The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. . - book review

Parameters, Summer, 2002 by Andrew J. Bacevich

The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. By John J. Mearsheimer. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2001. 555 pages. $27.95. Reviewed by Andrew J. Bacevich, professor of international relations, Boston University.

This is a book of considerable wisdom, larded with considerable nonsense. Most of the wisdom derives from the work of others. The author's own contribution--a theory of "offensive realism"--is unpersuasive. Worse, its conclusions--attempting to shed light on the challenges facing the only truly great power left standing after the cataclysms of the 20th century--rest on a breathtakingly inaccurate understanding of what makes America tick.

At its best, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics offers a useful primer on realism, a concept that explains the behavior of states in terms of power and self-interest. As the author, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, rightly points out, instinctively liberal Americans have never been entirely comfortable with the language and logic of realism. They bridle at its dour view of human nature. They resist its pessimism regarding the feasibility of world peace. Yet that discomfort by no means prevented American policymakers as far back as 1776 from adhering to realist principles. As John Mearsheimer writes, "the United States speaks one way and acts another."

Yet Mearsheimer aims to do more than puncture illusions, perhaps still harbored by a remnant of innocent undergraduates, that the United States, uniquely among nations, acts in accordance with the Sermon on the Mount. His larger purpose is to offer "offensive realism" as an explanation of all great power politics, useful not merely in understanding the past but also in predicting the future.

His theory reduces to a handful of propositions. Like any good realist, Mearsheimer believes that international politics is at root about power: "The overriding goal of each state is to maximize its share of world power." Given this imperative, "there are no status quo powers in the international system"--none, that is, except the state that achieves hegemony. But few reach this ultimate goal. Indeed, in all of modem history, only one has done so, namely the United States, which since 1900 has enjoyed hegemony throughout (but not beyond) the Western Hemisphere. (Mearsheimer dismisses global hegemony as a practical impossibility.)

Since all "great powers are primed for offense," they invariably seek to improve their relative standing by acting aggressively toward one another. Indeed, "survival mandates aggressive behavior." Furthermore, aggression pays: more often than not the attacker wins. As one great power, resorting to blackmail or outright war, makes its play for hegemony, other great powers face a choice of either "balancing" (assuming the burden of checking the aggressor) or buck-passing (passing that burden onto others).

In determining the outcome of this competition, the role of land power is dominant. Only armies decide. "Wars are won by big battalions," Mearsheimer asserts, "not by armadas in the air or on the sea. The strongest power is the state with the strongest army."

These iron laws describe the way that all great powers behave (or at least "should behave.") The result qualifies as "genuinely tragic," according to Mearsheimer, because statesmen (and, presumably, mere luckless citizens) have no real choice in the matter--offensive realism compels them "to pursue power and to seek to dominate the other states in the system." The imperatives of offensive realism trump human agency and ideology: "It does not matter for the theory whether Germany in 1905 was led by Bismarck, Kaiser Wilhelm, or Adolf Hitler, or whether Germany was democratic or autocratic." Germany would have behaved as it did regardless of who ruled according to what values. By extension, there's not a dime's worth of difference between Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Soviet Union, and Roosevelt's United States. Great powers are as interchangeable as billiard balls.

To substantiate his theory, Mearsheimer hauls the usual suspects into the dock. As proof that offensive realism corresponds with the actual behavior of great powers, he points to the expansionism of Germany and Japan through 1945 and of the Soviet Union throughout its existence, along with the balancing and buck-passing that each induced from their adversaries.

Mearsheimer's larger challenge is to incorporate into his theory those two apparent exceptions to the rule, Great Britain and the United States, to show that these less-obviously aggressive great powers also adhered to the precepts of offensive realism. With that in mind, he devises an ingenious corollary to his axiom about the supremacy of land power, to wit, "the stopping power of water." According to this corollary, "Armies that have to traverse a large body of water to attack a well-armed opponent invariably have little offensive capability." Insular powers such as Great Britain and the United States "are unlikely to initiate wars of conquest against other great powers" not because they are more virtuous but "because they would have to traverse a large body of water to reach their target." Offensive realism mandates that insular powers confine themselves to the playing the role of "offshore balancer," intervening only as necessary to block another power's quest for dominance.