Why Mearsheimer is wrong

A criticism of Mershmeier "great power politics": The misjudgement of too little realism

By the standards that govern contemporary international politics, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is an unmistakable unilateral act of aggression. Yet throughout the West, a minority of voices turn the blame back on the West, repeating Moscow’s claim that the war was forced on Russia by NATO’s eastward drift. That argument helps to cover the Kremlin’s openly admitted imperial ambition: to reassert control over a country it insists is inherently its own.

John Mearsheimer, a University of Chicago political scientist renowned for his 2001 book The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, is one of the most prominent voices claiming that the West provoked Russia’s assault on Ukraine. Since Moscow’s first move against Crimea in 2014, he has argued that NATO enlargement, rather than Kremlin ambition, lies at the heart of the conflict. His academic stature brings that claim into mainstream debate, providing scholarly cover for a line of criticism that otherwise sits largely on the political fringes.

Mearsheimer’s intervention has contributed to undermining a unified Western support for Ukraine. His standing as an international-relations scholar leads many to treat his assessment as authoritative. This piece explains why that deference is misplaced. Although his analysis of great-power politics is influential, its core assumptions are faulty and lead him to blame democracies for an autocratic war of conquest.

My purpose here is twofold: to apply the game theory ideas explored on this Substack to an important current debate, and to clarify where Mearsheimer’s arguments go astray for those following the Ukraine conflict.

Some good things about it

Before criticising Mearsheimer, let’s acknowledge that he gets something right about the world: the idealist views that have dominated in the West since the end of the Cold War have been proven wrong.

The liberal idealist vision

In his 1795 essay Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch, Immanuel Kant famously proposed that, as reason prevails, a lasting peace could emerge in international politics through the spread of republican constitutions, free commerce, and respect for international law. In Kant’s vision, this would eventually lead to a voluntary federation of free states—a “league of nations” (Völkerbund)—designed not to govern them, but to secure peace among them.

This idealist vision of world politics is echoed in liberal views of international relations, which hold that peace and the international rule of law are not only achievable but represent the most natural outcome as history progresses. Three main arguments are typically put forward in support of this view:

Economic interdependence (“doux commerce”). As old as the writings of Montesquieu,¹ this argument holds that economic interdependence reduces conflict because war becomes too costly when economies are closely linked. It was a major reason why the integration of China and Russia into the global economy was seen as a pathway to world peace.

Democratic peace. Democracies are considered more peaceful than autocracies. Economic development is expected to foster democratic transitions across the world, and a world composed primarily of democracies is thought to be more stable and peaceful.

Global institutions. International organisations such as the UN and the WTO provide forums for diplomacy, establish norms for state behaviour, and help enforce agreements. They offer a framework in which the peaceful resolution of conflicts can prevail.

Back from liberal naïveté

Mearsheimer’s realism stands in opposition to the idealist vision of international relations defended by liberal thinkers. To his credit, he challenged this view when it was still dominant. His book The Tragedy of Great Power Politics was published just over a decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall—an event widely regarded as a turning point that would usher in a more unified world marked by the spread of democracy and liberalism, global peace, and respect for international rules.

The most iconic reference—though often caricatured—is Fukuyama’s The End of History (1992), which argued that liberal democracy had emerged as the final form of human government. According to Fukuyama, the ideological battles of the 20th century had effectively ended, leaving liberal capitalist democracy as the only viable model. What remained, he suggested, was not further conflict over grand ideas, but the task of consolidating liberal norms across the globe, a process that would be uneven, but ultimately inevitable.

There were high hopes for the democratisation of Russia and, potentially, China, as it transitioned to a capitalist economy. One could envision a Kantian vision of lasting peace on the global stage, where countries adhere to international laws commonly agreed upon within institutions such as the UN, the WTO, and the WHO.

More than thirty-five years later, it is clear that this view was overly naive. Russia has launched the first large-scale invasion of a European country since World War II, and we now find ourselves in what many describe as a second Cold War with China, which openly speaks of invading Taiwan—an event that could trigger a major global military conflict.

The liberal hegemony envisaged in the 1990s didn’t materialise. Autocracies have resurged. Rather than transitioning into democracies, they have exploited the openness of the Western world to influence its institutions, information flows, and economies. They have adapted to new technologies and developed more effective means of suppressing dissent and controlling their populations. While becoming wealthier, they have retained concentrated power in the hands of small elites willing to pursue international conflicts. With China’s critical mass, autocracies are now able to compete globally with liberal democracies, which have struggled in various parts of the world, including Hungary, Poland, Brazil, and the United States.

In this context, Mearsheimer may appear to many as a voice of foresight. At the height of liberal optimism in the early 2000s, he criticised its idealism and predicted that raw power and conflict would return. On that point, he was right.²

Mearsheimer’s model of the world

Mearsheimer’s rejection of the liberal idealist view begins with the premise that the international system is fundamentally anarchic. Unlike within a state, there is no overarching authority to enforce rules or ensure good behaviour. From this starting point, Mearsheimer develops a Hobbesian vision of international politics.

Thomas Hobbes, writing in the aftermath of the English Civil War (1642–1651), famously argued that in the absence of a sovereign authority, individuals would exist in a state of perpetual conflict, a war of all against all.³ For Mearsheimer, the same logic applies to states. The international realm is one without enforceable laws, where each country pursues its own interests. From this perspective, the hope that reason or liberal principles will prevail is misguided. In the end, power dominates, and if violence offers an advantage, states will not hesitate to use it.

Understanding world politics, then, requires examining the risks and opportunities states face in an anarchic system and the strategies they will rationally adopt. For Mearsheimer, as for Hobbes, the central motive driving state behaviour is the desire for survival. And the best way to survive, in this view, is to pre-empt potential threats. This logic gives rise to the “security dilemma”: in seeking to make themselves secure, states may act aggressively, prompting others to respond in kind.

In Mearsheimer’s account, this dynamic leads states to seek not just security but dominance. They aim to maximise their relative power, not merely to be safe, but to ensure they are not dominated by others. This, he argues, propels great powers toward conflict, even when their ultimate goal is self-preservation.

Seen from this angle, it is understandable why the liberal optimism of the 1990s left Mearsheimer unconvinced. The world remained without a central authority, and major states—the United States, China, Russia—would continue to pursue relative power. A durable peace, in that view, is unlikely to emerge from such a system.

This offers a concise yet broadly accurate account of the intellectual foundations of Mearsheimer’s realism. With the tools of modern game theory, particularly in the study of conflict and cooperation, we can see why this vision is flawed in crucial respects.

A realism based on a wrong model of the world

A misguided view of the implications of a lack of overarching authority

Hobbes’ description of the implications of a lack of authority is one of the most influential pieces of political philosophy. Unfortunately, it is deeply wrong. It fails to take into account the variety of solutions that can emerge among actors with conflicting interests in the absence of an external authority to enforce peace.

Chaos and mayhem are certainly one possibility. We observe this kind of anarchy in disaster movies: police vanishes, looting erupts, and individuals arm themselves for protection. The sharp rise in gun sales in the U.S. during the COVID-19 crisis suggests that people anticipate this possible breakdown in social order.

A representation of Hobbes’ state of nature in the style of Romantic painter Delacroix

However, such chaos is not the most likely outcome. In fact, across the world, small stateless societies have lived in an orderly manner even in the absence of an external authority. Hobbes used his image of a war of all against all in the state of nature to justify appointing a single individual with authority over others to prevent conflict. But this is only one among many possible solutions humans can adopt.

Social norms and conventions, enforced through mutual monitoring, offer another way to limit recurring conflict (Ostrom, 1990; Binmore, 2005). These conventions may involve granting substantial authority to an individual or group to help resolve disputes. However, social groups can also feature social order with a much more egalitarian organisation and without a strong leader.⁴

For international relations, this means that generalised conflict is not an inevitable feature of an anarchic world. Norms and conventions can emerge and be sustained through institutions commonly agreed upon by states.

From this perspective, international rules of behaviour can carry real weight. They can constrain state actions and help limit conflict. A key difference from idealist visions is that these rules do not bind because they are inherently right or reasonable. On this point, Mearsheimer is correct: expecting reason alone to lead states to set aside self-interest is a fantasy. In contrast to Kant’s view, the rules that underpin international peace are not grounded in pure reason. States do not follow them simply because they are intellectually “right.”

But that does not mean international institutions and norms are without effect. They can influence state behaviour because they represent equilibria in the game of international relations. As such, they are self-enforcing: states that violate established rules face reputational costs, reducing their chances of benefiting from future cooperation with others.

This perspective imposes practical limits on which rules of international conduct can be effective. Only those that reflect equilibrium behaviour in international interactions are likely to be sustainable. Some rules may seem highly desirable, but remain unworkable if states have no incentive to comply. A central challenge to cooperation arises, for instance, when the short-term gains of self-serving behaviour outweigh the long-term benefits of coordination. Climate change offers a clear example: although every country would benefit in the long run from a global agreement to reduce emissions, in the short term, individual governments may prefer their economies not to be burdened by environmental constraints. As a result, the best possible global agreements on climate may fall outside the set of feasible institutional solutions.

Fear is not what is driving most wars

Starting from a Hobbesian position, Mearsheimer is too committed to viewing international politics as rooted in irreconcilable conflict. On top of this, he adds a specific theory about the motives driving state behaviour: fear.

Hopes for peace will probably not be realized, because the great powers that shape the international system fear each other and compete for power as a result. […] Given this fear—which can never be wholly eliminated—states recognize that the more powerful they are relative to their rivals, the better their chances of survival. - Mearsheimer (2001) emphasis mine

For Mearsheimer, the security dilemma takes an extreme form. Great powers seek to maximise their relative power and therefore expand, often at the expense of their neighbours, out of “fear.” He concedes that, for this fear to be justified, some states must indeed be aggressive, but otherwise it is this generalised paranoia between states that leads them to invade and attack one another.

The structure of the international system forces states which seek only to be secure nonetheless to act aggressively toward each other. - Mearsheimer (2001)

This is one of the most implausible explanations for imperialist wars. It reveals a fundamental flaw in Mearsheimer’s analysis: he treats states as unitary agents, without considering how decisions are actually made within them. This approach allows him to attribute to states a superficially credible motive, fear, that supposedly underpins their realpolitik behaviour on the global stage.⁵

But states are not agents. They are led by human beings with human motives. And survival is only one among many such motives. One of the most powerful drivers of human behaviour is the pursuit of status. In this light, offensive imperialism—from Ancient Rome and the Mongol Empire to Napoleonic France, Imperial Japan, and the Soviet Union—was not primarily driven by fear of others, but by the will to dominate and subjugate.

You only have to listen to military leaders and conquerors to see that fear of survival is not the main driver of imperialist conquest. Alexander the Great, who from Caesar to Napoleon has served as a model of the successful conqueror, is said by Plutarch to have stated:⁶

I would rather live a short life of glory than a long one of obscurity. - Alexander the Great

Reconstruction of the famous mosaic of Alexander the Great beating the Persian king Darius. Alexander went on to conquer an empire 200 times larger than his initial Macedonian kingdom. He stopped his conquest Eastward only when his generals opposed going further into India.

Paradoxically, Mearsheimer’s “realism” lets the leaders of imperialist countries largely off the hook. He portrays them as merely (and reasonably) concerned with their survival, rather than adopting the more cynical view that the pursuit of power and status is a primary driver of imperialist conquest.⁷

Rather than a generalised fear for survival leading to an anarchic war of all against all, it is more often the imperialist impulses of leaders that drive wars. A key to understanding whether international peace can be sustained is, therefore, to understand when and how these impulses can be kept in check.

Internal state politics is crucial for understanding international politics

Mearsheimer explicitly chooses to ignore internal politics as a matter of methodological approach:

The theory pays little attention to individuals or domestic political considerations such as ideology. It tends to treat states like black boxes or billiard balls. It does not matter for the theory whether Germany in 1905 was led by Bismarck, Kaiser Wilhelm, or Adolf Hitler, or whether Germany was democratic or autocratic. What matters for the theory is how much relative power Germany possessed at the time. - Mearsheimer (2001) emphasis mine

An important thesis of Mearsheimer’s is that the liberal view, that democracies are less likely to go to war, is mistaken, because what drives behaviour is solely the structure of power between states.

Offensive realism assumes that the international system strongly shapes the behavior of states. Structural factors such as anarchy and the distribution of power, I argue, are what matter most for explaining international politics. - Mearsheimer (2001)

I share Mearsheimer’s scepticism towards the liberal view that democracies are more peaceful because they are inherently “good.” However, his disregard for internal politics overlooks strong reasons to expect differences in behaviour between dictatorships and democracies.

Examining a state’s internal politics reveals a key feature of war: its costs and benefits are not evenly distributed across society. Wars are fought by the general population, who bear most of the costs in terms of human lives and destruction. In contrast, the benefits of conquest, particularly in terms of enhanced status, are largely enjoyed by political leaders. This creates a potential conflict of interest: leaders may be more inclined to pursue wars that boost their personal prestige.⁸ In this light, the institutional differences between autocracies and democracies can lead to very different outcomes in decisions about war.

Leaders in autocracies rely on a smaller winning coalition to remain in power (Bueno de Mesquita et al., 2003). As a result, they often have little need to consider the concerns or well-being of large segments of the population. Their personal preferences for glory and power can prevail with minimal opposition. They may initiate wars that result in the impoverishment of the economy and the deaths of a large number of their citizens, with limited resistance.

By contrast, leaders in democracies depend on very large winning coalitions. Staying in power therefore requires satisfying broad segments of the population, who must be persuaded that the benefits of a war outweigh its costs. This is why democracies are much less likely to go to war—not because they are inherently virtuous, but because ordinary citizens are typically less willing than their leaders to risk their lives and livelihoods for the sake of national glory.

A little realism takes you away from liberalism, but a lot of it brings you back

Mearsheimer presents his framework as hard-headed realism, but it is not realist enough. A more accurate understanding of how power and incentives shape international behaviour supports many liberal ideas—once stripped of their naive and idealist justifications.

Democratic peace

While Mearsheimer rejects the notion of democratic peace, there is clear empirical evidence that democracies are much less likely to wage war against each other, and possibly against non-democracies as well (Rousseau et al., 1996). Consider for instance how reluctantly the United States entered the two world wars—only in 1917 in the first, and after a direct attack on its navy in 1941 in the second—and how hesitant France and Great Britain were to confront Nazi Germany militarily in 1939.

A perfect illustration of anti-war sentiment in democracies: facsimile of an actual article published in the Daily Mail in 1936. It lays out the (perceived) interests of the journal’s readership, dismisses the fate of the Czechs, whose state is described as an artificial and recent creation, and accepts Hitler’s accusations regarding the oppression of German minorities.

Consider also how unpopular foreign interventions have become in the United States after the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; how Obama chose not to enforce red lines in Syria in 2011; how cautious Biden has been in his support for Ukraine following the invasion; and how Trump is now opposed to continued assistance. War costs money and lives, and when U.S. leaders propose military involvement, opposition politicians often see an opportunity to gain votes by denouncing the waste of public resources and the human cost.

Democratic peace is therefore real, not because of lofty ideals about democracy, but because of the structure of internal power and incentives within democratic systems.

Economic interdependence

From this perspective, economic interdependence likely plays a role as well, because it links the incentives of populations across countries (Oneal and Russett, 1999; Martin et al., 2008).⁹ When these populations have significant influence over decisions to go to war, economic interdependence tends to reduce their support for military conflict.

This helps explain why economic interdependence within regions like the EU has likely contributed to the absence of military conflict since World War II. It also clarifies why liberal hopes that economic ties with autocracies such as Russia and China would discourage aggression have failed. The rulers of autocracies are far less constrained in their decision-making by the losses their populations would suffer from the breakdown of commercial relations.

Institutions

Finally, the perspective I present here also explains why international institutions and rules can have binding force. It is important to note that it aligns with Mearsheimer’s criticism that institutions do not constrain states simply by virtue of their existence.

Institutions are not independent political entities that sit above states and force them to behave in acceptable ways. Instead, institutions are sets of rules that stipulate the ways in which states should cooperate and compete with each other. They prescribe acceptable forms of state behavior and proscribe unacceptable kinds of behavior. […] Liberals claim that these institutions or rules can fundamentally change state behavior. Institutions, so the argument goes, can discourage states from calculating self-interest on the basis of how their every move affects their relative power position, and thus they push states away from war and promote peace. - Mearsheimer (2001)

It also agrees with Mearsheimer that these rules are followed only because it is in the self-interest of states to do so.

These rules are not imposed on states by some leviathan, but are negotiated by states, which agree to abide by the rules they created because it is in their interest to do so. - Mearsheimer (2001)

However, Mearsheimer seems to imply in his critique that this fact largely strips institutions of any real force in international relations. Here, I believe the criticism goes too far. It is true that the binding power of international institutions is more limited than idealists often hope. The inability of the UN to prevent or resolve many conflicts around the world illustrates this clearly. However, widely accepted rules and conventions can still have a strong influence on state behaviour. They can represent equilibria in the game of international relations—situations in which states choose to follow certain rules because doing so serves their own interests, given the benefits of cooperation and the costs of defection.

A properly realist view—one grounded in the understanding that actors pursue their interests within institutional and strategic constraints—can support a position broadly compatible with a reasoned liberal world view. A state of constant conflict is not a necessary outcome of international anarchy. A peaceful global order is possible, especially if democracies dominate in a world of economic interdependence and institutionalised cooperation. This view is not naively idealist; it does not assume autocratic regimes will willingly take part in such a system, but it recognises the conditions under which peace can be strategically sustained.

Mearsheimer’s intellectual misjudgement on Ukraine

Mearsheimer’s diagnosis of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine has been to blame the West for the conflict. In 2014, following Russia’s annexation of Crimea, he wrote:

the United States and its European allies share most of the responsibility for the crisis. The taproot of the trouble is NATO enlargement, the central element of a larger strategy to move Ukraine out of Russia’s orbit and integrate it into the West. - Mearsheimer (2014)

He also criticises the West for promoting democracy in Ukraine, implying that its citizens should somehow remain under the de facto control of Russia and its authoritarian regime:

The West’s final tool for peeling Kiev away from Moscow has been its efforts to spread Western values and promote democracy in Ukraine and other post-Soviet states, a plan that often entails funding pro-Western individuals and organizations. - Mearsheimer (2014)

Noticeably, Mearsheimer’s position on Ukraine is not simply an application of the ideas in The Tragedy of Great Power Politics that I have just criticised. It is, in many ways, a distortion of them.

Remember that, in his theory, states go to war because they fear for their survival. But who could credibly claim, in the 21st century, that Russia is militarily threatened by the West? The United States did not even have the will to intervene in Syria in 2011. There is no plausible scenario in which a U.S.-led coalition would launch a war against Russia, a nuclear-armed state. The timid response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine—a country the U.S. assured, under the Budapest Memorandum, that its sovereignty and borders would be respected and that it would oppose violations by others—illustrates this clearly. The U.S. and its allies were cautious in their approach. They did not deploy troops before the invasion to deter it, and took months to gradually approve the delivery of tanks, long-range missile systems, and aircraft. At the start of the war, the West appeared to accept the likely collapse of Ukraine, even offering President Zelensky an exfiltration. The German chancellor’s initial pledge of support famously amounted to little more than helmets and token supplies.

Let us be clear: there is no war-mongering West threatening Russia. Putin is fully aware of this. After initially citing NATO as the cause of the war, he eventually dropped the pretence. In his interview with Tucker Carlson, when the former Fox News anchor opened the discussion by suggesting Russia feared a NATO attack, Putin dismissed the idea and instead launched into a 30-minute monologue about why Ukraine, in his view, belongs to Russia. Carlson summarised Putin’s take with these words:

You’re making the case that Ukraine, certainly parts of Ukraine, Eastern Ukraine, is in effect Russia. Has been for hundreds of years. - Carlson

While Mearsheimer continues to claim that Russia feels threatened by the prospect of Ukraine joining the West, he never offers a credible argument that Russia’s survival is at stake. Does he assign any real probability to the idea that a NATO-led coalition including Ukraine would attack Russia? I don’t believe so, and most serious military analysts would not consider such a scenario credible.

He also misrepresents the driver of NATO expansion, it has never primarily been a Western attempt to threaten Russia. Some in the West did view the weakening of Russia’s geopolitical position as desirable (not to attack it, but to deter future aggression), but most of the impetus for expansion came from former countries under Russian control seeking to secure their independence and democratic institutions (Sarotte, 2021). Russia’s behaviour has repeatedly validated those fears: the first war in Chechnya in 1994, the second in 1999, the invasion of Georgia in 2008, and the invasions of Ukraine in 2014 and 2022.

Rather than aggressively pushing for NATO enlargement, many in the West were hesitant. The pragmatic cost-benefit analysis of several NATO members was that they were already safe within the alliance, and the accession of Eastern candidates was unnecessary for their own defence. Accepting them could antagonise Russia and increase the risk of tension. It was on this basis that Angela Merkel vetoed the inclusion of Ukraine and Georgia in NATO in 2008. Four months later, Russia invaded Georgia, and five years later, it invaded Ukraine.

NATO’s expansion was not primarily driven by a desire within NATO to expand in an antagonistic strategy against Russia, but by requests from Eastern countries seeing NATO membership as a safety against Russian imperialism

In his 2014 article, Mearsheimer rejects the comparison with Germany’s aggressive territorial expansions in the 1930s. He argues that the claim that Russia would want to annex Ukraine “falls apart on close inspection,” because “Russia lacks the capability to easily conquer and annex eastern Ukraine […] Putin surely understands that trying to subdue Ukraine would be like swallowing a porcupine. His response to events there has been defensive, not offensive.”

This failed forecast reveals something about Mearsheimer’s flawed intellectual compass in the Ukraine conflict. Strikingly, the Mearsheimer of the 2010s and 2020s, who blamed the West for the crisis in Ukraine, departed significantly from the theoretical framework he had laid out in 2001. In effect, he accepts that great powers have a right to dominate smaller countries in their neighbourhood, and that any external support for those countries' independence amounts to provocation

Against this surprising stance, which echoes Russian imperial narratives, I would quote a well-known realist scholar of international relations, who noted that even during the height of the Cold War, an accommodating approach to Russia was not necessarily the best strategy:

The theory also has little to say about whether NATO should have adopted an offensive or a defensive military strategy to deter the Warsaw Pact in central Europe.''* To answer these questions it is necessary to employ more fine-grained theories, such as deterrence theory.

Deterrence theory, developed by game theorist Thomas Schelling, points out that when faced with determined opponents, it is crucial to be credible about one’s resolve and capability to respond to aggression. The aim is to make any hostile action too costly for the opponent to pursue. A classic failure to apply this principle was the appeasement policy towards Nazi Germany in the 1930s, which accepted its territorial claims over neighbouring countries in the hope of preventing further conflict. As noted by the same international relations expert:

appeasement contradicts the dictates of offensive realism and therefore it is a fanciful and dangerous strategy. It is unlikely to transform a dangerous foe into a kinder, gentler opponent, much less a peace-loving state. Indeed, appeasement is likely to whet, not shrink, an aggressor state's appetite for conquest

This expert was… Mearsheimer, writing in the Tragedy of Great Power Politics.

Mearsheimer has, very regrettably, lent his reputation to a Russian narrative justifying an imperialist war in the heart of Europe, one that has killed hundreds of thousands of people, destroyed cities, and shattered countless families. The seeds of Mearsheimer’s misguided stance were already present in his theory of Great Power Politics, which is too realist by half. It fails to recognise that, when fully considered, the equilibria of strategic interactions between self-interested actors can give rise to far more cooperation than a mere war of all against all. It also overlooks how the internal dynamics of power within states lead democracies to have a much lower propensity for war than autocratic regimes.¹⁰

Mearsheimer’s position on Ukraine, possibly triggered by a reflexive rejection of liberal idealism, has led him down the troubling path of endorsing Russian narratives and whitewashing the openly imperialist motives behind the invasion.

In addition to this post, the interested reader will find additional elements in the criticisms of Matt Johnson (2023), and Anghell and Stolle (2022).

References

Anghel, V. and Stolle, D. (2022) ‘In Praise of Reality, Not Realism: An Answer to Mearsheimer’, EUIdeas, 28 June.

Binmore, K. (1994) Game Theory and the Social Contract: Volume 1, Playing Fair. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Binmore, K. (2005) Natural Justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Bueno de Mesquita, B., Smith, A., Siverson, R.M. and Morrow, J.D. (2003) The Logic of Political Survival. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Fukuyama, F. (1992) The End of History and the Last Man. New York: Free Press.

Johnson, M. (2023) ‘Mearsheimer: Rigor or Reaction?’, Quillette, 15 February.

Kant, I. (1795) Zum ewigen Frieden: Ein philosophischer Entwurf. Königsberg: F. Nicolovius.

Martin, P., Mayer, T. and Thoenig, M. (2008) ‘Make Trade Not War?’, The Review of Economic Studies, 75(3), pp. 865–900.

Mearsheimer, J.J. (2001) The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. New York: W.W. Norton.

Mearsheimer, J.J. (2014) ‘Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West's Fault: The Liberal Delusions That Provoked Putin’, Foreign Affairs, 93, pp. 77–89.

Montesquieu, C. de Secondat (1748) De l’esprit des lois [The Spirit of the Laws]. Geneva: Barrillot & Fils.

Oneal, J.R. and Russett, B. (1999) ‘The Kantian Peace: The Pacific Benefits of Democracy, Interdependence, and International Organizations, 1885–1992’, World Politics, 52(1), pp. 1–37.

Ostrom, E. (1990) Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Rousseau, D.L., Gelpi, C., Reiter, D. and Huth, P.K. (1996) ‘Assessing the Dyadic Nature of the Democratic Peace, 1918–88’, American Political Science Review, 90(3), pp. 512–533.

Sarotte, M.E. (2021) Not One Inch: America, Russia, and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate. New Haven: Yale University Press.

1

Wherever the ways of man are gentle, there is commerce; and wherever there is commerce, there the ways of men are gentle - Montesquieu (1748)

2. Though it should also be noted that he was not right on everything. He was overly pessimistic on the risk of resurgence of conflicts between European countries. Commenting on his 90s predictions, Matt Johnson explains:

Eastern European states would eventually get nuclear weapons, which they didn’t. He even envisioned “scenarios in which Germany uses force against Poland, Czechoslovakia, or even Austria,” and warned that Germany would acquire nuclear weapons “as the surest means of security.” - Johnson (2023)

3. Mearsheimer acknowledge Hobbes’ influence on his thinking here, qualifying his book The Leviathan as “the most important” in regard to the effect of an absence of authority (Mearsheimer, 2001, p. 414).

4. On the fact that the absence of an overarching authority would not lead to the chaos described by Hobbes, game theorist Ken Binmore writes:

Nor is it correct to say that anarchy will necessarily result if everybody “just” does what he wants. A person would be stupid in seeking to achieve a certain end if he ignored the fact that what other people are doing is relevant to the means for achieving that end. Intelligent people will coordinate their efforts to achieve their individual goals without necessarily being compelled or coerced by real or imaginary bogeymen. - Binmore (1994)

5. Mearsheimer obviously does not ignore this possible explanation. Instead, he chooses to leave it aside:

I do not adopt Morgenthau's claim that states invariably behave aggressively because they have a will to power hardwired into them. Instead, I assume that the principal motive behind great-power behavior is survival. In anarchy, however, the desire to survive encourages states to behave aggressively. - Mearsheimer (2001)

6. Other famous quotes attributed to famous leaders (though the origin is not always clear):

The greatest happiness is to vanquish your enemies, to chase them before you, to rob them of their wealth, to see those dear to them bathed in tears... - Gengis Kahn

The greatest and noblest pleasure which men can have in this world is to discover new truths; but conquest comes close - Frederick The Great

A crown is merely a hat that lets the rain in — unless you fill it with victories. - Peter the Great

A great reputation is a great noise; the more it is heard, the further it echoes, the longer it lasts. A great name is a sort of immortality. - Napoleon

I would annex the planets if I could. I often think of that. - Cecil Rhodes

It is better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep. - Benito Mussolini

7. Surprisingly, Mearsheimer entertains other motives for states than fear, but leaves out status and prestige as a driver of conquest:

Survival is the number-one goal of great powers … In practice, however, states pursue non-security goals as well. For example, great powers invariably seek greater economic prosperity … They sometimes seek to promote a particular ideology abroad … Great powers also occasionally try to foster human rights around the globe. States might pursue any of these, as well as a number of other non-security goals. - Mearsheimer (2001)

8. The same conflict exists within organisations, with managers often having a bias towards “empire building” instead of adopting the best strategies from the perspective of stakeholders.

9. Martin et al. 2008 suggest, however, that the effect may not apply to all types of trade. While bilateral trade reduces incentives for war, globalised trade can make countries less dependent on any specific partner, thereby lowering the cost of going to war with a particular state.

10. Mearsheimer devotes considerable attention to historical examples, but I find his discussion deeply flawed. He often mixes inconsistent arguments to explain why democratic countries were not imperialistic—for instance, why the United States did not establish long-term control over Western Europe and Japan as the Soviet Union did. A detailed discussion of these cases would go beyond the scope of this post. However, I believe that, equipped with the arguments presented here, a reader revisiting Mearsheimer’s book would clearly see the flaws in his reasoning.