22:30
the Soviet Union extends into Northeast Asia; in fact, it shares a border with North Korea, okay?
22:38
So we cared about Northeast Asia not Southeast Asia. What's happened today is the threat in Asia is not Russia,
22:49
the threat in Asia is China. And once China becomes the threat, Southeast Asia is just as important as Northeast Asia.
22:59
So now the United States cares about East Asia to include Northeast Asia
23:05
and Southeast Asia. To the extent I think Southeast Asians feel that the United States is not paying them enough attention,
23:14
I think that's largely due to the fact that the United States has gotten bogged down in Europe,
23:21
in the Ukraine war, and hasn't had enough bandwidth to employ in East Asia.
23:30
But I think once the United States begins to focus laser-like on East Asia
23:37
and focus much less on Ukraine, which I believe will invariably happen at some point in the distant future,
23:44
the United States will pay great attention to Southeast Asia, and it will pay great attention to Northeast Asia,
23:52
because now all of East Asia matters. I'm going to pivot to the topic of Ukraine.
Amerika Sulut Perang Ukraina
24:00
What made you so prescient about what was going to unfold in Ukraine?
24:06
I mean, you started talking about this seven or eight years ago.
24:11
That's the first part of the question. The second part is:
24:17
to the extent that you were so prescient in painting the future of Ukraine
24:23
seven or eight years ago. How is it that people in Washington were not listening or paying attention
24:33
to the stuff that you were saying? I believe, as a good realist,
24:40
that if you take a military alliance like NATO
24:45
that was a mortal foe of the Soviet Union during the Cold War
24:50
and you take that alliance after the Cold War ends
24:56
and you move it up to Russia's borders, the Russians are going to view this as an existential threat.
25:07
That's just good old-fashioned realist logic. Here in the West, in the United States, we have the Monroe Doctrine;
25:15
we do not want any other great powers in the Western Hemisphere.
25:21
That's what the Monroe Doctrine says. Great powers cannot form military alliances
25:26
with countries in the Western Hemisphere, and they can certainly not move military forces into the Western Hemisphere.
25:34
This is why we had the Cuban Missile Crisis. The same basic logic applies to the Russians.
25:40
The Russians are thinking like hard-headed realists. They see this alliance, which was once a mortal foe,
25:49
moving closer and closer and closer. The Russians made it unequivocally clear after April 2008
26:00
that when we say that we are going to incorporate Ukraine into NATO,
26:06
that we are going to incorporate Ukraine into the EU, that we are going to foster an Orange Revolution in Ukraine
26:15
and make Ukraine a pro-Western liberal democracy, this is categorically unacceptable.
26:22
This is what the Russians say. It makes perfect sense to me. Therefore, I think what the United States should do or should have done
26:31
was back off, because the problem is that if the United States persists,
26:37
what the Russians will do is they'll wreck Ukraine. And the Russians make it unequivocally clear
26:44
that they will wreck Ukraine. Do the United States policymakers listen to them in the Bush Administration?
26:53
In the Obama Administration? And the Trump Administration? And the Biden Administration? No, they ignore them, and they continue to push and push and push.
27:03
And in 2014, February 2014, the crisis broke out.
27:12
This is when the Russians take Crimea and you have the start of a civil war in the Donbass region of Ukraine.
27:20
And then of course on February 24th of 2022,
27:26
eight years later, you have a huge war that's now going on.
27:33
From my point of view it was perfectly obvious that this was going to happen
27:41
after we announced in April 2008 that Ukraine would become part of NATO.
27:47
And there was just all sorts of evidence available to American policymakers
27:53
that should have made them hesitate. And certainly after 2014, American policymakers should have backed off
28:01
but instead we doubled down. And Joe Biden, it's important to emphasize,
28:06
has always been especially hawkish on Ukraine. He handled the Ukraine portfolio in the Obama Administration
28:17
and he was a super hawk on Ukraine. So when he becomes president in January of 2021,
28:23
what he does is double down, and the end result is that we have this war.
28:30
Now you asked the question why didn't American policymakers listen to me or listen to the Russians and listen to all those other people.
28:40
It's not just me. You want to understand that in April 2008 at Bucharest,
28:46
both Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy, the German and French leaders.
28:51
- Recipe for a disaster. - Yep. Angela Merkel has recently said,
28:57
this is amazing, she has recently said that the reason she was opposed to what happened at Bucharest in April 2008
29:05
is because she understood that Putin would see,
29:11
claimed that Ukraine would become part of NATO as a declaration of war.
29:16
Just think about that. Merkel said that. So it's not just John Mearsheimer; it was Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy.
29:23
Back in the 1990s, it was people like George Cannon; it was Bill Perry, who was the Secretary of Defense;
29:30
it was General Mark Milley, who was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. All sorts of people warned that if we expanded NATO too far eastward,
29:39
this would blow up in our faces. And of course, the end result is that Ukraine would be wrecked.
29:45
It would be turned into a dysfunctional rub state. But we refused to believe that this was a problem,
29:55
and you asked me why. I think there are two reasons. First of all, it all started during the unipolar moment.
30:04
And during the unipolar moment, we were pursuing a policy of liberal hegemony.
30:10
And we believed that it was not a threat to the Russians
30:18
to expand NATO eastward. Michael McFaul has said to me that when he was Ambassador to Moscow,
30:25
he told Putin on numerous occasions that NATO expansion was not aimed at Russia,
30:31
was not a threat to Moscow, and that Putin should relax.
30:36
Putin, of course, didn't believe this. But I believe that many American policymakers
30:42
believed that NATO expansion was not a threat to Russia, even though the Russians said it was,
30:49
and they thought it was part of a benign strategy. The United States was a benign hegemon.
30:54
So that, I think, is reason one: we pushed it. And reason two, which I alluded to before,
30:59
is that we were incredibly powerful and we thought we could just shove it down their throat. They may not like it,
31:05
but that's their problem, not our problem. The United States is so powerful that it can just push NATO expansion as far as it wants.
31:14
It can support an open door policy no matter what and the Russians can't do much about it.
Pemanasan Global Panaskan Geopolitik
==========
How do you deal with the argument that there was no reason for Ukraine to ever consider joining NATO and or the EU?
31:35
And the second is how would you deal with the fact now
31:40
that Finland and Sweden are in the process of joining NATO.
31:50
What are your views with respect to these two observations? Well, with regard to Ukraine,
31:56
I think it is perfectly understandable why Ukraine wanted to be in NATO.
32:03
I think it's perfectly understandable that any country in Eastern Europe wants to be in NATO;
32:09
they want to be underneath the American security umbrella. So I understand that.
32:16
But the question you have to ask yourself is: how are the Russians going to react,
32:22
and how does this play out if you try to join NATO? And the fact is that if you try to join NATO,
32:30
if you're Ukraine and you try to join NATO, the Russians are going to crush you.
32:36
They're going to destroy your country. So you really have two alternatives here:
32:42
one is you can try to join NATO and end up getting destroyed, or you cannot join NATO
32:51
and be in a situation where you have to pay serious attention
32:56
to Russian security concerns so that they don't crush you and you will not have the American security umbrella over your head.
33:05
This is not an ideal situation, the second scenario. But in my humble opinion, it is infinitely preferable to being destroyed.
33:16
So I think it would have made much more sense for Ukraine to remain a neutral state
33:23
and to pay homage to Russian security concerns,
33:30
and to not provoke the Russian bear. Again, this is not an ideal situation,
33:36
but international politics is all about choosing among bad alternatives, and that's the least bad alternative.
33:43
And if you look at what is happening to Ukraine today, it's horrific; it's absolutely terrible.
33:53
So that would be my answer or my observation. On the second part, where Finland and Sweden have considered joining NATO,
34:03
which is a little different from how things would have been before February 2022, right?
34:11
What's your take on this? Does that make this more insecure for Russia?
34:16
Does this entail a more difficult scenario going forward?
34:22
Just to start, there was no reason for Finland and Sweden to join NATO.
34:27
They were not members of NATO during the Cold War, and the Soviet Union was much more of a threat to them than Russia was,
34:34
but then Russia is today. And indeed, Russia today is not a threat to either Finland or Sweden,
34:42
at least, before they joined NATO. It was remarkably foolish, in my opinion, on their part to join the alliance.
34:50
And I think that you are correct when you say that Finland and Sweden joining NATO
34:58
is going to make the Russians feel more insecure. It's not the same as Ukraine joining NATO or Belarus joining NATO.
35:09
If you look at the geography, Belarus and Ukraine matter enormously to Russia.
35:15
Finland doesn't matter that much, but it matters. And it matters in very important ways because of global warming
35:25
and the fact that you have melting ice in the North Pole area,
35:32
and you have a number of countries that have claims on that region.
35:38
And basically, the Russians are going to be up against seven other countries up in the Arctic.
35:46
Unsurprisingly, the Russians are now beginning to talk to the Chinese
35:51
about getting the Chinese to help them deal with any potential conflict situations
35:59
or crises in the Arctic. And you are likely to have crises in the Arctic.
36:08
And here you have a situation where Sweden and Finland are no longer neutral.
36:15
These two key players in the Arctic are now on the other side of the balance sheet, with the Americans, the Canadians, and so forth and so on.
36:23
And the Russians are isolated. Furthermore, Russian conventional forces are pinned down in Ukraine.
36:31
Their conventional forces have been weakened by this war, which means that for purposes of security all over but especially in the Arctic,
36:40
they're going to rely more on nuclear weapons. Nuclear deterrence, nuclear coercion are going to matter more
36:47
for the Russians moving forward. So we are taking a bad situation and making it worse.
36:54
And we have done this consistently since April 2008.
37:00
We made a bad move then, and we have not corrected our behavior at any point.
37:07
We continue to double down and make the situation worse. This is no sense of the limits of power here on the part of the Americans;
37:16
no good sense of a balance of power politics. And what amazes me is the situation is so different
37:24
from what it was in the Cold War. Our leaders made mistakes; there's no question about it.
37:31
American leaders were hardly perfect during the Cold War, but they just had much healthier assets,
37:38
a much healthier appreciation of the limits of power than American policymakers have had.
37:45
Actually, since the 1990s, I find it quite stunning,
37:50
and I actually think it's a very dangerous situation. I think the situation we face today in the world is much more dangerous
37:58
than it was during the Cold War. You know, what's concerning about this is we're seeing increasing resilience
Blunder Amerika
38:07
on both sides of the border, on the Ukrainian side and on the Russian side,
38:13
which makes people like us think that the war is just going to get more and more protracted,
38:19
it's going to get more prolonged. I want to ask you if that's the right assumption or presumption.
38:26
I want to ask you about the relationship between Russia and China. They met up some time ago.
38:34
They indicated a very special kind of friendship or partnership between the two.
38:42
Do you foresee the relationship between China and Russia
38:48
as one of subordination or one of equal footing? And how would that impact the people of Southeast Asia
38:58
and other parts of the world? I think there's no question that American policy toward China
39:07
and American policy toward Russia have pushed them closely together.
39:15
I think that there's no question that the Chinese have a deep-seated interest
39:21
in making sure that Russia does not lose in Ukraine.
39:26
So if at any point it appears the Russians are losing, I think you can rest assured the Chinese will do everything they can
39:35
to make sure the Russians don't lose. I would not describe it.
39:42
I would describe the situation is one where I think the United States has created a situation
39:54
where there's a lot of interdependence between China and Russia. It's not so much that Russia is subordinated to China;
40:02
it's that Russia is dependent on China, in a very important way, China is dependent on Russia.
40:10
That's why I say the Chinese cannot afford to allow the Russians to lose. So you have this interdependence between them,
40:18
and it's somewhat asymmetrical. I think that's what you're getting at; I think the Russians are more dependent on the Chinese
40:27
than the Chinese on the Russians. But I don't think subordination is the word I would use. I think dependence going both ways is what is driving…
40:38
- Asymmetric dependence. - Yeah, I think asymmetric dependence would be a good way to put it.
40:44
Now, I think what this means is that the war in Ukraine
40:52
is likely to go on for a long long time. It's likely to go on because the Russians and the Ukrainians…
41:00
leave the Chinese out. The Russians and the Ukrainians don't have a common set of objectives
41:09
that would allow them to reach an agreement. They're never going to agree on how to divide the territory in Ukraine,
41:16
and they're never going to agree on whether Ukraine is a neutral state or a member of the West.
41:22
So I think the best you can hope for just focusing on Ukraine and Russia
41:27
is a cold peace. That you'll get some ceasefire at some point, and you'll get a cold peace;
41:34
it'll look like the 38th parallel in Korea, but you're not going to get a meaningful peace agreement.
41:40
Then, when you factor in the Chinese, one could argue the Chinese have a vested interest in this war
41:46
going on and on and on because, as long as the war continues
41:51
and the United States is pinned down in Europe, the United States is limited in its ability to focus on East Asia.
42:03
What the United States should be doing at this point in time is fostering good relations with the Russians
42:12
and pivoting full force to East Asia because China is a pure competitor and Russia is not.
42:19
Russia is the weakest of the three great powers. So the United States should be:
42:24
number one, forming some sort of close relationship with Russia; and number two, pivoting full force to East Asia.
42:31
Is it doing that? No. It's actually pushing the Russians into the arms of the Chinese,
42:37
and it's pinned down in Eastern Europe.
42:42
That is good news for the Chinese. The Chinese are the winners so far in this war.
42:50
But this tells you that from China's point of view, it's not such a bad thing
42:55
if the war in Ukraine continues for the foreseeable future.
43:00
Absolutely. But there is a concern amongst many in Asia,
43:06
including those in Southeast Asia, that there is likely to be less of a balance of power in the Asia Pacific
43:15
by way of the allocation of resources by the United States
43:21
for an extended period of time into Ukraine on the assumption that the war in Ukraine gets prolonged.
43:30
Is that the right way of thinking? Yes, there's no question.
43:36
In countries in East Asia, this again includes Northeast Asia,
43:41
Southeast Asia, to include Australia. All these countries should be nervous about what the Americans are doing.
43:50
I want to infuse into this a variable that a lot of people don't talk about:
Paradoks Nuklir
43:58
it's the cost of financing. We've seen interest rates go up in the last 11–12 months in the United States
44:09
from 25 basis points to about five percent. That's a 2,000 percent increase.
44:16
That's a more than four percent interest rate increase
44:22
on the back of government debt in excess of 20 trillion dollars in the United States
44:31
and on the back of government debts in Europe in excess of 20 trillion dollars.
44:37
It’s gotta have a pretty difficult impact
44:43
on the people of both the United States and Europe, to the extent that the cost of things would have gone up and will continue to go up.
44:52
This would inevitably change the politics or the political calculus, right? The domestic politics of these two regions.
45:00
Do you see that as something that might change sentiments towards the war in Ukraine?
45:07
Well, I think there's no question that the description of what is going on that you just laid out is true,
45:18
and it doesn't look like things are going to improve anytime soon.
45:23
Just to add to your description, I think that this is going to influence public opinion;
45:30
there's no question about that. The problem is there's a disjunction between the elites and public opinion.
45:39
And in the West, especially in the United States, the elites have not paid much attention to public opinion.
45:47
And the question is: can they continue to do that?
45:53
You know, I've been following this whole question of whether or not the Ukrainians will launch
46:01
a major offensive this spring against the Russians.
46:07
And it's very clear that what the Americans are thinking is that if Ukraine launches an offensive this spring,
46:18
given the weaponry we've given the Ukrainians, they will not defeat the Russians decisively,
46:26
but they will deliver a really serious blow to Russia
46:31
that will lead the Russians to the negotiating table. The Americans will put pressure on the Ukrainians to go to the negotiating table,
46:42
and remember, the Americans have a lot of leverage over Ukraine because we're bankrolling them and providing them with weapons.
46:49
We'll get both sides to the negotiating table, we'll reach a deal, we'll shut down the Ukraine war,
46:57
and that will alleviate a lot of the economic and political problems that you were describing,
47:03
and it will allow the United States to focus on China. This is a pipe dream.
47:09
This is not going to happen. The Ukrainians, if they launch a major offensive, are going to get clobbered.
47:18
I could lay out the reasons for that. And even if I'm wrong
47:23
and the Ukrainians gain substantial territory against the Russians,
47:29
the Russians are not going to roll over and play dead; they're going to fight back. This is a war to the death for the Russians.
47:37
So this war is not ending anytime soon. But the point I'm making in response to your description of the situation
47:47
is that we're beginning to think about how we can bring it to an end because we recognize the problems you're describing.
47:55
But what I'm saying is we don't understand just how much trouble we're in.
48:00
The United States made a mistake of colossal proportions
48:05
in starting this war in Ukraine in April 2008.
48:12
- Bucharest. - In the Bucharest Summit, right? This was a colossal miscalculation,
48:19
and we have doubled down at every point. Remember what we said in our discussion about Finland and Sweden joining the alliance?
48:27
Here we are again doubling down, and now we may have trouble in the Arctic. Well, we have trouble in the Arctic, and we're having trouble in Ukraine.
48:35
What does that say about our ability to focus on East Asia?
48:40
So the United States has gotten itself into one heap of a lot of trouble,
48:46
and it's now looking for ways out, and my view is that there is no way out.
48:51
==============================
I want to switch to Asia, but the last question on Ukraine is: what's the possibility of this going tactically nuclear?
49:02
I think that the only likely scenario
49:08
where nuclear weapons are used is when the Russians are losing.
49:15
In other words, let's assume that the Ukrainians launch an offensive this spring
49:23
and they inflict a massive defeat on the Russian army,
49:29
and it looks like they're going to end up reconquering Crimea
49:35
and, in effect, destroying the Russian army in Ukraine.
49:41
I think once it begins to look like that is happening,
49:47
the Russians will think about turning to nuclear weapons,
49:53
and I would bet a good sum of money they will use nuclear weapons to rescue the situation.
50:00
And the good news is I don't think that scenario is at all likely
50:09
because I don't believe the Ukrainians have the capability
50:14
to deliver a decisive defeat to Russian forces inside Ukraine.
50:21
As I've said on a number of occasions, there's a real paradox here. And the paradox is that America's policy or the West's policy in Ukraine
50:31
is to basically knock Russia out of the ranks of the great powers.
50:36
Our goal is number one: to defeat the Russian army inside Ukraine;
50:41
number two: to cripple its economy with devastating sanctions;
50:48
number three: to affect regime change; and number four: to put Putin on trial.
50:55
Now, if we were to come close to accomplishing those goals,
51:01
the Russians would almost certainly turn to nuclear weapons. All this is to say that there's a perverse paradox here,
51:10
which is that the more likely we are to succeed in our policy goals,
51:17
the more likely it is that the Russians will use nuclear weapons.
51:22
So we should held hope that the Ukrainians don't defeat the Russians decisively in Ukraine.
51:32
But as I said to you, I don't believe that's going to happen. Let's switch to Asia.
Medan Perang Baru
51:37
I'm still puzzled by the fact that your thinking just seems logical to a lot of us in Southeast Asia,
51:48
but I'm puzzled by the fact that the policies of the United States
51:54
do not reflect upon your thinking to the extent I think they should be.
52:06
And now in Asia, you've expressed your views about Taiwan,
52:12
and you've expressed your views about the South China Sea. Which do you think is a higher risk scenario between the two?
52:23
Very hard to say. I mean, there's also the East China Sea.
52:30
- Right. The Senkaku. - Yeah. The Senkaku or Diaoyu Islands, which the Chinese care about greatly.
52:36
I mean, you can easily hypothesize a conflict breaking out there.
52:42
I mean, I think Taiwan is the issue that we talk about the most
52:49
because it's so obvious why that is a dangerous flash point.
52:54
I mean, for China, Taiwan is important not simply for strategic reasons,
53:02
but it's important because it's sacred territory; this is nationalism.
53:07
I have never met a single Chinese person in my entire life who wasn't deeply committed,
53:15
and I'm choosing my words carefully here, deeply committed to getting Taiwan back.
53:20
And they view the West, especially the United States, as the principal obstacle to that happening.
53:27
And of course, as the strategic competition between the United States and China heats up,
53:35
it becomes more important than ever for the United States to keep Taiwan as a close ally.
53:43
So the United States is now and for the foreseeable future will be tightening its relations with Taiwan.
53:52
This drives the Chinese crazy, which is understandable because they view Taiwan as Chinese territory.
54:00
We view it as a great strategic asset that we have to keep on our side of the ledger.
54:07
So you can imagine a situation where a war breaks out
54:13
between the United States and Taiwan on one side
54:18
and China on the other side quite easily. At the moment, I don't think it's likely,
54:25
in large part because China doesn't have the capability to launch an amphibious assault across the Taiwan Straits
54:33
and invade Taiwan and conquer it at some reasonable cost. But as time goes by
54:40
and the Chinese economy grows and their military capabilities grow, their ability to conquer Taiwan will increase.
54:48
And if the Americans in Taiwan East do anything to provoke the Chinese, the Chinese will launch an attack
54:54
even if they don't think the chances of success are very great. And the Chinese make that clear.
55:02
So this is a potentially dangerous situation of the first order.
55:08
And then there's the South China Sea. The Chinese are actually militarizing islands in the South China Sea.
55:17
They view the South China Sea as a giant Chinese lake, a big Chinese body of water, they think they own it.
55:26
The Americans don't agree, most of their neighbors don't agree, and the potential for a minor incident
55:33
which then escalates into a major incident is great. At some point, the Americans are going to put their foot down and say,
55:41
"Enough is enough." You do something that is provocative against, let's say, the Philippines.
55:48
And the Philippines, we know, can't defend themselves against China, but we can defend the Philippines,
55:54
and our credibility is at stake, and we're not going to allow you to militarize the South China Sea any more
56:02
than you've already done. So we're drawing a line in the water, and you have a major incident there.
56:08
And once you have a major incident and it begins to escalate,
56:14
it's very hard to see how you shut these things down. So I think one could argue
56:21
that the South China Sea is even more dangerous than Taiwan
56:26
because it's easier to imagine a conflict breaking out in the South China Sea
56:34
than it is to imagine a conflict breaking out over Taiwan, which is not to say it's difficult to imagine a conflict breaking out over Taiwan.
56:44
Is that also because you think that as we're seeing the increasing amphibious capabilities of the Chinese,
56:52
you're seeing that there are enough military capabilities in South Korea,
56:59
Japan, and the United States around Taiwan as an adequate deterrent?
57:06
I think that the Chinese will go to great lengths to build up their ability
57:12
to isolate Taiwan and launch an amphibious assault.
57:20
And at the same time, the United States and its allies, especially the Japanese but also the Australians,
57:28
will go to great lengths to build up our capabilities to counter Chinese capabilities.
57:37
And amphibious operations are remarkably difficult to make work.
57:44
It's easy to cross... Let me put it differently: it's much easier to cross a piece of land than it is to cross a large body of water.
57:54
So it'll be very difficult for China to develop the capability
58:03
to launch an invasion of Taiwan that has a high degree of success.
58:09
We, especially the Americans, will go to great lengths to make sure they don't have that capability. But they will go to great lengths to make sure they do,
58:16
we'll see what happens. The point I would make is that we know from studying deterrence situations over time
Kekuatan Politik vs. Militer
58:26
that you often see such... Let me take that back. You sometimes see situations where states have a political incentive
58:37
to go to war that is so powerful that they will pursue a military strategy that has little chance of working
58:49
because the politics of the situation dictate pursuing a remarkably risky strategy.
58:58
And the canonical example is the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941.
59:06
It is very important to understand that the Japanese policymakers were rational actors of the first order;
59:15
they were first-class strategists. These were not wild and crazy people.
59:20
The Japanese strategists who decided to attack the Americans at Pearl Harbor
59:27
understood that there was only a sliver of a chance that Japan would win.
59:34
They were not under any illusions about who they were attacking, okay?
59:40
The question is, Why did they attack? Why did a country that had [inaudible]
59:45
the gross national product of the United States attacked the United States? In fact, they didn't want to attack the United States.
59:51
They were trying everything they could to avoid an attack, but they attacked, and the question is: why?
59:57
And the answer is the politics, and the fact is that the United States was strangling the Japanese economy.
1:00:05
We had cut off scrap iron exports to Japan in 1940,
1:00:11
and we'd cut off oil in 1941. And the Japanese were being strangled, and they tried to end those embargoes,
1:00:21
and the United States refused to end the embargoes. They were doing everything they could to avoid war,
1:00:29
but in the end, they thought that their survival was at stake and they had no choice.
1:00:35
So, even though there was only a small chance, a sliver of a chance they would win militarily, they attacked.
1:00:42
So, when you fast forward to the present situation involving Taiwan, you can imagine situations,
1:00:48
for example, where the Taiwanese government declares independence, knowing the Americans will protect them.
1:00:55
And the Chinese say, "This is unacceptable. We may suffer enormous costs;
1:01:02
we may even lose in the short term, but this is unacceptable, and we are launching the boats."
1:01:08
So you see, it's not just military calculations; it's also the political calculations that matter in a deterrent situation.
1:01:19
And you have these cases from the past. I could point to other cases as well
1:01:25
where states pursue highly risky military strategies. So we, the United States, have to be extremely careful
1:01:33
that we don't put the Chinese in a situation where they feel that despite the military balance,
1:01:39
they have no choice but to attack Taiwan or to attack the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands.
1:01:47
I have two more questions. I know you've got to go, but with what's going to happen next year politically in the United States,
1:01:57
do you see prospects of things changing
1:02:03
with respect to both Ukraine and Taiwan from a posture standpoint? I believe that if things change with regard to Ukraine
1:02:11
and with regard to Taiwan it will not be because of American politics.
1:02:17
I think it will be because events involving those two wars
1:02:23
would be a consequence of changes in the international system.
1:02:28
The fact is that the American foreign policy elite
1:02:33
is actually quite homogeneous in its views on what American policy should be.
1:02:41
The argument that the Republicans and the Democrats think about foreign policy in different ways is not true.
1:02:48
This is Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. It's very important to understand that both President Obama and President Trump
1:02:57
got elected on a platform that said they were going to fundamentally change American foreign policy.
1:03:07
In both cases, the so-called blob, the foreign policy establishment defeated them.
1:03:13
Remember, Trump was committed to improving relations with Putin. He was interested in getting out of Europe and putting an end to NATO,
1:03:23
and so forth and so on. None of that happened. And the reason is the blob, the foreign policy establishment, is so powerful.
1:03:32
So even if Trump gets re-elected in 2024, he's not going to be able to change things very much at all.
1:03:39
American policy is set in stone at this point. And of course, Obama admitted in an exit interview he gave
1:03:47
to the Atlantic Magazine in 2000, I believe it was 2009,
1:03:54
as he was leaving the White House that the blob had defeated him. So I don't think that domestic politics will matter.
1:04:04
I might be wrong. Going back to your description of the economic consequences of these various policies
1:04:12
and how the United States spends like a drunken sailor, it may lead to a situation where there is domestic unrest.
1:04:21
I think, by the way, just to add one point to this. I think where you're likely to see domestic unrest matter is in Europe.
1:04:32
- It’s more likely. - Moving to the right. Less likely in the United States.
1:04:37
But do you see things moving more to the right over time in Europe? Yeah, I just see a lot more dissatisfaction.
1:04:47
And one could argue that people on the left that represent workers
1:04:53
will be as dissatisfied as the populist right,
1:04:59
so you could see widespread support for changing our policy.
1:05:06
By the way, just to go back to this spring offensive that the United States is trumpeting as a way of delivering a powerful message
1:05:17
to the Russians that they should come to the negotiating table and we should put an end to this war,
1:05:23
you want to think about what the consequences will be if the Ukrainians lose,
1:05:31
and I think a very good case can be made that the Ukrainian forces will be battered badly damaged
1:05:39
if they launch an offensive, and this will present a huge crisis for Ukraine.
1:05:46
But what that will tell your average citizen in the West
1:05:51
is that all of this support has been futile. And if anything, this is just going to go on and on forever and ever.
1:05:59
Many people describe this Ukrainian army that's now facing the Russians
1:06:04
as the third Ukrainian army that we've helped to build. Well, what if this third Ukrainian army is defeated?
1:06:12
Are we going to build a fourth Ukrainian army, a fifth Ukrainian army? Are you going to spend all those dollars or euros on bankrolling the Ukrainians
1:06:24
when you have Americans and Europeans who are paying electricity bills that they can't afford, and so forth and so on?
1:06:33
So it may be the case that domestic politics matters a lot more
1:06:39
than I said before. Well, the Chinese are laughing to the bank by way of whatever we're seeing.
==============================
Mearsheimer di Mata Tiongkok
1:06:50
This is my last question: You're very popular in China, right?
1:06:55
Is that because they think your theory is right
1:07:00
or because they know people are not listening to your theory? It's an interesting question. I started going to China in the very early 2000s
1:07:09
when "The Tragedy of Great Power Politics" was first published,
1:07:14
and it was translated shortly thereafter into Chinese. And in that book, of course, I argued that China could not rise peacefully,
1:07:24
and I was absolutely surprised that the Chinese invited me,
1:07:29
and then when I went to China I was treated like a rock star. But my explanation goes like this:
1:07:37
First of all, I think the Chinese are very theoretical. The Chinese like IR (International Relations) theory.
1:07:45
It's really quite interesting. I've had many conversations with Chinese students
1:07:52
and, of course, Chinese faculty members and policymakers about sort of basic realist theory, how it works, and so forth and so on.
1:07:59
And they often challenge me. You know, in the old days, when I would go over there, Chinese elites would talk about economic interdependence theory
1:08:08
as a challenge to my realist worldview, and we would go back and forth. So I think the Chinese liked me because they liked theory.
1:08:16
Second reason I think they liked me is: I took China seriously. I said, "China is going to rise
1:08:24
to the point where it is a pure competitor of the United States." And I think the Chinese wanted to hear that.
1:08:31
Third reason I think they liked me is: I described the United States as a ruthless great power,
1:08:37
and they would say to me, "Finally an American who tells the truth about the United States."
1:08:43
But the fourth and, I think, most intriguing reason that the Chinese liked me,
1:08:49
wanted me to come, and wanted me to speak to wide audiences
1:08:54
is that the Chinese understood that there was a lot of power in my argument.
1:09:00
They understood that as they grew more powerful, there was a real danger that a security competition would set in.
1:09:06
So quite a few Chinese interlocutors told me what they wanted to do
1:09:12
was they wanted to hear my theory so they could figure out why it was wrong
1:09:18
and how they could show that China could rise peacefully, to which I would always respond, "You can't defeat my theory.
1:09:27
China and the United States are doomed to have an intense security competition
1:09:33
if China continues to rise peacefully." But for a long time, I would say up until about 2018,
1:09:41
they refused to believe that. Most of my interlocutors, they thought that the deterioration of U.S.-China relations
1:09:50
after President Trump moved into the White House was an aberration. And then when Biden came in,
1:09:56
I know a lot of people thought we'd go back to the old days, the days of the unipolar moment.
1:10:02
But I always told them that was not going to happen. There's just no way. - It happened.
1:10:08
- Well, look, from China's point of view, it makes eminently good sense to dominate Asia.
1:10:17
From China's point of view, it makes eminently good sense to push the Americans out of Asia to have their own Monroe Doctrine.
1:10:26
If I were the National Security Advisor in Beijing, I would tell Xi Jinping,
1:10:32
"We got to work overtime to figure out how to establish hegemony in Asia
1:10:37
because it is clearly the best way to survive in the international system.
1:10:44
We have to imitate the Americans. We've got to get them out of here." Okay? So, from the Chinese point of view, that makes sense,
1:10:51
but from the American point of view, and certainly from the point of view of China's neighbors,
1:10:57
it does not make sense to have China as a regional hegemon.
1:11:03
So almost all the neighbors; not all of them, but almost all the neighbors; and the Americans are going to push back
1:11:10
and they're going to try to contain China. And that makes eminently good sense for the Americans and China's neighbors,
1:11:16
just like it makes eminently good sense for China to try to dominate Asia. But the end result of all these actors pursuing what is a strategically rational policy
1:11:27
is that you end up in this intense security competition where, as we discussed before, there is a serious possibility of war.
1:11:38
And to put out the bottom line very clearly this is the tragedy of great power politics.
1:11:46
- Wow. Thank you so much, John, - It was my pleasure. - for your time. - Glad to do it.
1:11:54
That was Professor John Mearsheimer at the University of Chicago. Thank you.
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