John Mearsheimer - Offensive Realism

Jaksot

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  Episode 8: The Russia I Saw 16.09.2026 46min

  I recently spent 8 days in Russia – September 5-12, 2026 – mainly in Moscow and St. Petersburg. I gave a series of talks and interviews and spoke with numerous people in the Russian security community, including senior figures like Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. In this episode, I describe what I learned during my trip.
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  Episode 7: A Must Read Book on the Israel Lobby 08.09.2026 42min

  Eli Clifton and Ian Lustick have just published a terrific new book called Israel’s Lobby: America in the Grip of a Foreign Power. It appears twenty years after Steve Walt and I published “The Israel Lobby” in The London Review of Books (March 2006), which we turned into a book a year later. Much has happened regarding Israel, the Israel lobby, and the US-Israeli relationship in the two decades since Steve and I first addressed those subjects. Clifton and Lustick do a great job explaining tho...
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  Episode 6: Why Ukraine Is Doomed 01.09.2026 51min

  In recent months, Western news coverage of the Ukraine war tells us that Russia is suffering huge casualties on the battlefield while making hardly any progress capturing Ukrainian territory. At the same time, Ukraine’s long-range drone attacks on the Russian homeland are wreaking havoc, which will improve Ukraine’s position at the bargaining table. In short, Russia is in deep trouble and Ukraine’s situation is hardly dire. This episode explains why this perspective is wrong. Russia is winnin...
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  Episode 5: The False Promise of Tactical Nuclear Weapons 24.08.2026 34min

  There is considerable evidence that the US is interested in “expanding its options” for using its nuclear arsenal. In particular, it appears that the Pentagon would like to increase its reliance on tactical nuclear weapons for both deterrence and warfighting should deterrence fail. I will argue that fighting a war with tactical nuclear weapons is unlikely to produce a meaningful military victory and is likely to have catastrophic consequences. In fact, the US and NATO embraced this ver...
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  Episode 4: The MOU Is Dead! Can a Blockade Save Us? 17.08.2026 32min

  The June 17, 2026, Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) expired today – August 17, 2026. The US has not achieved any of its initial objectives. It is now mainly concerned with opening the Strait of Hormuz without having to accept Iran’s far-reaching demands for ending its blockade of the Strait. The Trump administration is trying to achieve that goal with a naval blockade, a strategy it employed earlier in the war, and which failed. I will argue that the strategic situation facing the US ...
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  Episode 3: Iran Has Trump Over A Barrel 11.08.2026 29min

  The aim of this video is to compare the terms of the new deal to end the Iran war, which key Iranian spokesmen have just described, with those of the June 17, 2026, Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between Tehran and Washington. I will explain why President Trump should have embraced the original MOU instead of walking away. The US has since lost significant bargaining leverage, and is now facing Iranian demands that far exceed those in the original MOU. It is difficult to see how Tr...
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  Episode 2: Trump Must Admit Defeat In Iran 03.08.2026 42min

  In today’s video I’ll explain why I believe a US victory is not possible and why the longer Trump waits to cut a deal with Iran, the worse the outcome for the US. I’ll argue that Trump would have been wise to settle the war months ago, after the initial bombing campaign failed. Instead, he kept looking for some way to win the war or at least find an off ramp that would allow him to make the case that the US achieved some of its goals and did not walk away from the fight empty-handed. B...
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  Episode 1: Origins of the War In Ukraine 30.07.2026 37min

  In this video, my first substantive one, I lay out my theory of conventional deterrence and use it to explain Russian thinking in the run up to the war in Ukraine as well why the war has taken the form it has over the past 4+ years. The key question I address is: why wasn’t Russia deterred from attacking Ukraine? After all, Russia did not have a large and finely-tuned army and the West had gone to substantial lengths to arm and train the Ukrainian army between February 2014 and February 2022...