The Lawfare Podcast: America, China and the Tragedy of Great-Power Politics

Jen Patja, Jack Goldsmith, John Mearsheimer
Tuesday, November 9, 2021, 12:00 PM

Published by The Lawfare Institute
in Cooperation With
Brookings

Jack Goldsmith sat down with John Mearsheimer, the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor in the Political Science department at the University of Chicago, to discuss his recent article in Foreign Affairs, called “The Inevitable Rivalry: America, China, and the Tragedy of Great-Power Politics.” In that essay, Mearsheimer argues that America's engagement with China following the Cold War, and its fostering of the rise of China's economic and thus military power, was the worst strategic blunder any country has made in recent history. They discussed why he thinks this, why he believes we currently are in a cold war with China that is more dangerous than the one with the Soviet Union, and what concretely the U.S. government should do now to check China's power.


Jen Patja is the editor of the Lawfare Podcast and Rational Security, and serves as Lawfare’s Director of Audience Engagement. Previously, she was Co-Executive Director of Virginia Civics and Deputy Director of the Center for the Constitution at James Madison's Montpelier, where she worked to deepen public understanding of constitutional democracy and inspire meaningful civic participation.
Jack Goldsmith is the Learned Hand Professor at Harvard Law School, co-founder of Lawfare, and a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Before coming to Harvard, Professor Goldsmith served as Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legal Counsel from 2003-2004, and Special Counsel to the Department of Defense from 2002-2003.
John Mearsheimer is a political scientist and international relations scholar, who belongs to the realist school of thought. He is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago.
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