No, Russia Didn’t Get its Propaganda From John Mearsheimer – The Intercept

WASHINGTON, USA FEBRUARY 21 : John Mearsheimer speaks during a panel organised by Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research (SETA) Foundation in Washington, United States on February 21, 2019.(Photo by Yasin Ozturk/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

Photo: Yasin Ozturk/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

A minor squall on Twitter this past week may have largely gone unnoticed amid the larger hurricane about Russias invasion of Ukraine. But its worth taking a close look at it, because it illustrates something significant about U.S. foreign policy since World War II, and how propaganda works everywhere.

It started when Russias Ministry of Foreign Affairs the equivalent to the U.S. State Department did something unusual: It tweeted out an endorsement of a2014 article in Foreign Affairsthe publication of the Council on Foreign Relations, probably the most influential American think tank on U.S. foreign policy. The piece was by John Mearsheimer, a professor in the political science department at the University of Chicago and a prominent member of the realist school of foreign policy thought. You can understand why the Russian government liked it, because it was called Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the Wests Fault.

This led to a response from Anne Applebaum, a neoconservative journalist whos currently a staff writer at The Atlantic.Now wondering if the Russians didnt actually get their narrative from Mearshimer et al., she wrote. Moscow needed to say West was responsible for Russian invasions (Chechnya, Georgia, Syria, Ukraine), and not their own greed and imperialism. American academics provided the narrative.

The et al part is important here. In U.S. political lore NATO was created in 1949 as a defensive military alliance against the Soviet Union and its allies. The reality was somewhat different. But for realists in general, not just Mearsheimer, the Soviet collapse and the end of the Cold War meant that an expansion of NATO could lead to dangerous conflict with Russia. Fifty American foreign policy leaders, largely realists, wrote to President Bill Clinton in 1997 that pushing NATOs borders eastward would be a policy error of historic proportions. We believe that NATO expansion will decrease allied security and unsettle European stability In Russia, NATO expansion, which continues to be opposed across the entire political spectrum, will strengthen the nondemocratic opposition, undercut those who favor reform and cooperation with the West, bring the Russians to question the entire post-Cold War settlement, and galvanize resistance in the Duma

To comprehend Applebaums glee here, her tweet should be seen as not just about Ukraine, but as part of a decades-long battle between realists and neoconservatives. And her rhetorical gambit is a favorite of neoconservatives, one theyve used many times before and will surely use many times again. Neither the realists or neoconservatives are any great shakes from a progressive perspective, but you have to understand them to understand U.S. foreign policy.

Realists believe that the U.S. should run as much of the world as possible,while being mindful that there are limits to American power and remember other countries(in particular, great powers like Russia and China)have their own interests. For realists, morality, democracy, the sovereignty of small countries, etc., are nice in theory but its nave to think they can ever play much role in great power politics.

For instance, in Mearsheimers 2014 article, he wrote that it is the Russians, not the West, who ultimately get to decide what counts as a threat to them. But of course the same thing could have been written about the U.S. before the invasion of Iraq. From a realist perspective, the only question about that war was whether it was wise or foolish for U.S. power, not whether it was right or wrong.

Likewise, in a recent interview with Mearsheimer in the New Yorker, Isaac Chotiner brought up the long history of ugly U.S. actions in the Western Hemisphere, and remarked, Were essentially saying that we have some sort of say over how democratic countries run their business. Mearsheimer replied with equanimity, We do have that say, and, in fact, we overthrew democratically elected leaders in the Western hemisphere during the Cold War because we were unhappy with their policies. This is the way great powers behave.

What makes propaganda propaganda is oftennot its lack of factual basis, but its bad faith.

Then there are the neoconservatives. The term neoconservatism wasnt coined until the 1970s, but it arguably has its roots in the desire of one U.S. foreign policy faction after World War II to confront the Soviet Union and reverse the communist revolution in China. Neoconservatives believe the U.S. can and must run the entire world, and justify the necessary wars with intense sloganeering about our devotion to democracy and human rights. This is sincerely felt by some neoconservatives, in the same way there were Soviet apparatchiks who were sincerely angry about the oppression of African Americans in the U.S. But the practical effect of this sentiment is near-zero: When the rubber meets the road, neoconservatives usually have no problem supporting the most vicious dictatorships if it serves their larger goals, and spend little energy fretting about democracy and human rights in America.

Neither school has much concern for basic justice or the lives of regular, non-powerful people. But the realists at least tend to be more tethered to the world we live in, while the neoconservatives consistently succumb to bizarre fantasies of omnipotence that lead to catastrophe. (There is arguably a third school that embraces an 1821 admonition from John Quincy Adams that America goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. But its so weak that for practical purposes its irrelevant.)

In any case, Applebaums attack on Mearsheimer that his analysis sounds similar to Russian propaganda, or even inspired it in the first place is the kind of ugly, childish rhetoric in which neoconservatives specialize. For neoconservatives, if any external criticism of the U.S. is similar to internal criticism from Americans, that immediately discredits the internal critics. That argument seems to make sense until you think about it for two seconds. The fact is that when countries engage in propagandistic attacks on others, its rarely all lies. Indeed, propaganda often contains a surprisingly high percentage of truth. Thats because powerful nations are constantly doing terrible things, so other powerful governments dont always have to make things up to criticize them.

What makes propaganda propaganda is often not itslack of factual basis, but its bad faith. In this particular case, Mearsheimer was correct that the West had been moving into Russias backyard and threatening its core interests. Meanwhile, Putin has been vociferously making the same complaints for years. But obviously Russia doesnt object to a country moving into anothers backyard on principle.Just ask anyone who lives in Aleppo.

Likewise, in 2006 when Irans then-president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sent a long letter to George W. Bush, his indictment of the U.S. was mostlyon point and indeed sounds a lot like criticism from Americas left. Yet Ahmadinejads words about the injustice of our treatment of prisoners at Guantnamo Bay did not carry great moral weight, since you could just go to EvinPrison to find how much Ahmadinejads own government actually cares about the brutal detention of human beings.

From the other direction, consider the attacks of Alexey Navalny, a prominent Russian opposition leader currently in prison, on Vladimir Putins war:

What Navalny says is generally true.And when he speaks about the aggressive war against Ukraine and the fact Putin is not Russia it also sounds a lot like the criticisms U.S. officials make in bad faith against Russia. But this does not invalidate what Navalny is saying even though Applebaums equivalents in Russia have surely claimedthat it does. (And like Mearsheimer, Navalnyis by no means a progressive hero.)

The lesson here is straightforward: Everyone who wants their country to improve should feel free to engage insincere, accurate criticism of theirgovernments actions. It is both inevitable and irrelevant that it will likely end up soundingsimilar to criticism of theircountry byforeign enemy governments. And those who claim the similarity discredits the internal criticsshould be ignored like the propagandists they are. To keep this in mind, youcan memorize this article, or just keep a copy of this chart handy:

Chart: Soohee Cho for The Intercept

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No, Russia Didn't Get its Propaganda From John Mearsheimer - The Intercept