Professor John Mearsheimer: Theorist for Aggression (complete)
How Mearsheimer's theorizing legitimizes military aggression
Chapter Summaries
Preface
1. Introduction
Provides an overview of this publication touching on some of the main themes and arguments in the chapters that follow.
2. Why Mearsheimer Matters
Considers the importance, especially from Russia’s point of view, of Mearsheimer’s role as a high-profile international affairs academic who is prepared to not just criticize Western policy, and excuse Russian behaviour, but to defend it as both rational and strategically warranted. Over forty years ago, the KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov stressed that pro-Russian advocacy by a credible Westerner is vastly more effective than when it comes from an identifiable Russian source. It is generally acknowledged that the informational dimension of warfare has never been as important as it is now. With Mearsheimer active on social media, especially YouTube, there is ample scope for Russian state actors and sympathizers to throw their weight behind him, such as by mobilizing their troll factories in YouTube comments. Most remarkably, there is evidence of Russian official sources modifying their own propaganda to reflect themes cropping up first in Mearsheimer’s commentaries.
3. Offensive Realism and the Justification of War
Begins to examine the details of offensive realism, Mearsheimer’s signature theory of international relations. This theory is central to his rationale for Putin’s aggression. Unlike less ambitious followers of the realist framework, Mearsheimer sees offensive realism as both a descriptive and a prescriptive theory. It does not just purport to explain state conduct in the international system, it prescribes how states ought to act. For him, the cardinal action principle for nations, especially “great” powers, is to maximize their power relative to actual or potential rivals, indeed they should seek, if feasible, to become hegemonic at the regional or global level. How? He does not quite say “by any means necessary”, but he goes close. Military aggression, he thinks, is an underrated tool of statecraft, and certainly warranted to counter a perceived deterioration in a country’s strategic position. or even to exploit opportunities to enhance its power. This is how he justifies the brutal and illegal Russian attacks on Ukraine, contending they are both rational and warranted.
4. Of Billiard Balls and International Relations
Considers one of the most ridiculous aspects of Mearsheimer’s theory: his likening of interactions between states to colliding billiard balls, all made of the same stuff, differing only in relative size reflecting each state’s relative power. With this metaphor, in which states are bound by quasi-physical laws to behave in certain ways, he feels able to assert that Putin had to act as he did: “we made him do it”, the “we” being the West, NATO, and especially the US. Putin did not have any real agency. Like a billiard ball, he was caused to respond to the West’s “provocation” by starting a major land war. The poor fellow could do no other. In his tomes on international relations, Mearsheimer offers no credible defence of this absurd doctrine. In the real world, states are not homogenous, like billiard balls. They vary enormously in terms of system of governance—liberal democracy, one-party dictatorship, theocratic rule, military dictatorship, and most saliently, “personalist” autocracies dominated by single dictator—and contra Mearsheimer, this has an enormous bearing on how they behave in the international system.
5. Blame, Agency, Morality: A Mearsheimerian Muddle
Assesses Mearsheimer’s hopelessly incoherent treatment of these matters. Despite eschewing what he regards as empty moralizing—in his theory, he makes no distinction between “good” and “bad” states (his scare quotes). Notwithstanding this, he is prepared to assign sole blame for the Ukraine war to the West and effectively absolve Putin, seemingly unaware blame is an inherently moral concept. How so? Because, he says, the West “caused” the war, by expanding NATO, as if starting a major war was the only option open to Putin. In any case, given Mearsheimer’s insistence that great powers should maximize their strategic advantage, what was wrong with the US and the West grasping the opportunity to expand NATO when they had the opportunity? He concedes Russia’s aggression was not morally justified according to the tenets of Just War Theory, but insists it was warranted by the strategic imperative since, according to offensive realism, strategy should trump morality where they conflict. Remarkably though, he inverts these priorities when it comes to one state, Israel when it is attacked by adversaries committed to its annihilation and the extermination of its Jewish population.
6. Homo Theoreticus: Putin as Rational Actor
Takes up Mearsheimer’s insistence that Vladimir Putin is a rational actor on the international stage, indeed “a first-class strategist”. In his view, a rational state actor is a homo theoreticus, one who makes key decisions by applying a sound theory—with offensive realism the soundest of all—and commits to major decisions only after a “robust and uninhibited” deliberative process with colleagues. However offensive realism is a poor theory, especially in an age of personalist autocracies in which the leader sits at the apex of a “power vertical” surrounded by supplicants terrified of telling him anything he does not want to hear. In his latest book, Mearsheimer insists that the requirement for such a deliberative process was met in the leadup to Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine, his sole evidence being an uncorroborated statement to this effect by foreign minister Sergey Lavrov. There is overwhelming evidence that the process was a complete shambles, with all but Putin’s closest cronies unaware right up to invasion eve, and even top military leaders out of the loop. Lavrov himself reportedly only found out at 1 a.m. on the day of the invasion! This “first-class strategist” has actually achieved something remarkable: convincing hitherto non-aligned Finland and Sweden to join NATO, turning the Baltic Sea into what Russian commentators complain is a “NATO lake.”
7. The NATO-as-Existential-Threat Furphy
Considers Mearsheimer’s repeated invocations of the “existential threat” allegedly posed to Russia by NATO expansion, citing Putin’s statements to this effect. He never elaborates on how this could be the case. Is Putin worried that with Ukraine in, NATO might launch a massive onslaught against Russia through the flat plains of Ukraine? Maybe he has this in mind, since he sometimes refers to Ukraine being the traditional invasion route, used by Napoleon and Hitler. Would anybody, let alone a “first-class strategist” like Putin, take this seriously? That the diverse, 32-member alliance of states accountable to democratic electorates, might decide to attack a nation with the world’s largest stock of nuclear weapons? Especially given the drastic reduction in NATO capabilities that followed the end of the Cold War? It is just ridiculous, as confirmed when Putin himself dismissed the scenario when asked about it in his interview by Tucker Carlson in February 2024. Mearsheimer is almost never seriously challenged about this in his many lectures and interviews. On the rare occasions he is, he ends up conceding that what is imperilled is ”Russia’s status as a great power”. Which raises an interesting question: just what does Russia need to regain such status?
8. Gathering the Russian Lands: Putin’s Imperial Project
Provides compelling evidence that, contrary to Mearsheimer, Putin has long aspired to restore Russia’s status as an imperial power. What if, rather than terror of being attacked, what really bothers Putin about NATO expansion is that it denies him the ability to bully, dominate, and maybe annex the newly freed countries that were formerly part of the Russian sphere, in either its imperial or Soviet incarnation? Surely, as a “great power”, Russia should not be denied the ability to do that? It’s an existential issue! In one interview, Mearsheimer stated Russia would not attack the Baltic states because they were in NATO, but when the interviewer suggested that therefore this was a good thing, Mearsheimer denied it. He really thinks they should be subservient to Moscow! And yet, Mearsheimer dismisses suggestions Putin has any imperial ambitions. He is confident of this because Putin has said so, publicly, and such declarations should be believed since state leaders (those undifferentiated billiard balls) rarely lie, at least to foreign audiences. Has it escaped his attention that practically everything Putin has said about Ukraine has been a lie, not least the denials he had any intention to invade until invasion day? Putin has had imperial aspirations for Russia for at least three decades and sees himself following in the footsteps of his hero, Peter the Great.
9. “Not One Inch”: The NATO Expansion Debate
Addresses Mearsheimer’s claim that the US “shoved NATO expansion down Russia’s throat”, as if Uncle Sam rode out on horseback lassoing the newly free states and dragging them forcibly into the alliance. The reality is that, unlike the Warsaw Pact, there was no coercion. The new members had to apply for membership and did so with the full support of their publics. And, far from being coerced, they were desperately knocking on the NATO door, issuing “desperate entreaties”, according to the Mary Sarotte, the American political scientist who has written the definitive account of the NATO expansion. Why would they do that? After all, most Western leaders thought, as of the 1990s, that Russia’s transition to democracy was secure. The new members, having experienced long periods under the Russian heel, saw some disturbing signs to the contrary, even during the seemingly benign Yeltsin years. Or, to follow Mearsheimerian logic, provocative Russian behaviour “caused” the new members to rush to NATO membership by posing an all-too-real existential threat to them. As for the “not one inch” claim, that the Americans agreed in 1990 that there would be no eastward expansion of NATO, Sarotte deals with that at length in her 500-page book. The short answer: No, they did not.
10. Could the Ukraine War Have Been Avoided?
Addresses claims that the war could have been avoided had NATO permanently ruled out Ukrainian membership. Western critics also contend that draft agreements submitted by Sergey Lavrov in December 2021 provided a reasonable basis for settlement. Neither is true. As shown in Chapter 8, Putin has long been obsessed with his imperial project, “gathering the Russian lands”, which involves absorbing or dominating the now independent countries that were formerly part of imperial or Soviet Russia, with Ukraine as priority number one. The Lavrov proposals were purposely designed to be rejected, requiring the effective rolling back of NATO to pre-1997 borders, which would put an additional fourteen member states in an ambiguous grey-zone, susceptible to Russian intimidation and aggression. More recently, it has been claimed that Russian and Ukrainian negotiators had reached an agreement in early April 2022, only to have it scotched by Boris Johnson in Kyiv on 9 April. This is false. On 15 June 2024 the New York Times effectively buried this claim with a major investigative report that included the actual text of the agreement that was being negotiated, and where the Russians and Ukrainians deviated. Late in the negotiations, the Russians insisted on a poison-pill provision that would have rendered any guarantees of Ukraine’s future security from attack effectively meaningless. That was the deal-breaker, not Boris Johnson’s visit.
11. Mearsheimer on Gaza: The Theory Vanishes
Considers a glaring anomaly between Mearsheimer’s take on the Israel-Hamas war and his treatment of the Ukraine conflict. Mearsheimer espouses a theory of state behaviour that stresses the imperative for all states to prioritize state security and survival above all other considerations, including the legality and morality of their international conduct. He applies this theory to construct a defence of the Putin regime’s aggression against Ukraine, asserting that Russia had no option than to respond militarily to the existential risk posed by the prospect of NATO expansion into Ukraine. Yet, when it comes to Israel and its conflict with Hamas, all his theorizing appears to vanish. Indeed, he never mentions realism, or offensive realism, in any of his many talks on the Israel-Hamas war unless it is brought up by his interlocuters. He fails to provide any coherent justification for this, the best he can do being to say his theory applies to inter-state behaviour, and Hamas is not a state. A state it is not, and hopefully never will be, but Hamas together with other Iranian terrorist proxies, as well as Iran itself, do pose a genuinely existential risk to Israel, having launched an extraordinarily vicious attack on its people, with the stated intention that this be the first of many such attacks, having the ultimate goal of annihilating Israel and exterminating or driving out its Jewish inhabitants.
12. Conclusions
Recapitulates and draws together the various arguments from the earlier sections that refute the various elements of Mearsheimer’s position on the causes and motivations of the Ukraine war, and his attempt to shift blame for it from the aggressor regime to the democratic states of the West that tried to deter the aggression and have since supported the victimized state. It considers the role that Mearsheimer has played as a rationalizer, apologist, and influencer of Western opinion at a time of geopolitical tensions unseen since the height of the Cold War as a coalition of personalist autocracies mount an unprecedented challenge to the rules-based international order. In effect, Mearsheimer’s theorizing, which is a central feature of his defence of the Putin regime, amounts to a revanchist aggressors charter. It envisages—and advocates—a world order in which naked power seeking is seen as legitimate, with great powers able to range across national boundaries and create spheres of dominance in which lesser states are obliged to accept a kind of limited sovereignty. The article concludes with some remarks about how the West has responded, and how it needs to up its game if the challenge from a rising axis of autocratic, and increasingly totalitarian states is to be effectively met.
Peter, Your comments about Mearsheimer reflect a complete ahistorical understanding of international relations, agreements and arrangements over the last 55 years.
See https://youtu.be/uvFtyDy_Bt0?si=Pn03jtnNEUO7H2bH for a more informed discussion with both John Mearsheimer and Jeffery Sachs.
Hello Peter
I think your argument is well sustained and exposes weaknesses in Mearsheimer's work very well. I for one am pleased you have taken the trouble to set it out in some detail. One small point is that the different assessments he makes of the Russian and Israeli wars has one thing in common; namely, he sees his own country as invariably culpable notwithstanding his inconsistent treatment of each case. More importantly, military aggression is always an exercise in "might is right" irrespective of how it is justified, as the victor secures an outcome that may not have been possible by other means. In this sense, it is largely irrelevant as to whether one believes Russia was unreasonably "provoked" in its decision to invade Ukraine, or not. Like you, I think this argument is nonsense, but unlike you I think it is no more than a propagandist's side-show and is of little if any real consequence, as the more important issue is whether Russia prevails or secures some longer term advantage as a result of its military incursion into Ukraine. Similar considerations apply in the case of other wars, including that between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Once a war begins, the only thing that really matters is who wins.