The security dilemma plays a central role in Walt and Mearsheimer’s reading of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But what if they get the security dilemma wrong?
What Walt and Mearsheimer Get Wrong About the Security Dilemma
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Walt
A tale of two realisms
It's been a rough week for John Mearsheimer. He has come under a barrage of criticism for his claim that Russia's aggression towards Ukraine is the West's fault. His theoretical tradition, realism,...
No Supply Without Demand: A Response to Stephen Walt
This is a guest post by Sarah Detzner, a Ph.D Candidate at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. Her research is focused on international security, particularly post-conflict...
Is it possible to be a realist?
Some weeks ago, Stephen Walt lamented the absence of realist commentators in the American media space. What was striking to me at the time was Walt’s claim that realism is a ‘well-known approach to...
More Walt Posts
Iraq 10 Years Later (3): Why the Neocon Theory behind the War Failed
My first post on the Iraq War asked if academic IR had any responsibility to slow the march to war. The second tried to formulate what the neoconservative theory of the war was, because many of us, in retrospect of a conflict gone so badly, desperately want to un-remember that there really was a logic to the war, that it was at least somewhat intellectually defensible, and that a lot of us believed it. We may want to retroactively exculpate ourselves by suggesting it was just W the cowboy acting ridiculous, or a neocon hijacking of the policy process, or Halliburton oil...
Iraq 10 Years Later (1): How Culpable is Academic International Relations?
I’ve been thinking a lot about the war this month. I’ll be teaching it in the next few weeks at school because of the decade anniversary (March 20). My quick sense is that any defensible theory behind the war was simply buried by an execution so awful, disorganized, mismanaged, and incompetent that it invalidated the whole premise. The whole episode became just shameful, and regularly teaching and conferencing with non-Americans these last few years has made this so painfully clear. My students particularly are just bewildered to the point of incredulity. Again and again, the basic...
Walt sings the praises of a liberal education
Steve Walt opines that "would-be foreign policy wonks" should basically get a classical liberal-arts education, and he uses a traditional justification for this: "In world that is both diverse and changing rapidly, a broad portfolio of knowledge is almost certainly the best preparation for a long career in the field." I'd amend that somewhat, and say that a broad liberal-arts education -- which isn't about gaining a portfolio of knowledge or skills as much as it is about developing a certain critical intellectual disposition -- is almost certainly the best preparation for the rest of your...
Ranking US Allies: A Response to Stephen Walt, Andrew Sullivan & all those Canadians…
<img alt="" galleryimg="no" onload="var downlevelDiv = document.getElementById('9ab6f160-8fa0-4fcc-a292-405526f7884b'); downlevelDiv.innerHTML = "";" src="https://lh4.ggpht.com/-PqxwrrtujtM/T-JEowomCmI/AAAAAAAAAPA/yY5-l-pt3y8/videocbda4184ad6b%25255B66%25255D.jpg?imgmax=800" />Who knew Canada could be so controversial…Last week, I tried to rank US allies, drawing response from both Walt and Sullivan (oh, and these guys, whose website name’ll creep you out). So here are a few responses:1. I accept the arguments from many commenters that Turkey...
Foreign Policy Charade
A few weeks ago, Steve Walt relied upon his own recent experiences writing about the Israeli Lobby to generate "a list of the lessons" he learned from "grabbing the third rail" of foreign policy discourse.Interestingly, Walt's somewhat older list of foreign policy taboo positions did not include challenging U.S. foreign policy towards Israel (or Israeli security policy). Had Walt declined to grab the rail this time?I was reminded of the continued primary importance of these issues recently when reading a short book review in The Nation. Charles Glass, author of the review, used a sizable...
Stephen Walt on Valentines Day and IR
This post on Foreign Policy Blog is not to be missed! First couple of paragraphs: "Tomorrow is Valentine's Day. As a public service, I would like to remind FP readers of the important insights that international relations theory can provide for people in love.To begin with, any romantic partnership is essentially an alliance, and alliances are a core concept on international relations. Alliances bring many benefits to the members (or else why would we form them?) but as we also know, they sometimes reflect irrational passions and inevitably limit each member's autonomy. Many IR theorists...