John Mearsheimer's June 23 update on the Russia-Ukraine War

When will peace come to Ukraine?¹

Image from the First World War

The international-relations Über-Realist John Mearsheimer is consistently irritating. He’s irritating because he states bluntly views that many in politics and the foreign policy establishment don’t share, he’s well-informed, and he has an especially annoying knack for being right about things his audiences would rather not hear.

He has a long piece from late last month about the Russia-Ukraine War that is sure to irritate and annoy just about everyone.² Including me, because I would prefer to feel optimistic about things like this. The short version: There are different ways the fighting in the Ukraine could come to an end, and none of them are likely to result in a Happy Ending for Ukraine in the foreseeable future.

His analysis of the war of attrition going on is important, but it doesn’t look good for Ukraine. He mentions one of the more dramatic facts, which is that since the Russian invasion last year, “roughly 8 million Ukrainians have fled the country, and about 7 million are internally displaced.” That’s at least a third of the population of Ukraine as of the beginning of the war in 2022..

Also, Mearsheimer likes to be deliberately provocative by saying things like this that he knows will make the hair on Cold War 2.0 enthusiasts’ heads stand straight up: “I am not saying what I would like to see happen. I am not rooting for one side or the other. I am simply telling you what I think will happen as the war moves forward.“ (my emphasis)

Not rooting for Our Side even in a factual analysis is against the rules in the Democracies-vs.-Autocracies game! Although the countries on the “D” side in that game aren’t required to be actual democracies, and those on the “A” side don’t have to autocracies, either.

Two main elements:

First, is a meaningful peace agreement possible? My answer is no. We are now in a war where both sides – Ukraine and the West on one side and Russia on the other – see each other as an existential threat that must be defeated. Given maximalist objectives all around, it is almost impossible to reach a workable peace treaty. Moreover, the two sides have irreconcilable differences regarding territory and Ukraine’s relationship with the West. The best possible outcome is a frozen conflict that could easily turn back into a hot war. The worst possible outcome is a nuclear war, which is unlikely but cannot be ruled out.  

Second, which side is likely to win the war? Russia will ultimately win the war, although it will not decisively defeat Ukraine. In other words, it is not going to conquer all of Ukraine, which is necessary to achieve three of Moscow’s goals: overthrowing the regime, demilitarizing the country, and severing Kyiv’s security ties with the West. But it will end up annexing a large swath of Ukrainian territory, while turning Ukraine into a dysfunctional rump state. In other words, Russia will win an ugly victory. [my emphasis]

A favorite Cold War 2.0 argument is that Russia couldn’t possibly imagine that NATO is any kind of threat to Russia! And anyone suggesting it might be is just repeating Commie Putinist propaganda. And, of course, Russia actually has been saying very publicly since the 1990s they see NATO expansion as a threat, even if the Democracy side in the Democracies-vs.-Autocracy framing of the New Cold War says - and many on Our Side may really believe - that the idea is totally irrational.

But one of the practical virtues of Mearsheimer’s IR-Realist perspective is that it focuses both on historical experience in foreign policy but also on how the leadership of countries perceive their interests and threats. Mearsheimer and other realists like Stephen Walt spend a lot of time and energy trying to convince people to take a more empirically realistic view of what’s happening in the world. So it’s not like they are assuming that a country’s leadership always has the right perceptions. On the contrary, they focus on factors that may lead decision-makers to take a view of threats and opportunities that isn’t consistent with their country’s national interest. Factors like lobby groups, political posturing, and theoretical frameworks (e.g., the Munich Analogy as it’s typically applied).

Different players with different national interests

Allies in military coalitions never have identifical national interests. And the current war is not exception. Mearsheimer notes one key difference, and thereby illustrates that his brand of realism not only does not assume that nations perceive their interests correctly, but also that they sometimes get it really wrong.

The Ukraine war is hindering the U.S. effort to contain China, which is of paramount importance for American security since China is a peer competitor while Russia is not. Indeed, balance-of-power logic says that the United States should be allied with Russia against China and pivoting full force to East Asia. Instead, the war in Ukraine has pushed Beijing and Moscow close together, while providing China with a powerful incentive to make sure that Russia is not defeated and the United States remains tied down in Europe, impeding its efforts to pivot to East Asia. [my emphasis]

This is one way in which the “realist” view also has a normative/presecriptive tilt. In this case, Mearsheimer is essentially arguing that the US is playing the “balance-of-power logic“ in a suboptimal way from the standpoint of the core realist assumptions. Because balance-of-power competition is built into the system, realist arguments often wind up effectively assuming that powerful nations should play the game that way and not emphasize breaking out of that deadly cycle.

But, in another example of why Mearsheimer is consistently irritating, is argument is both correct and very relevant. Since the Obama Administration US foreign policy has officially considered the rising power of China the top priority threat for the US, a US policy in Ukraine or elsewhere that drives Russia and China into a closer security cooperation is detrimental to the official top foreign policy priority of the US, competing with China.

From the Nixon Administration until at least the Obama Administration, the US had aligned more closely with China to balance off against Soviet and Russian power. It was generally considered a success. Though it was always considered rather impolite to point out that this experience largely disproved some of the key assumptions of the First Cold War period. For example, the idea that the Vietnamese Communists were Chinese puppets. The short invasion of Vietnam by China in 1979 showed pretty clearly the flaw in that assumption on which the justification for the US war in Vietnam was largely based.

Foreign policy experts who made a "realist" case against the Vietnam War included George Kennan, Hans Morgenthau, and Reinhold Niebuhr. Mearsheimer himself recalled Morgenthau's position and related it to his own criticisms of the Cheney-Bush Administration Iraq War.³ The realists were annoying Cold War hawks back then, too!

Where do we/should we go from here?

Historians will be arguing for decades over the best way to characterize the period between 1989 and now. Or 1991, if we want to use the fall of USSR itself as the breaking point. It certainly looks at the moment as though we’re in a Cold War 2.0 with China and Russia. I’m sure commentators and political consultants on Our Side will suggest other names for it. You know, like The Holy Battle for the Defense of Democracy Against Autocracy, or other things along those lines.

In fact, the three decades or so after 1989 were the years that the human race had the best chance to make huge strides toward a genuinely peaceful and more just world - the best opportunity since 1945 - and collectively squandered it.

As utopian as it sounds at the moment, the world does have to get back a new starting point and build a world that has much less war and many fewer nuclear weapons (and eventually none). And the need for all major nations to cooperate on reducing greenhouse gases to minimize the seriousness of the climate crisis will only get more obvious over time.

Containing and resolving the Russia-Ukraine War is obviously an immediate item on the agenda. But for the reasons Mearsheimer describes so well (unfortunately!), the way forward isn’t very clear. And pretty much all versions of it will leave a very badly damaged Ukraine in its wake with many more dead.

Hegel would not be surprised. As he famously said, “The history of the world is not the ground of happiness, because the periods of happiness are blank pages in it.” Not so often quoted is what immediately follows, “the object of history is, at the least, change.”⁴

1. Image from: The Bombs Still Blow: Environmental Legacies of WWI - Tait Keller. National WWI Museum and Memorial YouTube channel 05/19/2019. (Accessed: 2023-06-07.

2. Mearsheimer, John (2023): Darkness Ahead-Where The Ukraine War Is Headed. John's Substack 06/23/2023. (Accessed: 04-07-2023).

3. Mearsheimer, John (2005): Hans Morgenthau and the Iraq war: realism versus neo-conservatism. OpenDemocracy 05/18/2005. <https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/morgenthau_2522jsp/> (Accessed: 05-07-2023).

4. Hegel, G.W.F. (2015): Gesammelte Werke 27:1, 54 (Nachschrift Hotho, 1822-23). Düsseldorf: Nordrhein-Westfalische Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Künste. My translation from the German.