Lex Fridman PodcastJohn Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 | Lex Fridman Podcast #401
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
155 min read · 30,908 words- 0:00 – 1:29
Introduction
- LFLex Fridman
The following is a conversation with John Mearsheimer, a professor at University of Chicago, and one of the most influential and controversial thinkers in the world. He teaches, speaks, and writes about the nature of power and war on a global stage, in history and today. Please allow me to say, once again, my hope for this little journey I'm on. I will speak to everyone, on all sides, with compassion, with empathy, and with backbone. I will speak with Vladimir Putin and with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, with Russians and with Ukrainians, with Israelis and with Palestinians, with everyone. My goal is to do whatever small part I can to decrease the amount of suffering in the world by trying to reveal our common humanity. I believe that, in the end, truth and love wins. I will get attacked for being naive, for being a shill, for being weak. I am none of those things. But I do make mistakes, and I will get better. I love you all. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's John Mearsheimer.
- 1:29 – 24:43
Power
- LFLex Fridman
Can you explain your view on power in international politics as outlined in your book, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, and in your writing since then?
- JMJohn Mearsheimer
Yeah, I make two sets of points there. First of all, I believe that power is the currency of international relations, and by that I mean that states are deeply interested in the balance of power, and they're interested in maximizing how much power they control. And the question is why states care so much about power. In-in the international system, there's no higher authority, so if you get into trouble and you dial 911, there's nobody at the other end. In a system like that, you have no choice but to figure out for yourself how best to protect yourself, and the best way to protect yourself is to be powerful, to have as much power as you can possibly gain over all the other states in the system. Therefore, states care about power because it enhances or maximizes their prospects for survival. Second point I would make is that in the realist story, or in my story, power is largely a function of material factors. Uh, the two key building blocks of power are population size and wealth. You wanna have a lot of people and you wanna be really wealthy. Of course, this is why the United States is so powerful. It has lots of people and it has lots of wealth. China was not considered a great power until recently, uh, because it didn't have a lot of wealth. It certainly had population size, but it didn't have wealth, and without both a large population and much wealth, you're usually not considered a great power. Um, so I-I think power matters, uh, but, uh, when we talk about power it's important to understand that it's, uh, population size and wealth that are underpinning it.
- LFLex Fridman
So there's a lot of interesting things there. First, you said nations in relation to each other are, is essentially in a state of anarchism.
- JMJohn Mearsheimer
Yeah. Well, anarchy basically means the opposite of hierarchy. Sometimes people think when you're talking about anarchy, you're talking about murder and mayhem, but that's not what anarchy means in the realist context.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- JMJohn Mearsheimer
Anarchy simply means that you don't have hierarchy. There's no higher authority that sits above states. States are like pool balls on a table, right? And in an anarchic world, uh, there's no higher authority that you can turn to, uh, if you get into trouble. And of course the political philosopher who laid this all out was Thomas Hobbes.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- JMJohn Mearsheimer
And Hobbes talked about life in the state of nature. And in the state of nature, you have individuals, and those individuals compete with each other for power. And the reason that they do is because in the state of nature, by definition, you have no higher authority. And Hobbes's view is that the way to get out of this terrible situation where individuals are competing with each other and even killing each other is to create a state. It's what he calls the Leviathan, and that, of course, is the title of his famous book. So the idea is to escape anarchy, you create a state, and that means you go from anarchy to hierarchy.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- JMJohn Mearsheimer
The problem in international politics is that there is no world state. There is no hierarchy. And if you have no hierarchy and you're in an anarchic system, you have no choice but to try to maximize your relative power, to make sure you are, as we used to say when I was a kid on New York City playgrounds, the biggest and baddest dude on the block.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- JMJohn Mearsheimer
Not because you necessarily wanna beat up on other kids (laughs) or on other states, but because, again, that's the best way to survive. And as I like to point out to people, the best example of what happens when you're weak in international politics is what the Chinese call the Century of National Humiliation.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- JMJohn Mearsheimer
Uh, from the late 1840s to the late 1940s, the Chinese were remarkably weak, and the great powers in the system preyed upon them. And, uh, that sends a very important message (laughs) to not only the Chinese, but to other states in the system: don't be weak. Be as powerful as you can.
- LFLex Fridman
And we'll talk about it, but humiliation can lead to resentment, and resentment leads to, uh, something you've also studied, which is Nazi Germany in the 1930s. We'll talk about it. Um, but staying to the psychology and philosophy picture, what's the connection between the will to power in the individual, as you mentioned, and the will to power in a nation?
- JMJohn Mearsheimer
The will to power in an individual has a lot to do with individual psychology. Uh, the story that I tell about the pursuit of power is a structural argument.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- JMJohn Mearsheimer
It, it's an argument that says, when you are in a particular structure, w- when you're in a system that has, uh, a specific architecture which is anarchy, the states have no choice but to compete for power.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- JMJohn Mearsheimer
Uh, so structure is really driving the story here. Will to power has a lot more to do with an individual, uh, i- in the Nietzschean story where that concept comes from. So i- it's very important to understand that I'm not arguing that states are inherently aggressive, right? My point is that as long as states are in anarchy, right, they have no choice but to behave in an aggressive fashion. But if you went to a hierarchic system, uh, there's no reason for those states to worry about the balance of power, because if they get into trouble, there is a higher authority that they can turn to. There is, in effect, a Leviathan.
- LFLex Fridman
So what is the role of military might in this, uh, will to power on the national level?
- JMJohn Mearsheimer
Well, military might's what ultimately matters. As I said to you before, the two building blocks of power are population size and wealth.
- LFLex Fridman
You didn't mention military might.
- JMJohn Mearsheimer
I did not, no, that's right, and-
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- JMJohn Mearsheimer
... it's good that you caught that-
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs)
- JMJohn Mearsheimer
... because if you have a large population-
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- JMJohn Mearsheimer
... and you're a wealthy country, what you do is you build a large military. And it's ultimately the size of your military that matters, uh, because militaries fight wars. And if states are concerned about survival, which I argue is the principal goal of every state in the international system, for what I think are obvious reasons, then they're gonna care about having a powerful military that can protect them if another state comes after them.
- 24:43 – 42:09
Hitler
- LFLex Fridman
How do you explain Hitler and Nazi, Germany? Uh, just one of the more recent, aggressive expansions through military might. H- how do you explain that in the framework of, uh, offensive realism?
- JMJohn Mearsheimer
Well, I think that Nazi, Germany was driven in large part by structural considerations. And I think if you look at Imperial Germany, which was largely responsible for starting World War I, and of course Nazi Germany's largely responsible for starting World War II, what (laughs) that tells you is you didn't need Adolf Hitler to start World War I.
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- JMJohn Mearsheimer
Right? And I believe that there is a good chance you would've had World War II in the absence of Hitler, right? I believe that Germany was very powerful, it was deeply worried about the balance of power in Europe, and it had strong incentives to behave aggressively, uh, i- i- in late 1930s, early 1940s. So I, I believe that structure mattered. However, I wanna qualify that in the case of Adolf Hitler, because I do think he had what you would call a will to power. I've never used that word to describe him before, but it's consistent with my point that I often make, that there are two leaders, or there have been two leaders in modern history who are congenital aggressors. Uh, and one was Napoleon and the other was Hitler. Now, if you wanna call that a will to power, you can do that. I, I'm more comfortable referring to Hitler as a congenital aggressor, and referring to Napoleon as a congenital aggressor, (laughs) although there were important differences between the two, because Hitler was probably the most murderous leader, uh, in recorded history, and Napoleon was not in that category at all. Uh, but, but both of them, uh, were, uh, driven by what you would call a will to power, uh, and that has to be, uh, married to the structural argument in Hitler's case, and also in Napoleon's case.
- LFLex Fridman
Is there some degree on the human psychology side that resentment, because of how... because of what happened after World War I, led to Hitler wielding so much power, and then Hitler starting World War II? So this is the, the human side. Perhaps the reason I ask that question is also because you mentioned the century of humiliation on the China side. So w- so, so to which degree did humiliation lead to Hitler and lead to World War II?
- JMJohn Mearsheimer
Well, the question of what led to Hitler is a very different question than the question of what led to World War II once Hitler was in power. I mean, after January 30th, 1933, he's in power, and then the question of what is driving him comes racing to the fore. Uh, i- is there resentment over the Versailles Treaty and what happened to Germany?
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- JMJohn Mearsheimer
Yes. Did that matter? Yes. But my argument is that structure was the principal factor, uh, driving the train, in, in Hitler's case. But what I'm saying here is that there were other factors as we- as well, resentment being one of them, will to power, or the fact that he was a congenital aggressor, in my lexicon, uh, certainly mattered as well. So I, I don't wanna dismiss, um, your point, uh, about resentment.
- LFLex Fridman
So Hitler in particular, the way he wielded, the way he gained so much power might have been the general resentment of the populace, of the German populace?
- JMJohn Mearsheimer
I think that, uh, as a result of, um, defeat in World War I and all the trials and tribulations associated with Weimar, Germany, and then the coming of, uh, the Great Depression, all, all of those factors definitely account for his coming to power. I think that one of the reasons, um, that he was so successful at winning over the German people once he came to power-
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- JMJohn Mearsheimer
... uh, was because there was a great deal of resentment, uh, in the German body politic, and he played on that resentment. Uh, that surely helped him get elected too, but I think, uh, having studied the case, it was even more important once he took over. I also believe that one of the principal reasons that he was so popular, and he was wildly popular inside Nazi, Germany, is because he was the only leader of an industrialized country who pulled his country out of the Depression, uh, and that really mattered. Uh, and, uh, it made him, uh, very effective. I- it's also worth noting that he was a remarkably charismatic individual. Uh, I find that hard to believe, 'cause every time I look at him or listen to his speeches, uh, he does not appear to be charismatic to me, but, uh, I've talked to a number of people who are experts on this subject who assure me that he was very charismatic. And I would note to you, if you look at public opinion polls in Germany, West Germany, in the late 1940s, this is the late 1940s, after the Third Reich is destroyed in 1945, he is still remarkably popular in the polls.
- LFLex Fridman
Stalin is still popular in many parts of Eastern Europe.
- JMJohn Mearsheimer
Yeah. Yeah. And Stalin's popular in many quarters inside Russia.... a- and Stalin murdered more of his own people than he murdered people outside of the Soviet Union.
- LFLex Fridman
And still, to you, the tides of history turn not on individuals, but on s- structural considerations? So, so Hitler may be a, uh, surface layer characteristics of how Germany started war, but not the, really the reason?
- JMJohn Mearsheimer
Well, history is a multi-dimensional phenomena. (laughs)
- LFLex Fridman
So I hear.
- JMJohn Mearsheimer
(laughs) And we're, we're talking about inter-state relations here.
- LFLex Fridman
Yes.
- JMJohn Mearsheimer
And realism is a theory about how states interact with each other.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- JMJohn Mearsheimer
And there are many other dimensions to international politics. And if you're talking about someone like Adolf Hitler, right, (laughs) uh, "Why did he start World War II?" uh, is a very different question than, "Why did he, uh, start the Holocaust?" Or, "Why did he push forward a holocaust?" I mean, that's, uh, you know, a different question. And realism doesn't answer that question. So I wanna be very clear that, you know, w- I'm not someone who argues that realism answers every question about international politics, but it does answer what is, you know, one of the big, if not the biggest, questions that IR scholars care about, which is, what causes security competition and what causes great power war?
- LFLex Fridman
Does offensive realism answer the question why Hitler attacked the Soviet Union?
- JMJohn Mearsheimer
Yes.
- LFLex Fridman
Because from a military strategy perspective, you know, there's pros and cons to that decision.
- JMJohn Mearsheimer
Pros and cons to every decision.
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs)
- JMJohn Mearsheimer
The question is, did he think that he could win a quick and decisive victory? And, uh, he did. I mean, a- a- as did his generals. It's very interesting. I- I've spent a lot of time studying German decision-making-
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- JMJohn Mearsheimer
... uh, i- i- in World War II, if you look at the German decision, um, to invade Poland on September 1st, 1939, and you look at the, uh, German decision to invade France on May 10th, 1940, and then the Soviet Union on June 22nd, 1941, what you see is there was actually quite a bit of resistance to Hitler in 1938 at the time of Czechoslovakia, Munich, a- and there was also quite a bit of resistance in September 1939.
- 42:09 – 1:38:22
Russia and Ukraine
- JMJohn Mearsheimer
- LFLex Fridman
To fast-forward in time but not in space-
- JMJohn Mearsheimer
(laughs)
- LFLex Fridman
... (sighs) let me ask you about, uh, the war in Ukraine. Why did Russia invade Ukraine on February 24th, 2022? What are some of the explanations given and which do you find the most convincing?
- JMJohn Mearsheimer
Well, clearly, the conventional wisdom is that Putin, uh, is principally responsible. Putin is an imperialist. Uh, he's an expansionist. He-
- LFLex Fridman
That's the conventional thinking.
- JMJohn Mearsheimer
Yeah, yeah. And the idea is that, uh, he, he, uh, is bent on creating a greater Russia, uh, and even more so, he's interested in dominating Eastern Europe if not all of Europe.Um, and that Ukraine was the first stop on the train line, uh, and what he wanted to do was to conquer all of Ukraine, uh, incorporate it into a greater Russia, and then he would move on and conquer other countries. This is the conventional wisdom. My view is there is no evidence, uh, let me emphasize, zero evidence to support that argument.
- LFLex Fridman
Which part? That he would... The imperialist part? The sense that he would, he sought to conquer all of Ukraine and move on and conquer
- JMJohn Mearsheimer
There's no evidence he was interested in conquering all of Ukraine. There was no interest in... There's no evidence beforehand that he was interested in conking, conquering any of Ukraine. And there's no way that an army that had 190,000 troops at the most, right, could have conquered all of Ukraine. Just impossible. As I like to emphasize, when the Germans went into Poland in 1939, uh, and the Germans, you want to remember, were only intent on conquering the western half of Poland, because the Soviets, uh, who came in later that month were gonna conquer the eastern half of Poland. So the western half of Poland is much smaller than Ukraine, and the Germans went in with 1.5 million troops. Uh, if, uh, Vladimir Putin were bent on conquering all of Ukraine, he would've needed at least two million troops. I would argue he'd need three million troops, because not only do you need to conquer the country, you then have to occupy it. Uh, but the idea that 190,000 (laughs) troops was sufficient for conquering, uh, all of Ukraine is not a serious argument. Furthermore, he was not interested in conquering Ukraine, and that's why in March 2022, this is immediately after the war starts, he is negotiating with Zelenskyy to end the war. There are serious negotiations taking place in Istanbul involving the Turks, and Naftali Bennett, who was the Israeli Prime Minister at the time, was deeply involved in negotiating with both Putin and Zelenskyy to end the war. Well, if he was interested, Putin, in conquering all of Ukraine, why in God's name would he be negotiating with Zelenskyy to end the war? And of course what they were negotiating about was NATO expansion into Ukraine, which was the principal cause of the war. Uh, people in the West don't want to hear that argument because if it is true, which it is, then the West is principally responsible for this bloodbath that's now taking place, and of course the West doesn't want to be principally responsible. It wants to blame Vladimir Putin.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- JMJohn Mearsheimer
So we've invented this story out of whole cloth, that he is an aggressor, that he's the second coming of Adolf Hitler, and that what he did in Ukraine was try to c- uh, to conquer all of it. And he failed, but, uh, w- with a little bit of luck, he probably would've conquered all of it, and he'd now be in the Baltic states and eventually end up, uh, dominating all of Eastern Europe. As I said, I think there's no (laughs) evidence to support this.
- LFLex Fridman
So maybe there's a lot of things to ask there. Uh, maybe just to linger on NATO expansion, what is NATO expansion? What is the threat of NATO expansion, and why is it such a concern for Russia?
- JMJohn Mearsheimer
NATO was a mortal enemy of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. It's a military alliance which has at its heart the United States of America, which is the most powerful state on the planet. It is perfectly understandable that Russia is not going to want that military alliance on its doorstep. Here in the United States, we have, as you well know, what's called the Monroe Doctrine, and that basically says no great powers from Europe or Asia are allowed to come into our neighborhood and form a military alliance with anybody in this neighborhood. Uh, when I was young, there was this thing called the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Soviets had the audacity to put nuclear armed missiles in Cuba. We told them in no uncertain terms that that was not acceptable and that those missiles had to be removed. This is our backyard and we do not tolerate distant great powers coming into our neighborhood. Well, what's good for the goose is good for the gander, and if we don't like great powers coming into our neighborhood, it's hardly surprising that the Russians did not want NATO on their doorstep. Uh, they made that manifestly clear, um, when the Cold War ended, and they exacted a promise from us that we would not expand NATO, and then when we started expanding NATO, they made it clear after the first tranche in 1999 that they were profoundly unhappy with that. They made it clear in 2004 after the second tranche that they were profoundly unhappy with that expansion, and then in April 2008 when NATO announced that, uh, Ukraine and Georgia would become part of NATO, they made it unequivocally clear, not just Putin, that that was not gonna happen. They were drawing a red line in the sand. And it is no accident that in August 2008, remember, the Bucharest Summit is April 2008 and August 2008 you had a war between Georgia and Russia, and that involved, at its core, NATO expansion. So, uh, the Americans and their allies should have understood...... by at least August 2008, that continuing to push to bring Ukraine into NATO was going to lead to disaster. And I would note that there were all sorts of people in the 1990s, like George Kennan; William Perry, who was Bill Clinton's Secretary of Defense; the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Paul Nitze; and so forth and so on, who argued that NATO expansion would end up producing a disaster, which it has. I would note that, uh, at the famous April 2008 Bucharest Summit, where NATO said that Ukraine would be brought into the alliance, Angela Merkel and, uh, Nicolas Sarkozy, the German and French leaders respectively, opposed that decision. Angela Merkel later said that the reason she opposed it was because she understood that Putin would interpret it as a declaration of war. Just think about that. Merkel is telling you that she opposed NATO expansion into Ukraine because she understood, correctly, that Putin would see it as a declaration of war. What did the United States and its friend in, friends in Europe do? They continued to push and push, because we thought that we could push NATO expansion down their throat after 2008, the same way we did in 1999 and 2004. But we were wrong, and it all blew up in our face in 2014. And when it blew up in our face in 2014, what did we do? Did we back off and say, "Well, maybe the Russians have some legitimate security interests"? No, that's not the way we operate. We continued to double down, and the end result is that in 2022 you got a war. And as I've argued for a long time now, we, the West, are principally responsible for that, not Vladimir Putin.
- LFLex Fridman
So the expansion of NATO is primarily responsible for that?
- JMJohn Mearsheimer
Yeah. To put it in more general terms, what we were trying to do was turn Ukraine into a Western bulwark on Russia's border. And it really wasn't NATO expansion alone. NATO expansion was the most important element of our strategy, but the strategy had two other dimensions. One was EU expansion, and the third was the color revolution. Uh, uh, we were trying to force orange revolution in Ukraine, and the basic goal there was to turn Ukraine into a pro-Western liberal democracy. And that meant that you'd have Ukraine, if it worked, as a pro-Western liberal democracy that was in the EU and that was in NATO. This was our goal. And the Russians made it unequivocally clear, (laughs) Ukraine was not gonna become a Western bulwark on their border. And most importantly, they made it clear, (laughs) , that Ukraine in NATO was unacceptable.
- LFLex Fridman
Can we talk about the mind of Vladimir Putin? You've mentioned that this idea that he has aspirations for, uh, imperialist conquest, that he dreams of empire, is not grounded in reality. He wrote an essay in 2021 about one people. Do you think there is some degree to which he still dreams of the former Soviet Union reuniting?
- JMJohn Mearsheimer
No. He's made it clear that, uh, anybody with, uh, a triple-digit IQ, uh, understands that, uh, it's nuts to think about recreating the Soviet Union. He thinks it's a tragedy that the Soviet Union fell apart.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- JMJohn Mearsheimer
But as he made clear in that essay, the July 12th, 2021 essay, and as he made clear in speeches before, immediately before he invaded Ukraine, he accepted, uh, the breakup of the Soviet Union and he accepted, uh, the status quo i- in Europe. Save for the fact he did not accept the idea that Ukraine would become part of NATO.
- LFLex Fridman
He's been in power for over two decades. Is there a degree that power can affect a leader's ability to see the world clearly? As they say, corrupt. Um, do you think power has corrupted Vladimir Putin, to a degree?
- JMJohn Mearsheimer
It's very hard for me to answer that question 'cause I, I don't know him and I've not studied (laughs) him carefully, uh, i- in terms of his overall performance over the course of, you know, the 23 years that he's been in power. Uh, I've studied him as a strategist and I've studied how he, you know, deals with the West, uh, and, you know, deals with the international system more generally, uh, since 2014. And I think he is a first-class strategist. This is not to say he doesn't make mistakes, uh, and he admits he's made some mistakes. Uh, uh, but, uh, uh, I think that the West is dealing with a formidable adversary here. Uh, and I don't see any evidence that he's either lost speed off his fastball or that power has corrupted his thinking about strategic affairs.
- LFLex Fridman
So he has consistently put, as a primary concern, security, as does the United States. He's put for Russia's security, making sure that NATO doesn't get close to his borders.
- JMJohn Mearsheimer
I think that's clear, yeah. I, I, I think, as I...... emphasized early on (laughs) in our conversation, that leaders privilege security or survival over everything else. And by the way, he, he gave a number of talks, uh, and press conferences, uh, in addition to writing that famous article that you referred to on July 12, 2021. So we have, you know, a pretty clear record of what he was saying, and I would argue what he was thinking, in the run-up to the war in February 2022. And if you read, uh, what he said, uh, it's quite clear that he privileged security or survival. He was deeply concerned about the security of Russia. And Russia is a quite vulnerable state in a lot of ways, especially if you think back to what it looked like in the 1990s, as you know better than I do. Uh, it was in terrible shape. Uh, the Chinese talk about the century of national humiliation. One could argue that for the Russians, that was the decade of national humiliation. And, um, and it took Putin, I think, quite a bit of time to bring the Russians back from the dead. I think he eventually succeeded, but, uh, it took a considerable amount of time. And I think he understood that he was not playing a particularly strong hand. He was playing something of a weak hand, and he had to be very careful, very cautious, and I think he was. Uh, and I think that's very different than the United States. The United States was the unipole. It was the most powerful state in the history of the world, the most powerful state relative to all its possible competitors from, you know, roughly 1989, certainly after December 1991 when the Soviet Union fell apart. Up until, I would argue, about 2017, we were incredibly powerful. And even after 2017, up to today, the United States remains the most powerful state in the system. And because of our geographical location, uh, we are in a, uh, terrific, uh, situation to survive in any great power competition. So, uh, you have a situation involving the United States that's different than the situation involving Russia. They're, they're just much more vulnerable, uh, than we are. And, and therefore I think Putin tends to be more sensitive about security, uh, than any American president in recent times.
- LFLex Fridman
Europe on one side, China on the other side. It's a complicated situation.
- JMJohn Mearsheimer
Yeah, and we talked before about 1812 (laughs) when Napoleon invaded, and Moscow got burned to the ground.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- JMJohn Mearsheimer
We talked about World War I, where the Russians were actually defeated, uh, and surrendered. Uh, and then we talked about 1941 to 1945, where although, thankfully, uh, the Soviets prevailed, uh, it was, uh, it, it was a close call and, I mean, the casualties, the destruction that the Soviet Union, uh, had inflicted on it by the Germans is just almost, almost hard to believe. It just, uh... So they are sensitive. Y- you can understand full well, or at least you should be able to understand full well, why the idea of bringing Ukraine up to their border really spooked them. Uh, I don't understand why more Americans don't understand that. I- it just... It, it befuddles me. Uh, I think it has to do with the fact that Americans are not very good at putting themselves in the shoes of other countries. Uh, and, uh, you really ha- I- if, if you're gonna be a first class strategist in international politics, you have to be able to do that. You have to put yourself in the shoes of the other side and think about how they think so you don't make foolish mistakes.
- LFLex Fridman
And a- a- as a starting point, Americans tend to see themselves as the good guys and a, a set of others as the bad guys, and you have to be able to empathize that Russians think of themselves as the good guys.
- JMJohn Mearsheimer
(laughs)
- LFLex Fridman
The Chinese think of themselves as the good guys. And just be able to empathize, if they are the good guys, it's like, uh, that, uh, funny skit, "Are We the Baddies?" Consider the United States could be the bad guys. Like, first of all, em- like, uh, see the world, if the United States is the bad guys and China's the good guys, what does that world look like? Be able to just exist with that thought, because that is what the Chinese le- leadership and many Chinese citizens, uh, if not now, maybe in the future, will believe. And you have to kind of do the calculation, the simulation forward from that. And same with Russia, same with, with other nations.
- 1:38:22 – 2:39:13
Israel and Palestine
- LFLex Fridman
Switching gears a little bit and going to a different part of the world also engulfed in war, let me ask you about the, uh, situation in Israel. Uh, why did Hamas attack Israel on October 7th, 2023? As you understand the situation... what was the reason that attack happened?
- JMJohn Mearsheimer
Well, I think the main reason was that you had this suffocating occupation. I think as long as the occupation persists, the Palestinians are going to resist. Uh, as you well know, this is not the first time there has been a Palestinian uprising. There was the First Intifada, there was the Second Intifada, now there's October 7th, and there are uprisings besides those three. Uh, so this is not terribly surprising. Uh, a lot of people hypothesize that, uh, this attack was due to the fact that, um, the Israelis, the Saudis, and the Americans were working together to, uh, foster another Abraham Accord, uh, and that the Palestinians would, in effect, be sold down the river. Uh, I think, uh, given the fact that this was in the planning stages for probably about two years, uh, and the Abraham Accords with regard to (laughs) Saudi Arabia are a relatively new phenomenon, I don't think that's, uh, the main driving force here. I think the main driving force is that the Palestinians, uh, feel oppressed, as they should, and that this was, uh, a resistance move. They were resisting the Israeli occupation.
- LFLex Fridman
So that resistance, the attack involved killing a large number of Israeli civilians. There's many questions to ask there, but one is, do you think Hamas fully understood what the retaliation will involve from Israel into Gaza?
- JMJohn Mearsheimer
They had to understand. I mean, uh, you, you had, you know, Operation Cast Lead in 2008, 2009. It started, I think, right after Christmas 2008, and it ended right before President Obama took office, uh, in January 2009. And, uh, uh, the Israelis periodically do what they call mowing the lawn, where they go into Gaza and they pound the Palestinians, uh, to remind them that they're not supposed to rise up and cause any problem. Uh, so (laughs) there's no question in my mind that the, uh, uh, the Hamas forces understood full well that the Israelis would retaliate, and they would retaliate in force, a- as they have done.
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah, even the metaphor of, uh, mowing the lawn is disturbing to me in many ways. Um, I actually saw, uh, Norman Finkelstein, I think, uh, say that, well, then if you use that metaphor, then you could say that Hamas was also mowing the lawn. And it's such a horrific image because the result on either side is just the death of civilians. I mean, let me ask you about the death of civilians. So during the attack, 1,400 Israelis were killed, over 240 were taken hostage, and then in response, as we sit today, uh, Israel's military response has killed over 10,000 people in Gaza. And given the nature of the demographics, it's, it's a v- very heavily young population. Over 40% of them are under the age of 18, of those killed. That's, uh, of course, according to Ministry of Health of Palestinian Authority. So what do you think is the long-term effect on the prospect of peace when so many civilians die?
- JMJohn Mearsheimer
I mean, I think it's disastrous. Um, uh, I mean, (sighs) it, the only way you're gonna get peace here, uh, is if you have a two-state solution, um, where the Palestinians have a sovereign state of their own and there is a sovereign Jewish state, uh, and these two states live side by side. Uh, American presidents since Jimmy Carter have understood this full well, and this is why we have pushed very hard for two-state solution. Indeed, many American Jews and many Israelis have pushed for a two-state solution because they think that that is the only way you're gonna get, uh, peace, uh, between the two sides. Uh, but what's happened here is that in recent years, the Israelis have lost all interest in a two-state solution. Uh, and it's in large part because the political center of gravity in Israel has steadily moved to the right. Uh, when I was a young boy, uh, the political center of gravity in Israel was much further to the left than it is today. And, uh, it, it, it, it, it is in-... uh, it is in a position now, the political center of gravity, where there's hardly any support for two-state solution. And Netanyahu and the rest of the people in his government were in favor, or are in favor, of a greater Israel. There's just no question about that. Well, on top of that, you now have had a war, where as you described, huge numbers of civilians have been killed, and you already had bad blood between the Palestinians (laughs) and the Israelis before this conflict. Uh, and you could imagine how people on each side now feel about people on the other side. So even if you didn't have this opposition inside Israel to a two-state solution, how could you possibly get the Israelis now to agree to a two-state solution? I think for the foreseeable future, the animosity inside Israel towards the Palestinians is so great that it is impossible to move the Israelis in that direction. And the Israelis here are the key players, more so than the Palestinians, because it's the Israelis who control greater Israel. It's the Israelis who you have to convince. Now I want to be clear here, you also ultimately have to get around the fact that Hamas, right, is not (laughs) committed to a two-state solution. But I think that problem could be dealt with. It's important to understand that Arafat and the PLO was once adamantly opposed to a two-state solution, but Arafat came around to understand that that was really the only hope for settling this, and he became a proponent of a two-state solution. And that's true of Mahmoud Abbas, who runs the PA in the West Bank. It's not true of Hamas at this point in time. They want a one-state solution, they want (laughs) a Palestinian state. And of course, the Israelis want a one-state solution too, which is a Jewish state that controls all of, um, all of greater Israel. So the question is can you get some sort of agreement? And I think, to get to your, the nub of your question, given what's just happened, uh, it's almost impossible to imagine that happening anytime soon.
Episode duration: 3:26:41
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