I am traveling in Europe and on 29 October 2024 I did a long interview in London with Freddie Sayers on UnHerd about the essence of realist theory and how it applies to the major conflicts in the world.
Currently, EU is not an instrument of peace. Peace is not EU policy. EU might have had a better chance for peace if it didn’t merge with the instrument of American hegemony -NATO. American exceptionalism and being a geographically insulated young civilization created a militaristic nation that never experienced a war of invasion on their own territory. But ready to bomb any people who dare to have a different view of how they should live their lives. Read readers comments in “liberal” NYTimes. Many of them seriously sound criminally insane.
The US was invaded by the UK in 1812, the Capitol was burned, the White House sacked, and Fort McHenry in Baltimore harbor was shelled by warships.
Francis Scott Key, an American imprisoned in a British warship, could observe the US flag still flying all night when the scene was illuminated by bursting British shells. This event is recounted in the words of the US national anthem, which begins, "Oh say can you see, by the dawn's early light..."
Interesting. War of 1812 was far more complex than they taught us in grade school when we were taught that the US went to war because of British impressment of sailors. Personally, I think the US wanted to conquer Canada and we lost.
You shouldn't. It's not a religion; it's a science, or a philosophy, if you prefer. As Mearsheimer points out, Realism is amoral. An amoral religion would be a nasty thing indeed (think of a certain tribal religion that you have to contend with and that is amoral towards those that don't follow it).
Would you like to become a prophet of peaceful realism? The world needs new ideas. Give peace a chance, intellectually. The Western elites are not trusted by the rest of the world. You might have a better chance to give peace a chance.
Have to crush the other party or give them terms so favorable they stop making war. As of today, the odds that Israel will do both are looking pretty good. Israel has fought an extraordinarily generous war relative to those seen in history. Hamas tactics are extraordinarily brutal and they need to be wiped from the face of the earth if it is possible in order to have any hope of peace.
John, if the US doesn't have the ammunition or the industrial military capacity to produce what it needs to defend Ukraine or Israel why do you think it can defend Taiwan?
Allow me if you will to offer two elements of response to that.
Firstly, it would be more precise to say that the US *can't spare* the ammunition or industrial capacity to defend Ukraine or Israel. An important part of of why it can't (or won't) spare that capacity is because it wants to set it aside for the event that it may have to confront China. The US could, if it wanted, defend Ukraine. It already does defend Israel, to a large extent.
Secondly, you have to distinguish between defending a country and punishing those who attack it. The US sure as hell as plenty of means in reserve to punish China (or Russia, or Iran), even terminally so. The only question, since China has the means to do the same to the US (or thereabouts), is: do you want to risk it? And so the question, in Realist terms, becomes: is it necessary and is it worth it?
For Ukraine, the current answer seems to be that it's not worth it (I agree). For Israel, it's not necessary (yet). For Taiwan, should it become necessary, Mearsheimer argues that it would be worth it from the US' PoV.
The proper goal of government policy, foreign and domestic, is to respect and protect individual freedom and natural rights. American policy can and probably will make permanent enemies of Russia and China, in the cause of preserving American hegemony worldwide. But this is wrong, because wars destroy lives and freedom.
China is not a natural enemy of the USA; it's government wants to preserve its power over a vast territory home to disparate cultures. China is experiencing many social revolts and cultural upheavals that threaten the preservation of its state monopoly of territorial power. The way to preserve the Chinese state, as is probably recognized by its political class, is to continue to raise economic productivity and thereby continue to improve living conditions for Chinese subjects.
As such, the likely goal of Chinese policy is to sell stuff to people around the world. But this is what threatens irrational American policy makers, who fear a prosperous China and like Trump, believe in zero sum economics and war-by-tarriffs.
The USA could, in theory, become once again a free productive people dedicated not to starting wars but to defending the right of individuals to shape their own lives and seek their own improvement. This prospect has disappeared as most commentators sell solutions based on their favored approach to waging war, rather than returning to free, productive private enterprise.
Why war, including war competition with China, is supposed to be realistic and good for Americans is never carefully explained. What a wreck we're headed into.
I've learned a lot from Prof. Mearsheimer and am very grateful for his teachings. The definition of civil war needs to be narrowed or enlarged, it looks very much like the Algerian war, even the war in Vietnam. It's a colonial liberation war. Ilan Pappé explains this very well.
is it possible that the "liberal" policies of the unipolar moment are better understood as cases where the realist calculations were disguised from the American public?
this is stuff that often gets hand-waved away as conspiratorial or fringe. for example: there is an argument to be made that the so-called War on Terror was *neither* about spreading democracy nor exclusively about enriching American economic interests (although that did happen). instead, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan make realist sense in terms of strengthening the United States' regional allies (Israel and Saudi Arabia, respectively). the fact that these ultimately ended in military defeats don't mean that they were bad strategic gambits to start with; the combined confusion of lying to the American public about our true strategic aims, plus a military defeat (maybe as a result of that moral confusion) makes it look like a failure of "liberal" policy.
there's a terrifying world in which America finally takes off the mask and becomes the fascist state it always has been, underneath the camouflage of liberal rhetoric, and aligns its realist geopolitical interests with the rhetoric of the truth: we have always dominated the world for our own economic and strategic gain, and don't give a tinker's fuck about human rights or "spreading democracy." that's how you get American recruits to tool up for the inevitable (in Prof. Mearsheimer's view) conflict with China: drop the lies about peace, love, and understanding. blood and glory for the Fatherland. it's the Starship Troopers vision of America.
the American Left is currently pretending that their candidate will prevent that move, instead of encouraging it, but the incentives make it equally likely from both ruling parties no matter who's in office. the only difference is that the optics might be slightly more palatable for Park Slope Democrats if one of their own is driving the tank of state.
"Is it possible that the 'liberal' policies of the unipolar moment are better understood as cases where the realist calculations were disguised from the American public?"
I used to lean towards that view. But after more consideration, no, I don't think so. I think they are more cogently understood, as Mearsheimer says, as non-Realist emanation of a messianic ("liberal") spirit.
Primarily, what happened during the "unipolar moment" was not part of a power competition, since, by definition, there was no power then that the US was competing with. It keeps the theory more clean if you don't lump the two things together. As Mearsheimer says, a theory doesn't have to explain everything.
I think there's a secondary element at play that is responsible for the pattern that you likely base your hypothesis on. Consider this: a species' extended phenotype always reflects its primary phenotype. We Humans have sculpted the world in our image. Our dwellings are proportioned to our bodies. Our tools are the size of our hands. And so forth. Just the same, the effects of State action always reflect the nature of State means, and a State's means reflect that State's organisation.
As for America "always having been a fascist State", no. Don't let your anger, however justified, cloud your judgement. I myself for instance am a subject of one of America's vassals. I resent that, and wish it weren't so (the vassal part, I mean). But at the same time, I have to admit that as far as overlords go, we could do much worse. For instance, I am convinced that the only reason that, in our countries, we still pay lip service to freedom of expression or individual freedom in general (however hypocritical in may be in practice), is because the US is our overlord. I shudder to think what it would look like if the overlord were China instead of the US. I still want to be rid of them, make no mistake. But whenever you look at a picture, always watch out for what you don't see.
This brings me to a last point I'd like to impart. Like you perhaps, I've grown up during the unipolar moment. I found it terribly depressing, and have been outraged by the US' misdeeds, and I still am. I have felt and still feel feelings similar to those that transpire from what you write. But consider this: those who don't do anything, do no wrong. Or conversely, only those who do anything, do wrong.
During the unipolar moment, only the US did anything, globally speaking. And so, they did all the wrong. It may well be that what the multipolar future has in store for us will make us look back longingly towards those times. It's still worth it, because, ¡VIVA LA LIBERTAD, CARAJO! -- but it's very unlikely to be pretty.
well said. but we might be missing something in the meaning of "fascism." i don't mean fascism as something that necessarily involves a Nazi genocide or an Orwellian state of deprivation. the ethos of the Roman empire at its height said that whatever Rome did was for the good of all Romans. as long as you were inside the Empire and kept your head down, for most of the time, life was pretty good. it was only when you opposed the Empire—like trying to resist the forcible seizure of your ancestral homeland—that you stopped mattering as a human being and became an ambulatory pile of gristle under the iron-bound wheel of Progress.
if the United States has a national character in terms of its foreign policy over the past century, its actions are best described as secretly wanting to be the new Roman Empire—wanting to fully embrace its own Pax Americana, in which everything it does is for the good of all Americans—but feeling constrained by its identity as a liberal democracy. there are probably a disconcerting number of people within the government and also within the electorate who would like nothing more than to maintain global order by raining down hellfire from the sky on anyone who opposes them, with no apologies made for the innocent. we've come very close, many times, and the only thing holding us back has been this pernicious need to be merciful.
for the record, i'm fully on the side of peace, which is why it's so scary to live inside this colossus. because really—what's stopping us? if we discussed in public what's only been whispered about in private for the past few decades, and promised the spoils would flow down to the citizens, how many people within the United States would stand up and resist? Germany took the darkest of dark turns because its people were humiliated after WW1; how far will we get into a multipolar future, with a culturally and economically diminished United States, before the Americans decide they really do want to get back to brunch, the way things used to be—by any means necessary?
Fascism is a very interesting historical phenomenon, but its understanding is severely hampered by the fact that its defeat has become part of the foundational myth of the post-WW2 US-led order, and even further complicated by its contemporary use in the political arena. It is hard to account for all the variation and undertones of the term without a veeeery lengthy discussion.
You speak of the US secretly wanting to be the new Roman Empire. Three things.
Firstly. Why the Roman Empire in particular? The Roman Empire is a great and, importantly, well known and documented, example of an empire achieving regional hegemony. But it is not unique in that regard. Are you aiming at something particular about it?
Secondly. Why "secretly"? They are hardly being coy about it. Take Bush the First's 1991 State of the Union. What part of "we are going to be the World's policeman" is ambiguous? What part of "manifest destiny" or "indispensable Nation" is a double-entendre?
Thirdly and finally. The US is striving to be a hegemon. Yes. No buts about it. That is precisely what Mearsheimer describes. That's the natural course of things. Every State naturally and necessarily strives to become a hegemon. Those who can, do. Those who can't, land on the scrapheap of History (... a bit sooner than the former).
If you oppose the Empire, you stop mattering as a human being and become an ambulatory pile of gristle, as you so eloquently put it. No argument there. But let me ask you this: have you tried not paying your taxes lately? That's a rhetorical question; I am very certain that the answer is no, judging by the fact that you are posting here and therefore alive. For if you did seriously try not paying them, I can assure you that you would quickly become intimately acquainted, metaphorically speaking, with an iron-bound wheel, whether it bears the name of Progress or any other. That is true whether you live in the US, or in Italy, or Angola, or Russia, or India, or North Korea or bloody Belgium. Does that mean that Belgium is fascist? How does that fit in with what you're trying to say?
You describe, if I may paraphrase, the US as a bloodthirsty beast reined in by a liberal ethos, and express anguish at the thought that those reins may fail. It's an interesting point of view. But... I don't think it is quite right. You consider those two things at odds, the underlying ruthlessness and the overarching ethos. But I think they are actually complementary. Or to put it differently, that they are both crucial ingredients for a third, critical element -- namely, the US's *success*.
Two things are necessary for succeeding at becoming a hegemon: the means and the will. When Victoria Nuland goes to Kiev to distribute cookies to people she knows full well she'll subsequently use as cannon fodder, she needs some kind of ethos that makes her believe she's doing the right thing. Perhaps Victoria Nuland is a bad example, as she is a particularly evil person, but overall, it is quite clear that those who further the US hegemony, and they are legion, at many levels of responsibility, on the whole believe what they are doing is right. People are like that. I'm not trying to say that they are, indeed, right; I'm saying there needs to be an ethos that enables them to believe they are right. In that sense, that very ethos, rather than being a restraint on imperial expansion, actually conditions it.
The US's enabling ethos happens to be liberalism (in the modern sense). Or perhaps Progressivism would be more apt a term. Regardless, the particular ethos is incidental. There just needs to be one, and it needs to work. Of course, there will be times where the ethos is at odds with the natural law of striving for hegemony. That's bound to happen. An interesting question is: what happens when that happens. Mearsheimer says: the ethos takes a back seat. Seems about right, as far as I can tell.
In any case, those episodes of contention between the enabling ethos and the hegemonic tendency is not unique to the liberal ethos. You could easily imagine, for instance, an Empire whose enabling ethos is, say, xenophobia, finding itself in a philosophical pickle when confronted with the need to ally or vassalize certain foreign powers (my latest Stellaris run comes to mind). Nazi Germany needed to make friends with some Muslim countries, or with the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, or what have you. Definitely not Aryans. So what did they do? They spun out some claptrap, or hushed it up, or lied about it, and things went on anyway.
That's not to say that the ethos can never fail; it certainly can. When it does, the hegemonic project crumbles, like any man who's lost the will to live. As far as I can tell, it is the ethos that fails first, long before the means fail. See the Soviet Union for instance. It could have fought tooth and nail. It didn't. Was that accidental? I don't know. I hope not.
We are mortals, and so are our creations. Don't worry too much.
John M. has been prescient about many things and can be bracingly concise and well organized in the presentation of arguments.
That said, contra John M., the assumptions of the neoons about international politics are distinctly realist in nature, by John's own definition, but unrealistic in situational analysis and execution. Unrealistic is not tantamount to idealist and shouldn’t be labeled as such. It’s doubly wrong to call the neocons idealists by taking at face value their public statements about motives and aims, which their actions belie. In fact it’s further evidence of a Machiavellian realism, not idealism. It’s nice and tidy to set up a polar opposition between realism and idealism in policy, and it may exist somewhere, but it’s not between tragic realists like Mearsheimer and maximalist unipolar realists in Washington.
The same critique goes for describing Western states as champions of liberal democracy. That’s the PR, not the reality, for states that were once selectively liberal at home, only rarely abroad, and now are ever less so even domestically. Moreover the West’s democracies often more closely resemble empty spectacles staged by elites than effective mechanisms to meaningfully represent popular will. To adopt such terminology is misleading and arguably an inadvertent concession to a deceptive image promoted by the West.
I loved seeing the professor roast the journalist. It’s interesting how quickly some journalists become defensive and push their biases when the narrative goes against Western propaganda. The field seems less about uncovering the truth and more about manipulation. They speak of realism but struggle to face Israel’s setbacks over the past year. Unlike Israel, Hamas and Hezbollah didn’t receive $22 billion in aid from its daddy.
Sadly (or is it only naturally?) Prof. Mersheimer doesn't seem to be able to think from other nations point of view. He is, realism or not, irrespectively bound in the thought-mrchanism of the US world view and western globalism. For example, the rise of China's economic and military power is a direct result if US hegemonic policies around the world, and China is not the only country moving that way.
Accusing Israel of genocide doesn't make me angry. It results in my thinking less of Professor Mearsheimer. One can hold that opinion but an academic being so uncareful with a word having so many different definitions is inexcusable.
Prof Mearsheimer's immoral 'Realist' doctrine states that each country should try to become more powerful than the others and that it should maximize the gap between the power of itself and its adversaries.
By arming and helping Ukraine, the US has made Russia much weaker both militarily and economically. The gap between Russian and US power has increased considerably from 2022 to 2024, so much so that Russia has to go to a third world country like North Korea for help. So, it appears that the US is doing exactly what the immoral 'Realist' doctrine dictates.
In that case, what is Prof Mearsheimer complaining about US and European actions vis-a-vis Ukraine?
Mearsheimer may call it amoral, but I think the 'Realist' doctrine is totally immoral. The doctrine is essentially 'Might makes Right' - quite uncivilized and disgusting. I dislike the idea of a 'mult-polar' world. We should have a world with ZERO poles.
All power should reside with the UN general assembly and the security council veto should be abolished. The idea of 'balance of power politics' should be made obsolete. Perpetrators of genocide like Israel will then no longer be protected by a veto.
What you say is that the application of the Realist theory yields conclusions that are offensive to your moral sense. That's one thing.
On the other hand, Realism being amoral means precisely that it does not make any statement as to the morality of what it describes. It is not a doctrine; it is a theory of nature. It purports to describe something akin to a natural law, as in: that's how things work.
The validity of a theory hinges on whether or not it describes its subject accurately. Not on whether you do or do not like what it says.
From the rest of what you write, you are obviously a statist and would like the world to function as a singular State. Setting aside whether that's even possible or not, riddle me this: what happens when the State itself becomes evil? What do we do when the World Government turns against us? Who is going to stop it?
You need a source for this? Their interest rate is 21 percent. More than half their tanks are destroyed. They are now using WWII tanks. They have over 100,000 soldiers dead and many times that seriously wounded. I know you are getting ready to open your mouth and spout 'fake news' like Trump.
what is the significance of "over 100,000 soldiers dead"? why is that number important? i see nothing in the article you linked saying that Russia's military is crippled because of those casualties. how are those losses being offset by enlistment? how will a military victory for Russia positively affect its recruitment abilities in the future? well, not at all, probably, because *everybody knows* that Russia is a giant prison with Putin as the jailer. it's not possible that winning a war against the West will increase Russian enthusiasm for the military. it's just not a normal country in that regard. right?
nowhere in your article does it say "WWII tanks." it says "older tanks," which could just as easily mean tanks from the 1990s. it's not like Russia stopped making tanks after World War 2 and just started again in 2022. this is absurd.
what your article *does* talk about is Russia's booming wartime economy, which Prof. Mearsheimer has mentioned many times as a favorable outcome for Russia, and something that the West has been unable to stop. so that gives the lie to your claims about Russia being "economically weaker."
most importantly: if you want to screech about Trump and "fake news," why on Earth are you commenting on the work of a sober and intelligent political analyst? take that Sesame Street bullshit back to Facebook. the grown-ups are having a conversation.
So, you see nothing significant about 100000 dead? Are you Stalin's brother?
As Mearsheimer advocates, the US is increasing the gap between Russian power and US power - that does not mean 'crippling' Russia, just weakening it relatively. As for tanks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=0U9n9vr7XP0
...you're citing a local news channel from Kentucky as your source? brother.
i heard them say that model was "*first built* in the 1940s." not an artillery expert, but i can imagine the hard-hitting journalists at WDRB having a particular bias when it comes to their portrayal of Russia's military capabilities. i'd be much more likely to trust their assessment if it was a story about the Strategic Banjo Gap.
and again: you're not offering anything credible about how much Russia's military has actually been weakened. what is their capacity to replenish their numbers? what is their capacity to out-perform the United States in strategic arms production? how much has U.S. support for Ukraine (and Israel) diminished its own stockpiles to the point where it's *also* less competitive than it was before the conflict? how does morale and battlefield expertise among the United States' 1st Cavalry Rascal Scooter Regiment compare to a new Russian recruits who see the first chance in generations to win back some dignity for their country?
The only thing the US is running out of is artillery shells but the US will never be fighting a trench war needing artillery shells. The only modern weapons the US has provided Ukraine is the HIMAR, ATACMS and Patriot batteries - but very few of them, so we have kept what we need. The rest of the weaponary is what was in storage and would have been decommissioned anyway (at a cost) .
On Israel, Mearsheimer is totally correct - there is no theory under which US should arm and support a country committing genocide and war crimes. But on Ukraine, the US is doing exactly what his immoral doctrine dictates.
To say that the Iraq war was the result of a liberal policy is ridiculous. Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney and Rice are not liberals at all. They are some of the most illiberal warmongers the world has known. They are neither realists or liberals, they are just old-fashioned war criminals plain and simple.
Today you brilliant analysis shines its best. I've come to the conclusion that you shine where you have intelligent opponents rather than hooligans ones. God job dear John, and good job Freddy as well.
The realist international policy school is disappointing and depressing, and leaves no hope for peaceful coexistence. Does a multipolarity of BRICS or “living by the UN charter” proposed by Jeffrey Sachs in his book “A new foreign policy” for the US could work? It seems that China and Russia are less aggressive in their attitudes towards the world. The US is a new civilization that didn’t experienced a foreign invasion and war on its territory. The “rest of the world” questions Americans intellectual capacity to live in a peaceful world based on facts of the last 30 years, as well as the entire history of US. The world needs a foreign policy Mahatma Gandhi.
The entire world lives within the framework of the most powerful gaining the most security and advantages. Humans are part of this world. It's not easy being a primate.
Good job Sir! We admire you and learn from you.
The prophet of offensive realism,
the only religion I believe in as an Iranian Middle East studies student at the Uni of Tehran
Currently, EU is not an instrument of peace. Peace is not EU policy. EU might have had a better chance for peace if it didn’t merge with the instrument of American hegemony -NATO. American exceptionalism and being a geographically insulated young civilization created a militaristic nation that never experienced a war of invasion on their own territory. But ready to bomb any people who dare to have a different view of how they should live their lives. Read readers comments in “liberal” NYTimes. Many of them seriously sound criminally insane.
Mostly correct.
The US was invaded by the UK in 1812, the Capitol was burned, the White House sacked, and Fort McHenry in Baltimore harbor was shelled by warships.
Francis Scott Key, an American imprisoned in a British warship, could observe the US flag still flying all night when the scene was illuminated by bursting British shells. This event is recounted in the words of the US national anthem, which begins, "Oh say can you see, by the dawn's early light..."
Not the UK, but Fenians from Toronto, Britain’s colony known as Upper Canada.
Interesting. War of 1812 was far more complex than they taught us in grade school when we were taught that the US went to war because of British impressment of sailors. Personally, I think the US wanted to conquer Canada and we lost.
You shouldn't. It's not a religion; it's a science, or a philosophy, if you prefer. As Mearsheimer points out, Realism is amoral. An amoral religion would be a nasty thing indeed (think of a certain tribal religion that you have to contend with and that is amoral towards those that don't follow it).
I should believe whatever I wish friend
Morality is a human-made subject
But offensive realism is such a “real” thing that you can witness when seeing birds fight for food
Offensive realism & Mearsheimer are the best religions & prophets I found for life
Amiridaryoush,
Would you like to become a prophet of peaceful realism? The world needs new ideas. Give peace a chance, intellectually. The Western elites are not trusted by the rest of the world. You might have a better chance to give peace a chance.
Peace is an outcome of war
EU was created after WW2
Have to crush the other party or give them terms so favorable they stop making war. As of today, the odds that Israel will do both are looking pretty good. Israel has fought an extraordinarily generous war relative to those seen in history. Hamas tactics are extraordinarily brutal and they need to be wiped from the face of the earth if it is possible in order to have any hope of peace.
John, if the US doesn't have the ammunition or the industrial military capacity to produce what it needs to defend Ukraine or Israel why do you think it can defend Taiwan?
Allow me if you will to offer two elements of response to that.
Firstly, it would be more precise to say that the US *can't spare* the ammunition or industrial capacity to defend Ukraine or Israel. An important part of of why it can't (or won't) spare that capacity is because it wants to set it aside for the event that it may have to confront China. The US could, if it wanted, defend Ukraine. It already does defend Israel, to a large extent.
Secondly, you have to distinguish between defending a country and punishing those who attack it. The US sure as hell as plenty of means in reserve to punish China (or Russia, or Iran), even terminally so. The only question, since China has the means to do the same to the US (or thereabouts), is: do you want to risk it? And so the question, in Realist terms, becomes: is it necessary and is it worth it?
For Ukraine, the current answer seems to be that it's not worth it (I agree). For Israel, it's not necessary (yet). For Taiwan, should it become necessary, Mearsheimer argues that it would be worth it from the US' PoV.
It’s very sad what a distorted impression of events in Israel and Ukraine even a reasonably intelligent journalist like Freddy has.
The proper goal of government policy, foreign and domestic, is to respect and protect individual freedom and natural rights. American policy can and probably will make permanent enemies of Russia and China, in the cause of preserving American hegemony worldwide. But this is wrong, because wars destroy lives and freedom.
China is not a natural enemy of the USA; it's government wants to preserve its power over a vast territory home to disparate cultures. China is experiencing many social revolts and cultural upheavals that threaten the preservation of its state monopoly of territorial power. The way to preserve the Chinese state, as is probably recognized by its political class, is to continue to raise economic productivity and thereby continue to improve living conditions for Chinese subjects.
As such, the likely goal of Chinese policy is to sell stuff to people around the world. But this is what threatens irrational American policy makers, who fear a prosperous China and like Trump, believe in zero sum economics and war-by-tarriffs.
The USA could, in theory, become once again a free productive people dedicated not to starting wars but to defending the right of individuals to shape their own lives and seek their own improvement. This prospect has disappeared as most commentators sell solutions based on their favored approach to waging war, rather than returning to free, productive private enterprise.
Why war, including war competition with China, is supposed to be realistic and good for Americans is never carefully explained. What a wreck we're headed into.
This is a very good illustration of the liberal world view. I find it very enticing. But I'm afraid, as the saying goes: "it don't work that way".
I've learned a lot from Prof. Mearsheimer and am very grateful for his teachings. The definition of civil war needs to be narrowed or enlarged, it looks very much like the Algerian war, even the war in Vietnam. It's a colonial liberation war. Ilan Pappé explains this very well.
is it possible that the "liberal" policies of the unipolar moment are better understood as cases where the realist calculations were disguised from the American public?
this is stuff that often gets hand-waved away as conspiratorial or fringe. for example: there is an argument to be made that the so-called War on Terror was *neither* about spreading democracy nor exclusively about enriching American economic interests (although that did happen). instead, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan make realist sense in terms of strengthening the United States' regional allies (Israel and Saudi Arabia, respectively). the fact that these ultimately ended in military defeats don't mean that they were bad strategic gambits to start with; the combined confusion of lying to the American public about our true strategic aims, plus a military defeat (maybe as a result of that moral confusion) makes it look like a failure of "liberal" policy.
there's a terrifying world in which America finally takes off the mask and becomes the fascist state it always has been, underneath the camouflage of liberal rhetoric, and aligns its realist geopolitical interests with the rhetoric of the truth: we have always dominated the world for our own economic and strategic gain, and don't give a tinker's fuck about human rights or "spreading democracy." that's how you get American recruits to tool up for the inevitable (in Prof. Mearsheimer's view) conflict with China: drop the lies about peace, love, and understanding. blood and glory for the Fatherland. it's the Starship Troopers vision of America.
the American Left is currently pretending that their candidate will prevent that move, instead of encouraging it, but the incentives make it equally likely from both ruling parties no matter who's in office. the only difference is that the optics might be slightly more palatable for Park Slope Democrats if one of their own is driving the tank of state.
"Is it possible that the 'liberal' policies of the unipolar moment are better understood as cases where the realist calculations were disguised from the American public?"
I used to lean towards that view. But after more consideration, no, I don't think so. I think they are more cogently understood, as Mearsheimer says, as non-Realist emanation of a messianic ("liberal") spirit.
Primarily, what happened during the "unipolar moment" was not part of a power competition, since, by definition, there was no power then that the US was competing with. It keeps the theory more clean if you don't lump the two things together. As Mearsheimer says, a theory doesn't have to explain everything.
I think there's a secondary element at play that is responsible for the pattern that you likely base your hypothesis on. Consider this: a species' extended phenotype always reflects its primary phenotype. We Humans have sculpted the world in our image. Our dwellings are proportioned to our bodies. Our tools are the size of our hands. And so forth. Just the same, the effects of State action always reflect the nature of State means, and a State's means reflect that State's organisation.
As for America "always having been a fascist State", no. Don't let your anger, however justified, cloud your judgement. I myself for instance am a subject of one of America's vassals. I resent that, and wish it weren't so (the vassal part, I mean). But at the same time, I have to admit that as far as overlords go, we could do much worse. For instance, I am convinced that the only reason that, in our countries, we still pay lip service to freedom of expression or individual freedom in general (however hypocritical in may be in practice), is because the US is our overlord. I shudder to think what it would look like if the overlord were China instead of the US. I still want to be rid of them, make no mistake. But whenever you look at a picture, always watch out for what you don't see.
This brings me to a last point I'd like to impart. Like you perhaps, I've grown up during the unipolar moment. I found it terribly depressing, and have been outraged by the US' misdeeds, and I still am. I have felt and still feel feelings similar to those that transpire from what you write. But consider this: those who don't do anything, do no wrong. Or conversely, only those who do anything, do wrong.
During the unipolar moment, only the US did anything, globally speaking. And so, they did all the wrong. It may well be that what the multipolar future has in store for us will make us look back longingly towards those times. It's still worth it, because, ¡VIVA LA LIBERTAD, CARAJO! -- but it's very unlikely to be pretty.
well said. but we might be missing something in the meaning of "fascism." i don't mean fascism as something that necessarily involves a Nazi genocide or an Orwellian state of deprivation. the ethos of the Roman empire at its height said that whatever Rome did was for the good of all Romans. as long as you were inside the Empire and kept your head down, for most of the time, life was pretty good. it was only when you opposed the Empire—like trying to resist the forcible seizure of your ancestral homeland—that you stopped mattering as a human being and became an ambulatory pile of gristle under the iron-bound wheel of Progress.
if the United States has a national character in terms of its foreign policy over the past century, its actions are best described as secretly wanting to be the new Roman Empire—wanting to fully embrace its own Pax Americana, in which everything it does is for the good of all Americans—but feeling constrained by its identity as a liberal democracy. there are probably a disconcerting number of people within the government and also within the electorate who would like nothing more than to maintain global order by raining down hellfire from the sky on anyone who opposes them, with no apologies made for the innocent. we've come very close, many times, and the only thing holding us back has been this pernicious need to be merciful.
for the record, i'm fully on the side of peace, which is why it's so scary to live inside this colossus. because really—what's stopping us? if we discussed in public what's only been whispered about in private for the past few decades, and promised the spoils would flow down to the citizens, how many people within the United States would stand up and resist? Germany took the darkest of dark turns because its people were humiliated after WW1; how far will we get into a multipolar future, with a culturally and economically diminished United States, before the Americans decide they really do want to get back to brunch, the way things used to be—by any means necessary?
Fascism is a very interesting historical phenomenon, but its understanding is severely hampered by the fact that its defeat has become part of the foundational myth of the post-WW2 US-led order, and even further complicated by its contemporary use in the political arena. It is hard to account for all the variation and undertones of the term without a veeeery lengthy discussion.
You speak of the US secretly wanting to be the new Roman Empire. Three things.
Firstly. Why the Roman Empire in particular? The Roman Empire is a great and, importantly, well known and documented, example of an empire achieving regional hegemony. But it is not unique in that regard. Are you aiming at something particular about it?
Secondly. Why "secretly"? They are hardly being coy about it. Take Bush the First's 1991 State of the Union. What part of "we are going to be the World's policeman" is ambiguous? What part of "manifest destiny" or "indispensable Nation" is a double-entendre?
Thirdly and finally. The US is striving to be a hegemon. Yes. No buts about it. That is precisely what Mearsheimer describes. That's the natural course of things. Every State naturally and necessarily strives to become a hegemon. Those who can, do. Those who can't, land on the scrapheap of History (... a bit sooner than the former).
If you oppose the Empire, you stop mattering as a human being and become an ambulatory pile of gristle, as you so eloquently put it. No argument there. But let me ask you this: have you tried not paying your taxes lately? That's a rhetorical question; I am very certain that the answer is no, judging by the fact that you are posting here and therefore alive. For if you did seriously try not paying them, I can assure you that you would quickly become intimately acquainted, metaphorically speaking, with an iron-bound wheel, whether it bears the name of Progress or any other. That is true whether you live in the US, or in Italy, or Angola, or Russia, or India, or North Korea or bloody Belgium. Does that mean that Belgium is fascist? How does that fit in with what you're trying to say?
You describe, if I may paraphrase, the US as a bloodthirsty beast reined in by a liberal ethos, and express anguish at the thought that those reins may fail. It's an interesting point of view. But... I don't think it is quite right. You consider those two things at odds, the underlying ruthlessness and the overarching ethos. But I think they are actually complementary. Or to put it differently, that they are both crucial ingredients for a third, critical element -- namely, the US's *success*.
Two things are necessary for succeeding at becoming a hegemon: the means and the will. When Victoria Nuland goes to Kiev to distribute cookies to people she knows full well she'll subsequently use as cannon fodder, she needs some kind of ethos that makes her believe she's doing the right thing. Perhaps Victoria Nuland is a bad example, as she is a particularly evil person, but overall, it is quite clear that those who further the US hegemony, and they are legion, at many levels of responsibility, on the whole believe what they are doing is right. People are like that. I'm not trying to say that they are, indeed, right; I'm saying there needs to be an ethos that enables them to believe they are right. In that sense, that very ethos, rather than being a restraint on imperial expansion, actually conditions it.
The US's enabling ethos happens to be liberalism (in the modern sense). Or perhaps Progressivism would be more apt a term. Regardless, the particular ethos is incidental. There just needs to be one, and it needs to work. Of course, there will be times where the ethos is at odds with the natural law of striving for hegemony. That's bound to happen. An interesting question is: what happens when that happens. Mearsheimer says: the ethos takes a back seat. Seems about right, as far as I can tell.
In any case, those episodes of contention between the enabling ethos and the hegemonic tendency is not unique to the liberal ethos. You could easily imagine, for instance, an Empire whose enabling ethos is, say, xenophobia, finding itself in a philosophical pickle when confronted with the need to ally or vassalize certain foreign powers (my latest Stellaris run comes to mind). Nazi Germany needed to make friends with some Muslim countries, or with the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, or what have you. Definitely not Aryans. So what did they do? They spun out some claptrap, or hushed it up, or lied about it, and things went on anyway.
That's not to say that the ethos can never fail; it certainly can. When it does, the hegemonic project crumbles, like any man who's lost the will to live. As far as I can tell, it is the ethos that fails first, long before the means fail. See the Soviet Union for instance. It could have fought tooth and nail. It didn't. Was that accidental? I don't know. I hope not.
We are mortals, and so are our creations. Don't worry too much.
John M. has been prescient about many things and can be bracingly concise and well organized in the presentation of arguments.
That said, contra John M., the assumptions of the neoons about international politics are distinctly realist in nature, by John's own definition, but unrealistic in situational analysis and execution. Unrealistic is not tantamount to idealist and shouldn’t be labeled as such. It’s doubly wrong to call the neocons idealists by taking at face value their public statements about motives and aims, which their actions belie. In fact it’s further evidence of a Machiavellian realism, not idealism. It’s nice and tidy to set up a polar opposition between realism and idealism in policy, and it may exist somewhere, but it’s not between tragic realists like Mearsheimer and maximalist unipolar realists in Washington.
The same critique goes for describing Western states as champions of liberal democracy. That’s the PR, not the reality, for states that were once selectively liberal at home, only rarely abroad, and now are ever less so even domestically. Moreover the West’s democracies often more closely resemble empty spectacles staged by elites than effective mechanisms to meaningfully represent popular will. To adopt such terminology is misleading and arguably an inadvertent concession to a deceptive image promoted by the West.
I loved seeing the professor roast the journalist. It’s interesting how quickly some journalists become defensive and push their biases when the narrative goes against Western propaganda. The field seems less about uncovering the truth and more about manipulation. They speak of realism but struggle to face Israel’s setbacks over the past year. Unlike Israel, Hamas and Hezbollah didn’t receive $22 billion in aid from its daddy.
Sadly (or is it only naturally?) Prof. Mersheimer doesn't seem to be able to think from other nations point of view. He is, realism or not, irrespectively bound in the thought-mrchanism of the US world view and western globalism. For example, the rise of China's economic and military power is a direct result if US hegemonic policies around the world, and China is not the only country moving that way.
Accusing Israel of genocide doesn't make me angry. It results in my thinking less of Professor Mearsheimer. One can hold that opinion but an academic being so uncareful with a word having so many different definitions is inexcusable.
Prof Mearsheimer's immoral 'Realist' doctrine states that each country should try to become more powerful than the others and that it should maximize the gap between the power of itself and its adversaries.
By arming and helping Ukraine, the US has made Russia much weaker both militarily and economically. The gap between Russian and US power has increased considerably from 2022 to 2024, so much so that Russia has to go to a third world country like North Korea for help. So, it appears that the US is doing exactly what the immoral 'Realist' doctrine dictates.
In that case, what is Prof Mearsheimer complaining about US and European actions vis-a-vis Ukraine?
*A*moral, not *im*moral. Mearsheimer even took the time to stress that. Do not fib.
Mearsheimer may call it amoral, but I think the 'Realist' doctrine is totally immoral. The doctrine is essentially 'Might makes Right' - quite uncivilized and disgusting. I dislike the idea of a 'mult-polar' world. We should have a world with ZERO poles.
All power should reside with the UN general assembly and the security council veto should be abolished. The idea of 'balance of power politics' should be made obsolete. Perpetrators of genocide like Israel will then no longer be protected by a veto.
What you say is that the application of the Realist theory yields conclusions that are offensive to your moral sense. That's one thing.
On the other hand, Realism being amoral means precisely that it does not make any statement as to the morality of what it describes. It is not a doctrine; it is a theory of nature. It purports to describe something akin to a natural law, as in: that's how things work.
The validity of a theory hinges on whether or not it describes its subject accurately. Not on whether you do or do not like what it says.
From the rest of what you write, you are obviously a statist and would like the world to function as a singular State. Setting aside whether that's even possible or not, riddle me this: what happens when the State itself becomes evil? What do we do when the World Government turns against us? Who is going to stop it?
Hail competition!
"the US has made Russia much weaker both militarily and economically."
source?
You need a source for this? Their interest rate is 21 percent. More than half their tanks are destroyed. They are now using WWII tanks. They have over 100,000 soldiers dead and many times that seriously wounded. I know you are getting ready to open your mouth and spout 'fake news' like Trump.
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2024/07/05/report-estimates-120000-russian-soldiers-killed-in-ukraine-a85620
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-relying-old-stocks-after-losing-3000-tanks-ukraine-leading-military-2024-02-13/
what is the significance of "over 100,000 soldiers dead"? why is that number important? i see nothing in the article you linked saying that Russia's military is crippled because of those casualties. how are those losses being offset by enlistment? how will a military victory for Russia positively affect its recruitment abilities in the future? well, not at all, probably, because *everybody knows* that Russia is a giant prison with Putin as the jailer. it's not possible that winning a war against the West will increase Russian enthusiasm for the military. it's just not a normal country in that regard. right?
nowhere in your article does it say "WWII tanks." it says "older tanks," which could just as easily mean tanks from the 1990s. it's not like Russia stopped making tanks after World War 2 and just started again in 2022. this is absurd.
what your article *does* talk about is Russia's booming wartime economy, which Prof. Mearsheimer has mentioned many times as a favorable outcome for Russia, and something that the West has been unable to stop. so that gives the lie to your claims about Russia being "economically weaker."
most importantly: if you want to screech about Trump and "fake news," why on Earth are you commenting on the work of a sober and intelligent political analyst? take that Sesame Street bullshit back to Facebook. the grown-ups are having a conversation.
Grownups are having a conversation! Hahaha!
So, you see nothing significant about 100000 dead? Are you Stalin's brother?
As Mearsheimer advocates, the US is increasing the gap between Russian power and US power - that does not mean 'crippling' Russia, just weakening it relatively. As for tanks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=0U9n9vr7XP0
...you're citing a local news channel from Kentucky as your source? brother.
i heard them say that model was "*first built* in the 1940s." not an artillery expert, but i can imagine the hard-hitting journalists at WDRB having a particular bias when it comes to their portrayal of Russia's military capabilities. i'd be much more likely to trust their assessment if it was a story about the Strategic Banjo Gap.
and again: you're not offering anything credible about how much Russia's military has actually been weakened. what is their capacity to replenish their numbers? what is their capacity to out-perform the United States in strategic arms production? how much has U.S. support for Ukraine (and Israel) diminished its own stockpiles to the point where it's *also* less competitive than it was before the conflict? how does morale and battlefield expertise among the United States' 1st Cavalry Rascal Scooter Regiment compare to a new Russian recruits who see the first chance in generations to win back some dignity for their country?
you're not being serious.
I am deliberately citing obscure sources because Putin-lovers are quick to say MSM news is all fake or all US propaganda as if Russian/Chinese news is the 'truth'. But you can see the same story on CNN https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2023/05/08/exp-russian-tanks-clare-sebastian-live-dnt-050803aseg1-cnni-world.cnn
The only thing the US is running out of is artillery shells but the US will never be fighting a trench war needing artillery shells. The only modern weapons the US has provided Ukraine is the HIMAR, ATACMS and Patriot batteries - but very few of them, so we have kept what we need. The rest of the weaponary is what was in storage and would have been decommissioned anyway (at a cost) .
On Israel, Mearsheimer is totally correct - there is no theory under which US should arm and support a country committing genocide and war crimes. But on Ukraine, the US is doing exactly what his immoral doctrine dictates.
To say that the Iraq war was the result of a liberal policy is ridiculous. Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney and Rice are not liberals at all. They are some of the most illiberal warmongers the world has known. They are neither realists or liberals, they are just old-fashioned war criminals plain and simple.
Great Article!
We've shared the link on our report.
A Skeptic War Reports
https://askeptic.substack.com/
Today you brilliant analysis shines its best. I've come to the conclusion that you shine where you have intelligent opponents rather than hooligans ones. God job dear John, and good job Freddy as well.
The realist international policy school is disappointing and depressing, and leaves no hope for peaceful coexistence. Does a multipolarity of BRICS or “living by the UN charter” proposed by Jeffrey Sachs in his book “A new foreign policy” for the US could work? It seems that China and Russia are less aggressive in their attitudes towards the world. The US is a new civilization that didn’t experienced a foreign invasion and war on its territory. The “rest of the world” questions Americans intellectual capacity to live in a peaceful world based on facts of the last 30 years, as well as the entire history of US. The world needs a foreign policy Mahatma Gandhi.
The entire world lives within the framework of the most powerful gaining the most security and advantages. Humans are part of this world. It's not easy being a primate.