John J. Mearsheimer is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. He is a well known realist and opponent of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

Early Years

Mearsheimer was born in December 1947 in Brooklyn, New York. He was raised in New York City until the age of eight, when his parents moved his family to Croton, New York, a suburb located in Westchester County.

The Army, West Point & the Air Force

At age 18, Mearsheimer enlisted in the U.S. Army. After two years as an enlisted man, he was faced with the choice of going to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and earning an undergraduate degree, or going to Vietnam and serving as an infantryman. Faced with this choice, he accepted an appointment to West Point, which he attended from 1966-1970. After graduation, he served for five years as an officer in the U.S. Air Force.

Graduate Studies at Cornell

After leaving the U.S. Air Force, Mearsheimer earned a Master’s Degree in International Relations from the University of Southern California in 1974. He subsequently entered Cornell University as a graduate student and earned a Ph.D. in government, specifically in international relations, in 1981. From 1978-1979, he worked as a research fellow at a Brookings Institution, in Washington, D.C. From 1980-1982, he worked as a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard University’s Center for International Affairs.

The University of Chicago

Since 1982, Mearsheimer has been a member of the faculty of the department of political science at the University of Chicago. He became an associate professor in 1984, a full professor in 1987, and was appointed to the Harrison chair in 1995. From 1989-1992, he served as chairman of the department. It was widely rumored that in 1992, President-elect Bill Clinton was interested in asking Mearsheimer to serve as his secretary of defense, but Mearsheimer declined his overtures.

Mearsheimer has written extensively about national security policy and international relations theory, especially realism, which he defines as a state’s tendency to attempt to gain as much relative power as possible and eventually become the hegemon of the international system.

Mearsheimer has also been a vocal critic of American policy toward China. Though China does not have openly militaristic ambitions today, he feels that by trading with China and helping its economy, the United States is providing a base from which the Chinese could seriously threaten American national security in the years to come.

Mearsheimer’s books include Conventional Deterrence (1983), Liddell Hart and the Weight of History (1988), and The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001). He has also written numerous book chapters, journal articles, and newspaper op-ed pieces.

Iraq

In 2002, Mearsheimer became a visible opponent of President Bush’s intention to invade Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein from power. He felt that invading Iraq would distract from the war against al Qaeda, which he described as a greater threat to national security. The war was unnecessary, Mearsheimer felt, because the United States could continue to effectively contain Hussein, as it had done for over a decade since the Gulf War. Mearsheimer also predicted that after invading Iraq, the U.S. would need to occupy it for decades, an endeavor that he described as “unnecessary.”

External Links

Biography, Interviews

• The Globalist, short biography
• Conversations With History Interview, conducted by the Institute of International Studies at Berkeley
• Interview for American Amnesia Blog, 12/04

Articles

• Keeping Saddam in a Box, 02/03 Op-Ed in New York Times
• Lying in International Politics, 22/04
• An Unnecessary War, Co-authored with Stephan Walt 01/03