CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Mearsheimer’s “Offensive Realism” Versus Radical Realism

Photograph Source: John Mearsheimer – CC BY-SA 3.0

One of the most persuasive critics of US foreign policy and perhaps the best-known contemporary exponent of international relations (IR) theory is John Mearsheimer, a professor at the University of Chicago. But despite his fame and massive audiences on YouTube, the mainstream media organizations (MSM) will have nothing to do with him.

The reason is obvious. The MSM do not platform serious and erudite critics of US foreign policy. Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky explained this in their epic work, Manufacturing Consent (first published in 1988), on the MSM and US foreign policy, which, they argued, institutionally function not as a proverbial free press but rather as organs of propaganda in the service of state legitimacy. Without a compliant mass media system, the days of any government would be numbered.

Mearsheimer’s methodical analysis of the crises in Ukraine and the Middle East and the US role in these conflicts has swayed large numbers of people, as revealed in the growing audience size each time he makes a public appearance in lecture halls or on social media platforms. Audiences around the world see him as a leading IR expert, particularly younger sections of the population who side with anti-imperialism and anti-colonialism. The left (radical realism) has several overlaps with Mearsheimer’s claim to a realist perspective, albeit with a more complex political-economic analysis than he offers.

Mearsheimer’s 2007 book with Harvard professor Stephen Walt on the power of the Israel lobby in the US was a courageous effort to challenge the extraterritorial influence that the Israeli state and its in-country minions exert over the American political process, particularly with respect to foreign policy in the Middle East. While they were initially treated with loud choruses of condemnation and frequently accused of being antisemites by legacy media pundits, that charge has somewhat receded since the book first appeared (together with a journal article version of it published the year prior). A number of other political analysts have since taken up a similar exposé of Israeli penetration of American politics.

In their book and on the speakers circuit, Mearsheimer and Walt do not specifically focus on Israel’s apartheid policies or the violence enacted against the Palestine population as much as seeing these acts as a strategic blunder that is not in Israel’s long-term interest as a state. Indeed, they bend over backward to express their defense of Israel’s “right to exist,” clearly cowed by the antisemitic charges lodged against them by Israeli and pro-Israel elements. They further argue that Israel’s behavior is damaging to the maintenance of America’s sphere of influence in the region and its survival as a great power, a status they in fact endorse.

On strategic grounds, Mearsheimer in particular has been very critical of America’s past forays in the Third World (Global South): its outright military defeats or complete policy failures in Vietnam, Iraq, North Korea, Afghanistan, Cuba,........

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