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.