Offensive Realism of John J. Mearsheimer
A long time ago, I read John J. Mearsheimer’s The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001) and was greatly influenced by it. Strangely, I never noted it: he only appears as a note in my discussions of a book about Ulysses S. Grant.
Mearsheimer is a West Point graduate who currently teaches at the University of Chicago. He expands the realist tradition by adding a testable (read: can use history of foreign affairs to prove) element. His argument is really that states are interested in survival, you can never be sure about other states’ intentions, and therefore a state must constantly be accumulating power. You can’t become a non-warring state because it doesn’t make sense for survival.
There are two interesting interviews with Mearsheimers I’ve passed through recently:
- International Relations interviewed him on 2004 Oct 14. Part One (PDF) | Part Two (PDF)
- Harry Kreisler of the Institute of International Studies at University of California – Berkeley interviewed Mearsheimer on 2002 April 8. There is also a video stream, apparently.
Put Mearsheimer’s ideas with Julian Fairfield’s ideas (in a forthcoming book) using holonic theory to explain human conflict and you have a nice reason for Balkanization and why what’s-his-name said in his book on Jesus that many of the ruling Jews didn’t have a problem with being ruled by Rome: in the end, the external balancer forces opposing sides to play with each other rather than go at each other’s throats.
Mearsheimer’s sound bite is that in international relations, if someone doesn’t do what they said they would do, there isn’t any one at the other end of your “911″ call.
Interesting is Mearsheimer’s discussion of the Realists’ opinion of the invasion of Iraq.
That is definitely the smartest guy you have linked in a while. I don’t recall anything he said in either interview I could really poke too many holes in. . . .
Really liked his points about interaction of academia and real world and his point that theories and models aren’t real – just ideas attempting to explain what is real.
Smart guy.
You should read his book, then. It was quite influential on me, including how I would view the organizational world.