John Mearsheimer

But that's my view there.

And with regard to the Israelis, my only point about Israel is that it would be better for Israel and better for the United States if we, the United States, was in a position, the United States was in a position to put pressure on Israel from time to time.

As Steve and I say in the book, we should be able to treat Israel like a normal country.

The fact is that countries sometimes do stupid things.

This includes the United States and Israel.

And if Israel is pursuing a policy that we think is unwise, we should be in a position where we could put pressure on Israel.

That's our argument.

But anyway...

We goofed both with regard to Ukraine and with regard to the Middle East, and we're now up to our eyeballs in alligators in both of those regions.

And as you described my view,

This is not good because the area of the most strategic importance for the United States today is East Asia, and that's because China is there, and China is the most serious threat the United States faces.

I don't know.

My argument is there will be, there is right now, a serious security competition.

And at the same time, there is a real possibility of war.

Whether or not we avoid it is very hard to say.

I mean, we did during the Cold War.

We had a serious security competition from roughly 1947 to 1989.

And we thankfully avoided war.

Probably came the closest in 1962 with the Cuban Missile Crisis.

But we avoided it.