Charles Krauthammer on "Iran's Emerging Empire"

   Charles Krauthammer is talking empire again, this time with regard to Iran. In a Washington Post column he argues that, in the US,  "...Iran’s march toward conventional domination of the Arab world has been largely overlooked." He goes on to criticizes the president and congresses lack of attention to the Iranian backed coup in Yemen in the context of what he sees as alarming actions by Iran in Syria. Essentially, Iran is building an empire in the Middle East while Washington does nothing to stop it.

   As is often the case,  Krauthammer exhibits a pseudo-Realist view of the world as a place where nations vie for dominance over one another. I call this view pseudo-Realist because Krauthammer's analysis has the state- and power-centric characteristics of Realism without the typical view that security maximization is the primary motivation of the state. Thus, his analysis lacks one of the key virtues of Realist theory which is to provide a model of state decision making that applies to all nations. In so doing, it gives us the means to reduce inscrutable and fearsome foreign boogie men to calculating and constrained rational actors that simply have opposing interests to ours given the zero-sum nature of security.

   Of course, there are Offensive Realists, like Mearsheimer, who assume that states are power maximizers instead of security maximizers. But even Offensive Realism invites a more dispassionate and less nationalist view than Krauthammer. Consider John Meirsheimer's 2012 comments on PBS about the effect of a nuclear armed Iran on the Middle East:

I think there’s no question that a nuclear-armed Iran would bring stability to the region, because nuclear weapons are weapons of peace. They’re weapons of deterrence.

They have hardly any offensive capability at all. And if Iran had a nuclear deterrent, there’s no way that the United States or Israel, for that matter, would be threatening to attack Iran now, in the same way that if Saddam had had nuclear weapons in 2003, the United States wouldn’t have invaded Iraq, and if Libya had nuclear weapons in 2011, the United States wouldn’t have gone to war against Libya.

So I think that if you had a Middle East where other states besides Israel — and this, of course, includes Iran — had a nuclear deterrent, it would be a more peaceful region. But the problem is that there is always some small possibility that there will be nuclear use.

And the most likely scenario is what’s oftentimes referred to as inadvertent escalation. And this is where you have a conventional war that starts off with no intention of turning into a nuclear war, but inadvertently escalates to the nuclear level.

   Note in the above quotation that Mearsheimer implicitly applies the same model of decision making to all states and considers the deterrent effect on the US and Israel to be just as valuable for stability as deterrence on Iran. In short, there are no good guys and bad guys, just states with security interests that are both driven and constrained by the relative power of other states. That's a Realist at work.

   But, of course, Krauthammer is talking about conventional "domination" not nuclear proliferation. I used quotation marks because domination is not, theoretically speaking, a clear cut term. I suppose he may means that Iran is seeking to achieve hegemony in the region and Krauthammer does characterize the situation as "Iran's growing hegemony in the region." However, by definition, hegemony is generally a "there can be only one" situation and, regionally, that one is Israel in the Levant and, arguably, the US in the Gulf. So, semantically, talking of Iran's "growing hegemony" is nonsense.

   Iran may be better characterized as challenging Israeli in the Levant and US hegemony in the gulf.  Indeed, it is hard to argue that they are not. It is generally what the Iranians say they are trying to do, and it is also what Realism predicts they will do.

   The question is what should the US being doing about it. From Realism and Krauthammer's state-centric point of view, the US should be trying to thwart Iran's efforts as a general rule. However, the specific situation is complicated by the rise of ISIS which is threatening to take over Syria in the Levant and Iraq in the Gulf region. To the extent that ISIS is a non-state actor, it hits Realist theory in its non-state blind spot.

  However, since ISIS is proclaiming itself to be a state and is taking over territory, it may be that it should be considered a new emerging state in theoretical terms. Furthermore, one might argue that its insurgent strategy is proving to be a surprisingly effective war fighting technology that is upsetting the balance of power in the region in an unexpected way with unpredictable future consequences.

  If you buy this, admittedly, ad hoc modification of Realism, then Realist theory would predict that the US and other powers would have to adjust their alliance structure to deal with the shift in power within the region. Arguably, that is what the US and Iran have done as they have become tacit allies in the fight against ISIS. If the US and Iran seem like strange bedfellows,  it is important to remember that Realism predicts that nations will make alliances based on considerations of power, not national amity or enmity.

   From this point, many of the things Krauthammer decries as US inaction against Iran are actually US actions against ISIS. That is, the US decision to drop demands for Assad's ouster in Syria is attempt to keep an ally in the fight against ISIS. The acquiescence to the presence of Hezbollah fighters and Iranian officers in Syria is acquiescence to the presence of a tacit ally's troops and proxy troops on the field against the common enemy, even if they may up to some other mischief. The administration's reluctance to impose more sanctions on Iran may reflect a reluctance to impose more costs on an ally that is already hurt by falling oil prices and/or a belief that a more conciliatory approach will be more successful in the presence of a new mutual enemy. (Welcome to the pitfalls of coalition warfare.)

   Overall, it appears that the US has made a decision to tolerate marginal gains in power by Iran in order to thwart potentially larger and more destabilizing gains by ISIS. This decision is akin  (albeit on a much smaller scale and without explicit official acknowledgment on either side) to the decision to ally with the Soviet Union in World War II. While that decision had distinct long term drawbacks, any systematic analysis of it would have to take into account the large short term benefits. Therefore, Krauthammer's arguments fall short because he is not considering the impact of the rise of ISIS on the region's distribution of power and the benefits of a tacit alliance between the US and Iran in mitigating that impact.

   To be sure, you could argue that the US is overestimating the threat posed by ISIS to US interests (primarily in Israel and Iraq). Indeed, it may be that, having first underestimated ISIS, US policymakers are irrationally over compensating. Or, you could argue that increased Iranian influence in Syria (and perhaps in Iraq) would be worse for the US than the emergence of a new state in Syria and parts of Iraq. If one is really worried about Iran, one could argue that having a new state to threaten Iran's western border would be a good thing.

   Ultimately, such arguments would be more palatable to Realists who would see ISIS as just another state seeking to maximize its security or power than to non-Realists who might take ISIS's ideology and brutality into account. But then, such non-Realists would also probably take Iran's ideology and brutality into account as well. This would then raise the thorny issue of which nation's ideology is more malignant and which nation is likely to be more brutal.

   Of course, one would only get into such comparisons if one puts the ISIS into the analysis in the first place. While attributing state status to ISIS is problematic in a Realist analysis, it is probably truer to the theory's emphasis (or, more precisely, Neo-Realism's emphasis) on the importance of considering the international system (i.e., the international distribution of power) as a whole. Such an emphasis encourages one not to make the mistake of selectively considering only part of the system as Krauthammer does.

Low Oil Prices and Conflict

Last week, I wrote about the drop in oil prices from purely an economic point of view and, in October, I briefly commented on the effect lower prices would have on Putin's regime in Russia; but what about oil prices from a more purely IR point of view? What effect, if any, can we expect on the behavior of states in the international system?

Rob Nikolewski  at Watchdog.org raises this concern in an article entitled Will crashing oil prices make Russia, Iran and Venezuela more dangerous? The gist of this article is that low oil prices are hurting Russia, Iran, and Venezuela and, therefore, their leaders may lash out at the world. However, most of the substantive analysis is an assessment of how much these countries are hurt by lower oil prices, and very little analysis focuses on the motives and strategic calculations of their leadership that would support concerns about them "lashing out."

Indeed, one is left with the impression that Nikolewski thinks the proposition that one can expect aggression from these leaders when they are under pressure needs little more examination than a quote from an expert or two. This might fly with the conservative readership of Watchdog.org but, as IR scholars (and here I am addressing my students), we should be more critical in our reading. We should look at Nikolewski's piece and note that he spends too much time on the suppositional part of his argument (i.e., that lower oil prices are hurting Russia, Iran, and Venezuela) and far too little on the more causal part of his argument (i.e., that this economic pain will encourage more aggression internationally).

This is turn should get us thinking about what the price reaction of the Russian, Iranian, and Venezuelan leadership may actually be. With apologies for another Rex Stout reference, Nero Wolfe frequently tells his assistant, Archie Goodwin to proceed based on "intelligence guided by experience." For our purposes, these twin pillars of intelligence and experience can be interpreted to mean theory (which is logical inference and deduction based on a model of underlying causal relationships) and empirical research (which is the study of past behavior of states).

Taking the second one first,Cullen Hendrix shares some results from his empirical research in a Monkey Cage post entitled Falling oil prices, more peace?  As is typical of scholarly (read, with admitted bias, as "good") empirical research, Cullen starts with some theory, specifically Thomas Friedman's First Law of Petropolitics, which Friedman defines as follows:

The price of oil and the pace of freedom always move in opposite directions in oil-rich petrolist states. According to the First Law of Petropolitics, the higher the average global crude oil price rises, the more free speech, free press, free and fair elections, an independent judiciary, the rule of law, and independent political parties are eroded. And these negative trends are reinforced by the fact that the higher the price goes, the less petrolist leaders are sensitive to what the world thinks or says about them. Conversely, according to the First Law of Petropolitics, the lower the price of oil, the more petrolist countries are forced to move toward a political system and a society that is more transparent, more sensitive to opposition voices, and more focused on building the legal and educational structures that will maximize their people’s ability, both men’s and women’s, to compete, start new companies, and attract investments from abroad. The lower the price of crude oil falls, the more petrolist leaders are sensitive to what outside forces think of them.

The last line of the preceding passage is most suggestive in that it suggests that, when oil prices are low, the leaders of oil exporting states will actually be more constrained by international pressure than when oil prices are high. In other words, contrary to what Nikolweski implies, the leadership of Russian, Iran, and Venezuela may be less likely to lash out due to the current low oil prices.

In his working paper for the Peterson Institute, Hendrix puts this idea to the test, as his abstract very succinctly describes:

Anecdotal evidence suggests high oil prices embolden leaders in oil-rich states to pursue more aggressive foreign policies.This article tests the conjecture in a sample of 153 countries for the time period 1947–2001. It finds strong evidence of a contingent effect of oil prices on interstate disputes, with high oil prices associated with significant increases in dispute behavior among oil-exporting states, while having either a negative or null effect on dispute behavior in nonexporting states.

 Thus, Hendrix's research suggests that high, not low, prices encourage more aggressive behavior (the lashing out that Nikolewski is concerned about) on the part of oil exporting states. It should be pointed out that Hendrix finds only weak evidence to suggest that low prices (below $33/barrel) make oil exporting states more pacific than non-exporting states, so we have to see this as a somewhat one-way relationship. That is, high prices promote more aggressive behavior among oil exporting states and lower prices will not promote such particular behavior.

So, empirical research (the systematic study of experience, if you will) not only casts doubt on Nikolewski's concerns, but paints an entirely different picture of the effect of low oil prices on state behavior. We could leave it there but, sometimes, when confronted with an article that tweak's one critical thinking as Nikolewski's does, there may not be an empirical study so on point as Hedrix's at hand. In such a case, one needs to resort to theory to examine the question in mind.

Hendrix started with Thomas Friedman's First Law of Petropolitics and I generously categorized this as theory. However, a law is technically not a theory but rather an observed empirical regularity, and Friedman is not a theorist but rather a journalist. Indeed, nothing marks the difference between a journalist and scholar so much as Friedman's inexact use of the term "law" in that the term should be used only after an exhaustive empirical study (as opposed to the more anecdotal evidence Friedman depends upon) has established it

Perhaps a better theoretical foundation would have been to use a theory that explains the conflict behavior of  national leaders based on political economy factors. Obviously, Realism is out here as it focuses on system level variables, but my old stand-by of Selectorate Theory clearly applies (and I never miss a chance to pass out the Kool-aid). While Selectorate Theory focuses on the differences in behavior of large versus small coalition regime leaders, it can be applied here since oil exporting states are typicaly small coalition, or non-democratic, regimes.

Back in July, I wrote about Selectorate Theory's predictions about the war making decisions of democratic versus non-democratic leaders (dictators for short). I described the prediction of Selectorate Theory about the war making decisions of dictators as follows:

 In a small coalition regime, the leader (call him a dictator) survives in office with the support of a small coalition of supporters. Because they are small in number, the dictator can best ensure their loyalty by providing them with private benefits. As a result, the leader's survival depends not on his job performance as a national leader, but on his ability to keep the flow of private benefits to supporters going. As long as the private benefits flow to the leader's essential supporters, the leader is free to do whatever he wants with regard to policy, including the prosecution of a war. However, the leader will have only the resources he has left over after paying off his supporters to devote to the war effort.

I have added emphasis to the last sentence because it points to an important consideration for dictators who depend on oil revenue to pay private benefits to supporters. When the price of oil is high, the dictator will have more money left over after paying off his/her supporters than when prices are low. Therefore, the leader will have more resources with which to conduct wars, or any other policy, when oil prices are high than when they are low. Therefore, we should see more aggression when the leader has excess resources to carry it out than when the leader is scrambling to find enough money to pay off supporters. More importantly, even if a leader may be more inclined to be internationally aggressive when oil prices are low, the leader will have less resources to act on the inclination.

Indeed, to the extent that the leaders of Russia, Iran, and Venezuela depend on smaller rather than larger coalitions of supporters, they can be expected to focus on keeping the private benefits flowing to key supporters more than on international adventurism. This is because the leader's domestic political survival is at stake and the theory assumes that this overrides other considerations. Of course, this assumption is supported by the argument that, if leaders don't act to ensure their survival, then they will be far less likely to survive in office.

In short, we shouldn't theoretically expect low oil prices to make the leaders of oil exporting, small- coalition regimes lash out internationally. Given that most oil exporting states have small coalition regimes, this lines up well with Hendrix's empirical finding that oil exporters are less dispute oriented when oil prices are low than when they are high. As Nero Wolfe would say, this reveals Nikolewski's concerns to be fatuous.

Liberal Interpretations of the Crimean Crisis

Whenever you try to apply Liberal theories to a case in which one nation uses force on another, the Liberal perspective appears to be at a disadvantage vis-a-vis Realism since force has in fact already been used. For instance, Mearsheimer's analysis of Russian actions and the underlying assumption that only power can deter power seems quite plausible at the moment.

However, one must remember that, in 1990, Mearsheimer predicted that the end of the Cold War could lead to a multi-polar  and more war prone international system in Europe.  He has more recently argued that Europe has remained peaceful because the United States has acted as the pacifier of Europe by maintaining large forces in the region since the end of the Cold War. In this view, the fact that European nations are all democracies, that they have become more economically interdependent, or that they have established a fairy strong  international institution in the EU are of minor importance.

But now that we have something that looks like an old fashioned territory grab that is the bread and butter of Realism, what do Liberal theories have to say about this? Unfortunately, Liberalism is a term that covers a wide array of different theories and perspectives, or what I call flavors of Liberalism. Furthermore, none of these theories, or at least none of the Neo-Liberal theories commonly used in academia, entirely discount the importance of security and power, or replace Realism's model of the world with entirely different one. In general, they argue that Realism is missing some important aspects of the international system and state behavior by focusing entirely on power, security, and the international system.

Republican Liberalism: The general point of view here is that a nation's domestic politics has an impact on its international behavior. Democratic Peace Theory is perhaps the most important part of this perspective and it predicts that democratic nations will not fight wars with other democratic nations. Therefore, one might suppose that, since the fall of the Communist system, Russia would be less likely to get into a war with democratic nations.

However, this presumes that Russia is currently a democracy. After all, Putin is a democratically elected president. But it takes more than an election to make a democracy (note that even North Korea stages elections). The folks at Freedom House provide an an index of democracy that rates the political systems of the world according to their level of civil and political rights. On a scale of 1 (best) to 7 (worst), Russia gets a 5.5, which Freedom categorizes as Not Free. In contrast, Ukraine gets a 3.5, or Partly Free, rating and most Western European nations get a 1, or Free rating. (Freedom House also has a world map that shows the category of all nations in the world).

So, Russia's actions can be seen as the result of a lack of democracy in the nation. Indeed, Freedom House is doing an "I-told-you-so" on the subject:

Since 2003, Freedom House has documented the country’s move to authoritarian rule and warned of Russian efforts to restore hegemony over Ukraine (see attached and below a selection of quotes from past Freedom House analysis on Russia).  We explained how this increasingly authoritarian system posed a threat to democracy not just inside Russia itself but through Vladimir Putin’s support for dictators and pressure on democratic governments among Russia’s neighbors.  Blocking democratic development and integration with the West along Russia’s periphery is integral to Putin’s repressive rule.  The nature of the Russian regime—kleptocratic authoritarianism—lies at the core of the current crisis between Russia and Ukraine.

Beyond Democratic Peace, Republican Liberalism can be thought to encompass more specific analyses of domestic political influences on foreign policy. One example of this would be Boris Barkanov's argument that Putin is playing to nationalist and religious audiences in Russia. In general, Barkanov sees Putin as "a strategic actor motivated by domestic concerns." He argues that portraying Putin as a dictator misrepresents that nature of Russian domestic politics which he describes as follows:

Russia is a hybrid system that combines elements of authoritarianism and pluralism.  State-sponsored repression, though now growing, has been selective and relatively limited.  Intense elite competition, elections, and public opinion are managed, but they matter more than the conventional wisdom holds.  This means a successful solution [to the crisis] has to accommodate an attentive public, as well as domestic elites’ various security, economic, and ideological interests.

Barkanov describes Putin himself as follows:

Some have suggested that Putin may be a new Hitler. A better historical analogy is to think of him as a 21st century Russian Bismarck.  My research supports former Secretary Henry Kissinger’s view that Putin is an intelligent, rational, strategic actor who views politics through a realist lens that is informed by his view of Russia’s history.  He began as a neo-liberal statist who has gradually drifted to the right for political reasons.
From this point of view, Putin's moves in Crimea have been more of a tactical response to unexpected developments in Ukraine than part of a grand strategy. However, because of the national and religious importance conservative Russian attach to the Ukraine (not to mention the economic interests that elites have in current ties to Ukraine), Barkanov does not expect Putin to back down easily.

Another concept that loosely fits in this category is the diversionary war hypothesis, This posits that leaders may use small scale wars as a means of diverting public attention from domestic difficulties. This idea was popularized in the film "Wag the Dog" which takes its name from the idea of the tail wagging the dog.  In a post on the Monkey Cage, Kimberly Marten discusses the role that Putin's intervention might play in diverting public attention away from the corruption and waste in the Sochi Olympics. Though Marten does not argue that this provided the primary motivation for Putin's moves, she notes that the Crimean Crisis was well timed since critics of the Sochi Olympics had been holding off until after the games were over. While domestic political diversion has seemed at play in wars like the Falklands War, the wag the dog meme too often threatens to become conspiracy theory.

Economic or Commercial Liberalism: From this point of view, economic ties between nations are supposed to make them less likely to go to war with one another. More specifically, when nations become economically interdependent on one another, the costs of going to war are thought to be so high that the nations will seek other means of resolving their differences.

Russia and the EU are arguably in a situation of interdependence. According to the BBC, the EU is Russia's largest trading partner by a wide margin with 267 billion Euros in trade with Russia. Russia's next largest trading partner is China with only 64 billion Euros in trade. Europe also buys 84% of Russian oil exports and 76% of its natural gas exports (most of which flow through Ukraine). Of course, Europe needs these imports of fuel to keep itself going, thus both sides are dependent on one another to a good extent.

As for Ukraine and Russia, the relationship is a little more lopsided. Trade between the two countries amounts to about 24 billion Euros per year, only 1/10th as much as Russian trade with Europe. Much of that trade was natural gas, which Russia was selling to Ukraine at a greatly reduced price to encourage stronger ties (and discourage a move towards the EU). As a result of Ukraine's change on government, Russia is now demanding a higher price for gas and a refund of the gas discount (to the tune of $12 billion). So, in some ways, Russia's economic position vis-a-vis Ukraine is improving as a result of the crisis, especially if Russia expected that a Ukrainian move towards the EU was going to diminish the economic benefits of friendly relations with Ukraine anyway.

Of course,  many of Russia pipelines run through Ukraine,and the Ukrainians could threaten to shut them down. However, that would cause a great deal of harm to the Ukrainian and European economies and could provide a pretext for a Russian invasion. Alternatively, a large Russian invasion of Ukraine might either force the Ukrainians's hands or simply disrupt the pipelines as collateral damage. This creates a rather precarious situation.

In metaphorical terms, I would describe the situation this way. Imagine there is a big puddle of gasoline. Russia and the EU each have one foot stuck in the edge of it and Ukraine is standing in the middle. All three have lighters which they can use to ignite the gas and burn all three of them.

In such a situation, no one will want to make any sudden big moves that might cause one of the others to light the gasoline on fire. However, because anyone who lights the fire will also get burned, they will be reluctant to do so. As a result, each party can probably get away with a lot of subtle little moves without triggering someone else to spark a conflagration. That is to say, having a lighter doesn't give anyone control over anyone else, but no one will be able to ignore the fact that the other two have lighters. Therefore, everyone will be constrained in what they do and "go small, or go home" will be the order of the day.

In terms of the Crimea, Russian actions have been relatively constrained (at least up to this point). Since they started out with a major military base there, Russia did not invade the peninsula so much as come out of the barracks to occupy it. Even then, they weren't willing to own up to the fact that it was their own forces taking over the territory. While labeling their forces "Crimean self-defense units" was a transparent fiction, it bespoke a certain level of sensitivity and a perceived need to be circumspect. Also, the fact that the Crimean parliament actually kicked off event by declaring independence from Kiev probably presented Putin with an opportunity to secure the peninsula in a way that would not provoke a massive response from Ukraine and the EU.

In this sense, Russia is "going small" and their economic interdependence with the EU and, to lesser extent, with Ukraine may keep their actions small (compared to what they might otherwise be) even if it doesn't make them go home.

Institutional or Regulatory Liberalism: This is the view that having international rules and institutions can mitigate the raw effects of anarchy and allow more cooperation between nations. Realists may scoff at this notion and quip that institutions and rules didn't stop Hitler, but I think that such arguments make a straw man out of institutional liberalism by overstating the expectations of what institutions can accomplish. To my mind, the First Gulf War in 1990-1991 is a good case to examine. Saddam Hussein blatantly violated the rules of the UN Charter when he invaded Kuwait. While the rules didn't stop him from doing so, they greatly facilitated a UN based response and a broad coalition to oust him from Kuwait. Also, prior to the invasion,  the US did not have a formal treaty with Kuwait that committed the US to defend Kuwait (something that famously came up in his interview with the US ambassador to Iraq a couple days before he invaded). One is left to wonder what effect a defense pact with Kuwait would have had on Saddam's calculations of the US response to his planned invasion.

As far as Crimea is concerned, I have already blogged on varying views on the role of international law and institutions and will let that post finish this one off.

Realist Take on the Crimean Crisis

This is the obligatory "Theories of IR" week in my World Politics course and it seems fitting, if a bit tedious, to talk about the Crimean Crisis from the theoretical perspectives of Realism and Liberalism. So this post will build on some stuff I have already posted and try to give a sense of how the Realism would explain the crisis and predict future outcomes. I'll tackle Liberalism in a later post.

To get the ball rolling, let's talk about what Realism isn't. There is a tendency for students to equate Realism with a hawkish or aggressively nationalist stance of foreign policy.  Also, because the term "liberalism" is used to describe the theoretical approach with which Realism in most often contrasted,  students sometime associate Realism with a conservative point of view (no matter how much one talks about the academic and popular usages of the term "liberal" differ). Therefore, the recent commentary by conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer might seem like the epitome of the Realist perspective on the Crimean Crisis

Krauthammer was particularly quick to come out of his corner, swinging at Putin and Obama. On Feb 27th, he analyzed Putin's actions in terms of the context of power and hegemony. In Krauthammer's view, Putin is seeking to restore a Russia mini-empire in Eurasia and his moves against Ukraine are just another step in the process of doing so. This process dates back to Russia's 2008 war with Georgia and was continued more recently with economic pressure on Ukraine to abandon plans for closer ties to Europe. As for Obama, Krauthammer blames him and other western leaders for creating a power vacuum in which Putin was free to pressure Ukraine and now may be free to invade parts of it. Therefore, Krauthammer calls on the US ad EU to counter Russian pressure (with a naval flotilla in the Black Sea) and provide economic support to the Ukraine (starting with the $15 billion dollar loan) until the Ukraine is on a firm financial footing. He concludes, "Either Ukraine will fall to Russian hegemony or finally determine its own future — if America balances Russia’s power.

Krauthammer is apparently taking an offensive realist point of view, but that this appearance may be deceiving. Sure he is talking about power and the need to balance it, but I think he is missing a couple of  key points. First, he is arguing that Putin’s goal is to restore the Soviet Empire while implying the US goal is to promote peace. Yet, realism assumes that all states have the same goals, either maximizing their security (Defensive Realism) or maximizing their relative power (Offensive Realism). Therefore, Putin's supposed goal of restoring the empire would be more properly viewed as potential strategy for balancing or maximizing relative power. While peace in Ukraine is certainly desirable, the US’ overriding interest lies in maintaining its own security or relative power position.

This may seem like a quibble, but keeping one’s eye on the power might lead one to take a different view of the situation. If one asks what changes in the distribution of power are at stake in the current situation, one might argue that Russia was faced with more potential losses of power than potential gains. Closer ties between the Ukraine and EU would represent an indirect loss, but anything that threatened Russian access to its naval base in Sevastopol would represent a much more direct (if not quite catastrophic) loss. In this context, a move to take direct control of the region around its naval base would be aimed more about avoiding a loss in power than in acquiring a gain in power. Therefore, Russia's moves are largely defensive and understandable.

Stephan Walt provides a more traditional Realist analysis of the situation that serves as a good counterpoint to Krauthammer. Walt focuses on the the issues of power and interest involved for both the US and Russia and argues that the Russia has both more vital interests at stake in Ukraine and more power in locus to pursue them than the US does. Therefore, unlike Krauthammer, he doesn't criticize the US for not having more aggressively supported Ukraine nationalists. Instead, he argues that the US and EU were naive to think that Russia would sit on its hands while the Ukrainian government sought closer ties to the West. Where Krauthammer blames Obama for not balancing Russian power to thwart Putin's imperial ambitions, Walt blames the US for not recognizing that Russian interests and proximity could not be balanced by a more distant and less interested US.

John Mearshiemer, arguably the father of Offensive Realism, sees things pretty much the same way that Walt does. By trying to get Ukraine out of Russia's orbit and into Western Europe's, and by supporting the protesters that ousted a pro-Russian Ukrainian regime, Mearshiemer argues that "Washington played a key role in precipitating this dangerous situation, and Mr. Putin’s behavior is motivated by the same geopolitical considerations that influence all great powers, including the United States."

In Mearshiemer's view, the US and NATO have continued to treat Russia as a threat since the end of the Cold War and have threatened its security by expanding NATO and planning to build missile defense systems in Europe. In this context, a pro-Western government in Kiev was a threat to Russian interests that Putin could not ignore. In a textbook perfect expression of the Realist view of the effect of anarchy pn state behavior, Mearshiemer explains:

Mr. Putin’s view is understandable. Because there is no world government to protect states from one another, major powers are acutely sensitive to threats — especially near their borders — and they sometimes act ruthlessly to address potential dangers. International law and human rights concerns take a back seat when vital security issues are at stake.

But, as I like to point out, anarchy in the international system and the supremacy of security concerns are assumptions in Realist theory, meaning they do not vary from situation to situation. Since the actions of states (or their leaders) do vary, you have to look at relative power to predict what a state will or won't do.

With regard to power, Mearsheimer notes (indeed laments) that Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons when the Soviet Union broke up, which left it without a credible deterrent to Russian conventional military superiority. Russia also has a good deal of political and economic leverage vis-a-vis the US and EU. With security at stake and some good cards to play, Mearshiemer thinks that it was not only understandable that Putin acted as he did, but it is also unlikely that he will fold under pressure from Western sanctions.

So, rather than being hawkish like Krauthammer, Mearsheimer argues that Obama should seek to recognize Russian interests while supporting Ukraine's territorial integrity. In his words:

To achieve those goals, the United States should emphasize that Georgia and Ukraine will not become NATO members. It should make clear that America will not interfere in future Ukrainian elections or be sympathetic to a virulently anti-Russian government in Kiev. And it should demand that future Ukrainian governments respect minority rights, especially regarding the status of Russian as an official language. In short, Ukraine should remain neutral between East and West.

Some might say these policy prescriptions amount to a defeat for America. On the contrary, Washington has a deep-seated interest in ending this conflict and maintaining Ukraine as a sovereign buffer state between Russia and NATO. Furthermore, good relations with Russia are essential, because the United States needs Moscow’s help to deal with Iran, Syria, Afghanistan, and eventually to help counter China, the only genuine potential rival to the United States.