Imperfect worlds throw up political problems that cannot always be solved. Mandelbaum’s opposition to NATO expansion and the “liberal crusade” makes sense in realist terms. The strength of realism as a theory lies in how it is grounded within a conception of “the international” – even if this is defined narrowly as the existence of multiple competing states.

The latter is a position he outlines again in The Rise and Fall of Peace on Earth (pp.11-13).įrom realism to American liberal nationalism But he is also a long-standing opponent of NATO expansion into Eastern Europe, seeing it as an unnecessary provocation of Russia that was not in the interests of the US. He famously, or perhaps infamously, derided Clinton-era interventionism as a ‘social work’ approach to foreign policy – in terms that would be familiar to the assumptions of political realism in IR. He was, for example, critical of both the project for a new American century and the earlier Clinton and Bush Senior eras. Mandelbaum is very much a figure of the American establishment’s academic arm – albeit someone who has been prepared to take unconventional positions that can put him at odds with the broader foreign policy community (across both the Democrat and Republican parties).

In its place, a new period of geopolitical competition and instability has begun. The book warns the era of security cooperation between the world’s major powers, which opened with the end of the Cold War, has drawn to a close. The Rise and Fall of Peace on Earth is the latest contribution in the output of realist scholar Michael Mandelbaum.

Images of peace on earth