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CIAO DATE: 9/99
Transcript: Is Major War Obsolete?
Michael Mandelbaum
John J. Mearsheimer
Great Debate Series
between Professor Michael Mandelbaum and Professor John J. Mearsheimer
Presider: Mr. Fareed Zakaria
New York, N.Y.
February 25, 1999
The following is a transcript of the February 25, 1999, Great Debate, “Is Major War Obsolete?,”sponsored by the New York Meetings Program and Home Box Office. This event was on the record.
Mr. Fareed Zakaria: (Session joined in progress) ...instability rests on something very particular, which is peace among the great powers. And peace among the great powers, somebody once said, is like oxygen: you only notice it when you start getting deprived of it. I think for that reason this subject takes on a heightened importance at this time.
About 30 years ago when he was appointed titular professor of history at Oxford, Michael Howard, the military historian, wrote a book called War and the Liberal Conscience. And in that book he chronicled how, for most of modern history, through the dismal recurrence of war in every continent and every decade, virtually, people had held out the hope that war was going to be obsolete or was going to be somehow ended, or was going to be somehow transformed. And yet war persisted.
What is interesting about this debate is it is not a debate of that nature, since who we have here are two realists, both so much pessimistic about human nature and the interstate condition. And therefore, this debate might well be called “ War and the Realist Conscience,” since we have Michael Mandelbaum and John Mearsheimer debating this question. The topic, importantly, “ Is Major War Obsolete?,” not war itself. And we will begin with Professor Mandelbaum, and then Professor Mearsheimer; shortest rebuttals on either side. I will probably ask a few questions, and then we’ll go straight to questions from the floor. Each presenter will have about 10 minutes, and that should get us to questions quite quickly.
We’re going to begin with Michael, who is in this case representing, I suppose, what we would now call compassionate realism.
Professor Michael Mandelbaum (Christian A. Herter Professor of American Foreign Policy, The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University; Director, Project on East-West Relations, Council on Foreign Relations): Thank you, Fareed. I will, of course, use that with attribution.
An introductory note: The position I’m proposing in this discussion occupies the high ground morally. After all, we all wish to believe that major war is obsolete. But it does not occupy, I must in all honesty say, the high ground intellectually. History and logic weigh on the other side. The burden of proof or, I should say, the burden of argument, for this is a proposition that cannot be proven, is on me. And many of you here will recognize this argument as the descendant of a familiar one, one two centuries old that originates with the philosopher Immanuel Kant, which was proposed in dramatic form by the American President Woodrow Wilson, which is identified with the liberal Anglo-American view of the world.
My argument says, tacitly, that while this point of view, which was widely believed 100 years ago, was not true then, there are reasons to think that it is true now. What is that argument? It is that major war is obsolete. By major war, I mean war waged by the most powerful members of the international system, using all of their resources over a protracted period of time with revolutionary geopolitical consequences.
There have been four such wars in the modern period: the wars of the French Revolution, World War I, World War II, and the Cold War. Few though they have been, their consequences have been monumental. They are, by far, the most influential events in modern history. Modern history which can, in fact, be seen as a series of aftershocks to these four earthquakes.
So if I am right, then what has been the motor of political history for the last two centuries that has been turned off? This war, I argue, this kind of war, is obsolete; less than impossible, but more than unlikely. What do I mean by obsolete? If I may quote from the article on which this presentation is based, a copy of which you received when coming in, “ Major war is obsolete in a way that styles of dress are obsolete. It is something that is out of fashion and, while it could be revived, there is no present demand for it. Major war is obsolete in the way that slavery, dueling, or foot-binding are obsolete. It is a social practice that was once considered normal, useful, even desirable, but that now seems odious. It is obsolete in the way that the central planning of economic activity is obsolete. It is a practice once regarded as a plausible, indeed a superior, way of achieving a socially desirable goal, but that changing conditions have made ineffective at best, counterproductive at worst.”
Why is this so? Most simply, the costs have risen and the benefits of major war have shriveled. The costs of fighting such a war are extremely high because of the advent in the middle of this century of nuclear weapons, but they would have been high even had mankind never split the atom. As for the benefits, these now seem, at least from the point of view of the major powers, modest to non-existent. The traditional motives for warfare are in retreat, if not extinct. War is no longer regarded by anyone, probably not even Saddam Hussein after his unhappy experience, as a paying proposition.
And as for the ideas on behalf of which major wars have been waged in the past, these are in steep decline. Here the collapse of communism was an important milestone, for that ideology was inherently bellicose. This is not to say that the world has reached the end of ideology; quite the contrary. But the ideology that is now in the ascendant, our own, liberalism, tends to be pacific.
Moreover, I would argue that three post-Cold War developments have made major war even less likely than it was after 1945. One of these is the rise of democracy, for democracies, I believe, tend to be peaceful. Now carried to its most extreme conclusion, this eventuates in an argument made by some prominent political scientists that democracies never go to war with one another. I wouldn’t go that far. I don’t believe that this is a law of history, like a law of nature, because I believe there are no such laws of history. But I do believe there is something in it. I believe there is a peaceful tendency inherent in democracy.
Now it’s true that one important cause of war has not changed with the end of the Cold War. That is the structure of the international system, which is anarchic. And realists, to whom Fareed has referred and of whom John Mearsheimer and our guest Ken Waltz are perhaps the two most leading exponents in this country and the world at the moment, argue that that structure determines international activity, for it leads sovereign states to have to prepare to defend themselves, and those preparations sooner or later issue in war.
I argue, however, that a post-Cold War innovation counteracts the effects of anarchy. This is what I have called in my 1996 book, The Dawn of Peace in Europe, common security. By common security I mean a regime of negotiated arms limits that reduce the insecurity that anarchy inevitably produces by transparency-every state can know what weapons every other state has and what it is doing with them-and through the principle of defense dominance, the reconfiguration through negotiations of military forces to make them more suitable for defense and less for attack.
Some caveats are, indeed, in order where common security is concerned. It’s not universal. It exists only in Europe. And there it is certainly not irreversible. And I should add that what I have called common security is not a cause, but a consequence, of the major forces that have made war less likely. States enter into common security arrangements when they have already, for other reasons, decided that they do not wish to go to war.
Well, the third feature of the post-Cold War international system that seems to me to lend itself to warlessness is the novel distinction between the periphery and the core, between the powerful states and the less powerful ones. This was previously a cause of conflict and now is far less important. To quote from the article again, “ While for much of recorded history local conflicts were absorbed into great-power conflicts, in the wake of the Cold War, with the industrial democracies debellicised and Russia and China preoccupied with internal affairs, there is no great-power conflict into which the many local conflicts that have erupted can be absorbed. The great chess game of international politics is finished, or at least suspended. A pawn is now just a pawn, not a sentry standing guard against an attack on a king.”
Now having made the case for the obsolescence of modern war, I must note that there are two major question marks hanging over it: Russia and China. These are great powers capable of initiating and waging major wars, and in these two countries, the forces of warlessness that I have identified are far less powerful and pervasive than they are in the industrial West and in Japan. These are countries, in political terms, in transition, and the political forms and political culture they eventually will have is unclear. Moreover, each harbors within its politics a potential cause of war that goes with the grain of the post-Cold War period-with it, not against it-a cause of war that enjoys a certain legitimacy even now; namely, irredentism.
War to reclaim lost or stolen territory has not been rendered obsolete in the way that the more traditional causes have. China believes that Taiwan properly belongs to it. Russia could come to believe this about Ukraine, which means that the Taiwan Strait and the Russian-Ukrainian border are the most dangerous spots on the planet, the places where World War III could begin.
In conclusion, let me say what I’m not arguing. I’m not saying that we’ve reached the end of all conflict, violence or war; indeed, the peace I’ve identified at the core of the international system has made conflict on the periphery more likely. Nor am I suggesting that we have reached the end of modern, as distinct from major, war; modern war involving mechanized weapons, formal battles, and professional troops. Nor am I offering a single-factor explanation. It’s not simply nuclear weapons or just democracy or only a growing aversion to war. It’s not a single thing; it’s everything: values, ideas, institutions, and historical experience. Nor, I should say, do I believe that peace is automatic. Peace does not keep itself.
But what I think we may be able to secure is more than the peace of the Cold War based on deterrence. The political scientist Carl Deutcsh once defined a security community as something where warlessness becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Well, he was referring to the North Atlantic community, which was bound tightly together because of the Cold War. But to the extent that my argument is right, all of Eurasia and the Asia-Pacific region will become, slowly, haltingly but increasingly, like that.
Thank you.
Mr. Zakaria: Thank you very much, Michael. That was very well and eloquently laid out, and also almost entirely within the time limit. For some odd reason, the Council procedure has the light go off on my podium, but I will try and do something about it. I should have added biographical sketches for the two guests; not that they need them. But Michael holds a chair in American Foreign Policy at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Study. And John Mearsheimer holds a chair in International Relations, or Political Science, really, at the University of Chicago. John has often been called a hyperrealist. I think you will discover there is very little hyper about John Mearsheimer, a very studied, determined man, but I think it would be fair to call him a pure realist. John.
Professor John J. Mearsheimer (1998-99 Whitney H. Shepardson Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations; R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago): Thank you very much, Fareed.
The question on the table is whether or not great-power war is obsolete, and I’d like to start by first defining what I mean by great-power war, and then what I mean by obsolescence. By great-power war, what we’re talking about here are wars involving two great powers or more fighting against each other. We’re not talking about wars between great powers and minor powers, and certainly not minor versus minor powers. We’re talking about great power versus great-power wars. Some examples would be Russia versus China in Asia, Japan versus China, the United States versus China, Germany versus Russia. Those are the sorts of cases we’re talking about.
Secondly, the question of what it means to say that war is obsolete. I think it’s important for analytical purposes to distinguish between what I call the obsolescence argument and the deterrence argument. And Michael was actually quite eloquent on this, so I’m not saying anything that contradicts him. I just want to build on it a bit. The obsolescence argument, which is the one on the table, says that war is no longer a meaningful social instrument. It serves no useful purpose. There’s no practical reason for two great powers to go to war against each other. It’s kind of gone the way of dueling and slavery, to use John Mueller’s famous phrase, which Michael, of course, uses in his Survival piece as well. That’s the obsolescence argument.
The deterrence argument is that states still compete with themselves for security, and they oftentimes compete very intensely. But the fact of the matter is that sometimes deterrence is not very hard to achieve, and as a result, even though you have a lot of intense security competition, you don’t have war in the system, because deterrence works. I think a good example of this would be the Cold War. The fact of the matter is the two great powers never fought each other directly in the Cold War, and it wasn’t because war was obsolescent. There was nobody running around like Michael from 1945 to 1990 saying war was obsolescent. On the contrary, right?
So what I’m saying here is you can have an absence of war, but it can be for two different sets of reasons; one the obsolescence rationale that Michael laid out, and two the deterrence rationale.
Now I think the central claim that’s on the table is wrong-headed, and let me tell you why. First of all, there are a number of good reasons why great powers in the system will think seriously about going to war in the future, and I’ll give you three of them and try and illustrate some cases. First, states oftentimes compete for economic resources. Is it hard to imagine a situation where a reconstituted Russia gets into a war with the United States and the Persian Gulf over Gulf oil? I don’t think that’s implausible. Is it hard to imagine Japan and China getting into a war in the South China Sea over economic resources? I don’t find that hard to imagine.
A second reason that states go to war which, of course, is dear to the heart of realists like me, and that’s to enhance their security. Take the United States out of Europe, put the Germans on their own; you got the Germans on one side and the Russians on the other, and in between a huge buffer zone called eastern or central Europe. Call it what you want. Is it impossible to imagine the Russians and the Germans getting into a fight over control of that vacuum? Highly likely, no, but feasible, for sure. Is it hard to imagine Japan and China getting into a war over the South China Sea, not for resource reasons but because Japanese sea-lines of communication run through there and a huge Chinese navy may threaten it? I don’t think it’s impossible to imagine that.
What about nationalism, a third reason? China, fighting in the United States over Taiwan? You think that’s impossible? I don’t think that’s impossible. That’s a scenario that makes me very nervous. I can figure out all sorts of ways, none of which are highly likely, that the Chinese and the Americans end up shooting at each other. It doesn’t necessarily have to be World War III, but it is great-power war. Chinese and Russians fighting each other over Siberia? As many of you know, there are huge numbers of Chinese going into Siberia. You start mixing ethnic populations in most areas of the world outside the United States and it’s usually a prescription for big trouble. Again, not highly likely, but possible. I could go on and on, positing a lot of scenarios where great powers have good reasons to go to war against other great powers.
Second reason: There is no question that in the twentieth century, certainly with nuclear weapons but even before nuclear weapons, the costs of going to war are very high. But that doesn’t mean that war is ruled out. The presence of nuclear weapons alone does not make war obsolescent. I will remind you that from 1945 to 1990, we lived in a world where there were thousands of nuclear weapons on both sides, and there was nobody running around saying, “ War is obsolescent.” So you can’t make the argument that the mere presence of nuclear weapons creates peace. India and Pakistan are both going down the nuclear road. You don’t hear many people running around saying, “ That’s going to produce peace.” And, furthermore, if you believe nuclear weapons were a great cause of peace, you ought to be in favor of nuclear proliferation. What we need is everybody to have a nuclear weapon in their back pocket. You don’t hear many people saying that’s going to produce peace, do you?
Conventional war? Michael’s right; conventional war was very deadly before nuclear weapons came along, but we still had wars. And the reason we did is because states come up with clever strategies. States are always looking for clever strategies to avoid fighting lengthy and bloody and costly wars of attrition. And they sometimes find them, and they sometimes go to war for those reasons. So there’s no question in my mind that the costs of war are very high, and deterrence is not that difficult to achieve in lots of great-power security situations. But on the other hand, to argue that war is obsolescent-I wouldn’t make that argument.
My third and final point here is, the fact of the matter is, that there’s hardly anybody in the national security establishment-and I bet this is true of Michael-who believes that war is obsolescent. I’m going to tell you why I think this is the case. Consider the fact that the United States stations roughly 100,000 troops in Europe and 100,000 troops in Asia. We spend an enormous amount of money on defense. We’re spending almost as much money as we were spending during the Cold War on defense. We spend more money than the next six countries in the world spend on defense. The questions is, why are we spending all this money? Why are we stationing troops in Europe? Why are we stationing troops in Asia? Why are we concentrating on keeping NATO intact and spreading it eastward?
I’ll tell you why, because we believe that if we don’t stay there and we pull out, trouble is going to break out, and not trouble between minor powers, but trouble between major powers. That’s why we’re there. We know very well that if we leave Europe, the Germans are going to seriously countenance, if not automatically go, and get nuclear weapons. Certainly the case with the Japanese. Do you think the Germans and the Japanese are going to stand for long not to have nuclear weapons? I don’t think that’s the case. Again, that security zone between the Germans and the Russians-there’ll be a real competition to fill that.
The reason we’re there in Europe, and the reason that we’re there in Asia is because we believe that great-power war is a potential possibility, which contradicts the argument on the table. So I would conclude by asking Michael if, number one, he believes we should pull out of Europe and pull out of Asia, and number two, if he does not, why not?
Thank you.
Mr. Zakaria: Well, John, that’s a perfect rhetorical note to end on, because-it’s not really rhetorical since you have now have two minutes to respond.
Prof. Mearsheimer: Good.
Prof. Mandelbaum: Good points. First, it is the case that I’m arguing for obsolescence and not deterrence. To argue that nuclear weapons deter and will continue to deter may be correct; I think it is correct, but it’s uninteresting. It’s not an argument worth coming out on a cold February evening to hear. Second, it is, I think, easy enough to argue plausibly that the economic motive is a false one; that is, any of the scenarios in which a major power would go to war for economic reasons would end up a losing proposition. The lesson of the Cold War is that the way you get rich is by participating in the international division of labor or, as it’s sometimes called, the world market.
But my argument requires going further. It requires not only asserting that that’s true, but that the major powers will come to believe it’s true. And I think that the Western powers already do believe it, and I think there’s reason to hope, although not to be certain, over time that Russia and China will come to believe it.
Now on the issue of Russia and China, John is quite right: the American presence in Europe is a necessary condition for peace or what I call common security, and that is true as well in the Asia-Pacific region. If the United States left Europe, the Germans and then the Russians would have to recalculate. If the United States left the Asia-Pacific region, the Japanese and then the Chinese would have to recalculate. So I certainly do not think that the United States should leave.
Nonetheless, I don’t believe that that is inconsistent with my argument, because I do believe, and I’ve argued in The Dawn of Peace in Europe, that the role the United States plays, certainly in Europe, is not classically deterrence but reassurance, which is something different and a bridge toward a distant day when enough confidence has been achieved and arms have been reduced to a low enough level that the United States can leave Europe, or rather, that the United States will have left Europe and no one will notice. But my argument certainly does require a continuing American presence in the Asia-Pacific region and on the European continent. It doesn’t require a lot of other things that we’re spending money on.
Mr. Zakaria: I think we’re going to have to leave it at that. John, can I ask you maybe to answer the question that Michael raised implicitly, which is: Isn’t it true that, particularly in the sort of post-industrial economic societies, the purpose of conquest, the traditional purpose of a conquest, the extraction of resources of some kind or the other, becomes somewhat problematic? Let us say China decides that it wants to invade Taiwan and make it a rich province of China. Since all Taiwan has is human capital, it will be a somewhat self-defeating proposition, as it would be if it were to try to brutally take over Hong Kong or something. So the use of military conflict to achieve those kinds of economic ends seems made more complex by the fact that you’re not talking about extracting resources.
Prof. Mearsheimer: Let me make three quick points on that. One is, there’s a book by Peter Liberman, who actually teaches at Queens College, called Does Conquest Pay? which addresses this issue. And it shows very nicely that even though we live in the post-industrial age, conquest does pay, and that you can extract resources when you conquer countries in the modern age.
Second point is, even if you don’t buy that argument, you can still make the raw-materials argument, which is the one that I went to because it’s the easier argument to make, involving things like the South China Sea and oil in the Persian Gulf.
And my third and final point would be, even if you take the economic arguments off the table-let’s say that they just don’t hold any water-the security arguments remain alive and well. We knocked the Soviet Union down the toilet bowl during the Cold War. It produced no economic benefits for us, but what it did was it eliminated our principal competitor, which, from a realist’s perspective, is a wonderful thing. And I think most people in the audience think it was a wonderful thing. It had no economic benefits, but it had significant strategic benefits, because we wanted no peer competitors in the world because that’s the way we like it.
Mr. Zakaria: But what about the argument Michael makes about common security? You wrote a very famous article in International Security and The Atlantic Monthly called “ Back to the Future,” in which you argued that Europe was going to go back to the future to a kind of nineteenth century world of shifting alliances, power politics, and great-power war. You know, you have to look at Europe now, 10 years later, and say that hasn’t happened. And most people, I think, find it difficult to believe that France and Germany are going to go to war. A, is that true, and if that’s true, what is it about the world you look at that convinces you that France and Germany could still go to war?
Prof. Mearsheimer: That’s a good question. I wrote this piece, “ Back to the Future,” where I said, assuming the Cold War ends, which means the Soviet Union, which was still intact at the time, pulls out of the eastern two-thirds of Europe, and the United States pulls out of the western one-third of Europe. Then you’d sort of go back to good, old-fashioned great-power security competition. But what’s happened is that the United States has not left western Europe, and that gets back to the point that I made at the end of my talk in response to Michael, where I said, as long as the United States stays in Europe and stays in Asia in a big way and serves as what Joe Jaffe nicely called the American pacifier role, then you’re not going to have that much trouble. There’s no question about that. But the point I made to Michael was that the reason that we are staying there is because we understand full well that sitting there right below the surface is a very powerful potential for great-power competition.
This brings us to the second question that my friend Fareed raises, which is, how can anyone imagine the French and the Germans sort of getting into a tiff? Here’s basically the way it happens. Take the Americans out. The real security vacuum in Europe is in between the Germans on one hand and the Russians on the other. It’s called central Europe. That’s where the security competition is going to take place, number one. The second big security problem is that the Germans don’t have nuclear weapons. Absent the nuclear umbrella of the United States, they’re going to have very powerful incentives to get nuclear weapons. It’s the competition between Germany and Russia that’s going to scare the living bejesus out of the French and will cause the French to ally with the Russians against the Germans. It’s happened before World War I and should have happened before World War II.
Mr. Zakaria: OK. Michael, your argument, as I see it, sort of rests on arms control and domestic politics, what you call the common security created by a web of arms-control agreements. And the second is, in effect, the embourgeoisement of western Europe and the advanced industrial world in general. Now it strikes me that arms control is the consequence of great-power peace, not the cause, and I’d like to know, I guess, do you really believe that signing arms-control treaties is what produced the relaxation of great-power tensions, or is in fact the consequence of the relaxation of those tensions?
And on the second issue of the domestic transformation of societies, you could look at the world in the 1920s and you would see most great powers, liberal democracies of the world, characterized by open world economics, liberalization, etc. The problem is just one or two great powers live in a different historical space than the other nice, fat liberal democracies, and they can drag the world, as Germany dragged the world, into a world war. I mean, the simplest example is, obviously, China, which might decide that-you know, you can imagine the situation: Taiwan declares independence, China decides it will not tolerate this; Japan and the United States are drawn in. The United States still conforms to your profile, but you still end up with a great-power war.
Prof. Mandelbaum: Well, I agree with everything you said, Fareed. You’re quite right, and I thought I made this point-I should have made it-that arms control is a consequence, not a cause, of peace. But I place greater emphasis on arms control than most people do because I think once countries have decided for peace, arms control can be very helpful in dealing with the cause of war that John and Ken have taught us is so important, and that is the structure of the system. So I believe that arms control does have a great role to play after the political basis for peace has been laid.
It has not fully been laid in Russia and China, and they do represent the great problems. And I can’t say that those problems will be solved, insofar as they can be solved, anytime soon, although I think one difference between John and me is that, with a major caveat, I can imagine a peaceful Europe without the United States with a certain kind of Russia, a Russia that we’re very far from having at this point. The caveat is that even there there would be a problem in removing the United States, because Germany lacks nuclear weapons, and nuclear weapons will always be an existential fact.
Nonetheless, I have greater faith in the pacific possibilities of the evolution of domestic political systems than I suspect John does, and you rightly identified that as an important part of my argument.
If I can make one other point; when I first gave this talk in Oxford at the annual conference of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, and somebody got up and said, ’You know, you’re just repeating the mistake of Norman Angell, the man who wrote the book The Grand Illusion in the first part of the century saying, “ War could never happen."’ And shortly thereafter, World War I broke out. And, indeed, it could have been said in the 1920s that war really was finished, given what had happened between 1914 and 1918, and yet we know what happened between 1939 and 1945. So Fareed raises a point which is germane and which has to be dealt with in my argument.
I chose to deal with it then, and I will beg your indulgence to deal with it now by telling one of my favorite jokes. The joke is about the two men sitting in front of the television set watching the eleven o’clock news. On the eleven o’clock news there’s a man threatening to jump off the top of a 20-story building. The first watcher says to the second, ‘I’ll bet you 100 bucks he jumps.’ The second guy says, ‘You’re on.’ Sure enough, the man jumps off the building. The second man reaches into his pocket, pulls out his wallet, and starts to peel off $100. The first guy says, ‘Wait a minute. I can’t take your money.’ Second guy says, ‘What do you mean?’ First guy says, ‘I have a confession to make. I saw this on the six o’clock news.’ Second guys says, ‘Well, so did I, but I couldn’t believe he’d be dumb enough to do it twice.’
It seems to me that the fact of the twentieth century argues in favor of my point of view. And it also seems to me that those of us who make our living from education are poorly placed to argue that people never learn anything. Surely what has happened in the twentieth century has made an impact even in Russia and China, not just with us.
Mr. Zakaria: All right. We’re going to open it up to the floor now. There are people with microphones. Please make sure you wait until somebody comes along. Sir, at the back. Please identify yourself before you ask your question.
Questioner: I think Dr. Mandelbaum’s argument is most persuasive when you consider great powers rationally contemplating alternative courses of action, one of which might be the possibility of war with another great power. But the one likely scenario is a response to terrorist attack. We saw how fickly, and some would say, inadvisably, the administration attacked the Sudan after a terrorist act in Kenya, under political circumstances where the very popular reaction among the people seemed to justify such an attack. But what if there’s a major attack on New York City-biological or even a small nuclear weapon which, from what I read in The New York Times, the intelligence community is getting more and more concerned about? Doesn’t a great power kind of lose a little bit of rational control over the demands of the people for a quick response, and a quick response to a presumed source of terrorism creates the kind of risk of great-power confrontation?
Mr. Zakaria: I’m going to take a couple more questions, just so we can get some more in. Michael.
Questioner: Thank you. Michael Mandelbaum, I’m struck by the possibility that you’ve acknowledged that this is not irreversible, this trend towards obsolescence. In order to make sure or to maximize the possibility that it is irreversible, do we not have to act as if it’s not? In other words, how do we act, in a policy sense, with what seems to me the risk that if we accept the argument that it’s obsolescent, we’re less likely to do the things that’ll make it so? In other words, do we have to behave as John Mearsheimer would have us behave to achieve your goal?
Mr. Zakaria: Well, why don’t, Michael, you take both, since they’re both...
Prof. Mandelbaum: OK. Those are both fair questions. I don’t think that responding to terrorism or bombing Afghanistan is going to trigger a major war. And I do not expect major powers to attack each other via terrorism. If that were to happen, that would certainly count against my argument.
The question of what policies ought to be followed is an interesting one and a fair one. I would say-I would give you a partial answer in these terms. First, I think it is important to try to work for common security regimes to strengthen the one in Europe which, alas, NATO expansion does not do, and to do whatever is possible-and now not very much is possible-to build the foundations of one in the Asia-Pacific region. But in general, I would say that the forces on which I rely for making war obsolete are not susceptible to manipulation by policy instruments. They are broad, ongoing social forces. And therefore, my policy prescription is for the United States to contribute to keeping in place the relatively benign geopolitical structure so that Russia and China will have a chance to be operated on by these benign social forces, and so that the peace with Russia and China will slowly, and perhaps subtly, be transformed from one based on deterrence, which is now partly the case, to one based on an acceptance of a common framework. But that requires domestic changes in these countries that won’t happen overnight.
Mr. Zakaria: But if I may just add, Michael-I assume there are about six great powers in the world. You’re excluding two from your argument. Just sort of aside from that, the argument is fine, but, I mean, if you’re saying that, well, you know, there may be wars involving Russia or China, but other than that we won’t have major great-power war, that’s a big if.
Prof. Mandelbaum: Well, I would say that if you accept that the forces of warlessness have triumphed in the most powerful part of the international system, something that could not have been said in the last 25 centuries, that’s no small thing. I would also argue that these forces are at work on Russia and China, although I do have to concede that the relatively benign policies these countries are now pursuing, the absence of challenges that could lead to major war, does derive in part from weakness and in part from deterrence. But I think, although it’s true that I cannot make the same claim for Russia and China that I make for North America, western Europe, and Japan, I regard the claim I do make as being a substantial one, and I think one piece of evidence for that is that John doesn’t agree with it.
Prof. Mearsheimer: But I would just say that it’s a contradiction to argue that war is obsolescent, and then say that China and Russia, who are two great powers, might start a great-power war. It’s just a contradiction.
Mr. Zakaria: [Another question.]
Questioner: The U.S. is not obsolete, at least in its function of balancing. I guess my category questions are that Michael seems to have pushed off the board surrogate wars. If we and Primakov are implicitly at war in Iraq, if Russia’s really selling to Iraq and we’re going to have a slow attriting air war in the no-fly zones, why doesn’t that count? And you also don’t seem to take account of the decivilizing effect of democracy, that although you and I are benefiting from the global market, many folks in Russia aren’t. So the more democratically controlled countries are, the less they may respond to your rational after-model. It may be that, again, cosmopolite Mandarins wouldn’t go to war, but Lebed’s people or Lukashenko’s people might.
Prof. Mandelbaum: Well, I said that war is obsolete; I didn’t say foreign policy is obsolete. I think if you regard my argument as requiring whoever is prime minister of Russia to agree with every foreign policy the United States chooses to carry on, then it’s true this goal will never be reached. And if you substitute France for Russia, it’s equally true.
As for the bellicosity of democracy, well, the gentleman to my right has written not yet the book, but the article on that. There is evidence that new, badly established democracies without the rule of law can be bellicose. I’m not sure I agree that they are more bellicose than good, old-fashioned autocracies, but I think Fareed Zakaria’s codicil to the democratic peace argument has merit, and I subscribe to it.
Mr. Zakaria: Well, that would be a great note to end the debate on, but it turns out we have a good long while. So...
Questioner: The world we live in is not as rational as you paint it, even if someone had seen it on the six o’clock news and never thought they would do it again. I would postulate the possibility of the Russians taking action out of desperation, the kind of desperation they’re now facing on hunger and disease and everything else, and then us responding to that action perhaps by a preemptive strike, because preemption is one of the things that we are always prepared to do. And then a war took place. It wasn’t a rational process; it wasn’t a thoughtful process. It was just what happened.
Mr. Zakaria: Let’s, again, take a couple more. I think there was somebody back there. Yeah.
Questioner: It seems that social institutions become obsolete not on their own, but when they’re replaced by a better alternative. Slavery became obsolete due to industrialization, dueling due to effective court systems. What institution or what practice would make war obsolete as a means of resolving great-power disputes? And if that institution is, in fact, international regimes, how would those regimes constrain great powers from using force to resolve disputes?
Mr. Zakaria: What replaces war?
Prof. Mandelbaum: Well, I would not necessarily accept the premise that there must be a replacement for war. I think you would be better off addressing that argument to John, if he took my position, because he believes that security competition is endemic. I would put war not in the categories that you suggest it, but I would analogize it to foot-binding. What has replaced foot-binding, you know? Common sense, I guess.
Questioner: I’d like to elaborate on the question that [was previously asked.] And there seems to be an assumption of rationality on the part of the great powers that both professors are approaching this problem with. When we read in the newspaper that Yeltsin is very upset about possible NATO intervention in Kosovo, as we did back with Bosnia-Herzegovina, and we know that Yeltsin is not a stable man, what about the elements of irrationality, the possibility that there might be a nationalist fringe in Russia that could set off a nuclear war by accident? That’s what scares, I think, a lot of citizens more than a rational quotient of war.
Mr. Zakaria: Let me ask John to begin by answering this, because your argument is not that states will go to war for some blindly irrational reason. You think it’s perfectly logical, right?
Prof. Mearsheimer: Yes.
Mr. Zakaria: I mean, there could be perfectly rational reasons.
Prof. Mearsheimer: Well, just a couple quick points on this. I think, as Fareed said in the very beginning, both Michael and I loosely fit into the realist tradition, me much more so than Michael. But we both, I think, fit into the realist tradition. And as such, I think it’s fair to say that both of us are operating on the assumption, by and large, that states behave rationally. I would argue-I don’t know what Michael would say on this-that because the costs of war are so high that it is very rare that states behave irrationally. I think the greater danger that you have to worry about is the threat of an accident, and you used the word ’accident’ yourself. But an accidental nuclear war, as horrible as that would be, is really not the subject that we’re talking about here. We’re talking about purposeful nuclear war or purposeful conventional war between two great powers. Again, not to say it’s not a subject, but not the subject on the table.
Mr. Zakaria: Michael, anything to add?
Questioner: Where would you put in this argument a possible conflict between two great powers that didn’t escalate into a large war? I mean, the problem with World War I and II was that it escalated. A conflict by an accident or by an unstable leader that could be solved by diplomacy, or by the factors which Michael points to, could solve a conflict very quickly.
Mr. Zakaria: But do you mean a conflict between minor powers that then results in great powers siding with...
Questioner: That’s a second argument, but two great powers who happen to have, as this gentleman was talking about, a weak Yeltsin or an accident or something like that.
Mr. Zakaria: Somebody has to go to war for the...
Questioner: But is war defined as injury by one party to another, or is it defined by a great conflict? And I think that the possibility of one nation possibly injuring another is vastly different than one nation, two nations deciding to go at war over an extended period.
Mr. Zakaria: But give me an example of injuring.
Questioner: With the example in the back: Yeltsin’s very weak; someone happens to get control and fires a missile that injures somewhere in Europe or, heaven behold, America. Does that mean we’re going to go to war, or does that mean we’re going to sit around and talk about it for exactly the reasons that Michael mentioned?
Prof. Mandelbaum: Well, as I said in response to [an earlier] comment, I do not envision the end of foreign policy. I do not envision...here I do think that we have a disagreement. I think that we do understand escalation quite well and we do have good reasons to believe that it won’t happen. Korea is the hardest case, to be sure, but we had peripheral conflict drawing in the great powers because the great powers saw their interests at stake and believed that if they suffered a setback in the periphery it would come closer to home. This was the domino theory.
With the advance, at least, of great-power rivalry what happens in the periphery becomes much less important and we’ve already seen that. And if I may again indulge myself by reading from the original article, “ ...when the world is integrated powerful countries can justify fighting weak adversaries or waging war far from their borders, or both, on the grounds of self defense...” That is you stop them there because otherwise it’ll come closer. “ When the war is disaggregated, the rationale loses its force. One of the most vivid examples of the workings of an integrated international system was the scramble for Africa at the end of the nineteenth century when the European powers rushed to stake out positions and control territory simply to preempt their rivals. The opposite dynamic was recently on display in the Balkans. The collapse of authority in Europe’s poorest and most backward country in 1997 set off a scramble from Albania. The countries of western Europe maneuvered to avoid taking any responsibility for its fate. The Italians, handicapped by geographic proximity, were the losers.”
Well I think we see this dynamic operating and it is a consequence of the changes at the heart of the international system. Prime Minister Primakov’s interest in Iraq to the contrary not withstanding. It is a consequence of the changes that I have cited.
Questioner: Both of you are also realists also in the sense that except for your last remark about Albania and Yugoslavia, actually, you are treating states as givens in the international system and states as the actors. Now, since we are talking about some of these somewhat hypothetical scenarios. What if one of these great powers, in particular Russia or China, suffered a severe crisis that led to the collapse of internal authority and some kind of major civil conflict. We’ve already seen of course a fairly significant civil conflict in Russia on the border with the Caucuses. Signs of that possibly in the future in China, particularly if there is a vast national crisis there and if that happens. It is of course possible that neighbors, and these two countries are neighbors, could be drawn in.
One, is that remotely plausible in your view? And second, how does it count for your arguments?
Mr. Fareed Zakaria: Let me just take one more and then...
Questioner: It seems to me that one of the points that we’re implying but not completely stating is that if you look at the history of the last 100 years, certainly in terms of the great powers. The escalations usually come out of messy situations in a series of events that certainly no one anticipates at the time. And, you know, you don’t need to look too...it’s Bosnia-Herzegovina in World War I. It’s the Japanese doing things in China at the beginning of World War II. And when I look at the map right now and look at French West Africa or central Asia, you know the Balkanization of these new independent states and energy just adding fuel to the fire. The thing I worry about, and I think that lots of other people worry about, is that you could get a series of events that could tempt one great power or another to move into what looks like a more enticing morsel or take too advantageous a position to deny and then there is a series of unanticipated domino effects that fall out of that. John if you can comment on that.
Prof. Mearsheimer: On World War I and World War II, I actually don’t believe that in either case it was a case of escalation from a minor crisis to a major crisis. I think in World War I which is the trickiest case for me that basically the Germans pushed the Austro-Hungarians, the Germans were looking to start a continental war in Europe. It wasn’t a bottom up phenomenon as it is often described. I actually don’t think you have a lot of escalation causing wars before 1945, but I think it is you describe a serious potential problem in the post-Cold War period that we would think about so everything you said is music to my ears. With regard to [the previous questioner], everything you said is music to my ears. I think it is a very plausible scenario. Not a likely scenario, but a plausible scenario in both the case of China and in the case of Russia, and who’s to say who would get drawn into a war like that.
Prof. Mandelbaum: Let me comment. You raised the possibility of escalation via the collapse of a structure of an existing structure and outside powers rushing in to lap up these enticing morsels. These morsels are not, these are not enticing. And they don’t even have the enticement that they had historically. Balkan wars are not an unfamiliar part of European history. There were three or four of them between 1875 and 1912, and they were all settled when the great powers intervened to impose a solution using the superior forces of the great powers, because the great powers calculated that if they didn’t intervene to get a settlement, they would be drawn in by their ongoing security competition. No great power could afford to let another great-power grab off a disproportionate chunk. Well what happened when the successor to the Ottomans or the successor to the Hapsburgs, or I guess both, that is Yugoslavia collapse. The great powers stayed out because they had no interest there. And they didn’t care whether anyone else came in and took a morsel and that’s the reason the wars in Yugoslavia have been so destructive, because the outside powers, the United Sates emphatically included, do not see sufficient interest there to spend the resources necessary to go in and pacify it. And that is, I would argue, a major break in history.
Questioner: Professor Mandelbaum, how does the American policy of strategic ambiguity in the Taiwan straight fit into your general theory of the obsolescence of war between great powers?
Prof. Mandelbaum: Well, it fits in as I’ve said, this is the trouble spot. This is the place where deterrents is still important but where we hope that internal changes on the mainland will create a China that will not regard military action to secure control of Taiwan as thinkable. So we hope to have it both ways. It seems to me that is the appropriate policy. One tries to keep this framework in place and hope that the forces of what in social science generally are called modernization work on China. They surely are working on China, although we don’t know at what rate. My argument which I think John may well disagree or he certainly doesn’t subscribe to it to the extent that I do, is that the forces, these broad social forces known as modernization, lead to an aversion to war.
Mr. Fareed Zakaria: Weren’t France and Germany modernizing in the first half of the twentieth century?
Prof. Mandelbaum: Indeed they were, but plainly, especially Germany, they weren’t modern enough.
Prof. Mearsheimer: I would say that when you talk about modernization, one of the most powerful modernizing forces of the world is nationalism. Nationalism is sometimes a force for peace and sometimes a force for war.
Questioner: A comment and a question for both of you. The comment is, it sounds like rather than obsolescence or prevalence of great-power war, what you guys are talking about sounds like really a little more like the old Defcon system we had for nuclear war during the Cold War. It sounds like what you are really talking about is where the world system is on defense conditions in one, two, three, four, or five, and really how close are we and at what stages would we have to go through to get closer to a general war. And with that point, it seems to be that the United States actually plays a great role in both of your theories. And I’d be curious for each of you to speak on the role the U.S. plays. Professor Mandelbaum, in how much of, how much is U.S. policy responsible for keeping things on keel and preventing us from going down to Defcon one? And Professor Mearsheimer, how much is the United States responsible for preventing the outbreak of war and why is it likely to keep doing that and therefore make your predictions less likely to come true?
Mr. Fareed Zakaria: Let me ask you to start John, and specifically, do you support a continued and essentially indefinite role for U.S. troops in Europe and Asia, which is the logical consequence of your view?
Prof. Mearsheimer: No. This is a whole other can of worms. Let me make two points. One is the heart and soul of my argument is that the reason you don’t have any trouble in Asia and Europe today is in large part because of the presence of the United States and the fact that the United States, coming out of the Cold War, has so much more relative power than all of the other great powers in both Europe and Asia. For those of you who really want to read what I think is the best piece on this was a 1984 piece written in Foreign Policy, can I say that here, by Joe Joffe, who of course has written for Foreign Affairs many times, about the role of the United States as Europe’s pacifier. So that is the heart and soul of my argument and that’s where I am arguing Michael has a major contradiction.
Then you raised the question whether or not we are likely to stay. I’ll give you my thumbnail sketch theory on when the United States goes into Europe and Asia, and when it comes out when we’re willing to fight in die in Europe and Asia. It’s when there’s a potential hegemon in those regions when there’s a pure competitor. We don’t fight to maintain stability in Europe, and we don’t fight to maintain stability in Asia. And I think the only place you can make the case at this point in time we’re likely to stay is China because I think China looks like a pure competitor. It’s hard to see a pure competitor in Europe. And when people tell me that they worry about a resurge in Russia, I tell them, look, the Germans and the French are big boys and big girls-they can take care of themselves. These are rich countries; there’s no reason we have to defend them. Let them defend themselves. If they get into a spat, that’s there problem, not ours.
Mr. Fareed Zakaria: So you still think the sequence will be a withdrawal of the United States from Europe which will then lead to interpower rivalry and possibly a great-power war?
Prof. Mearsheimer: Yes. That is my argument as to what will happen. Because, again, I don’t think the United States, and I could go through the history and it’s quite clear on this history, if we don’t go into World War I until 1917, war breaks out in 1914, we sit on the sidelines. We go in in 1917 because in 1917 it looks like Germany is going to win the war. Adolph Hitler comes into power 1933, he starts World War II on September 1, 1939. We don’t do a turn around until the summer of 1940, with the fall of France where we think Hitler is on the verge of conquering all of Europe. It is in the summer of 1940 when isolationism is jettison and the United States goes in. And I could tell you the same story with regard to Japan in the Far East, but I don’t think you are going to get the American people to be willing to pay the blood price of fighting a major war in Europe there is a pure competitor over there.
Mr. Fareed Zakaria: Michael, if your argument is true, at least in Asia I think you’ve made your point. The United States needs to stay to allow modernization to take place. Why does it need to stay in Europe?
Prof. Mandelbaum: Let me come to that. It is a good question, but let me respond to [the previous one]. What I am arguing is that we have a new lower stage of Defcon that we never had before. We can never get rid of it entirely as long as we have our anarchy, which is as long as we’re going to be around. But I am arguing that there is a new lower, safer, qualitatively different stage. As to the question of how important the United States is, it is very important. It is crucial because in so far as there must be deterrents in the world to keep the peace, it’s the United States that is the agent of deterrents.
Now I come to Fareed’s point. John and I come out differently in our policy prescriptions for the United States in Europe and in the Asia-Pacific region. The reason I suspect is, although as you can see John is perfectly capable of explaining himself and doesn’t need me to paraphrase him, the reason is that I believe that the American presence can be and already is a bridge to something else-a bridge to this lower Defcon. John, I think, does not believe that, and therefore you look at the American presence differently. I think that the American presence is part of a segue into a lower Defcon into common security. My sense is that John believes that what I regard as an important innovation in international politics, common security is at best temporary and at worst a dangerous illusion which is bound to dissolve into a familiar pattern at the game of nations and that being the case, when it happens, for the specific reason that he sites, we would be better off with the Europeans defending themselves. We really do have a major difference.
Prof. Mearsheimer: Not a dangerous illusion, just an illusion.
Mr. Fareed Zakaria: As an editor here, I have to interject something
Prof. Mandelbaum: You really know how to hurt a guy.
Mr. Fareed Zakaria: Michael’s wife mouths to me, “ What is Defcon"? Defcon is a defense condition-the level of alert at which the American nuclear forces are kept. What is it at now, Gideon? Do you know? Larry, do you know?
Mr. Fareed Zakaria: It’s the lowest, so depending on what’s high and what’s low.
Questioner: Both of you placed yourself in the realist school and you each defined that or accepted a definition of that as a belief that states act rationally, then I’d like to take the risky step of challenging you both. I’d like to ask what the historical basis of this is? Apart from the successful conclusion of the most recent war, the Cold War where thanks in some part to the relative insurance that the leaders of both sides would be killed instantly if the conflict broke out, we managed to avoid one so in some way acted rationally. Let’s look at a scenario since we’ve all had one. China. They continue to develop an ability to threaten the U.S. homeland directly with nuclear missiles that become increasingly accurate. This becomes increasingly unacceptable to segments of the U.S. political spectrum and population; we issue an ultimatum, they do not comply.
So, we have a return, in effect, to a Cold War situation. It’s your belief, I guess, that we will once again come rationally, i.e., realistically, through this with a similar outcome such as we have today. And yet there has been no alteration that I can detect in the human DNA and the only successful example of this is the most recent war, all others have not gone that way. So is, in fact, the realist position really the historical position. And is it really the one that most accounts for the realities just as economists today are realizing that people’s behavior economically is not in fact the sum total of what might be taken to be their rational incentives.
Mr. Fareed Zakaria: John, do you want to take this?
Prof. Mearsheimer: The whole subject of rationality is a fascinating subject. I want to emphasize here that when I say states behave rationally, that doesn’t mean that they can’t then go out and make moves that produce catastrophes. The fact of the matter is that states behaving rationally oftentimes miscalculate and end up shooting themselves in the foot. One very important aspect of international politics is the fact that when states make decisions, not only are they making those decisions based on imperfect information, but in many cases they are dealing with other states that are going to considerable lengths to fool them, to confuse them, to provide them with information that is incorrect misinformation. Because you’re working with imperfect information and because you’re oftentimes being confused by the adversary, you often times goof in a big way. I would make the argument just to highlight that when Hitler decided to invade the Soviet Union in June 1941, although it fortunately ended up with him shooting himself in a bunker in Berlin in April 1945, when he went into the Soviet Union, in my opinion, it was the result of a relatively rational decision-making process. They just miscalculated; they just guessed wrong.
Questioner: You argued that if Michael concedes that Russia and China could indeed go to war, he contradicts himself. But could it be in a perverse sense that Michael has a very unlikely ally, namely Russia itself, which is imploding and may not be a great power even now except in a formalistic sense, and fill up the trajectory it may be out of the mix. Second brief question: I am compelled by your argument, maybe too much time has been spent on great power or great-power war on a premeditated basis, we might have a World War I model where non-great powers suck into the vortex great powers, Korea being the case that I am persuading. But would Michael’s proposition be saved by arguing that it is a very important case that makes all the difference, but in fact, the end is won in as much as that is not likely to be replicated in many other places?
Prof. Mearsheimer: The whole question was raised [previously] about what happens if a country like Russia or China comes unglued? What you were saying is that if Russia comes unglued, it in effect sort of gets wiped off the slate. But then we have China to worry about. It’s still there and it still contradicts his basic argument. Furthermore, I would point out that if Russia disintegrates, I wouldn’t bet a lot of money that other great powers don’t get involved, the Chinese in particular.
Questioner: They are not disintegrating, their just sort of slowly descending into non-great-power status.
Prof. Mearsheimer: Well if that happens, it’s a slow and rather coherent descent into non-great-power status-hood, then it just disappears from the map and that makes Michael sleep better at night because he knows that there is only one state out there that he has to worry about for his argument which is China. What was your second question? Oh, it was on the escalation in the Balkans?
Questioner: I can see your point on Korea...
Mr. Fareed Zakaria: Is Korea the only exception to this rule of small conflict?
Prof. Mearsheimer: I’d have to go through my rolodex of examples and try to think up some more; I can’t off the top of my head. I would just say that I think you are wrong, as I’ve said before on World War I, I don’t think is was a case of a crisis in the Balkans sucking the great powers in. I think the great powers, Germany in particular, were driving that crisis from the beginning.
Prof. Mandelbaum: Can I make two quick comments? First on the subject of Russia, it’s been my observation that almost anything can now be said or believed about Russia, not by somebody like [previous questioner] who knows it well, but somehow we are willing to impute things to Russia that we wouldn’t impute to any other country. It’s a country with troubles, but it’s not on another planet. And furthermore, at this point, no country is less bellicose; anti-war sentiment is nowhere as strong as it is in Russia. I count it as a question mark only because I think the political arrangements and the political culture of Russia are unsettled, but the Russians are not champing at the bit, waiting to jump to wash their boots in the Caspian Sea.
Second, it’s true that the issue of rationality is, the definition of rationality is problematical, but I personally do not know of any historical example of war by accident of people who found themselves in a war despite the fact that they didn’t want one. The example often cited, most famously by President Kennedy based on his reading of the Barbara Tuckman book, was World War I. We now know, because of the careful research that has been done, I wouldn’t agree with John exactly on the explanation on the outcome of World War I, but I certainly believe that the Germans wanted the war and pressed the war, and there was a war in August 1914 because the Germans decided they wanted one.
Mr. Fareed Zakaria: I am going to take the liberty of the chair to ask a question to John, because it seems to me that most of the questions have been one more nightmare scenario after the other, and is it not possible that war can break out in such circumstance. And it seems to me that I thought there would be a greater representation of the view that, look around you, the world we are living in is very different, that it is remarkable that France and Germany do not eye each other enviously and it does seem to have something to do with broader societal transformations and not just the fact of American troops.
It is conceivable that the American troops go away. It doesn’t quite seem they are the hinge of security as, for instance, it does seem in Asia. These are countries that have come to a historical peace with one another. The Soviet Union collapses as a great power for the first time really in history, a great multinational empire collapses without a war of any kind. Why this is, I don’t know, and I want to bring up the one taboo subject which is nuclear weapons.
You said, John, that during the Cold War, there were lots of nuclear weapons around, yet nobody was making the case that nuclear weapons meant that there wouldn’t be great- power wars. Actually there were some people making that case-Ken Waltz was one of them, and he is in the audience, as I think you were one of them. What is the transforming effect of nuclear weapons on great powers and does that not change the calculus for the future?
Prof. Mearsheimer: Just two things. One is, the first part of Fareed’s question where he is saying that some things change pieces in the air, he could have been talking about Europe in 1927. They had the Le Carneau Pact, they had the Kellogg-Briand Treaty. There was no war on the horizon. Lots of people were talking about love, peace, and dope, and so forth and so on. Ten years later, they were dealing with Adolph Hitler. Is that going to happen 10 years from now? I would not bet much money on that.
My only point is that it is very difficult to predict the future with precision and there are a lot of forces at play that should make one very nervous. Now with regard to his second question regarding nuclear weapons, which is an excellent questions, I tried in the very beginning to set this up so that we didn’t talk about deterrents, and talked about obsolescence. Michael, following me, agreed with that. We’re talking here about the obsolescence of war. I think there is no question, Ken Waltz, of course, has gone to great lengths to write about this and point this out, there is no question that nuclear weapons significantly reduced the likelihood of war. But there were few people who argued that the Cold War, and I believe you people today who believe that the presence of nuclear weapons in the hands of great powers makes war unthinkable, and therefore obsolescent. And if they did believe that again, then what they should be in favor of is lots of nuclear proliferation.
Mr. Fareed Zakaria: But let me ask you specifically, do you believe that existential deterrents among the great powers then causes obsolescence?
Prof. Mearsheimer: No. I don’t. We spent an enormous amount of intellectual capital and an enormous amount of financial capital during the Cold War preparing for a conventional war on the central front in Europe. Did we not? Was that just a complete waste of time?
Mr. Fareed Zakaria: My recollection is that at the time you were arguing that nuclear weapons meant that we didn’t need to worry about it as much.
Prof. Mearsheimer: As much. That’s correct. Nuclear weapons meant that we did not have to worry about it as much. And I was not in favor of de-emphasizing our reliance on nuclear weapons. But nevertheless, I thought it was very important to worry about how robust conventional forces because something may happen where conventional war breaks out and you don’t want to have to use nuclear weapons in that event.
Prof. Mandelbaum: I don’t know if this is my last intervention, but if it is...
Mr. Fareed Zakaria: Now, do you want to make one short one, then each of you can sum up in a minute or two.
Prof. Mandelbaum: Two points. The first, a historical nit to pick with John which is evidence, although hardly decisive evidence in favor of my argument, there is a real difference between the post-World War I period and the post-Cold War period in that the Germans, for all of their peaceful diplomatic emphasis in the 1920s, never excepted the legitimacy of the post World War I settlements, set as their national goal from the very beginning to overturn it. Now, the means that they used varied. But no German government, no German leader, and I dare say almost no German political figure, thought that the status quo was acceptable. That is not true of Russia. It may come to be true, but the Russians have been much more accepting, at least at the political level, at least thus far of the post-Cold War settlement, than the Germans were of the post-World War I settlement. So there is a minor, not a decisive, but a minor way in which this period is different from previous comparable ones. The final point that I want to make is that after this discussion and after listening to our discussion and thinking about it, I am not sure if I can really qualify as a realist anymore. I guess it’s up to John and Ken to decide whether this represents a defection or merely a lapse.
Mr. Fareed Zakaria: All right, we’ll make that your final comment. John, do you want to quickly...
Prof. Mearsheimer: I don’t have a final statement, so why don’t you let this woman ask a question.
Questioner: I am listening to all this talk about war and mankind, but in the equation, on the side of obsolescence, it would be nice to hear that as you empower woman, there will be a progress toward obsolescence of war. Because women will definitely vote for peace and promote peace; they don’t want their husbands, their sons, their fathers dying in wars. So it would be nice to have us included in this equation.
Mr. Fareed Zakaria: I’ll let John take that. I was today reading an obituary of the lady in Russia who died, the very staunch democrat, Galina, I forget how to.... And one of the Russian Parliamentarians was quoted as saying, “ You know everybody wanted her to become the president. Mostly because she was a woman, and they thought, A, she wouldn’t start as many wars, and B, she wouldn’t drink as much vodka.”
Prof. Mearsheimer: I have never thought really hard about this question, but all my instincts tell me that women would not behave very differently, if at all, from men. I have never understood why it is that women would not want to fight wars-what the different set of reasons are from men.
Prof. Mandelbaum: I had the privilege of debating this issue with my friend, a distinguished classicist, Don Kagan, in Washington a week ago, and somebody asked that question and Don was brave enough to say, well what about Indira Gandhi, what about Golda Meir, what about Margaret Thatcher? And I thought to myself afterwards, that isn’t really right. These were women who happened to get to the top of particular kinds of societies. But surely, the most important social change in my lifetime is the change in gender roles. And surely that must make some difference. Surely our society will be different in the next century than it was in this century because of the changing roles of women. So, it seems to be that it is a very good questions. I haven’t thought about it at all beyond that, but I certainly don’t know the answer and maybe John is right, but I don’t think it goes without saying that there will be no difference.
Prof. Mearsheimer: If I can just make one quick point on this. Just to invoke my realist hat, you see, what a realist would say, and this is why I am always uncomfortable with cultural arguments, as a good realist, I don’t care if somebody’s black, brown, green, Jewish, Muslim, Christian, it doesn’t matter. They’re part of a state that operates in the international system. And the international system forces states to behave in certain ways. Because if you don’t behave according to the dictates of the international system, you die, and states don’t want to die. So whether you have a woman in charge, if you have Golda Meir in charge in Israel or you have Yitzhak Rabin in charge in Israel, it doesn’t matter because they are both managing a state that lives in a bad neighborhood, that has enemies around it, and the imperatives of the structure of the system force this state, regardless of who’s running it, to do certain things. So it’s for those kinds of reason that I don’t think it matters. You just don’t have that much control over how you behave as a state in the international system. Again, the structure just doesn’t give you a lot of room for maneuver.
Mr. Fareed Zakaria: Realistically now, we have to stop. Thank you very much for coming. Great pleasure.
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