2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine (Part 3)

[gracchus]

Walt was the writing partner of John Mearsheimer, the “realist” political scientist discussed earlier. It ends up being the same school of “might makes right” Useful Idiocy for Putin.

@gracchus

His job as a so-called foreign policy realist is to twist himself into knots and dynamically shift goalposts to “prove” that it isn’t imperialism. For him, everything is a great-powers conflict. Somehow all of the twisted historical interpretation by Putin’s dancing bear is really an expression of Russia’s centuries-long anxiety about NATO, or the U.S., or … (yeah, that’s better) the West

@gracchus

the realist applies that view selectively, as Mearsheimer often does when he switches his focus from international relations to a nation-state’s internal politics. What he sees as a vice on the international stage becomes – in select cases – a virtue on the domestic one.

@gracchus

Mearsheimer only accords agency to those established players who have the capacity to exert the most brute force. On the global scale that means that only the U.S., China, and Russia make choices – every other country is a pawn.

You can see why a thug like Orban would find that view appealing when applied to his regime’s domestic monopoly on violence.

@gracchus

To be fair, it’s not clear that these realists care about right vs. wrong. They see amorality as a feature rather than a bug.