Liberalism as a Source of Trouble by MICHAEL WELTON

John Mearsheimer, the author of The Great Delusion, believes the liberal interventionalists had good intentions, but I don't see it like that way myself, what I see is business as usual.

Destroying Syria was about gas pipelines, not about spreading liberal values with the West backing the Jihadists. How could John Mearsheimer get it so wrong, but he is a mainstream political theorist who blames the U.S. rather than Russia, or anyone else, for all these wars?

Mearsheimer, who is a prominent US political theorist from the University of Chicago, had the guts to challenge the massive propaganda masking the US engineering of the overthrow of the elected Ukrainian government. Now, in his new book, The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities (2018), Mearsheimer displays the same moxie as he dissembles the “liberal hegemonic” futilities of US foreign policy. The title of my article, “Liberalism as a source of trouble,” is the title of chapter six in his book. The book surprised me. I didn’t think it possible that a mainstream political theorist from America could take a cold, hard look at his own county’s repugnant actions on foreign soil. So let me extract some of his provocative ideas for CP readers.


His basic question is a fascinating one: “What happens when a country that is deeply committed to individual rights and doing social engineering to promote those rights employs that template in the wider world?” (p. 120). The answer: “That formidable state will end up embracing liberal hegemony, a highly interventionist foreign policy that involves fighting wars and doing significant social engineering in countries throughout the world” (ibid.). The liberal hegemonic framework, fueled by America’s missionary religious impulses and an over-bearing hubris, permits the US to forgo international law to topple any regime deemed authoritarian and worthy of American tutorials in how to create an open economy and liberal democratic institutions. Sounds good? Well, for Mearsheimer the US  ends up invading countries (lots of them) and destroying the very goals they espouse publicly. This paradoxical outcome undermines the liberal hope that toppling authoritarian regimes like Iraq can lead to a more peaceful world. It hasn’t. Every invaded country is a bloody, shameful mess. Does the world look more peaceful to you?

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Liberalism as a Source of Trouble by MICHAEL WELTON