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by tschwimmer 1573 days ago
There is a reason Mearsheimer is part of an IR school of thought called "Realists." This analysis doesn't focus much on self-determinism or international law because it assumes that these concepts don't have much influence. I also think that it's regrettable, but people making foreign policy calls should be aware of this line of thinking.

For what it's worth, what Mearsheimer is saying here about NATO expansion being destabilizing is pretty much exactly what Putin is saying in his various speeches.
1 comments
zozbot234 1573 days ago
> it assumes that these concepts don't have much influence.

But international law has a lot of influence. As a set of shared norms, it's something that most competently-run countries and polities explicitly foster in order to achieve some sort of long-term stability and predictability that ultimately benefits them all. A "realist" analysis that simply ignores these dynamics and pretends they do not exist is not very realistic after all.

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yason 1573 days ago
On the other hand, international law only influences where the geopolitical setting allows it to. When it comes to the question of life and death for a superpower, international law no longer needs to mean anything.

I can observe an analogy of this for an individual person in a situation that he feels is life-threatening: criminal law or civil law are not the first things that come to mind but survival is. Only the one who first survives has a chance to return to law when things are settled back enough.

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melony 1573 days ago
Only when backed by force. There is no higher power in the playground of states. Ultimately countries by themselves are not necessarily rational actors. Smaller states join larger power blocs (either coerced or voluntarily, essentially they are trading off sovereignty for protection) and their own individual freedom to act gets subsumed. When it comes to dealing with Great Powers, realism is about as good as we can get, it is also predictably one of the oldest schools of thought in political science. The LIO theory is great in the decade post Cold War, but the world is multipolar now.
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finiteseries 1573 days ago
To my understanding it doesn’t ignore international law so much as singlemindedly focus on the forces and interests that “truly” drive it and are inherent to nature, ie global anarchy navigated by power/security concerns.

“Anarchy is what states make of it” is a great search phrase to pull on this thread with to say the least.

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