[…]Yet China, not Russia, is the real threat today, argued John Mearsheimer, a political science professor at the University of Chicago, and Dr. Sara Moller, an assistant professor of international security at Seton Hall University in New Jersey. […]
Mearsheimer, however, argued that Putin, aggressive as he may be, is not Washington’s biggest headache at the moment. “It boils down to whether or not the United States should remain militarily committed to NATO, whether we should keep large-scale military forces in Europe,” said Mearsheimer. “My answer to that is no.” The professor, who has published six books on international affairs, said the Pentagon’s chief priority right now is containing China.
“Three areas of the world matter strategically to the United States: Europe, East Asia, and the Persian Gulf. For the United States, the key question is whether or not there’s a potential hegemon in one of those regions,” Mearsheimer said. “One of the reasons we stayed in Europe during the Cold War was because the Soviet threat was concentrated in Europe. The fact is, there is no regional hegemon in Europe today—or on the horizon, and indeed there is a regional hegemon: China. That means the US should concentrate all its military might in East Asia. That is what really matters. Europe does not matter very much at all.” Mearsheimer further argued that “the US and its allies—and specifically NATO—created the Russian threat” in the first place, and that NATO, which was formed in 1949, “has pushed Russia into the arms of the Chinese.” Läs artikel