How realism gets the world profoundly wrong

The Washington Post | Francis Fukuyama

John Mearsheimer and the Quincy Institute have revived structural realism to explain Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, attributing the conflict to systemic security competition rather than Moscow's internal politics. This framework asserts that states act as unitary, rational actors driven solely by the anarchic international system and the distribution of power.

However, this rigid focus on structural distribution of power ignores how domestic regime types, ideological motivations, and individual leadership decisions shape foreign policy. In an excerpt from his book In the Realm of the Last Man: A Memoir, Francis Fukuyama argues that classical realists like Hans Morgenthau historically accounted for these internal variables. Ideas matter. Consequently, ignoring internal dynamics leads to critical strategic failures, such as misjudging Vladimir Putin's imperial ambitions or Saddam Hussein's domestic survival calculations prior to the 2003 Iraq War. Ultimately, a comprehensive framework must integrate domestic political structures and ideological drivers to accurately predict state behavior.

Comment

The resurgence of offensive realism, championed by the Quincy Institute, exposes a critical vulnerability in contemporary threat-assessment doctrines. By reducing state behaviour to systemic, structural pressures, this framework systematically mischaracterises revisionist states as purely rational, security-seeking actors. This doctrinal reductionism leaves intelligence agencies ill-equipped to decode ideological drivers, such as the imperial revanchism guiding the Kremlin's actions in Ukraine. Consequently, Pentagon planning models that treat adversaries as black boxes fail to anticipate high-risk, non-rational military interventions.

This analytical failure carries severe downstream consequences for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's deterrence strategy along its eastern flank. When Allied Command Operations planners assume Moscow's threshold for conflict is governed solely by material balance-of-power calculations, they misjudge the efficacy of conventional deterrence. Ultimately, the reliance on structural models leaves the North Atlantic Treaty Organization vulnerable to asymmetric escalations driven by Kremlin regime-survival imperatives rather than systemic equilibrium.

Strategic Question for Discussion

If the Quincy Institute's structural realism fails to account for the Kremlin's ideological motivations, how can Allied Command Operations design a deterrence strategy that reliably accounts for non-rational escalation thresholds?

The trajectory of recent conflicts indicates that deterrence must be calibrated against a regime's internal ideological narrative rather than its material capabilities alone. My assessment is that Allied Command Operations can achieve this by integrating domestic political vulnerability indicators directly into NATO's threat-modelling frameworks. This shift would allow planners to identify when a revisionist leadership prioritises regime survival or historical legacy over systemic rational equilibrium.

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