Do we need a Smaller Army, Colonel Stephen asks John Mearsheimer #realpolitik
Channel: International Relations & Politics
Date: 2022-04-12

John Mearsheimer offers a Strategic study in the interdisciplinary academic field centered on the study of conflict and peace strategies, often devoting special attention to the relationship between international politics, geostrategy, international diplomacy, international economics, and military power. He offers a way to avert such a catastrophe lies in studying again the Cold War, examining what made our strategy successful, and understanding the past, in order to apply strategic thinking to the problems of the future. That is why strategic studies are so vitally important today.

'War' defined by Webster's Dictionary is a state of open and declared hostile armed conflict between states or nations, or a period of such conflict. This captures a particularly political-rationalistic account of war and warfare, i.e., that war needs to be explicitly declared and to be between states to be a war.

John Joseph Mearsheimer is an American political scientist and international relations scholar, who belongs to the realist school of thought. He is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago. He has been described as the most influential realist of his generation.

Mearsheimer is the leading proponent of offensive realism. The structural theory, unlike the classical realism of Hans Morgenthau, places the principal emphasis on security competition among great powers within the anarchy of the international system, not on the human nature of statesmen and diplomats.

Mearsheimer's view, which he called “offensive realism,” holds that the need for security, and ultimately for survival, makes states aggressive power maximizers. States do not cooperate, except during temporary alliances, but constantly seek to diminish their competitors' power and enhance their own.

Mearsheimer based his theory on five core assumptions: (1) the international system is anarchic (there is no authority that exists above the states to arbitrate their conflicts), (2) all states have some military capability (however limited), (3) states can never fully ascertain the intentions of other states.

Structural realism holds that the nature of the international structure is defined by its ordering principle, anarchy, and by the distribution of capabilities (measured by the number of great powers within the international system).Mearsheimer is the leading proponent of offensive realism. The structural theory, unlike the classical realism of Hans Morgenthau, places the principal emphasis on security competition among great powers within the anarchy of the international system, not on the human nature of statesmen and diplomats.

#army 
#internationalrelations 
#internationalpolitics
#realpolitik