The End of Western Dominance—US Lives in Mortal Fear | John Mearsheimer

Since 2017, when Trump entered the White House, the balance of power has shifted in China’s favor, though the United States remains the world’s most powerful state. China is rapidly closing the gap, particularly in cutting-edge technologies, which Washington fears could tilt global economic and military power. As China converts its economic strength into military might, it builds not just regional forces but also blue-water naval power and global projection capabilities linked to its Belt and Road Initiative. This imitation of US strategy alarms Washington and drives a bipartisan policy of containment.

John J. Mearsheimer, American political scientist and professor at the University of Chicago, best known for his work

on international relations theory, offensive realism, the US Zionist lobby, US–China rivalry and great power politics.

Initially, Chinese leaders argued that economic interdependence would prevent conflict, since prosperity required cooperation. However, survival—not prosperity—is the primary goal of states in an anarchic international system with no higher authority. As China’s economic rise translated into growing military capacity, American fear replaced optimism, triggering security competition in East Asia. Prosperity enriched both sides, but balance-of-power politics and survival imperatives outweighed economic interdependence theory.

» Great powers are ruthless, exploiting weaker rivals to secure survival and expand influence. «

John J. Mearsheimer's complete discourse video. 

Historical lessons reinforce this logic. Weak states like China during its “century of humiliation” (1840s–1940s) and Russia during NATO expansion in the 1990s suffered because they lacked power. Great powers are ruthless, exploiting weaker rivals to secure survival and expand influence. In this system, the optimal strategy is regional hegemony, dominating one’s neighborhood while preventing rivals from doing the same. The US has long acted this way, blocking Germany, Japan, and the Soviet Union from achieving dominance in Europe or Asia, while securing its own supremacy in the Western Hemisphere.

China’s trajectory fits this pattern. As its power has grown since the 1990s, Beijing naturally seeks to dominate East Asia. Yet the US cannot tolerate another regional hegemon, making containment inevitable. From Washington’s perspective, preventing Chinese hegemony is about survival, not choice. From Beijing’s perspective, seeking hegemony is equally rational. The result is a structural clash: both sides are locked in an intensifying security competition driven by the anarchic nature of the international system.

» The United States lives in mortal fear that the Chinese are going to dominate. «

China’s path to hegemony is more difficult than America’s was because regional powers like Japan, Australia, South Korea, and the Philippines—backed by the US—resist Chinese dominance. India participates in the Quad but is geographically and strategically less central to East Asian balance. Russia, meanwhile, has been pushed into China’s camp by the Ukraine war, eliminating a potential counterweight. This complicates US strategy: instead of balancing China together, Washington and Moscow are now aligned against each other.

 

The Ukraine war creates two major problems for the US: it prevents a full pivot to Asia and deepens the Sino-Russian partnership. Trump recognized this dynamic and sought rapprochement with Moscow to peel Russia away from China, but his chances of success are slim. Russia deeply distrusts the US, and Trump underestimated the difficulty of ending the Ukraine conflict. His instincts—to improve ties with Russia and focus on China—align with realist logic, but his reliance on instincts over experts undermines effective execution.

» It's only recently that Putin has brought the Russians back 

from the dead and we now consider Russia to be a great power. «

Since 2017, US policy has shifted decisively from engagement to containment of China, first under Trump and then reinforced, even hardened, under Biden. Yet American forces remain tied down in Ukraine and the Middle East. Deployments against the Houthis in the Red Sea and the prospect of war with Iran divert vital resources away from East Asia, just as China grows militarily stronger. Past US experiments in social engineering—in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya—ended in failure, raising doubts about new entanglements that sap the capacity to counter China.

Facing escalating global uncertainties, Chinese President Xi Jinping said the SCO is increasingly

responsible for regional peace, stability, and member-state development, August 31, 2025.

 

Ultimately, the US–China rivalry reflects structural realities of power politics. Both states seek survival through maximizing power, and both see regional hegemony as the path to security. The United States, the sole global hegemon since 1900, refuses to share that status, while China, closing the gap, sees dominance in East Asia as essential. The result is an enduring, intensifying contest that economic interdependence or diplomatic optimism cannot erase.

Reference:
John J. Mearsheimer (September 2, 2025) - Lecture on the SCO Summit 2025: Why China is acting this way. (video)

 

See also:

Tecnología Futura (August 31, 2025) - China's new weapon that could destroy the US in seconds. (video)
 John J. Mearsheimer (2001) - The Tragedy of Great Power Politics.

Jin Canrong  (September 3, 2025) - China's Preparations for Reunification With Taiwan Around 2027.

Jin Canrong (September 1, 2025) - Hybrid Warfare & Strategic Stalemate in China–US Competition.

TPR (September 01, 2025) - SCO Summit Ushers in New Global Security Order and Development.

Ray Dalio (April 12, 2025) - Don't Think That What's Now Happening Is Mostly About Tariffs. 

Serge Bernard (2015)  - From Conquest to Affluence to Collapse: The 250 Year Empire Life Cycle. 

500 Years of Western Dominance - What Comes Next | Glenn Diesen

Felix Abt: A great European religious war and the first pan-European conflict over superpower status came to an end in 1648. After 30 years of devastating wars and chaos, especially on German soil, with millions of deaths and shattered economies, the Peace of Westphalia brought a new, rules-based order to Europe, as the Western political class would call it today. This included the inviolability of borders and non-interference in the internal affairs of sovereign and equal states; it is regarded as a milestone in the development toward tolerance and secularization. How did this affect the new powers that emerged afterward and their quest for hegemony?

Glenn Diesen: The lesson from the Thirty Years War (1618-1648) was that no one power could restore order based on hegemony and universal values, as the other states in Europe would preserve their own sovereignty and distinctiveness by collectively balancing the most powerful state. This was evident when Catholic France supported Protestant Sweden to prevent the dominance of the Catholic Habsburgs. The Peace of Westphalia in 1648 gave birth to the modern world order, in which peace and order depend on a balance of power between sovereign states. The Westphalian system prevents hegemony as other states collectively balance the effort of an aspiring hegemon to establish economic and military dominance, and universal values are rejected to the extent they are used to reduce the sovereignty of other states.

» The Westphalian system prevents hegemony. « 

The 1648 peace treaty between the parties in the Thirty Years' War established the Westphalian system.

 

The principle, known as the Westphalian principle of sovereignty, prohibits interference in the internal affairs of another state, and every state is equal before international law, regardless of its size. Thus, every state has sovereignty over its territory and its internal affairs, to the exclusion of all external powers. But when the European colonial powers used violence to impose their will on other continents, they violated this ideal. Was this the beginning of this principle’s demise?

 

The Westphalian system should in principle be based on sovereign equality for all states. However, it originated as a European security order that later laid the foundation for a world order. Under the original Westphalian system, the Europeans claimed special privileges and the principle of equal sovereignty for states did not apply to everyone. Sovereignty was deemed to be a right and a responsibility assigned to “civilized peoples”, a reference to the Europeans as white Christians. The international system was divided between the civilized and the barbarians. There was one set of rules for the Europeans in the civilized “garden”, and another set of rules when the Europeans engaged with the so-called despotic barbarians in the “jungle”. The interference in the internal affairs of other peoples and the development of vast empires was framed as the right and the responsibility of civilized states to guide the barbaric peoples towards universal values of civilization. This responsibility to govern other peoples was termed the “white man’s burden” and the “civilizing mission”.

 » The gardeners have to go to the jungle. «

Josep Borrell's universal mission.

In our current era, we have abandoned the civilized-barbarian divide, but we have replaced it with a liberal democracy-authoritarian divide to legitimize sovereign inequality. The West can interfere in the domestic affairs of other states to promote democracy, invade countries to defend human rights, or even change the borders of countries in support of self-determination. This is the exclusive right and a responsibility of the West as the champions of the universal values of liberal democracy. As the EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell explained: “The gardeners have to go to the jungle. Europeans have to be much more engaged with the rest of the world. Otherwise, the rest of the world will invade us”.

International law in accordance with the UN Charter defends the principle of sovereign equality for all states. The so-called “rules-based international order” is based on sovereign inequality, which introduces special privileges under the guise of universal liberal democratic values. For example, the West’s recognition of independence for Kosovo was a breach of international law as it violated the territorial integrity of Serbia, although it was legitimized by the liberal principle of respecting the self-determination of Kosovo Albanians. In Crimea the West decided that self-determination should not be the leading principle, but territorial integrity. The US refers to liberal democratic values to exercise its exclusive right to invade and occupy countries such as Iraq, Syria and Libya, although this right is not extended to countries in the jungle.  

» The so-called “rules-based international order” is based on sovereign inequality, 

which introduces special privileges under the guise of universal liberal democratic values. «

In 1945 fifty countries established the United Nations System. With the help of this supra-national governance

system the Anglo-Frankish-Zionist-Dönmeh-Wahhabi-Takfiri elites of the UK, France, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the US and

some others, expected to secure their hegemonies beyond the foreseeable demise of traditional colonialism. 

The Bretton Woods conference, World Bank, IMF, nuclear bombing of Japan, dividing Korea 

and creating the State of Israel in Palestine are early show cases of what Pax Americana and UN are all about.

[...] The Ukrainian conflict is essentially an extension of American geopolitics, which aims to carry out Mackinder’s aforementioned stanza, “He who rules Eastern Europe rules the world.” What are your thoughts about it?

Preventing Germany and Russia from controlling Eastern Europe means that much of the Eurasian continent becomes landlocked. US control over Eastern Europe implies that Russia can not bridge Europe and Asia, but rather becomes an isolated land-locked region at the dual periphery of Europe and Asia.

Brzezinski outlined the strategy for developing and preserving US global primacy, which relies on the age-old wisdom of divide-and-rule. Brzezinski wrote that the US must “prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and keep the barbarians from coming together”. Historically, the British and the Americans have worked to prevent Germany and Russia from coming together as it would form an independent pole of power. Hegemony requires conflict between Germany and Russia, as Germany becomes a dependent ally and Russia is weakened. This logic is also applied to why it is beneficial to perpetuate tensions between the Arabs and Iran, or between China and its neighbors. The US has been very concerned about the economic integration between the Germans and Russians, which is why the US was so hostile to the Nord Stream pipelines and most likely was behind the attack on these pipelines. 

 

 Anka Feldhusen, a fine example of a German Neonazi apparatchik of the 21st century.

March 22, 2023.

 

 Wehrmacht 2.0 south of Kiev. 

There will be hell to pay.

March 22, 2024.

The problem is that the world is no longer Western-centric and by pushing Russia away from Germany, the US has pushed Russia towards China – a technological and industrial power much greater than Germany. In the mid-19th century, the British fought against Russia in the Crimean War with the explicit purpose of pushing Russia back into Asia, where it would remain technologically and economically backward and stagnant. NATO’s war in Ukraine is a repeat of the efforts to push Russia back into Asia, although this time Asia is much more dynamic than the West. The failure of the West to adjust our grand strategy to this new reality has been a mistake of immeasurable proportions. We have not subordinated Russia, rather we ended Russia’s 300-year-long Western-centric policies in which Moscow looked to the West for modernization.

What is driving this stunning anti-Chinese obsession in the United States against a country that upholds the principle of non-interference in other countries, that used its mighty navy only for trade and not for gunboat politics when it was a superpower in the past, and that follows the millennia-old concept of “Tianxia” (天下), which literally means “everything under heaven”, that is, an inclusive world full of harmony for all?

China does not threaten the US, but it threatens US dominance as the foundation for the unipolar world order established after the Cold War. The US is currently attempting to weaken China through economic warfare, convincing its allies to decouple from the Chinese economy, and knocking out Russia in Ukraine as a vital partner of China. If the US fails to achieve its objectives, then it will likely stoke conflicts between China and its neighbors to make the neighbors more dependent and obedient, and also create instability for the Chinese that will bleed it of resources. The ideal would be greater tensions between India and China, as India would have to make itself more reliant on the US and it would be an important ally to weaken China. If all fails, then the US could also fight an indirect war through a proxy similar to the way they are using Ukrainians to fight Russia – by for example pushing for Taiwan’s secession. Besides securing its supply chains and building a military for deterrence, China should prioritize resolving its disputes with India as any friction with China can be exploited.

» This is a Westphalian system with Eurasian characteristics. « 

Since 2009 BRICS is establishing a Multipolar World Order based on Westphalian principles and controlled by the 

Eurasian great powers China, India and Russia. Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates joined BRICS

on January 1, 2024. To date 15 more countries have formally applied to join.

Finally, in your new book you say that a new Westphalian world order is reasserting itself, albeit with Eurasian characteristics. Can you explain this in more detail?

We are returning to a Westphalian system based on a balance of power between sovereign states. However, the former Westphalian system was based on sovereign equality among the Western powers while the “barbarians” or “despots” outside the West were not deemed to be qualified for the responsibility of sovereignty. It was a dual system of collective hegemony of the West, with sovereign equality between the Western states. In the new Westphalian system, there are several powerful states that are not Western, with China as the leading economy in the world. The Eurasian powers such as China, Russia, India and others are developing the economic foundations for this system with new technologies, transportation corridors and financial instruments. The Eurasian powers are more prepared to include the Global South as sovereign equals. The Eurasian powers reject the so-called “rules-based international order” based on sovereign inequality, as Western dominance should not be legitimized by a civilized-barbarian or liberal democracy-authoritarian divide.

The Western powers over the past centuries have had an inclination for dominance and empire by controlling limited maritime corridors. Russia’s Eurasianism in the 19th century was a hegemonic strategy by dominating the Eurasian landmass through land corridors, although under the multipolar distribution of power the Russians do not have the capability or intentions to pursue hegemony. Instead, Eurasian integration entails moving from the dual periphery of Europe and Asia, to the center of a new Eurasian construct. Even China as the leading power does not have the capability or intention to pursue hegemony. Countries like Russia are content with China being the leading power, although they would not support China if it demanded dominance and hegemony. The Chinese demonstrate that they are not attempting to limit Russia’s economic connectivity with other states to make itself the only center of power. In the Global Civilization Initiative, the Chinese are also advocating for respecting civilizational differences and that all states have their own path to modernity, which implies that China is not claiming to represent universal values that legitimizes interference into the domestic affairs of other states. The West assumed that the Russia-China partnership was a “marriage of convenience” and that they would clash over influence in Central Asia, but this never happened because neither side demanded hegemony. Instead of sabotaging each other’s relations with the region, China and Russia harmonized their interests in Central Asia. China, Russia, India and other Eurasian powers have different visions and interests in terms of Eurasian integration, but they all need each other to realize their goals and pursue prosperity. Hegemony is not an option. This is a Westphalian system with Eurasian characteristics.

Quoted from:

500 Years of Western Dominance: Is it Coming to an End and What Comes Next?

Felix Abt talks with Glenn Diesen. In: Eastern Angle - March 22, 2024.

 

See also:

Glenn Diesen (2024) - The Ukraine War & the Eurasian World Order. 

Zbigniew Brzezinski (1997) - The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives.

Carl Schmitt (1950) - The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum.

On Realism and War with China | John Mearsheimer

Lex Fridman: The communication gap between China and the United States seems to be much greater than that of what was the former Soviet Union and the United States.

 

Mearchiavelli, Machiavelli's revenant.

 

John Mearsheimer: It’s an interesting question. A lot of people describe the Cold War as an ideological competition above all else.

Communism versus liberal democracy or communism versus liberal capitalism, whatever. I actually don’t believe that. The Soviets were realists to the core. Stalin was a realist par excellence, and ideology did not matter much in Stalin’s foreign policy. And if you look at Soviet foreign policy after World War II, throughout the Cold War, they were realists to the core. And in those days the Americans were realists. Sure, a lot of liberal ideology floating around out there, but the Americans were realists. One of the reasons we avoided a shooting match between the United States and the Soviet Union from 1947 to 1989 was because both sides understood the basic balance of power logic.

 

The US-China competition is somewhat different. But first of all, the Chinese are realists to the core. I’ve spent a lot of time in China. I am basically a rock star in China. The Chinese are my kind of people. They are realists. They speak my language. It’s the United States that is no longer very realist. American leaders have a very powerful liberal bent and tend not to see the world in realist terms.

 

That’s fascinating. So the Chinese are pragmatic realists and think of the world as a competition of military powers?

 

Yeah, you are actually right. And I think we will avoid war. The problem with the Americans is, it’s not just their liberalism. It’s the possibility that we will pursue a rollback policy. During the Cold War the American grand strategy towards the Soviet Union was: containment, containment, containment. We now know from the historical record that the United States was not only pursuing containment. We were trying to rollback Soviet power to put it bluntly. We were trying to wreck the Soviet Union. And I would not be surprised moving forward with regard to China if the United States pursues a serious rollback policy.

 

So you’re saying throughout history the United States was always pursuing rollback policies? 

Look, you don’t respect the power of other nations. You fear the power of other nations.

 

Will there be a war with China in the 21st century?

 

I don’t know. But my argument is yes, there will be war with China. 

 

Quoted from:
Lex Fridman interviews John Mearsheimer - Nov 17, 2023. (transcript) (video)

 

 See also:
John Mearsheimer (2001) - The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. 

Li Jingjing's World | The Tianxia System For A Possible World Order

 

» Where were you, why didn't you invest in them?  «

» In this video, I share my own story of seeing how infrastructures lifted China out of extreme poverty, 

and my observations of Belt and Road projects in Asia, Africa, and Europe. 

I also give my analysis of why some Western politicians designed the whole smear campaign on Xinjiang. «

 

天下

 

Tianxia (天下) ─  » All-under-Heaven «  or » Celestial Empire «  ─ is a Chinese cultural concept that denotes the entire geographical world and the metaphysical realm of mortals. Today Tianxia is mainly associated with political sovereignty, the Chinese Civilization-State and international relations governed by universal and well-defined principles of order.

 

Reference:
Li Jingjing (Nov 10, 2023) - Why some wants to destroy the Belt & Road Initiative. (video)

 

Conquer hearts and minds. Develop cooperation. Create wealth.

 

See also:
Tingyang Zhao (2021) - All under Heaven: The Tianxia System for a Possible World Order.

Alexander Dugin (2023) - The Civilization-State.