“The American expeditionary force would easily rout the Taliban in a conventional war - which is why there would not be one. The Taliban would launch a guerrilla resistance from the countryside. It is unlikely that the United States could win this armed struggle at any reasonable cost.”

American political scientist and international relations scholar

John Joseph Mearsheimer is an American political scientist and scholar of international relations, and a professor at the University of Chicago. He is known for his work on great power politics and the theory of offensive realism. His writing and teaching focus on how states compete for power in an anarchic international system. He has become widely associated with realist thinking in international affairs, especially questions of security, rivalry, and the behavior of major powers.