they all, in the 19th century, got their independence, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And what I'm saying to you is in the 19th and in the 20th century, there were two forces that were really driving the train.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
One is nationalism, and then the other is the Industrial Revolution, which changes the cost-benefit analysis.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Well, that's a long time.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
If you ask me, let's just say the next hundred years.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
That's still tough.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But actually, you know, I think we're in excellent shape.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And here's the reason.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Going back to the beginning of our conversation, you asked me about power.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And I told you the two principal building blocks of power are population size and wealth.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Okay?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And therefore, you want to look around the world and you want to look at what you think the demographics are of countries like Britain and
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The United States, Iran, China, Russia.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Pick your country moving forward, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
What do the demographics look like?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And how wealthy are those countries likely to be?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
What you discover very quickly is that almost every country around the world is depopulating over time.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Russia is going to be much smaller.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
China is going to be much smaller 100 years from now than both of those countries are.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It's best we can tell.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
American women are not having lots of babies these days.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
No question about that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But we have immigration.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
We're an immigrant culture.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
You're a perfect manifestation of that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
You're perfect.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
You're now an American.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
That's wonderful.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
We need more people like you, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So when I hear Donald Trump and others arguing that immigration is a terrible thing,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
This is ridiculous.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Immigration is what made us great, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It's when my relatives came over in the middle of the 19th century from Germany and Ireland, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Yeah.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Just very quickly on this.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
That's fascinating.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Sam Huntington's book, Who Are We?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Which in many ways, I love that book, but it has one fundamental flaw.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And a number of people told him beforehand that that flaw existed and he didn't fix it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But Sam argues in the book that we have large numbers of Hispanics in this country.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And we're doing a very poor job of integrating them into the mainstream.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And they're not becoming Americans.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And because many of them are concentrated in the southwest of the United States, unlike other ethnic groups that were spread out all over God's little green acre, right, we're going to have this cohesive group of Spanish-speaking people.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Americans who are going to want to break away and the United States is no longer going to be a reasonably coherent nation state.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
He's wrong.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
All the evidence is that Hispanics are integrating into the American mainstream more quickly and more effectively than the European immigrant groups that came starting around 1835.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
If you look at immigration from Europe into the United States, leaving aside the original WASPs who came over and founded the place,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The immigrants start coming in large numbers in 1835, and we really don't shut the door until 1924, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
This is a crude overview.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Starting in 1835 and running up till about 1885, it's mainly Germans and Irish.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
That's why Germans are the largest ethnic group to ever come to the United States, and the Irish are right behind them.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
These are the European ethnic groups we're talking about.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Then starting in 1885, Poles, Jews, and Italians start coming, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And the Germans and Irish keep coming.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And this is why Ellis Island is opened.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I think it's 1893.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Ellis Island is open because Castle Garden in New York, which had handled all the previous
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
immigrants coming across the pond.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Castle Garden couldn't handle them all, so they opened up Ellis Island.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
That's why somebody like me, I can't find my distant relative's records in Ellis Island, because they came through Castle Garden.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Right.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Whereas lots of Jews I know, lots of Italians I know, they can find their relatives records in Ellis Island because they came to Ellis Island.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The point is you had all these immigrants who came in roughly between 1835 and 1924 when we shut the gates.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It was the only time we've ever really shut the gates in a meaningful way.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And this is what made America great.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
All these people, and they made lots of babies.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Well, we opened the gates again in 65.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Closed them in 24, opened them in 65.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I'm oversimplifying the story here because we didn't completely shut them.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
We almost completely shut them in 24.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Opened in 65.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And we've had huge numbers of immigrants flowing in.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Yeah.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
These immigrants who have been flowing in since 65 are not Europeans.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
They're not mainly Europeans.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
They're mainly Hispanics and Asians.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
If you look at those Hispanics and Asians, they're integrating into the American mainstream at a much faster and more effective clip than was the case with those immigrants who came in in the 19th century and early 20th century.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The Irish, oh my God, you know, they were treated horribly.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
There's a book, a very famous book that's been written called When the Irish Became White.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Right.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Just think about the title of that book.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
There was discrimination against all these groups, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And the worst discrimination, of course, was against Chinese Americans, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But we've gotten much better.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And what we should do moving forward is redouble our efforts to integrate immigrants into the American mainstream, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
you know, Hispanics, you know, Asians of all sorts, because the fact is that America is rapidly reaching the point where it's not going to be an all-white country, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I have five children, and two of my children are, I was a Generation Z, Gen Z. Gen Z is the last majority white
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
generation, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Subsequent generations are not majority white.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So for anybody who's bothered by this, I'm not bothered by that, but for anybody who is bothered by this, they better get used to it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Because
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Americans aren't making enough babies that we can continue to grow population-wise in a robust way.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So we need immigration.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And we're an immigrant culture.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And this is a great virtue.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It has been a great virtue over time.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It should be a source of hope, not worry.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
That's my view.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
That's my view.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And America, when it works, is a place that is very attractive to immigrants, and immigrants can do very well here.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And then the real key moving forward is intermarriage.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And you have a huge amount of intermarriage.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Somebody was telling me not too long ago that the highest intermarriage rates in the United States are among Asian women, Asian American women, Asian women, and Anglos.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And I say, wonderful.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Great.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Love is the fastest way to integrate.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Yeah.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Yeah, well, what you want to do is you want to eliminate difference, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
You want to eliminate difference, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It's like people who say I'm an anti-Semite, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I have two grandsons who Adolf Hitler would have thrown into a gas chamber, one of whose first name is John and middle name is Mearsheimer.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Yeah.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
This is what you want.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Yeah.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Steve Walt's wife and his two children would have been thrown into a gas chamber by Adolf Hitler.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
This is what you want.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
You want intermarriage.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Now, there are a good number of people in some of those groups, especially among Jews, who don't like intermarriage.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But they've lost because I haven't looked recently at the data for intermarriage rates among basically secular Jews, but it used to be around 62% large numbers of Jews marry goyim.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Exactly.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Calling me an anti-Semite?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
They haven't met my grandsons, my son-in-law, nieces that I have, nephews that I have, brother-in-laws that I have, Jewish, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Come on.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
All things are rough in the beginning.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I think it's very important to make sure that you do something in life
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
that really interests you.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
My mother used to use this phrase, floats your boat.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
You want to do something that floats your boat.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Or to use another one of my mother's phrases, you want to do something where you get up out of bed in the morning with a bounce in your step, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So I think that if your mother and father want you to be a lawyer and they're pushing you to be a lawyer and you don't want to be a lawyer, you want to be a policeman, be a policeman.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Don't do what other people want you to do, because it's very important to find a job, an occupation that you really love.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
The second thing I would say, and this has to do with your point about humility, you want to think about the humility hubris index.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
My friend Steve Van Ever, who teaches at MIT, he and I invented this concept.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
We call it the hubris humility index.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And you want to have a healthy dose of humility.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Mm-hmm.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But you also want to have a healthy dose of hubris.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
You want to think you can change the world.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
You want to think you can make things better for yourself.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
You want to take chances.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
You want to think sometimes that you know better than other people do.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Hubris is not a bad thing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But at the same time, you have to have humility.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
You have to understand that a man or a woman has his or her limits.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And you want to listen to other people.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
You want to be a good listener, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
So always remember the importance of the hubris humility index and the importance of having healthy doses of both hubris and humility.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I'm not sure I'm afraid of death.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I don't wanna die because I enjoy life so much.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Having too much fun?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
You know, given how horrible the world is today, I hate to say that I'm having too much fun.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But do I find what I do interesting and gratifying?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I do.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I just love what I do.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And I love studying international politics.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And I love being intellectually curious about all sorts of subjects.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I love talking to you about this and that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I mean, this is really wonderful.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And I often tell people, thank goodness I'm only 28 years old, because I do try to behave like I'm only 28 years old.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
But I am well aware of the fact that
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
As my mother used to say, nothing is forever, and that includes me.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And when you're 75 going on 76, you understand that you have a limited number of years left.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And I find that depressing because I've been very lucky, and I feel like I've won the lottery, and I'm very thankful for that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
And
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I'd like to make it last for as long as possible, but I do understand that nothing is forever.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Yeah.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
You never think that when you're young.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I mean, you think you're gonna live forever and you're just not gonna get old.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
I never thought this would happen, that I would become 75 years old.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
It was my pleasure.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#401 – John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Thank you very much.