Canada and Mexico on its borders. What state in its right mind would want other powerful countries located in its region? All Chinese surely remember what happened over the last century when Japan was powerful and China was weak.... [They also] surely remember what happened in the hundred years between the First Opium War (1832–42) and the end of World War II (1945), when the United States and the European great powers took advantage of a weak China and not only violated its sovereignty but also imposed unfair treaties on it and exploited it economically. Why should we expect China to act differently than the United States? Are the Chinese more principled than we are? More ethical? Are they less nationalistic? Less concerned about their survival? They are none of these things, of course, which is why China is likely to follow basic realist logic and attempt to become a regional hegemon in Asia (pp. 374-375). In a subsequent debate with former U.S. National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski in Foreign Policy magazine, Mearsheimer clarified, "It is unlikely that China will go on a rampage and conquer other Asian countries. Instead, China will want to dictate the boundaries of acceptable behavior to neighboring countries, much the way the United States does in the Americas. An increasingly powerful China is also likely to try to push the United States out of Asia, much the way the United States pushed the European great powers out of the Western Hemisphere." In his response, Brzezinski argued, "How great powers behave is not predetermined.... For its part, the Chinese leadership appears much more flexible and sophisticated than many previous aspirants to great power status." Mearsheimer responded that Chinese leaders are indeed prudent and have no incentive to "pick a fight" with the United States at the moment, but "what we are talking about is the situation in 2025 or 2030, when China has the military muscle to take on the United States. What happens then, when China has a much larger gross national product and a much more formidable military than it has today? The history of great powers offers a straightforward answer[.]" In a widely debated 2021 Foreign Affairs article, Mearsheimer observed that the United States was destined to compete aggressively with China as long as the latter continued to grow into a militarily and economically powerful state in East Asia. However, contrary to realist