“I don’t think the basic nature of conventional warfare has changed – it still looks a lot like it did during the First and Second World Wars.”

#JohnMearsheimer

https://www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2023/09/tragedy-john-mearsheimer

I literally laughed out loud at this one. How can you look at modern warfare, which is played out mainly using drones and cyberattacks, and claim that it's anything like the world wars?! It's like claiming WW1 was like the Napoleonic wars. Just nonsense.

It's that same "prisoner's dilemma" paranoia that leads to potentially self-fulfilling prophecies like this;

“China believes that there must be a way for it to rise peacefully. But it’s not going to happen. If China continues to rise, there is going to be a security competition with the US.”

#JohnMearsheimer, 2025

https://www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2023/09/tragedy-john-mearsheimer

If China wants to trade in a peaceful world, and so does the US, it seems self-evidenct to me that peaceful co-existence can be negotiated.

(1/3)

"The tragedy is that you could have two states who are content with the status quo and have no interest in fighting or competing for power. Nevertheless, because they cannot know each other’s intentions, and because they operate in an anarchic system, they have to assume the worst about each other and have to compete for power."

#JohnMearsheimer

https://www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2023/09/tragedy-john-mearsheimer

Typical IR realist cant. Basically the RAND Corporation "prisoner's dilemma" paranoia that Adam Curtis explores in The Trap.

"Then in 2006, along with his co-author Stephen Walt, [John Mearsheimer] wrote 'The Israel Lobby', which examined the complex of organisations that sought to encourage the US to provide material aid to Israel, often against American strategic interests. It was subsequently published as a book in 2007, and the argument saw Mearsheimer and Walt labelled as anti-Semitic, liars and bigots."

#GavinJacobson, September 2023

https://www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2023/09/tragedy-john-mearsheimer

That sounds familiar.

#JohnMearsheimer #Israel