Professor Mearsheimer’s review is interesting but misses the mark on many points. First, through robust statistical tests and eight case studies, I repeatedly demonstrate the power of master narratives to shape war and peace outcomes in US foreign policy. Mearsheimer mentions almost none of the book’s main case studies (China, 1950; Cuba, 1961; Vietnam, 1965; El Salvador, 1981–83; Grenada, 1983; or Libya, 2011) that demonstrate this, presumably because the evidence in support of master narratives here is largely uncontroversial. Instead, he focuses on one of the few overdetermined cases (World War II) in the data and misconstrues two others—Korea and Iraq.
On Korea, the realpolitik (or offshore balancing) move came in January 1950 when, in accord with George Kennan’s realist strongpoint approach, President Truman drew Korea outside the US defense perimeter and withdrew all troops. Was there a strategic change in June that justified not only war but also a foolhardy (and far from realpolitik) bid at Korean unification? No, not at all: at the time, Douglas MacArthur again deemed the peninsula strategically irrelevant. So, what changed? Answer: the master narrative context. The evidence for this is overwhelming. Truman scrambled to get ahead of a robust liberal narrative discourse and avoid domestic losses from looking “weak on communism,” even to the point of going against his better strategic judgment by crossing the 38th Parallel. Overall, realism cannot explain this case—master narratives can.
Were Bush and FDR important agents? Of course, they were, but both were also deeply constrained by narrative context. Bush never could have pursued the disastrous Iraq War without the robust antiterrorism narrative (something largely not of his making), and FDR had to wait on trauma events to build a narrative for war—and that delay mattered, costing Europe immeasurable destruction and millions of lives. My argument explains things like this. Mearsheimer’s overly simplistic view (i.e., elites and geopolitics control everything) does not. Elites matter in bounded, not unfettered, ways (a view common to the literature on ideas). In some conditions, they play a major role in helping create dominant narratives; at other times they do not. Likewise, in certain narrative contexts—Truman with Korea, Johnson with Vietnam, Kennedy with Cuba, Reagan and military restraint with El Salvador—leaders sometimes get pushed into policy choices against their will. In other cases (e.g. China and Libya), that narrative-driven context allows space for leaders to create policy more to their liking. I offer a systematic theory based on cultural trauma and domestic coalitional politics to explain the binding role of narratives on elites (pp. 24–40): it’s tempting to deem something “under-theorized” when we disagree with it.
Finally, I acknowledge that realists normatively oppose forceful regime change (p. 42). Theoretically, however, many realists (Mearsheimer included) observe that a preponderance of power is the most likely geopolitical condition for regime promotion. Mearsheimer even admits this in his critique when he claims that post–Cold War unipolarity made the United States “so powerful that it could largely ignore balance of power logic and instead topple regimes.” Realists must decide if they really want to own this theoretical argument, rather than accept it when convenient and cast it aside when not.
Overall, I hope my “bold,” “provocative,” and “quite radical perspective on how ideas influence the decision to go to war” (i.e., Mearsheimer’s claim) helps the United States become more sober and pragmatic going forward: there lies the real potential to shape our world for good.
