The new issue of The Atlantic magazine contains an article notable for its topic and its author. The topic is John J. Mearsheimer, the brilliant and controversial political scientist at the University of Chicago, known for his powerful arguments in behalf of foreign-policy “realism” and his searing study (with Harvard’s Stephen M. Walt) of the “Israel lobby. “ The writer is Robert D. Kaplan, the itinerate adventurer/reporter/thinker who gained prominence nearly twenty years ago with his probing and timely study—Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History—of the cultural crosscurrents in the old Yugoslavia, published as those crosscurrents were turning the region into a bloodbath that Kaplan had predicted.
The article’s title is, “Why John J. Mearsheimer Is Right.” But there’s an asterisk that points to a qualifier lower on the page: “*about some things.” No doubt this was added to separate author and magazine from some of Mearsheimer’s more incendiary expressions, particularly his blurb for a book on Jewish identity that was widely seen as crudely anti-Semitic. Kaplan calls the blurb “a blight on Mearsheimer’s judgment,” particularly given other expressions by the book’s author that Kaplan calls “revolting commentary.” But Kaplan adds: “The real tragedy of such controversies, as lamentable as they are, is that they threaten to obscure the urgent and enduring message of Mearsheimer’s life’s work, which topples conventional foreign-policy shibboleths and provides an unblinking guide to the course the United States should follow in the coming decades.”
Kaplan then goes on to probe, with thoroughgoing approval, Mearsheimer’s provocative foreign-policy outlook.
It isn’t surprising that Kaplan, himself a muscular-minded realist, would write a laudatory piece on Mearsheimer’s scholarship. But it is significant because Kaplan’s judgment carries weight. He is the author of thirteen books, nearly all on the geopolitical forces swirling around the turbulent surface of the globe—and all demonstrating a capacity to cut through the wispy idealisms that often guide foreign-policy thinking in our time and probe the potent forces of culture, geography and power that actually drive global events and developments.
There is another reason why the piece is significant. The Mearsheimer-Walt study of America’s Israel lobby, first in an article in the London Review of Books and later in a book called The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, was attacked by people seemingly bent (in some instances) on marginalizing the authors. Many considered it nourishment for anti-Semites, and Eliot Cohen of Johns Hopkins University, writing in the Washington Post, declared flatly, “why, yes, this paper is anti-Semitic.” He went on to say the authors impugned the patriotism of Jews throughout the country. This is the kind of allegation that, if it sticks, can upend careers.
But it didn’t stick. Though Mearsheimer and Walt remain highly controversial, with abundant and vocal detractors, they survived the Israel-lobby controversy with stature generally intact. And many believe their willingness to absorb the attacks has served to expand the range of acceptable discussion on that highly emotional matter. Kaplan’s piece can only add to their stature and further validate that expanded range of discussion.
But Kaplan’s central interest is Mearsheimer’s passionately held views on what really drives geopolitical events, as examined in his 2001 defining opus, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. Kaplan says of the book, “its clairvoyance is breathtaking.” He quotes Columbia University’s Richard K. Betts as calling Tragedy one of the three great works of the post-Cold War era, along with Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last Man (1992) and Samuel L. Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996). Betts has suggested that, if world events unfold as expected (and as predicted by Mearsheimer), his opus likely could surpass the others in influence.
The Tragedy of Great Power Politics rests upon a foundational insight that all great nations will seek to project their power to the fullest possible extent. Status-quo powers don’t exist, Mearsheimer maintains. Great powers are always on the offensive, always in expansion mode, because they can never know how much military capacity and geographic positioning they will need for survival. Hence world history is not a chronicle of ongoing peace interrupted by occasional wars; it is rather a chronicle of perpetual struggle that can be stabilized only when a balance of power is maintained.
It isn’t surprising that Mearsheimer harbors a goodly level of contempt for liberal interventionism, which shrinks from the brutal realities of power relationships and inserts morality into foreign policy. He quotes the British scholar E. H. Carr, who wrote in 1939: “Whatever moral issues may be involved, there is an issue of power which cannot be expressed in terms of morality.”
Comments
There's one glaring flaw in this piece by Mr. Merry, and it's the unspoken assertion that when it comes to judging Mr. Mearsheimer's foreign policy views on Israel that we should give even one single solitary fig of care for how an individual who chose to serve not in the U.S. military but instead in Israel's views that thinking. Not one. And the same goes for IDF-veteran Kaplan's voluminous writings presuming to instruct us on what our policies should be vis a vis Israel and Israel-related issues. This doesn't necessarily mean any disrespect for Mr. Kaplan (although I note that in his Atlantic bio where he does seek to so instruct us so often, that he doesn't disclose his IDF history, which makes me wonder about his citizenship status as well). But it's bad enough when the boundaries our politicians observe is set by partisans of a foreign power. To add that the very boundaries of what all other Americans "respectably" think and say about our foreign affairs should be set or even influenced by such partisans represents an embarrassing sort of lilly-liveredness among our intellectuals in refusing to defend the idea that we have the right to solely consider our own interests, period. So Mr. Kaplan can opine all he wants ostensibly on the subject of those interests, but by having served in the armed forces of that other country it seems to me the correct response to him and any others in his situation is to simply say "Thank you, but you obviously have other relevant interests, and just as is the case with the citizens of every other country on earth Americans have the absolute right if not duty to be *solely* concerned with their own and no-one else's, and that's what this discussion is about."
This is simply an ad hominem. What is at issue in discussing Kaplan's views is not his biography, or even citizenship, but his thoughts. In this way a foreign native could very well have illuminating views (say, stemming from a realist persuasion and adoption of the American perspective) on American interests, and based on these even make sensible policy prescriptions. Furthermore, there is no sensible political theory that requires citizens to be personally concerned exclusively with their state's interests (think of recent migrants), and this is not the thesis of realism: that thesis, rather, is that *states* should base policies exclusively on their own interests. So whether or not Mr. Kaplan has a personal connection to Israeli interests is immaterial, as long as his thought on American policy bases itself exclusively in an understanding of American interests.
@ dmdebruijn: It's not ad hominem at all, and indeed in damn near *every* theory we employ today governing important human interactions the idea of conflicts of interest is not just taken into account, but indeed forms a central plinth of those theories. And I wasn't even saying Mr. Kaplan doesn't have the right to try to instruct us on the proper bounds of our conversations about our interests and what those interests are. Instead what I clearly said is that we also have rights, including that of dismissing his opinions due to his conflicting interests. And yet you seem to be saying is that no, we *don't* have that right. And indeed further that Mr. Kaplan is right to not to even disclose that he was once a member of a foreign power's military forces because, in your own words, it's "immaterial." Betcha in your choice of lawyers whether they have some huge sucking conflict of interest with yours and whether they disclose same to you aren't so immaterial, right?
Like what theories? Of course conflicts of interest have to be taken into account in some areas (a study on a company financed by that same company might arouse suspicion), but in no relevant area of academia are individuals nationalities or past military service taken into account; a German psychologist can study Israeli attitudes, someone who has served in the American military can give an account of the Indian economy, etc etc-- it just doesn't matter. And of course anyone has *the right* to dismiss any opinion for whatever reason. My suggestion is just: listen to Mr Kaplan's opinion and decide whether you think it's a good one (he seemed in fact to agree with Mearsheimer on conflicts between Israeli and American interests), and don't try to make up your mind beforehand based on his biography. But of course this can be no more than a suggestion. (And the lawyer example isn't exactly apt: that is a case where someone who needs to personally help you throughout a certain time period--this requires a certain loyalty to clients that is not parallelled in academia: there any well-documented claim is open to consideration, whomever the source).
@dmdebruijn: Unintentionally I think the distinction you are trying to make just indicts Mr. Kaplan specifically far more than I have, if not irredeemably so. (If indeed it can be said that I did so at all.) Mr. Kaplan, after all, wasn't just talking just theoretically about realist theory. Indeed, he wasn't talking in any academic journal even: He was talking concrete specifics about the United States policies vis a vis Israel not in any academic journal but instead in an openly political, general circulation magazine—the Atlantic. In essence then what you've done is to point out that it is in fact nearly impossible to take Mr. Kaplan's motive as just being airily academic or intellectual; it is instead just obviously trying to move American popular opinion, period. And yet the extremity of your position says that not only should we not take his conflict of interest into consideration when he's doing this, but that no, it's wrong to even ask him to disclose that blatant conflict. Certainly when it comes to the abstract philosophical theory of "the truth" a conflict of interest matters not. But most certainly whether it's the modern theories of the practice of law, politics, finance, psychology or even medicine, because by their very nature they are more than just abstract theories of "the truth" and are applied theories involving interactions between people conflicts of interest and constitute some of their central concerns. And Mr. Kaplan has moved far beyond just dabbling in some abstract philosophical theory of truth and has dived as deeply as is possible into the pool of politics, and indeed into what is perhaps its most important niche involving matters of life and death, war and peace, and national survival even. But if we take your position even here there would be absolutely nothing to even *comment* upon seeing a country's political journals and commentary filled to the brim with exhortations of what is right or wrong and smart and dumb for that country about such issues by people who are even paid agents of a foreign power. And again your further position is that it is invalid for anyone to even ask them to disclose that they are paid agents of a foreign power. So at some point short of this situation something changed even for you, didn't it? While you are effectively saying this I can't believe you can't really be meaning it given that it's nothing less than the idea that somehow it's wrong for the people of the United States to try to protect their country from the worst subversion imaginable, about the most important life-and-death issues imaginable.
So first, the specifics of countries' interests is itself a matter of academic concern, rather than only its application: it is part of the substance of political science and international relations. Second, both the Atlantic and National Interest, while not themselves academic journals, contain many shorter pieces by academics and often constitute a forum of academic discussion: Mr Kaplan's piece was, in fact, a review of Prof. Mearsheimer's influential (academic) book, and its influence in promoting realism as a position in academic political science. None of this constitutes Mr Kaplan 'entering into politics' or 'trying to move American political opinion'. Moreover, you're plain wrong that law, psychology and medicine centrally focus on possible conflicts of interest academic authors have (like citizenship, etc.): I don't know where you get that information, but it's false. These fields precisely allow freedom for people of different backgrounds to express themselves on an issue: for example, Prof Mearsheimer frequently speaks about Israeli policy (though he himself is American), and Mr Kaplan (whether you like it or not) is clearly regarded as an insightful commentator on many issues, ranging from the Balkans to the Chinese Sea to, yes, American Middle East policy. And that is also my issue with your position: Mr Kaplan has done extremely interesting work on all kinds of international policy issues, and instead of considering his thought for yourself, you're depriving yourself of it because you don't like 'paid foreign agents' (which he isn't) to write in an American journal. That's ignorant. If Kissinger (a 'paid American agent' by your standards) writes something on Israel, Israelis listen because it's interesting. Likewise, say Gorbachev writes something on, say, European Union politics, why not take it into account because it may be insightful? It's an idiotic picture to think of American journals as *for Americans only*, rather than simply fostering dialogue between the people with the best ideas. And The National Interest would anyway be the last place to come looking for that, given that it's full of people addressing the politics of countries of which they're not citizens.
@dmdebruijn: You know, in one way you can seem to simply be saying that "it's theoretically possible that anyone can say something true or of value about anything," to which everyone would say "of course." What you then do however is to essentially assert that this means that a whole lot of other things flow smoothly and "of course" out of that same satchel too. That, for instance, despite his writing in a general circulation, general interest mass publication like the Atlantic, that regularly if not especially covers politics, on a specific and topical issue like our policy and policy-making vis a vis Israeli issues, and despite his talking about how some of Mearsheimer's views regarding same are a "blight," and "repugnant," no, Kaplan wasn't "entering into politics." That ... no, despite such rhetoric in such an American publication Kaplan wasn't "trying to move American political opinion." (As if such rhetoric could have been intended for anything else.) That ... it is wrong to say that Kaplan should have disclosed that he went and served in the Israeli military, and indeed it's even wrong to say that paid agents of foreign governments should disclose that status when they write the same kind of articles as Kaplan did ostensibly concerned about U.S. interests in the same type of American publications about issues concerning the government that pays them. And I just don't think that satchel contains all that.