8 ms·

Why Mearsheimer’s Realist Take Is So Exasperating

24 points by LichenStone 5y ago

quantified 5y ago
> The Soviet Union lost the Cold War decisively. Its empire fell into pieces, its regional alliance disappeared, and most of its former allies joined NATO. Russia lost, and the Western alliance won. Given this, it is not NATO’s responsibility to protect Russian state security interests. It is Russia’s responsibility to give wide berth to NATO, recognizing—as every realist should—that the strong do what they will, the weak do what they must.
- panick21_ 5y ago
  This is wrongheaded. The Soviet Union didn't lose the Cold War. In fact, the Cold War was ended with a series of treaties between the US and the Soviet Union. The Cold War was already over when Soviet Union collapsed. Its only later that US propaganda machine got high on themselves proclaiming how they had destroyed the Soviet Union.
  - quantified 5y ago
    The Cold War ended when the USSR couldn’t fight it anymore. It was expensive for both sides, an expensive war of attrition. Mikhail Gorbachev should always get great credit for attempting to make it honest and productive. Problem was, making it honest and open allowed all to see, and say out loud, how screwed up and repressive it really was, and it fell apart because it was held together by unwanted force.
    - panick21_ 5y ago
      > The Cold War ended when the USSR couldn’t fight it anymore. It was expensive for both sides, an expensive war of attrition. That is just flat out false, as many people have pointed out. Yes it was expensive, but there is no inherent reason Soviet Union had to collapse based on that expense. Gorbachev in order to do the reforms he wanted had to overcome the party opposition, and he did that by basically destroying the power of the party. This then allowed the republics to assert the power. But those things were not exclusive. Gorbachev could have done a lot of his foreign policy without some of the domestic program that eventually lead to the collapse of the Soviet union.
      - quantified 5y ago
        But he did do the domestic program. Which did cause it to fall apart. You can lose a war through your own actions, without any activity on your enemy’s part. And it’s not like the loser of the Cold War had to start paying tribute to, or got occupied by, the winner.
        panick21_ 5y ago
        But my point is that those are not linked. The Soviet Union didn't collapse because they ended the Cold War.
        quantified 5y ago
        But they did, in fact, both lose the Cold War and collapse. Unless somehow either the West decided it wasn’t worth it anymore and called it a draw, but that would be highly revisionist.
  - cuteboy19 5y ago
    It is true that Communism, being inherently unworkable, would have collapsed eventually anyways. But to suggest that the West had nothing to do with it is contrary to history and contrary to what the leaders of the USSR frequently complained about. > In fact, the Cold War was ended with a series of treaties between the US and the Soviet Union. Yes, those treaties acknowledge that the USSR lost.
    - panick21_ 5y ago
      > It is true that Communism, being inherently unworkable Not really. And 'Communism' is an abstract philosophy, the Soviet Union was an actually workable system. And if you can survive from 1917 to 1990 you can survive a lot of stuff. > would have collapsed eventually anyways. Anything collapses 'eventually' but there is no inherent reason the Soviet Union would have had to stop existing for 100s of years. > But to suggest that the West had nothing to do with it is contrary to history and contrary to what the leaders of the USSR frequently complained about. Sure the Soviet Union was not alone on a planet. And of course the Soviet leadership action were about problems in their country but it emphatically was not the inability fight the US military. > Yes, those treaties acknowledge that the USSR lost. Please point out how they acknowledge that.
EquitableEqual 5y ago
You are deeply misinterpreting Mearsheimer's conclusion in your piece. He's not saying that NATO has a responsibility to not upset Russia - He's merely (accurately) noting that expanding the West's sphere of militaristic and social influence right up to Russia's borders has led to a clash between conflicting interests. Both sides are responsible for furthering their own agendas, and the agendas are incompatible when they meet. This is Mearsheimer's point; if we didn't want conflict in Europe, we should not have run toward it. Further, I think you could do with giving Russia more credit than you do - Suggesting that they are a declining power because 'all they have is a large portion of the world's energy reserves, and one of the few nuclear arsenals that shapes the world's geopolitics' is more than a little stretched, even if I see what you're shooting for. It's worth remembering the chaos they have successfully sown in US and European politics over the past 5 years, along with the effective interference they have run in the West's Middle East policy while assessing Russia's level of power in the world. Nonetheless, I have been interested to see how much debate he has caused in such a short time - We need more lightning rods like this!
- panick21_ 5y ago
  Its kind of fun he and many others have been pointing these things out for 15+ years. And now that the thing finally happened that they predicted people start paying attention and start arguing about it.
  - Arnt 5y ago
    Uhm, "the thing they predicted" is NATO expansion ("the heart of the strategy" in Mearsheimer's words), and the thing that's happened isn't a NATO base being established in Kharkiv. Far from it.
    - crateless 5y ago
      CIA Director, William Burns wrote this in 2008. Edit: Nyet means Nyet: Russia's NATO Enlargement Redlines : https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/08MOSCOW265_a.html https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/08MOSCOW265_a.html
blub 5y ago
Still haven’t seen a solid critique of Mearsheimer’s thesis and I’m starting to believe that maybe there won’t be one… I think one of the confusing points is trying to approach these events from a moral or “who’s to blame” point of view which is maybe important when attributing war crimes, calculating reparations or even giving us someone to hate if the world should end. But the key aspect should be outcomes. And his thesis is quite simple: if you push a major power, they will push back hard - just as sure as the sun will rise tomorrow. So the solution’s also quite simple: if you don’t want the outcome, don’t take actions that lead to it. He’s said it right in the New Yorker article at the end - strategy trumps morality.
- yucky 5y ago
  This is correct, and everything else is noise. I think people struggle coming to terms with this due to relying too much on emotion, and not logic.
- watwut 5y ago
  Ukraine is not in NATO nor close to it and the outcome is Russia thinking they are entitled to their own territory. NATO was not threat to Russia, that is merely excuse and attempt to blame someone else. And when Russia cant take their territory, they settled with trying to kill as much civilians as possible. That is not consistent with defensive war. Ideologically, Russia was moving toward expansive colonialist theories for years now. They were not worried about NATO attacking them. They wanted to making Russia bigger again. Ukrainians disagreeing with Russians plans is not fault of NATO. It should not be goal of American diplomacy to make Russian ambitions easier by intentionally weakening other nations.
  - typon 5y ago
    The US almost started global thermonuclear war because the Soviet Union allied itself with Cuba. What you're talking about is a fantasy world that only exists in the mind of liberals. Down here in the real world, major powers exert dominance over their neighbours and want to protect their sphere of influence.
enaaem 5y ago
The issue is not that we don't understand Russias security concerns. Everyone understands that now. We just can't comply with Russias demand. Russia wants write the security policies of over 100 million people. No one is going to agree with that.
derbOac 5y ago
I'm skeptical of the idea that anything having to do with NATO is the true motive for Putin in this. It makes little sense to me given his actual statements about NATO with regard to the Russian invasion, and strategically makes little sense in terms of potential costs to their current endeavors. Why would you make 3/4 of your conventional military critically vulnerable to an adversary that you have publicly stated is unquestionably superior, by provoking that adversary, to increase security against said adversary? I've always suspected this is about securing access to Crimea and natural resource rights in eastern Ukraine: water access was cut to Crimea following 2014, and natural resource deposits have been discovered in the east. I suspect NATO is just a rhetorical excuse, to justify it to the world and domestic audiences. It also explains why the western campaign has been so ineffectual, and the Eastern one so relatively brutal. Yes, the east is easier to access by sea and less central to Ukraine, but I suspect a land bridge to Crimea, and securing natural resource rights, was the primary objective all along. Russia might have been accurate all along when they insisted they didn't want to occupy Ukraine per se or change the government, in the sense they just wanted to annex the east, and the west is just a diversionary tactic and/or secondary goal in service of the primary. It's also why I suspect Russia will consider this a win if they extract a land bridge as a "compromise" to obtain peace. All of this I'm saying as someone who'd rather see Russia out of everywhere that was undisputed Ukrainian territory in, say, 2000. All this discussion of NATO expansion is just falling into Russia's rhetorical trap they set.

24 points by LichenStone 5y ago

> The Soviet Union lost the Cold War decisively. Its empire fell into pieces, its regional alliance disappeared, and most of its former allies joined NATO. Russia lost, and the Western alliance won. Given this, it is not NATO’s responsibility to protect Russian state security interests. It is Russia’s responsibility to give wide berth to NATO, recognizing—as every realist should—that the strong do what they will, the weak do what they must.

panick21_ 5y ago
This is wrongheaded. The Soviet Union didn't lose the Cold War. In fact, the Cold War was ended with a series of treaties between the US and the Soviet Union. The Cold War was already over when Soviet Union collapsed. Its only later that US propaganda machine got high on themselves proclaiming how they had destroyed the Soviet Union.
- quantified 5y ago
  The Cold War ended when the USSR couldn’t fight it anymore. It was expensive for both sides, an expensive war of attrition. Mikhail Gorbachev should always get great credit for attempting to make it honest and productive. Problem was, making it honest and open allowed all to see, and say out loud, how screwed up and repressive it really was, and it fell apart because it was held together by unwanted force.
  - panick21_ 5y ago
    > The Cold War ended when the USSR couldn’t fight it anymore. It was expensive for both sides, an expensive war of attrition. That is just flat out false, as many people have pointed out. Yes it was expensive, but there is no inherent reason Soviet Union had to collapse based on that expense. Gorbachev in order to do the reforms he wanted had to overcome the party opposition, and he did that by basically destroying the power of the party. This then allowed the republics to assert the power. But those things were not exclusive. Gorbachev could have done a lot of his foreign policy without some of the domestic program that eventually lead to the collapse of the Soviet union.
    - quantified 5y ago
      But he did do the domestic program. Which did cause it to fall apart. You can lose a war through your own actions, without any activity on your enemy’s part. And it’s not like the loser of the Cold War had to start paying tribute to, or got occupied by, the winner.
      - panick21_ 5y ago
        But my point is that those are not linked. The Soviet Union didn't collapse because they ended the Cold War.
        quantified 5y ago
        But they did, in fact, both lose the Cold War and collapse. Unless somehow either the West decided it wasn’t worth it anymore and called it a draw, but that would be highly revisionist.
- cuteboy19 5y ago
  It is true that Communism, being inherently unworkable, would have collapsed eventually anyways. But to suggest that the West had nothing to do with it is contrary to history and contrary to what the leaders of the USSR frequently complained about. > In fact, the Cold War was ended with a series of treaties between the US and the Soviet Union. Yes, those treaties acknowledge that the USSR lost.
  - panick21_ 5y ago
    > It is true that Communism, being inherently unworkable Not really. And 'Communism' is an abstract philosophy, the Soviet Union was an actually workable system. And if you can survive from 1917 to 1990 you can survive a lot of stuff. > would have collapsed eventually anyways. Anything collapses 'eventually' but there is no inherent reason the Soviet Union would have had to stop existing for 100s of years. > But to suggest that the West had nothing to do with it is contrary to history and contrary to what the leaders of the USSR frequently complained about. Sure the Soviet Union was not alone on a planet. And of course the Soviet leadership action were about problems in their country but it emphatically was not the inability fight the US military. > Yes, those treaties acknowledge that the USSR lost. Please point out how they acknowledge that.

EquitableEqual 5y ago

You are deeply misinterpreting Mearsheimer's conclusion in your piece. He's not saying that NATO has a responsibility to not upset Russia - He's merely (accurately) noting that expanding the West's sphere of militaristic and social influence right up to Russia's borders has led to a clash between conflicting interests. Both sides are responsible for furthering their own agendas, and the agendas are incompatible when they meet. This is Mearsheimer's point; if we didn't want conflict in Europe, we should not have run toward it. Further, I think you could do with giving Russia more credit than you do - Suggesting that they are a declining power because 'all they have is a large portion of the world's energy reserves, and one of the few nuclear arsenals that shapes the world's geopolitics' is more than a little stretched, even if I see what you're shooting for. It's worth remembering the chaos they have successfully sown in US and European politics over the past 5 years, along with the effective interference they have run in the West's Middle East policy while assessing Russia's level of power in the world. Nonetheless, I have been interested to see how much debate he has caused in such a short time - We need more lightning rods like this!

panick21_ 5y ago
Its kind of fun he and many others have been pointing these things out for 15+ years. And now that the thing finally happened that they predicted people start paying attention and start arguing about it.
- Arnt 5y ago
  Uhm, "the thing they predicted" is NATO expansion ("the heart of the strategy" in Mearsheimer's words), and the thing that's happened isn't a NATO base being established in Kharkiv. Far from it.
  - crateless 5y ago
    CIA Director, William Burns wrote this in 2008. Edit: Nyet means Nyet: Russia's NATO Enlargement Redlines : https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/08MOSCOW265_a.html https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/08MOSCOW265_a.html

blub 5y ago

Still haven’t seen a solid critique of Mearsheimer’s thesis and I’m starting to believe that maybe there won’t be one… I think one of the confusing points is trying to approach these events from a moral or “who’s to blame” point of view which is maybe important when attributing war crimes, calculating reparations or even giving us someone to hate if the world should end. But the key aspect should be outcomes. And his thesis is quite simple: if you push a major power, they will push back hard - just as sure as the sun will rise tomorrow. So the solution’s also quite simple: if you don’t want the outcome, don’t take actions that lead to it. He’s said it right in the New Yorker article at the end - strategy trumps morality.

yucky 5y ago
This is correct, and everything else is noise. I think people struggle coming to terms with this due to relying too much on emotion, and not logic.
watwut 5y ago
Ukraine is not in NATO nor close to it and the outcome is Russia thinking they are entitled to their own territory. NATO was not threat to Russia, that is merely excuse and attempt to blame someone else. And when Russia cant take their territory, they settled with trying to kill as much civilians as possible. That is not consistent with defensive war. Ideologically, Russia was moving toward expansive colonialist theories for years now. They were not worried about NATO attacking them. They wanted to making Russia bigger again. Ukrainians disagreeing with Russians plans is not fault of NATO. It should not be goal of American diplomacy to make Russian ambitions easier by intentionally weakening other nations.
- typon 5y ago
  The US almost started global thermonuclear war because the Soviet Union allied itself with Cuba. What you're talking about is a fantasy world that only exists in the mind of liberals. Down here in the real world, major powers exert dominance over their neighbours and want to protect their sphere of influence.

enaaem 5y ago

The issue is not that we don't understand Russias security concerns. Everyone understands that now. We just can't comply with Russias demand. Russia wants write the security policies of over 100 million people. No one is going to agree with that.

derbOac 5y ago

I'm skeptical of the idea that anything having to do with NATO is the true motive for Putin in this. It makes little sense to me given his actual statements about NATO with regard to the Russian invasion, and strategically makes little sense in terms of potential costs to their current endeavors. Why would you make 3/4 of your conventional military critically vulnerable to an adversary that you have publicly stated is unquestionably superior, by provoking that adversary, to increase security against said adversary? I've always suspected this is about securing access to Crimea and natural resource rights in eastern Ukraine: water access was cut to Crimea following 2014, and natural resource deposits have been discovered in the east. I suspect NATO is just a rhetorical excuse, to justify it to the world and domestic audiences. It also explains why the western campaign has been so ineffectual, and the Eastern one so relatively brutal. Yes, the east is easier to access by sea and less central to Ukraine, but I suspect a land bridge to Crimea, and securing natural resource rights, was the primary objective all along. Russia might have been accurate all along when they insisted they didn't want to occupy Ukraine per se or change the government, in the sense they just wanted to annex the east, and the west is just a diversionary tactic and/or secondary goal in service of the primary. It's also why I suspect Russia will consider this a win if they extract a land bridge as a "compromise" to obtain peace. All of this I'm saying as someone who'd rather see Russia out of everywhere that was undisputed Ukrainian territory in, say, 2000. All this discussion of NATO expansion is just falling into Russia's rhetorical trap they set.