https://youtu.be/FgHAEBMfHK8?si=MhKMlpCjRPV9cn4s
This skillful interview contains many fresh insights from Professor John J. Mearsheimer.
The positive side of Nationalism can hold together a multicultural Liberal Society.
Aswhere a Liberal believes that a program of economic engagement will bring other states on board and into the fold of democratic countries, a Realist believes that in the absence of any hierarchy and in the uncertainty concerning your neighbours' intentions, Great Powers will be always vying with each other for dominance and control, just to ensure their survival.
In the 1990s when Russia was at its weakest, America chose containment rather than assistance. America could have helped Russia integrate into a new security architecture.
The unipolar moment lasted rather more than a moment, from 1991 to 2017, so younger people [born after 1972] today have no experience of the Cold War (1947 - 1991) and no one has experience of a multi-polar world (America, China, Russia, post 2017).
The Ukraine War started back in the 1990s when America was unchallenged and free to do as it pleased and attempt to convert the world to democracy and contain "the threat" from Russia. The Ukraine war is a vestige of the Cold War and a policy of NATO enlargement eastwards.
Today the West is in two cold wars, plus (not talked about here), the risk of The Middle East becoming the battleground for some very serious proxy wars.
The correct strategy would have been to work with Russia to knock out China, but this is a strategy for a multi-polar world and yet the war with Russia is a result of a unipolar world and unipolar thinking.
War between the three Great Powers is more likely in the South or East China Seas, or Taiwan, than in Central Europe, because the scale of the potential horror in Central Europe is unimaginably greater. The only hope of avoiding direct confrontation between the Great Powers is the threat that it may go nuclear.
The American foreign policy establishment, aka The Blob, calls the shots irrespective of the party in power on The Hill or the president in The White House. As proof, both Trump and Biden did a volte-face, faced with the limitations of their power vis-a-vis The Blob. [This is why many hark back to JFK's famous and powerful peace speech in June 1963 and believe that he was assassinated by The Blob.] Trump armed Ukraine. Biden went back on his promise of engagement. Next time will be no different. The reason - if you are a structuralist like Mearsheimer is that we are now in a multipolar world.
Can balance-of-power Realism work in a multipolar world to prevent war? There will be crises, there may be war, war will be hard to shut down once started, and it is easier to fight in Asia than Central Europe, but perhaps the threat of nuclear will deter....
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