- Good evening, everybody. Welcome, thank you all for being here for this talk by John Mearsheimer who I'll introduce in a moment. Before I do, I just wanted to acknowledge a few folks that have joined us. Our dean, Mark Welsh, who just got his own round of applause, Andrew Natsios from the
Scowcroft Institute, next to him is Mr. Royce Hickman, a local community leader,
thank you for joining us. Greg Gause, my boss, and department head of International Affairs,
and a number of my colleagues from International Affairs, and a number of students
from the Bush School, so thank you all for coming. It is my pleasure tonight,
I'm John Schuessler, by the way, I am in the Department
of International Affairs, I'm an associate professor
in that department, but I'm here tonight to introduce our speaker, John Mearsheimer. John is the R. Wendell
Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago,
where he's been sine 1982. He is best known academically
as an offensive realist, a scholar of offensive realism, which is an important body of thought in international relations theory, in terms of public debate,
applying theory to practice, he's left his mark on many
of the important debates of the post-Cold War period and before, including the causes of
the Ukrainian crisis, the folly of invading Iraq,
the Arab-Israeli peace process and the US's Israel relationship,
nuclear proliferation, the return of great power
politics, so on and so forth. And on a personal level,
I met John in 1999 when I enrolled at the
University of Chicago. I'm so proud to welcome him here, and he taught me two things, which I think you'll see tonight. One, keep it simple, stupid. Simple arguments can be powerful, and number two, engage with the idea, don't attack the person,
which is incredibly important. So it is with great pride that I introduce Dr. John Mearsheimer.
(audience applauding) - Thank you very much, John,
for the kind introduction, and thank you all for the invitation here. I think this is the fourth time
I've been to Texas A and M. I always enjoy coming
here, despite the fact that it is not easy to get here. (audience laughing) And I'm thrilled that you
all came out to hear me talk. I often tell people that
I'm a Marxist at heart, that is to say, a Groucho Marxist, and I would never wanna belong to a club that would have me as a member. And for somebody who has that mentality, it's always very humbling
when you see people come out to hear you talk
or people read your books and articles and write
you and tell you that, you know, you've had a profound influence on how they think about the world. It really is humbling, and I'm deeply appreciative
that so many people take what I say and
what I write seriously. Today what I wanna talk
about is my new book, The Great Delusion: Liberal Ideals and International Realities. This book came out,
officially, on September 25th, which, of course, was two days ago. It was about 10 years in the making, really seven years of pretty
much straight hard work, and I've spent a lot of time thinking about the ideas in the book, and I'm excited about throwing them out for you to analyze. And when we go to the Q and A, you shouldn't hesitate to come after me, as John alluded to and as I can tell you, I actually love combat. I love arguing with people, and I love people who think I'm wrong. What could be more boring
than to deal with people who think you're a genius, right? So if, as I go along
here, I make arguments that you don't understand or you think are just wrongheaded,
you should not hesitate to stand up and let me
know what you really think. Okay. Basic story, after the Cold War ended, the United States pursued a policy that I called liberal hegemony. And the main aim of that strategy was to remake the world
in America's image. The policy has failed miserably. If you look at US foreign policy from the end of the Cold War till now, and especially since 2001, it's marked by a whole series of abject failures. And I'll talk about that at great length. And the $64,000 question is why. Why was there all this
optimism in the early 1990s? Why did people think we
had the wind at our back, and we were gonna be
able to remake the world in our own image, and today,
things don't look good at all. What went wrong? And my argument is that to
understand what went wrong, you have to understand the relationship between nationalism and
realism and liberalism. And I believe, again,
that we have followed what is, essentially, a
liberal foreign policy. This is called liberal hegemony, and that it has been
defeated at almost every turn by nationalism and realism, okay? Now, the way I wanna
proceed is, first of all, I wanna talk about what liberalism is. Then I wanna talk about
what nationalism is. And when I talk about
liberalism and nationalism, I'm not gonna say anything
about international politics, at least in any meaningful way. I just wanna give you a
sense for what liberalism is. The United States is a
thoroughly liberal country. It is a liberal democracy. Both Republicans, who we sometimes refer to as conservatives, are liberals, and Democrats are liberals. I'm using the term liberal in the John Lockean sense of the term. The United States was born
as a liberal democracy. The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, these are thoroughly liberal documents. We are a liberal people, okay? But what exactly does that mean? It's very important
that you understand it, because you have to
understand what liberalism is to understand liberal
hegemony and what went wrong. Then, it's very important to
understand what nationalism is. John's argument is very simple here. Nationalism is the most
powerful ideology on the planet. And in a contest between
liberalism and nationalism, nationalism wins every time. And what I wanna do is explain to you what liberalism is, what nationalism is, and why nationalism defeats liberalism. Then, what I wanna do is talk about what liberal hegemony is. What does it mean to say
that the United States is interested in remaking
the world in its own image? So I'll describe that. Then I wanna talk about why
we pursued liberal hegemony, and of course, I've tipped you off by telling you that the United States is a thoroughly liberal country, but there's more to the story. Then, I wanna tell you
what our track record is. I wanna describe our failures in the Middle East, with
regard to NATO expansion and Russia, and with regard
to engagement in China. Just talk about the
evidence that we goofed. Then I wanna talk about
why liberal hegemony fails, and this, again, this is basically a story about nationalism and
realism trumping liberalism. And then I wanna make
the case for restraint, what I think is a wise
foreign policy, okay? Let me start with what is liberalism. There are two bedrock assumptions
that underpin liberalism. One is that it's
individualistic at its core. And number two is that
there are real limits to what we can do with
our critical faculties to reach agreement on first principles or questions about the good life. And what exactly am I saying? You have to decide, when
you think about politics, whether you think human beings are first and foremost individuals
who form social contracts or you think that human beings are fundamentally social animals who carve out room for
their individualism, right, this is very very important
to think about, all right? Liberalism is all about individualism. Liberal theorists are known
as social contract theorists because they believe that individuals come together and form social contracts, so the focus is on the individual. The assumption underpinning liberalism is not that human beings are
social animals from the get go. That's the first point. The second point is
that liberalism assumes that we cannot use our critical faculties. We cannot use reason to come up with truth about first principles. Think about issues like
abortion, affirmative action. You cannot get universal
agreement on those issues, right? And I'll talk about this
more as we go along, but the roots of
liberalism are traced back, in my opinion, to the
religious wars in Britain between Catholics and Protestants. And the fact is, you cannot
use your critical faculties to determine whether Catholicism
is a superior religion to Protestantism, or vice versa, or whether atheism is
superior to both of them, or Judaism or Islam, is
superior to Catholicism and Protestantism, who knows, right? You just can't reach agreement. There are real limits to what we can do with our critical faculties, okay? So those are the two bedrock assumptions. One, you focus on the individual, and number two, you accept the fact that you can't reach universal agreement. Now, central question, how should politics be arranged to deal with this potential for violence? And you say to yourself,
what does he mean, potential for violence? The fact is that Catholics and Protestants were killing each other in huge numbers, not only in Britain, but all over Europe. People today, Shias and
Sunnis, kill each other 'cause they can't agree on
whether Shi'ism or Sunnism is the correct interpretation of Islam. Or communists versus liberals, people can't agree on first principles, and when they can't
agree on first principles if they feel really strongly about them, there is potential for violence. So when you have all of these
individuals running around, who don't agree, they
may agree in some cases, but don't universally agree, there's tremendous potential for violence. So liberalism is basically an ideology that's based on conflict,
and the question is, how do you solve that conflict? There's a three part solution, and this should be dear
to all of your hearts. The first is, you focus
on individual rights. Remember, the importance
of the individual. You know the Declaration of Independence, life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness. Those are natural rights,
those are inalienable rights. This means that every person on the planet has a particular set of rights, sometimes defined as freedoms. This is to say, you, if you
want to be a Protestant, have the right to practice that religion, and if I want to be a
Catholic, I have the freedom, I have the right to be a Catholic. The name of the game is to recognize that everybody has these
freedoms to choose. This makes perfect sense when you think about Catholics killing
Protestants, right? Or Jews killing Muslims,
or whatever group you want, atheists killing believers, communists killing whatever, right? The point is, you wanna
focus on the individual and let the individual
choose for him or herself what kind of life they want to lead. You want to let them
lead, as much as possible, their version of the good life. And, very important,
every person on the planet has that right, and let me
get ahead of myself here, just put this seed in your brain. If you focus on individualism
and inalienable rights, you go almost automatically
from an individualistic ideology to a universalistic ideology, right? Because again, you're
focusing on the individual, you're saying every individual
has a set of rights, every individual on the planet. That individualistic ideology becomes a universalistic ideology. But we're talking about
the individual here. The second is, you purvey
the norm of tolerance. We talk about tolerance all the time. Universities are really big on tolerance. We're supposed to tolerate
opinions that we don't like. You bring in speakers, or
you allow speakers to come in who say things that you
find reprehensible, right? Tolerance really matters. But the fact is, that tolerance
only takes you so far, because you're dealing
with people who sometimes are so committed to their beliefs. Somebody who believes
that abortion is murder is willing to murder a doctor who practices abortion, all right, so you need a state,
that's the third element of the equation, you need a state that's effectively a night watchman that makes sure that
those people over there who wanna live as Protestants don't attack those people who wanna live
as Catholics or vice versa. This is the liberal solution. This is what America is all about. Individualism, we talk
about it all the time. We talk about rights,
everybody has rights. My kids, over the years,
have always reminded me when I tell them that they
have to do X, Y, and Z, that they have rights
and I cannot interfere with their rights, right? It's the way we're educated from the get go, and of course, we're a remarkably tolerant
people, as societies go. Not completely, but that's, of course, why we have a state, right? You gotta have a police force, you gotta have a system of courts, right? So that's what liberalism
is all about, right, liberalism focuses on
the individual, right, purveys the norm of tolerance, and accepts the fact that you
need a night watchman state. Now, let's talk about nationalism. Different animal. Nationalism is based on the assumption that human beings are social animals. We are born and we are heavily
socialized into tribes. We are not born in the state of nature, we are not individuals, born
and left alone in the woods. We are born into groups. We are very tribal. So you see, in terms of
starting assumptions, or bedrock assumptions,
what underpins nationalism, what underpins liberalism,
very very different. And individualism takes a back
seat to group loyalty, right? Somebody around the
world kills an American, ISIS kills an American,
it's fundamentally different than killing a Saudi, or killing a Brit, because you're killing one of us. This is the tribe, right,
you're an American. Americans look out for other Americans. We are social animals from the get go. And aside from the family,
the most important group, remember I said that you're born into and heavily socialized
into particular groups. Putting aside the family,
the most important group in today's world is the nation. I'll say more about that in a second. What's nationalism? Here's my simple definition. It's a set of political beliefs which holds that a nation, a nation, a body of individuals
with characteristics that purportedly distinguish
them from other groups, should have their own state. Think of the word nation-state. Nation-state, nation-state embodies what nationalism is all about. It says the world is
divided up into these tribes called nations, and each one
of them wants its own state. But if you think about the world today, just look at a map of the world today, it is completely covered
with nation-states. Nothing but nation-states. If you went back to 1450 and
you looked at a map of Europe, there isn't even a
single state on that map. Over time, the growth of the state, and then the growth of the nation-state, you move to a world that is filled with nothing but nation-states. Look at the Palestinians and the Israelis. The Jews, who believe in Zionism, what is Zionism all about? It's all about having
your own Jewish state. Theodor Herzl, who was
the father of Zionism, his most famous book is called The Jewish State, Jewish nation-state. What do the Palestinians want? Two state solution? Palestinians want their own state. Palestinians as a nation,
they want their own state. The planet is filled with nations, many of which have their own
state, almost all of which want their own state, nation-state, right? That's what nationalism is all about. Take it a step further, nations place enormous
importance on sovereignty or self-determination, which is why they want their own state. The Palestinians don't
want the Israelis deciding what their politics should look like. Palestinians want their own state. Jews want their own state. Germans want their own state. Americans want their own state, because they believe in sovereignty. You saw this with Donald Trump. Remember, Donald Trump ran in a campaign on a platform that he
referred to as America first. Just think about that, America first. America, a particular nation,
take care of us first. And he has made it very
clear that he does not want anybody interfering
in our sovereignty, and he was saying
yesterday, he doesn't think we should be interfering
in the sovereignty of other countries, right? That's recognition of the power
of nationalism, all right. So nations want their own state, and then, once you get nation-states, they place enormous
importance on sovereignty or self-determination. Who are these Russians to be
interfering in our elections? The United States is a sovereign country. No country like Russia,
or any other country, for that matter, has
the right to interfere in our elections is the
basic argument here. That's what nationalism
is really all about. Okay, so you get a feel for the difference between liberalism and nationalism. Liberalism focuses on the individual and therefore, because it
emphasizes individual rights, which everybody has, has a
universalistic dimension, nationalism is
particularistic at the core. Fundamentally different. Okay, so what's liberal hegemony? I've given you the
definition of liberalism and the definition of
nationalism that I've worked out. Let me talk a little bit
about liberal hegemony. It's basically an attempt
to remake the world in America's image, and
it has three components. The first is, spreading liberal democracy all over the globe. And the reason that I
put three stars up there is it is the most important of the three. This is the idea that we
wanna turn every country into a liberal democracy. We want every country on the planet to have the same political
system that we do here in the United States. Second goal, is we want
to integrate more and more countries into the open
international economy. This is where we have an
emphasis on free trade, lots of economic intercourse, right, free capital flows and so forth and so on. You know the whole story. And then, third is we wanna integrate more and more countries into
international institutions, like the World Trade Organization, the IMF, NATO, think NATO expansion, the TPP, Trans-Pacific Partnership, which the Obama
administration was building and which President Trump cashiered, okay. The liberal story places a
great emphasis on institutions. It places a great emphasis on
an open international economy, and most importantly,
on spreading democracy. Just to give you a feel for this, Donald Trump ran against
liberal hegemony, right? And liberal hegemony, to be clear, was supported by both
Republicans and Democrats. As I like to say, the
Republicans especially, but the Democrats also
like to make the argument that there's a big difference between the two parties on foreign policy. This is not a seriously argument. This is tweedledee and tweedledum. Hardly any difference between the Republicans and the Democrats. There's a real difference between Donald Trump and both of them. Remember, Donald Trump ran the table in the Republican primaries by criticizing the Republicans' performance
on the foreign policy front for decades and criticizing the Democrats in the general election. Donald Trump said, "I'm not interested "in spreading liberal
democracy across the globe." And, in fact, he was quite comfortable making nice with dictators. Second, he was not
interested in supporting an open international economy. In fact, he is showing
today that he is willing to put tariffs on China,
Canada and our European allies, and as far as international
institutions are concerned, he said NATO is obsolete,
he was contemptuous of the World Trade Organization, contemptuous of the European Union, does not like the IMF, does
not like the World Bank, does not like NAFTA, cashiered the TPP. That's Donald Trump. He ran against this. But Obama, George W. Bush,
Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, they embraced this after
the Cold War ended. And, by the way, it was
the failure of this policy, it's the failure of American policy that helped put Donald
Trump in the White House. For those of you who say to yourself, how could this man have ever been elected president of the United States, I'm telling you an important
part of the story, all right? It's the failure of the
foreign policy elites in this country to produce
over the past 30 years. Okay, what are the benefits
of liberal hegemony? And this is very important. In other words, why did
we go down this road, and part is due to the fact that foreign policy elites in the United States had a story to tell about
how this was gonna lead to all sorts of wonderful consequences. First of all, if you turn every country on the planet into a liberal democracy, you basically eliminate significant
human rights violations. We don't need R2P or any
more of these policies that are designed to run around the world protecting human rights,
because human rights are no longer threatened,
because the world is comprised of nothing
but liberal democracies. Second, and maybe even more importantly, liberals tend to believe, and again, I'm using liberals to include
Democrats and Republicans, they believe in what's called
democratic peace theory, that is that liberal democracies
don't fight each other. So if you can create a world with nothing but liberal democracies,
they don't fight each other, peace breaks out, and
problems like proliferation and terrorism would be
taken off the table, and it's just a world
of peace, love and dope. Can't get much better than that, right? And then finally, it makes the world safe for liberal democracy. As you all know, inside
every liberal democracy there are going to be elements who don't like liberal democracy. When I was a kid, this was the Communist Party in the United States. Well, if there's no Soviet Union out there that's a communist state that can interact with those communists
in the United States, then you don't have to
worry about those communists in the United States
getting support from abroad. So what we do is we make the whole planet nothing but liberal democracies, and that really ameliorates the problems that any of these liberal democracies have on the home front, because
there's no foreign power that can assist them. This is a Woodrow Wilson-like argument, made by the likes of George Bush, right? So these are the three great
benefits of liberal hegemony, and this is what propelled people to pursue this policy
of remaking the world in America's image, which mainly means spreading liberal democracy. Now, why did the US
pursue liberal hegemony? First of all, as I said
to you folks before, the United States is a
profoundly liberal country. It makes the United
States a wonderful place. You should understand
here that I am not arguing that liberalism is a bad
thing, period, end of story. I actually think that liberal democracy is the best political system
you can possibly have, and I thank my lucky stars that I was born in the United States of
America, a liberal democracy, and raised in a liberal democracy. I would want it no other way. My argument is that liberal democracy is the best of all
possible political systems that you can have, but
as a foreign policy, liberalism is bankrupt, all right? So you understand the
argument I'm making here, but this is a fundamentally
liberal country, and realists like me, John
Schuessler, Jasen Castillo, they can tell you this. Realists like me and them
have a tough time in America, because liberals don't like realists. That's why so many people
don't like me, right, because I'm a realist on
foreign policy grounds, right? So this is a profoundly liberal country, and just to go back to that slide, when you start trying to
sell these kinds of arguments in the early 1990s, it's very easy to do. Americans just gravitate
to these arguments, 'cause it is a liberal country. Second, American nationalism supplied an unhealthy dose of
hubris to the equation. This is a very important
part of the story. John told you that nationalism
is the most powerful political ideology on the planet. What I'm telling you also,
I didn't say this before, but I'll tell you now. The United States is a
very nationalistic country. If you go to the library here, University of Chicago,
Harvard, you name it, right? There are whole wings of the library that are filled with books
about American liberalism. There is probably one shelf worth of books on American nationalism,
'cause we never talk about ourselves as a
nationalistic country. We are very nationalistic. Let me just say a few words about this. Madeleine Albright,
canonical liberal, right, loves liberal hegemony,
is famous for saying this, "America is the indispensable nation. "We stand taller and we see further." This is pure, unadulterated nationalism. America is, America as
opposed to the other, right, that America is the indispensable, there's the word, nation, nation, as in nationalism, we, we
are the indispensable nation. We stand taller and we see further, right, we are superior, you all know, we're the city on the hill, right, we have the right, we
have the responsibility and we have the capability
to transform countries all around the world into
liberal democracies, right? This is nationalism. So what I'm saying to you here, well, let me just give
you another example. American exceptionalism? You will surely all believe
in American exceptionalism, and if any of you plan to
run for political office in the United States, you'd better say you believe in American exceptionalism. Andrew Cuomo just got himself in trouble for denying that and Barack Obama flirted with that argument and
he quickly backed off. Well, if you believe in
American exceptionalism, you believe in American nationalism, because exceptionalism is
what nationalism is all about. So what you have here is a country that is fueled by both
nationalism and liberalism, right? So it is hardly surprising
that this country is going to go on a rampage
and try to remake the world. And then finally, and this
is a very important part of my argument, I believe
you can only pursue liberal hegemony in unipolarity. The reason is, if you're in bipolarity or multipolarity, you have
other great powers to deal with, and you have to act according
to the dictates of realism. Bipolarity means two great powers, multipolarity, three or more. Unipolarity, there's only one great power. Well, if there's only one great power, you don't have to worry
about great power politics. This is the way United States was at the end of the Cold War. We were Godzilla, we
were incredibly powerful relative to everybody else in the system. Tremendous amounts of power, Charles Krauthammer called
this the unipolar moment. So here we are, we're incredibly powerful, and we think that liberal democracy is the wave of the future,
we think we have the wind in our back, and we think
the idea of spreading liberal democracy, given
how powerful we are, it's gonna be easy, and
we don't have to worry about balance of power politics. 1991, the Soviet Union disappears. It was a weakling even
before it disappeared. China hasn't risen yet,
there's nobody else out there. We don't have to worry
about the balance of power, so we are free to pursue liberal hegemony. If you're in a bipolar system or a multipolar system, I'm
getting way ahead of myself now, think rise of China, think
resurrection of Russian power, not much room for liberal hegemony, you're talking about
balance of power politics. Pivot to Asia, dot dot
dot, you know the story. But here, if you have unipolarity and the sole pole, that's Uncle Sugar, the sole pole is
profoundly liberal, right, and profoundly nationalistic,
you're off to the races. And that's what happened in,
starting in the early 1990s. Hang on just one second,
I'll move it with this. Yeah, liberal hegemony's track record. Just wanna talk a little bit about this. These are the failures of
American foreign policy. Talk about the Bush doctrine
and the greater Middle East, Afghanistan, you think
we're gonna turn Afghanistan into a liberal democracy? Just a question of when we turn
it back over to the Taliban. Longest war in American history. Iraq, total disaster. Led to the creation of ISIS, hundreds of thousands of people died. Iran now has significant
influence in Iraq. Syria, we played a key role
in unsettling the regime in Syria, that's worked out really well. Libya, we played a key role
in toppling Colonel Gaddafi from power, that's really
worked out very well. We're deeply involved
in the war in Yemen now, which is a human rights catastrophe. The Americans oughta be embarrassed for their disgraceful
behavior, supporting this war, supporting the Saudis. You look at our track record
in the greater Middle East, failure after failure, and Donald Trump, to his credit, pointed
this out in the campaign, and the American people
fully understand this. The elites in this country don't because they're deeply
invested in these wars. But dismal track record. The Ukraine crisis and
US-Russian relations, of course, inside the elite,
we blame the Russians. The Americans haven't blamed
themselves for anything, but actually what happened here is that the United States decided when the Cold War ended
that we would take NATO and we would take the EU, and
we would march them eastward, right up to the border of Russia. And what we would do is
we would help solidify the democracies that had emerged in Eastern Europe after the Cold War. We would get the countries
in Eastern Europe embedded in international institutions like NATO and the EU,
we would get them hooked on capitalism, and we would make sure they were liberal democracies, by the way, those countries that
weren't liberal democracies? We would foment revolutions. Remember the Orange Revolution in Ukraine? The Rose Revolution in Georgia, right? It's all part of the piece,
it's all part of this story. All right, realism like me, George Kennan, we all said, are you crazy? You think you could
take a military alliance that was a mortal enemy
of the Soviet Union during the Cold War and march it right up to the Russians' border and they're just gonna
sit there and take it? And of course, the Russians
screamed bloody murder about NATO expansion from 1995 forward. We didn't listen, right, but it eventually blew up in their face,
Georgia, 2008, Ukraine, 2014. We are principally
responsibile for creating the crisis that led to
Russia recapturing Crimea or capturing Crimea,
depending on your view, and for the war in Ukraine today. The Russians have basically said, you're not gonna make
Ukraine a Western bulwark on our border, not gonna happen. We'll wreck it before we let that happen, and they said the same
thing about Georgia. From an American point of view, this makes eminently good sense. You've all heard of the
Monroe Doctrine, right? You know what the Monroe Doctrine says? No distant great power
from Europe or East Asia is allowed to come into
the Western Hemisphere with military force and form an alliance with any country in this region. That's the Monroe Doctrine. I'm old enough to remember
the Cuban Missile Crisis. We went ballistic when we found out the Soviets had put missiles in Cuba. And then, later, they were
talking about building a naval base at Cienfuegos. Who do these people think they are? Don't they understand that
this is the Western Hemisphere? They are not allowed to move military forces into this region. We still have sanctions on Cuba. God knows how many years since
1959 this has been going on, because the Cubans had the audacity to form a military alliance
with a distant great power. Well, as my mother told me
when I was a little boy, what's good for the goose
is good for the gander, and if we can have a Monroe Doctrine, are you shocked that they
had a Monroe Doctrine or they have a Monroe Doctrine? You're shocked that the
Russians don't like the idea of us marching NATO
right up to their border? You shouldn't be, you shouldn't be. Great powers, I can tell you from studying a lot of military history,
are remarkably sensitive about their borders, and the idea that an enemy's gonna creep
right up to their borders and they're just gonna stand there and say, oh, that's okay. We live in a world of
peace, love and dope. That's not the way
international politics works. That's realism 101,
slamming liberal hegemony. It's also all about nationalism, right, because the United States is interested in interfering in the politics
of both Russia and China, and this brings us to
engagement with China. Our goal from the beginning
has been to turn China into a liberal democracy. That involves interfering
with their politics. You think they were happy about that? No, they weren't. Let's go back to the goose and the gander. You've been watching all these Americans screaming bloody murder about the fact the Russians are
interfering in our election. Well, don't you think the
Chinese or the Russians are gonna scream bloody murder when we try and interfere
in their politics? They are, surprise of surprises. But of course, liberals, here again, I'm talking about
Republicans and Democrats, US is a benign hegemon,
we're a benign hegemon. We only have good intentions, and we just wanna make
the world look like us. And of course, once that happens, we all live happily ever after. Didn't work out that way, just look at that giant disaster zone
called the Middle East. Look at the hundreds and
hundreds of thousands of people who've died, we have a
lot of blood on our hands. US-Russian relations? We bear principal responsibility for the deterioration of those relations. And with regard to engagement,
it's been a failure. Principal architects like Kurt Campbell now admit that's true, we failed. The policy has been an abject failure. So the question is, why did it fail? I'm not gonna go into this any detail, but the power of nationalism, right? I was one of the leading opponents, there weren't many, in the sort of, foreign policy establishment, I was one of the leading
opponents of the Iraq war. I think it was because I
was in the American military from 1965 to 1975, which was coterminous with the Vietnam War. And I heard that these
people were thinking about invading Iraq, I said,
"Have they lost their mind?" Right, there's no question
the United States military is an incredibly
formidable fighting force, and we can topple regimes
almost anywhere in the world, maybe China and Russia left out. We can go in Iran, go
in Iraq, go into Syria, you can topple regimes. The problem is, what do you
do once you own the place, right, what do you do? You're greeted as a
liberator the first day, week, maybe even the first month, right, all sorts of people were glad
we got rid of Saddam Hussein. But then we gotta stay
to do social engineering. And this is a prescription
for big trouble. Remember what I told
you about sovereignty? Remember what I told you
about self determination? You think the Iraqis wanted us telling them what color
toilet paper they could use? I don't think they liked it at all. And we had resistance, serious resistance. You wanna rape Russia? Tell 'em to invade
Ukraine, that'll be pretty. Let 'em go into Latvia,
Lithuania and Estonia. Let 'em reestablish the Soviet
Empire in Eastern Europe. You think that'll make them more powerful? They'll be up to their
eyeballs in alligators. I remember in 1979, the
Soviets invaded Afghanistan. Virtually everybody in
the national community, security community, was aghast. Oh my god, the Soviets are on the march, this is the end of the world. I said, "You've got it all wrong, "they just jumped into a giant tarpit." When you're involved in an arms race with a country like the Soviet Union, what you want 'em to do
was go into Afghanistan, just like you want us to go into Vietnam. You wanna do that one again? Almost tore this country apart. Almost wrecked our military. Ugh, so I told the Chinese when
I first started going there in the early 2000s, what
you wanna tell the Americans is you're counting on them
to win the war on terror. Tell them they gotta stay in Afghanistan and Iraq until they win the war. They'll be there forever grinding up their military,
wrecking their economy. You know what the lesson here is? Stay outta those places unless
you absolutely have to go in. But we had exactly the opposite worldview, because we had a foreign policy
that's based on liberalism. We thought we had a
right and responsibility and the capability to do
all this social engineering. Power of nationalism, you
never want to underestimate it. And you wanna understand
that as Americans, you are very nationalistic,
and you ain't special. Everybody else on the
planet is very nationalistic and nationalism is all
about self determination and sovereignty and if
you don't like people interfering in your
politics, don't be surprised if they don't like you
interfering in their politics. Oh, about the power of realism, again, when you're dealing with China and you're dealing with Russia, you're dealing with
very powerful countries and you start moving military alliances, you start moving military
forces up to their borders, you get in their face, you're
asking for serious trouble. I just talked to the
Chinese some time back, how they think about those American naval and air forces right off their coast, it really bothers them. They don't like it at all. I don't blame them, right? As an American, I'm glad we're there. I wanna contain the Chinese. Let me be very clear about that. I'm a realist, I don't wanna
cut the Chinese any slack but I understand why they get upset. But again, liberal hegemony doesn't buy that line of bargaining. Now, I wanna talk about
overselling individual rights and illiberal liberalism,
just very quickly. On overselling individual rights, the fact is that we make a really big deal about the importance of rights
here in the United States, but if you look around the world, most people don't really think that individual rights matter that much. In a thoroughly liberal
country like the United States you can sell that kind of
argument up to a point. But it's very hard to do abroad, especially in countries
where people prize security. If you go to Russia today,
and you talk to people about liberal democracy and rights, they will tell you, almost all of them, we tried that in the 1990s, and Russia was turned into the wild West. We're much happier with Putin
and the political system that we have, soft authoritarianism. It's much more suited for us, and we don't care that much about rights. We have some rights, we
understand their limits, but we don't want your political system. We've been there, we tried
that, it didn't work. So, what I'm saying to you
is, in a lot of countries, when you invade them and you think you can do social engineering,
or for the purpose of turning them into liberal democracies, what you discover in
almost all those cases is that being turned
into a liberal democracy where individual rights are
prized is not that important. It's not to say it's unimportant, but people are just not
craving for individual rights. And in many cases, they're
just craving for stability. If you're an Iraqi and it's 2003, and Uncle Sugar pays you a visit, he topples the regime, right, and then chaos breaks out. Over the next couple years,
you're not gonna be worried too much about creating
a liberal democracy. You're not gonna be worried too much about individual rights. You're just gonna be worried
about what you can do to stabilize the country
so that you and your family don't get killed, right? So you just wanna understand
that we tend to oversell individual rights and when you marry that with the power of nationalism
and the power of realism, you get into real trouble. My final point has to do
with illiberal liberalism. Remember what I told you about
liberalism to begin with? I told you that liberalism was
predicated on the assumption that you could not reach
universal agreement on first principles,
remember I told you that? And therefore, you develop
sort of a live and let live political order, that's
what liberalism is. It's a modus vivendi form of politics. You let people decide for themselves. If he wants to be a Protestant,
I wanna be a Catholic, he wants to be a Jew, I wanna be a Muslim, you let people do what they want, okay? Because you can't reach
universal agreement. If you think about it, liberal hegemony is based on intolerance. It says everybody has to
be a liberal democracy. My view is if you have
soft authoritarianism in Russia, so what? That's their choice. Why can't they have a
soft authoritarian system? Why do we have to say
everybody has to look like us? Isn't this antithetical to
the basic liberal enterprise? I think the answer is yes. Case for restraint, very quickly. If I'm running foreign policy, and you can rest assured
that will never happen, but if I was running
American foreign policy from the early 90s forward,
I would have pursued a policy of restraint. I would have abandoned liberal hegemony, which mainly means abandoning the policy of spreading democracy
around the world, okay? I think that was the key
mistake that we made. We thought that liberal democracy was going to take root everywhere. For those of you, you
young people haven't read Frank Fukuyama or Francis
Fukuyama's famous article The End of History? You really should read it. The two most important
articles that were written when the Cold War ended
were Francis Fukuyama's The End of History and
Charles Krauthammer's The Unipolar Moment, and basically what Frank Fukuyama said is that we spent the first half of the 20th
century defeating fascism, we spent the second half
defeating communism, and now that we have
won those two battles, all that was really left
standing was liberal democracy, and the world was slowly
but steadily going to evolve into a system of liberal democracies. And Frank says, at the
very end of the piece, that the biggest problem that
we're gonna face in the future is probably boredom, boredom.
(audience laughing) Why boredom, because once you have a world that's populated by all liberal
democracies, you get peace. And Krauthammer wrote this piece
called The Unipolar Moment, that he said, this is a unique moment in world history, and the
United States is by far the most powerful state on the planet. We have this tremendous military, and we ought to use it to reshape the world in our own interest. You marry Krauthammer's argument
with Fukuyama's argument. Fukuyama says, we've got
the wind at our back, Krauthammer says, we have
this big stick that we can use to facilitate the process,
and you're off to the races. Right, and this, of course,
is exactly what happens, but I would've abandoned that,
and I would've concentrated instead on maintaining a
favorable global balance of power, which mainly means
containing the rise of China. All right, as you would
expect from a realist like me, what I really care about is not what kind of political system a state has, I just care how much power it has. And my principal goal as
an American is to make sure we are the most powerful
state on the planet. And as many of you know, in my lexicon, that means to make sure we are a hegemon in the Western Hemisphere. We wanna be a regional hegemon
in the Western Hemisphere, and make sure that there
is no hegemon in Europe or in East Asia or in the Gulf, right? So, I believe in primacy,
that's my definition of primacy, to be the most powerful
state in the system, but I'm not interested, to
go back to my first point, in spreading liberal democracy. Again, I think liberal
democracy's a wonderful thing. If every state in the world
was a liberal democracy, I think that would be good for the people who live in those
countries, but my view is, because I believe in sovereignty, it's up to them to decide what they want. Final point I wanna make to
you here on this slide is, liberalism abroad leads
to illiberalism at home. This is what the founding
fathers understood. If you're in a permanent
state of war, right, it's gonna have consequences
for liberalism at home, because you're gonna create
a national security state and you're gonna have a
state that spies on people and does all sorts of other things. So I think from a point of
view of civil liberties, this foreign policy is bankrupt. Final point, the end of liberal hegemony. You remember what John said
to you very early in the talk, I said that you could
only have liberal hegemony in unipolarity, because in unipolarity the sole pole, which is the United States, does not have to worry
about great power politics, because by definition, you
can't have great power politics when there's only one great power. Well, we are now transitioning out of unipolarity into multipolarity. This is very clearly
reflected in a document on the country's national
security strategy that the White House
issued in December of 2017, and then the Pentagon in January of 2018 issued a similar document on
our national security strategy, and both these documents make it clear that multipolarity is here,
that unipolarity is over with, and great power politics is what we're gonna be mainly
concerned with in the future. And that has to do with,
one, the rise of China, which I think, for all of you
young people in the audience will be the most important
issue of your lifetime, and then the second
issue is the resurrection of Russian power after Putin
came to office in 2000. Russia is a declining great power. You don't wanna overestimate
Russian power, right, China is the real threat
to the United States here. But nevertheless, the Russians are back, and the Russians have
thousands of nuclear weapons, and they can cause us a lot of trouble, and we are at loggerheads with
them over the Ukraine crisis. So we wanna pay them serious attention, but what I'm saying to you here is that I think with the
coming of multipolarity, liberal hegemony will go away. Now, if I'm wrong and we
remain in a unipolar world because the Chinese rise doesn't continue and Russia begins to fall apart again, and we are once again the unipole, then we're back to arguing
against liberal hegemony and making the case for restraint. But I don't think that people like me are going to have to make
the case for restraint in the future, in large part
because of the rise of China. I would say, and this
is my concluding point, that I have very mixed
emotions about that. On one hand, I welcome the rise of China and the resurrection of Russian power because it means that liberal
hegemony is going away. But on the other hand, what it means is that the United States is now facing a potential peer competitor, and I think, all things considered, I'd
rather have liberal hegemony as a problem to deal with
rather than have China and Russia as twin problems
to deal with, thank you. (audience applauding) John has to be wired up but I don't. - Do you wanna take
questions from the audience? That, or I could go.
- Sure. Sure.
- Okay. (microphone buzzes) So, I'm supposed to conduct the Q and A, but I just know that
John would not be happy if he didn't get a question
or two from you all, so we're gonna kinda wing it in a moment and just take whatever
comes from the audience. But I wanted to get one question in. - Good.
- But you kinda answered it in your last sentence,
which really bothered me. But--
- All right, let's go to the audience.
(audience laughing) - So, the key implication of your book, or one of 'em, is that if the US has too much power, it acts stupidly. So, in your other, the big book, Tragedy of Great Power Politics, you kind of counsel
maximizing power, right, this is the good thing to
do for security purposes. But the upshot of this book
is if you have too much power you lose all restraint and discipline. So shouldn't, to kinda go to your point, shouldn't we be hoping for some
measure of American decline? Aren't we only smart when
we have a competitor? - Yeah, yeah, there's a
lot of points in here. First of all, there's
this very famous saying by Lord Acton that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. You do have the sense,
watching the United States, that there is this phenomenon
of too much power, right, that a state can have too much power and it becomes careless
and it does foolish things. This is an interesting concept that I have not thought
long and hard about, and I don't understand what the
theory is that underpins it. I think there's just a lot
of empirical evidence for it. I watch the Israelis, for example, the Israelis, I think, do
not behave terribly smartly because they know the
United States has their back almost no matter what they do. And I think Israel, from
its own perspective, would be better off if it
didn't have the United States to back it at every turn,
because the Israelis can make a mistake and the Americans will pull their chestnuts out of the fire. And if you take the United
States of America today, the United States of America
is the most secure great power in the history of the world. And you realize, from 1990 up
until 2014, for sure, right, we were the most secure great power in the history of the world. We're separated from the rest of the world by two giant moats, we have
thousands of nuclear weapons, and it's the unipolar moment, which means we have no
great power competitors. Really quite remarkable. So we are free, I'm
picking up on John's point, we are free to run around the world and do all sorts of stupid things and it has no consequences. It really doesn't have
any great consequences for the United States, because
we're just so powerful. But it all gets at the point,
when you're really powerful, you're free to do foolish things. And states seem to do that. Then the question is, why? And there I don't have a good answer, so one of you should write a paper, answer this question and
send it to me and to John. - Well, if you weren't popular before, I guess you advocating for decline, right, will certainly help that.
- But, I wanna be clear here, just getting to my last slide. I'm not advocating for a decline. - Yeah, no, I'm sorry.
- Right. (audience laughing)
I'm deeply worried about the rise of China, right? I'd prefer that China not rise and we be stuck with liberal
hegemony again, right, and fighting that battle,
but I do believe states, my final point on this,
I do believe states should maximize their
power, their relative power. You wanna be as powerful as possible, but as John knows, and
many of you probably know, my argument is you cannot
be a global hegemon. John's argument is you can dominate your region of the world,
and then the name of the game is to prevent other countries from dominating their region of the world. But the idea that you
can be a global hegemon is not possible, and liberal hegemony is a way of saying you
can be a global hegemon, and it's because the United States thought it was a benign,
it was a benign hegemon, but you only think you're a benign hegemon if you believe that liberalism is much more powerful than nationalism. And again, John's argument is, you never wanna underestimate, you never wanna underestimate
the power of nationalism, and understand that that power, right, is what makes it very hard for any hegemon to be seen as benign by other countries. Okay, I'm gonna wander, and
why don't you take a question and if I need to, I'll translate. - I'll take the man with the, I'll take Greg and then the
person right behind him. Greg Gause.
- So John, two things. You say nationalism is
the most powerful force in the world today, but
when I look at a place like Afghanistan or Iraq, I
don't see a national uprising against an American occupation. I see strong group feelings, but not that are coterminous with the
way these borders are drawn. And, at least in the Middle East, it seems to me that it's
both substate identities, like being a Pashtun in Afghanistan or super state identities
like being a Shia Muslim that are animating peoples,
that are mobilizing people. So you could talk a little
bit about how those identities fit into your notion of nationalism. The second thing is, in some ways, not surprisingly, this is
a very structural argument. Unipolarity drives liberal hegemony. - It presents an opportunity. - [Greg] It presents an opportunity, but is 9/11 the real driver? Because up until 9/11,
we kind of got liberalism in Eastern Europe and
changes in Latin America, the things that Fukuyama talked about in the article, without doing much, right? We didn't invade Latin, we
didn't invade Eastern Europe to make them democratic, for all sorts of historical reasons going on they defaulted to democracy
like Fukuyama talked about. But after 9/11, we decided that places that didn't have that default had to be forced into the default. So how does 9/11 fit into this argument? - Yeah, let me take 'em in reverse order, and you'll remind me of
the first one if I forget. These are both terrific questions. Just on the second one. To reinforce your point,
you remember Wesley Clark wanted to use military force,
ground forces in the Balkans and the Clinton administration refused to commit ground forces in the Balkans because we were so skittish. And you remember, the 1991 Gulf War, George H.W. Bush, of this institution, had a really difficult
time selling that war, because people said, oh my God, we're gonna use ground forces. And they were thinking in kind of John Mearsheimer
type terms, right? Well, this is to say that Greg is right, that 9/11 represents a big change and let me just unpack it a bit. What 9/11 does is it forces
us to go into Afghanistan. I think there is no president
who can't go into Afghanistan to topple the Taliban, no matter
what the price we will pay, no matter the price we will pay, okay? We go into Afghanistan and we score what appears to be a stunning victory in a short period of time. We put Karzai in power, and we, the Americans, basically get out. So it looks like we have
found the magic formula for toppling regimes and
then getting out of town. And just to build on this some more, think about the Bush Doctrine. The Bush Doctrine said that
we're gonna use military force against Iraq, but that's
not the last place we're gonna use military force. We're gonna go into Iraq, we're gonna repeat the Afghan model, then we're gonna do Iran or Syria. When the Israelis caught
wind in early 2002 that we were thinking about doing Iraq after Afghanistan, the
Israelis sent a high level team to the United States
to say, are you crazy? Iraq is not the appropriate
target, it's Iran. The administration said,
the Bush administration, George W. Bush administration, and the neoconservatives,
said to the Israelis, relax, we're gonna do Iraq,
and then we're gonna do either Syria or Iran, and we
may not even have to do Iran because they'll throw their hands up because they'll see that we
can float like a butterfly and sting like a bee, which
is what we did in Afghanistan. So I would just unpack your point about 9/11 and say, it's not just 9/11, it's what we thought was the Afghan model that would lead us to be able to transform the entire Middle East at
the end of a rifle barrel. And by the way, you wouldn't
have to use military force more than one or two
times before everybody was throwing their hands up. The problem was that we did not decisively defeat the
Taliban, as you know, they were gonna come back
from the dead, right, and then we went into Afghanistan. That brings me to your first question. Look, I was an adamant
opponent of the Iraq War, and I know a lot of academics
were also adamantly opposed, and I think there were two arguments against going into Iraq. One was the argument I'm making here, which is the nationalism argument, and the second argument,
which is more consistent with what you're saying,
and I think is correct, is that there were
powerful centrifugal forces inside of Iraq, there were
Shia, there were Sunnis, there were Kurds and
then there were factions within those different groups, and you're saying to me, John, that doesn't look like
a national state, right, especially when you look at the Kurds. And I think that that's true, right? But I do believe that there
was a lot of nationalism in Iraq and that you got
an insurgency against the United States because
we were seen as occupiers. That was one foot dropping. The other foot dropping
was the centrifugal forces. And you could go to countries
like Afghanistan as well, where you don't have one
unified nation state, and as you well know, you can go to Europe and see much the same thing. Go to a place like
Spain, look at Catalonia, look at the Basque region, look at what's happening
in Great Britain today. But these are all manifestations
of nationalism, right, a lot of these centrifugal,
I shouldn't say all of, many of these conflicts
inside existing nation states are the result of nationalism at play. The gentleman behind Greg?
- Yes, thank you so much (man mumbling)
- You should stand up, just so everybody can hear you. And talk loudly, just so.
- Yeah, as a person from Afghanistan I think, I'm like, the conclusion that you make is something like, I see that the premises don't follow the conclusion, especially like, with Afghanistan. In the case of Afghanistan nationalism, is it good to say that there is some nationalism in
Afghanistan, but what I think, I am not sure about using
nationalism in Afghanistan, because the way I see
Afghanistan, what he has said, there are four main ethnic
group in Afghanistan, and there was 20 years
of war in Afghanistan to make, like, to have
a balance instead that to respect these rights are
the basic rights of the people. And Pashtuns knew they had
a leader of the country, and there was resistance against it. You have the Taliban and a lot of resistance against the Taliban all over the country, but you understand what did we use in Afghanistan, they have supported Pashtuns making sure that they were in the power, and then they supported anti-Americans, actually who would arm
themselves in this situation. They supported to write a constitution, despite the state of prison, basically-- - You should cut to your point. - [Audience Member]
Yeah, and so, what I say, I think the nationalism as saying, okay, if he be paid, because we actually, this part of nationalism, and I don't see that
that's stuff like that. - Let me ask you a question. The British had a rich experience in Afghanistan, and they
were basically run out. The Soviets, as you know, in the 1980s, had a rich experience in Afghanistan, and they were run out. The Americans have run
into tremendous resistance. Is this nationalism, Afghani nationalism? - No.
- What is it then? - [Audience Member] I
think it's more like a, it's systemic in the system, because in Afghanistan, I
think, resistant cort-a-fu-sis is only 10% of the country. It's like 90%, but I look from this here is actually less about the allies because to put in one the
one who supported Taliban on the back stage, I don't
see it as nationalism. - Okay, I want to get other questions, but I would just say to you,
I think it is nationalism, right, but that's not to say you don't have a fractured
nation state, right? You had a fractured nation
state in the United States, that's why we fought a
civil war, 1861 to 1865. I'm not arguing that these
are homogenous nation states where there's never any disagreement, but I think virtually all
groups dislike intensely the idea of a foreign country coming in and occupying them, but
I, we can talk later. Just 'cause I wanna
get other people, okay? Sir. - [Audience Member] All right, so, something that seemed to be significantly missing
in the lecture tonight as well as the general theory
when it comes to neorealism over the past several decades we have the explosion of non-state actors. So, my question sort of trends along, how do non-state actors affect what you've gone over tonight, when you introduce them into the scenario as well as neorealism, in regards to, I see two things happening
that is hurtling us more towards an international system because of non-state actors. You have non-violent,
non-governmental organizations such as Human Rights Watch, which provide quantifiable evidence for inter-governmental organizations like the UN to apply pressure, and then you have violent actors such as-- - For who to apply pressure?
- For the international system, so like the United Nations, they wanna use inter-governmental
organizations it seems. - Okay.
- And then you have the violent ones,
terrorism, obvious example, Somali pirates on the Horn of Africa, which forces international cooperation, so we introduce non-state actors who are not vying for the balance of power or vying for their own power in the international scheme of things, how does this affect realism, how does it affect what
you talked about tonight? - Good question. First of all, realism is a theory that focuses exclusively
on great powers, right, it's a theory about great power politics, and there is no room in
realism for non-state actors. And realism, like any
theory, doesn't explain everything in the world,
it explains, I think, a great deal, but not everything
about great power politics and even politics involving minor states, but it doesn't have much to say about non-state actors. Then the question is, how
important do you think non-state actors are? And my view is, non-state actors don't matter very much at all, pirates? Is this a serious concern of mine, no. I think terrorism is a
completely overhyped problem. You're more likely to die
slipping in your bathtub or choking on a peanut than
being killed by a terrorist in the United States,
and you kinda wonder, what are people thinking? And then you talk about
Human Rights Watch? I have great respect
for Human Rights Watch, I don't wanna dis what
Human Rights Watch does, it's the liberal in me, but the idea that these organizations
have a lot of influence on international politics,
the United Nations? The United Nations is a
toothless institution. It's always been a toothless institution. Whether that's good or bad, we can debate, but I just don't see non-state actors mattering very much. I'll give you 30 seconds to come back and tell me why I'm wrong. - John, I think you have
time for one more question, so you might not wanna, I'm sorry, but I just don't think we can do rebuttals if you're gonna get to
any other questions, so. - Give him 30 seconds,
I won't respond to him. I'll let him have the last word. - [Audience Member] So,
looking at the past 100 years, we see more and more,
while it's not great, we still have an international energy with more and more influence
on the international system, moving from the League of Nations to the United Nations. Looking into the future,
should great power politics and neorealism evolve to accept this greater place of the
international systems. - You shouldn't ask me a question, 'cause I gave you the last word. (audience laughing) In the rear, if you
could stand up, please. - [Audience Member] So I have
major disagreement with you. Because you're pairing liberalism as kind of like the main
goal of the American system-- - Spreading liberalism.
- Yeah, spreading liberalism. I think the problem with your thesis is that it is not spreading liberalism. That's not the main focus of
the American hegemonic system. It is spreading neoliberalism, which is, which goes to the second point, when you were explaining
the focus, or the goals of the liberal hegemony which is basically spreading the American economic model, the capitalist economic model. And I think the
contradictions that you see in this concept of a liberal hegemony is that it's, those contradictions come in because as the professed
liberal hegemonic goal, which is spreading
democracy, and then the real, 'cause I liked what that we
talk about, using the realist. The real goal of the
American hegemonic system is spreading capitalism, and
I think that is the cause of all this development of
contradictions that you see in the project of the
American hegemonic system. - That's an excellent point. Just to sort of reiterate what I said, and put this gentleman's point in context. Remember, I said there were three goals that the liberal hegemonists had. The one where I had three stars was to spread liberal democracy, and the second was to promote
an open economic order, and the third was to get
more and more countries incorporated into
international institutions, which, by the way, is
linked to the second one. Now, this gentleman is
basically saying to me, John, all your emphasis
on spreading democracy and saying that's the most
important goal is wrong, that the most important
goal is the second goal, which is sort of what people on the left tend to argue, which is
to focus more on economics and say that capitalism and capitalists in the United States,
what they really wanna do is they wanna spread free markets and neoliberalism, to use your rhetoric, for the purpose of making America rich. And, of course, many people
in the developing world think this has ended up
doing enormous damage to their economies and to their countries, and there is a lot of
truth in that, for sure. I don't have the time
to spell it out here, but I think that you're right, that this is very important. I just think you're wrong when you say this is more important than
spreading liberal democracy, right, and, but I have a difficult time making that argument to you now. To support your point, actually, and contradict my point, if
you think about engagement with China, how does engagement
with China work, right? You remember, as China begins to rise, you have two policy possibilities. One is you can try to contain China, that's the realist view, that's me, or the liberal view is you engage China. Remember, I had engagement up here. What exactly does engagement mean? When I spell it out, it's more in line with his argument than mine. This is the way it goes. The idea is that if we can get the Chinese hooked on capitalism, and
everybody's getting richer and richer, and we can
embed them in institutions where they learn to respect the rules, the end result is that they
will become a liberal democracy. So if you look at Kurt Campbell's piece, he was a very important policy maker who pushed engagement, right? If you look at his piece
and you look at other pieces on engagement, he argues engagement failed because even though we got
them hooked on capitalism, we got them incorporated
into institutions, we failed to turn them
into a liberal democracy. But this is all a way of saying that the principal goal was to turn them into capitalist countries,
get them hooked on capitalism, get 'em into the open international order, and then what would follow
is liberal democracy, which is more in line
with what you're saying, but I think they're wrong
and I think you're wrong, but I think in the end, there's
not a whole heck of a lot of disagreement between
us because we do agree that all three of those
things go together. And my basic argument is
that this enterprise failed, and a lot of it has to do with
what you're talking about. There's this book, by the way, I tell people to read
it, sorry, just give me-- - I know, I'm not--
- 10 more seconds. (audience laughing) Every time I talk, I always say, why didn't we leave another hour? But anyway, just very quickly, this book, it's called, I think it's
called The Globalization Paradox by Dani Rodrik, D-A-N-I,
R-O-D-R, Dani Rodrik, yeah. That people should read that
really sort of talks about how hyper globalization,
apropos your comments about neoliberalism, led to
all sorts of bad consequences. Anyway, I wish I had more time, but thank you very much for
the excellent questions. (audience applauding) - Thank you. Please join us out in
the lobby for a reception and thanks again to John.
Professor Mearsheimer hit the nail on the head on this one.