“When the United States worked to contain the Soviet Union during the Cold War, we went to enormous lengths to get as many countries on the planet as possible on our side of the ledger, balancing with us against the Soviet Union.”

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.