they claim that we’re closer to nuclear war than any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis, which is clearly nonsense
John Mearsheimer also believes P(nuclear war) is higher now that at any time during the Cold War. If you like, I can try to find where he says that in a video of one of his speeches and interviews.
His reasoning is that the US national-security establishment has become much less competent since the decisive events of the Cold War with the result that Russia is much more likely to choose to start a nuclear war than they would be if the security situation the US currently finds itself in were being managed by the US’s Cold-War leaders. I’m happy to elaborate if there is interest.
Writer of the original article here, and I am skeptical. Largely on the grounds that I think the odds of someone using nukes deliberately are actually fairly low, and we have a lot less nukes sitting around where accidents can happen. I also have a complicated relationship with IR Realism, and this sounds like it’s part of a theory that ends with “therefore, we should let the Russians do whatever they want in Ukraine.” Which I am very much not OK with.
Mearsheimer, to his credit, was able to anticipate the Russian invasion of Ukraine. If his prescriptions were heeded to sooner, perhaps this conflict could have narrowly been avoided.
You could just as easily argue that Mearsheimer’s opponents have done more to enable the Russians.
I’m not saying I agree with Mearsheimer or understand his views fully, but I’m grateful his school of thought exists and is being explored.
This is a tangent, but I think it’s important to consider predictors’ entire track records, and on the whole I don’t think Mearsheimer’s is very impressive. Here’s a long article on that.
Indeed. And there are other forecasting failures by Mearsheimer, including one in which he himself apparently admits (prior to resolution) that such a failure would constitute a serious blow to his theory. Here’s a relevant passage from a classic textbook on nuclear strategy:[1]
In an article that gained considerable attention, largely for its resolute refusal to share the general mood of optimism that surrounded the events of 1989, John Mearsheimer assumed that Germany would become a nuclear power. Then, as the Soviet Union collapsed, he explained why it might make sense for Ukraine to hold on to its nuclear bequest. In the event Germany made an explicit renunciation of the nuclear option at the time of the country’s unification in 1990, while Japan, the other defeated power of 1945, continued to insist that it had closed off this option. Nor in the end did Kiev agree that the nuclear component of Ukraine’s Soviet inheritance provided a natural and even commendable way of affirming a new-found statehood. Along with Belarus and Kazakhstan, Ukraine eased out of its nuclear status. As it gained its independence from the USSR, Ukraine adopted a non-nuclear policy. The idea that a state with nuclear weapons would choose to give them up, especially when its neighbour was a nuclear state with historic claims on its territory, was anathema to many realists. One of his critics claimed that when asked in 1992, ‘What would happen if Ukraine were to give up nuclear weapons?’ Mearsheimer responded, ‘That would be a tremendous blow to realist theory.’
It’s not a fair description of all IR realism, which I think is a useful theory for illuminating certain interests of state actors. But some proponents (and the article Stephen linked confirms that Mearsheimer is one of them) seem to elevate it to a universal theory, which I don’t think it is. Frankly, Realism is the intellectual home of Russia-apologism, and while I’ll admit that Mearshimer seems to come by this honestly (in that he honestly thinks Russia is likely to respond with nukes and isn’t just a Putin fanboy) I take a rather different view of how things are likely to turn out if we keep backing Ukraine.
Realism as a school of IR thought far predates Russia-Ukraine, Wikipedia lists ~1600s as the origin of IR realism in the West but in college I was taught that the intellectual foundation originated with at least Thucydides.
I don’t know whether this is getting too into the weeds on realism, but the claim that the US national security establishment is less competent since the end of the Cold War seems straightforwardly incompatible with realism as a theory anyway since realism assumes that states rationally pursue their national interest. I have found this in interviews with Mearsheimer where he talks about ‘Russia’s’ only rational option given US policy towards Ukraine, but then says that the US is not acting in its own national interest. Why can’t Russia also not be acting in its own national interest?
Once you grant that the US isn’t pursuing its national interest, aren’t you down the road to a public choice account, not a realist account?
Mearsheimer does claim that states rationally pursue security. However, the assumption that states are rational actors—shared by most contemporary realists—is a huge stretch. The original—and still most influential—statement of neorealist theory, Kenneth Waltz’s Theory of International Politics, did not employ a rational actor assumption, but rather appealed to natural selection—states that did not behave as if they sought to maximize security would tend to die out (or, as Waltz put it, ‘fall by the wayside’). In contrast to Mearsheimer, Waltz at least motivated his assumption of security-seeking, rather than simply assuming it.
In subsequent publications, Waltz argued that states would be very cautious with nuclear weapons, and that the risk of nuclear war was very low—almost zero. Setting aside the question of whether almost zero is good enough in the long term, this claim is very questionable. From outside the realist paradigm, Scott Sagan has argued that internal politics are likely to predispose some states—particularly new nuclear states with military-dominated governments—to risky policies.
In a recent critique of both Waltz and Mearsheimer (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00471178221136993), I myself argue that (a) on Waltz’s natural selection logic, we should actually expect great powers to act as if they were pursuing influence, not security—which should make them more risk-acceptant; and (b) Sagan’s worries about internal politics leading to risky nuclear policies should be plausible even within neorealist theory, properly conceived (for the latter argument, see my section ‘Multilevel selection theory’).
Bottom line: When you dig down into neorealist logic,the claim that states will be cautious and competent in dealing with nuclear weapons starts to look really shaky. Classical realists like Hans Morgenthau and John Herz had a better handle on the issue.
I’m pretty sure John Mearsheimer believes P(nuclear war) is higher now that at any time during the Cold War. If you like, I can try to find where he says that in a video of one of his speeches and interviews.
His reasoning is that the US national-security establishment has become much less competent since the decisive events of the Cold War. I’m happy to elaborate if there is interest.
Sure, feel free to elaborate. I would be curious to know a little more about why you think John Mearsheimer’s views are relevant (not saying they are not; I had to google him!).
Note the post I am sharing was published on 24 April 2022. I have now added this important detail to the start of my post. Metaculus’ community was predicting 8 % chance of a global thermonuclear war by 2070 then[1], and now it is forecasting 13 %, which suggests the chance is now higher. On the other hand, Metaculus’ community prediction for a nuclear weapon being detonated as an act of war by 2050 has remained at 33 %.
The members of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists believe it, too, as expressed in their collective decisions about the time shown on the “Doomsday Clock”: source.
I am not a fan of that clock. As argued by Christian Ruhl, I think probabilistic forecasts are more informative.
After I wrote my paragraph about the clock (which you quoted) I noticed that the Bulletin has expanded the meaning of the clock to include risks from climate change, i.e., the clock is no longer about nuclear war specifically, so I deleted that paragraph.
First, thank you for the informative post.
John Mearsheimer also believes P(nuclear war) is higher now that at any time during the Cold War. If you like, I can try to find where he says that in a video of one of his speeches and interviews.
His reasoning is that the US national-security establishment has become much less competent since the decisive events of the Cold War with the result that Russia is much more likely to choose to start a nuclear war than they would be if the security situation the US currently finds itself in were being managed by the US’s Cold-War leaders. I’m happy to elaborate if there is interest.
Writer of the original article here, and I am skeptical. Largely on the grounds that I think the odds of someone using nukes deliberately are actually fairly low, and we have a lot less nukes sitting around where accidents can happen. I also have a complicated relationship with IR Realism, and this sounds like it’s part of a theory that ends with “therefore, we should let the Russians do whatever they want in Ukraine.” Which I am very much not OK with.
Is this really a fair description of IR Realism?
Mearsheimer, to his credit, was able to anticipate the Russian invasion of Ukraine. If his prescriptions were heeded to sooner, perhaps this conflict could have narrowly been avoided.
You could just as easily argue that Mearsheimer’s opponents have done more to enable the Russians.
I’m not saying I agree with Mearsheimer or understand his views fully, but I’m grateful his school of thought exists and is being explored.
This is a tangent, but I think it’s important to consider predictors’ entire track records, and on the whole I don’t think Mearsheimer’s is very impressive. Here’s a long article on that.
Indeed. And there are other forecasting failures by Mearsheimer, including one in which he himself apparently admits (prior to resolution) that such a failure would constitute a serious blow to his theory. Here’s a relevant passage from a classic textbook on nuclear strategy:[1]
Lawrence Freedman & Jeffrey Michaels, The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy, 4th ed., London, 2019, pp. 579–580
It’s not a fair description of all IR realism, which I think is a useful theory for illuminating certain interests of state actors. But some proponents (and the article Stephen linked confirms that Mearsheimer is one of them) seem to elevate it to a universal theory, which I don’t think it is. Frankly, Realism is the intellectual home of Russia-apologism, and while I’ll admit that Mearshimer seems to come by this honestly (in that he honestly thinks Russia is likely to respond with nukes and isn’t just a Putin fanboy) I take a rather different view of how things are likely to turn out if we keep backing Ukraine.
Realism as a school of IR thought far predates Russia-Ukraine, Wikipedia lists ~1600s as the origin of IR realism in the West but in college I was taught that the intellectual foundation originated with at least Thucydides.
I don’t know whether this is getting too into the weeds on realism, but the claim that the US national security establishment is less competent since the end of the Cold War seems straightforwardly incompatible with realism as a theory anyway since realism assumes that states rationally pursue their national interest. I have found this in interviews with Mearsheimer where he talks about ‘Russia’s’ only rational option given US policy towards Ukraine, but then says that the US is not acting in its own national interest. Why can’t Russia also not be acting in its own national interest?
Once you grant that the US isn’t pursuing its national interest, aren’t you down the road to a public choice account, not a realist account?
Mearsheimer does claim that states rationally pursue security. However, the assumption that states are rational actors—shared by most contemporary realists—is a huge stretch. The original—and still most influential—statement of neorealist theory, Kenneth Waltz’s Theory of International Politics, did not employ a rational actor assumption, but rather appealed to natural selection—states that did not behave as if they sought to maximize security would tend to die out (or, as Waltz put it, ‘fall by the wayside’). In contrast to Mearsheimer, Waltz at least motivated his assumption of security-seeking, rather than simply assuming it.
In subsequent publications, Waltz argued that states would be very cautious with nuclear weapons, and that the risk of nuclear war was very low—almost zero. Setting aside the question of whether almost zero is good enough in the long term, this claim is very questionable. From outside the realist paradigm, Scott Sagan has argued that internal politics are likely to predispose some states—particularly new nuclear states with military-dominated governments—to risky policies.
In a recent critique of both Waltz and Mearsheimer (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00471178221136993), I myself argue that (a) on Waltz’s natural selection logic, we should actually expect great powers to act as if they were pursuing influence, not security—which should make them more risk-acceptant; and (b) Sagan’s worries about internal politics leading to risky nuclear policies should be plausible even within neorealist theory, properly conceived (for the latter argument, see my section ‘Multilevel selection theory’).
Bottom line: When you dig down into neorealist logic,the claim that states will be cautious and competent in dealing with nuclear weapons starts to look really shaky. Classical realists like Hans Morgenthau and John Herz had a better handle on the issue.
I find “realism for thee but not for me” to be a pretty common pattern in casual IR discussions, possibly as a subbranch of outgroup homogeneity.
Thanks for commenting!
Sure, feel free to elaborate. I would be curious to know a little more about why you think John Mearsheimer’s views are relevant (not saying they are not; I had to google him!).
Note the post I am sharing was published on 24 April 2022. I have now added this important detail to the start of my post. Metaculus’ community was predicting 8 % chance of a global thermonuclear war by 2070 then[1], and now it is forecasting 13 %, which suggests the chance is now higher. On the other hand, Metaculus’ community prediction for a nuclear weapon being detonated as an act of war by 2050 has remained at 33 %.
I am not a fan of that clock. As argued by Christian Ruhl, I think probabilistic forecasts are more informative.
After I wrote my paragraph about the clock (which you quoted) I noticed that the Bulletin has expanded the meaning of the clock to include risks from climate change, i.e., the clock is no longer about nuclear war specifically, so I deleted that paragraph.