Mearsheimer's Blindspots

The limitations and dangers of realism

Warwick Powell
Sep 22, 2024
American political scientist John Mearsheimer rose to public prominence over the past two and a half years principally due to his 2014 article warning that the Ukraine crisis was the west’s fault and his willingness to get up on stage and press the point. His critique of western (US-led) foreign policy in the post-Soviet era drew on the insights of American diplomats and security analysts who had cautioned that NATO’s eastward expansion would most likely be a casus belli. Russian president Vladimir Putin expressed concerns that this encroachment was an existential question in 2008, but his warnings at the time were ignored.

Mearsheimer argued that not only was NATO expansion an unnecessary provocation, but was also counterproductive for US interests in that it ran the risk of pushing Russia towards China. For Mearsheimer, China was and remains America’s greatest threat, a point to which I return below. Despite this framing of US interests, and Mearsheimer wasn’t alone in seeing the world this way, American political leadership nonetheless proceeded to expand NATO eastward.

The outbreak of direct warfare involving Russians in Ukraine in early 2022 was, on this analysis, an inevitable consequence of foolhardy US foreign policy.

I had the pleasure of meeting Mearsheimer in October 2023, and listen to him speak not only about the Ukraine situation but also early perspectives on the crisis that had at the time just been sparked in Palestine. At that talk, Mearsheimer reiterated what were by then well-rehearsed positions. His performance was exemplary, and provided a shot over the bows of his Australian interlocutor that evening, Peter Varghese, who tried to muster a defence of the liberal rules based international order.

Mearsheimer’s merits for many rested not only on what was seen to be forewarnings against Russian provocation leading to unnecessary bloodshed. Mearsheimer’s other great contribution to the understanding of international affairs is his disassembling of the normative pretensions of the liberal order. In his talks and writings over the years, he had ably stripped away the hypocrisy and vacuity of the liberal world view, demonstrating that the so-called liberal order was premised on illiberal conduct. It should be said that he wasn’t the only one who exposed the liberal order for its hypocrisy.
Yet, despite these two significant contributions, there’s something troubling about Mearsheimer’s take on the state of world affairs. He is one of the doyens of the Realist school of international relations. He frequently prefaces his remarks with words to the effect of “as a good realist ….”, just in case his audience was to hold any doubts as to his theoretical predilections. Realism argues for a view of the world in which nation states act in their own interests, in the context of an anarchic world. By anarchic, this means the absence of any higher order; there’s only nation states. In such as world, nations pursue power maximisation as the means to achieving security. This gives rise to so-called security competition, which can spill over into warfare.

There’s something alluring about a theoretical frame that carries with it a sense of detachment and absence of sentimentality. Yet, there are major problems with this framework, which goes to explaining what I would call Mearsheimer’s persistent blindspot: his assessment of China and views on what American should do in relation to the China question. This blindspot has been a regular feature of his public appearances over the years, most recently in the panel discussion in which he shared the stage with Professor Jeffrey Sachs.

In short, Mearsheimer’s core argument about China can be summarised as follows:

1. The US is a great power that necessarily pursues global hegemony as the best means of ensuring its security. It cannot tolerate peer competitors anywhere. China is America’s greatest threat.

2. Picking a fight with Russia was counterproductive because it pushed Russia towards China. Additionally, Russia is not on a par with China and is, in Mearsheimer’s assessment, a third rate power whereas China is a peer competitor. Russia wasn’t worth the fight, in short.

3. The US should contain China and prevent China from establishing hegemony in Asia. The US needs to do this because if China secures a hegemony in Asia, it would then be free to project power elsewhere - in particular into the Indian Ocean. Mearsheimer says this is probable because that’s what hegemons do. He cites the US as the case in point; having secured hegemony in the western hemisphere, the US then proceeded to extend its military ambitions globally.

Mearsheimer is refreshingly direct. So, what’s wrong with this line of argumentation? The principal problems and limitations of realism a la Mearsheimer include the following:

1. The presupposition that all nations have the same calculus when it comes to interests and behaviours, which are reducible to some abstract notion of power rationality, is readily falsifiable. Mearsheimer’s own assessment of US policy vis-a-vis Ukraine and Israel provide the falsification needed. Mearsheimer’s reductive rationalist presuppositions are ahistorical. His theory of rational actors fails empirically because he shows that the US doesn’t act ‘rationally’.

a. In the case of Ukraine, he argued - and persuasively - that the pursuit of NATO expansion would end in disaster. Yet, despite the evident risks of disaster, the US pursued NATO expansion. This was, on Mearsheimer’s terms, irrational.

b. As for Israel, he and his colleague Stephen Walt wrote an extensive analysis of the power of the Israel Lobby in Washington and how that shaped US foreign policy towards Israel. Put plainly, regardless of the state of play or context, the US political establishment would unwaveringly and without question back Israel - even if it damaged US interests. Again, US behaviour is, on Mearsheimer’s terms, irrational. Mearsheimer is actually aware that this case undermines the rationalist trope at the heart of his version of realism, but shrugs the shoulders with the claim that his theory explains 80% of cases. Any theory that self-claims 80% explanatory power is probably one worth revisiting, particularly when we are dealing with questions of war and peace.

2. Mearsheimer’s rationalist presuppositions draw on the ideas of ‘rational choice’ theory that were prominent in the 1980s and 1990s in other fields of the social sciences, including in economics. If the notion saw the unrealistic concept of homo economicus elevated to God-like status in the cannons of mainstream economics, then Mearsheimer’s IR oeuvre adopted a similarly abstract notion of agency and calculus. Rational choice theory progressively receded in the other social sciences for the basic reason that its presuppositions were so far detached from reality that the world and the theory simply did not resemble each other. The same problems beset Mearsheimer’s adoption of this rationalist choice trope in the IR context. Again, the cases of US policy towards Ukraine and Israel show that the notion of ‘rational national interests’ aren’t simply ‘given’ but are constructed through historically embedded frames of political, cultural and institutional contexts of reference.

Mearsheimer’s rationalist presuppositions draw on the ideas of ‘rational choice’ theory that were prominent in the 1980s and 1990s in other fields of the social sciences, including in economics. If the notion saw the unrealistic concept of homo economicus elevated to God-like status in the cannons of mainstream economics, then Mearsheimer’s IR oeuvre adopted a similarly abstract notion of agency and calculus. Rational choice theory progressively receded in the other social sciences for the basic reason that its presuppositions were so far detached from reality that the world and the theory simply did not resemble each other. The same problems beset Mearsheimer’s adoption of this rationalist choice trope in the IR context. Again, the cases of US policy towards Ukraine and Israel show that the notion of ‘rational national interests’ aren’t simply ‘given’ but are constructed through historically embedded frames of political, cultural and institutional contexts of reference.

3. While Mearsheimer argues that it was foolhardy for the US to pick a fight with Russia, he’s more than happy for the US to pursue the same strategy vis-a-vis China.

a. Ironically, as the war in Ukraine unfolded, it became clear that the Russians were no ‘easy beats’. On the contrary, the Russian military has demonstrated a capacity to overcome the western-backed, trained and supplied Ukrainian military. Russia was, in short, winning the war - a war of attrition. Mearsheimer was slow to come to this conclusion, despite many independent analysts arriving at this assessment not long after Ukraine’s failed 2023 summer offensive. At the time, Mearsheimer - like many others - was cautious in how they interpreted the situation, preferring the concept of ‘stalemate’. In time, he has saved his blushes by acknowledging the realities of the battlefield. My quibble, however, isn’t so much this belated assessment - that would be a case of narcissism of small differences.

b. Rather, the quibble is this: if Russia - a third rate power according to Mearsheimer - was besting the collective west, then what is the rationale for promoting a potential war with what Mearsheimer rates as a peer competitor? A war between China and the US is a distinct possibility, a fact conceded by Mearsheimer as a logical corollary of his favoured policy of containment. When this was pointed out at the recent panel discussions with Sachs, he simply fell back on the idea that this is just the ‘tragedy of great power politics’. Containment presupposes the stratagem of deterrence, in which a stronger actor can deter a weaker actor from acting. This is the Realist’s notion of ‘balance of power’ politics. All good in abstract theoretical terms, but in the real world of imperfect information, it’s not surprising that the weaker power would seek to change the terms of engagement. The problem with deterrence discourse is that:

i. It cannot foreswear that the weaker actor won’t act anyway, because they are driven by concerns that go beyond the parameters of ‘rational choice’. The case of Hamas is demonstration of this, as argued by Lawrence Freedman, who showed that Israel’s supposed ‘deterrence strategy’ simply did not work despite obvious relative military strength.

ii. One actor’s deterrence is another’s motivation. Unsurprisingly, this gives rise to the increased probability of an arms race, the corollary of which is increased risk of conflict. Mearsheimer’s deterrence / containment strategy is a recipe for increased instability, with few guarantees that his ambitions of American hegemony can hold. Given the risks of failure, the strategy is arguably irrational on Realist terms

4. The veneer of rational choice ultimately leaves open the question of what kind of rationality are we really talking about? This goes to how nations frame the means-objectives matrix. For Mearsheimer:

a. On the question of objectives, ‘rational’ nations are driven to pursue survival above all else. They will foreswear prosperity in the name of survival (security). On his view, the calculus is framed in dualist either/or terms: prosperity or security, assuming that all nations at all times would entertain such a framing.

b. The second problem with this means-objectives frame is that the means are not necessarily ‘read off’ the objectives. Yet, Mearsheimer has strong presuppositions about the appropriateness of certain means given a particular fixed notion of objectives. For him, the most appropriate means is the pursuit of hegemony. The United States secures its security by being ‘the biggest guy on the block’. The colloquialism has the benefit of appealing to ‘common sense’, but it fails because there are both risks of this strategy as well as possible alternatives that are better suited to the stated objectives.

C. In other words, Mearsheimer’s rationality is a very limited form of rationality. Yet, it is conceivable that alternative framings can be entertained that can be reasonably characterised as rational given particular conditions. This is where his ahistorical notion of rationality is exposed in its analytical and prescriptive / normative limitations. Nations could secure their security through collaboration with others, to align respective security interests so as to entangle mutual interests. This is not irrational. Similarly, the dualism of prosperity or security doesn’t allow one to countenance the proposition of security through prosperity, and prosperity as a means to security. Even on Mearsheimer’s preferred ‘real power’ view of ‘balance of power’, without prosperity there can be no capacity to source security.

5. Mearsheimer is somewhat blinded by how the actions of one may impact the calculations and actions of others, particularly China, even though he always understood that US actions in Europe would provoke a reaction from Russia at some point in time. In the case of China, his answer is basically to ‘get stronger quicker, and stay stronger’, even if this involves adopting the ‘Tonya Harding’ approach to hobbling others. That such an approach could fail with devastating consequences seems beyond the scope of risk calculus within Mearsheimer’s realism; yet, any rational actor would surely evaluate the potential risks of any actions before pursuing them.

6. The argument for American containment of China is to prevent Chinese expansion. He has zero evidence of China’s expansionary intent beyond his own description of US behaviour. He projects US calculus and behaviour onto others, yet, his evaluation of Russian calculus and ambitions demonstrates that there are other possibilities. He has consistently argued that there is no evidence of Russian expansionary - let alone, imperial - ambitions. He thus castigates those pushing for containment of Russia on the basis of these claims. Yet, he falls prey to precisely the kinds of fantasies he criticises others for. He has been at pains to emphasise that there’s no evidence of Russian expansionary intent. Yet, he just assumes that China has such intentions, despite the absence of evidence. The real question is: why does his take one view when it comes to Russia, but a different view when it comes to China?
Mearsheimer’s expose of liberal foreign policy hypocrisy is powerful. His critique of US policy in Ukraine is robust and salutary. His analysis of the power of the Israel lobby over US foreign policy towards Israel and the middle east generally is persuasive. But these undermine the foundational presuppositions of ‘rational choice’ realism that animate his strategic conclusions vis-a-vis China. Mearsheimer’s realism is alluring in some respects, and its appeal for many seeking a non-sentimental framework for thinking about global affairs is understandable. But, it’s clear that its simplistic rationalist presuppositions and dualism can readily lead one down a dangerous path that delivers neither security nor prosperity.

Mearsheimer himself would call this the Primrose Path.

https://warwickpowell.substack.com/p/mearsheimers-blindspots