It does not take a huge leap of imagination to see how the limits of a ‘one-best-way’ approach to state governance, exposed by cultural relativism, suggest identical failings in John Mearsheimer’s universalist notion of ‘offensive realism’ (OR), whose well-known principal tenets include:
“In order to survive, and because competitors cannot be trusted, states must …. acquire and maintain sufficient military and economic power to protect themselves against threats which, Mearsheimer (2019) concedes, ‘can be a ruthless and bloody business’. This is usually done at the expense of rival states and is a zero-sum game” (Blunt, 2025).
According to OR, the best way to achieve state security and to protect state interests is to maximize power and to become a regional hegemon.
In this essay, briefly, I will make the obvious parallels between the limits of universalist approaches to ‘good’ governance and ‘realist’ international relations explicit; delve behind the fig leaf of ‘state interest’ and point to those who stand to benefit most from OR being the main international relations game in town; and argue that a ‘realism’ that draws on China’s peaceful ‘win-win’ approach to international affairs is no less valid than its chronically belligerent alternative; it is just a lot less convenient to those who profit from perpetual war.
‘Democratic’ Governance and Offensive Realism as Metaphysical Doctrines
“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”Epicurus
Epicurus was clearly no slouch when it came to unmasking the logical limitations of metaphysical doctrines. He saw that such beliefs can only be maintained if they are completely immune to contradictory evidence. As I have pointed out elsewhere, as with the notion of ‘democratic’ governance, OR relies on precisely the same type of blind faith and therefore cannot claim to be a ‘theory’ in an epistemological (Popperian) sense:
“OR’s masquerade as an unflinching scientific theory of how the cruel world that we live in really works is easily revealed because, like other metaphysical doctrines such as psychoanalysis, it is unfalsifiable. Seeming anomalies or contradictions – such as those identified by Hall (2025) – are either treated as irrelevant and ignored or simply explained away after the fact by defenders of the faith (Kuhn’s normal scientists) through the introduction of ad hoc hypotheses.
OR’s scientific weaknesses are plain to see.
The dangers of OR stem from its impregnability and relative permanence (according to Kuhn, ruling paradigms can only be overthrown by rare ‘scientific revolutions’), which when combined with its pseudo-scientific and superficially persuasive normalisation of the supposedly innately aggressive (chimp-like) imperialist behaviour of late-stage capitalist states such as the US, make it a particularly effective weapon in the manufacture of consent – and hence the prolongation of late-stage capitalism and its adverse consequences for the future of all forms of life on Earth” (Blunt, 2025, ibid).
Believers in ‘democratic’ governance and OR who accept, or deign even to consider, alternative realities, such as those revealed by cultural relativism, are quickly excommunicated.
The ambition and breathtaking presumption of grand theoretical enterprises such as OR is neatly revealed when Chomsky says, “If we can’t explain why a cockroach decides to turn left, how can we explain why a human being [or a nation state] decides to do something” (Chomsky, 2002). For most of the social sciences, ‘theorizing’ is therefore reduced to plausible and sometimes epically fanciful (e.g., psychoanalysis) storytelling and speculation.
The Beneficiaries of Offensive Realism
But, as suggested above, for the ruling class, such quibbles should not be allowed to interfere with the dissemination of ideological opiates like OR, and other forms of persuasion and distraction, that are necessary to keeping the ‘bewildered herd’ – the largely poor and marginalised people who will do the fighting and dying (like the ones who are now jumping off a US aircraft carrier in the middle of the ocean) – under control and firmly in their place.
For those who benefit from imperialism and the constant military aggression it entails, metaphysical doctrines like OR are doubly attractive because they provide a plausible rationale for its maintenance: “we may not like the way that [OR] portrays the world, but that, unfortunately, is how things are” (Blunt, 2025, ibid). By implication, we are being ‘unrealistic’ if we think otherwise.
The principal beneficiaries of OR are, of course, the military-industrial complex and the politicians that do its bidding. One statistic will suffice to reiterate this truism: the US military budget for the year 2027, which is now under consideration, could be as much as a staggering $1.5 trillion, that is, more than the military budgets of the next nine countries – ranked according to their military expenditures – combined.
The Inconvenient ‘Black Swan’: China’s Win-Win Approach
China’s patently win-win and historically unaggressive approach to international relations as evidenced by, among many others, its world-wide infrastructure-led Belt and Road Initiative, the fact that its last full-scale interstate conflict was almost 50 years ago in the Sino-Vietnamese war, and the fact that by some estimates it has only 6 military bases abroad – as compared to the 861 maintained by the US and another 118 maintained by ones of its closest allies, the UK – is strong evidence that other realities are possible.
If OR were a testable theory and not just plausible ideology masquerading as one, then, at the very least, the China case would pose a significant empirical challenge. For a strong theory – measured according to Popper by its susceptibility to being shown to be wrong (the more susceptible the better) – it would constitute a ‘black swan’ event and disprove OR.
The fact that OR is impregnable to such testing does not detract from the validity of China’s approach as an alternative, one which I have argued before is preferable to the profit- and OR-inspired Western war machine.
To eschew such possibilities and maintain its impregnability, OR adherents simply adopt the well-tried and tested amoeba-like method of introducing ad hoc hypotheses to explain away inconvenient empirical observations that contradict their beliefs. Words to the effect that, like other great powers, ‘in an anarchic world, China must maximize its relative power to ensure its own survival’; that ‘China is in fact preparing the ground for the inevitability of conflict with other global great powers and that it is naturally inclined to dominate East Asia’; or, ‘while the current leadership in China appears to be operating according to principles of cooperation for mutual benefit, we cannot assume that future leaders will do the same’; and, moreover, that ‘the idea that trade and deeply embedded supply chains can somehow prevent war is simply wrong’, and so on, ad infinitum. These are just a few examples of what can quickly become an “infinite regress of ad hoc hypotheses being ‘tested’ and then rescued from refutation by further ad hoc hypotheses which in their turn are ‘tested’ and then rescued, and so on (Meehl, 1967)” (Blunt, 1980, p. 48).
But OR also resorts to other forms of self-immunization, as suggested by Mearsheimer’s (2019, p. 17) assertion that “the US will have little choice but to adopt a realist [OR] foreign policy, simply because it must prevent China from becoming a regional hegemon in Asia.” If it doesn’t do so, then, according to OR, it will be behaving irrationally or ‘unrealistically’.
The discipline of international relations is far from being alone in these respects. Many years ago, I noted that:
“the history of ‘soft’ psychology in particular is littered with ambiguous and untestable theories [and] that soft theories in psychology never die [by being shown to be wrong], they either ‘just slowly fade away . . . (or) dry up and blow away’ (Meehl, 1978, p. 807) as a result of accumulated bafflement or boredom or disillusionment or some combination of these. Harshly put, this suggests that such theories ‘are scientifically unimpressive and technologically worthless’ (Meehl, 1978, p. 806)” (Blunt, 1980, ibid, p. 47).
But then we all know that resistance to such an argument has little or nothing to do with the niceties of epistemology or what an ancient Greek philosopher might have to say about religion. As we have seen repeatedly with the current Trump administration and other US governments before it, when it comes to realizing billions of dollars in profit, such trivia will not be allowed by the ruling class to stand in the way. Pretty much any old mumbo jumbo will do as justification for their actions, and if the ‘theory’ in question has a patina of academic respectability to go with it, so much the better.
Conclusion
It is not difficult to see how OR could be packaged to give a veneer of intellectual gloss to what amounts to a global protection racket. Its evisceration of alternatives – by stripping away culture, history, and human choice as valid explanations of significant differences in the behavior of nation-states – is crucial to this. At the same time, it can be used to convince the ‘bewildered herd’ that big power aggression and never-ending war are an unalterable law of nature. But as the bullet trains, infrastructure, peaceful practices, and almost universal citizen satisfaction in a rising China demonstrate, another highly impressive reality is being actively built. We can either accept the fallacies of a desperate, dying empire, or we can choose a realism that, if permitted to flourish, might enable humanity to survive and prosper.
We must reject the reflex of OR dogmatists and those who simply use OR as a cudgel or as flimsy intellectual cover to dismiss China’s cooperative strategy abroad as a mere subterfuge or as a sneaky prelude to the inevitable aggression that is bound to come, as if to confide:
‘don’t worry, Mr. President, all this cooperation for mutual benefit palaver is fake – those cunning, untrustworthy oriental characters will show their true, power-hungry, aggressive colours as soon as the opportunity presents itself.’