On 24 September 2025, I was interviewed by Peter Slezkine of the Stimson Center in Washington, DC, for its program — The Trialogue — which is a platform for constructive conversation among experts and ex-officials from the United States, Russia, and China.
Similarities between Germany and Israel are very evident in this narrative. This can be expected because both Germany in World War II and Israel currently are ‘ethno’ states and consider themselves superior to everyone else.
This is due to the same family system they share, along with Japan Korea, periphery of France, Austria, northern Spain, Quebec and Rwanda. That is the stem family : the key values are inequality and authority with strong emphasis on cultural transmission. It gives a significant educational push, but brings ethnocentric rigid societies. It can lead to terrible genocide and extreme antagonism when in crisis, or just robust organized and well developed countries in normal times.
An A+ interview, John! Topics and insights and the common thread tying the topics and history together was highly informative and very, very interesting.
Are you an American that was an adult on 9/11?? Because Netanyahu did everything right where Bush did everything wrong after February 2002. And if Netanyahu was a little sloppy it’s because Bernie Sanders could have been president in January 2025 and so on Oct 8, 2023 he had a hard deadline of having everything wrapped up by that date…Bush’s deadline was actually January 2009 because everything he did was to win reelection in 2004.
I’ve thought about this before, but it occurred to me again recently.
This isn’t particularly new or earth-shattering, but…
What’s happening in Gaza is bullying on steroids. That’s the most apt description I can find.
In war, we dupe people into killing each other—people who otherwise probably wouldn’t have anything against one another. War is horrific. People get killed, and that’s bad enough.
But what’s happening in Gaza goes beyond even that. It’s the purposeful humiliation and degradation of an entire population—bullying on steroids—in addition to the killing, maiming, and destruction. That combination makes it even more vicious than conventional war.
It’s hard to believe that one group of people could do such a thing to another. It’s even harder to believe that the United States of America could be complicit in it.
It’s truly despicable, and we should all be ashamed.
All wars start with bullying, and all bullying leads to war, provided one side is not an order of magnitude stronger than the other. All wars are quintessential displays of the will to exist. What's there to be ashamed of?
We may feel indignant about the means brought to bear in the Gaza bullying, and rightly so. But that's to transpose the rules we have internalised about how to build a functioning society to a conflict between societies.
The only way to exclude conflict between societies would be to establish a bully greater than everyone else. Great, but what happens when that bully turns evil?
The U.S, is arguably now the gravest threat civilization has ever faced. It is impossible to overstate how toxic the ghastly nihilism that has captured the U.S. ruling elite, Democratic and Republican, is. The question is whether China's rare earth export controls will disarm the U.S to such an extent that it impedes the violent rampages the U.S. and its allies are addicted to. If not, it may mean the end of us all.
Mearsheimer doesn’t seem to realize we are in a transitional period with respect to defense technology. So right now we have Hegseth focused on the last war wasting time and money and stroking his own ego…but the next war will be fought with drones from space.
Biden subsidizing semiconductor factories and getting them built means we now have the most important defense industrial capacity in America. Biden also subsidized battery factories which are another building block of drones. The notion we need another tank factory is absurd if one is intellectually honest about Putin’s failure in Ukraine…Mearsheimer is simply too invested in his false narrative about Ukraine to provide analysis about geopolitical strategy.
Similarities between Germany and Israel are very evident in this narrative. This can be expected because both Germany in World War II and Israel currently are ‘ethno’ states and consider themselves superior to everyone else.
This is due to the same family system they share, along with Japan Korea, periphery of France, Austria, northern Spain, Quebec and Rwanda. That is the stem family : the key values are inequality and authority with strong emphasis on cultural transmission. It gives a significant educational push, but brings ethnocentric rigid societies. It can lead to terrible genocide and extreme antagonism when in crisis, or just robust organized and well developed countries in normal times.
An A+ interview, John! Topics and insights and the common thread tying the topics and history together was highly informative and very, very interesting.
So informative. Thank you.
…Everything you’ve had to say about everything you’ve weighed in on has been exactly correct…
You forgot “/sarc”. You go to the 3 little dots in the upper right corner and it allows you to edit your comment so you can add it.
I’m taking Kevin literally and I agree with his statement.
Are you an American that was an adult on 9/11?? Because Netanyahu did everything right where Bush did everything wrong after February 2002. And if Netanyahu was a little sloppy it’s because Bernie Sanders could have been president in January 2025 and so on Oct 8, 2023 he had a hard deadline of having everything wrapped up by that date…Bush’s deadline was actually January 2009 because everything he did was to win reelection in 2004.
I don’t know what on earth you’re talking about.
You don’t know about 10/7 and Netanyahu’s military operations?? So I assume you didn’t know wtf Mearsheimer was discussing in the interview??
Highly interesting discussion between to very astute analysts. 10/10 would listen again!
Very interesting and enjoyable discussion. Slezkine made great counterpoints too - so much better than the standard bellicose dogma.
I’ve thought about this before, but it occurred to me again recently.
This isn’t particularly new or earth-shattering, but…
What’s happening in Gaza is bullying on steroids. That’s the most apt description I can find.
In war, we dupe people into killing each other—people who otherwise probably wouldn’t have anything against one another. War is horrific. People get killed, and that’s bad enough.
But what’s happening in Gaza goes beyond even that. It’s the purposeful humiliation and degradation of an entire population—bullying on steroids—in addition to the killing, maiming, and destruction. That combination makes it even more vicious than conventional war.
It’s hard to believe that one group of people could do such a thing to another. It’s even harder to believe that the United States of America could be complicit in it.
It’s truly despicable, and we should all be ashamed.
All wars are bullying on steroids.
All wars start with bullying, and all bullying leads to war, provided one side is not an order of magnitude stronger than the other. All wars are quintessential displays of the will to exist. What's there to be ashamed of?
We may feel indignant about the means brought to bear in the Gaza bullying, and rightly so. But that's to transpose the rules we have internalised about how to build a functioning society to a conflict between societies.
The only way to exclude conflict between societies would be to establish a bully greater than everyone else. Great, but what happens when that bully turns evil?
Thanks for your great work!
We've shared this link on 'The Stacks'
https://askeptic.substack.com/p/the-stacks
The U.S, is arguably now the gravest threat civilization has ever faced. It is impossible to overstate how toxic the ghastly nihilism that has captured the U.S. ruling elite, Democratic and Republican, is. The question is whether China's rare earth export controls will disarm the U.S to such an extent that it impedes the violent rampages the U.S. and its allies are addicted to. If not, it may mean the end of us all.
Slim pickings! :)
Mearsheimer doesn’t seem to realize we are in a transitional period with respect to defense technology. So right now we have Hegseth focused on the last war wasting time and money and stroking his own ego…but the next war will be fought with drones from space.
Biden subsidizing semiconductor factories and getting them built means we now have the most important defense industrial capacity in America. Biden also subsidized battery factories which are another building block of drones. The notion we need another tank factory is absurd if one is intellectually honest about Putin’s failure in Ukraine…Mearsheimer is simply too invested in his false narrative about Ukraine to provide analysis about geopolitical strategy.
Until you unpack "too invested in his false narrative" I can't understand your point.