“John” has military credentials and a bunch of degrees postdoc work in foreign policy. of course it’s meaningless, as even academic and thinktank foreign policy experts are basically a red team/blue team exercise in demagoguery
The world would be a better place if China or Russia was the dominant power?
He seems to have a track record of being right about other things, like the Middle East.
Putin can be seen as a bit of a wildcard in his theory, which treats states as black boxes where internal politics don’t matter much. His theory can be modified by accepting that outlier individual political actors can drive actions in a different direction from what would normally be predicted.
No. I think the world would be better will no true dominant power. The US has felt it’s had a free hand basically since the end of the Cold War (and even a good bit before that) and I think it’s only led to mostly bad outcomes. If the US felt it had some international checks on its power I don’t think the Iraq War II happens for instance.
2 Likes
Those parity years in world history don’t particularly go well and you could say a lot of states don’t try serious shit because the USA and their bloc can stop it, albeit that’s not a super strong argument.
Is no true dominant power a realistic outcome? What if it isn’t?
I think only if everyone has nukes.
Maybe you (and NBZ) are right that there will always be a dominant power and when there isn’t states will fight to be the top dog. I guess in that sense the US is better than most have been and how Russia and China would be (but that’s a low bar). I still think if there was more of a balance between the US and Europe that would help as the US couldn’t just decide to go to war and drag Europe along.
As to your last point, while it’s possible the US and it’s block may act as a check on some states, we also enable and even encourage others (like Saudi) to commit atrocities that they likely could not do on their own.
Mearsheimer argued that multipolarity and nuclear proliferation in Europe might be the best chance for stability in Europe.
mearsheimer’s model multipolarity, as developed in apparently 80s and 90s is a far cry from what became of stability in europe in 00s and 10s.
the fact that putin decided that this new power is infringing on his rightful sphere of influence is … basically simply outdated, but i suppose measheimer’s thinking can still be applied to the ex-kgb who rules as if it’s still the 1900s.
however measheimer hasn’t adjusted his thesis for what’s happening on the other side since his initial work. first of all, EU became more influential than what was expected, not without major obstacles along the way of course. EU is perhaps more impactful than NATO day-to-day and year-to-year. the economic benefits of trade unions and most importantly NOT having war in the 21st century are far greater than what they were in the 90s. both in terms of destroyed economies, and displacement of people, but also taking away very valuable time and effort from mitigating things like rise in authoritarian regimes and climate change.
Yeah America being the rich, intellectually disabled (maybe CTE riddled) bouncer of earth may be apt lol
1 Like
“Objectively”
I think it’s kind of a weird question to ask about ‘ideal’ situations. Speaking as a left-wing person myself I wouldn’t really know how to answer (especially given I’d consider it a trap question that the asker would shit on my answer for regardless) and I also feel like countries as a construct are completely stupid/arbitrary even if they aren’t going away any time soon/ever.
1 Like
I’ve always got an answer for that - Scandinavia. Not perfect, but better than any other working examples imo.
Let’s push to get to that level, then worry about improving with things that have never been tried before.
1 Like
I think that was me and it wasn’t a gotcha. I did figure someone like Microbet or suzzer was going to answer it first if anyone did.
What?? Pretty much every person in this thread has friends or family members that have been brainwashed by American propaganda aka Fox News / Newsmax.
“objectively”