Professor John J. Mearsheimer Guest Lecturer on " The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams & International Realities "
On the morning of October 28th, 2019, Professor John J. Mearsheimer, the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science from the University of Chicago, delivered a lecture on “The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams & International Realities” at D114 at the East Campus. The lecture was hosted by Professor Tan Ankui, dean of School of Government.
The lecture mainly discussed how the liberal hegemony pursued by the United States after the Cold War failed under the constraints of forces like nationalism and realism. During the period between the end of the Cold War (1989) and the presidency of Donald Trump (2017), it was widely believed in the West that the United States should spread liberal democracy across the world, foster an open international economy, and build institutions. This policy of modeling the world after America was supposed to protect human rights, promote peace, and make the world safe for democracy. But this is not the reality. Instead, the United States ended up as a highly militarized country fighting wars that undermine peace, harmed human rights, and threatened liberal values at home. Prof. John Mearsheimer explained why liberal hegemony, the foreign policy pursued by the United States after the Cold War ended, was doomed to fail, and why it had contributed to the victory of Donald Trump in the White House. He maintained that it would have made far more sense for Washington to have adopted a more restrained foreign policy based on a sound understanding of how nationalism and realism constrain great powers abroad.
Professor Mearsheimer has written extensively about security issues and international politics more generally. He has published six books: Conventional Deterrence (1983), which won the Edgar S. Furniss, Jr., Book Award; Liddell Hart and the Weight of History (1988); The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001, 2014), which won the Joseph Lepgold Book Prize and has been translated into nine different languages; The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (with Stephen M. Walt, 2007), which made the New York Times best seller list and has been translated into twenty-four different languages; Why Leaders Lie: The Truth about Lying in International Politics (2011), which has been translated into twelve different languages; and The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities (2018) which has been translated into five different languages.
Professor John Mearsheimer’s wonderful and vivid lecture won much applause from the audience. During the interactive session, the audiencewere fully engaged. Both faculty members and students have benefited greatly from this edifying and entertaining lecture.
