The Myopia of Mearsheimer's Political Theory

John Mearsheimer has made a career out of telling us the world is a jungle. He calls it offensive realism: nations are selfish, power-hungry beasts, always looking for an angle, never trusting anyone else. Survival comes first, morality is a fairy tale, and cooperation lasts only until someone sees a chance to grab more.

It's a clean, brutal philosophy. And it feels persuasive when you apply it to Stalin's Soviet Union, Mao's China, or Putin's Russia. Those regimes were — and are — run by men who care only about themselves, whose paranoia and cruelty are written straight into their countries' foreign policy. Dog-eat-dog describes them perfectly.

But here's the fallacy: Mearsheimer universalizes the pathology of autocracy. He looks at the paranoid strongman and declares, that's the way the whole world works.

What He Sees, What He Misses

Mearsheimer sees NATO "threatening" Russia. He sees Ukraine's bid for independence as reckless provocation. He sees China's rise as destined to end in a clash with the U.S. In his telling, all of this is structural inevitability — nations acting as they must.

But what he misses is bigger:

• Nuclear deterrence. Nobody is going to invade Russia. Its arsenal guarantees survival. NATO isn't an existential threat; it's just a convenient excuse for Putin's aggression.

• Democratic balance. Democracies don't behave like Stalinist autocracies. They're messy, self-interested, sometimes hypocritical — but institutions dilute the paranoia of any one leader. Empathy, restraint, and compromise exist alongside ambition.

• Human variation. Some people care about others, some don't, and most are somewhere in between. Democracies reflect that mix. Autocracies magnify the worst end of it.

Mearsheimer flattens all this into one iron law. He mistakes the behavior of aberrant regimes for the essence of international politics.

Here's the smoking gun: when do we actually see the warfare his theory predicts? Autocracies attack democracies (Russia invades Ukraine). Autocracies threaten other states (China menaces Taiwan, contests the South China Sea). Autocracies fight proxy wars and destabilize regions.

But democracies attacking each other? It essentially never happens. NATO allies don't plot against one another. The EU doesn't prepare for internal wars. Democratic India and democratic Japan don't eye each other's territory with conquest in mind.

Mearsheimer's "universal law" isn't universal at all. It's a perfect description of how sick autocrats think — the paranoid, zero-sum worldview of men who see enemies everywhere because they've made enemies everywhere.

He's taken the pathological cases — Stalin, Mao, Putin — and treated them as the norm. It's like studying only paranoid sociopaths and then claiming you've discovered universal human nature. His theory isn't political science; it's the pathology of despotism dressed up as scholarship.

Why Autocrats Love Him

And here's the darker truth: if you read his writings or listen to his interviews, you'd swear he was a KGB agent. He echoes all their twisted talking points.

• Putin says NATO forced Russia's hand. Mearsheimer solemnly agrees that any great power would act the same way.

• Xi's officials claim U.S. "containment" makes conflict inevitable. Mearsheimer frames it as structural logic.

• Autocrats everywhere insist their wars are defensive. Mearsheimer nods along and calls it realism.

It's not because he has a uniquely sober view of the world. It's because his framework happens to fit how sick autocrats behave — and they love pretending that everyone is like them. Mearsheimer's "tragedy" becomes their propaganda, dressed up in academic robes.

The Real Tragedy

The tragedy isn't that all states must compete forever in some lawless jungle. The tragedy is that large autocracies, too big to fail and armed to the teeth, still let paranoid men drive policy as if the Cold War never ended.

Mearsheimer's myopia is to confuse this pathology for principle, to see Stalin and Putin not as outliers but as the rule. An otherwise intelligent man ends up rationalizing the behavior of sick autocrats — and painting all of humanity with their brush.

And if you stare through that lens long enough, the whole world starts to look like a gulag.

But it isn't. Not yet, anyway.