जॉन जे. मियरशाइमर John J. Mearsheimer

Life and career

  1. 1947 · Born in Brooklyn. Born in Brooklyn on 14 December 1947. He was one of five children. When he was eight the family moved to Croton-on-Hudson in New York State. (Wikipedia: John Mearsheimer)
  2. 1966 · Army private to West Point. He enlisted in the US Army at 17. A year later he won a place at the United States Military Academy. He graduated from West Point in 1970. (Wikipedia: John Mearsheimer · John Mearsheimer: Biography)
  3. 1970 · Five years in the Air Force. He served as an Air Force officer from 1970 to 1975 and left as a captain. While serving he took an MA in international relations at the University of Southern California in 1974. (Wikipedia: John Mearsheimer · John Mearsheimer: Biography)
  4. 1980 · Cornell, Brookings and Harvard. He began graduate study at Cornell in 1975 and took his PhD in 1980. He was a research fellow at the Brookings Institution and then a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard until 1982. (John Mearsheimer: Biography · Wikipedia: John Mearsheimer)
  5. 1982 · Chicago. He joined the political science faculty at the University of Chicago in 1982. His first book Conventional Deterrence appeared in 1983. He became a full professor in 1987 and chaired the department from 1989 to 1992. (John Mearsheimer: Biography · Wikipedia: John Mearsheimer)
  6. 1990 · Back to the Future. In International Security he predicted that Europe would slide back into rivalry after the Cold War. He wrote in The Atlantic that “we will soon miss the Cold War”. The essay drew replies from Stanley Hoffmann and Robert Keohane among others. (Wikipedia: John Mearsheimer)
  7. 1993 · A nuclear deterrent for Ukraine. In Foreign Affairs he argued that Ukraine should keep the Soviet nuclear weapons on its soil. He saw them as the only reliable check on Russia. In 2000 he argued in the New York Times that India too had good reason to build the bomb. (Wikipedia: John Mearsheimer)
  8. 2001 · The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. His main work set out offensive realism. It argued that China could not rise peacefully. Revised editions followed in 2003 and 2014. It won the Joseph Lepgold Book Prize. (Wikipedia: John Mearsheimer · John Mearsheimer: Biography)
  9. 2006 · The Israel Lobby. In March 2006 he and Stephen Walt published “The Israel Lobby” in the London Review of Books and as a Harvard working paper. A storm of criticism followed. The book came out in August 2007 and reached the New York Times bestseller list. (Harvard WCFIA: Setting the Record Straight. A Response to Critics of “The Israel Lobby” (December 2006) · Wikipedia: The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy · NPR: Debate over controversial Israel lobby continues (20 September 2007))
  10. 2014 · Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault. After Russia took Crimea he argued in Foreign Affairs that NATO and EU expansion had provoked Moscow. Michael McFaul and Stephen Sestanovich replied in the next issue. His 2015 Chicago lecture on the subject later passed tens of millions of views online. (USSC: Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault. Foreign Affairs (September/October 2014) · Foreign Affairs: Faulty Powers. McFaul, Sestanovich and Mearsheimer (November/December 2014) · John Mearsheimer: Public Appearances)
  11. 2018 · The Great Delusion. He attacked the post-Cold War project of liberal hegemony. The Valdai Discussion Club named it best book of 2019. He presented it at the University of Chicago Center in Beijing in October 2019. In 2020 he received the APSA James Madison Award. (Wikipedia: John Mearsheimer · John Mearsheimer: Biography · UChicago Center in Beijing: Mearsheimer speaks on The Great Delusion (24 October 2019))
  12. 2022 · Russia invades Ukraine. After the invasion he held that the West was principally responsible. He made the case in The Economist and in a June lecture at the European University Institute. The Russian foreign ministry endorsed his account. In December he debated Carl Bildt at the Holberg Prize. (The Economist: John Mearsheimer on why the West is principally responsible for the Ukrainian crisis (11 March 2022) · Wikipedia: John Mearsheimer · John Mearsheimer: Public Appearances)
  13. 2023 · How States Think. With Sebastian Rosato he published How States Think. It argues that most states act rationally most of the time. In October 2024 he lectured to large audiences at Tsinghua and Renmin universities in Beijing. (Lawfare: What makes a state rational? Review of How States Think (24 October 2023) · Wikipedia: John Mearsheimer · Global Times: Mearsheimer hopes future China–US ties could prove him wrong (October 2024))
  14. 2025 · Trump, India and Gaza. In March he told the New Yorker that Trump was right on Ukraine. In April he discussed India’s strategy with former national security adviser Shivshankar Menon at Yale. In August he told CNN-News18 that the US tariffs on India were strategically foolish. On Tucker Carlson he called the war in Gaza a genocide. (Mearsheimer Substack: New Yorker interview on Ukraine (12 March 2025) · Yale MacMillan Center: Shivshankar Menon and John Mearsheimer on India’s strategic challenges (25 April 2025) · Antiwar.com: Mearsheimer on CNN-News18. Picking a fight with India is just dumb (21 August 2025) · Mearsheimer Substack: Talking with Tucker Carlson (28 July 2025) · Mearsheimer Substack: The Roots of the Gaza Genocide (24 July 2025))
  15. 2026 · The Iran war. The United States and Israel attacked Iran on 28 February 2026. He called the war a strategic blunder and said air power alone cannot bring regime change. In the autumn he began posting his own talks on Ukraine and Gaza. (Consortium News: Hedges Report. Why the US is losing its war with Iran (18 March 2026) · John Mearsheimer: Public Appearances)

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