- Tubelator AI
- >
- Videos
- >
- News & Politics
- >
- John Mearsheimer: Forecasting the Escalating Tensions in Ukraine, Middle-East, and South-East Asia
John Mearsheimer: Forecasting the Escalating Tensions in Ukraine, Middle-East, and South-East Asia
Renowned scholar John Mearsheimer predicts worsening geopolitical situations in Ukraine, Middle-East, and South-East Asia, highlighting growing nationalism, troubled liberal regimes, and escalating conflicts. Delve into his insights on the Reinvent Money Podcast.
Install Tubelator On Chrome
Video Summary & Chapters
No chapters for this video generated yet.
Video Transcript
I actually have no positive words. I think things are only going to get worse. I don't think most people understand how much trouble we're in.
As I tried to make clear, I think the Russians will win in Ukraine. I think this will have negative consequences for Europe. It'll do significant damage to NATO.
I think that nationalism is a growing force around the world.
I think the liberal regimes that dominated during the unipolar moment in Europe are in
trouble.
I think if you look at the American domestic political situation, especially with regard
to what's happening with Donald Trump and how he thinks about democracy, I think it's
quite clear that the United States isn't trouble.
With regard to the Middle East, I think the Israeli-Hallostinian conflict is only going
to get worse.
The idea that the Israelis are in the process of fixing this problem, I don't think is
true.
There's no solution to Gaza at the moment.
Hello everybody, my name is Paul Beitink and welcome to a new episode of the Reinvent
Money Podcast.
Today's guest is renowned American scholar, author and one of the most quoted academics
when it comes to international relations, John Mershimer of the University of Chicago.
Welcome, John. Glad to be here, Paul. I'm honoured and grateful for you to appear in my show,
so thanks so much for making and time available for me. I look forward to discussing... Sorry?
My pleasure. Yeah. I look forward to discussing geopolitics with you,
with a focus on the role of the European Union, where I'm based and based in Netherlands.
You've developed this theory of offensive realism in international relations.
Could you first of all describe what offensive realism is?
Let me describe what realism is and then contrast it with the way most economists in business people think.
But realism is a theory about how the world works that focuses on power.
And it says that states compete among themselves for power.
In other words, they worry greatly about the balance of power.
And they want to make sure they're more powerful than all their potential rivals.
Now why do I argue that states think that way?
The key is that in international politics, there is no higher authority.
In the international system, there's no night watchman, no institution or state that
states can turn to if they get into trouble.
And because you can never know the intentions of other states and you are sometimes dealing
with really powerful states, what you have to do is make sure that you can protect yourself.
It's a self-help world because again, there's no higher authority that can rescue you if you get
into trouble. If there's a state out there that has malign intentions towards you and is also very
powerful. So this logic applies to all states in the system. They all understand that they
should be powerful, but because power is basically a zero-sum phenomenon, states end up competing
for power with each other, and sometimes that security competition turns to war.
Now people in the world of finance, economic scholars or scholars of economics, they don't
focus on the fact that the world is anarchic, that there's no higher authority, and there
is this ever-present threat of war. What they're interested in doing is maximizing prosperity.
They're interested in competing economically, doing deals, trading with other countries,
investing in other countries, so that they can promote wealth. This makes perfect sense from an
economic point of view, but there's no attention paid to security issues.
There's no attention paid to the fact that you live in a world where there's no higher
authority and some other state may attack you, which gives you incentives to be really
powerful.
So you have this one logic realism that focuses on the importance of trying to survive in
a system where there's no higher authority and where power matters.
