The Historical Context of American Foreign Policy

In this conversation, John speaks with political scientist and international relations scholar Professor John Mearsheimer about the recent war in Ukraine, and the potential for conflict in Taiwan.Mearsheimer argues for what he calls 'offensive realism,' which holds that conflicts between states are driven by the need to maximize power in relation to other states. This is in contrast to the heterodox liberal framework, which Mearsheimer contends was only tenable under the recently ended ‘unipolar’ era. Using this framework, Mearsheimer famously predicted the recent Russian invasion, arguing that it was an inevitable outcome of NATO's eastward expansion.