We read the major analyses of the international system and heave a sigh of relief learning that in an anarchical international system, great powers, the main actors in world politics, are rational entities; as such, they are capable of coming up with sound strategies that maximize their prospects for survival in that chaotic setting.
But this is a big “but” here; the authors of these analyses, who call their theory “offensive realism,” also say that great powers always try to maximize their powers and crave to dominate the international system simply because they can never be certain of the intentions of other states.
There are other theories in international relations, but this one was put forward by the political scholar I admire most: John Mearsheimer. I keep referring to his many analyses and podcasts on social media sites.
In his seminal book, "The Tragedy of Great Power Politics," Mearsheimer writes that states are capable of rationally and strategically thinking about how to survive but security-seeking great powers will nonetheless be forced to compete for and conflict with one another. The “tragedy” in this game of great power politics is that states cannot be sure that other states will not use military capabilities against them.
A case in point: The Biden administration – even though NATO-EU quietly shipped 300-kilometer-range (186-miles-range) ATACMS missiles to Ukraine almost a year ago – allowed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to fire them into Russia properly. Zelenskyy could use them inside Ukraine; those regions that Russia claims it has “annexed” to the motherland are technically and diplomatically part of Ukraine. The U.K. and France have also supplied long-range missiles, known as Storm Shadow, to Ukraine, capable of precision strikes up to 250 kilometers.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and his military were never sure when those American, British and French missiles would be fired at Russia proper. If you give guns to one’s neighbor, one has the liberty to think that neighbor could use them whenever it deems the time is right. Russia warned the U.S. and EU governments that Ukraine’s firing NATO-EU missiles on Russian soil would be considered Ukraine’s act “with and for” NATO-EU. This is what an Offensive-Realist theoretician would call “security-seeking Russia’s rational strategy to maximize its prospects for survival” and “to eliminate any possibility of challenge by another great power(s).”
If Russia, a great power with a large nuclear arsenal, warns the U.S., another great power with an equally large nuclear stockpile, not to point guns at them, but, nevertheless, Ukraine, “with and for” the U.S., fires those missiles onto Russian soil, then the offensive-realist theoretician would start scratching their head: Is the U.S. acting rationally? Or has Biden lost his senses?
Military experts estimate that at least 245 known Russian military objects are within the range of the American ATACMS, specifically their 300-kilometer variant. Russia even went at length to revise its nuclear to lower the threshold for a nuclear strike in response to a broader range of conventional attacks. In a sense, Biden claimed confrontation with Russia, which says it would consider those NATO members to be directly involved in the war in Ukraine. The updated Russian nuclear doctrine allows Putin to order a nuclear strike.
He could, but would he? Putin, a little eccentric nonetheless, still has a huge Russian state apparatus behind him, unlike Biden, "The Dingy Nut," who does not have the U.S. deep state with him anymore. He has only a handful of hell-bent neocons who must have been scared to death that President-elect Donald Trump is going to pay them with their own coin. (Trump kept blaming all the big shots at the State and Defense Departments, FBI and CIA for delivering his phone records and secret communication documents to the investigations about him plotting to overturn the 2020 election.)
So, neocons are playing their last cards in Ukraine and Palestine so that they gift a “Le Deluge” to Trump. Mearsheimer's offensive neorealism draws a pessimistic picture of international politics characterized by dangerous inter-state security competition that often leads to conflict and war. But not that dangerous, you might say, because “states have survival as their primary goal,” Mearsheimer's "Rule Book of Theory" says.
We know (well, in fact, we hope!) that no nuclear power fires at another nuclear power lest it wants to see what “mutually assured destruction” really is. Even though their new doctrine lowered the threshold for using his nuclear arsenal after Biden’s arms decision for Ukraine, the mighty Russian bureaucracy, with the heritage of not one but two empires, knows better. If they keep hounding down U.S., British and French missiles, as they have been doing last week, rest assured that no Russian nuke will be on its way to France, Britain or the U.S. in the near future.
Israel and Iran held back from an all-out war even though they seemed on the brink of a bigger war. What holds them back is the fact that Israel is a nuclear power, and Iran is close to having (if not already has) a nuclear deterrence. I think the same logic will work in the Ukraine-Russia war.
As professor Mearsheimer says, states are rational beings even if their outgoing, incoming or sitting president are nutjobs. But remember, praying also helps!
