The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities by John J. Mearsheimer

 

Mearsheimer's most recent (2018) book

John Mearsheimer: controversial IR theorist, especially viz. Ukraine-Russia

John Mearsheimer, a professor of international relations at the University of Chicago, has been in the news of late. Such notoriety seems unlikely for what would otherwise be an obscure professor (outside the world of academia and government). But Mearsheimer is a proponent of what he terms “offensive” and “structural” realism as the best understanding of how nations behave toward one another. In short, a conceptual framework that attempts to gauge whether we will enjoy peace or suffer war. Among Mearsheimer’s opinions, based on his conception of realism, has been a long-standing series of warnings about NATO expansion toward Russia and about the West becoming too involved in the status of Ukraine. This concern about NATO expansion and Ukraine, in particular, is not recent. He wrote about the topic extensively in 2014, when Putin grabbed Crimea from Ukraine and began his effort to eventually grab the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. But Mearsheimer’s concern with Ukraine goes back even further. In 1993, Mearsheimer published an article in Foreign Affairs arguing that Ukraine should retain the nuclear weapons that fell into its hands with the collapse of the Soviet Union. (“The Case for a Ukrainian Nuclear Deterrent.”) In this piece, Mearsheimer presciently argues:

A nuclear Ukraine makes sense for two reasons. First, it is imperative to maintain peace between Russia and Ukraine. That means ensuring that the Russians, who have a history of bad relations with Ukraine, do not move to reconquer it. Ukraine cannot defend itself against a nuclear-armed Russia with conventional weapons, and no state, including the United States, is going to extend to it a meaningful security guarantee. Ukrainian nuclear weapons are the only reliable deterrent to Russian aggression. If the U.S. aim is to enhance stability in Europe, the case against a nuclear-armed Ukraine in unpersuasive. (p.50-51.) 

Mearsheimer continues: 

A war between Russia and Ukraine would be a disaster. Great power wars are very costly and dangerous, causing massive loss of life and worldwide turmoil, and possibly spreading to involve other countries. The likely result of that war? Russia's reconquest of Ukraine would injure prospects for peace throughout Europe. It would increase the danger of a Russian-German collision, and sharply intensify the security competition across the continent. 

A conventional war between Russia and Ukraine would entail vast military casualties and the possible murder of many thousands of civilians. Russians and Ukrainians have a history of mutual enmity; this hostility, combined with the intermixing of their populations, raises the possibility that war between them could entail Bosnian style ethnic cleansing and mass murder. This war could produce mil lions of refugees clamoring at the borders of Western Europe. 

In addition, there are 14 operational nuclear reactors in Ukraine that might produce new Chernobyls if left unattended or attacked during a conventional war. The consequences of such a war would dwarf the death and suffering in the Balkans, where more than 50,000 people have died since the summer of 1991. Needless to say, if nuclear weapons were used the costs would be immeasurable. 

There is also the threat of escalation beyond the borders of Russia and Ukraine. For example, the Russians might decide to reconquer other parts of the former Soviet Union in the midst of a war, or might try to take back some of Eastern Europe. Poland and Belarus might join forces with Russia against Ukraine or gang up with Ukraine to prevent a Russian resurgence. The Germans, Americans or Chinese could get pulled in by their fear of a Russian victory. (Doubters should remember that the United States had no intention of fighting in Europe when war broke out in 1914 and again in 1939.) Finally, nuclear weapons might be used accidentally or purposefully against a third state. 

The security environment in Europe would certainly become heated and competitive in the wake of a Russian war with Ukraine. Other great powers would move quickly and sharply to contain further Russian expansion. The Russians would then think seriously for security reasons about controlling their many smaller neighbors. Other great powers would move to check them. Ukrainian nuclear weapons are the only reliable deterrent to Russian aggression. 

One might expect the burden of deterring a resurgent Russia to fall to an American-dominated NATO, in effect, bringing back the Cold War order that kept Europe at peace for 45 years. (p.52-54.) 

I could continue the quote for some length, but I assume by now you have Mearsheimer’s point, and you appreciate the accuracy of his analysis. (I highly commend the entirety of the article to you. And if you want more articles by him, go to his website: https://www.mearsheimer.com/. And be sure and appreciate the faux portrait. ) 

Why all of this background for a review of Mearsheimer’s most recent book, The Great Delusion (2018)? First, I want you to understand why I chose to read this book. Given all that Mearsheimer has stated about Ukraine and Russia, I wanted a deeper background. This book does have some discussion of the situation in Ukraine that meshes with his previous writing on the topic. Also, I’d read his The Tragedy of Great Power Politics near the time of its original publication in 2001, and I found it an accessible and comprehensive guide to Mearsheimer’s thinking about realism. And like The Tragedy, The Great Delusion is a comprehensive, learned, and accessible guide to Mearsheimer’s thought about liberalism in foreign policy. And--spoiler alert--he thinks very poorly of it. 

Before going further with Mearsheimer’s critique of liberalism in foreign policy (especially in contemporary U.S. foreign policy), I should make it clear that Mearsheimer clearly states his preference for a liberal democratic nation-state. But his enthusiasm for liberalism ends at the water’s edge. For in addition to liberalism, two other factors contend with liberalism (and other forms of domestic political arrangements) in guiding a nation’s behavior towards other nation-states: nationalism and realism. And to jump again to a Mearsheimer conclusion: both considerations of nationalism and realism trump liberalism’s aspirations when it comes to issues of foreign policy. This is so even in U.S. foreign policy, despite ongoing U.S. aspirations to establish a liberal hegemony throughout as much of the world as possible. 

Mearsheimer is excellent in providing a taxonomy of contemporary liberalism. He identifies “modus vivendi liberalism, which is essentially classical liberalism defined by primary concerns for negative liberty or “freedom from” and that tends toward libertarianism, and “progressive liberalism,” which is concerned with providing its citizenry with opportunities and promotes conceptions of positive freedom, or “freedom to,” the ability to live in an environment that maximizes opportunities and that uses government to provide such an environment. Mearsheimer also identifies two close relatives of liberalism, utilitarianism and “liberal idealism” (which was very prominent in nineteenth-century Britain via T.H. Green and others). Mearsheimer concludes that “progressive liberalism” is now the dominant variety, with, for instance, the application of Keynesian and monetary economics to smooth economic turbulence. (We saw this in spades with the economic stimulus during the height of the COVID pandemic.) 

But while Mearsheimer expresses no significant reluctance about the practice of progressive liberalism domestically, he finds liberal attitudes inadequate when trying to apply its principles abroad. The reality of nationalism and the structure of the international political arena (anarchical) don't work with liberalism. Here, too, Mearsheimer, thoroughly, fairly, and accurately presents the realities of nationalism and realism. Nationalism, now reflected in the dominance of the nation-state system, is a potent force that all states must reckon with, both domestically and in foreign relations. As Mearsheimer notes, nationalism has overwhelmed ideas of class and ideology in defining relations among nations in ways that both liberal democracies and Marxist regimes couldn’t appreciate. Vietnam fought a war with the French and then the U.S. based much more on nationalism than on commitment to Marxist doctrine. Then after defeating the U.S., Vietnam battled its Marxist neighbors China and Cambodia. I should note (as Mearsheimer does) that Vietnam currently enjoys good relations with the U.S. because the Vietnamese (as good realists) share a common commitment with the U.S. and other nations to check Chinese power in Southeast Asia. This current relationship with the U.S. enhances, not threatens, Vietnamese nationalism. 

In addition to serving as a leading exponent of the realist tradition in international relations (a lineage that can be traced back to the ancient Greek, Thucydides), Mearsheimer is an outspoken critic of U.S. foreign policy as practiced by recent Republican and Democrat administrations. Why? Because, as he argues at length in this book, liberalism doesn’t work as an export. Only in a unipolar world (a world with only one dominant great power) could such a project be undertaken, as it was in the immediate post-Cold War era.  But now, with the rise of China and the residual military might of Russia, we no longer live in a unipolar world. And, as Mearsheimer points out, in any event, U.S. efforts to export democracy to unwilling nations have failed miserably at great cost to the U.S. Iraq and Afghanistan provide only the two most recent and dramatic instances of failure to forcibly export democracy and the rule of law. And for its effort, the U.S. has suffered a decline in its own democratic norms and commitment to the rule of law. 

Mearsheimer prosecutes a strong case. He makes a persuasive argument. He emphasizes the structural imperatives reflected in realism. In brief, there are the strong and the weak among nations, and there is no 9-1-1 to call in the event of an emergency. Therefore, there’s an imperative to be among the strong, including the use of alliances. All true, I agree. But in weighing threats and the power dynamics behind any threats, Mearsheimer doesn’t address the nature of regimes, at least not directly. He doubts democratic peace theory, economic interdependence theory, and international institutions theory as guarantors—or even as promotors—of peace. But he neglects to consider how regimes contribute to the mix. For example, as he notes, liberal democracies have to jump through more hoops—including pleasing (or cajoling) their voting public—to pursue any foreign adventures. Of course, it's been done; the U.S. provides too many examples. But popular descent can throw sand in the works, unlike authoritarian regimes like Putin’s Russia, where dissent, even internal (intra-government) dissent is quashed.

But more importantly to an argument about the limits of realism, some borders, once hotly contested, have become pacific. In the early nineteenth century the U.S. took the territory it coveted from Mexico, and many in the U.S. had their eyes on Canada during that same period. But now no armies patrol those borders. (In the U.S., border patrols and vigilantes monitor, but that’s because so many in Latin America want to come to the U.S., not because the U.S. covets those territories or the U.S. fears an invasion by the Mexican army.) And could any president to date have gotten the U.S. behind a war to conquer Canada? The imperialist ideology of the nineteenth and early twentieth century might have garnered some support for such ventures (witness the result of the Spanish-American War), but now? I think not. The nature of our regime, including the electorate, has changed. In realist theory, Canadians should perpetually be nervously scanning their southern border: their neighbor to the south is bigger: bigger population, bigger economy, bigger armed forces (including nukes), and it’s more militaristic.  Yet, the Canadians, I don't believe, live in fear of a U.S. invasion. How does realist theory explain this? As far as power dynamics go, is this so different from Russia and Ukraine? 

Let’s consider a hypothetical. Canada remains Canada, but the U.S. falls to an authoritarian regime. A strongman [sic] has taken over. Predictably, except for a privileged few (let’s call them oligarchs or plutocrats if you’re old-fashioned), things are going poorly in the U.S. The economy is a wreck, people are constrained from exercising their traditional rights, and popular discontent is on the rise. Americans have begun looking north to how well Canadians are doing with a government committed to liberal democracy and the rule of law. In fact, the migration of U.S. citizens to Canada has increased dramatically. The U.S. rulers begin talking about how the U.S. and Canada are really much the same, with so many shared traditions. Really, the strongman [sic] argues, the Manifest Destiny of the U.S. (taken out and dusted off) is to encompass the whole of North America. Might a U.S.-Canadian war break out? 

Mearsheimer would suggest the more likely scenario would be if Canada decided to become an ally of China. Then the U.S. would consider war against Canada to stem a Chinese encroachment so close to the U.S. (citing the Monroe Doctrine, no doubt). But while I wouldn’t disagree with Mearsheimer's counter-scenario, I don’t believe that it negates mine, nor would I consider his scenario the more likely. My point is that regimes make a difference. The culture, the political system, the traditions, the discourse, and all the beliefs of those active in a nation-state count toward whether and to what extent a realist paradigm becomes the dominant mode of relations between (or among) various nation-states. The constitutions and cultures of Japan and Germany are different now than they were at the beginning of WWII. Their geography didn’t change, but their regimes did, including the friends they kept (the alliances that they joined). Also, the popular culture in each nation was greatly pacified by the defeat both suffered in the war. These and other factors greatly affected the policies and actions of their decision-makers. Of course, realistic considerations have always played a role in their thinking, and of late, significant trends toward re-armament have gained traction in both Germany and Japan; but even so, they move only slowly and cautiously. 

So is Mearsheimer right that the West is at “fault” for the current war in Ukraine? Let me ask you this: A person enters a neighborhood known for its muggers, and the person knows of this danger. The person has every right to be there and to be free from harm. The person chooses to walk through the neighborhood, and sure enough, gets mugged. Is the person at fault? Does the person who exercised a perfectly legitimate right in a peaceful, non-threatening manner deserve the blame? By the way, the mugger, upon being confronted, defended himself by saying that he didn’t want “their type” in our neighborhood. Besides, the mugger says, the person kept bad friends (hostile to the mugger and his group), and they might have weapons. Again, is the person mugged at fault? Should the cops, who warned the person not to enter this bad neighborhood, decline to act because the person acted foolishly in picking this route? “Rights be damned, you’re a fool, and you have to pay the price,” says the cop standing down. Is this the course the cops should take?

To be clear, Mearsheimer isn’t arguing in favor of Putin’s invasion, nor does he support Putin’s cause. Mearsheimer is only saying that the whole bad situation could have been avoided with the exercise of greater prudence (to wit, a realist analysis of the dynamics of the situation). He has a point, but we're in it now. The cops have arrived (or at least are providing assistance to the person amid the mugging), so how far should they—should we—go? How much should we--the U.S., NATO--risk in defense of Ukraine? Should the mugger walk away with the victim's purse, or even the victim's life, with impunity?

There are no easy, clearly right or wrong answers here. And, however you come down on these issues, Mearsheimer’s analysis provides a bracing tonic against wishful thinking and continuing fantasies. Liberalism, especially U.S. liberalism that seeks export abroad, is called to question in a detailed and knowledgeable exposition that challenges the status quo. We’d all be advised to take heed and govern ourselves accordingly. 

Moral Judgments in History

Yesterday on my other blog ("Steve's View From Abroad" about living abroad and traveling), I posted a note about the sirens that marked the anniversary of the "Chinese War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression". As the sirens sounded, I happened to be reading R.G. Collingwood's The Idea of History, and specifically, "Lectures on the Philosophy of History" given in 1926. In that section, Collingwood writes about the historian's attitude toward the past. Collingwood argues that it is not the job of the historian to judge the past, but to deal with the facts and attempt to explain it.

I think that he's right. This seemingly cold-blooded attitude--as Collingwood describes it--is required for an accurate understanding of the nature of the past. The past is done, final; and to pass moral judgment upon it is to waste energy that should be spent on current concerns. Like the pathologist performing an autopsy, the job is not to mourn or decry the fact of an untimely or unjust death, but to understand it, to explain it, and to pass on information to the present and future that may prove of use there. This is not to say that we should become callous about wars of aggression, slavery, or any of the seemingly infinite number of wrongs that we humans can commit. No so! But to dwell in the world of past wrongs as if it was real is a fool's errand and the tool of tyrants and demagogues who manipulate the gullible to dwell on past wrongs at the expense of current, ongoing malfeasance.

This is not an easy attitude to take. We cannot think of wrongs without some sense of moral revulsion. As the Chinese (or any feeling person) will react in horror and revulsion at the Rape of Naking and the history of brutality and hostility wrought by the Japanese in China between 1931 and 1945, this reaction must halt at the visceral level. For those who go further--those who exercise their historical consciousness--the next step is to perform the autopsy. Lessons can be learned, but the past cannot be changed nor can it serve as a reliable motive as it fades further and further into the blur of the accumulated past. This is the role of forgiveness at the personal level and some practical statute of limitations at the social level.

Here are Collingwood's thoughts on the subject:

[I]t is not the function of the historian to pass judgment, but to explain; and to explain is always to justify, to show the rationality of that which is explained; for (he goes on) whereas the practical consciousness always looks to the future and tries to bring into existence something better than what now exists, and therefore always regards the present as bad, whereas it can regard the past as simply good because it is not real and therefore has not to be opposed and improved, the theoretical or historical consciousness, concerned simply with what is, must regard the present with an impartial eye and must therefore see in it the outcome of all the past's endeavor, and therefore better than the past. [402]

To say that the whole course of history has been a continual passage from the good to the better is true and valuable, if it means that we must look at history not with a view to criticizing it but with a view to accepting it and reconciling ourselves to it, not it to ourselves. But it is false if it means that we are called upon to pass moral judgments on its course and at the same time restricted from passing any but a favorable judgment. We are not called upon to pass moral judgments at all. Our business is simply to face the facts. To say that the Greek victory at Marathon was a good thing or the Renaissance papacy a bad thing is simply to indulge in fantasies that impede, instead of advancing, the course of historical study. The real holocaust of history is that historian's holocaust of his emotional and practical reactions towards the facts that it presents to his gaze. True history must be absolutely passionless, absolutely devoid of all judgments of value, of whatever kind. [402]

[I]t's easy to forget that what we are studying is the past, and to deceive ourselves into thinking that Athens and Sparta are as real as France and Germany. And we do this, we feel about them as we feel about France and Germany, that it is up to us to do something about it, to decide upon a course of action, or at least to make up our minds how we should act if opportunity arose to act. It will not arise; and for that very reason we may take the same kind of self-deceptive pleasure in making up our minds how we should act that we take in framing pungent rapartees to an adversary whom we know we shall not meet. We are amusing ourselves by transplanting ourselves in imagination into a scene whose very essence, as an object of historical thought, is that we are not in it and can never be in it: and this not only confuses our historical thinking but squanders in fantasies our moral energy which it is our duty to devote to the actual problems of life. [403]

To pass moral judgments on the past is to fall into the fallacy of imagining that somewhere, behind a veil, the past is still happening; and that when we so imagine it we will fall into a kind of rage of thwarted activity as if the massacre of Corsyra was now being enacted in the next room and we ought to break open the door and stop it. To rescue ourselves from the state of mind we need only to realize clearly that these things have been; they are over; there is nothing to be done about them; the dead must be left to bury their dead and praise their virtues and lament their loss. [404]

The Idea of History (Revised Edition)

China Bit: Sirens in Suzhou

Sirens to remind people of Japanese aggression

Sep 9, 2015|By Pan Zheng

---

Air raid sirens will sound across Suzhou on September 18 to mark the outbreak of China’s War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression in 1931. The city government decided to test sirens on this day instead of April 27, the anniversary of Suzhou’s liberation in 1949.

All over Jiangsu Province, sirens will be heard to commemorate the September 18 Incident 84 years ago when the Japanese army attacked Chinese troops in Manchuria, setting off a 14-year war in China.

The sirens will sound at 10pm and last nine minutes. People are reminded to stay calm during the alarm.

http://www.livingsu.com/news_detail.asp?id=2762#.VftyZvmqqko

I Googled the item above as sirens here began wailing at 10 a.m. this morning. Given that began wailing at exactly 10 a.m. and that the weather outside was calm--being a good Iowan the first thing that I think of with a warning siren--I didn't think too much of it. Also, the pedestrians, cyclists, and motorists continued in their nonchalant ways. But a second round led me to my computer to find the above. I'd never heard warning sirens here before. (Note that the article refers to them as "air raid sirens". Really?)

This reminder of Japanese aggression isn't the only recent reminder of that distant war  that the Chinese people have received of late. Earlier this month the Chinese celebrated a new holiday to mark the surrender of the Japanese to Chinese forces, ending the brutal and humiliating occupation of China by the Japanese. The big-wigs celebrated by holding a Soviet-style parade of military hardware and goose-stepping troops parading through Tiananmen Square. Apropos the occasion, Vladimir Putin attended as a guest. Meanwhile, a great many ordinary Chinese spent the holiday pouring into Japanese-owned malls to buy Japanese-manufactured goods, or they went out and bought Japanese brand cars. One senses a disconnect from the leadership's ideas about how they should think of Japan. For C, it was a day off of school. 

Some suggest that all of this reminder of a war that ended over 70 years ago is to foment nationalist pride and denigrate the Japanese. In the U.S.,  it would be the equivalent of sounding sirens to mark December 7, 1941, and the bombing of Pearl Harbor, or to declare a national holiday for V-J Day. Even in my youth, less than 20 years after V-J Day, I don't recall any commemoration. And while the anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack was noted, it was not a holiday or major event.  Those who lived then and were affected by the war, such as my parents, certainly recalled that date and what they were doing when they learned of the attack. But for us young ones, it was strictly a historical event.  The current generational equivalent is 9/11, but note that American high schools are now populated by those who have no personal memory of 9/11. Time passes. 

As for me, if I'd have been asked, I would have suggested a celebration of 70 years of peace between China and Japan (and the U.S. and Japan). The cause for celebration is the successful rehabilitation of Japan after the war and its place in the world today. A fact, that I must add, justifies some measure of American pride. 

Anyway, an interesting choice of a date to test the sirens. But was something else something else being tested? 

Japan Through the Looking Glass by Alan Macfarlane

Published 2007

In anticipation of an upcoming trip to Japan with C and the Glamorous Nomad, I read Cambridge anthropologist Alan Macfarlane's Japan Through the Looking Glass. Macfarlane is a relatively a relative latecomer to Japan, having arrived there for the first time only in 1990, although he’s been back several times, in addition to reflecting upon what he saw and learned there. Macfarlane completed his anthropological fieldwork in Nepal and he’s written a great deal about early modern England. He's a keen student of the transition to modernity and the early theorists who dealt with that change from Montesquieu to Maitland, including Adam Smith, Tocqueville, Malthus, Marx, and others who have attempted to explain the advent of modernity. It was with this background that Macfarlane approached Japan, and he found that Japan confounded many of the characteristic dichotomies that classical theorists had developed about modern versus traditional societies.

The main theme of Japan Through the Looking Glass is that nothing seems quite as it first appears in Japanese culture; indeed, even upon closer examination, paradoxes and uncertainties abound. As Macfarlane notes, many outward similarities exist with Great Britain. Both are island nations, both have a feudal history, both have a long history of a strong work ethic, and both were the first to industrialize in their regions. But as Macfarlane points out, despite the similarities, westerners have a continuing challenge in understanding how Japan works.

For instance, Japan has a mix of individualism and status relationships. It is a modern (often hyper-modern) capitalist society, yet the profit motive is not glorified. Individuals in the sense of Western individualism don’t exist. Instead, people are defined by relationships. People think in terms of relationships and emotions rather than in terms of  logic whenever dealing with other people. Thus, while the Japanese can be quite reticent in speech and seemingly cold, in their observation of the subtlest behaviors and assessments of responses they’re finely nuanced and responsive. As to religion, in a land filled with temples and shrines, the Japanese are, according to Macfarlane, some of the least religious people in the world. If we measure religiosity by belief in a soul, the afterlife, or belief in God, we find few Japanese adhere to these beliefs. The Japanese perceive little difference between nature and culture, and none between the natural and the supernatural. This does not mean that the native Shinto religion, Confucianism, and Buddhism have not had an effect, but rather than suffer a transformation by any one religion, Japanese culture has transformed the religions to fit Japan. Thus, Zen Buddhism lies a far distance from the more traditional Buddhism of South Asia. This lack of distinction between nature and culture also helps us appreciate Japanese attitudes towards nature and the beauty of ephemeral things like cherry blossoms and the phases of the moon. Macfarlane even ventures into the difficult question of why, when Japanese became a conquering military power in the 1930s, there were so many instances of the Japanese atrocities. How did such an otherwise docile people, who have an extremely low crime rate and few incidents of criminal violence, turn into war criminals? Macfarlane, adopting the opinions of some others who have considered this paradox, suggests that the perception of extreme differences between native Japanese and others accounts for this stark dichotomy. But it remains in some sense another one of the enigmas of Japan. 

Macfarlane has an open, inquisitive mind that is well trained in attempting to understand how societies work. He readily admits that Japan has confounded his preconceived notions about the transformation to modernity and the role of the Axial religions in modern cultures. In this way, he serves as an outstanding guide him for a venture into understanding Japan and the Japanese. If you're looking for us a sink, a well constructed and broad ranging work on the enigma of Japan, I highly recommend this book to you.