Living With Gorillas
Political realism and John Mearsheimer explained
I was just reading a very interesting piece about how Latin American countries are treating the Russian invasion in Ukraine and I found that I was mostly nodding my head in agreement until I came to a screeching halt when a Mearsheimerian argument was mentioned.
Professor John Mearsheimer doesn’t need my endorsement or introduction. But for the sake of those unaware of him, he’s one of the most distinguished scholars in the field of international relations and political science in the US, and probably the world. He is what we call a realist.
What does that mean?
As a young man, I was more or less what one would call an idealist. I was really fervent in my views about freedom, democracy, and justice and, at the same time, rejected indoctrination of any kind. That’s why I kept communists at arm’s length, even though it’s so very common for students in Greece to lean that way. I respected their views, but I didn’t like the baggage that came along with them.
Back then, I might have thought that John Mearsheimer was the devil. Or, well, a trusted advocate. But, I discovered one fine day that I’d woken up and the idealist that was living in my head had changed. I don’t know when that happened, to be honest. My views haven’t really changed on a fundamental level, but I’m using a different prism now.
Perhaps years of political disappointments in Greece, both witnessed, read about, and then experienced first hand made me not quite cynical, but at least very skeptical about politics. Most importantly, I learned that what politicians say is rarely what they mean and even more rarely what they do.
Enough about me, though. What really stood out in the aforementioned piece was that, even though the author recognized the long shadow of the Monroe doctrine at work in Latin American countries historically, it called the argument that Russian aggression was caused by the U.S. very Mearsheimerian in that it “doesn’t recognize Ukrainians” interest in becoming a part of Europe as valid, and delegitimizes everything they’ve been through since Euromaidan.”
How can anybody recognize so clearly that the US has been trying to control, directly or indirectly, the politics on its entire continent, the entire Western hemisphere even, and not understand that Russia succeeded the USSR in that position in Eastern Europe and aspires to do the same there?
Mearsheimer might come across to some as an amoral political thinker. But he’s far from that. He’s merely not allowing his own personal values (he’s said that he finds the war in Ukraine appalling, as any sane person would) to muddle his judgment as far as international relations are concerned.
I see that many people still profoundly misunderstand him.
Mearsheimer is not saying that Ukraine’s wish to approach the West isn’t valid. What he’s saying is that it’s as valid as the desire of Latin American countries to get out of the shadow of the U.S. Or the desire of Cuba to install Soviet missiles in order to discourage another U.S.-supported invasion attempt.
Didn’t Cuba have the right to ally themselves with Russia, especially after the Bay of Pigs invasion? It most certainly did. But the U.S. tried repeatedly to depose and assassinate Fidel Castro and when he asked the USSR to install nuclear missiles on Cuban soil, perhaps as a way to deter any further meddling from the U.S., JFK effectively threatened the world with nuclear war. How in all the world is any of that compatible with international law?
You could say that the U.S. was right to be afraid of Soviet nukes so close at home and I would agree. But that is irrelevant as far as Cuba’s sovereignty goes, whether we like it, or not. The U.S. repeatedly violated Cuba’s sovereignty and no one in the West so much as batted an eyelid. Because, you see, Cuba was communist. But that was the Cuban people’s choice. And, as many conveniently forget or ignore, this move by the USSR was an answer to the quiet installation of U.S. nuclear missiles in Turkey, which was as close as geographically possible to most Soviet cities at that time.
What Mearsheimer keeps saying is that Eastern European countries, as well as Latin American ones, live next to “gorillas”. For decades, these countries had to tread very lightly in order to avoid angering the gorilla next door. Because when they did, bad things happened. See tanks in Prague and CIA agents in Guatemala, for example. Coups, invasions and assassinations. Bad things.
The problem this time started when NATO started expanding in the Russian gorilla’s front yard and funded uprisings in former Warsaw pact countries via NGOs. When the Russians, practically every leader they had since 1990 protested against this expansionism and was ignored. When the Assistant Secretary of State was caught discussing with the US Ambassador in Ukraine who was suitable to be in the government after Maidan and how to make it happen. Would this have been acceptable to the US if Ukraine was substituted with Mexico and it was the Deputy Foreign Minister of Russia discussing with the Russian Ambassador in Mexico about the next day of an ongoing socialist uprising?
Hell, no.
We might accept the fact that the U.S. had the entire continent under its sphere of influence because we’re part of the West and “that’s just how it is”, but by the same token, Russia is looking to protect its own sphere of influence, and that has been under attack for decades.
We can’t wish all that away and pretend it’s not there, because it’s “not right.” Is it right that Putin invaded Ukraine? No.
But is that really the question we should be asking?
The Russian gorilla is very angry now and it’s pummeling Ukraine while we’re rooting for the victim and sending it weapons, but the American gorilla who incited this is out of the fray because we simply can’t afford an open battle between the two beasts. It would be the end of us all.
And so the only reasonable question is: why did this have to happen in the first place? Was the future of Ukraine in NATO so valuable to it that it had to be paid in so much blood?
If there is one argument for Ukraine’s integration into NATO, just one, that would naturally be to protect its security. How’s that security looking now?
Mearsheimer has said many times that speaking about “rights” in the context of international relations is very tricky and can lead the US into “all sorts of trouble.” Frankly, I think it’s other countries that get into more trouble than the US and in this particular case, it’s Ukraine. This country has become another battlefield in a long series of proxy wars between the East and the West, to put it in very broad terms.
And very few of these wars ended well, as far as I can remember. Is it worth it?
That’s what the realist asks.
