Putin and leaders like him are almost always gamblers, not rational decision-makers. He figured he had a window of time in the early Biden years, with the last serious Westen leaders and policies gone, replaced by fantasies of "energy transition." So he rolled the dice.
We still hear on the right the "onward, Christian soldiers" fantasy, brave Russian soldiers fighting vicious transgender neo-Nazis in Ukraine. But the pseudointellectual "realist" right has been returning for a couple decades now, and as unreal as ever, with specious and historically ignorant arguments. It's heartening to know that the fact-deficient and morally obtuse are not exclusive to the left.
I read that Unherd article too. Obviously invading Ukraine was not a rational choice. It was a gamble. And how does Mearsheimer explain all Putin’s busts of Peter and Catherine the Great?
The academic "realists" like to brandish theories last truly relevant before the French Revolution. Classical realism died between 1815 and 1914, although it took another couple generations for the lesson to sink in. In the modern world -- a world of nations and nuclear weapons, not of empires or tin-pot principalities or of flintlocks and cavalry charges -- there's collective/cooperative security, or there's no security. That's why these gasbags lash out with conspiracy theories when it's repeatedly made obvious how out of touch with reality they are.
I don’t disagree with this. Still, historical themes do repeat themselves. In the early eighteenth century and again after 1789, the aspirations of an imperial state, France, were opposed by a grand alliance: collective security in fact if not in name. And at the Congress of Vienna, the concept of collective security was formally embraced.
It was the rise of nationalism and of ideology in general that undermined that concept. Rival power blocs animated by fear and ambition in varying proportions replaced it. Thus the Great War originated with the Habsburg Monarchy, a polity that could only survive in an environment of respect for “legitimacy” and acceptance of the principle that the security of all states depended on the security of each state. Once that world was seen to have passed away, fear drove Austria-Hungary to seek salvation through violence.
The only realism worth the name is rooted in a clear understanding of the age in which one lives. Neither the puerile internationalism of the postmodern Left nor the defeatist isolationism of the nationalist Right embodies that understanding.
When I referred to "realists," I meant Mearsheimer and others working with clearly obsolete concepts. Except for China, the world is no longer a world of empires. Obviously, considerations of power, balance, imbalance, etc., will always be with us.
There is another conception of realism that embraces consideration of the internal character of regimes as a factor; e.g., Thucydides. However, the non-viability of pre-modern conceptions of power is evident. You see that in modern historiography: it's no longer enough to talk about political and military affairs; you have to study and write about economic and social history. That's the modern world.
Romney is a quite decent fellow, from an antique era, obviously. Plus he had the decency not to wait until he's senile to retire.
Putin and leaders like him are almost always gamblers, not rational decision-makers. He figured he had a window of time in the early Biden years, with the last serious Westen leaders and policies gone, replaced by fantasies of "energy transition." So he rolled the dice.
We still hear on the right the "onward, Christian soldiers" fantasy, brave Russian soldiers fighting vicious transgender neo-Nazis in Ukraine. But the pseudointellectual "realist" right has been returning for a couple decades now, and as unreal as ever, with specious and historically ignorant arguments. It's heartening to know that the fact-deficient and morally obtuse are not exclusive to the left.
I read that Unherd article too. Obviously invading Ukraine was not a rational choice. It was a gamble. And how does Mearsheimer explain all Putin’s busts of Peter and Catherine the Great?
The academic "realists" like to brandish theories last truly relevant before the French Revolution. Classical realism died between 1815 and 1914, although it took another couple generations for the lesson to sink in. In the modern world -- a world of nations and nuclear weapons, not of empires or tin-pot principalities or of flintlocks and cavalry charges -- there's collective/cooperative security, or there's no security. That's why these gasbags lash out with conspiracy theories when it's repeatedly made obvious how out of touch with reality they are.
I don’t disagree with this. Still, historical themes do repeat themselves. In the early eighteenth century and again after 1789, the aspirations of an imperial state, France, were opposed by a grand alliance: collective security in fact if not in name. And at the Congress of Vienna, the concept of collective security was formally embraced.
It was the rise of nationalism and of ideology in general that undermined that concept. Rival power blocs animated by fear and ambition in varying proportions replaced it. Thus the Great War originated with the Habsburg Monarchy, a polity that could only survive in an environment of respect for “legitimacy” and acceptance of the principle that the security of all states depended on the security of each state. Once that world was seen to have passed away, fear drove Austria-Hungary to seek salvation through violence.
The only realism worth the name is rooted in a clear understanding of the age in which one lives. Neither the puerile internationalism of the postmodern Left nor the defeatist isolationism of the nationalist Right embodies that understanding.
When I referred to "realists," I meant Mearsheimer and others working with clearly obsolete concepts. Except for China, the world is no longer a world of empires. Obviously, considerations of power, balance, imbalance, etc., will always be with us.
There is another conception of realism that embraces consideration of the internal character of regimes as a factor; e.g., Thucydides. However, the non-viability of pre-modern conceptions of power is evident. You see that in modern historiography: it's no longer enough to talk about political and military affairs; you have to study and write about economic and social history. That's the modern world.
Yeah they’re such idiots. The foreign policy “realists.” But they think they’re so brilliant and morally superior.