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Quite striking how US-centric John Mearsheimer's latest article "Bound to fail" is. He seems to assume that democracy is something the US hegemon is forcing upon others; while in truth it is demand for decent governance that is moving the world towards the liberal order.
He also fails to understand how much the regimes in Russia and China are driven in their international behavior by panic: the need to protect their rule against the forces of democracy and market economy.
Mearsheimer believes that there is a kind of neutral order in which the US, China and Russia can cooperate happily and peacefully - if only the U.S. gives up on its demand for democratization. This misreads the domestic dynamic in China and Russia; both are deeply unstable.
The US, Europe, and liberal countries in Asia like Japan would be (almost) perfectly fine with autocratic regimes in Beijing and Moscow if they would behave as "responsible stakeholders" on security matters and provide a level playing field on economics.
Most of the current tensions between the liberal and the autocratic powers are not driven by an American push towards democratization but by a push by Russia and China to redefine the international security order.
