A Conversation with John Mearsheimer | ROEC

hello I believe we can begin welcome everyone my name is Eugenia gulab I'm the director of the think-tank Romania energy center and on behalf of Rorick I would like to extend a warm welcome to all of you today is a big day for our think tank and we couldn't have done it without the help from our partners the Bucharest University of economic studies the host of our host of our event who put our disposal this beautiful owl up the Romanian US Alumni Association and our media partners of course today's event is part of the Royal Google's talk series our latest project and which aims to engage the biggest names of our time and meaningful conversation on current affairs topics at the same time this event marks a milestone for manias think-tank community as it is the first time we have an American scholar engaged with the audience in Bucharest and discuss a book which was launched in Washington DC just two weeks ago right two weeks ago professor Mearsheimer were absolutely thrilled to have you here and thank you for accepting our invitation to talk about your latest book a few more things before we begin our event will be live-streamed so I would like to greet our viewers online who will be tuning in and watching us I would like to thank our partner intro media who made that possible and I would like to invite now the vice rector of the Bucharest University of economic studies professor Mara's prefer royal to join me in welcoming you [Music] [Applause] good afternoon dear professor Mearsheimer dear guests welcome to the Bucharest University of Economics study welcome to Romania I discuss with the professor 30 minutes above the transition in Romania and I am so happy to know that we are still in transition in our university but the will it's correct in our review I think our university because University of Economics studies not only I think but I believe we are the most prestigious university in Romania in the field of economics business and public administration we are founded more than 100 years ago in 1913 by the King Karl and now we have more than 22,000 students we have more than 800 full professor and we have now more than 200 partnership around the world and I'm so happy to say that now we have a new American Central University we have partnership University with Chicago I am so happy to say that the summer organized first time in Romania international data science summer infidel with Professor from Chicago our Romanian professor Danny Kolya the Dean of the school of status is in Chicago not only Chicago also professor from University of Ohio professor University of New York another professor from Europe in fact our strategy in our university is to be a real player in the global martyr market of Education I think and I believe that education it's a strategic tool for the countries and Romania if you want to be part of this the global market we need people to understand what happened in this global world and I think today our distinguished guests will talk also about this we passed more than 100 years this university we passed from the monarchy to the Communists to the colonies of capitalist and I think for us was very difficult this transition period for my professor from my colleagues but I think now after 30 years we think with the help also with the think tank like you and congratulation our university become more prominent in the international arraign distinguished professor at Chicago University with numerous academic and teaching honors at prestigious academic establishment all over the world his articles and his six published books have shaped debate on the most relevant foreigner and security affairs we are honored to host professor Mishima today in a conversation about this latest book the great delusion liberal dreams international teas please welcome professor john marshall in university thank you mucho nice [Applause] the this will come up on this screen so people can see it thank you thank you can everybody hear me clearly especially in the back there's no echo okay pardon what know if I put the mic to cloaks you it's not as clear I think it's better if the mics not near me as long as people can hear oh for the online I see okay I'm gonna have to go to great lengths not to talk too loud because the the echo from the microphone is quite significant it's a great pleasure to be here I would like to thank the Romania Energy Center and the Bucharest University of economic studies for sponsoring my talk today and I'd especially like to thank you Gina GU Salaf for making the arrangements for being for me being here today and also for the talk I'm going to give tomorrow and I'd like to acknowledge her sidekick Eliza George who helped Eugenia plan my visit the subject I'm going to talk about today is my new book the great delusion liberal ideals and international realities now just see if I can make this work there we go here's the basic story that I'm going to tell you today the United States pursued liberal hegemony after the Cold War and the basic aim was to remake the world in America's image the policy failed miserably and then the question is why and my argument is that nationalism and realism trumped liberalism at every turn this is really very much a story about the relationship between liberalism nationalism and realism and the arguments I make about liberalism should not be misinterpreted to mean that I am against liberalism as a political ideology I thank my lucky stars every day that I was born in liberal America the fact that I was born into a liberal democracy I considered to be a great fortune so I'm not arguing that liberal democracy as a political system for a particular country is a bad thing in fact I think the best political order one can possibly have is a liberal democracy my argument is that there's a fundamental difference between liberalism at home and liberalism abroad and that were you when you pursue a liberal foreign policy you get yourself into a whole heck of a lot of trouble and that's in large part because you run into nationalism and realism here's the basic outline of my talk first I'm going to define for you what I mean by liberal that I'm gonna define for you what I mean by nationalism then I'll tell you what liberal hegemony is which is the foreign policy I argue the United States has pursued since 1989 then I'll tell you why we Americans pursued this policy I'll talk about what the track record looks like how well it did then I'll talk about why it failed and what liberal hegemony future is so that's the basic outline of what I'm gonna do first what's liberalism liberalism has to bedrock assumptions it is individualistic at its core and you're saying to yourself what exactly is he talking about I believe that when you think about human beings you have to ask yourself whether or not you believe that human beings are essentially social animals who carve out space for their individualism or you believe that human beings are individuals who form social contracts it's a very very important distinction and liberalism is predicated on the assumption that we are first and foremost individuals who form social contracts and this is why the famous liberal theorists like John Locke are called social contract theorists because they believe you start with the individual and to get ahead of myself nationalism is predicated on the assumption that we are all social animals from the beginning that we carve out space for our individual ism along the way we are very tribal from the get-go it's a very different way of looking at the world than assuming we are first and foremost individuals who then come together to form social contracts that's the first thing you want to understand about liberalism its individual ISM the second thing that you want to understand is that it assumes that individuals cannot reach universal agreement over first principles I can't really agree about the big questions like abortion affirmative action and in fact liberalism in my opinion got its start in Britain at a time when Catholics and Protestants were killing each other in large numbers and the question is how do you determine using your critical faculties lose using your ability to reason whether Catholicism is superior to Protestantism or Protestantism is superior to Catholicism how do you figure out what the answer to that one is if you're in Germany in 1938 there are lots of people who like fascism I think it's the best political system in the world there are lots of people in the United States who think liberal democracy is the best political system in the world how do you determine who's right using your critical faculties I don't think so so what liberalism what liberalism starts with is the assumption that people oftentimes cannot agree about important issues and those disagreements are so intense that they sometimes lead to violence so the question that liberalism phases from the start his how should politics be arranged to deal with this potential for violence this is the central question that liberalism deals with and the liberal solution is threefold first of all to place very high premium on individual rights liberalism is all about rights as I'm sure all of you know and those rights are inalienable that means that everybody on the planet has those rights life liberty and the pursuit of happiness they're not restricted to Americans in the Declaration of Independence they apply to every person on the planet second part of the solution is to purvey the norm of tolerance tolerance is enormous ly important in the liberal story and tolerance is important because you can't solve those disputes with your critical faculties to determine whether we should be Catholic or Protestant and therefore those people who want to be Catholic have to tolerate the Protestants and the Protestants have to tolerate the Catholics so liberalism is all about preaching tolerance and also getting back to my first point it's about individual rights you have the right to be a Catholic you have the right to be a Protestant you have the right to be an atheist and we're all tolerant of each other's particular views even if we disagree with them the third element to dissolution is the state and the reason you need a state is because tolerance only goes so far and sometimes people are incapable of being tolerant and they want to kill each other so you have a state that acts as a night watchman and if anybody misbehaves the state comes in and deals with them accordingly so again you start with two assumptions individuals or what matter it's an individualistic ideology it assumes that individuals can't reach universal agreement and then the question becomes how do you organize politics to deal with these two issues and you get individual rights that are inalienable the norm of tolerance and the state now here's the taproot of liberal hegemony this is the key to understanding liberalism in foreign policy once you focus on individuals not on tribes or social groups or Nations you focus on individuals and you say that every individual on the planet has in alienable rights you have by definition a universalistic ideology it's an ideology that applies across the planet you don't distinguish between Romanians and Americans Americans and Romanians that's nationalism this is liberalism the focus is on the individual there is no significant difference between you as Romanians and me as an American we are all individuals and we all have inalienable rights that's the universalism that's what really drives the Train that's what makes the United States of America when its thinking that way so bent on reshaping the world in its own image talk a little bit about nationalism nationalisms core assumption human beings are naturally social animals they're born into and heavily socialized into particular groups and individualism takes a backseat to group loyalty and aside from the fan the most important group in today's world is the nation there is this entity called the Romanian nation there is this entity called the American nation you are all very tribal everybody from where I come from is very tribal everybody on the planet is tribal that's what nationalism is all about the focus is not primarily on the individual and when you think about the relationship between liberalism and nationalism what you have to do is ask yourself the question what do you think is the correct view of human nature are we all primarily social animals or are we all primarily individuals here's my definition of nationalism it's a set of political beliefs which holds that a nation which is a body of individuals with characteristics that purportedly distinguish them from other groups should have their own state the word nation-state captures the essence of nationalism the world is divided up into nations and each nation should have its own state Theodore Herzl who is the father of Zionism Theodore Herzl father of Zionism his great book was entitled the Jewish state just think about the Jewish state he was saying Jews are a nation and they should have their own state the Romanian state the German state the French state look around the world today the world the planet is covered by nothing but nation-states what are the Palestinians want they want their own nation-state what are the Catalonians want they want their own nation-state you did not like being part of the OTO empire you wanted your own nation-state there's this tribe they're called Romanians and they wanted their own state talk a little bit about sovereignty nations place enormous importance on sovereignty or self-determination which is why they want their own state you don't want Russia telling you what to do don't you think you have a right as members of Romanian nation state to determine your own fate that what self-determination is all about or sovereignty you resist foreign interference you go to the United States of America today we're still terribly upset about the fact that the Russians supposedly interfered in our election in 2016 in a big way who are the Russians to interfere in our election we're a sovereign state so very important for when we start talking about liberal hegemony nationalism versus liberalism nationalism beats liberalism at every turn why is that human beings are primarily social animals they're not first and foremost individuals who then form social contracts we are all born into a society and we are heavily socialized before our critical faculties kick in and as I said to you on a number of occasions if you look at the planet it's covered by nothing but nation-states liberal democracies have never comprised 50 percent of the states in the system and the number of liberal democracies has actually been declining since 2006 the number of nation-states is not declining another way of saying all liberal democracies are liberal nation-states okay liberal hegemony now we're talking about American foreign policy liberal hegemony has three basic goals and they all are pursued in support of an attempt to remake the world in America's image this is what happened when the Cold War and the United States decided it was going to remake the world in its own image and there are three components to the strategy the first and most important and that's why I put three stars next to it is we're going to spread liberal democracy across the planet second we're going to integrate more and more countries into the open international economy and third we're going to integrate more and more countries into international institutions and let me give you example of liberal hegemony at work NATO expansion EU expansion NATO expansion EU expansion is liberal hegemony work you loved it by the way right what was the name of the game the name of the game was to make Eastern Europe look like the United States of America we wanted to turn you all into liberal democracies we wanted Europe all of Europe to be filled with liberal democracies by the way the bush had the Bush Doctrine we invaded the Middle East you understand our ultimate goal with the Bush Doctrine was to turn the Middle East into a sea of democracies we're remaking the world in America's image you of course like this and I don't blame you one bit because you remember what I said about liberal democracy best political system on the planet not perfect but the best but America wanted to make every country on the planet look like us second we wanted to integrate more and more countries into the open international economy EU expansion there you go integrate more and more countries in international institutions you wanted to be an EU right we wanted to get you in the EU you wanted to be made up you wanted to be in NATO we wanted you to be a NATO those are the international institutions remember the Orange Revolution the Rose Revolution go back to the first point that's spreading democracy what do we want to do with Ukraine what do we want to do with Georgia we want to get him in NATO we wanted to get him in the EU that's a liberal hegemony at work with the benefits three big benefits first of all you eliminate significant human rights violations because liberal democracies hardly ever violate the individual rights of their citizens in major ways so if you create a planet that's filled with liberal democracies you take the human rights problem right off the table its enormous ly important and remember how important rights are in the liberal story or be liberal ism is a theory that prizes individual rights therefore violating individual rights in authoritarian states is unacceptable formal liberal point of view because everybody on the planet has this set of rights and the focus is on the individual not on the tribe so if you can take this problem off the table eliminating human rights violations you've really done something very good then a second benefit of liberal hegemony which many of you know about is you make for most or more peaceful world because you know the liberal theory that liberal democracies don't fight each other so if you create a world of liberal democracies that don't fight each other you end up in a world of peace love and don't the balance of power and realism is relegated to the dustbin of history people like me are instant dinosaurs realism come on and furthermore if you're concerned about terrorism and nuclear proliferation in a world that's remarkably peaceful those problems are taken off the table this is why Frank Fukuyama who wrote this very famous article called the end of history said at the end of the article that if this world comes into being the greatest problem that we'll face is boredom just think about these that the greatest problem we'll face is boredom because basically conflict is taken off the table so first of all you solve the human rights problem violations of human rights number two you make for a more peaceful world which has all sorts of positive consequences in terms of dealing with terrorism and dealing with nuclear proliferation and then third you make the world safe for liberal democracy because there's no alternative system out there that people can turn to and of course liberal democracies always have groups inside them that are unhappy with liberal democracy and would like to do away with liberal democracy we're seeing more and more of this in Europe today and many would argue we're beginning to see in the United States as well well those people inside a particular country don't have anybody to turn to for support right if communists inside the United States can't turn to the Soviet Union for outside support because the whole world is populated with nothing but liberal democracies you help make the world safe for liberal democracy so these were the benefits that we saw why did the u.s. pursue liberal hegemony first point which I cannot emphasize enough is you have to be in a unipolar world and and this is why starting with the end of the Cold War in 1989 the United States began to move towards pursuing you know towards pursuing liberal hegemony and the reason is if you're in a bipolar world or a multipolar world we have other great powers you have to pay attention to the balance of power and you have to act in a realist way in a unipolar world in a unipolar world where there is only one great power by definition that one great power doesn't have to worry about competing with other great powers so it's free to pursue a liberal foreign policy so the point is that unipolarity was a permissive condition it opened the door for us to pursue liberal agenda a second reason we pursued liberal agenda is that the United States is a profoundly liberal country there's no getting about around that as a realist I can tell you from all my experiences over the years in the United States that there were a few Americans who like realism they love liberalism and then finally and this is quite paradoxical American nationalism supplied an unhealthy dose of you Burris to the equation Madeleine Albright is a card-carrying liberal hegemonist she is a thoroughgoing liberal when it comes to foreign policy she's also a nationalist of the first order she's an American nationalist we never talk like this in the United States nationalism is a word that's hardly ever used to describe Americans we self-identify as liberals not nationalists but we are all nationalists because as I told you nationalism is the most powerful political ideology on the planet and it applies to the United States as well as Romania as well as Russia as well as Germany as well as Japan whether Madeleine Albright's most famous words Madeleine Albright said when asked why the United States intervenes all over the world she said we are the indispensable nation we stand taller and we see further just think about those words we we as opposed to the other we we stand taller and we see further we we are better than others we meaning the Americans right and then she said we are the indispensable nation there's the word nation we are the indispensable nation we as opposed to the other are indispensable we are smarter we are better than other nations that's nationalism American exceptionalism any American politician who denies American exceptionalism is going to get him or herself into a lot of trouble American exceptionalism is pure unadulterated nationalism so that sense of hubris that comes from nationalism coupled with the profound influence that liberalism has in the American body politic combined with the fact that we were in the unipolar moment allowed us to pursue liberal hegemony what happened disasters first of all the Bush Doctrine and the greater Middle East as I said to you before the Bush Doctrine was designed to democratize the Middle East when we invaded Iraq Iraq was envisioned as only the first stop on the railroad line we were then going to do Syria maybe do Iran we were going to democratize the entire region it was a colossal failure the amount of murder and mayhem that we have created in the Middle East is truly stunning think Libya think Syria think Iraq think Afghanistan think what we're doing in Yemen now hard to believe the murder in ma'am the Bush Doctrine was a failure what about the Ukraine crisis most of you surely believe that the Russians are principally responsible for the Ukrainian crisis it was the evil Russians who caused this crisis how else could this have happened that's wrong in my opinion we created we meaning the West created the Ukraine crisis because we marched NATO the EU right up to Russia's doorsteps despite their protests they kept telling us that sooner or later this is going to blow up in your face the idea that you Americans can take a military alliance that was a mortal enemy of the Soviet Union during the Cold War and put it right on our borders is unacceptable not going to happen you Americans have the Monroe Doctrine you don't let other great powers come into your backyard we're not going to let other great powers come into a backyard and of course we were fostering revolutions the orange revolution in Ukraine and the Rose Revolution in Georgia and we were hinting that Putin was next you seriously think that Vladimir Putin was gonna stand by and allow that to happen you know how the United States goes ballistic when the Russians interfere in our domestic politics you don't think the Russians are going to go ballistic when we interfere in their politics you don't think flat amir putin is gonna punch back when you start talking about marching nato right up to his border you don't think that that amir putin is good at punch back when you start threatening to topple his regime and democratize russia it's not just russia go to China go to Beijing and talk to the Chinese how they think about American interference in Chinese politics and you'll get the same story they don't like it at all and they don't like those American ships in those American aircraft going up and down the coast of China is this surprising as an American who privileges the America of the Monroe Doctrine and who does not like the idea of great powers from Asia or great powers from Europe interfering in the Western Hemisphere I can fully appreciate why the Russians don't want NATO on their border but that's what we did and we did not do it for realpolitik reasons most of you young people in the audience probably think that we marched nato eastward because we were worried about the Russian threat on the contrary there was hardly any talk about a Russian threat NATO was moved eastward the EU was moved eastward and we promoted these revolutions as part of a non realistic Genda as part of a policy called liberal hegemony and in fact Madeleine Albright and Michael McFaul who is the US ambassador to Russia from 2012 to 2014 both told Putin on countless occasions that NATO expansion was not directed at Russia that we did not view Russia as a military threat we invented that myth after February 22nd 2014 when the crisis broke out this was liberal hegemony at its worst and now we have a massive problem with the Russians finally and I won't say much about this there's the failure of engagement with China the United States as it watched China continued to grow decided that it would engage with China that we would do everything we can to integrate China into the open international economy we'd get them deeply embedded and invested in international institutions and the end result would be that we would democratize China China would turn into a liberal democracy that would mean China would look like the United States and if all the countries on the planet looked like the United States we would all live happily ever after because we're the good guys and if everybody looks like us ergo peace love and dope that failed virtually everybody now agrees that there is an intense security competition brewing between the United States and China why did liberal hegemony fail power of nationalism over selling of individual rights power of realism and illiberal liberalism let me just say a few words about all of these factors just on the power of nationalism the idea that the United States can run around the world and interfere in the politics of other countries and do it in a way that doesn't cause a blowback is a pipe dream it's not going to happen and when you invade a country and occupy a country as we did with Iraq and as we did with Afghanistan the end result is that you find yourself facing an insurgency when I was young we fought the Vietnam War I was in the American military from 1965 to 1975 which was coterminous with the Vietnam War the American commitment to Vietnam the build up began in March 1965 and we lost the war in 1975 from 65 to 75 the United States did everything it could to win that war and it couldn't and the reason was the Vietnamese wanted to run their own country we were up against nationalism the Vietnamese were willing to die in huge numbers for their sovereignty they did not want us interfering in their politics when we invaded Afghanistan we briefly defeated the Taliban they came back from the dead and now we face a major league insurgency there furthermore with war - the Russians and the Chinese as I said to you before the Russians and the Chinese don't want us telling them what kind of political system they should have any more than we want them telling us what kind of political system we should have then who's the overselling of individual rights the fact is in many places on the planet people don't care that much about rights it's not to say they don't care but they don't care that much go to Russia today and you talk about liberal democracy Russians identify liberal democracy with the 1990s when Russia was the Wild West it was a terrible period in Russian history they'll take Putin not everyone but most people will take Putin and the security that he has created in Russia over the wild west that you had in the 1990s which they identify with liberal democracy you might disagree with that but the fact of the matter is there are a lot of people in Russia were much more interested instability and insecurity than they are in individual rights so this tells you when you go into a lot of countries individual rights are not that important that means selling liberalism is not that easy then we come to the power of realism this is the story I told you about NATO expansion Vladimir Putin was operating according to the realist playbook he had no intention of letting NATO expand up to Russia's borders the Russians are basically wrecking Ukraine the Russians have basically sent a simple message to the west and a simple message to Ukraine which is that if you continue to persist in trying to integrate Ukraine into the Western orbit will wreck will wreck Ukraine will make it impossible for that to happen that's realpolitik 101 liberal hegemonies future this is the last part of my talk the end of liberal hegemony Donald Trump ran against liberal hegemony it's very important to understand this Donald Trump ran against in 2016 all the key elements of that particular foreign policy he said number one the United States is getting out of the business of spreading liberal democracy and as you know Donald Trump is very comfortable cavorting with authoritarian leaders and dictators number two he is very unhappy about the open international economy and he is demonstrated since he moved into the White House in January 2017 that he likes to slap tariffs not only in countries that are adversaries of the United States but America's allies as well which is contrary to what you do when you're promoting an open Internet national economy furthermore he does not like institutions at all he said NATO is obsolete he loathes the EU he loathes the World Trade Organization he does not like our alliances in East Asia with South Korea and Japan NAFTA he killed it one of the first things he did when he came in office foolishly in my opinion was he killed the TPP the trans-pacific partnership this guy has never seen an institution he didn't love you just want to think about what that means we're talking about somebody who was elected who number one was not interested in spreading democracy around the world number two was opposed in some fundamental ways to the open international economy and number three does not like international institutions at least all the ones that existed when he moved in to the White House but I don't think that mattered liberal hegemony is basically all over with because of the rise of China and the resurrection of Russian power remember what I said to you in the beginning of the talk it is absolutely essential to have unipolarity they have unipolarity to pursue a policy of liberal hegemony once you have multi polarity or by polarity once you have more than one great power in the system and here we're talking about three great powers in the system Russia China in the United States those countries have to compete with each other and they're therefore not free to pursue a liberal foreign policy so my basic view here is that liberal hegemony has come to an end and it's not because of Donald Trump although Donald Trump certainly did run against liberal hegemony and was elected but it's in large part because of the rise of China and the resurrection of Russian power thank you very much [Applause] Thank You professor Mearsheimer for this fascinating talk you raised a lot of issues now before we open up for questions from the audience I'd like to get a round of reactions and first questions from the panel and for this next stage I have enlisted the help of three great minds from three different generations and that will make the introduction starting from the other side of the table and I will start with ELISA gaudium who is a professor of international relations at Bilkent University and a member of the Royal Board of Advisors who flew all the way from Turkey to be with us here today next to her we have Andrey Chernykh commissioner for the France Romania season 2019 Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and a former executive director at the Aspen Institute Romania and next to me I have ambassador Sergio Chara a career diplomat at the former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Romania as moderator I would like to defer the privilege of asking the first question - ambassador chillax well professor I hope you will excuse me and I beg the audience to to forgive me for speaking from a sitting position but I had a little accident with my leg yesterday I'm grateful if you let me sit while I'm talking I have in fact two questions and and the brief comment let me get the the comment out of the way first there are many things that on which I agree with Professor Mishima including is brilliant definitions of the three motive forces of politics nationalism liberalism and reality and I think and that is in fact my first question we would all greatly appreciate if you gave us a sort of definition if this is not two presumptions of populism the new ghost ghost haunting Europe and not only Europe with the direct effect the considerable form fallout in international politics as well but the my comment is that they there are about from many points of agreement at least two on which I beg to differ one concerns the responsibility of the West for what happened in Ukraine we are neighbors of both Russia and Ukraine for us in Romania looking at the Kremlin is not a pleasant pastime or an exercise in intellectual curiosity it is a matter of survival and you used in your book you use the word survival several times it because as a Romanian and with some knowledge of remaining history and history of diplomacy I would say that survival the ambition to survive has been a constant feature since the establishment of the first early state formation on Romanian land just imagine professor that Ukrainians officially asked Russia to live Crimea according to international law will they oblige unlikely but the Iraqis government won it was formed as the United States to live the Iraq in a military sense and the United States obliged so I see some sort of a symmetric response responses to a sort of symmetric to symmetric situation secondly I have noted your your doubts and your quotation from George Kennan concerning the lack of wisdom in deciding NATO enlargement eastward however in your book you make it clear that the change in changes in Eastern Europe have not been the result of deliberate liberal export of liberalism from the US and the Western world into that region to which Romania belong you actually say in your book that it was the decision of the of those countries or people in those countries or political forces on in those countries to shake the not only the communist regime but also the Soviet and then Russia and I mean of their respective countries why not extend the same courtesy to Ukrainians because if you look at the facts on the ground not just press reports or some ideological consideration the Western interference in the development of events in Ukraine was physically minimum the world support there were some vocal statements by politicians and in the media but nothing compared to the military occupation of the turret of a portion and sizable portion of another country's territory so I would just say that from the Romanian perspective or a Romanian perspective for us it is as simple as that we need the European Union for Prosperity and for its values including political value and we need the United States for security because now but nobody else is in a position to provide it and it is not a matter of choice because the alternatives are no or non-existent so we either join and become an increasingly active members in those two multilateral arrangements or we don't survive and we don't relish the prospect of not surviving in in addition to the question about a possible definition of population as the new game in town my other question regards your ideas and you're correct and White's criticism of dreams about the global state as a professional of diplomacy I don't see the realistic prospects in that direction but wouldn't you agree that we have already entered the period of transition to a different international order and that the process of that transition has become has begun it is now working progress and it is driven by at least in part by forces that simply did not exist before the power of technology the new tools of communication the internet the social networks are reshaping International Affairs and we are already halfway to something else which hopefully will not be a global state a world state but something else would you speculate on what else it could be and just for for your use professor Sir the power of nationalism as an idea and the motive force in politics became very clear to me when I visited the History Museum in Hanoi the History Museum in Hanoi has three sections one was the resistance against the Chinese the other is the Vietnamese resistance against French colonial and the third was the Vietnamese resistance against the Americans with Chinese help and in the case of resistance against the French with American help so this this illustrates how how strong it is and also and that to illustrate your thesis about the the futility or lack of realism of a global State or of any effort to establish although much of my work in diplomacy was in multilateral diplomacy un se I I would say that the best description of a future world perfect world order is to be found in a series of five plays by George Bernard Shaw which to my knowledge have never been played on stage and which is entitled bad black back to methuselah and the final of those files place starting with Lilith and Adam and Eve is about the perfect Society of the future in which every Mattia every job is collectively performed by the nation which is best at that respective job the British are bobbies the Germans are mechanics the Russians sing in choirs and set up military parades the Italians are Latin lovers and it's the sing returns Anita's and all this beautiful perfectly oil world mechanisms is administered wisely and respectful respectfully by the Chinese thank you [Applause] would you like to respond now or we can take everybody then what I would like well why should not we continue with you ELISA gurgi if you would like to to jump in you told me an interesting thing about a book when we were discussing it you told me that this is not a typical John Mearsheimer book would you care to develop this thought for us well first of all thank you very much professor Mearsheimer for a fascinating talk and for producing what I think is going to be one of the most important books in the field in the next decades I had three questions for you the first one has to do with the intellectual journey that took you to this triptych to the fact that you added nationalism which is not necessarily an international relations theory in the same way that liberalism and realism are and so how was it why was it that you had to bring this into the picture and if you think about the fact that nationalism has to do with ideas coming from a realist that I found that to be very striking very surprising nationalism doesn't have so much to do with material capabilities so I wondered what prompted you to go in that direction then the other question I had deals with the battle or the fight the tension between realism and nationalism on page 82 you mentioned that when liberalism is at odds with nationalism nationalism wins almost every time now you don't discuss as much those situations where nationalism and realism are at odds which one wins and I think this is particularly pertinent to discuss to be discussed in Romania a country where national nationalist communism was a state ideology and carried us forward for a number of decades and so when you for instance talk about how a country a small country like Romania or a small country like Georgia like Moldova they don't really have the right to advance their interest or to really pursue their national interests because we live in a bad neighborhood I wonder to what extent nationalism could mitigate or compensate for our lack of military material capabilities I'm not saying that I endorsed that position I'm just wondering what you would what you would think about that and then my my last question has to do with your analysis of liberal hegemony and its rise at the beginning or in the unipolar age it seems to me that liberal hegemony is to a certain extent over determined what do I mean by that you're talking about how the structure was very permissive for liberal hegemony to take roots and to to flourish but then you also mentioned that American nationalism and and your quote from Manning Albright was was really on point on this in this respect nationalism was also a factor that that led to this embrace of liberal hegemony so what kind of conditions would have permitted or enabled the realism to prevail because in the past you have written many articles and you have talked at great length about how the US was mistaken to take the route it took and you obviously emphasize this in your book but it seems to me that realism really had the the odds stacked against itself against it so I'm curious to know what how how you think realism would have been a possible and a feasible alternative thank you Amritsar now would you like to jump in yeah great pleasure I'm I'm gonna speak from the angle of the petitioner rather than that of the theoretician though some of my former students are in in the hall so I salute them to some degree liberal hegemony never existed it's entirely a theoretical concept so just to pick up won't you last said if we take a famous quote in the middle of them Ukrainian crisis that made the first page of news and Internet and I'm referring to the specific patterns of Victoria Nuland that's maybe a typical example that what we usually call liberal hegemony is a figment of our imagination and it was in fact a poll a coherent policy of a nation-state and its allies both domestically and abroad in an interplay of domestic and foreign policy that had certain effects that we now in retrospect real able and play with them theoretically it's coherent but in practice it doesn't stand the test of actual if you and theoretical underpinning of the policy-making process the one thing that I believe is to some degree missing in the book is the analysis of method of practice of policymaking and policy implementation and and one of the phrases that used repeatedly in the book is that liberal internationalism or or their policy failed miserably but in fact you can twist that around and say that in fact policy miserably failed liberalism in a sense of but as much as it it's we're talking about an ideology or a coherent ideology that has as you explained in the first part of the book domestic underpinnings domestic beliefs that turned into political action the other element that to some degree is missing is the personal decision-making element that is involved inevitably and and that ambassador chalak alluded to in in his intervention a book that you're familiar with Philip Zelikow essence of decision and discusses to great lengths an episode of international importance of global importance that the Cuban Missile Crisis in terms that have less to do with the global theoretical framework of realism or liberalism or institutional liberalism or whatever you want to call them but rather the processes through which decision makers captive on both sides in their own bubble of groupthink made practical decisions that had global implications in that case of averting a nuclear war so in that respect I think we're we're maybe over emphasizing the ideological element and we're giving little or no attention to the element that has to do with the the both the human in a sense of decision makers element in in the process and the fact that as you well mentioned States up Russia as Ukraine Romania as United States operate as as Nations and thus nationalism in that sense of the term less the domestic ideology that we call nationalism operates as well and the question that arises from that is if we give up the idea that a form of institutionalism hence a form of liberal theory underpinning international norms and international objectives collective objectives of nation-states is even possible or desirable we're probably framing ourselves for another failure we've seen since the the the book was was not published but since it was presented for publishing as you mentioned in in several interviews decisions of the Trump administrations have took a sledgehammer to some of the critical pillars some of them established with a very realist objective including in areas like nuclear non-proliferation or treaty specifically designed to make it more difficult for a nation-state and nationalist nationalism expression of of power to create havoc in the form of nuclear war last night I was at the launch of a product and that's the final comment by a multinational Chinese company two of its suppliers are European companies three of its main contributors are American companies about half of the total value and two-thirds of the profits go to those companies and it's a Chinese product in a sense if I started by saying that liberal hegemony never existed it already won because while the United States dismantles some of those or rather the current administration of United States dismantled some of those international treaties that are the underpinning of an international legal order that we define as liberal other countries are picking up the baton and continuing it whether they're going to be successful or not without the United States which remains and will remain for the next decades the main military and economic power of the world it's a separate question thank you would you like to respond now or can I and I have a couple of questions myself okay only one well - first of all in your presentation today and also in the book you say this interesting thing and I quote within countries I believe liberalism is a genuine force for good I consider myself especially fortunate to have been born and lived all my life in liberal liberal America but liberalism at international level however is a different matter so would it be fair to say that you're a principled realist that you're principled realist this is the first one and the second one I will just I will just add to what ambassador Locke said at the beginning in the I mean in your book you critique the post Cold War US foreign policy you call it liberal hegemony but for instance if we talk we will talk about my country Romania I mean we are now better off precisely to the US due to the u.s. liberal foreign policy we have rejoined the transatlantic community after much struggle we're now members of NATO which is the bedrock of our security and of the EU which offers us as ambassador chalak said solid framework for economic growth so two institutions of the liberal World Order created after the Second World War which we joined very late but this NATO and EU membership for Romania is like the holy of holy of our academic elite foreign policy military establishment thinking so I would say that the u.s. foreign policy did not bring on the misery but also created security and prosperity and we Romanians are living proof of that despite the many problems that we still have and you know our democracy still work in progress I appreciate all these questions the problem I face is that there are a lot of questions and they're excellent questions so I'm not going to be able to answer all them and certainly none of them in great detail so I'll do my best to cover the waterfront starting with the ambassador's questions I'm gonna ignore the question of populism in large part because I don't have a good answer to your question I'm somewhat embarrassed to say that but I'm not clear in my own head what exactly I think populism is and how it relates to nationalism instead of trying to dance around up here it's just better if I leave that for another day because of my ignorance let me focus on your comments about Ukraine for the most part the Ukraine crisis just I'm gonna be very clear that when you were talking about Ukraine you started talking about Romania and how Romania thinks about the Russian threat my comments about the Ukraine crisis and what caused it had nothing to do with Romania and you said that when Romanians look at when they look at Russia they think about their survival and I fully understand that and I fully understand by the way why were main ian's want to be part of nato i think from a romanian point of view your principal foreign policy goal for the foreseeable future should be to maintain an American military presence in Europe and to maintain NATO and make sure that Romania is firmly ensconced in NATO so I'm not talking at all about Romania when I talk about the Ukraine crisis now let me just make a couple points about that first of all you said that with regard to international law the Russians violated international law when they went in and took the Crimea and the Americans on the other hand when they were asked to leave Iraq in keeping with international law left Iraq the United States violates international law all the time the invasion of Iraq was a violation of international law what we did in Libya was a violation of international law the point I would make is that great powers when they think their interests are threatened don't pay attention to international law and it would be crazy for a country like Romania to put great stock in international law international law is not going to save you if you get into trouble with a great power because great powers do whatever they think is in their interests and you talked about extending a certain courtesy to Ukraine and I think that what you were talking about is recognizing the fact that Ukraine as a sovereign state has the right to decide its own foreign policy most of you I'm sure believe that Ukraine has a right to join the West if it wants to do so because it's a Ukrainian because it is a sovereign state I think this is a fundamentally foolish way of thinking about international politics if you live next door to a great power you do not have the right to just do whatever you want in foreign policy because if that great power thinks you don't have the right it will crush you do you really think that countries in the Western Hemisphere have the right to choose any foreign policy that they want they don't the United States would gobble lipstick if any country in the Western Hemisphere decided that it was gonna pursue a foreign policy that threatened the American national interest this is what happened in the Cuban Missile Crisis great powers great powers are paranoid about their borders they're paranoid about their security and if you're a minor power and you live near a great power you have to be extremely careful and the problem in the case of Ukraine is that because of Western policies the Russians got spooked and when the Russians got spooked they went to great lengths to intervene in Ukraine and make sure that Ukraine never becomes a Western bulwark on their border and I believe that what the United States and its European allies did was they led the Ukrainians down the primrose path they encouraged the Ukrainians to think that they had the right to pursue any foreign policy that they wanted they led Georgians to think the same way and in fact the Russians did not agree with that assessment and the Russians went to war in August 2008 over Georgia and they went to war after February 22nd 2014 over Ukraine and in both cases they'll wreck those countries before they let them become part of the West so that's why I think it was just such a mistake for the West to to say here in Bucharest the trouble started here in Bucharest by the way in April 2008 in the wake of the NATO summit when NATO issued a declaration saying that Georgia and Ukraine would become part of NATO the Russians made it very clear at the time that you have crossed the red line but of course people in the West didn't listen the professor I'm assuming the ambassador also raised a very interesting issue and that's whether or not we are in the midst of transformation in the nature of the international system and he focused on the power of technological change and his basic the point was that although we may not be moving to a world state international politics is changing in important ways I respectfully disagree completely with that perspective and my view is that the international system is not changing the international system is comprised of nation states and those nation-states operate in an Antarctic system that is to say they have no higher authority above them in my opinion the nation-state is not going away as I said to you in my comments from the lectern nationalism is the most powerful political ideology on the planet nationalism is all about the nation-state the nation-state is here to stay the nation-state is going to exist in an Antarctic environment and for me that means that the essence of international politics is not going to change this is not to say that technological changes don't matter but in fact I think the most important technological development of modern times that has profoundly affected international politics is the development of nuclear weapons and if you want to make an argument that international politics has fundamentally changed in the past century I think you'd want to Rivet on nuclear weapons but even there I don't think the basic nature of international politics changed with regard to eliza's questions first of all she asked me why did I deal with nationalism in this book when in the past I had largely ignored nationalism and focused mainly on realism but also on liberalism and she's of course correct that in the past I wrote about realism and liberalism and said hardly anything about nationalism in a funny way I thought it was time to say something about nationalism because even though I had not written about it I did believe it was the most powerful political ideology on the planet and as I said to you in describing my youthful experiences in the American military I came to appreciate as a result of the Vietnam War just how powerful force nationalism is and I always thought that I should write something about it and I thought it would be very interesting to talk about the relationship between these three isms nationalism liberalism and realism and nobody else had done that so that was sort of what drove me in this direction now she raises the point and her second question that I don't say much about realism and nationalism right and if you think about the way I've structured the book the book focuses on liberalism liberal hegemony and then what happens when liberal hegemony runs up against nationalism and when liberalism or liberal hegemony runs up against realism so those two those two relationships liberalism and realism liberalism and nationalism and she's saying what about nationalism and realism but I of course I'm not focusing on that because I'm focusing on liberalism and how it relates to those two let me say a few words first of all I think that nationalism and liberalism do not clash very often right I think that they did oh sorry sorry sorry yeah right right nationalism in realism sorry yeah I don't think that nationalism and realism clash very often right I think they sometimes do when nationalism gets out of control right that nationalist fervor is so powerful in a particular country that it forces leaders to pursue foolish policies and to pick up on this I'll say a few words about China if you talk to Chinese scholars about how the Chinese government is playing the nationalism card these days the Chinese government is playing the nationalism card big time because the Chinese government has a legitimacy problem communism is not a really legitimate ideology and they're not democratically elected leaders in China so nationalism has become an important way for the elites the governing elites to maintain their position and they emphasize the century of national humiliation if you look at the literature on Chinese nationalism it focuses on the century of national humiliation and who humiliated the Chinese was first the Japanese and second the Americans in Chinese academics and Chinese policymakers who I know will tell you that they worry that a crisis will break out between Japan and China or between the United States and China and nationalism will kick in and the end result is the tremendous pressure from below because of nationalism will be put on the governing the lease to go to war against Japan or to go to war against the United States even though the elites don't want to do it it's sort of letting the genie out of the bottle I raised this example because it gets to eliza's point or question are there instances where nationalism and realism actually clash with each other that I don't discuss and I don't discuss that as you pointed out and that's an example of where they clash but my Gen more point to you would be that they usually don't clash she'll so raised very interesting question of whether nationalism can be a substitute for not having sufficient military capabilities you know if you're a country like Romania and you don't have a huge army can you you know use nationalism as a force multiplier that's a word we use in the United States it's a force multiplier I think the answer is that nationalism can be a huge force multiplier because what nationalism does it creates tremendous loyalty among the citizenry and among the troops to the state and it makes people willing to fight and die in large numbers the Ambassador talked about the museum in Hanoi that Museum in Hanoi was all about nationalism right and nationalism was a huge force multiplier for the Vietnamese they were willing to fight and die in enormous numbers to win their independence as the Ambassador pointed out from the French from the Chinese from the Americans and I would add from the Japanese during World War two as well right so nationalism can be a huge force multiplier but there's also I just want to be very clear here no substitute for having a huge army the best thing that could happen to Romania is that could grow to be about twenty times as big as it is now in terms of population size and wealth best situation that Romania could find itself in is one word it is by far the most powerful state in all of Europe then you wouldn't have to worry about your survival at least in this neighborhood so in the final analysis there's no substitute having large large numbers of big battalions but on top of that you do want nationalism as a force multiplier then I will go to Andres points Andre said that he thought that was liberal hegemony is I laid it out is theoretically coherent he applauded me on that front he said it's theoretically coherent but in practice it doesn't really tell you very much about the world the way I think about theory is that we need the theory because the world is incredibly complicated and we can't make sense of it without theories theories are simplifications of reality john gets up there and he gives you talk about what liberalism is and it's a very simple story most of you I'm sure had no trouble following my arguments because my arguments are very simple but the world is incredibly complicated but again the reason we need simple theories is to make sense of that complicated world ok so when you tell me that I have a nice coherent and simple theory right but it doesn't really do a great job explaining how the world works I'm somewhat sympathetic to that because that's true of theory in general ok however I do disagree with you and that I think it explains more about the real world than you do and I think if you look at if you look at the Bush Doctrine let's stay away from the Ukraine crisis but if you look at the Bush Doctrine and you read what George Bush was saying and what his lieutenants were saying at the time when they formulated that doctrine and when they went into Iraq and in the aftermath right I think you see lots of evidence liberal hegemony was at here right and that the theory does tell you I'm choosing my words very carefully here that the theory does tell you quite a bit about what happened in Iraq but it doesn't tell you everything for the reasons that he was alluding to that the world is incredibly complicated he also pointed out that one thing he didn't like about my talk and my book is that I didn't place enough emphasis on decision making that the decision-making element really matters in foreign policy first of all he's right that I don't pay attention to decision-making this is not a book about decision-making you you reference the Cuban Missile Crisis the Graham Allison and Philip Zelikow book that's all about decision-making in the Cuban Missile Crisis my book is not about decision-making my book is about the policies that result from decision-making and I don't deny that you could write a book on the decision-making process that led to liberal hegemony but I didn't do that all I did was look at the policies and as you well know there are limits to what you can do when you write a book and I just didn't have time to do that but you of course can do that by writing a book on the subject but I you know I just didn't do it but again that's just the limits of the academic enterprise let me say a few words but one of your other points that's that about China you said that Donald Trump is taking the sledgehammer and wrecking the liberal international order and that China is picking up the baton in part first point I would make is that remember my order my argument is not so much the Trump is really responsible for what's happening to the liberal international order or what's happening to liberal hegemony it's the rise of China right and that with the rise of China liberal hegemony is finished it's just no longer a viable foreign policy and this is because I believe that it's impossible in a world of two or more great powers for the United States to pursue the gemenese so it's just all over with and Trump does matter but he doesn't matter that much let me go to Eugenia's two points first of all she said that I'm a principled realist I like to think that I'm a principled person I really do leave aside the realism I do like to think that I'm a principled person I'm not too sure what it means to be a principled realist because the word principal is usually associated with morality and I think it's important to understand that realism is not an amoral theory or ideology or foreign policy but it is a moral realism basically says that what matters is the balance of power and you do what you have to do to maintain your position in the balance of power and sometimes that involves doing terrible things not often but sometimes it does so when you talk about being a principled realist it's almost a contradiction in terms right this is not to say that you want to go around the world creating murder and ma'am and you all understand by the way in the context of the United States the realists are mainly are the main group that opposes America's Wars you understand I was one of the leading opponents of the Iraq war and in opposing the farm policy of liberal hegemony I'm calling for the United States to pursue a much more restrained foreign policy I often say when I go around do you realize that the United States has been at war for two out of every three years since the Cold War ended do you realize that the United States has fought seven different wars since the Cold War ended the United States is addicted to war I'm opposed to this so I'm not a militarist and again I opposed the Iraq war I oppose what we did in Syria I opposed what we did in Libya last thing I want to do is go to war against Iran right so realists tend to favor foreign policies of four-string so it's not like we're interested in running around the world starting Wars and killing lots of people but to say that you're a principled realist I think is a contradiction in terms as much as I hate to say that finally your point about about Romania and what's happened to Romania as a consequence of liberal hegemony is absolutely correct it's it's a fascinating point she is saying that Romania has been the beneficiary of this foreign policy called liberal hegemony which john says is a remarkably foolish policy that's what she's saying and she's correct but I still think it was a remarkably foolish policy because the amount of trouble that it caused not only for the United States for people around the world as well outweighs the good that it did but I do not deny for one second that Romania benefited greatly from this policy and as I said before my basic view was guards Romanian foreign policy is that your principal goal should be to keep the Americans in Europe keep NATO intact make sure you remain in NATO and number two don't do anything unnecessary to provoke the Russians because any time you live next door to an 800-pound gorilla you have to make sure that you don't do anything that needlessly provokes that gorilla thank you thank you for answering all of our questions we fired away everything we had you know in the panel well we have a couple questions more but I would like to give the audience the chance to ask you questions and we have a mic Stephanie where are you we have a gentleman over here and over here that's done thank you my name is Octavian joram I'm associate professor in this distinguished University and also founder and editor-in-chief of the market for ideas magazine my question deals with something that bothers me equally as a score as a journalist I always thought that being relevant not necessarily eminent in the study of human relations international relations in this case does need first and foremost a fair representation of reality and a fair representation of reality has in my opinion two necessary allies a good command of logic and a fair sense of language I want to ask you as a political scientist where do you think that politically correctness stands in relation to this fair representation of reality in international relations or wherever else is political correctness a device meant to soften or smoothen our discourse or is a device meant to entrap and imprison our mind thank you should we take a couple more questions or you would like to respond to each why don't you take a couple okay Beck misses Marshall Fund I have two questions you conclude that the liberal hegemony has failed what has failed the liberal part of it or the hegemony part of it in other words you understand my question but have the liberal values failed on us or the way we go about it went about it or you who can't about as Americans has failed honest and the second question at one point on your on your porn presentation you had United States is a profoundly liberal country and I didn't understand if you're great with this assumption or if you disagreed with this with this assumption could you repeat that place on your PowerPoint presentation you had that United States is a profoundly liberal country do you agree with it or you disagree with it because I didn't get it from the politic let's be fair and take a question from this side of the room yeah thank you I am an associate professor with the Academy of economic studies it's a privilege of having you here my question is quite simple there are some other failures in our modern history of liberal international world would you would you compare this period that we are going to experience from now on with the post VN our the post 1815 international system what do you think thank you and one more from the side just to have a fair balanced turn to oh no I'm not Adam grant from the national diversity of portal studies on public administration you've mentioned I said I have to say that I I didn't read your book yet but you've mentioned your presentation something about a liberal liberalism what do you mean by this you had a point in your presentation as the failure of the barest order and I don't understand exactly what we mean by this a liberal liberalism okay yo you want me to answer sir okay yeah okay I'll try and be as quick as possible on the whole business of political correctness is a fascinating question and it's fascinating question because in liberal democracies it's oftentimes difficult to talk about specific aspects of foreign policy amazingly you see this in the United States the boundaries of legitimate discourse about American foreign policy are quite narrow in the United States and anybody who challenges the reigning orthodoxy runs the risk of being marginalized you get a real groupthink you would think that would not be the case in a liberal democracy because liberal democracies and you were intimating this are supposed to privilege the marketplace of ideas and the theory is that we all benefit from having different perspectives and having debates about what is the best way to think about foreign policy but there are a lot of countries that you go into in the Liberal Democratic world where you can't talk about certain subjects if you go to Germany for example and you say it would be a good idea if Germany got nuclear weapons you automatically be dismissed as somebody who needs to be taken to a mental institution and that's just one of many examples I could point to and my view is to use your rhetoric it does imprison our mind it makes it hard to have legitimate discussions about foreign policy and to weed out bad ideas and there is a surprising amount of political correctness I don't want to go into this in any great detail but I could tell you all sorts of stories about the run-up to the Iraq war in the United States I was as I said before one of the leading opponents of the Iraq war in the United States and I was very outspoken against the Iraq war and I talked to a good number of people who reposed to the war who were afraid to speak out because it was politically incorrect especially inside Washington DC to oppose that war at a certain point and people got on board and the end result is we had a disastrous foreign policy I could go on and on but political correctness is a bad thing you want to have an a marketplace of ideas you want have an open discussion and if you disagree with people you should listen to them and if you think their arguments of foolish you ought to knock them down using logic and facts the woman here asked me the very interesting question was liberalism more hegemony that failed my argument would be it was both the idea that the United States could be a global hegemon and dominate the world was a pipe dream it was just impossible the world is too big there's too much variety out there it's too much water separating us from other areas of the world see it's impossible to be a hegemon a global hegemon and also liberalism fails because it runs into nationalism and realism as I said there's also the question of whether or not I said that the United States is or is not a profoundly liberal country I apologize for not being clear my argument was that the United States is a profoundly liberal country right there's no question about that Donald Trump notwithstanding then I was asked the question of whether or not the post 1815 period bears any resemblance to the period that we're moving into I would say no and let me just describe the post 1815 period between 1792 and 1815 at 1792 and 1815 France basically took on the world those are the French revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars 23 years France was an incredibly powerful country it took five balancing coalition's to defeat the French okay at 1792 to 1815 the next big war that involved almost all of the great powers in Europe was World War one in 1914 were basically all of the great powers in Europe and then eventually the United States took on Germany that was Imperial Germany so between 1815 and 1914 you had remarkably few wars in Europe you had the Crimean War in 1853 1856 small war you had the Italian Wars of unification 1859 you had the austro-prussian war 1866 and the franco-prussian war 1870 so there's no European great power war from 1870 to 1914 that's 44 years there's no great power war in Europe from 1815 to 1853 when the Crimean War breaks out it's another huge period of peace and you have no big systemic war like the Napoleonic Wars or World War one why is that the case it's because there's no one power in Europe that can threaten to dominate the entire continent because of its economic and military might there's no Napoleonic France there's no Imperial Germany the world we're moving into now is a very different world because of China the rise of China and East Asia China has the potential to become an incredibly powerful country and the United States of course will move to check China many of China's neighbors like Japan India and so forth and so on we'll try to check China so it looks like we're going to have an intense security competition in Asia involving the rise of China and China's efforts to dominate Asia the way the United States dominates the Western Hemisphere so I don't think we have a situation that's analogous to 1815 to 1914 which is one of the most peaceful periods in European history final question was illiberal democracy this is very simple liberalism is all about rights I tried to emphasize that point here liberalism is all about rights democracy is all about voting right and you can have a democracy where the majority rules and violates the rights violates the rights of the minority that is an illiberal democracy and if you look right next-door and hungry or Bond has made it clear that he believes that Hungary is an illiberal democracy so he is interested in having Hungarians vote on a regular basis and he is interested in you know having a transition in power after one side wins and the other side loses but he is not interested in a liberal democracy he advertises that the democracy is going to be a liberal and that means that there are certain people in that country who are going to be denied basic rights remember when I sent about liberalism liberalism is all about inalienable rights liberalism is predicated on the assumption that everybody on the planet has the same basic rights and once you start talking about denying rights to people who live inside your borders right you're talking about in a liberal democracy and a good example of this would be Israel many people will say Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East you can argue that Israel is a democracy but you cannot argue that in my opinion that Israel is a liberal democracy because the Palestinians don't have the same rights as the Israeli Jews do so it is an illiberal democracy not a liberal democracy well I'd like us to take the next round of questions and well gentlemen here but then I also like to take a couple of questions from the back of the room yeah hi my name is Bogdan Barnea I own a pub basically so anyway picking up on the China thing earlier you mentioned that I think last week you stated that the one factor that could improve us-russia relations is China so you reckon there's a chance of a grand bargain between US and Russia yalta like thing happening in our neck of the woods so with US and Russia getting together let's say to contain China yes you think there's a chance for a grand bargain between the two countries yalta like like in 1945 in our neck of the woods here in Romania or Eastern Europe like in 1945 thank you okay here we go and hello John I've had a thoroughly enjoyable time in the US so loved that country just so you know where I'm coming from with my question if you could just identify yourself I'm gave your ballot and you've stated that the US wanted to spread liberal democracy after the end of the Second World War now why didn't they start with the Russians why did they feed that serial criminal our country and others and made communism a reality instead of offering the Russian troops the option of democracy I have spoken with a German professor at the conference and the German High Command actually proposed they fight the Russians there were 1 million German prisoners obviously willing to fight there was a huge veteran army American and allied 10 million soldiers and equipment there and then but they chose instead to give my country to feed that severe criminal and have their picture taken with the Smurfs on their faces with the serial criminal instead of doing the right thing in the easy thing because I doubt the Russian soldiers being given the option of democracy would have actually fought for the serial criminal and they would a brother delivered you fraternizing with Yahweh so the question is shorty's why didn't the Americans give the Russian troops the option of having a liberal democracy rather than have a deal a dirty deal okay thank you do we have other questions in the room okay you here in the middle hello good afternoon my name is Kirsten mana lucky I'm a political science student I'm on my way to write my graduate thesis I want to write it on the security dilemma subject so my questions are related to it is the Cold War an example of security dilemma is the relations between Russia and USA a security dilemma and can we talk nowadays about second Cold War but this time not a global one but original one thank you question from this side of the room here thank you so much professor my name is Yvonne Chaka rescue I'm a lecturer associate later other investor of Bucharest in political sciences tell me do you think that it's possible to have in the near future a real alliance between Russia and China I mean if they could go beyond what they see pardon to to become allies against the so-called American hegemony this is the first question and second of course realist neo realism they see the evolution of international system as an evolution of the distribution of power in an anarchic 'el system you have the polarity you have the change in the parody but what about the possibility that China and Russia really collapse by their internal problem by the nationalism by the regional extensions by economic clashes I mean they are not undestructible blocks something could happen inside these countries and so all the parodic would change so the balance of power system maybe could be also accommodated with such sociological explanation thank you the first and second question or both deal with the history of the Cold War the first question asked whether it's possible for the US and Russia to today form a condominium or to come together and form an alliance against China similar to the one that was formed in 1945 at the end of World War two and I interpreted that to mean that was when the United States and Russia decided to divide up Europe and where the United States and the Soviet Union decided to divide up Europe and the Soviets got the eastern part of Europe which included remaini of course and we got the western part in World War two it was a Soviet Union that played the key role in defeating Nazi Germany when the United States finally landed at Normandy on June 6 1944 less than one year before the war ended at that point in time 93% of German casualties were on the Eastern Front 93% Soviets lost 24 million people in World War two fighting against the Germans they built a huge army and by the time the Red Army got to Berlin in the spring of 1944 five it was one very big and very formidable fighting force that had played the key role in defeating Germany the same time the Americans were fighting against the Japanese in the Pacific all by themselves and they were fighting against the Germans with of course the Russians and the British when the war ended in May 1945 the war in the Pacific was still raging and in fact the United States needed the Soviets help or at least they thought they needed the Soviets help to help defeat Japan and in fact the Soviets actually invade Japan in August 1945 I think it's August 8th 1945 but we needed the Soviets in Asia so the idea that the United States and the spring of 1945 was going to liberate Eastern Europe by going against picking a fight with this giant military machine that had just defeated Nazi Germany was not in the cards and it was not in the cards not only because the last thing the United States wanted to do was fight a war against the Soviet Union having just fought a war against Nazi Germany we hadn't finished with the Japanese in the Pacific so there was zero possibility that the United States was going to rescue liberate Eastern Europe from the Soviet Union it just simply was not going to happen and furthermore to take this a step further given that the Soviets had suffered 24 million casualties that their country had been wrecked by Germany and that the Soviets had fought against or the Russians had fought against Germany not just in world war two but world war one as well there was no way they were leaving central Europe they were going to stay there to make sure that Germany did not come back from the dead and that meant that they were going to end up occupying Eastern Europe for a long period of time this is a tragedy and it was had tragic consequences for the people of Eastern Europe there is absolutely no question about that but there is simply nothing the Americans could do about this the Americans did not have the military might they certainly didn't have the will to do this and given the situation in the Pacific we needed the Soviets to help defeat Japan now the second question from this gentleman on my left talked about giving Russian troops the option of accepting liberal democracy this is not a plausible strategy the idea that we could undermine Stalin and the Red Army by offering the troops liberal democracy which would then spread across the Red Army and into Soviet society I just think was not in the cards so the end result again is that the United States accepted the basic Yalta agreement and I think there was no alternative to that and again I don't want to deny for one second the tragic consequences not only for the Romanians but for the pols the East Germans and everybody else in Eastern Europe including the Baltic States is a tragedy of colossal proportions but there was really nothing the Americans could do about it third question had to do with whether the Cold War was a global security dilemma when people talk about a security dilemma what they're basically saying in my opinion is that you have two great powers or two powers right that cannot be certain about the intentions of other states and they cannot be certain about whether the military capabilities that those states have are offensive or are defensive in nature and therefore they have no choice but to try to take advantage of the other country so during the Cold War just to go back to the Cold War you had the United States here and you had the Soviet Union here we in the United States could never figure out what the intentions war of the Soviet Union we had huge debates about what their intentions were did they have full of benign intentions or malign intentions people were on both sides of that debate furthermore when we looked at their military capabilities you could not say that they had defensive capabilities or they had offensive capabilities because those tanks could be used for offense or defense the artillery could be used for offense or defense so the United States could not make sense of whether or not the Soviet Union was a status quo power where it was determined to upset the status quo and the Soviets when they looked at us couldn't make sense of exactly what our intentions were or whether we had offensive or defensive capabilities and in fact they understood that our capabilities and military capabilities had both offensive and defensive potential and the end result is we competed with each other because we couldn't trust each other that to me is what the security dilemma is and I would argue that if China continues to rise as I said you're going to get a security competition in Asia that involves the United States and its allies on one hand and the Chinese and its allies on the other hand and the security dilemma is going to be alive and well both sides are going to not know what the intentions are for sure of the other side and they're not going to know whether they have offensive or defensive capabilities for sure right and the end result is you'll have a security dilemma so I think when you talk about great pair of politics in most cases what you get are Security dilemmas finally there was a question about whether or not you'll get an alliance between Russia and China against American hegemony in the future I think what we have now is a situation where as a result of the Ukraine crisis the United States has pushed the Russians into the arms of the Chinese from my point of view it makes very good sense for the United States makes very good sense for the United States to form an alliance with the Russians against China right China is a much greater threat to the United States than any other country on the planet and the United States is going to have a very difficult time containing China and the United States needs the Russians and my view is that over time what will happen is that the Americans and the Russians will move closer and closer together for purposes of containing China I do not believe I want to add that this will have negative consequences for Romania because the Russians will be looking eastward and southward and they will not be looking westward in the direction of Romania in other words what I'm saying is that when you think about the rise of China and what the consequences are for Russia it will force the Russians not to look east ivy westward at countries like Romania but to look eastward and southward the downside the downside of China rising is that the United States will in all likelihood move forces out of Europe to Asia to deal with China and that could result in the demise of NATO so the rise of China is a mixed bag for Europe and for Romania in particular okay we're a little bit overboard with the time so I proposed maybe we take one last question and then go with the round of final thoughts for the panel and then wrap up the event if you agree one last question okay here in the front seat thank you thank you first of all for offering us such an opportunity of having a conversation with you and we have to thank you Tanya who she loved for organizing such an event my question is the following one I haven't introduced myself and Mariana Pegula's co PhD in contrasting linguistics still interested in what is happening on an international stage do international realities and liberal dreams favor in a way life long illusion just to in a way opposed the metaphor of your title thank you it's a great question help us summarize again the last part looking at your title and in fact the subtitle as well so do international realities and liberal dreams favor perhaps in a way a lifelong illusion when targeting what is happening on let's say a political stage internationally speaking thank you I think that when the United States first began to pursue liberal hegemony we were operating on the assumption that this was going to work out very well and it was going to benefit people all over the world and of course it did benefit some people that was the point that Eugenia made but my argument of course is that it did more damage than it did good and I don't think you end up with a life long illusion because I think most Americans now understand that these dreams led to failed policies my colleague Steve Walt has written a book that's very critical of American foreign policy over the same time frame I'm talking about his book is also a critique of liberal hegemony but the title of his book is the hell of good intentions the hell of good intentions and Steve's argument is that the policymakers who pursued liberal hegemony were not evil individuals they were fools they were fools you know tal Iran's very famous statement it's worse than a crime it was a blunder right this is what we're talking about when we talk about the American foreign policy Lee right these were people who were remarkably foolish they pursued well we used to call boneheaded policies and the fact is at this point in time it's quite clear that those policies failed again this is why Donald in part why Donald Trump got elected right because the American body politic understands that these policies did not work out and Trump criticized liberal hegemony as I pointed out in my talk at almost every turn and I think most of the liberal hegemonist understand that their grand scheme failed so I don't think we're talking about lifelong illusions here but I want to make one final point to you what happens if in let's say 20 years China begins to fall apart and Russian power continues to decline and the United States gets more and more powerful and we have another unipolar moment in other words we have another opportunity for the United States to pursue liberal hegemony what will happen now my answer to your question is that we won't sort of implies that we won't do it again because we've learned our lesson you talked about a life long illusion I'm sad to say that it might be a lifelong illusion and after 20 or 30 years we'll forget what happened and we'll try liberal hegemony again I hope that's not the case but I wouldn't be surprised if your use of the term lifelong illusion is appropriate 20 or 30 years from now any last thoughts from our conversation facilitators from from our panel before we concluded or from your professor is we let my go start that side of the table again thank you very much for a fascinating discussion and for your very thorough answers my final and final thought had to do with the fact that one of my main takeaways from your book is just how fragile liberal democracy is and what we see happening today and in places like the United States where you have attempted crimes or crimes against particular minorities is a is a very grim unfortunately reminder but because I don't like to be to end on a negative note I'm just sort of curious to know in your final thoughts what you think how you think you can maintain a vibrant democracy and and advance those values and those ideas thank you I had a very similar point um we're equating quite often neoconservative policies with liberal policies when in fact they're not the same though they may look or the discourse may be the discourse that they use may use liberal arguments but in fact we're talking about not blunders and fools but by self-interested clear connection between specific interests that may not be national interest but there still are interests tied into political decision-making directly linked to that it's the idea that is very present in your book that one of the dangers to liberal democracy that comes from such a liberal foreign policy is that its failures will then be imported and lead to uber nationalism populism etc etc and will undermine internally the credibility of a liberal democratic system with a huge cost for those societies the opposite is also true if you completely take out values from the international system the risk is that the substantial values that are required by a liberal democratic system get so tarnished that the belief that underpins a liberal society will fail to exist well I'm a bit at a loss because on one hand for the first time I found myself defending the national interests of another country not Romania my second brief observation is that Professor neshama normally has the right to have the last word so it's a bit strange to to give the flow to other panelists you put my I just say two very quick points because I've talked much too much Eliza asked me the question you know what can be done to advance a vibrant liberal democracy and my answer to our question is very similar to what I would say to Andres comments I didn't emphasize this theme in my talk but I do emphasize this theme in my book and that is that when you pursue liberal hegemony you end up pursuing a highly militaristic foreign policy the great emphasis on fighting wars and that ultimately undermines liberalism at home in other words when you have a national security state that's set up to manage and fight Wars all the time that undermines liberal democracy so I make clear in the book that one of the principle reasons that I'm opposed to liberal hegemony is because I think it threatens the liberalism at home as paradoxical as that is so I would say to you Eliza to Andre I think one of the best things that the United States could do to foster liberal democracy at home is to pursue a more restrained foreign policy the final point is you emphasized the importance of values and if you said you said if you take out liberal values altogether you're in real trouble I agree with that I'm not against liberal values I'm not against the United States right going around the world or people in the United States going around the world saying that they think liberal democracy is a wonderful political system and engaging in debates about values what I'm against is a u.s. foreign policy that is designed to reshape the world in America's image and in a very important way it's not a liberal foreign policy because it does not tolerate difference remember what I said about liberalism liberalism emphasizes inalienable rights it emphasizes tolerance and then it emphasizes the importance of having a state but in a very important way if you think about it and this is paradoxical the United States is not a very tolerant state because it's saying you have to adopt liberal democracy we have figured out what the approved solution is and it's my way or the highway and that's what disturbs me I'm not against proselytizing about the virtues of liberal democracy I've tried to make it clear that I consider myself to be a liberal Democrat and I'm thrilled that I grew up in a liberal democracy but I'm not interested in ramming that down the throats of other people especially if that means using military force because to go back to my first point what that ends up doing is undermining liberal democracy at home well there is nothing left for me than to thank professor Mearsheimer for being here today for answering our questions for his presentation a special thank you goes also to our three wonderful conversationalist conversation facilitators as well as to our partners for this event and to all of you for coming and for asking questions but this I think we can conclude our event and there is one more part left that is the book signing and just to give you instructions we have a small table on the left side of the podium and I kindly ask you to form an orderly line so that Professor Neil Simon can consign you the copy of your book [Applause] you

Channel: Romania Energy Center - ROEC

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Keywords: #RoecBucharestTalks, ROEC, Romania Energy Center, John Mearsheimer, The Great Delusion, Eugenia Gusilov, Marius Profiroiu, Sergiu Celac, Eliza Gheorghe, Andrei Tarnea, Roec Bucharest Talks

Id: xJYtYssRCHc

Length: 142min 31sec (8551 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 04 2018