How did the United States rise from a fragile collection of colonies to the dominant power in the international system, and what does that history reveal about today’s great-power competition with China and Russia?

In this conversation hosted by the University of Chicago Graham School, Prof. John J. Mearsheimer – one of the world’s leading scholars of international relations theory and author of The Tragedy of Great Power Politics – examines 250 years of American foreign policy. Beginning with the founding, he contrasts the United States’ liberal language of natural rights with the hard nationalism of a new state determined to secure its independence, expand across the continent, and keep rival powers out of the Western Hemisphere.

Mearsheimer explains his theory of regional hegemony, reflects on the Monroe Doctrine and the Cuban Missile Crisis, and considers how the Civil War, British grand strategy, and the defeat of the Confederacy shaped America’s rise. Along the way, he pushes back on claims of American exceptionalism, drawing on Reinhold Niebuhr’s critique of national self-righteousness.

Turning to the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Mearsheimer traces U.S. foreign policy through the world wars, the Cold War, and the brief unipolar moment before the return of great-power rivalry with China and Russia. He examines competing post–Cold War frameworks from Francis Fukuyama and Samuel Huntington, defends his own predictions about China’s rise – grounded in his theory of offensive realism – and explains why international relations theory is indispensable for statesmen and policymakers.

Moderated by Graham School instructor Jennifer Lind, this conversation with Prof. John J. Mearsheimer connects 250 years of American foreign policy to the defining questions of our moment: the rise of China, the war in Ukraine, tensions with Iran, and the future of U.S. power.

Key questions explored in this conversation:

· Is the Declaration of Independence really a liberal document or is it, as Mearsheimer argues, first and foremost a nationalist blueprint for American power?

· Why did the United States stay on the sidelines of both World Wars for so long and what does the strategy of buck-passing reveal about great powers?

· What does 250 years of great-power politics tell us about an emerging US-China Cold War?

· How does Mearsheimer interpret the war in Ukraine, NATO enlargement, and the shifting alignments reshaping the Middle East?

· How do Francis Fukuyama’s End of History and Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations hold up against Mearsheimer’s realist predictions – and who got it right?