The Tragedy of Great Power Politics
The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (ISBN: 9780393349276) was written by John J. Mearsheimer in 2001, with an updated 2nd edition published in 2014.
Mearsheimer posits that international conflict is best described as being driven by structural incentives based on a fundamental fear of other nations and a desire to survive as a nation at all costs. Nations are used as an anthropomorphized unit that itself feels these incentives and anxieties. Because this is how the world is best described, and because (as the model states) we fear other nations behaving that way, all nations ought to behave this way too.
Fundamentally comes down to relative balance of power. Balance of power is largely balance of military assets. Specifically land armies.
- "[C]onquering and controlling land... is the supreme political objective in a world of territorial states" (p. 86). Land armies are simply the only military asset that is effective at accomplishing this objective.
- While land armies aren't the only factor that determines the outcome of a war, it is the only one that we can purposefully augment to improve outcomes.
- Strategy can fail, weather isn't under our control, latent power (i.e. socieconomic assets that can be fed into a military economy) isn't quickly realized into military power.
- Latent power does play a role as the upper limit of military assets. Latent power is measured as GNP after 1960, and iron/steel production before.
Great powers must have nuclear weapons.
- If a nuclear dominance emerged, that power would certainly be the global hegemon.
- Mearsheimer distinguishes between first strike capacity, which can qualitatively differ so as to give an advantage to one power, and second strike capacity, which is a simple state.
A great power does not need to have capacity to defeat the strongest power, just enough capacity to weaken it.
- But all great powers were European until the U.S. (1895).
The ultimate aggressive strategies for survival are:
- war...
- so as to exploit forced labor
- so as to sieze strategic land
- so as to eliminate rival states permanently
- war has costs, but these benefits can outweigh them
- intimidation/blackmail/posturing
- essentially: a catch-all for non-war methods to obtain concessions
- "bait and bleed" = instigating costly war among rivals
- "bloodletting" = exacerbating costly war among rivals
The ultimate defensive strategies for survival are:
- balancing
- military alliances to forestall war
- "buck-passing"
nominally: refusing to address an aggresssor so as to force another, weaker power to feel more threatened by the aggressor, instigating them to address the aggressor instead at personal cost
- essentially: a catch-all for diplomatic, cold war, and non-war methods to address an aggressor
- also a catch-all for the reasons a state may appear to rationally concede military assets
The predicted strategy for China is:
- avoid costly wars in the region
- even while pressing strategic land claims and isolating rival regional powers
- more important to focus on latent power
- Mearsheimer predicts that this will not be successful; the land claims will draw China into costly war eventually; rival regional and global powers will realize that China must be "baited and bled" now
- instigate conflict outside of the region
- especially in West, to tie up U.S. military assets
Mearsheimer emphasizes the parallels between his offensive realism and Waltz's defensive realism. He agrees with the core structuralism (i.e. zero sum game given anarchy in which goal is survival). Mearsheimer takes issue with idea of status quo powers (i.e. either ons great power or a cartel of great powers that benefit from the current balance of power, so they flex offensive and defensive power to maintain it). He believes that great powers always stand to gain from instability, so always aim to destabilize the status quo.
Mearsheimer disagrees with rationalist explanations for war. Tsarist Russia was not stronger than Napoleonic France; Viet Nam was not stronger than the United States.
- Mearsheimer does not significantly explore causes of war, just posits that you cannot increase the probability of peaceful cooperation by increasing transparency. This is only important to emphasize the fear of anthropomorphized nations.
My thoughts
The simplification of balance of power down to land army size is highly suspect.
- It seems like Mearsheimer started with the idea of using land army size as an independent variable and found a justification to fit that model.
There is specific mention of "resolve" as a factor that feeds into the outcome of a war. My understanding is this refers to the willingness of an army to fight. But this is an asset that we do observe being augmented (i.e. propoganda, reducation/indoctrination, censorship, revisionism, etc). Should these be examined more closely? Should these actions be treated the same as an arms race?
- The insistence on land armies taking primacy over navies makes sense to a degree. I think a more nuanced model would explore the relationship between a nation, its percieved or actual rivals, and the geographic features between the two. But models can begin simply.
- The insistence on land armies taking primacy over air forces (and space forces?) seems a product of currency bias. But I should probably read the work of Robert Pape before making judgements.
Similarly, the use of GNP to measure latent power (after 1960) is dubious.
- Not all production can be easily converted for a military economy. Manufacturing certainly can, but office jobs and luxury services cannot.
- The conversion rate of production to military assets is not universal.
- The U.S. military industrial complex has never been an open and competitive market. Few nations across history have had an open and competitive market for military assets. Several of the great powers examined specifically in this book had command economies. There is absolutely no reason to expect an efficient conversion rate. Every nation should have a conversion rate that depends on their specific domestic political economy.
- Public spending on the scale of arms races certainly crowds out private investment.
- The pre-1960 measure (iron and steel production) is both more grounded in reality and better substantiated by actual negotiated treaties and actual imposed sanctions.
How can Mearsheimer claim that all great powers were European until the U.S. and Japanese rise in the 1890s?
- Even when the pool of evidence is not restricted to great powers, it is exclusively Western states. (e.g. security competition of Rome and Carthage; Union blockade of the Confederacy when discussing naval forces vs land armies)
- Topic of regional hegemons is repeatedly explored. So it need not be that a non-Western great power had to influence the Western great powers.
- Mearsheimer tries to explain this away as being an effect of insurmountable geographic barriers until technology enabled Europeans to influence the rest of the world. But what existed in the rest of the world prior to that? Apparently a never-ending power vacuum.
Mearsheimer's disagreements with rationalist explanations for war are interesting. But Fearon was mostly concerned with land wars, while Mearsheimer seems mostly concerned with wars of conquest (genocide?). Perhaps its just that Fearon and Mearsheimer are interested in different kinds of war?