John Mearsheimer

So those two things kind of go together, right?

Right, but if you build up your own power, you are building up your capability to hurt the other side.

Well, that I agree with.

I think that, you know...

The United States wants to make sure it has a big stick in East Asia for purposes of containing China and avoiding a war.

Again, I want to be clear.

I'm not advocating that we start World War III.

But the point is you want to have a big stick.

And you want to make sure that you don't overstep your bounds in terms of using that big stick.

This is the danger with rollback.

Yeah.

Right.

That you get too aggressive and you precipitate a war.

Right.

And you also just have to be very careful what you say.

And to go back to your favorite argument, you want to be able to have empathy or put yourself in the shoes of the other side.

Because if you do something, you want to think smartly about what that other side, how that other side is going to see your action and how they're going to react.

Well, occasionally you have to mention the stick.

There is some truth in that, right?

Well, leaders matter.