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Lex Fridman

00:00

The following is a conversation with John Mearsheimer, a professor at University of Chicago and 1 of the most influential and controversial thinkers in the world. He teaches, speaks, and writes about the nature of power and war on the 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.

Lex Fridman

00:34

I will speak with Vladimir Putin and with Volodymyr Zelensky, 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.

Lex Fridman

01:09

I am none of those things. But I do make mistakes and I will get better. I love you all. This is the Lex Friedman podcast.

Lex Fridman

01:21

To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's John Mierschammer. 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.

John Mearsheimer

01:39

Yeah, I make 2 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.

John Mearsheimer

02:00

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.

John Mearsheimer

02:39

Second point I would make is that in the realist story or in my story, power is largely a function of material factors. The 2 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.

John Mearsheimer

03:03

It has lots of people and it has lots of wealth. China was not considered a great power until recently 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.

John Mearsheimer

03:25

So I think power matters, but When we talk about power, it's important to understand that it's population size and wealth that are underpinning it.

Lex Fridman

03:37

So there's a lot of interesting things there. First, you said nations in relation to each other are essentially in a state of anarchism.

John Mearsheimer

03:48

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. Anarchy simply means that you don't have hierarchy.

John Mearsheimer

04:05

There's no higher authority that sits above states. States are like pool balls on a table, right? And in an anarchic world, there's no higher authority that you can turn to if you get into trouble. And of course, the political philosopher who laid this all out was Thomas Hobbes.

John Mearsheimer

04:29

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' 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.

John Mearsheimer

04:57

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. The problem in international politics is that there is no world state.

John Mearsheimer

05:18

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. Not because you necessarily wanna beat up on other kids 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.

John Mearsheimer

05:59

From the late 1840s to the late 1940s, the Chinese were remarkably weak. And the great powers in the system preyed upon them. And that sends a very important message to not only the Chinese, but to other states in the system. Don't be weak, be as powerful as you can.

Lex Fridman

06:17

And we'll talk about it, but humiliation can lead to resentment, and resentment leads to something you've also studied, which is Nazi Germany in the 1930s. We'll talk about it. 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?

John Mearsheimer

06:43

The will to power in an individual has a lot to do with individual psychology. The story that I tell about the pursuit of power is a structural argument. It's an argument that says, when you are in a particular structure, when you're in a system that has a specific architecture, which is anarchy.

John Mearsheimer

07:06

The states have no choice but to compete for power. So structure is really driving the story here. Will to power has a lot more to do with an individual in the Nietzschean story where that concept comes from. So it's very important to understand that I'm not arguing that states are inherently aggressive.

John Mearsheimer

07:33

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, 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.

Lex Fridman

07:59

So What is the role of military might in this will to power on the national level?

John Mearsheimer

08:06

Well, military might's what ultimately matters. As I said to you before, the 2 building blocks of power are population size and wealth.

Lex Fridman

08:15

You didn't mention military

John Mearsheimer

08:17

might. I did not, No, that's right. And it's good that you caught that because if you have a large population 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 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.

Lex Fridman

08:55

What's not obvious that a large nation with a lot of people and a lot of money should necessarily build a gigantic army and seek to attain superpower, like dominant soul superpower status to military might. But you're saying, as you see the world today, It has to be that way. Yeah, I'm arguing it is obvious.

Lex Fridman

09:19

If you're a state in the international system,

John Mearsheimer

09:22

do you want to be weak? If you live next door to Nazi Germany or Imperial Germany or Napoleonic France or even the United States, The United States is a ruthless great power. You surely recognize that.

John Mearsheimer

09:35

And if you're dealing with the United States of America and you're Vladimir Putin, you wanna make sure you're as powerful as possible so that the United States doesn't put its gun sights on you and come after you. Same thing is true with China. You want to be powerful in the international system. States understand that and they go to great lengths to become powerful.

John Mearsheimer

09:54

Just take the United States of America. When it started in 1783, it was comprised of 13 measly colonies strung out along the Atlantic seaboard. Over time, the various leaders of the United States went to great lengths to turn that country into the dominant power in the Western Hemisphere. And then once that was achieved in 1900, we've gone to great lengths to make sure that there's no peer competitor in the system.

John Mearsheimer

10:29

We just want to make sure that we're number 1. And my argument is that this is not peculiar to the United States. If I'm China, for example, today, I would want to dominate Asia the way the United States dominates the Western Hemisphere. They'd be fools not to.

John Mearsheimer

10:51

If I were Imperial Germany, I'd want to dominate all of Europe the way the United States dominates the Western Hemisphere. They'd be fools not to. If I were Imperial Germany, I'd want to dominate all of Europe the way the United States dominates the Western Hemisphere. Why?

John Mearsheimer

10:58

Because if you dominate all of Europe, assume you're imperial Germany or Napoleonic France, then no other state in the area or in the region can threaten you because you're simply so powerful. And again, what I'm saying here is that the structure of the international system really matters. It's the fact that you're in this anarchic system where survival is your principal goal and where I can't know your intentions. You're another state.

John Mearsheimer

11:27

I can't know that at some point you might not come after me. You might. And if you're really powerful and I'm not, I'm in deep trouble.

Lex Fridman

11:37

Yeah, so some of the ideas underlying what you've said, offensive realism, which I would love to talk to you about sort of the history of realism versus liberalism, but some of the ideas you already mentioned, anarchy between states, everybody's trying to develop a military capabilities, uncertainty, such an interesting concept. States cannot be sure that other states will not use military capabilities against them, which is 1 of. That's of enormous importance

John Mearsheimer

12:08

to the story.

Lex Fridman

12:09

And so interesting because you also say that this makes realists more cautious and more peaceful. The uncertainty, because of all the uncertainty involved here, it's better to approach international politics with caution. Which is really interesting to think about.

Lex Fridman

12:29

Again, survival, most states are interested in survival. And the other interesting thing is, you assume all the states are rational.

John Mearsheimer

12:40

Which- Most of the time.

Lex Fridman

12:41

Most of the time. You call this framework offensive realism. Can you just give an overview of the history of the realism versus liberalism debate as world views?

John Mearsheimer

12:56

Well, I think for many centuries now, the big divide within the world of international relations theory is between realism and liberalism. These are time-honored bodies of theory. And before I tell you what I think the differences are between those 2 bodies of theory, it is important to emphasize that there are differences among realists and differences among liberals.

John Mearsheimer

13:30

And so when you talk about me as an offensive realist, you should understand that there are also defensive realists out there, and there are a panoply of liberal theories as well. But basically, realists believe that power matters, that states compete for power, and that war is an instrument of statecraft. And liberals, on the other hand, have what I would say is a more idealistic view of the world. This is not to say that they're naive or foolish, but they believe there are aspects of international politics that lead to a less competitive and more peaceful world than most realists see.

John Mearsheimer

14:23

And I'll lay out for you very quickly what are the 3 major liberal theories today that I think will give you a sense of the more optimistic perspective that is inherent in the liberal enterprise. The first and most important of the liberal theories is democratic peace theory. And this is a theory that says democracies do not fight against other democracies. So the more the world is populated with democracies, the less likely it is that we will have wars.

John Mearsheimer

15:03

And this basic argument is inherent in Francis Fukuyama's The End of History. He argues that democracy triumphed first over fascism in the 20th century. It then triumphed over communism. And that means that in the future, we're gonna have more and more liberal democracies on the planet.

John Mearsheimer

15:25

And if you have more and more liberal democracies and those democracies don't fight each other, then you have a more peaceful world. That was his argument. It's a very liberal argument. A realist like me would say that it doesn't matter whether a state is a democracy or not.

John Mearsheimer

15:45

All states behave the same way because the structure of the system, getting back to our earlier discussion about international anarchy, the structure of the system leaves those states no choice, whether they're democracies or autocracies. And again, the liberal view, this first liberal theory is that democracies don't fight other democracies and therefore the more democracies you have, the more peaceful the world.

Lex Fridman

16:12

Can I just sort of try to unpack that a little bit? So on the democratic peace theory, I guess would say, that in democracies, leaders are elected, and the underlying assumption is most people want peace, and so they will elect peacemakers. So the more democracies you have, the more likely you have peace.

Lex Fridman

16:33

And then the realist perspective, what says that it doesn't matter if the majority of people want peace. The structure of international politics is such that superpowers want to become more super and powerful, and they do that through war.

John Mearsheimer

16:51

You can't make that argument that you're making about democracies, because if you're saying that democracies are inclined toward peace, and that the electorate picks leaders who are inclined towards peace, then you have to show that democracies are in general more peaceful than non-democracies, and You can't support that argument. You can find lots of evidence to support the argument that democracies don't fight other democracies. So the argument I believe that you have to make if you're going to support democratic peace theory, The main argument you have to make is that liberal democracies have a healthy respect for each other, and they can assess each other's intentions.

John Mearsheimer

17:45

If you're a liberal democracy and I'm a liberal democracy, we know we have value systems that argue against aggression and argue for peaceful resolution of crises. And therefore, given these norms, we can trust each other. We can know each other's intentions. Remember, for realists like me, uncertainty about intentions really helps drive the train.

John Mearsheimer

18:12

But if you're talking about 2 democracies, right, The argument there is that they know each other's intentions.

Lex Fridman

18:19

And for you, sure, maybe democracies reduce uncertainty a little bit, but not enough to stop the train.

John Mearsheimer

18:26

I think that's right, yeah, that's right. So that's democratic peace theory. The second theory is economic interdependence theory.

John Mearsheimer

18:34

And that's the argument that in a globalized world like the 1 that we live in and have lived in for a long time, there's a great deal of economic interdependence. And if you and I are 2 countries, or if you and me are 2 countries, and we're economically interdependent, and we're both getting prosperous as a result of this economic intercourse, the last thing that we're gonna do is start a war, either 1 of us, because who would kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. It's that kind of argument. So there you have an argument that economic interdependence leads to peace.

John Mearsheimer

19:09

And then the third liberal argument has to do with institutions, sometimes referred to as liberal institutionalism. And this is the argument that if you can get states into institutions where they become rule-abiding actors, they will obey the rules that dictate that war is not acceptable. So if you get them to accept the UN rules on when you can and cannot initiate a war, then you'll have a more peaceful world. So those are the liberal theories.

John Mearsheimer

19:50

And as you can tell, they're very different from realism as articulated by somebody like me.

Lex Fridman

19:56

Can you maybe argue against the economic interdependence and in the institutions that institutions follow rules a little bit. So the golden goose with the golden egg, you're saying that nations are happy to kill the goose because again, they want power. If they think it's necessary to kill the golden goose because of security concerns, they will do it.

Lex Fridman

20:28

The point is that Economic interdependence

John Mearsheimer

20:33

at its root has prosperity as the core variable. In the realist story, the core variable is survival. And Survival always trumps prosperity.

John Mearsheimer

20:48

So if you go back to the period before World War I, we're in Europe, it's 1913 or early 1914. What you see is that you have an intense security competition between all of the great powers. On 1 side, you have the triple alliance, and on the other side, you have the triple entente. You have these 2 alliances, and you have an intense security competition between them.

John Mearsheimer

21:18

At the same time, you have a great deal of economic interdependence. It's amazing how much economic intercourse is taking place in Europe among all the actors, right? And people are getting prosperous, or countries are getting prosperous as a result. But nevertheless, in the famous July crisis of 1914, this economic prosperity is unable to prevent World War I because security concerns or survival is more important.

John Mearsheimer

21:47

So there are going to be lots of situations where prosperity and survival come into conflict and in those cases survival will win.

Lex Fridman

21:59

And maybe you can speak to the different camps of realists. You said offensive and defensive. Can you draw a distinction between those 2?

John Mearsheimer

22:08

Yeah, let me just back up a bit on that 1. And you were talking about will to power before. The first big divide between realists is structural realists and human nature realists.

John Mearsheimer

22:26

Nice. And Hans Morgenthau, who was influenced by Nietzsche and therefore had that will to power logic embedded in his thinking about how the world works, right? He was a human nature realist, okay? I'm a structural realist, and I believe it's not human nature, it's not individuals and some will to power that drives competition and war.

John Mearsheimer

22:57

What drives competition and war is the structure of the system. It's anarchy.

Lex Fridman

23:03

So you're not as romantic as the human nature realists.

John Mearsheimer

23:06

Yeah, there's just a world of difference between the 2. It's just important to understand that.

Lex Fridman

23:12

So within that, from the structural, There's a subdivision also of offensive and defensive.

John Mearsheimer

23:17

Yes, inside the structural realist world, right? And you have a handful of realists who believe that the structure of the system fosters competition for sure, security competition, but it really rules out great power war almost all the time. So It makes sense to care about the balance of power, but to focus on maintaining how much power you have.

John Mearsheimer

23:53

That's the defense of realism, maintaining how much power you have, not trying to gain more power. Because the argument the defensive realists make is that if you try to gain more power, the system will punish you, the structure will punish you. I'm not a defensive realist. I'm an offensive realist.

John Mearsheimer

24:15

And my argument is that states look for opportunities to gain more power. And every time they see, or almost every time they see an opportunity to gain more power, and they think the likelihood of success is high and the cost will not be great, they'll jump at that opportunity.

Lex Fridman

24:39

Just to linger on the human nature perspective, how do you explain Hitler and Nazi Germany? Just 1 of the more recent aggressive expansions through military might. How do you explain that in the framework of offensive realism?

Lex Fridman

25:04

Well,

John Mearsheimer

25:04

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 that tells you is you didn't need Adolf Hitler to start World War I, right?

John Mearsheimer

25:27

And I believe that there is a good chance you would have had World War II in the absence of Hitler, right? I believe that Germany was very powerful, was deeply worried about the balance of power in Europe, and it had strong incentives to behave aggressively in the late 1930s, early 1940s. So I believe that structure mattered. However, I want to qualify that in the case of Adolf Hitler because I do think he had what you would call a will to power.

John Mearsheimer

26:02

I've never used that word to describe him before, but it's consistent with my point that I often make, that there are 2 leaders, or there have been 2 leaders in modern history who are congenital aggressors, and 1 was Napoleon and the other was Hitler. Now, if you wanna call that a will to power, you can do that. I'm more comfortable referring to Hitler as a congenital aggressor and referring to Napoleon as a congenital aggressor, although there were important differences between the 2 because Hitler was probably the most murderous leader in recorded history, and Napoleon was not in that category at all. But both of them were driven by what you would call a will to power.

John Mearsheimer

26:54

And that has to be married to the structural argument in Hitler's case and also in Napoleon's case.

Lex Fridman

27:02

Is there some degree on the human psychology side that resentment 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 human side. Perhaps the reason I ask that question is also because you mentioned the century of humiliation on the China side.

Lex Fridman

27:26

So to which degree did humiliation lead to Hitler and lead to World War II?

John Mearsheimer

27:33

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.

John Mearsheimer

27:51

Is there resentment over the Versailles Treaty and what happened to Germany? Yes. Did that matter? Yes.

John Mearsheimer

28:00

But my argument is that structure was the principal factor driving the train in Hitler's case. But what I'm saying here is that there were other factors as well, resentment being 1 of them, will to power, or the fact that he was a congenital aggressor in my lexicon certainly mattered as well. So I don't wanna dismiss your point about resentment.

Lex Fridman

28:29

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.

John Mearsheimer

28:41

I think that as a result of defeat in World War I and all the trials and tribulations associated with Weimar Germany, and then the coming of the Great Depression. All of those factors definitely account for his coming to power. I think that 1 of the reasons that he was so successful at winning over the German people once he came to power was because there was a great deal of resentment in the German body politic.

John Mearsheimer

29:21

And he played on that resentment. That surely helped him get elected too. But I think, having studied the case, it was even more important once he took over. I also believe that 1 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.

John Mearsheimer

29:48

And that really mattered. And it made him very effective. It's also worth noting that he was a remarkably charismatic individual. I find that hard to believe, because every time I look at him or listen to his speeches, he does not appear to be charismatic to me.

John Mearsheimer

30:07

But 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.

Lex Fridman

30:31

Stalin is still popular in many parts of Eastern Europe.

John Mearsheimer

30:36

Yeah, yeah, and Stalin's popular in many quarters inside Russia. And Stalin murdered more of his own people than he murdered people outside of the Soviet Union.

Lex Fridman

30:50

And still to you, the ties of history turn not on individuals but on structural considerations. So Hitler may be a surface layer characteristics of how Germany started war, but not really the reason.

John Mearsheimer

31:09

Well, history is a multidimensional phenomenon. So I hear. And we're talking about interstate relations.

John Mearsheimer

31:19

And realism is a theory about how states interact with each other. And there are many other dimensions to international politics. And if you're talking about someone like Adolf Hitler, Why did he start World War II is a very different question than why did he start the Holocaust or why did he push forward a Holocaust? I mean, that's a different question and realism doesn't answer that question.

John Mearsheimer

31:48

So I wanna be very clear that I'm not someone who argues that realism answers every question about international politics, but it does answer what is 1 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.

Lex Fridman

32:10

Does offensive realism answer the question why Hitler attacked the Soviet Union? Yes. Because from a military strategy perspective, there's pros and cons to that decision.

John Mearsheimer

32:25

Pros and cons to every decision. The question is, did he think that he could win a quick and decisive victory? And he did, as did his generals.

John Mearsheimer

32:35

It's very interesting, I've spent a lot of time studying German decision making in World War II. If you look at the German decision to invade Poland on September 1st, 1939, and you look at the 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. And there was also quite a bit of resistance in September 1939.

John Mearsheimer

33:13

Internally or? Internally, internally, for sure, yeah. People had doubts. They didn't think the Wehrmacht was ready, and given the fact that World War I had just ended about 20 years before, the thought of starting another European war was not especially attractive to lots of German policy makers, including military leaders.

John Mearsheimer

33:37

And then came France, 1940. In the run up to May 10th, 1940, there was huge resistance in the German army to attacking France. But that was eventually eliminated because they came up with a clever plan, the Manstein Plan. If you look at the decision to invade the Soviet Union on June 22nd, 1941, which is the only case where they fail.

John Mearsheimer

34:08

They succeeded in France, they succeeded in Poland, they succeeded at Munich in 1938. Soviet Union is where they fail. There's hardly any resistance at all, right? Yeah, well, and to say that they failed the Soviet Union, I mean,

Lex Fridman

34:23

my grandfather, I mean, from the Soviet Union, you know, there was a lot of successes early on. So There's poor military, I would say, strategic decisions along the way, but it caught Stalin off guard. Maybe you can correct me, but from my perspective, terrifyingly so, they could have been successful if certain different decisions were made from a military perspective.

John Mearsheimer

34:54

Yeah, I've always had the sense they came terrifyingly close to winning. You can make the opposite argument that they were doomed, but I'm not terribly comfortable making that argument. I think the Wehrmacht by the summer of 1941 was a finely tuned instrument for war.

John Mearsheimer

35:18

And the Red Army was in quite terrible shape. Stalin had purged the officer corps. They had performed poorly in Finland. And there were all sorts of reasons to think that they were no match for the Wehrmacht.

John Mearsheimer

35:36

And if you look at what happened in the initial stages of the conflict, that proved to be the case. The Germans won a lot of significant tactical victories early on.

Lex Fridman

35:49

And if they focused and went to Moscow as quickly as possible, it's, again, terrifyingly, so could have been a, basically topple Stalin. And 1 thing that's- That's possible.

John Mearsheimer

36:04

That's possible. Fortunately, we're not gonna run the experiment again, but 1 could argue that had they concentrated, as the generals wanted to do, in going straight for Moscow, that they would have won. I mean, what Hitler wanted to do is he wanted to go into the Ukraine.

John Mearsheimer

36:22

I mean, Hitler thought that the main axis, there were 3 axes, the northern axis went towards Leningrad, the central axis of course went to Moscow, And then the southern axis, Army Group South, headed towards Ukraine and deep into the Caucasus. And Hitler believed that that should have been the main axis. And in fact, in 1942, the Soviets, excuse me, the Germans go back on the offensive in 1942. This is Operation Blue.

John Mearsheimer

36:54

And the main axis in 42 is deep into the Ukraine and into the Caucasus. And that fails. But 1 could argue that had they done that in 41, had they not gone to Moscow, had they concentrated on going deep into Ukraine and into the Caucasus, they could have knocked the Soviets out that way. I'm not sure that in the end I believe that.

John Mearsheimer

37:20

I think in the end the Soviets would have won no matter what, but I'm not 100% sure of that.

Lex Fridman

37:28

So sometimes, maybe you can educate me, but sometimes, you know, they say just like with Napoleon, Winter defeated Hitler in Russia. I think not often enough people tell the story of the soldiers and the motivation and how hard they fight. So it turns out that Ukrainians and Russians are not easy to conquer.

Lex Fridman

37:55

They're the kinds of people that don't roll over and fight bravely. There seems to be a difference in certain people, peoples in how they see war, how they approach war, how proud they are to fight for their country, to die for their country, these kinds of things. So I think Battle of Stalingrad tells, at least to me, a story of extremely brave fighting on the Soviet side. And that's a component of war too.

Lex Fridman

38:22

It's not just structural, it's not just military strategy, it's also the humans involved. But maybe that's a romantic notion of war.

John Mearsheimer

38:32

No, I think there's a great deal of truth in that, but let's just unpack it a bit in the case of the Soviet Union in World War II. The counter argument to that is that in World War I, the Russian army disintegrated. And if you look at what happened when Napoleon invaded in 1812, and you look at what happened in 1917, and then you look at what happened between 41 and 45, the Napoleon case looks a lot like the Hitler case, and it fits neatly with your argument, but World War I does not fit neatly with your argument because the Russians lost and surrendered.

John Mearsheimer

39:21

And you had the infamous Treaty of Brest-Litovsk where the Soviet Union then, because it went from Russia to the Soviet Union in October 1917, The Soviet Union surrendered large amounts of Soviet territory because it had suffered a humiliating defeat. My argument for why the Russians, let me take that back, why the Soviets fought like wild dogs in World War II is that they were up against a genocidal adversary. You want to understand that the Germans murdered huge numbers of Soviet POWs. The overall total was 3.7 million.

John Mearsheimer

40:02

And by December, December of 1941, remember the invasion is June 41, by December of 1941, the Germans have murdered 2 million Soviet POWs. At that point in time, they had murdered many more POWs than they had murdered Jews. And this is not to deny for 1 second that they were on a murderous rampage when it came to Jews. But they were also on a murderous rampage when it came to Soviet citizens and Soviet soldiers, right?

John Mearsheimer

40:34

So those Soviet soldiers quickly came to understand that they were fighting for their lives. If they were taken prisoner, they would die. So they fought like wild dogs.

Lex Fridman

40:47

Yeah, you know, the story of the Holocaust with the 6000000 Jews is often told extensively. If Hitler won, conquered the Soviet Union, it's terrifying to think on a much grander scale than the Holocaust, what would have happened to the Slavic people, to the Soviet people?

John Mearsheimer

41:08

Absolutely, all you have to do is read the Hunger Plan, right, and they also had a plan, what is it called, Grand Planned East, I forget the exact name of it, which made it clear that they were gonna murder many tens of millions of people. And by the way, I believe that they would have murdered all the Poles and all the Roma. I mean, my view is that the Jews were number 1 on the genocidal hit list.

John Mearsheimer

41:37

The Roma or the gypsies were number 2 and the Poles were number 3. And of course, I just explained to you how many POWs they had killed. So they would have ended up murdering huge numbers of Soviet citizens as well. But people quickly figured out that this was happening.

John Mearsheimer

41:57

That's my point to you, and that gave them, needless to say, very powerful incentives to fight hard against the Germans and to make sure that they did not win.

Lex Fridman

42:09

To fast forward in time, but not in space,

John Mearsheimer

42:16

Let

Lex Fridman

42:17

me ask you about 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?

John Mearsheimer

42:33

Well, clearly the conventional wisdom is that Putin is principally responsible. Putin is an imperialist, he's an expansionist.

Lex Fridman

42:42

That's the conventional thinking.

John Mearsheimer

42:44

Yeah, yeah, And the idea is that he is bent on creating a greater Russia and even more so he's interested in dominating Eastern Europe, if not all of Europe. And that Ukraine was the first stop on the train line. And what he wanted to do was to conquer all of Ukraine, incorporate it into a greater Russia, and then he would move on and conquer other countries.

John Mearsheimer

43:16

This is the conventional wisdom.

Lex Fridman

43:18

My view is there is no evidence, let me emphasize, 0 evidence to support that argument. 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.

John Mearsheimer

43:36

There's no evidence he was interested in conquering all of Ukraine. There was no evidence beforehand that he was interested in 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.

John Mearsheimer

43:58

Just impossible. As I like to emphasize, when the Germans went into Poland in 1939, and the Germans, you wanna remember, were only intent on conquering the western half of Poland because the Soviets 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.

John Mearsheimer

44:28

If Vladimir Putin were bent on conquering all of Ukraine, he would have needed at least 2000000 troops. I would argue he'd need 3000000 troops because not only do you need to conquer the country, you then have to occupy it. But the idea that 190,000 troops was sufficient for conquering all of Ukraine. It's not a serious argument.

John Mearsheimer

44:51

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 Zelensky 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 Zelensky 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 Zelensky 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.

John Mearsheimer

45:41

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. 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 conquer all of it, and he failed.

John Mearsheimer

46:13

But with a little bit of luck, he probably would have conquered all of it and he'd now be in the Baltic states and eventually end up dominating all of Eastern Europe. I said, I think there's no evidence to support this. So maybe there's a lot

Lex Fridman

46:30

of things to ask there. Maybe just to linger on NATO expansion. What is NATO expansion?

Lex Fridman

46:37

What is the threat of NATO expansion? And why is it such a concern for Russia?

John Mearsheimer

46:42

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.

John Mearsheimer

47:07

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. 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.

John Mearsheimer

47:32

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.

John Mearsheimer

47:59

They made that manifestly clear 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. They made it clear in 2004 after the second tranche that they were profoundly unhappy with that expansion.

John Mearsheimer

48:29

And then in April 2008, when NATO announced that Ukraine and Georgia would become part of NATO, they made it unequivocally clear, not just Putin, that that was not going to 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, in August 2008, you had a war between Georgia and Russia, and that involved at its core NATO expansion. So 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.

John Mearsheimer

49:17

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 at the famous April 2008 Bucharest summit where NATO said that Ukraine would be brought into the alliance. Angela Merkel and Nicholas 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.