Navigating the wars in Ukraine and Gaza has brought the political theory of realism to the fore, becoming a sudden mainstay of popular and journalistic analysis. More than anyone, University of Chicago professor John Mearsheimer, the doyen of American realism, …
How realists sacrificed their morality
Last week, the Defence Secretary, Grant Shapps, warned that we are “moving from a post-war to a pre-war world” where, “in five years’ time, we could be looking at multiple theatres [of conflict] involving Russia, China, Iran, North Korea”. This …
The Russian invasion was a rational act
It is widely believed in the West that Russian president Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine was not a rational act. On the eve of the invasion, then British prime minister Boris Johnson suggested that perhaps the United States and …
John Mearsheimer: We’re playing Russian roulette
Until the Russia-Ukraine crisis, Professor John Mearsheimer was mainly known in academic circles as a leading scholar in the “realist” school of foreign policy. That is to say, he takes an unsentimental view of world affairs as being a muscular …
Russia realists are the new lockdown sceptics
Less than a year after 9/11, Dick Cheney had a message for Americans: the “old doctrines of security do not apply… Containment is not possible when dictators obtain weapons of mass destruction.”
Cheney was referring to Saddam Hussein, but it …