Interview with John Mearsheimer arguing that the U.S. should stop trying to remake other countries and should focus on great-power competition without crusading regime-change wars. He says the Iran campaign failed, warns that escalating again would be costly and dangerous for the global economy, and frames China, Russia, Ukraine, and Cuba through a realist lens of power politics and spheres of influence.
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This is a long-form interview in which John Mearsheimer advances a consistent realist thesis: the U.S. should stop acting like a crusader state, avoid regime-change projects, and manage competition with other great powers within a constrained balance-of-power system. The discussion opens with the upcoming Monk Debate in Toronto, where Mearsheimer and Steve Walt will argue against the idea that the U.S. should go abroad to “slay monsters,” while Mike Pompeo and Victoria Nuland will defend a more interventionist, democracy-promotion posture. Mearsheimer’s central position is that U.S. security interests matter, but trying to transform other states into democracies is a fundamental error that almost always produces trouble. The conversation then moves to China and Iran. Mearsheimer says China has mixed motives in the Iran war: it benefits if the U.S. …
Near term, the main risk is a fresh U.S. strike cycle on Iran that could widen the conflict and keep pressure on defense and energy supply chains. The setup is tactical and fragile, with headlines from Washington and Tehran likely to dominate.
Over the next few months, the more likely path is continued geopolitical strain across Iran, Ukraine, and Taiwan, with the market forced to price intermittent escalation rather than clean resolution. Confirmation would come if the U.S. limits further Middle East escalation and keeps China/U.S. tension contained.
Structurally, the interview argues for a regime of persistent great-power rivalry and recurring U.S. overreach rather than a clean unipolar order. The durable implication is that alliance management, munitions depth, and restraint may matter more than ideological regime-change ambitions.
The U.S. should not go abroad trying to turn non-democracies into democracies; doing so is a fundamental mistake.
He frames the debate with Pompeo and Nuland as a clash between restrainers and crusaders, and says Adams was right.
China and the U.S. both have incentives to shut down the Iran war because an extended conflict could damage the international economy.
He says China is export-oriented and the U.S. also has an interest in avoiding economic fallout.
Trump avoided sharply escalating on Taiwan because he wanted to keep China cooperative on Iran and avoid another crisis in East Asia.
He says Trump did not take the bait and had reasons not to provoke China.
What is the purpose of the upcoming Monk Debate in Toronto, and what positions will each side argue?
John Mearsheimer says he and Steve Walt will argue that the U.S. should not act as a crusader state trying to make other countries democracies. He says Mike Pompeo and Victoria Nuland will argue the opposite: that the U.S. should promote democracy abroad, even by force if necessary.
Are foreign policy restrainers more mainstream today than they were in the 1990s?
Mearsheimer says yes: the American public is generally not interested in global crusades, and even more elites now doubt that the U.S. should use military power for social engineering. He stresses the debate is not about great-power security, but about whether the U.S. should try to promote democracy and liberty abroad.
Is China aligned with the United States in wanting the Iran conflict to end?
He says that broadly yes, because China benefits from a U.S. distraction in the Middle East, but it also fears the war could crash the international economy and hurt Chinese exports. He adds that Russia has similar reasons to want the war shut down, even though it has benefited in some ways from sanctions and oil flows.
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