John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 | Lex Fridman Podcast #401
- The following is a conversation
with John Mearsheimer, a professor at University of Chicago and one of the most influential and controversial thinkers in the world. He teaches, speaks and writes
about the nature of power and war on the global
stage in history and today. Please allow me to say once again, my hope for this little journey I'm on, I will speak to everyone on
all sides with compassion, with empathy, and with backbone. I'll speak with Vladimir Putin and with Vladimir Zelensky, with Russians, and with Ukrainians, with Israelis, and with Palestinians, with everyone. My goal is to do whatever small part I can to decrease the amount
of suffering in the world by trying to reveal our common humanity. I believe that in the
end, truth and love wins. I will get attacked for being naive, for being a shell, for being weak. I'm none of those things, but I do make mistakes
and I will get better. I love you all. This is a "Lex Fridman Podcast," to support it to please
check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends,
here's John Mearsheimer. Can you explain your view on
power in international politics as outlined in your book, "The Tragedy of Great Power Politics" and in your writing since then? - Yeah, I make two sets of points there. 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. And the question is why states
care so much about power. In the international system,
there's no higher authority. So, if you get into
trouble and you dial 911, there's nobody at the other end. And a system like that,
you have no choice, but to figure out for yourself
how best to protect yourself. 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. Therefore, states care about power, because it enhances or maximizes their prospects for survival. Second point I would make is that in the real story or in my story, power is largely a function
of material factors. The two key building blocks of power are population size and wealth. You wanna have a lot of people and you want to be really wealthy. Of course, this is why the
United States is so powerful. It has lots of people and
it has lots of wealth. China was not considered a
great power until recently, because it didn't have a lot of wealth, certainly had population size,
but it didn't have wealth. And without both a large
population and much wealth, you're usually not
considered a great power. So, I think power matters, but when we talk about power, it's important to understand
that it's population size and wealth that are underpinning it. - So there's a lot of
interesting things there. First you said nations in relation to each other are, is essentially in a state of anarchism. - Yeah, well, anarchy basically means the opposite of hierarchy. 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. Anarchy simply means that
you don't have hierarchy. There's no higher authority
that sits above states. States are like pool
balls on a table, right? And in an anarchic world, there's no higher authority that you can turn to if
you get into trouble. And of course the political philosopher who laid this all out was Thomas Hobbes. And Hobbes talked about
life in the state of nature. And in the state of nature
you have individuals and those individuals compete
with each other for power. And the reason that they do is because in the state
of nature, by definition, you have no higher authority. 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. It's what he calls the Leviathan. And that, of course is the
title of his famous book. So, the idea is to escape anarchy, you create a state and that means you go
from anarchy to hierarchy. The problem in international politics is that there is no world
state, there is no hierarchy. 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. 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. And as I like to point out to people, the best example of what happens when you're weak in international politics is what the Chinese call the
Century of National Humiliation from the late 1840s to the late 1940s, the Chinese were remarkably weak and the great powers in the
system preyed upon them. And that sends a very important message to not only the Chinese, but
to other states in the system. Don't be weak, be as powerful as you can. - And we'll talk about it. But humiliation can lead to resentment or resentment leads to
something you've also studied, which is Nazi Germany in the 1930s. We'll talk about it. But staying to the psychology
and philosophy picture, what's the connection
between the will to power in the individual, as you mentioned and the will to power in a nation? - The will to power in an individual has a lot to do with
individual psychology. The story that I tell
about the pursuit of power, it a structural argument. 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, the states have no choice
but to compete for power. So, structure is really
driving the story here. Will to power has a lot more
to do with an individual in the Nietzsche story where
that concept comes from. So, it's very important to
understand that I'm not arguing that states are inherently
aggressive, right? My point is that as long
as states are in anarchy, they have no choice but to
behave in an aggressive fashion. But if you went to a hierarchic system, there's no reason for those states to worry about the balance of power, because if they get into trouble, there is a higher authority
that they can turn to. There is in effect a leviathan. - So, what is the role of military might in this will to power
on the national level? - Well, military mights is
what ultimately matters, as I said to you before, the
two building blocks of power are population size and wealth. - You didn't mention military mights? - I did not. No, that's right. 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 and it's ultimately the size
of your military that matters, because militaries fight wars. And if states are
concerned about survival, which I argue is the
principle goal of every state in the international system 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. - Well, it's not obvious
that a large nation with a lot of people and a lot of money, should necessarily build a gigantic army and seek to attain superpower, like dominant soul, superpower
status to military might. But you're saying as
you see the world today, it has to be that way. - Yeah, I'm arguing it is obvious. If you're a state in the
international system, do you wanna be weak 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. You surely recognize that. And if you're dealing with
the United States of America and you're Vladimir Putin, you wanna make sure you're
as powerful as possible, so that the United States
doesn't put its gun sites on you and come after you. Same thing is true with China. You wanna be powerful in
the international system. States understand that and they go to great
lengths to become powerful. Just take the United States of America when it started in 1783, it was comprised of 13 measly colonies, strung out along the Atlantic seaboard. 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. 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. We just wanna make sure
that we're number one. And my argument is that this is not peculiar to the United States. If I'm China, for example, today I would want to dominate Asia, the way the United States
dominates the Western hemisphere. They'd be fools not to. If I were imperial Germany, I'd want to dominate all of Europe the way the United States
dominates the Western hemisphere. Why? 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. And again, what I'm saying here is that the structure of the international
system really matters. It's the fact that you're
in this anarchic system where survival is your principle goal. And where I can't know
your intentions, right? You're another state. I can't know that at some point
you might not come after me. You might. And if you're really powerful and I'm not, I'm in deep trouble. - Yeah, so some of the ideas
on underlying what you've said, offensive realism, which I would love to talk to you about, sort of the history of
realism versus liberalism. But some of the ideas
you already mentioned, anarchy between states, everybody's trying to develop
a military capabilities, uncertainty, such an interesting concept. States cannot be sure that other states, will not use military
capabilities against them, which is one- - That's of enormous
importance to the story. - And so interesting, because you also say that this
makes realists more cautious and more peaceful, the uncertainty, because of all the
uncertainty involved here, it's better to approach
international politics with caution, which is really
interesting to think about, again, survival most states
interested in survival. And the other interesting thing is you assume all the states are rational, which- - Most of the time. - Most of the time. You call this framework offensive realism. Can you just give a overview
of the history of the realism, versus liberalism debate as worldviews? - Well, I think for many centuries now, the big divide within the world of international relations theory is between realism and liberalism. These are time honored bodies of theory. 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. 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. But basically, realists believe that power matters, that states compete for power and that war is an
instrument of statecraft. And liberals on the other hand, have what I would say is
a more idealistic view of the world. This is not to say that
they're naive or foolish, but they believe there are
aspects of international politics that lead to a less competitive and more peaceful world
than most realists see. 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. The first and most important
of the liberal theories is democratic peace theory. And this is a theory
that says democracies, do not fight against other democracies. So, the more the world is
populated with democracies, the less likely it is
that we will have wars. And this basic argument is inherent in Francis Fukuyama's
"The End of History." He argues that democracy
triumph first over fascism in the 20th century, it then triumphed over communism. And that means that in the future we're gonna have more and
more liberal democracies on the planet. And if you have more and
more liberal democracies and those democracies
don't fight each other, then you have a more peaceful world. That was his argument. It's a very liberal argument. A realist like me would say that it doesn't matter whether a state is a democracy or not, 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. And again, the liberal view, this first liberal theory is that democracies don't
fight other democracies and therefore the more
democracies you have, the more peaceful the world. - Can I just sort of try to
unpack that a little bit? So, on the democratic peace theory, I guess would say that in
democracies leaders are elected and the underlying assumption
is most people want peace and so they will elect peacemakers. And so the more you democracies you have, the more likely you have peace. And then the realist perspective, says that it doesn't matter if the majority of people want peace, the structure of international politics is such that superpowers
want to become more super and powerful, and they
do that through war. - You can't make that argument that you're making about democracies, because if you're saying that democracies are inclined toward peace
and that the 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. You can find lots of evidence
to support the argument that democracies don't
fight other democracies. 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. If you're a liberal democracy
and I'm a liberal democracy, we know we have value systems
that argue against aggression and argue for peaceful
resolution of crises. And therefore, given these
norms, we can trust each other, we can know each other's intentions. Remember for realists like me, uncertainty about intentions
really helps drive the train. But if you're talking
about two democracies, the argument there is that they know each other's intentions. - And for you, sure, maybe democracies reduce
uncertainty a little bit, but not enough to stop the train. - I think that's right. Yeah, that's right. So, that's democratic peace theory. - [Lex] Yes. - The second theory is economic
interdependence theory. And that's the argument
that in a globalized world, like the one that we live in and have lived in for a long time, 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? It's that kind of argument. So, there you have an argument that economic interdependence
leads to peace. And then the third liberal argument has to do with institutions, sometimes referred to as
liberal institutionalism. And this is the argument that if you can get
states into institutions where they become rule abiding actors, they will obey the rules
that dictate that war is not acceptable. 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. So, those are the liberal theories and as you can tell, they're very different from realism as articulated by somebody like me. - Can you maybe argue against
the economic interdependence and in the institutions
follow rules a little bit? So, the golden goose with the golden egg, you're saying that nations
are happy to kill the goose, because again, they want power. - If they think it's necessary
to kill the golden goose, because of security
concerns, they will do it. The point is that economic
interdependence at its root has prosperity as the core variable. - Yeah. - In the realest story the
core variable is survival. And survival always trumps prosperity. So, if you go back to the
period before World War I, we're in Europe, it's 1913 or early 1914, what you see is that you have an intense
security competition, between all of the great powers. On one side you have The Triple Alliance and on the other side you
have the Triple Entente. You have these two alliances, and you have an intense
security competition, between them, okay? At the same time, you have a great deal of
economic interdependence. It's amazing how much economic intercourse is taking place in Europe
among all the actors, right? And people are getting prosperous. Our countries are getting
prosperous as a result. 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. So, there are going to
be lots of situations where prosperity and
survival come into conflict and in those cases, survival will win. - And maybe you can speak
to the different camps of realists. You said offensive and defensive. Can you draw a distinction
between those two? - Yeah, let me just back
up a bit on that one. And you were talking about
will to power before. The first big divide between
realists is structural realists and human nature realists. - [Lex] Nice. - And Hans Morgenthau, who was influenced by nature and therefore had that will to power logic embedded in his thinking about
how the world works, right? He was a human nature realist, okay? I'm a structural realist and I believe it's not human nature. It's not individuals in some will to power that drives competition and war. What drives competition in war is the structure of the system. It's anarchy. - So, you're not as romantic
as the human nature realists? - Yeah, there's just a world
of difference between the two. - [Lex] Sure. It's just important to understand that. - So within that, from the structural that
there's a subdivision also of offensive and defensive? - Yes. Inside the structural
realist world, right? And you have a handful of realists who believe that the structure of the system fosters
competition, for sure, security competition, but it really rules out great
power war almost all the time. So, it makes sense to care
about the balance of power, but to focus on maintaining
how much power you have. That's the defensive realism, maintaining how much power you have, not trying to gain more power, because the argument the
defensive realists make is that if you try to gain more power, the system will punish you. The structure will punish you. I'm not a defensive realist,
I'm an offensive realist. And my argument is that
states look for opportunities to gain more power. 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. - Just to linger on the
human nature perspective, how do you explain
Hitler and Nazi Germany, just one of the more recent
aggressive expansions, through military might? How do you explain that in the framework of offensive realism? - Well, I think that Nazi
Germany was driven in large part by structural considerations. And I think if you look
at Imperial Germany, which was largely responsible
for starting World War I and of course Nazi Germany's
largely responsible for starting World War II, what that tells you is you
didn't need Adolf Hitler to start World War I, right? And I believe that there is a good chance you would've had World War II in the absence of Hitler, right? I believe that Germany was very powerful, it was deeply worried about
the balance of power in Europe, and it had strong incentives
to behave aggressively in the late 1930s, early 1940s. So, I believe that structure mattered. 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. 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 modern history who are congenital aggressors, and one was Napoleon and
the other was Hitler. Now, if you wanna call
that a will to power, you can do that. 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
in recorded history, and Napoleon was not in
that category at all. 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. - Is there some degree on the human psychology
side that resentment, because of what happened
after World War I, led to Hitler wooly so much power and then Hitler starting World War II. So, this is the human side. Perhaps the reason I asked that question is also because you mentioned
the century of humiliation on the China side. So, to which degree did
humiliation lead to Hitler and lead to World War II? - 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. I mean, after January
30th, 1933, he's in power. And in the question of what is driving him
comes racing to the fore, is there resentment over
the Versailles Treaty and what happened to Germany? Yes. Did that matter? Yes. But my argument is that structure was the principle factor driving
the train in Hitler's case. But what I'm saying here is that there were other factors as well, resentment being one
of them, will to power or the fact that he was
a congenital aggressor in my lexicon, certainly mattered as well. So, I don't want to dismiss
your point about resentment. - So, Hitler in particular, the way he wielded, the way he gained so much power, might have been the general
resentment of the populace, of the German populace? - 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. 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. And he played on that resentment that surely helped him get elected too. But I think having studied the case, it was even more important
once he took over. I also believe that one
of the principle 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
outta the depression. And that really mattered and
it made him very effective. It's also worth noting that he was a remarkably
charismatic individual. I find that hard to believe, 'cause every time I look at
him or listen to his speeches, he does not appear to
be charismatic to me. But I've talked to a number of people who are experts on this subject who assure me that he
was very charismatic. 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's still remarkably
popular in the polls. - Stalin is still popular in
many parts of Eastern Europe. - Yeah, yeah. And Stalin's popular in many quarters, inside Russia and Stalin
murdered more of his own people than he murdered people
outside of the Soviet Union. - And still to you, the ties of history
turned not on individuals, but on structural considerations. So, Hitler may be a surface layer, characteristics of how
Germany started war, but not the really, the reason. - Well, history is a
multidimensional phenomenon. - [Lex] So I hear. - We're talking about
interstate relations here. - [Lex] Yes. - And realism is a theory
about how states interact with each other. And there are many other dimensions to international politics. And if you're talking, about someone like Adolf Hitler, right? 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? I mean, that's a different question. And realism doesn't answer that question. So, I want to be very clear that, I'm not someone who argues
that realism answers, every question about
international politics, 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. - Does offensive realism answer the question why Hitler
attacked the Soviet Union? - [John] Yes. - Because from a military
strategy perspective, there's pros and cons to that decision. - Pros and cons to every decision. The question is, did he think that he could win
a quick and decisive victory? And he did. I mean, as did his generals,
it's very interesting. I've spent a lot of time
studying German decision making. In World War II if you look at the German decision to invade Poland on September 1st, 1939 and you look at the German
decision invade France on May 10th, 1940 and then the Soviet
Union on June 22nd, 1941, what you see is there was
actually quite a bit of resistance to Hitler in 1938 at the time
of Czechoslovakia Munich. And there was also quite
a bit of resistance in September, 1939. - Internally or you mean- - Internally, internally for sure, yeah. Yeah people had doubts. They didn't think the Weimar was ready. 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 policy makers,
including military leaders. And then came France 1940 in
the run up to May 10th, 1940, there was huge resistance in the German army to attacking France. But that was eventually eliminated, because they came up with a clever plan, the Manstein Plan. 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. Soviet Union is where they fail. There's hardly any
resistance at all, right? - Yeah, well, and to say that
they failed the Soviet Union, I mean, my grandfather fought, I mean, I'm from the Soviet Union, there's a lot of successes early on. So, there's poor military, I would say strategic
decisions along the way, but it caught Stalin off guard. Maybe you can correct me, but from my perspective, terrifyingly so they
could have been successful if certain different decisions were made from a military perspective. - Yeah, I've always had the sense they came terrifyingly close to winning. - [Lex] Yeah. - You can make the opposite argument that they were doomed. But I'm not terribly comfortable
making that argument. I think the Weimar by the summer of 1941 was a finely tuned instrument for war. And the Red Army was in
quite terrible shape. Stalin had purged the Officer Corps, they had performed poorly in Finland and there were all sorts of reasons to think that they were no
match for the match for Weimar. And if you look at what happened in the initial stages of the conflict, that proved to be the case. The Germans won a lot of significant tactical
victories early on. - And if they focused and went to Moscow as quickly as possible,
is again, terrifyingly, so could have been a, basically topple Stalin. And one thing that's- - [John] That's possible.
- That's possible. - Fortunately we're not gonna
run the experiment again, but one could argue that
had they concentrated as the generals wanted to do
in going straight from Moscow, that they would've won. I mean, what Hitler wanted to do is he wanted to go into the Ukraine. I mean, Hitler thought that the main axis, there were three axis, the northern axis went towards Leningrad, the central axis of course went to Moscow, and then the southern axis, Army Group south headed towards Ukraine and deep into the Caucasus. And Hitler believed that
should have been the main axis. And in fact, in 1942,
the Soviets, excuse me, the Germans go back on
the offensive in 1942. This is Operation Blue, and the main axis in '42
is deep into the Ukraine and into the Caucasus. And that fails. But one could argue that
had they done that in '41, had they not gone to
Moscow, had they gone, had they concentrated on
going deep into Ukraine and into the Caucasus, they could have knocked
the Soviets out that way. I'm not sure that in
the end, I believe that. I think in the end, the Soviets
would've won no matter what. But I'm not a hundred
percent sure of that. - So, sometimes maybe you can educate me, but so sometimes they say, just like with Napoleon winter
defeated Hitler in Russia. I think not often enough
people tell the story of the soldiers and the motivation
and how hard they fight. So, it turns out that
Ukrainians and Russians are not easy to conquer. They're the kinds of
people that don't roll over and fight bravely. There seems to be a
difference in certain people, peoples in how they see war, how they approach war, how proud they are to
fight for their country, to die for their country,
these kinds of things. So, I think Battle of Stalingrad tells, at least to me, a story of
extremely brave fighting on the Soviet side, and that it's a component of war too. It's not just structural, it's not just military strategy, it's also the humans involved. But maybe that's a romantic notion of war. - No, I think there's a
great deal of truth in that, but let's just unpack it a bit in the case of the Soviet
Union in World War II, the counterargument to that
is that in World War I, the Russian Army disintegrated. 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. But World War I does not fit
neatly with your argument, because the Russians lost and surrendered. And you had the infamous
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, where the Soviet Union then, 'cause 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. My argument for why the
Russians, let me take that back, why the Soviets fought like
wild dogs in World War II is that they were up against
the genocidal adversary. You wanna understand that the
Germans murdered huge numbers of Soviet POWs. The overall total was 3.7 million. And by December of 1941, remember the invasion is June 41. By December of 1941, the Germans have murdered
2 million Soviet POWs. At that point in time, they had murdered many more POWs than they had murdered Jews. And this is not to deny for one second that they were on a murderous
rampage when it came to Jews, but they were also on a murderous rampage when it came to Soviet citizens
and Soviet soldiers, right? So, those Soviet soldiers
quickly came to understand they were fighting for their lives. If they were taken
prisoner, they would die. So, they fought like wild dogs. - Yeah, the story of the Holocaust, of the 6 million Jews is
often told extensively, if Hitler won, conquer the Soviet Union, it's terrifying to think
on a much grander scam than the Holocaust. What would've happened
to the Slavic people, to the Soviet people? - Absolutely. All you have to do is read
the Hunger Plan, right? And they also had a
plan, what was it called? Generalplan Ost, I forget
the exact name of it, which made it clear that they were gonna murder
many tens of millions of people. And by the way, I believe that they would've
murdered all the Poles and all the Roma. I mean, my view is that
the Jews were number one on the genocidal hit list. The Roma or the Gypsies were number two and the Poles were number three. And of course, I just explained to you how
many POWs they had killed. So, they would've ended
up murdering huge numbers of Soviet citizens as well. But people quickly figured
out that this was happening. That's my point to you. 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. - To fast forward in
time, but not in space. Let me ask you about the war in Ukraine. Why did Russia invade Ukraine
on February 24th, 2022? What are some of the explanations given and which do you find the most convincing? - Well, clearly the conventional
wisdom is that Putin is principally responsible. Putin is an imperialist,
he's an expansionist. - That's the conventional thinking. - Yeah, yeah. And the idea is that he is bent on creating a greater Russia and even more so he's interested in dominating Eastern
Europe, if not all of Europe. And that Ukraine was the
first stop on the train line. And what he wanted to do was
to conquer all of Ukraine incorporated into a greater Russia and then he would move on
and conquer other countries. This is the conventional wisdom. My view is there is no evidence, let me emphasize, zero evidence
to support that argument. - Which part that he would, the imperialist part,
the sense that he would, he sought to conquer all of
Ukraine and move on and conquer. - There's no evidence he was interested in conquering all of Ukraine. There's no evidence beforehand that he was interested in coning
conquering any of Ukraine. And there's no way that an army that had 190,000 troops at the most, could have conquered all of Ukraine. Just impossible. As I like to emphasize, when the Germans went into Poland in 1939 and the Germans you wanna remember were only intent on conquering
the western half of Poland, because the Soviets who
came in later that month were gonna conquer the
eastern half of Poland. So, the western half of Poland
is much smaller than Ukraine. And the Germans went in
with 1.5 million troops. If Vladimir Putin were bent
on conquering all of Ukraine, he would've needed at
least 2 million troops. I would argue he'd need 3 million troops, because not only did he
need to conquer the country, he would then have to occupy it. But the idea that 190,000
troops was sufficient for conquering all of Ukraine
is not a serious argument. Furthermore, he was not
interested in conquering Ukraine. And that's why in March, 2022, this is immediately after the war starts, he is negotiating with
Zelensky to end the war. 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. 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? And of course, what they were negotiating
about was NATO expansion into Ukraine, which was the principle cause of the war. 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. And of course, the West doesn't want to
be principally responsible. It wants to blame Vladimir Putin. 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 conquer all of it. And he failed. But with a little bit of luck, he probably would've conquered all of it. And he'd now be in the Baltic states and eventually end up dominating
all of Eastern Europe. As I said, I think there's
no evidence to support this. - So, maybe there's a lot
of things to ask there. Maybe just to linger on NATO expansion, what is NATO expansion? What is the threat of NATO expansion and why is this such a concern for Russia? - NATO was a mortal enemy
of the Soviet Union, during the Cold War. It's a military alliance which has at its heart the
United States of America, which is the most powerful
state on the planet. It is perfectly understandable that Russia is not going to want
that military alliance on its doorstep. Here in the United States we have, as you well know, what's called the Monroe Doctrine. 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. When I was young, there was this thing called
the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Soviets had the audacity to put nuclear armed missiles in Cuba. We told them in no uncertain terms that that was not acceptable and that those missiles had to be removed. This is our backyard and we do not tolerate
distant great powers, coming into our neighborhood. Well, what's good for the
goose, it's good for the gander. And if we don't like great powers, coming into our neighborhood,
it's hardly surprising that the Russians did not
want NATO on their doorstep. They made that manifestly
clear when the Cold War ended and they exacted a promise from us that we would not expand NATO. And then when we started expanding NATO, they made it clear after
the first tranche in 1999 that they were profoundly
unhappy with that. They made it clear in 2004
after the second tranche that they were profoundly
unhappy with that expansion. 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 was not gonna happen. They were drawing a red line in the sand. And it is no accident
that in August, 2008, remember the Bucharest
Summit is April, 2008 and August, 2008, you had a
war between Georgia and Russia. And that involved at its
core in NATO expansion. So, the Americans and their
allies should have understood by at least August, 2008, that continuing to push
to bring Ukraine into NATO was going to lead to disaster. And I would note that there
were all sorts of people in the 1990s like George
Kennon, William Perry, who was Bill Clinton's
Secretary of Defense, the Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, Paul Nitsa and so forth and so on, who argued that NATO expansion, would end up producing a
disaster, which it has. 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 Nicholas Sarkozy, the German and French
leaders respectively, opposed that decision. Angela Merkel later said that
the reason she opposed it was because she understood
that Putin would interpret it as a declaration of war. Just think about that. 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. What did the United States and its friends in Europe do? 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. But we were wrong. And it all blew up in our face in 2014. And when it blew up in our
face in 2014, what did we do? Did we back off and say, "Well, maybe the Russians, "have some legitimate security interest?" No, that's not the way we operate. We continued to double down and the end result is that
in 2022 you got a war. And as I've argued for a long time now, we, the West are principally
responsible for that, not Vladimir Putin. - So, the expansion of NATO is primarily responsible for that. - Yeah, to put it in more general terms, what we were trying to do was turn Ukraine into a Western bulwark on Russia's border. And it really wasn't NATO expansion alone. NATO expansion was the
most important element of our strategy. But the strategy had two other dimensions. One was EU expansion and the third was the color revolution. We were trying to force
Orange Revolution in Ukraine. And the basic goal there was to turn Ukraine into a
pro-Western liberal democracy. 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. This was our goal. And the Russians made
it unequivocally clear, Ukraine was not gonna
become a Western bulwark on their border. And most importantly, they made it clear that Ukraine
in NATO was unacceptable. - Can we talk about the
mind of Vladimir Putin? You've mentioned that this
idea that he has aspirations for imperialist conquest, that he dreams of empire
is not grounded in reality. He wrote an essay in
2021, about one people. Do you think there is some degree to which he still dreams of the former Soviet Union reuniting? - No, he's made it clear that anybody with a triple digit IQ understands that it's nuts to think about
recreating the Soviet Union. He thinks it's a tragedy that
the Soviet Union fell apart. But as he made clear in that essay, the July 12th, 2021 essay. And has 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. Say for the fact he did not accept the idea that Ukraine
would become part of NATO. - He's been in power for over two decades. Is there a degree that power
can affect a leader's ability to see the world clearly,
as they say corrupt? Do you think power has corrupted
Vladimir Putin to a degree? - It's very hard for me
to answer that question, 'cause 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, 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. And I think he is a
first class strategist. This is not to say he
doesn't make mistakes and he admits he's made some mistakes. But I think that the West is dealing with a
formidable adversary here. 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. - So, he has consistently put as a primary concern security, as does the United States, he's put for Russia's security, making sure that NATO doesn't
get close to its borders. - I think that's clear. Yeah, I think as I emphasized
early on in our conversation, that leaders privilege
security or survival, over everything else. 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 12th, 2021. So, we have a pretty clear
record of what he was saying, and I would argue what he was thinking in the runup to the war in February, 2022. And if you read what he said, it's quite clear that he
privileged security or survival, he was deeply concerned
about the security of Russia. 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, as you know better than I do, it was in terrible shape. The Chinese talk about the
Century of National Humiliation. One could argue that for the Russians, that was the Decade of
National Humiliation. And, and it took Putin, I
think, quite a bit of time to bring the Russians back from the dead. I think he eventually succeeded, but it took a considerable amount of time. And I think he understood that he was not playing a
particularly strong hand. He was playing something of a weak hand and he had to be very
careful, very cautious. And I think he was, and I think that's very
different than the United States. The United States was the unipole, it was the most powerful state
in the history of the world, most powerful state relative
to all its possible competitors from roughly 1989, certainly after December, 1991 when the Soviet Union fell apart. Up until I would argue about 2017, we were incredibly powerful. And even after 2017 up to today, the United States remains
the most powerful state in the system. And because of our geographical location, we are in a terrific situation to survive in any great power competition. So, you have a situation
involving the United States that's different than the
situation involving Russia. They're just much more
vulnerable than we are. And therefore, I think Putin tends to be
more sensitive about security than any American
president in recent times. - Europe on one side,
China on the other side. It's a complicated situation. - Yeah and we talked before about 1812 when Napoleon invaded and
Moscow got burned to the ground. We talked about World War I, where the Russians were actually
defeated and surrendered. And then we talked about 1941 to 1945, although thankfully the Soviets prevailed, it was a close call. And I mean, the casualties, the destruction that the
Soviet Union had inflicted on it by the Germans is
just almost hard to believe. Just so they are sensitive, 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. I don't understand why more
Americans don't understand that. It befuddles me. I think it has to do with the fact that Americans are not very
good at putting themselves in the shoes of other countries. And you really, if you're gonna be a
first class strategist in international politics, you have to be able to do that. 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. - And as a starting point, Americans tend to see
themselves as the good guys and a set of others as the bad guys. And you have to be able to empathize that Russians think of
themselves as the good guys. The Chinese think of
themselves as the good guys and just be able to empathize
if they are the good guys. It's like that funny skit,
"Are We The Baddies?" Consider the United States
could be the bad guys, like first of all, like see the world if the
United States is the bad guys and China is the good guys,
what does that world look like? Be able to just exist with that thought, because that is what
the Chinese leadership and many Chinese citizens, if not now, maybe in
the future will believe. And you have to kind
of do the calculation, the simulation forward from that. And same with Russia, same
with with other nations. - Yeah, I agree with
you a hundred percent. And just, I always think of
Michael McFall at Stanford, who was the American ambassador to Russia, I think between 2012 and 2014. 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 hegemony. And I asked Mike what
Putin's response was to that. And Mike said that
Putin didn't believe it, but Mike believed that
he should believe it and that we could move NATO
eastward to include Ukraine and in the end we'd get away with it, because we are a benign hegemony. But the fact is, that's
not what Putin saw. Putin saw us as a malign hegemony. And what Mike thinks or any
American thinks, doesn't matter. What matters is what Putin thinks. - But also the drums of
war have been beating for some reason. NATO expansion has been
threatened for some reason. So, you've talked about
NATO expansion being dead, so like it doesn't make sense from a geopolitical
perspective on the Europe side to expand NATO, but nevertheless that
threat has been echoed. So, why has NATO expansion been pushed from your perspective? - There are two reasons. One is, first of all, we thought it was a wonderful thing to bring more and more
countries in to NATO. We thought that it facilitated
peace and prosperity. It was ultimately all for the good. And we also thought that, countries like Ukraine
had a right to join NATO. These are sovereign countries
that can decide for themselves and the Russians have no say
in what Ukraine wants to do. 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. So, it's a combination of those factors that led us to pursue what I think was ultimately
a foolish policy. - We've talked about how wars get started. How do you hope the war in Ukraine ends? What are the ways to end this war? What are the ways to achieve
peace there to end the, I would say senseless death of young men as always happens in war? - I'm sad to say I don't
have a good answer to that. I don't think there's any real prospect of a meaningful peace agreement. I think it's almost impossible. I think the best you can
hope for at this point is at some point in the shooting
stops, you have ceasefire and then you have a frozen conflict. And that frozen conflict
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
dysfunctional rum 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. 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 piece and or you get a frozen conflict and the potential for
escalation there will be great. So, I think this is a disaster. - That's a very realist perspective. Let me ask you sort of
the human side of it. Do you think there's some
power to leaders sitting down, having a conversation, man to man, leader to leader about this? There's is just a lot of death happening. It seems that from a economic perspective from a historic perspective, from a human perspective
both nations are losing. Is it possible for Vladimir Zelensky and Vladimir Putin to sit down and talk and to figure out a way where the security concerns
are addressed and both nations can minimize the amount of
suffering that's happening and create a path towards
future flourishing? - I think the answer is no. - Even with United States involved, three people in the room. - Well, I think if the
United States is involved, the answer's definitely no. You have to get the Americans out. And then I think if you have
Zelensky and Putin talking, you have a sliver of a chance there. The Americans are a real problem. Look, let's go back to what happens right after
the war starts, okay? Because I said before, we're talking March, early April of 2022. The war starts on February 24th, 2022. And as I said to you, the two sides were negotiating in Istanbul and they were also negotiating
through Naftali Bennett and the Bennett track
and the Turkish track were operating together. I mean, they were not at
cross purposes at all. What happened? Bennett tells the story very clearly that they had made significant progress in reaching an agreement. This is Zelensky on one
side and Putin on the other. Bennett is talking in person
to both Putin and Zelensky and what happens to produce failure. The answer is the United
States and Britain get involved and tell Zelensky to walk. They tell Zelensky to walk. If they had come in
and encouraged Zelensky to try to figure out a way with
Putin to shut this one down and worked with Bennett
and worked with Erdogan, we might've been able to
shut the war down then. But it was the United States. - Well, let me sort of push back on that. You're correct, but sort of United States
paints this like picture that everybody's aligned. So, maybe you can correct me, but I believe in the power of individuals, especially individual leaders. Again, whether it's Biden
or Trump or whoever, goes into a room and says
in a way that's convincing that no more NATO expansion. And actually just on a basic human level, ask the question of why are we doing all this senseless killing? And look at the interest of one Russia, look at the interest of the other Ukraine. Their interests are pretty simple. And say, United States is
gonna stay out of this. We're not going to expand NATO and say all that in a
way that's convincing, which is, NATO expansion
is silly at this point. China's the big threat. We're not going to do this
kind of conflict escalation with Russia. The Cold War's over,
let's normalize relations. - Well, let me just embellish
your argument, okay? - Thank you. - I need it. - 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] Thank you, I need
all the help I can get. - Two things have to be
done here in my opinion. One is Ukraine has to become neutral and it it has to completely
sever all security ties with the West, right? It's not like you can say
we're not gonna expand NATO to include Ukraine, but we're going to continue to have some loose security
arrangement with Ukraine. None of that has to be completely severed. Ukraine has to be on its own, okay? And number two, Ukraine has to accept the fact that the Russians are
gonna keep the four oblast that they've now annexed in Crimea, right? The Russians are not gonna give them back. 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 wanna make sure the Russians, don't take another four oblast to include Kyiv and Odessa, right? If I'm playing Putin's
hand and this war goes on, I'm thinking about
taking four more oblast. I want to take about 43% of Ukraine and Annex to Russia, right? And I certainly want Odessa
and I certainly want Kiev and I want the two oblast
in between as well, right? - Literally, or as leverage in negotiation for Ukraine neutrality. - I want them literally I want
to conquer them literally. But my point to you is if we can begin to talk
about cutting a deal now, you may be able to head
that kind of aggression off at the pass. In other words, you may be able to limit Putin and Russia to annexing the four oblasts that they've now annexed plus Crimea. That's the best I think you can hope for. But the point is you have to get the Ukrainians to accept that, you have to get the Ukrainians to accept becoming a truly neutral state and conceding that the Russians keep a big chunk of territory. It's about 23% of Ukrainian
territory that they've annexed. And I find it hard to imagine, any Ukrainian leader agreeing to that. - Well, there could be
more nuanced things like, no military involvement, between the United States and Ukraine, but economic involvement, sort of financial support, sort of normalizing economic
relationships with Ukraine, with Russia, all being. - I think you could
probably get away with that. I think that the tricky question there that you would have to answer is what about EU expansion, right? 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
built into EU expansion. It's not purely an economic alliance or relationship or institution, whatever word you want to use. There's a military dimension to that. And in the runup to the World War, actually in the runup to the 2014 crisis, when it first broke out, the Russians made it clear
they saw EU expansion as a stalking horse for NATO expansion. So, EU expansion is tricky, 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. I think the Russians
have a vested interest if it's a neutral Ukraine, they have a vested interest
in that Ukraine flourishing. But that then brings us, back to the territorial issue, right? - Well, so do you believe it's possible for individual human
relations to counteract the structural forces that you talk about? So, meaning the leaders being
able to pick up the phone and make agreements that are
good for humanity as a whole and for their individual
nations in the long term? - I think leadership matters here. I mean, one of the real problems here is that there's no trust
and on the Russian side, and that has to do with
the Minsk Agreements. The Minsk Agreements, which were designed to
shut down the civil war in eastern Ukraine in the Donbas, really mattered to the Russians. And there were four players
involved in the Minsky process. Four main players, Russia and Ukraine of course
and then Germany and France. And I believe the Russians took
the Minsk Accord seriously. I believe Putin took them very seriously. He wanted to shut down that conflict. And Angela Merkel, Francois Hollande, he was the French leader, and Poroshenko who was
the Ukrainian leader, those were the three key
players besides Putin. Again, Hollande from
France, Merkel from Germany, and Poroshenko from Ukraine
have all explicitly said they were not seriously interested
in reaching an agreement in all of the discussions with Putin, they were bamboozling him. They were trying to trick him, so that they would buy time to
build up Ukraine's military. Putin is profoundly upset
about these admissions by these three leaders. He believes he was fooled into thinking that Minsk could work. He believes that he
negotiated in good faith and they did not. 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. 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. If you're Putin at this point in time, trusting the West is not an idea that's gonna be very attractive at all. In fact, you're gonna
distrust anything they say. - Yeah, distrust anything the West say. But there is individual humans. The way human nature works is when you're sitting
across from a person, you can trust a human being, while still distrusting the West. I mean, I believe in the power of that. I think with the right leaders, you could sit down and talk, like override the general
structural distrust of the West and say, you know what? I like this guy or gal, whatever. I do hope Zelensky and
Putin sit down together and talk, have multiple talks. - Just remember they
were doing that in March and the Americans came in
and the British came in. - [Lex] Yeah. - And they scotched a potential deal. - Well, the other beautiful
thing about human nature, there's forgiveness and
there's trying, again, - When you're the leader of a country in an Antarctic 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 stabbed you in the
back, you could die. And again, you wanna remember that the principal
responsibility of any leader, I don't care what country it is, is to ensure the survival of their state. And that means that, trust is only gonna buy you so much. And when you've already
betrayed the trust of a leader, you really are not gonna be
able to rely on trust very much to help you moving forward. Now, you disagree with that? I hope you're right and if they can shut down
the Ukraine-Russia war, it would be wonderful. If I'm proved dead wrong,
that would be wonderful news. My prediction that this war is gonna go on for a long time and end in an ugly way, is a prediction that I don't like it all. So, I hope I'm wrong. - You wrote that many in the West believe that the best hope for
ending the Ukraine war is to remove Vladimir Putin from power. But you argue that this isn't the case. Can you explain? - Well, 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. And what would happen is a peace-loving leader
would replace Putin. I made two points at the time and I would make those same two points. Now, number one, he's not likely to be overthrown. He was not likely then to be overthrown. And I think as long as
his health holds up, I think he will remain in power. 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 hard line than Putin is. I actually think one
could argue that Putin was too trusting of the
West before the war started. And number two, I think one could argue that he has not waged the war
against Ukraine as vigorously as one might have expected. He was slow to mobilize
the nation for war, and he has pursued a limited war in all sorts of ways. The Israelis for example, have killed more civilians
in Gaza in one month than the Russians have killed
over 18 months in Ukraine. The idea that Vladimir Putin
is waging a punishment campaign and killing on purpose, large numbers of civilians
is simply not true. 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 hard line than
him, in terms of waging the war and certainly will not trust
the West any more than he has. - By way of advice. Let me ask you, if I were to have a conversation
interview Vladimir Putin and Zelensky individually, what should I ask them? If you, me and Vladimir
Putin are having a chat, what are good ideas to explore? What are good questions to ask? What are good things to say
on or off the mic once again, that could potentially even slightly, less than the amount of
suffering in the world, caused by this war. - Oh, I think if you get an
interview with Vladimir Putin, there's just all sorts of
questions you could ask him. And my sense is that Putin
is a straight shooter. He's also very knowledgeable about history and he has simple theories in his head, about how the world works. And I think he would level with you and all you would've to
do is just figure out what all the right questions are. And that would not be hard to do, right? You could ask him why was he so foolish? This is for example, why was he so foolish
as to trust Poroshenko Hollande and Merkel in the Minsk accords. 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 in a very
important way trust the West? Why didn't he mobilize
the Russian military, before late September, 2022? Once the negotiations that
we were talking about, before involving Istanbul
and Naftali Bennett, and once they broke down why didn't he immediately mobilize, more of the Russian
population to fight the war? It just all sorts of questions like that. And then you could ask him questions about where he sees this one headed. What's the best strategy for Russia if the Ukrainians will not
agree to neutrality, right? People like John Mearsheimer say, you'll probably take
close to half of Ukraine. Is that true? Does it make sense to take Odessa? - And John Mearsheimer also
has questions about China, your future relationships with China. - Yeah, 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 Vladimir Putin, having good relations with Ukraine, what would your relations with China be? And how would you think about that? So, there are just plenty of
questions you could ask him. - Well, hope burns eternal in my heart. I think probably in Putin's
heart and Zelensky he's heart, I hope because hope is the leap of trust that we've talked about, I think is necessary for
deescalation and for peace. - Well, you realize I have
from the beginning argued for different policies that were all designed to prevent this war from ever happening. - [Lex] Yes, yes. - I don't know if you know this, but in 1993, I argued
that Ukraine should keep its nuclear weapons. I was probably the only person in the West who made that argument. And my argument in 1993,
this is in foreign affairs, was that there may come the day when Russia thinks about invading Ukraine. And should that day come,
it would be very helpful for preventing war if
Ukraine had nuclear weapons. - So, military might is essential for maintaining a balance
of power and peace. - 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. And if you're Russia, and I'm Ukraine, I'm far weaker than you. - [Lex] Yeah, right? - And having a nuclear deterrent, would be very effective at
convincing you not to attack me. Because if you attack me,
you're threatening my survival. And that's the one circumstance where it is likely that I
would use nuclear weapons to defend myself. And given the consequences of nuclear use, you would be reluctant in
the extreme to attack me. So, that's why I argued in '93 that if Ukraine kept its nuclear weapons that made war down the
road much less likely. And I believe I was correct. And in fact, Bill Clinton, 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. 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. So, I was deeply interested
at 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, but people did not
listen to me then either. - How did nuclear weapons, change the calculus of offensive realism? Because of mutually assured destruction. I mean, it's not just military might, it's just so destructive that you basically can't
use nuclear weapons, unless you want complete destruction. - 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. It doesn't take that
possibility off the table, but it makes it much less likely, because of the reasons
that you articulated. But with regard to nuclear use, it's an interesting question. How you think about
nuclear use in a mad world. 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, but let's stick to the capital letters. We're in a world of mutual
assured destruction. There's no question that in that world, it's unlikely that nuclear
weapons would be used. But the way you use nuclear
weapons in that world is you use them for
manipulation of risk purposes, demonstration effect. You put both sides out
on the slippery slope. Now, what exactly am I saying here? Let me talk about NATO doctrine. During the Cold War, we lived in a mad world, United States and Soviet Union, or the Warsaw Pact in NATO, both had an assured
destruction capability. So, you had mutual assured destruction. If the Warsaw Pact were
to invade western Europe and here we're talking about West Germany and NATO was losing the war, we said that we would use nuclear weapons. How would we use nuclear weapons, given that we were in a mad world? The argument was that
we would use a handful of nuclear weapons
against the Warsaw Pact, not necessarily against
their military forces, could be in a remote area. 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 throwing both sides, out on the slippery slope to oblivion. In other words, we were manipulating risk. And the last clear chance
to avoid Armageddon, rested with them. 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 launch a small
another nuclear attack. We would explode a handful
more of nuclear weapons, all for the purposes of
showing you our resolve, right? So, this is the manipulation
of risk strategy and a lot of the language I just used in describing it to you is language that Thomas Schelling invented, right? Now, fast forward to the present, if Russia were losing in Ukraine, that's the one scenario where I think where Russia would've
used nuclear weapons. And the question is, how would Russia have
used nuclear weapons? Again, we're assuming that the Russians are losing to the Ukrainians. I believe they would've pursued a manipulation risk strategy. They would've used four or
five, three or four, who knows? Nuclear weapons. - Maybe just one in a rural
area that kills very few people. - Yes, exactly. And basically that would spook everybody. The American- - Just the mushroom cloud. - Yeah. It's because of the threat of escalation. Again, you your point
is we're in a mad world. I accept that. 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. 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. So, everybody has a powerful incentive to put an end to the conflict right away. I might add to you that there were people who believed that we
would not even initiate a manipulation of risk strategy in Europe if we were losing to the Warsaw
Pact during the Cold War. Both Henry Kissinger and Robert McNamara said
after leaving office, that they would not have done it. They would've not initiated nuclear use, even limited nuclear use. That's what we're talking about here. They would rather be red than dead, right? That was the argument. - [Lex] Too risky. - Too risky, that's exactly right. But if they had used one
nuclear weapon in your story or three or four in my story, everybody would've said, "Oh my God, we've got to shut
this one down immediately." 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. And this is the answer - This is all very terrifying. Perhaps in part, it's terrifying to me, because I can see in the
21st century China, Russia, Israel, United States using
a nuclear weapon in this way, blowing it up somewhere
in the middle of nowhere that kills maybe nobody. But I'm terrified of
seeing the mushroom cloud and not knowing what given social media, given how fast news travels, what the escalation looks like there. Just in a matter of minutes
how the news travels and how the leaders react, it's terrifying that this
little demonstration of power, the ripple effects of it in
a matter of minutes, seconds, what that leads to, because it's like, it's human emotions. It's like you see the
landscape of human emotions, the leaders and the populace and the way news are reported, and then the landscape of
risk, as you mentioned, shifting like the world's most intense, non-linear dynamical system. And it is just terrifying, 'cause the entirety of
human civilizations hangs in the balance there. And it's like this, like hundreds of millions
of people could be dead. - Let's just talk about
this in the context of the Ukraine war. If the Russians were
losing as I said before, which is not the case anymore, but in 2022, it did look like that. If the Russians are losing and
they turn to nuclear weapons, the question is how do they use them? And they would use them in Ukraine. And because Ukraine has no
nuclear weapons of its own, Ukraine cannot retaliate. It's not a mutual assured
destruction world. It's a case where one
side has nuclear weapons and the other doesn't. 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. And therefore it makes
nuclear use more likely. Okay that's point one. Point two is let's assume
that the Russians use two or three nuclear weapons in a remote area. - My paws are sweating, by the way, just as a commentary, it's terrifying. - Yeah, the question then
is what does the West do? 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. But then the question
is, what would we do? And if you listen to David Petraeus, what David Petraeus says
is that we should attack the Russian naval assets in the Black Sea and attack Russian forces in Ukraine. Well, once you do that,
you have a great power war. You have NATO versus Russia, which is another way of saying you have the United States versus Russia. We're now in a great power war. They have nuclear weapons,
we have nuclear weapons. They've used nuclear weapons. What is the happy ending here? 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. Well, here's a case where not only is NATO come up to their border, but they're in a war with
NATO right on their border. What do the escalation
dynamics look like there? You know what the answer is? Who knows? That should scare the live-in
bejesus out of you, right? - And some of it could be,
like you mentioned, unintended. That could be unintended consequences, that could be a Russian
missile misses and hits Poland, these kinds of things that just
escalate misunderstandings, miscommunications, even I mean, nuclear weapon could be, boy, it could have been
planned to go location X and it went to a location Y that ended up actually killing a very large number of people. I mean, just that the
escalation that happens there, just happens in a matter of minutes. And the only way to stop that is communication between leaders. And that to me is a big argument
for ongoing communication. - 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] Yeah, yeah. - And he then found out a few days later that some guy hadn't gotten the message and had penetrated in an aircraft
deep into Soviet airspace. And this supports your basic
point that bad things happen. And again the overarching point here is we've never done
this before, thankfully, therefore, we don't
have a lot of experience as to how it plays itself out. It's really a theoretical enterprise, because there's no empirical basis for talking about escalation
in a nuclear crisis. And that of course is a wonderful thing. - Well, and in general the
human species as a whole is a one-off is a theoretical enterprise. The survival of the human species, we've seen empires rise and fall, but we haven't seen the
human species rise and fall. So, far it's been rising, but it's not obvious that it doesn't end. In fact, I think about aliens a lot. And the fact that we don't
see aliens makes me suspect it's not so easy to survive in this complicated world of ours. Switching gears a little bit and going to a different
part of the world, also engulfed in war. Let me ask you about
the situation in Israel. Why did Hamas attack Israel
on October 7th, 2023? As you understand the situation, what was the reason that attack happened? - Well, I think the main reason was that you had this
suffocating occupation. I think as long as the
occupation persists, the Palestinians are going to resist. As you well know, this
is not the first time there has been a Palestinian uprising. There was the First Intifada,
there was the Second Intifada, now there's October 7th, and their uprisings besides those three, so this is not terribly surprising, 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. 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 the
main driving force here. I think the main driving force is that the Palestinians
feel oppressed as they should and that this was a resistance move. They were resisting
the Israeli occupation. - So, that resistance, the attack involved killing a large number of Israeli civilians. There's many questions to ask there, but one is do you think
Hamas fully understood what the retaliation will
involve from Israel into Gaza? - They had to understand. I mean, you had Operation
Cast Lead in 2008, 2009. It started, I think right
after Christmas 2008. And it ended right before
President Obama took office in January, 2009. And 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. So, there's no question in my mind that the Hamas forces understood full well that the Israelis would retaliate
and they would retaliate in force as they have done. - Yeah, even the metaphor
of mowing the lawn is disturbing to me in many ways. I actually saw Norman
Finkelstein, I think, say that, well then if
you use that metaphor, then you could say that Hamas
was also mowing the lawn. And it's such a horrific image, because the result on either side is just the death of civilians. I mean, let me ask you about
the death of civilians. So, during the attack,
1400 Israelis were killed. Over 240 were taken hostage. And then in response, as we sit today, Israel's military response has killed over 10,000 people in Gaza. And given the nature of the demographics, it's a very heavily young population. Over 40% of them are under
the age of 18 of those killed. That's of course, according to Ministry of Health
of Palestinian Authority. So, what do you think
is the long-term effect on the prospect of peace
when so many civilians die? - I mean, I think it's disastrous. I mean, the only way
you're gonna get peace here is if you have a two-state solution where the Palestinians have a
sovereign state of their own and there is a sovereign Jewish state. And these two states live side by side, American presidents since Jimmy Carter, have understood this full well. And this is why we have pushed very hard for two-state solution. 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 peace between the two sides. But what's happened here
is that in recent years, the Israelis have lost all
interest in a two-state solution. And it's in large part
because the political center of gravity in Israel has
steadily moved to the right. When I was a young boy, the political center of gravity in Israel was much further to the
left than it is today. And it is in a position now
the political center of gravity where there's hardly any
support for two-state solution and Netanyahu and the rest of
the people in his government were in favor or are in
favor of a greater Israel. There's just no question about that. Well, on top of that, you now have had a war
where, as you described, huge numbers of civilians have been killed and you already had bad blood
between the Palestinians and the Israelis before this conflict. And you could imagine how people on each side now feel about
people on the other side. So, even if you didn't have
this opposition inside Israel to a two-state solution, how could you possibly get the Israelis now to agree to a two-state solution? 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. And the Israelis here
are the key players more, so than the Palestinians, because it's the Israelis
who control greater Israel. It's the Israelis who
you have to convince. Now, I wanna be clear here, you also ultimately have
to get around the fact that Hamas is not committed
to a two-state solution. But I think that problem
could be dealt with. It's important to understand that Arafat and the PLO was once adamantly opposed to a two-state solution, but Arafat came around to understand that that was really the
only hope for settling this. And he became a proponent
of a two-state solution. And that's true of Mahmoud Abbas who runs the PA in the West Bank. It's not true of Hamas
at this point in time. They want a one -state solution, they want a Palestinian state. And of course, the Israelis want a
one state solution too, which is a Jewish state that controls all of
all of greater Israel. So the question is, can you
get some sort of agreement? And I think to get to your, the number of your question,
given what's just happened, it's almost impossible to imagine that happening anytime soon. - The cynical perspective here is that those in power
benefit from conflict, while the people on both sides suffer. Is there degree of truth to that? Or for the people in
power to maintain power, conflict needs to continue. - No, I don't believe that. 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. You don't want resistance. You don't want an Intifada, you don't want what
happened on October 7th. In fact, I think one of
the principle reasons that the Israelis are 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. That's their goal. So, I think the Israelis would prefer that the Palestinians roll
over and accept submission. In terms of 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. I think in the case of the PA under Abbas, they would accept the two-state solution. I think what at this
point in time Hamas wants is a one-state solution,
but they want peace. All of them want peace. The two different sets of
leadership in Palestine and the Israelis. - So, you think Hamas wants peace? - Sure. But on its own terms, that's the point. - What does peace look like for Hamas? - At this point in time, I think peace basically
means a greater Israel, controlled by Palestine or Palestinians. - Okay, so essentially, I mean the whole land is called Palestine and there's no Israel. - I think at this point in time
that's their principle goal. 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 state of their own, that Hamas
would buy into that. Can we say that with a
high degree of certainty? No, but I think the
Israelis should have pursued that possibility. They should have worked with Abbas. They should have worked with Hamas to do everything they can to facilitate a two-state solution. Because I think ultimately
that's an Israel's interest. Now, the Israeli government and most Israelis at this point in time, I believe, don't agree with that. - What do you think of Israel starting the ground invasion of Gaza
recently on October 27th? - The question is, should they continue until they
have finally defeated Hamas? There are all sorts of
reports in the media, including in the Israeli media, that they're not gonna be allowed by the United States to
continue this offensive from much more than a few weeks. The Israelis have been saying it would, it's gonna take in the best
of all possible worlds, a number of months if not
a year to finish off Hamas. Well, it doesn't look like they're gonna have enough time to do that. I doubt whether they can finish off Hamas, even if they're given the time. I think they're gonna run
into fierce resistance. And when they run into fierce resistance and large numbers of
Israelis gonna start to die, they'll lose their appetite for this. 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 gonna rise
up to resist the occupation. The idea that you can use
what Ze'ev Jabotinsky, called the Iron Wall to
beat the Palestinians into submission is delusional. It's just not gonna happen. The Palestinians want
a state of their own. They don't wanna live under occupation. And there's no military
solution for Israel here. There has to be a political solution. And the only viable political solution is a two-state solution. I mean, you can't go to democracy. You can't go to a situation where you give the
Palestinians equal rights, inside a greater Israel in large part, because there are now as many Palestinians as there are Israeli Jews. 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. So, democracy for all doesn't work. The Israelis, I believe are quite interested
in ethnic cleansing. I think they saw this recent set of events as an opportunity to cleanse Gaza. But that's not gonna happen. The Jordanians and the
Egyptians have made it clear that that's not happening. The United States is now made it clear that that's not happening. And the Palestinians will not leave. They'll die in place. So, ethnic cleansing doesn't work. So, you're really left
with two alternatives, a two-state solution or a greater Israel that is
effectively an apartheid state. I mean, that's what the
occupation has led to. And all sorts of people
have been predicting this for a long, long time. And you've now reached the point, here in the United States, if you say that Israel's
an apartheid state, that's gonna get you into
all sorts of trouble. 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 detailed reports,, making the case that Israel
is an apartheid state. Furthermore, if you
read the Israeli media, all sorts of Israelis,
including Israeli leaders, refer to Israel as an apartheid state. It's not that unusual to hear
that term used in Israel. This is disastrous for
Israel in my opinion. And Steve Walt 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. And that brings us back
to the two-state solution, but is you and I were talking
about a few minutes ago, it's hard to see how you
get a two-state solution. And the end result of this
conversation is utter despair. - Because the path to a
two-state solution is blocked by the amount of hate that's
created by civilian deaths. - Well, that plus the fact
that the Israeli government is filled with people who have no interest in
a two-state solution. They're ideologically deeply
committed to a greater Israel. They want all the land
between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea to
be part of a Jewish state. They're just ideologically
committed to that. 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 when you have two sides with those kinds of views, right? You are in deep trouble, because there's little
room for compromise. 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. And you've already taken
care of the PA on this front, the Palestinian Authority, but you've gotta convince Hamas that its Maximalist goals
are are not gonna work in its interest to follow
in the footsteps of Arafat and accept a two-state solution. 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. The problem is that the
hatred that has been fueled by this recent ongoing conflict, is so great that it's just hard to imagine how you can make a two-state
solution work at this juncture. 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. It's just it's no longer possible. - Well, again, I believe in leadership and there's other parties at play here, other nations, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, other players in the
Middle East that can help, that can help through a
normalization of relationships and these kinds of things. There's always hope, like you said, slither of hope. - [John] Slither of hope. - I think human civilization
progresses forward by taking advantage of the
all the slithers it can get. Let me ask you about, you
mentioned "The Israel Lobby". You wrote a book, probably your most
controversial book on the topic, - Not probably, clearly the most controversial
book I ever wrote. - So you've criticized Israel
lobby in the United States for influencing US policy
in the Middle East. Can you explain what
"The Israel Lobby" is, their influence and your
criticism over the past, let's say a couple decades? - Well, the argument that
Steve Walt and I made, actually, we wrote an article first and which appeared in the
"London Review of Books," and then we wrote the book itself. Our argument is that the lobby is a loose coalition of
individuals and organizations that push American policy
in a pro-Israel direction. 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. And our argument is that if
you look at the relationship, between the United States and Israel, it's unprecedented in modern history. This is the closest relationship that you can find
between any two countries in recorded history. It's truly amazing the
extent to which Israel and the United States
are joined at the hip. And we support Israel no matter what, almost all the time. And our argument is
that that is largely due to the influence of the lobby. The lobby is an extremely
powerful interest group. 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. So, in the United States, you have an interest group or a lobby, like the National Rifle
Association that makes it, well, not impossible to get gun control. Yeah, right. And so with "The Israel Lobby," you have this group of
individuals and organizations that wield enormous
influence on US policy, toward the Middle East. And this is not surprising given the nature of the
American political system. So, our argument is that the lobby is not doing anything
that's illegal or elicit or immoral or unethical. It's just a good old fashioned
American interest group. And it just happens to
be extremely powerful. And our argument is that this is not good for the United States, because no two countries
have the same interests, all the time. 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. But the lobby tends to conflate
America's national interest with Israel's national interest and wants the United
States to support Israel, no matter what. 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. So, our argument is that
the lobby pushes policies that are not in America's interest or not in Israel's interest. Now, you're saying to yourself, what exactly does he mean by that? 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 in Greater Israel, push Israel to accept
the two-state solution. And we have run into huge resistance from the lobby whenever we tried to, let's be blunt about it,
coerce Israel, right? In a perfect world
where there was no lobby and an American president was free to put pressure on Israel, to coerce Israel, I believe we would've gone a long way, towards getting two-state solution. And I believe this would've
been in Israel's interest, but we couldn't get a two-state solution, because it was almost impossible to put meaningful pressure on
Israel because of the lobby. So, this was not in Israel's interest and it was not in America's interest. And that was the argument that we made. And we of course got huge
pushback for making that argument. - What's the underlying
motivation of the lobby? Is it religious in nature? Is it similar to the way war hawks are, sort of militaristic in nature? Is it nationalistic in nature? If you were de describe
this coalition of people, what would you say is their motivation? - Well, first of all, I think you have to distinguish
between Jews and Christians. You wanna remember that there are a huge number
of Christians Zionists, who are deeply committed to
Israel no matter what, right? And then there are a large number of Jews. The Jews are obviously the most important of those two groups in "The Israel Lobby". But one of the arguments
that we made in the book is that you should not
call it the Jewish lobby, because it's not populated just by Jews. And Christians Zionists are an
important part of that lobby. But furthermore, there are a good number of Jews
who are opposed to the lobby and the policies that the lobby prevails. And there a number of Jews who are prominent anti-Zionists, right? So, and they're obviously not in the lobby or if you take a group like
Jewish Voice for Peace, right? Jewish Voice for Peace
is not in the lobby. So, it's wrong to call it a Jewish lobby. But with regard to the American
Jews who were in that lobby, I think that really, this
is all about nationalism. It's not so much religion. 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. And that in addition to being an American, 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. So, I think that's what drives most, if not almost all the Jews. 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. - So, I had a conversation
with Benjamin Netanyahu and he said, fundamentally,
if you're anti-Zionist, you're anti-Semitic. So, the Zionist project
is tied to the hip, to the Jewish project. What do you have to say to that? - Look, you can define anti-Semitism, any way you want, right? And you can define anti-Semitism to incorporate anti-Zionism. And I think we have reached
the point where antisemitism is identified today, not
just with anti-Zionism, but with criticism of Israel. If you criticize Israel, people will say some people will say, you're an antisemite and if that's your
definition of antisemitism, it's taken an important term and stretched it to the point
where it's meaningless, right? So, when Steve and I wrote the book, wrote the article and then wrote the book, all sorts of people said
that we were anti-Semite, this is a ludicrous charge. But what they meant was, you're criticizing the lobby, you're criticizing Israel, and therefore you're an antisemite. Okay if that's what an antisemite is, somebody who criticizes Israel, probably half the Jewish community, if not more in the United
States is antisemitic. 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. But even people who are anti-Zionists, I don't think they're anti-Semitic at all. You can argue they're
misguided, that's fine. But many of these people are Jewish and proud of the fact that they're Jewish. They just don't believe that nationalism and Jewish nationalism is a
force that should be applauded. And you wanna understand
that in the American context, there is a rich tradition
of anti-Zionism, right? And these were not people
who were anti-Semites, if you go back to the 30s, 40s, 50s. And the same thing was
even true in Europe. There were all sorts of European Jews who were opposed to Zionism. Were they anti-Semite? I don't think so, 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 calling people anti-Semite, so loosely that the term
has kinda lost meaning. So, I think Netanyahu is wrongheaded to equate anti-Zionism with antisemitism. - Alan Dershowitz was one of the people that called you specifically antisemitic. So, just looking at
the space of discourse, how do you, where's the slither of
hope for healthy discourse, about US relationships with Israel, between you and Alan
Dershowitz and others like him? - Well, I think until there is a settlement of the
Israeli Palestinian conflict, there's no hope of putting an
end to this nonsense, right? - So, these are just uses of terms to kinda cheat your way
through the discourse. It's shortcut. - No, it's to silence people, right? So, it's very, very important to understand that one of
the lobby's principle goals is to make sure we don't
have an open discourse, a freewheeling discourse about Israel, because they understand
people in the lobby understand that if you have an open discourse, Israel will end up
looking very bad, right? You don't wanna talk about the occupation, you don't wanna talk about
how Israel was created, right? All these subjects are ones that will cause problems for Israel. See, just to go to the
present crisis, okay? When you have a disaster and what happened on
October 7th is a disaster, one of the first things that happens is that people begin to ask the question, how did this happen, right? What's the root cause of this problem? This is a disaster. We have to understand what caused it, so that we can work to make
sure it doesn't happen again, so we can work to shut it down and then make sure it
doesn't happen again. But once you start talking
about the root causes, right? You end up talking about how
Israel was created, right? And that means telling a
story that is not pretty, about how the Zionists
conquered Palestine. And number two, it means talking about
the occupation, right? It's not like Hamas
attacked on October 7th, because there were just
a bunch of anti-Semite who hated Jews and wanted to kill Jews. This is not Nazi Germany, right? This is directly related to the occupation and to what was going on inside of Gaza. And 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? We wanna talk about that. And we don't want to talk about from the lobbyist's point of view, the influence that the lobby has, right? It's better from the
lobbyist's point of view, if most Americans think that
Americans support of Israel is just done for all the right
moral and strategic reasons, not because of the lobby. 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. So, the point is, you have to go to great
lengths for all these reasons. You have to go to great lengths
to silence people like me and Steve Walt. And one of the ways to do that
is to call us anti-Semite. I think the chapter or
the section of the book where we talk about this charge of antisemitism is called
"The Great Silencer." That's what we call the
charge of antisemitism, the great silencer. Who wants to be called an antisemite, especially in the wake of the Holocaust? Do I wanna be called an antisemite? Oh my God, no. And so it's very effective, but it is important to
talk about these issues in my humble opinion. And I think if we had
talked about these issues, way back when, it would've
gone a long way towards, maybe getting a two-state solution, which I think was the
best alternative here. - It it's complicated. And I wonder if you can comment
on the complexity of this, because criticizing Israel and criticizing the lobby can for a lot of people be a dog whistle for sort of anti-Semitic
conspiracy theories that this idea that Jews run everything, run the world or this kind of cabal. And it's also very true that people who are
legitimately anti-Semitic are also critics of Israel
in the same kind of way. And so it's such a
complicated landscaping. We should have discussions because, even people like David Duke who are racist don't sound
racist on the surface. I haven't listened to 'em enough, but like there's dog whistles. It's a complicated space in
which to have discussions, because I mean, I wonder if
you can sort of speak to that, because there's this silencing effect of calling everybody anti-Semitic. But it's also true that there
is anti-Semitism in the world. Like there is the sizeable
population of people that hate Jews. There's probably a sizeable
population of people who hate Muslims too. - [John] A lot of hate out there. - A lot of hate out there. But the hatred of Jews
has like a long history. And so you have like rolling Stones, have a set of great hits and there's just a set of great hits of the ways conspiracy theories that you can make about the Jews that are used as part of the hatred. So, there's like nice templates for that. And I just wonder if you can comment on operating as a
historian, as an analyst, as a strategic thinker
in this kind of space. - Yeah, we obviously, when we wrote the article, which we did before the book, gave this subject a great deal of thought. I mean, what you say just
now is music to our ears and I'm talking about me and Steve. I mean, I think that your point about dog whistles is correct. Look, we went to great
lengths to make it clear that this is not a cabal,
it's not a conspiracy. And in fact, in a very important way, the lobby operates out in the open, right? They brag about their power, right? And this was true before we
wrote the article, right? 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? Secondly, it's not a cabal, right? It's an American interest group. - And the American system is designed, such that interest groups
are perfectly legal and some of them are super effective. - Exactly. I mean, you hit the
nail right on the head. That's exactly right. And there was nothing that we
said that was anti-Semitic, by any reasonable definition of that term. 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 antisemitic. But look, you've got this
interest group, right? That has a significant
influence on American policy and on Israeli policy and you wanna talk about it. It's just important to talk about it. It's important for Jews, right? In the United States, for Jews
in Israel to talk about this. The idea that you wanna silence critics, is not a smart way to
go about doing business, in my opinion. If we were wrong, if Steve and I were so wrong
and our arguments were so foul, they could have easily
exposed those arguments. They could have gone into combat with this in terms of
the marketplace of ideas and easily knocked this down. The problem was that our
arguments were quite powerful. And instead of engaging us
and defeating our arguments, they wanted to silence us. And this is not good, right? It's not good for Israel, it's not good for the United States. And I would argue in the end, if anything it's gonna
foster antisemitism. I think you don't wanna
run around telling people that they can't talk about Israel, without being called an antisemite. It's just not, it's not healthy in terms of the issue that you're raising, right? But I still agree with you
that it is a tricky issue. I don't wanna make light of that. I know that there's this
piece of literature out there, called the "Protocols
of the Elders of Zion," and I fully understand
that if you're not careful, you can come close to writing
volume two of the protocol. But I don't believe that we wrote anything that was even close to that. And again, I think that a
healthy debate on the issues that we were raising would've been, not only in America's interest, but it would've been in Israel's interest. - Yeah, I mean, underneath it all is just, I wonder why there's so
much hate against groups, why it's such a sticky way of thinking, not just tribalism, like
proud of your country and kind of hating another country, but really deeply hating, like hating in a way where it's part of your
identity kind of hate. - Well, just to make a
general point on this issue in our conversation here today, you often talk about individual leaders and the word individual often
pops up in your vocabulary. - [Lex] Yes. - I believe that we are
ultimately social animals, before we are individuals. I believe we're born into tribes, we're heavily socialized and that we carve out space
for our individualism. But we are part of tribes and
or social groups or nations, call them what you want, ethnic groups, religious groups. But the fact is that these tribes, often crash into each other, and when they crash into each other, they end up hating each other. If you go to a place like Bosnia, right? The Croats and the Serbs, oh my God. And then throw in the Bosniaks or which is the term for Bosnian Muslims, and Muslims, Croats, Serbs, oh, and the tribes hate each other. And in a funny way, that
hatred almost never goes away. And I guess there are
some exceptions to that. If you look at the Germans
after World War II, they've gone a long way towards reducing, I wouldn't wanna say
completely eliminating, but reducing a lot of the hatred that existed between
Germans and their neighbors. But that's really kind
of an anomalous case. 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. 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. And there are those lingering effects. 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. - It's interesting to ask,
to go back to World War II. Now, you said you studied
Nazi Germany in the '30s from a perspective of
maybe offensive realism, but just to look at the Holocaust, it's sometimes popular
in public discourse today to compare certain
things to the Holocaust. People have compared the
Hamas attack on Israel to the Holocaust saying things like, it's the biggest attack on
Jews since the Holocaust, which kind of implies
that there's a comparison. People have made that same comparison in the other direction. What do you make of this comparison? Is it comparable? Is the use of the Holocaust, have any accuracy in comparisons of modern day international politics? - 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. And as lots of people
and I mean lots of people who are pro-Palestinian accused
the Israelis of engaging in genocide in Gaza. I think what the Israelis
are doing in Gaza, represents a massacre. 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. But I would not use the word genocide. For me, a genocide is
where one side attempts to eliminate another
group from the planet. I think that what happened
with the Holocaust was clearly a genocide and that the Germans
were bent on destroying, all of European Jewry. And if they could have gotten their hands on Jews outside of Europe, they would've murdered them as well. That's a genocide. And I think with the
Hutu's and the Tootsies, you had a similar situation. I think with the Turks and the
Armenians during World War I. That was a genocide, 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. The Holocaust certainly does, okay? Now, what Hamas did
doesn't even come close to what happened to European Jewry, between, let's say 1939 and 1945, although I date the start
of the Holocaust in 1941, if we were looking at it closely, but let's just say 1939,
when they invade Poland. From 1939 to 1945, what Hamas did parallels in comparison. It's hard to believe anybody would make that argument, right? Yes, a lot of Jews died, but hardly any compared
to the number that died at the hands of the Germans. I mean, it just no parallel at all. And furthermore, Hamas was in no position
to kill all the Jews in the Middle East. Just not gonna happen. - Yeah, but there's also
a lot levels of things, using Germans using human skin for lamps. There's just levels of evil in this world. - Yes, but you don't see that with, I mean, that's not what Hamas is doing. No, I mean, I wanna be very clear here. I am not justifying Hamas'
killing of civilians, okay? Not for one second, but I'm just saying and by the way, just to go to the Israelis and what they're doing in Gaza, right, is I said to you before, I do believe that is a massacre, and I believe that's to be condemned, the killing of civilians. This is not legitimate collateral damage. They're directly punishing the population. But I would not call
that a genocide, right? And I would not compare
that to the Holocaust for one second. I just wanna be very clear on that. - Do you think if Israel could, they would avoid the
death of any civilians? So, you're saying there's some degree of punishment of collective- - No, they're purposely killing civilians. This is the iron wall. They're trying to beat the Palestinians in the submission, right? There's no way you kill
this many civilians if you're trying to precisely
take out Hamas fighters. 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 maximize the amount
of destruction and damage that we can inflict on the Palestinians. And I think this is a major
mistake on the part of Israel. First of all, it ends up being a moral
stain on your reputation, number one. And number two, it doesn't
work. It doesn't work. The Palestinians are not gonna roll over and submit to Israeli
domination of their life. So, the whole concept of the Iron Wall, Jabotinsky's term was misguided. And by the way, if you look at what
the Israelis are doing, they're trying to do two things. One is the Iron Wall and that's where you punish
the civilian population in Gaza and get them to submit. The other thing that they're
trying to do is get Hamas, they wanna destroy Hamas. And the belief there is
that if they destroy Hamas, they've solved the problem. But as many Israelis know, including people on the hard right, even if you destroy Hamas, they are going to be
replaced by another group, another resistance group and that resistance
group will employ terror. - Yeah, I think you've said that other terrorist organizations
have used this situation in Palestine as a kind of
a recruitment mechanism for a long time. - Osama bin Laden made it clear that this was one of
this principle reasons for attacking the United States, right? - And the United States attacked back and got us into a 20-year war that cost the lives of millions of people. Not American, but I mean human beings. - [John] And engaged in torture. - Torture, yeah. - No, I think if you look
at how we reacted to 9/11 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? And they lash out and
they go on a rampage, and the end result is not good. - Is there a capacity within
Israel or within United States after 9/11 to do something approximating, turn the other cheek of understanding the root of terror, this hate and fighting that hate with, not to sound naive, but compassion. - Well, I don't think in either case, you're gonna turn the other cheek. - I think- - Well, some, what I mean by that is, some limited powerful military
response, but very limited. - Yeah, coupled with a
smart political strategy. - [Lex] Political
strategy, diplomacy, yeah. - That's what they
should have done, right? - But is there capacity for that or from your offensive
realism perspective, it's just the odds are really low? - Well, from my offensive
realist perspective or my realist perspective that's
what you should do, right? - [Lex] Okay. - My view is states are rational actors, they should be cunning, right? They should think about, the strategic situation they're in and choose the appropriate response. And what happens and this is why my theory
is not always correct, is that sometimes states are not rational and they misbehave. I would argue in the Israeli case that it would've been
good after October 7th or starting on October 7th, if the United States had tried
to hold the Israelis back and countenance a more moderate response, take some time just to
think about how to deal with this problem, instead of lashing out. I think, given what
happened to the Israelis, given how shocked they were, given the level of fear, given the level of rage
they were gonna lash out and I don't believe that
was in their interest, I think it would've made
sense to think about it and to think about a smarter strategy than they're now employing. And I think the Americans blew it. The Americans gave 'em a
bear hug and a green light and said, we'll give you
all the weaponry you need and go out and do it. And I don't think that
was the smart thing to do. Look, in the wake of October 7th, the Israelis had no good strategy, right? 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, right? That's not true. They were in a sense, caught
between a rock and a hard place in terms of what to do. But they're smarter
things than number things. And I think the Israelis lashed out in ways that are counterproductive. I think going on a rampage and killing huge numbers
of civilians is not, it's obviously morally wrong, but it's also just not in their
strategic interest, right? I mean, 'cause it's not gonna
buy them anything, right? And in fact, it's gonna cost them, right? Because people all over the planet, are turning against Israel. 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
protests around the world that were pro-Israel versus pro-Palestine. And then it looked at the numbers from October 13th up to the present, and I think the numbers were
69% were pro-Palestinian in the first six days
after October 7th, 69%. And I think 31% take these
numbers with a grain of salt. 31% were pro-Israel. So, I think it was 69 and 31. 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. And what this tells you is that public opinion around the world has shifted against Israel. And if you look at some
of the demonstrations in places like London and Washington, DC, it's truly amazing the number
of people who are coming out in support of the Palestinians. And all of this, again, is
just to support my point that it was just not smart for Israel to launch this bombing campaign, right? You can make an argument
for going after Hamas and doing it in a surgical way or as surgical way as possible. But that's not what they did. And again, my point to you is I think that this punishment campaign is not gonna work strategically. In other words, they're not gonna beat the
Palestinians into submission. They're not gonna finish off Hamas. And at the same time, by
pursuing this strategy, they're doing huge damage to their reputation around the world. - Well, I just, yeah, in
the wake of October 7th, given the geopolitical context, I think there's a lot of leverage to be the great ethical superpower that demonstrate power
without killing any civilians. And use that leverage diplomatic leverage to push forward something
like Abrahamic Accords with more nations, with Saudi Arabia, push for peace aggressively, peace agreements, this kind of stuff, economic relationships,
all of this kind of stuff. And thereby pressure the
Palestinian authority, towards perhaps the two-state solution. - But I think what you're missing here, just in the Israeli case, is that the Israeli
Government is not interested in two-state solution. And you wanna 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? He almost looks like a moderate. He's got a lot of people who are way out to the right of him. And these people in this of
course, includes Netanyahu, are not interested in
the two-state solution. So, the question you have
to ask yourself is you, if you're Benjamin Netanyahu, and it's July 7th, late in the, excuse me, October 7th, late
in the day, what do you do? You're not thinking about
a two-state solution. You're thinking about an
occupation that's not gonna end. And the question is how do you
deal with the Palestinians, given what's just happened? - Well, there's people in the cabinet and then there's history. And history remembers great leaders. And so Benjamin Netanyahu can
look in the streets of Israel and see the protests and think of how history
will remember him. And I think a two-state solution is on the table for a great leader. - Well, it was there, was he the person who was
gonna take advantage of it? I don't think so, but we'll see. - Well, at this point, I mean, at this point,
it's very difficult. Like you said, 95% now
or whatever the number is of protests. I think the window in which Israel has the ears of the world, it can do the big ethical peace action, action towards peace is, I think has closed or maybe
there's still a slither, but it's just the slippery
slope of hate has taken off. It's quite depressing to watch. - Yep, I agree a hundred percent
unequivocally depressing. - But of course, as you talk about the the US involvement is of critical importance
here for the United States. And the argument you make is that we should not
be involved in Ukraine at least to the degree we are. We being the United States and we should not be involved
in Israel to the degree we are because it's stretching us too thin. When the big geopolitical
contender in the 21st Century with United States is China. Is that a correct summary? - Yeah, I think just on Ukraine, we should not have pushed
Ukraine to join NATO. - [Lex] Sure. - And once the war started, we should have worked overtime
to shut it down immediately. - [Lex] Yeah, March. - March, right? And you remember, by the way, not to go back to Ukraine in great detail. In the fall, early fall of 2022, the war starts February, 2022. There's March, 2022,
which we've talked about, which is in negotiations
in the fall of 2022, I think it was in September, the Ukrainians had won two
major tactical victories, one in Hassan and the other in Kiev. And at that point in time general Millie, who was the chairman of the
joint Chiefs of staff said, now is the time to negotiate, because this is the high
watermark for the Ukrainians. Millie understood that things
were only gonna get worse and the White House shut Millie down and said, we're not negotiating. So, we have blown a number
of opportunities here to head this problem off at the pass. But that's my view there 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. As Steve and I say in the book, we should be able to treat Israel, like a normal country, right? The fact is that countries
sometimes do stupid things. This includes the United
States and Israel. 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. That's our argument, right? But anyway, 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. And as you described my view, 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. - Do you think there
will be a war with China in the 21st century? - I don't know. My argument is there will be, there is right now a serious
security competition, and at the same time, there is a real possibility of war. Whether or not we avoid
it is very hard to say. I mean, we did, during the Cold War, we had a serious security competition from roughly 1947 to 1989. And we thankfully avoided war, probably came the closest in 1962 at the Cuban Missile Crisis. But we avoided it. And I think we can avoid it here. Is it for sure? No. - You've said that China won't
move on Taiwan militarily, in part because it's, as you said, amphibious
operations are difficult. Why will China not move
on Taiwan in your sense, in the near future? - Well, it's because
there's this body of water, called the Taiwan Strait, which is a big body of water. And getting across
water is very difficult, unless you can walk on water. - So, geography still has a role to play in the 21st century? - Oh, yeah, I think
geography's very important. Big bodies of water really matter. In an ideal world, you'd like
to have the Pacific Ocean, between you and any potential adversary, 6,000 miles. - [Lex] Yes. - 6,000 miles of water. Hard to get across. - [Lex] Yeah. - 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. And you of course can
take your Panzer divisions and come across that same piece of land. But if there's a big
body of water between us, your Panzer divisions
can't go across the water. And then the question is, how do you get 'em across the water? And that's very tricky. And in a world we 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. And all you have to do
is think about Normandy, the American invasion of Normandy, June 6th, 1944 coming in
on Omaha Beach, right? Oh boy, that was really difficult. - But there is a growing
asymmetry of military power there that even though it's difficult. - That is correct. - [Lex] So, I guess- - That is correct. - So, obviously I had a
conversation with Elon Musk and he says that China is quite serious, about the One China Policy, and it seems inevitable
that Taiwan will have to be, if you look at this pragmatically
in the 21st century, it seems inevitable that Taiwan, will have to be a part of China. And so we can get there either
diplomatically or militarily, what do you think about the inevitability of that kind of idea? When a nation says this
is a top priority for us, what do you think about them meaning it and what do we do about that? - There's no question it's
a top priority for them. And there's no question they mean it, but it's also a top priority for us not to let them take Taiwan. - [Lex] Why exactly? - Because it's an
important strategic asset. Many people will say it's
because Taiwan's a democracy, but that doesn't matter that much. It's because of two strategic reasons. The first is that if we
were to let Taiwan go, it would have hugely negative consequences for our alliance structure in East Asia. To contain China we need allies. We have an alliance
structure and our allies, Japanese, South Koreans,
Filipinos, Australians, they're all counting on
us to be there for them. And if we say we're not
gonna defend Taiwan, the Chinese attack, they're gonna say, I bet
if the Chinese attack us, the Americans won't be there for us. So, it would have a damaging effect on our alliance structure
which we cannot afford, 'cause containing China
is a wicked problem. It's a powerful state. You were getting to this before when you talked about China versus Taiwan. So, that's the first reason. Second reason is you wanna
bottle up the Chinese Navy and the Chinese Air Force
inside the first Island chain. You don't wanna let them
get out into the Pacific. You don't want them dominating
the waters of East Asia. You wanna bottle them up again, inside the first island chain. And you can only do that
if you control Taiwan. You don't control Taiwan, they get out, into the Philippines Sea, into the Pacific and the Western Pacific and
cause all sorts of problems. - Well, you saying all that, you've also said the
Century of Humiliation. Japan and the United States are a source of that
humiliation for China. Don't you think they see
the other side of that? - [John] Absolutely. - And in the interest
of avoiding a world war, I guess the question is how
do we avoid a world war? It doesn't seem like
the military involvement in the conflict between
China and Taiwan is the way - [John] Well, I don't want- - There's no good answers here. I'm just saying which
is the less bad option. - Well, what you wanna do is you wanna make sure
that you deter China from invading Taiwan. You wanna avoid a war. You and I are in complete
agreement on that. We don't want a war, but
we wanna contain China. We do not wanna let China dominate Asia. That's what the Americans are principally concerned with here. And it's with China's neighbors are principally concerned with. This includes the Japanese,
the South Koreans, the Filipinos, Australians
and the Taiwanese. They don't want and we don't want China
to dominate the region. So, we have to contain it. But at the same time and this should be music to your ears, we not only want to contain it, we wanna make sure we don't end up in a shooting match with the Chinese, 'cause this could be disastrous. So, you have to have a very smart policy. You have to build powerful military forces and you have to make sure
you don't do anything that's provocative. On Taiwan, for example, the last thing you want is
for the Taiwanese government to declare its independence. Because the Chinese have said, if Taiwan does that, we'll go to war. And of course, we don't want that. So, my view is you wanna smartly build up your military forces and you wanna do everything
you can to contain China and at the same time, not be provocative. - So, a big component of that
is making sure your military, the US military is bigger
than the Chinese military. - Not necessarily. It's an interesting question. A lot of people think that to
make the Terence work right, you have to be able to beat the Chinese, and therefore you need
a much bigger military. And I don't think over time
that's possible, right? 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. I think what you want to do is
make it clear to the Chinese, either that there will be no winner. In other words, you don't have to win, but you wanna make sure
they don't win, okay? It's a lose lose proposition if they go to war over
Taiwan or what have you. And if you can't do that, you think that they're so powerful that they're ultimately gonna win. You wanna convince them that victory, would be a pyrrhic victory. In other words, they would pay a godawful
price to win the war. You follow what I'm saying? So, (John coughing) excuse me. The best strategy for deterrence
is you win, China loses. Second best strategy is
a stalemate, nobody wins. Third best strategy is they win, but they pay a godawful price. And the fourth possibility,
which you don't want, is they went quickly
and decisively, right? If that's the case, then you don't have much deterrence. - What does a world with China as the sole dominant superpower look like? I mean, a little bit
underlying our discussion is this kind of idea
that US is the good guys and China is the bad guys. First of all, dividing
the world into good guys and bad guys seems to
somehow miss the nuance of this whole human civilization
project we're undertaking. But what does the world look like where China is the
dominant soul superpower in a unipolar world? - Well, I don't tend to think of the world in terms of good guys and
bad guys as a good realist. I think that states are states, they're all black boxes. I don't discriminate between
democracies and autocracies. But having said that, I
am an American, right? And as an American, I'm interested in the
security of my country, the survival of my country. So, I want the United States to be the most powerful
state in the world, which means I want the United States to dominate the Western hemisphere. I want us to be a regional hegemony. And I wanna make sure that
China does not dominate Asia, the way we dominate
the Western hemisphere. It's not because I think
we're the good guys and they're the bad guys. If I were Chinese and I were in Beijing, and I was Xi Jing Ping's
national security advisor, I'd tell him what we gotta 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? That'd be my view. So, I guess you could
say I do view the world in terms of good guys and bad guys, 'cause I'm an American and I- - More like us and them versus- - Yeah, it's us and them. That's a nice way to put it. Yeah, it's us versus them, not so much good guys versus bad guys. - Is it possible to have a stable, peaceful world with a
good balance of power with where it's China
and US as superpowers? It's a bipolar world, no longer unipolar. - Yeah, okay. So, you're hypothesizing a
world where they dominate Asia. - [Lex] Yeah. - And we dominate the Western hemisphere. - [Lex] Yep. - I believe there would be a great deal of security competition, intense security competition
between those two superpowers. - The definition of intense matters here. So, it could be small, small military conflicts or it could be extremely large, unstable military conflicts, right? - Well, conflict, let's use the word war. - [Lex] Okay. - So, I distinguish between
security competition and war. And what I'm telling you, is you'll have an intense
security competition where there's no shooting
or if there's shooting, it's mainly proxies that
are doing the fighting. - [Lex] Got it. - Much like the Vietnam War, right? Or you could have a case
where one of those superpowers was involved in a war against a proxy of the other superpower. Korean War, think the Korean War, the United States fought the Chinese who were allied with
the Soviets at the time. But a war between the
United States and China, just like a war between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. That's what you really wanna avoid. So, I think you'd have an intense security competition, right? 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, right? With the other superpowers proxies. - So, it seems likely then, if that's the case then it
would be Taiwan is the proxy and US fighting China
through the proxy of Taiwan. - Well, that would
assume the United States. But you wanna remember, you're hypothesizing a situation
where China dominates Asia. - [Lex] Oh, already has dominated Asia. - Yeah, it's already dominated Taiwan. - [Lex] I see. Where do you find the proxies? Australia? - The Middle East could be a good case. - [Lex] Oh, wow. - Persian Gulf. - Oh boy. And then our discussion of Israel, becomes even more dramatically- - Well, Israel gets involved, I think in this scenario, if you're talking about a
US China competition, right? And you're talking about the Middle East, I think it's the Gulf, it's the Saudis, the Iranians,
the Iraqis, it's the oil. - Don't you think it could
be Israel versus Iran with some very 1984 kind
of dramatic partnership of Iran, Russia, and China
versus United States, Europe and Israel. - I think that's possible, yeah. - [Lex] Oh boy. - I think that's possible, yeah. Now that I thought, I mean, I hadn't thought
about it until you said it, but yeah, I think that is possible - Isn't that terrifying? - Yeah, well, that, in your scenario where
China already dominate 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. I think it is the Gulf for the Middle East and the scenario that you posit. - I mean, one question I have, I don't know about you, but for me, unlike with the Soviet Union and I know I was born there, but even outside of that, the cultural gap, the laws in translation, the communication gap between
China and the United States, seems to be much greater than that of what was the form Soviet
Union and the United States. I see two cultures
intermingling and communicating as one of the ways to
deescalate future conflict. - It's an interesting question. I mean it at a sort of an
abstract theoretical level, 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. It depends. I would say, just in the case of the Soviets, a lot of people describe the Cold War as an ideological
competition above all else, it's was communism
versus liberal democracy or communism versus liberal
capitalism, whatever. I actually don't believe that, I believe the Soviets
were realist to the core. I believe Stalin was a
realist par excellence. And that ideology did not matter much in Stalin's foreign policy. And I believe if you look
at Soviet foreign policy after World War II,
throughout the Cold War, they were realists to the core. And I think in those days, the Americans were realists, right? A lot of liberal ideology
floating around out there. But the Americans were realists. And I think one of the reasons you avoided a shooting match between the United States and the Soviet Union from '47 to '89 was because both sides, I think understood basic
balance of power logic. US-China competition
is somewhat different. First of all, the Chinese
are realist to the core. I've spent a lot of time in China. I basically have rock and roll, I'm basically a rock
and roll star in China. The Chinese- - You're kind of a big
deal in China, I love it. - The Chinese are my kind of people. - [Lex] Yeah. - They're realists, right? They speak my language. - [Lex] Yeah. - It's the United States
that is not very realist. American leaders have a
very powerful liberal bent and tend not to see the
world in realist terms. I believe, by the way, just going back to our
discussion of NATO expansion, I think our inability to
understand that NATO expansion was anathema to the Russians was do 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, if those various American administrations, starting with the Clinton administration had put their realist hat on, they would've understood that
NATO expansion into Ukraine was not a good idea. But we had this thoroughly
liberal view of the world that dominated our thinking. And it's gone way somewhat, since we've moved into
multipolarity, but not completely. And this makes me a little nervous, right? To pick up on your point. 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. - So, that's fascinating. So, the Chinese are pragmatic
about thinking of the world and as a competition of military powers, all the ways in which you
described the realist perspective. So, I mean that's a hopeful thing, right? If we can achieve stability and a balance of powers through
that military competition. - Yeah, I actually think that's right, 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. 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. The problem with the Americans is it's not just the liberalism. It's the possibility that we
will pursue a rollback policy. In other words, during the Cold War, we pursued containment. It was, whenever anybody talked, about American grand strategy
towards the Soviet Unions it was containment,
containment, containment. We now know from the historical record that the United States was
not only pursuing containment, it was pursuing rollback. We were trying to roll back Soviet power, to put it bluntly, we were trying to wreck
the Soviet Union, okay? And I would not be
surprised moving forward with regard to China if
the United States pursues a serious rollback policy. - So, you're saying throughout history, United States was always
doing that always? Well, where's that from? Why can't we respect the
power of other nations? - 'Cause they may be a threat to us. - Well, I mean, you don't look, you don't respect the
power of other nations. You fear the power of other nations. - Well, fear and respect
are next door neighbors, depending on the neighborhood
you're living in. But I just mean it could be
very counterproductive to try, because if you can empathize with their, if you assume their rational actors, you trying to roll back will create, would lean into the uncertainty
of potential conflicts, you wanna avoid the uncertainty of potential conflict caution, right? - Well, yes and no. Look, your point is you wanna empathize, you wanna be able to put yourself in the shoes of the other side. - [Lex] Yes. - I agree 100% with that, right? It's very important if you're
a first class strategist to be able to do that. But at the same time, there is this competition
for power taking place. And what you wanna do is maximize how much power you have
relative to the other side. And the other side wants to maximize how much power it has relative to you. So, you have this
competition for power, right? That's taking place all the time and that's taking place at the same time, you wanna have empathy or you wanna be able to put yourself in the shoes of the other side. So, those two things kind
of go together, right? - It just feels less threatening to build up your thing, versus try to hurt the
other person's thing, the other group's thing. - Right, but if you
build up your own power, you are building up your capability to hurt the other side. - Right, but like you, I guess you don't rattle the saber, just work on manufacturing sabers. - Well, that I agree with. I think that the United States, wants to make sure it has
a big stake in East Asia for purposes of containing
China and avoiding a war, right? Again, I wanna be clear, I'm not advocating that
we start World War III, but the point is, you wanna have a big stake and you wanna make sure that you don't overstep your bounds in terms of using that big stake. This is the danger with rollback, right? That you get too aggressive and you precipitate a war, right? And you also just have to be
very careful what you say. And to go back to your favorite argument, you wanna be able to have empathy or put yourself in the
shoes of the other side, 'cause if you do something, you wanna think smartly
about what that other side, how that other side is
gonna see your action and how they're gonna react, right? - And mostly focus on the carrots, have a giant stick laying around, but never mention it,
just focus on the carrots. - Well, occasionally you have
to mention the stake, right? - No, everyone knows the stake is there, - There is some truth in that, right? - I mean, yeah. But and words matter a lot. It feels, this current President Biden's
meeting with Xi Jinping and I think the wars exchange
there are really important. I have a notion that
leaders can stop wars, just as much as they can start wars. - Well, leaders matter. There's no question about that. No question. But just on on rhetoric, you wanna remember that Putin has, on more than one occasion, very subtly rattled the nuclear sword. - [Lex] Oh, yeah. - 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. And thank goodness he's thinking that way. So, all Putin has to do
is mention the possibility of nuclear war, just to go back to Taiwan, switch areas of the world. 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. One could argue that that
discussion that I laid out before, didn't take into account nuclear weapons. And all President Biden or any of his successors has to do is just very subtly rattle or employ the nuclear threat and just sort of remind the Chinese that you start a war over Taiwan, it could easily escalate
into a nuclear war. You wanna understand we
both have nuclear weapons and if either one of us is put
into a desperate situation, we may turn to those nuclear weapons. And oh, by the way, Xi Jinping, you wanna understand that
we're out here in the water and using nuclear weapons in the water. It's not that it's not the same as using war nuclear weapons on lands. So, we may very well use them. I'm not saying we will, but anyway, a little
saber rattling, right? - Yeah. Let me just zoom out on human history. What makes empires collapse and what makes them last when they do? When you look at human
history in your sense, thinking about the United
States perhaps as an empire. - I don't view the United
States as an empire. - What's the definite? So, to you empire as a thing that seeks expansion constantly? - Yeah, I think it's a country that incorporates different regions or areas around the world into sort of a giant sphere of influence, without incorporating those territories, actually into the state itself. So, you had this thing
called the British Empire, and it controlled areas like India, North America and Kenya. Just to pick a couple
instances at different points. Singapore would be another example. Australia would be another example. So, these were all entities that were part of the
British Empire, right? 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. But we never got serious about it. There's never been an American empire. 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. But we're not running an empire the way the British Empire
was run or the French Empire. So, the question for me is,
why did those empires go away? Why did the British Empire go away? If you ever look at a
map of the world in 1922, after World War I, 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 that's right. It almost has to be. - Yeah, right, It's crazy. - It crazy, yeah. And then no longer is the case. - Now, I wanna be clear, the Americans have wield that
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. So, the question is, what
happened to that British empire? What happened to the French Empire? What happened to the Belgian Empire? What happened to the Dutch Empire? These were countries that had
colonies all over the planet. The Dutch East Indies, right? Vietnam was French Indochina. Where did those empires go? Two factors finished them off. Number one, nationalism. Nationalism became a very powerful force in the 19th century. 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. - Can you explain nationalism here? - Nationalism is the idea
that these different nations that were part of the
empire, like the Kenyans, wanted their own state, nation state. This is my point about
the Palestinians, right? This is Palestinian nationalism. What is Zionism? Zionism is Jewish nationalism, Jewish nationalism. Think of Theodore Herzl's famous book. It's called "The Jewish State," nation state. Think of the word nation state that embodies nationalism, nation state, Jewish state. Palestinians want their own state, two-state solution, right? Can't beat the Palestinians
into submission, right? The Indians wanted their own state. The Pakistanis wanted their own state. The Kenyans wanted their own state. Singapore wanted its own state. Oh, the Americans wanted their own state. This is called the American Revolution. - [Lex] Yep. - Right. So, that's the first reason, nationalism, that these empires disappeared. The second reason is that
from a cost benefit analysis, they no longer made any sense. And it was the coming of
the Industrial Revolution. Once the industrial revolution comes, an empire is basically an
albatross around your neck. I would argue that the British Empire was an albatross around Britain's neck in most of the 20th century. Some of my friends disagree with that and think there were all sorts of benefits from the British Empire. But you wanna remember
that in the 20th century, the three countries that
really were powerful were the United States,
Germany and the Soviet Union. Those were the big three. Did any of them have an empire? No. - That's a good card. - In the industrial world, you don't need an empire, right? What you need is a powerful
manufacturing base. - Well, the cost benefit
analysis is different. Before the Industrial Revolution,
there's been many empires. - There's no question that
empires came and went, right? I mean, right? You have to do is just look
at the British and the French in the seven years war. 1756 to 1763, the British win. They get Canada, right? And that's why Quebec, Montreal, all these big French speaking, areas are now part of Canada, right? So, borders change and
countries got established. The United States being one and remember South American
and Central America were once completely
dominated by the Spanish. And in the case of Brazil, the Portuguese. But they all in the 19th century, got their independence, right? 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. One is nationalism and then the other is the
industrial revolution, which changes the cost-benefit analysis. - Almost too crazy of a question. But if you look, let me calculate, let's say, 500 years from now, and you John Mearsheimer
traveled through time and are at a bookstore, looking at the entire
history of human civilization in a single book. What role does US play? Like what's the story of
US over the next a hundred, 200, 300 years? Is it a big role, small role? - Well, that's a long time. If you asked me, let's just
say the next hundred years. - Yeah, that's still tough. - Okay, I think, that's still tough. But actually, I think
we're in excellent shape. And here's the reason, going back to the beginning
of our conversation, you asked me about power. And I told you the two principle
building blocks of power are population size and wealth, okay? And therefore, you wanna
look around the world and you wanna look at what
you think the demographics are of countries like Britain, the United States, Iran, China, Russia pick your country moving forward, right? What do the demographics look like and how wealthy are those
countries likely to be? What you discover very quickly is that almost every
country around the world is depopulating over time, right? Russia's gonna be much smaller. China's gonna be much smaller
a hundred years from now than both of those countries are as best we can tell. United States, American women are not having
lots of babies these days. No question about that. But we have immigration. We're an immigrant culture. You're a perfect manifestation of that. - [Lex] Yeah, yeah. - You're a perfect,
you're now an American. That's wonderful. We need more people like you, right? So, when I hear Donald Trump and others arguing that
immigration's a terrible thing, this is ridiculous. - [Lex] That's fascinating. - Immigration is what
made us great, right? It's when my relatives
came over in the middle of the 19th century from
Germany and Ireland, right? - That's fascinating. Like because there's there's
been a huge concern in America and other developed nations
and not having enough children. But you just made me realize in the long arc of history, the United States has
gotten really damn good at integrating immigrants and
like helping them flourish. The whole diversity that makes up America. - [John] You're absolutely right. - There's a machinery of
integrating other cultures. - Yeah, just very quickly on this. - [Lex] That's fascinating. - Sam Huntington's book, "Who are We?" Which in many ways, I love that book. But it has one fundamental flaw. And a number of people told him beforehand that that flaw existed
and he didn't fix it. But Sam argues in the book that we have large numbers
of Hispanics in this country and we're doing a very poor
job of integrating them into the mainstream. And they're not becoming Americans. 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 gonna have this cohesive group of Spanish speaking Americans, right? Who are gonna want to break away. And the United States is no longer gonna be a
reasonably coherent nation state. He's wrong. 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. If you look at immigration from Europe into the United States, leaving aside the original Wasps who came over and founded the place, the immigrants start coming
in large numbers in 1835. And we really don't shut
the door until 1924, right? Starting this is a crude
overview starting in 1835 and running up till about 1885. It's mainly Germans and Irish. That's why Germans are
the largest ethnic group to ever come to the United States. And the Irish are right behind them. These are the European ethnic
groups we're talking about. Then starting in 1885, Poles, Jews and Italians
start coming, right? And the Germans and Irish keep coming. And this is why Ellis Island
is opened, I think it's 1893. Ellis Island is opened because
Castle Garden in New York, which had handled all
the previous immigrants, coming across the pond, Castle Garden couldn't handle them all. So, they opened up Ellis Island. That's why somebody like me, I can't find my distant relatives
records in Ellis Island, 'cause they came through
Castle Garden, right? Whereas lots of Jews I know, lots of Italians I know they could find their relatives
records in Ellis Island, 'cause they came through Ellis Island. The point is, you had all these immigrants who came in roughly between 1835 and 1924 when we shut the gates. It was the only time we've
ever really shut the gates in a meaningful way, right? And this is what made
America great, right? All these people and they
made lots of babies, right? - So, in some sense, make America great again means
getting more immigrants in? - Well we opened the gates again in '65, closed them in '24, opened 'em in '65. I'm oversimplifying the story here, 'cause we didn't completely shut them. We almost completely shut
them in '24, opened in '65 and we've had huge numbers
of immigrants flowing in. These immigrants who have
been flowing in since '65 are not Europeans. They're not mainly Europeans, they're mainly Hispanics and Asians. 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. The Irish, oh my God, they
were treated horribly. There's a book a very famous book that's been written called
"When the Irish Became White." Just think about the title of that book. - [Lex] Yeah. - There was discrimination
against all these groups, right? And the worst discrimination of course was against Chinese Americans, right? But we've gotten much better. And what we should do moving
forward is redouble our efforts to integrate immigrants into
the American mainstream. Hispanics, Asians of all sorts, because the fact is that America is rapidly reaching the point where it's not gonna be an
all white country, right? I have five children and
two of my children are, I was a generation Z, gen Z. Gen Z is the last majority
white generation, right? Subsequent generations
are not majority white. So, for anybody who's bothered by this, I'm not bothered by that. But for anybody who is bothered by this, they've better get used to it, because Americans aren't
making enough babies that we can continue
to grow population wise in a robust way. So, we need immigration and
we're an immigrant culture. And this is a great virtue. It has been a great virtue over time. - It should be a source
of hope, not worry. - That's my view, that's my view. And America, when it works, is a place that is very
attractive to immigrants. And immigrants can do very well here. And then the real key moving forward is intermarriage, right? And you have a huge amount
of intermarriage, right? 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, right? And I say wonderful and- - Great. - Yeah, no, the more- - Love is the fastest way to integrate. - Yeah, well you don't, what you wanna do is you wanna
eliminate difference, right? You wanna eliminate difference, right? It's like people who say
I'm an anti-Semite, right? I have two grandsons who
Adolf Hitler would've thrown into a gas chamber. One of whose first name is John and middle name is Mearsheimer, right? - [Lex] Yeah. - This is what you want, right? - [Lex] Yeah. Steve Walt's wife and his two children would've
been thrown into a gas chamber by Adolf Hitler, right? This is what you want. You want intermarriage. Now there are a good number of people in some of those groups,
especially among Jews who don't like intermarriage, right? But they've lost, because I haven't looked
recently at the data among, for intermarriage rates
among basically secular Jews. But it used to be around 62%, large numbers of Jews marry Guam. - And they've lost
because of intermarriage. Intermarriage helps fight tribalism. Destructive kind of tribalism, it's nice. - Calling me an antisemite. They haven't met my
grandsons, my son-in-law, a niece that I have, nephews that I have. Brother-in-laws that I have, Jewish, right? Come on. - And this gives a really
nice hopeful view of America is the integration of different cultures, different kinds of peoples. That is a unique property of America. - Yes, but just to go
back to where we started, it was not smooth in the beginning. - All things are rough in the beginning. - All things are rough in the beginning. - What advice would you give
to a young person today, about how to have a career
they can be proud of or a life they can be proud of? - Well, I think it's very
important to make sure that you do something in life
that really interests you. My mother used to use this
phrase, floats your boat. You wanna do something
that floats your boat or to use another one of
my mother's phrase is, you wanna do something
where you get up outta bed in the morning with a
bounce in your step, right? 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, right? Don't do what other people want you to do, 'cause it's very important to find a job, an occupation that you really love. The second thing I would say and this has to do with
your point about humility. You wanna think about the
Humility-Hubris Index. My friend Steve Van
Evera who teaches at MIT, he and I invented this concept. We call it the Hubris-Humility Index. And you want to have a
healthy dose of humility, but you also want to have
a healthy dose of hubris. You want to think you
can change the world. You want to think you can make
things better for yourself. You want to take chances. You wanna think sometimes that you know better than other people do. Hubris is not a bad thing. But at the same time, you
have to have humility. - [Lex] Yeah. - You have to understand
that a man or a woman has his or her limits and you
wanna listen to other people. You wanna be a good listener, right? So, always remember the importance of the Hubris-Humility Index and the importance of having healthy doses of both hubris and humility. - Speaking of humility, you're mortal, like all humans are, do you ponder your mortality? Are you afraid of it? Are you afraid of death? - I'm not sure I'm afraid of death. I don't want to die because
I enjoy life so much. - [Lex] Having too much fun? - Yeah, given how horrible
the world is today, I hate to say that I'm
having too much fun, but do I find what I do
interesting and gratifying? I do, I just love what I do and I love studying
international politics. And I love being intellectually curious, about all sorts of subjects. I love talking to you about this and that. I mean, this is really wonderful. 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. But I am well aware of the fact that as my mother used to
say, nothing is forever and that includes me. And when you're 75 going on 76, you understand that you have a
limited number of years left. 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. And I'd like to make it last
for as long as possible. But I do understand
that nothing is forever. - Yeah, the finiteness of things. - Yeah, you never think
that when you're young. I mean, you think you're
gonna live forever and you're just not gonna get old. I never thought this would happen that I would become 75 years old. - Well, you got so much energy
and boldness and fearlessness and excitement to you that I'm really grateful to see that, especially given how much
I'm sure you've been attacked for having bold ideas and presenting them and not losing, yeah, not losing that youthful
energy is beautiful to see. - Thank you. - Not becoming cynical. John it's a huge honor to speak with you that you've given me so much time and so much respect and so much love. This was a really incredible conversation. I thank you so much for
everything you do in the world, for looking out into the world and trying to understand it and teach us. And thank you so much for
talking with a silly kid like me. - It was my pleasure. Thank you very much, I
thoroughly enjoyed it. - Awesome. Thanks for listening to this conversation with John Mearsheimer. To support this podcast, please check out our
sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you
with some words from Plato, "Only the dead have seen the end of war." Thank you for listening and
hope to see you next time.