Realists about what really matters in international system :
“… what really matters are the other great powers in the system, and what you want to concern yourself with is the balance of power between the great powers or among the great powers.”
Excerpt from remarks by Professor John Mearsheimer, American political scientist and international relations scholar, in an interview with Katie Harper, June 12, 2024.
JOHN MEARSHEIMER:
“I think there’s no question that during the unipolar moment—which runs from roughly 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed, until about 2017, when we morphed into a multipolar world—the United States was incredibly powerful and pursued a liberal policy.
This is the policy that Piers [Morgan] was describing.
Piers has the mentality that most people in the West have about what the United States should do in the world.
He thinks that we have a responsibility and a right to run around the world and interfere in the domestic politics of every country on the planet.
He believes that we should reshape the politics of countries that we don’t think meet the criteria we’ve established for a successful liberal democracy.
My view, and the view of almost all realists, has long been that this is a prescription for disaster.
The United States should not be interfering in the politics of other countries unless it’s absolutely necessary.
In fact, when you do that, it’s going to backfire.
Witness what happened to the Soviets when they were in Afghanistan, witness what happened to us when we were in Afghanistan, and witness what happened to us in Vietnam and then later in Iraq.
You want to stay out of these places.
A realist like me says that what really matters are the other great powers in the system, and what you want to concern yourself with is the balance of power between the great powers or among the great powers.
You want your country to be as powerful as possible relative to all the other countries because that’s the best way to survive.
So what you have, if you look at the historical record, is a situation where virtually all the realists opposed the Vietnam War, except for Henry Kissinger, who’s not really much of a—or was not much of a—realist, and almost all the realists, except for Henry Kissinger, opposed the Iraq War in 2003 as well.
Steve Walt and I, two card-carrying realists, led the charge against the Iraq War in 2003.
So again, this whole idea that we have a right and responsibility to interfere in the politics of other countries around the world is just not a smart way to do business.”
