John Mearsheimer

Third best strategy is they win, but they pay a godawful price.

And the fourth possibility, which you don't want, is they win quickly and decisively, right?

If that's the case, then you don't have much deterrence.

Well, I don't tend to think of the world in terms of good guys and bad guys.

As a good realist, I think that states are states.

They're all black boxes.

I don't discriminate between democracies and autocracies.

But having said that, I am an American.

And as an American, I'm interested in the security of my country, the survival of my country.

So I want the United States to be the most powerful state in the world.

which means I want the United States to dominate the Western Hemisphere.

I want us to be a regional hegemon, and I want to make sure that China does not dominate Asia the way we dominate the Western Hemisphere.

It's not because I think we're the good guys and they're the bad guys.

If I were Chinese and I were in Beijing and I was Xi Jinping's national security advisor, I'd tell him what we got to do is make sure we dominate the world or dominate our region and then do everything we can to undermine America's position in the Western Hemisphere, right?

That'd be my view.

So I guess you could say I do view the world in terms of good guys and bad guys because I'm an American.

More like us and them.

Yeah, it's us and them.

That's a nice way to put it.

Yeah, it's us versus them.