The debates

Did the West cause the war in Ukraine?

Michael McFaul replied in 2014 that Putin’s domestic politics and “unconstrained, erratic adventurism” drove the crisis. NATO expansion had rarely come up in his talks with Moscow. Stephen Sestanovich said Russia had dominated an unwilling Ukraine long before the West acted. After the 2022 invasion Anne Applebaum attacked his view. The political scientist Filip Kostelka said he “legitimizes Russia’s propaganda”. Critics also noted that Russia’s foreign ministry promoted his account.

He says NATO expansion was one part of a wider Western strategy that also included EU expansion and democracy promotion. He says great powers act out of fear when rivals reach their borders. He holds that Western policy fuelled the crisis and that Ukrainians are the main losers. In 2025 he said a settlement would require Ukrainian neutrality.

Foreign Affairs: Faulty Powers. McFaul, Sestanovich and Mearsheimer (November/December 2014) · Wikipedia: John Mearsheimer · The Economist: John Mearsheimer on why the West is principally responsible for the Ukrainian crisis (11 March 2022) · Mearsheimer Substack: New Yorker interview on Ukraine (12 March 2025)

The Israel Lobby

The ADL called the 2006 essay “a classical conspiratorial anti-Semitic analysis”. Historian Benny Morris called it “a travesty” of the history he had studied. Leslie Gelb in the New York Times found the book “puzzlingly shoddy” but said it should be answered on the merits. Walter Russell Mead said their definition of the lobby was too broad.

They wrote that the lobby “is not a secret, clandestine cabal”. They called it a loose coalition “openly engaged in interest-group politics”. They said the antisemitic tradition of Jewish conspiracy is one “we deplore”. They affirmed that the US should defend Israel if its survival were in danger. A 79-page rebuttal in December 2006 kept their main argument.

ADL: Review of Mearsheimer and Walt’s Israel lobby paper (24 March 2006) · Wikipedia: The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy · World Politics Review: Gelb on Mearsheimer and Walt (19 September 2007) · History News Network: Mearsheimer and Walt respond to their critics (London Review of Books letter, May 2006) · Harvard WCFIA: Setting the Record Straight. A Response to Critics of “The Israel Lobby” (December 2006)

Was engaging China a blunder?

G. John Ikenberry said containing China in the 1990s would have been “an act of national self-harm”. Andrew Nathan said China’s weaknesses limit it and warned that overestimating the threat is as dangerous as underestimating it. Susan Thornton said engagement cut poverty and that diplomacy and deterrence make war unlikely. Sun Zhe said Chinese thinking is not monolithic.

He says liberal hegemony produced two hostile great powers and failures in the Middle East. He says he never wanted China kept poor but only its growth slowed. He agrees war is not inevitable but says security competition is. He calls the view of China as a status quo power inaccurate.

Foreign Affairs: A Rival of America’s Making? The debate over Washington’s China strategy (March/April 2022) · Foreign Affairs: The Inevitable Rivalry (November/December 2021)

Is realism right about the world?

His 1990 forecast of a Europe slipping back into rivalry ran into decades of European integration. Robert Keohane and Bruce Russett were among those who disputed it at the time. William Wohlforth argued The Great Delusion is inconsistent with The Tragedy. Keren Yarhi-Milo said How States Think gives no testable definition of rationality. She called it naive to assume rational conduct by Washington and Beijing.

He has stood by his European forecasts in public. In 2019 he argued the liberal order was bound to fail from the start. With Rosato he replied that their book is “not a brief for realism” because liberal theories also count as credible. They said experiments are a poor substitute for historical evidence.

Wikipedia: John Mearsheimer · Foreign Affairs: Thinking Like a State. Yarhi-Milo and Mearsheimer–Rosato exchange (2023) · Lawfare: What makes a state rational? Review of How States Think (24 October 2023)

Overview · Life · Ideas · Books · Videos · Debates · People I learn from