The tragedy of offensive realism: Classical realism and the rise of China

Abstract

What is the realist position on how to deal with the rise of China? One prominent realist approach, associated with John Mearsheimer, calls for the US to do whatever it can to slow China's rise. However, while this is a realist perspective, it is not the realist perspective. In particular, realist approaches that derive from a classical foundation suggest policies fundamentally different from those favored by Mearsheimer. This article argues that realism should return to some of its classical traditions. It reviews why, from a classical realist perspective, the rise of China must be viewed with alarm, but argues that Mearsheimer's approach -offensive realism -is wrong, and dangerous. Many of these errors are rooted in structuralism; a classical realist approach, which allows for the influence of history and politics, provides greater analytical purchase and wiser policy prescriptions than offensive realism.

Sovereignty regimes in the South China Sea: assessing contemporary Sino-US relations

“…hung 2009). The first perspective portrays Chinese foreign policy as necessarily requiring an offensive response from a "stabilizing" United States, as recounted in a critical vein by Kirshner (2012). Similarly, Luttwak (2012) offers a psychoanalysis of state managers' "great-power autism, " suggesting that their historical acclimatization to Chinese "solitary great power presence" in Asia (the past century and one-half notwithstanding) renders China's leadership incapable of sensitivity to its rivals' strategic constraints.…”

Second image revisited: The domestic sources of China’s foreign economic policies

“…Offensive realism -called this way because not all strands of realism share this argument -is most prominently embodied by the publications of Mearsheimer (2001Mearsheimer ( , 2010. Mearsheimer argues that China's rise will not be peaceful and should be slowed down by the United States (for a critique see Kirshner, 2012), mirroring more popular reasoning about the 'China Threat' (Roy, 1996) and including elaborations on 'How We Would Fight China' (Kaplan, 2005).…”

The Economic Sins of Modern IR Theory and the Classical Realist Alternative

“… Waltz 1979, 91; mearsheimer 2001, 30. for a critique of mearsheimer, seeKirshner 2012.16 Wolfers 1962. …”

“…33 fearon 1995, 392. 34 Kirshner 2000. The fundamental flaw of the rew approach (and of the hyperrationalist turn in international relations theory more generally) can be found in its uncritical and intimate (if often implicit) embrace of the rational expectations revolution in macroeconomic theory. a central tenet of rational expectations theory is that actors process information quickly, efficiently, and correctly and, crucially, that they share knowledge of the essentially correct underlying model of the economy.…”