A curious aspect of the Western discussion since the Russian invasion of Ukraine is that a school of thought that predicted some version of this conflict has been portrayed as discredited because its predictions have only partially come true.
Between the 1990s and the 2010s, from George Kennan’s opposition to NATO expansion to John Mearsheimer’s criticism of US involvement in Ukraine, thinkers linked to foreign policy realism — the school known for its cold predictions of great-power conflict, their skepticism of idealistic views of the world order—argued that the attempt to integrate Russia’s neighboring countries into Western institutions and alliances was poisoning US relations with Moscow, raising the likelihood of great-power conflict and exposing countries like Ukraine to disastrous risks.
“The West is pushing Ukraine to look for a deceptively easy way out of a predicament,” Mearsheimer declared in 2015, “and the end result is that Ukraine will be devastated.”
The West is pushing Ukraine to look for a deceptively easy way out of a predicament, and the end result is that Ukraine will be devastated.
But now that Ukraine is indeed being ravaged by a Russian invasion, many think that Mearsheimer’s realistic worldview has also fallen into disrepair — that (quoting Portuguese thinker Bruno Maçães) he “has lost his reputation and credibility” and ( quoting Anne Applebaum of The Atlantic) the realistic conception of nations as “players in the game of War”, with “eternal geopolitical interests or orientations, fixed motivations or predictable goals” must be discarded on the basis of evidence from Vladimir Putin’s invasion and of the Ukrainian response.
The broader critique of realism advocated by Applebaum and Apples goes something like this: yes, realists like Mearsheimer predicted some sort of conflict over Ukraine. But the predictions of realist thinking did not describe reality, for three reasons.
To begin with, the forecasts imagined a defensive logic behind Russian strategic conduct, based on protecting a sphere of influence and fear of encirclement by NATO. But the decision to invade appears to have been motivated more by Putin’s avowed and very personal desire to restore a mystical vision of great Russia – a grandiose ideological vision that would hardly be satisfied by a simple promise from the West not to admit Ukraine to NATO.
Second, the realistic forecasts underestimated the autonomy and strength of the Ukrainians themselves, viewing Russia’s neighboring countries as a landscape where the only thing of real importance was the great power’s strength projection and ignoring Ukraine’s potential capability – now demonstrated. on the battlefield—of resisting Russia and mobilizing global support, even without receiving direct military aid from the United States or NATO.
Finally, realistic predictions eliminated the moral dimension of global politics, effectively legitimizing imperialist impulses and “blaming the victim”, so to speak, with the moral responsibility for aggression ultimately being with the aggressor, not with nations that they are just seeking autonomy or self-defense.
As someone who considers himself a realist (insofar as it makes sense for a newspaper columnist to claim such affinities), I think some of this criticism is compelling. For example, my impression is that because most realist thinkers today operate within the liberal West and define themselves in opposition to its pious moral positions—especially against the globalist utopianism that gained so much acceptance in the post-Cold War period—there is a constant temptation to assume that illiberal regimes must be more rational actors, more realistic in their practices and goals, than the naive idealists of America or Europe. Thus, when a crisis occurs, the main or even essential fault can only be the unrealism of the West.
We can see this temptation at work in the interview Mearsheimer gave Isaac Chotiner of the New Yorker, published shortly after the Russian invasion began. On the one hand, the interview offers an insightful realist critique of how idealism led America to detours in the George W. Bush era, thanks to a naive theory of how aggressive war could democratize parts of the Middle East.
But when it comes to Putin’s aggressive war, Mearsheimer seems to assume that the Russian president thinks like him, the realist, and not like the utopian politicians of the West. Putin, he says, “understands that he cannot conquer Ukraine and integrate it into a great Russia or a reincarnation of the former Soviet Union.” And, he argues, if the US did more to “build cordial relations” with Moscow, there could be an American-Russian “tacit balancing coalition” against China’s rising power.
But why would Putin necessarily be immune to the arrogance and illusions of Western leaders? Why should we suppose that he does not dream of reintegrating Ukraine and Belarus into a great Russia? Why should we take it for granted that the right diplomatic strategy will draw him into an American coalition against China, when he may instead be engaged with a broad ideological vision of Eurasian power allied against the decaying West?
That is, why should we suppose that structural and schematic explanations of Putin’s war are more important than personal and ideological explanations? After all, as historian Adam Tooze points out, it seems that very few members of the Russian foreign policy elite — all presumably opposed to NATO expansion, all “dedicated to Russia’s future as a great power” — believed that Putin would actually invade. And if so many participants in Putin’s regime, all faithful servants of the national interest as defined by realists, would not have made his fateful choice if they could decide, then did realist premises actually predict war itself?
Equally important, did they predict the course the war has taken so far? I didn’t do it myself: I imagined that Ukraine might put up strong resistance in the western part of its territory, but that Russia would get there without much difficulty and would probably put Volodymyr Zelensky’s government on the run. (Some version of this premise was shared by US intelligence, which predicted the rapid fall of Kiev two days into the war.) After two weeks of stalled offensives and mounting Russian casualties, this flawed premise looks a bit like a similar worldview. to that of a War board, where all that matters are positioning and pieces, not patriotism, morale, leadership and luck.
But now let me say something in defense of realism: what we found this winter is that aggressive Russian power is weaker and united Western power is stronger than many pre-war analyzes predicted. That is, that the decline of the US and the decline of Europe are not as advanced as they have sometimes seemed lately.
However, look at the global response to the war in Ukraine — Beijing’s tacit support for Russia; India’s neutrality; the cautious reactions of the Gulf states, driven by their self-interest—and you will see the landscape whose emergence likely emboldened Putin to place his gamble: a world where US hegemony is on the wane, where new great powers and “ANDstates-civilizations” are determined to fight for their own interests and where the dreams of moral universalism and liberal consensus of the 1990s are giving way to the harsh realities of cultural differences, moral relativism and post-liberal political competition.
Indeed, even Europe’s mobilization against Russia, the talk of rearmament and energy independence fits this mold because it represents a nascent recognition of continental interest as much as a manifestation of cosmopolitan idealism. Yes, Zelensky’s inspiring example is important, but the fundamental reality is that, under conditions of threat and competition, Europe is shortening its historical vacation and beginning to behave like a great power in its own right – just as the realistic theory.
And while these threatening and competitive conditions are a little more favorable to the West than they appeared to be three weeks ago, they are still fundamentally hostile to the kind of crusader liberalism that was so strong in the Clinton and Bush presidencies and continued into the Obama years. . What we have gained so far from Russia’s blunders is the chance to achieve a more favorable balance of power in a multipolar world, and that is a very good thing. But the war is far from over, and the most plausible good outcome is still the peace of the realist, not the triumph of the idealist — a peace that will likely still leave Putin in power, with Crimea and the Donbass region in his hands. and Russia more integrated with (and subordinate to) our rivals in Beijing.
Can we hope for a better outcome, in which the Russians rise up, the democratic revolution flourishes, and (in the poetic terms of the 1990s) “hope and history rhyme”? To be sure: a realism that excludes idealistic possibilities is itself unreal. But in a conflict with a nuclear power, fought in a country that borders that power, to pursue that ideal outcome as our primary goal—that is, to seek total victory and regime change, rather than provisional stability—is to court disasters yet to come. worse than those that have befallen us in any recent war.
Translation by Clara Allain
