Open Questions | John Mearsheimer on Trump and why Iran isn’t Venezuela and Venezuela isn’t Panama

International relations scholar says US could easily take Greenland, while regime change in Tehran would be more difficult

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Published: 6:00am, 19 Jan 2026Updated: 6:57pm, 19 Jan 2026

John Mearsheimer is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, where he has taught since 1982. He has written extensively on security issues and international politics and is best known for his theory of offensive realism, which holds that to dominate the international system, great powers must constantly engage in security competition with each other, sometimes leading to war.

In this, our 100th Open Questions interview, Mearsheimer discusses the US raid on Venezuela, Donald Trump’s ambitions to take over Greenland and the implications for great power politics. He previously spoke to the Post about the threats to liberal democracy.

This interview first appeared in SCMP Plus. For other interviews in the Open Questions series, click here.

What are the implications of the US operation in Venezuela for the post-war world order? Will it set a precedent for great powers to ignore the principles of state sovereignty and non-interference?

What the Trump administration is doing now is certainly going to weaken the bedrock principles of the UN Charter. There’s no question about that. The president has shown that he has little regard for the sovereignty of other countries and, as we know, great powers tend not to pay much attention to the sovereignty of other states anyway.

But what you want to do is go to great lengths to minimise the number of times that a great power interferes in the affairs of other states. And [US President Donald] Trump has made it clear that he thinks he has the right to interfere in the affairs of other states, to challenge or undermine the sovereignty of other states whenever he sees fit. This is not good. It is a bad precedent.

Trump has ignored the principles of sovereignty and non-interference before. Why is this time different?

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.css-sioo19{color:#c79a00;}Open Questions | John Mearsheimer on Trump and why Iran isn’t Venezuela and Venezuela isn’t Panama

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}International relations scholar says US could easily take Greenland, while regime change in Tehran would be more difficult

Open Questions | John Mearsheimer on Trump and why Iran isn’t Venezuela and Venezuela isn’t Panama

International relations scholar says US could easily take Greenland, while regime change in Tehran would be more difficult