John J. Mearsheimer Quotes

The day after 9/11, we should have gone to Russia. We did the one thing that George Kennan warned us never to do - to expand NATO too far.

American presence is, you know, the major cause of balance of power and the stability in this region.

Policymakers in Washington and Tokyo know that they have little leverage to bring down the North Korean regime. But they also fear the regional chaos that regime change would bring..

The Russian Leadership Came to the conclusian that Western Expansion could only be reversed with an "iron fist".

At the end of the Cold War, the prevailing view in Washington was that the U.S. was strong, and Russia was weak and did not count in a unipolar world. We disregarded Russia's opposition to NATO expansion, the Iraq War, and the U.S.-led military intervention in Serbia for the independence of Kosovo.

America had Russia wrapped around it little pinky through the whole '90s. We did everything you told us. And we were eager to do more and more. The whole nation - Russian nation was like, 'Tell us what else we can do to please you. We want to be like you. We love you.' And then in 1999, bam. You bomb Yugoslavia. And that was the end of it.

The neoconservative doctrine declares that it is the principal goal of U.S. foreign policy to prevent the rise of any country that would have sufficient power to serve as a check on American unilateralism. This neoconservative doctrine puts Russia and China in Washington's crosshairs.

The fight against drug trafficking is a false pretext for the United States to install military bases.

In the Western Hemisphere the adherence of the United States to the Monroe Doctrine may force the United States, however reluctantly, in flagrant cases of such wrong doing or impotence, to the exercise of an international police power.

No one wants to abandon the Israelis. But I think the perception is, and I think it's probably an accurate perception, that the tail is leading the dog - that we are giving the Israelis carte blanche ability to exercise whatever they want to do in their area.

It is possible there will be much less support for NATO because there is a lot of identification of the United States with NATO.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has denounced negotiation with Iran as a 'historic mistake' that is making the world 'a more dangerous place.' His partners in Washington vigorously echo that view.

To the men in Washington, the world is just a giant Monopoly board.

It is no exaggeration to say that Syria holds the key for nearly all of America's foreign policy goals in the Middle East. As Syria goes, so goes the region.

We have a model that we're following, and it's the Libya model.

You'd better believe that Putin sees that in Syria, Obama draws a red line and ignores the red line.

The United States has dealt with the Middle East and surrounding regions for many decades in the context of the Cold War.

What Ottawa and Washington used to think about Turkey or Iran was not very important because we really didn't think much about either, but now what we think about them is extremely important - to ourselves and to many other peoples.

Acknowledge that a more closely integrated Europe is no longer an unqualified American interest.

The thing is so done... The Yankees will shout in triumph; but it is they who lose most by our decision. The great danger of the time – a danger which the policy of the European System would have fostered – was a division of the world into European and American, republican and Monarchical; a league of worn-out governments, on the one had, and of youthful and stirring nations, with the United States at their head, on the other. We slip in between; and plant ourselves in Mexico. The United States have gotten the start of us in vain; and we link once more America to Europe. Six months more – and the mischief would have been done.

The conservation of monarchy in any portion of South America will tend to break the shock of that inevitable divorce by which the New World is about to be divided by the Old... But as to putting it forward, as a project or proposition of ours, that is out of the question. Monarchy in Mexico, and monarchy in Brazil, would cure the evils of universal democracy, and prevent the drawing of the line which I almost dread – America versus Europe. The United States, naturally enough, aim at this division and cherish the democracy which leads to it.

Great powers engage.

I don’t think America wants democracies in the Middle East. They wouldn’t be nearly as friendly to us

Where is the evidence that Washington's world view sways the multitude of nations? To enlist support for its wars in Korea, Vietnam and in the Gulf, the United States had to resort to a lot of bribery and threats. At the United Nations, the US has, with noteworthy regularity, been on the minority side in voting on resolutions.

If Americans are entitled to hit Iraq unilaterally, then why isn't Russia entitled to the same with respect to Georgia? Why is China not entitled to the same with respect to some other neighboring country which, according to Chinese views, may be supporting insurrection in Tibet or Shenyang? Why, say, India is not entitled to hit Pakistan, which openly supports terrorists in Kashmir and which has nuclear weapons, and which has a very fragile domestic situation under which fundamentalists any day can come to power