This guy is brilliant.
Published on Apr 1, 2013:
Dr. John Mearsheimer, the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, presents his recent theories on the rise of China. The lecture took place at the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law on March 26, 2013.
John Mearsheimer says: “The best any country can do is to be a regional hegemon. The United States is a regional hegemon in the Western hemisphere. Your second goal is to make sure you do not have a peer competitor.”
“Most of you have probably never wondered why it is that the United States is roaming all over God’s little green acre, sticking its nose into other people’s business. A principle reason is that we have no security risks in the western hemisphere, so we are free to roam. The United States does not want another power to so thoroughly dominate its part of the world that it is free to roam into the Western hemisphere.
“The United States wants a Germany to have to worry about Russia and France and Britain. It does not want a Germany to so dominate Europe that it is free to wander into the western hemisphere.”
“When the United States started, it was 13 measly colonies strung out along the Atlantic seaboard. We marched across North America to the Pacific Ocean. We murdered huge numbers of native Americans. We stole their land. We went to war with Mexico and stole what is now the Southwest of the United States. We invaded Canada in 1812. We were deeply interested throughout the 19th Century in making Canada part of the United States. The reason that Toronto is not the capital of Canada and Ottawa is the capital, is that the British and Canadians expected us to make a return visit and they did want their capital overrun in the initial stages of the war, so they picked a city farther from the border with the United States. We were deeply interested in conquering more territory south of our border, especially in the Caribbean. The chief reason we didn’t is because of the slavery issue.”
“The United States had a voracious appetite for conquering territory. There is no state in modern times with a better record for conquest than the United States. Adolf Hitler, right after launching Operation Barbarossa on June 22, 1941, into the Soviet Union, often talked about the United States as his model for creating lebensraum (open space). The United States is a highly aggressive state. We call it manifest destiny.”
