Criticism of realism - Stephen M. Walt in Foreign Policy

Stephen M. Walt claimed in the Foreign Policy magazine that realists would have done a better job guiding American foreign policy than liberals or neoconservatives. He doesn't have any actual success stories to tell so he mostly criticizes decisions that were made and claims that adhering to realist theory of international relations would have produced better results. Criticising Walt's claims require playing a bit with alternative history just like he does but there's a helping hand - Walt's claims don't actually fit the realist theory. It's hard to understand how exactly does he derive his policy proposals from realist theory. To criticize him I use only some really core concepts of realism like the security dilemma, absence of trust and unpredictability of the future.

1. Walt claims:

"Second, had American leaders embraced the wisdom of realism, the United States would not have pushed NATO expansion in the 1990s or would have limited it to Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. Realists understood that great powers are especially sensitive to configurations of power on or near their borders, and thus experts such as George Kennan warned that NATO expansion would inevitably poison relations with Russia."

That claim doesn't fit with the idea of security dilemma. In short the security dilemma means that if another country has military capabilities near your country you never know weather that country will use them only for her defence or for attacking you. So to be on the safe side one has to increase one's own power even if it means that the other side will take it as a sign of a potential aggressive plans and will increase her military capabilities as well. The security dilemma is a vicious circle, because there is no trust among the countries and they can't predict the future.

The question is, why does Walt think that in 1992 Russia would have felt happy or secure in her new borders? Yes, NATO was very far from those borders but between Russia and NATO was a belt of nations, some of them, like Poland and Ukraine were big enough to be a danger for Russia herself in a theoretical future scenario, especially when allied with another strong state like China.

As soon as 1992 Russia again started to enlarge her influence by creating frozen conflicts in Georgia and Moldova and between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Russia tried to reintegrate several countries (most notably Belarus) to Russia to increase her power and to deny territory and resources to a potential enemy. Even without NATO's enlargement it made sense for Russia to increase her control over foreign territories.

Yet NATO's potential enlargement would also inevitably be on the table for Russia. Moscow could never really believe promises that NATO won't enlarge so it still would mean it would make sense for Russia to behave like NATO was enlarging. This is exactly what we see now in Ukraine, when Russia sees every example of military cooperation between NATO's nations and Ukraine as a sign of NATO's enlargement even when there is none.

On the other hand, consider the situation of Poland. In the 90s Poland was in a geopolitical dream, because she was independent, Germany was friendly and Poland was separated from Russia by Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania. Russia's attempts to enlarge her influence would inevitably be interpreted as hostile signs and Poland would try to stop them, thus entering into conflict with Russia.

Enlarging NATO to Poland would help little because realists themselves say that one should not put too much trust in allies. Without enlargement of NATO Poland would have been left alone and Warsaw would probably have supported every anti-Russian force in the world with weapons and money to balance Russia. A conflict over Ukraine would have been especially likely because Ukraine was and still is a divided country and almost anything could have produced a conflict.

All of this would have meant a deeply unstable Eastern Europe. It was only avoided by a strong US presence in Eastern Europe which calmed some of the fears in Poland and meant that Russia had to think twice before acting. Strong US presence helps to stabilize that region.

2. Walt wrote:

"Fourth, realists also warned that trying to “nation-build” in Afghanistan was a fool’s errand — especially after the invasion of Iraq allowed the Taliban to regroup — and correctly predicted that Obama’s 2009 “surge” was not going to work."

How exactly did the realists derive from their theory that nation-building in Afghanistan can't work? The difficulties of building states were obvious for most people but realist theory really says very little about nation-building. In fact, realist theory deliberately avoids such subjects.

3. Walt wrote:

"Finally, had Obama listened to his more realistic advisors (e.g., Robert Gates), he would not have helped topple Muammar al-Qaddafi in Libya, creating yet another failed state in the process."

People tend to overestimate the stability of dictatorships. Dictatorships often collapse, leaving chaos behind. I'm not saying that the Libyan intervention was successful but the alternative had a downside too, because ignoring Qaddafi's brutal suppression of the revolt or even helping him would have created serious image problems for the West. Walt is worried about American image in case of Israel but doesn't seem interested about how it would affect American image if America would no longer support democracy abroad.

4. Walt wrote:

"A realist would also have warned Obama not to say “Assad must go” or to draw a “red line” about the use of chemical weapons. Not because Bashar al-Assad should be defended or because chemical weapons are legitimate instruments of war, but because U.S. vital interests were not involved and it was clear from the beginning that Assad and his associates had little choice but to try to cling to power by any means necessary. For realists, the overriding task was to end the civil war quickly and with as little loss of life as possible, even if that required doing business with a brutal tyrant."

Walt seems to overestimate US influence in Syria. In fact other actors, mostly regional, are much more important in Syria. Jon Alterman, a former State Department official, had a bleak comment about actual US influence in Syria.“U.S. allies in the Middle East are increasingly acting independently because they think the United States is too passive,” he added. “The limited nature of the U.S. response leaves people too free to feel they can act with complete impunity and they act without regard to the United States because we’ve become like part of the furniture.”

Walt made in Syria the same mistake he made in Eastern Europe - he assumed that local powers are incapable of acting on their own and the only important actors are great powers like the US and Russia. The Syrian crisis shows just how wrong such attitude is.

Walt complains that realists don't get much attention among Washington's decision-makers. His own article explains that both the media and politicians in the US are right to keep ignoring them.