In the West, the view is widespread that the decision of Russian president Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine was an irrational act.
On the eve of intervention, the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson He suggested that possibly the United States and their allies did "not adequate to halt this irrational player and we must now admit that Vladimir Putin is most likely not reasoning logically, not noticing the impending disaster". American Senator Mitt Romney expressed a akin view after the start of the war, claiming that “By raiding Ukraine, Mr Putin proved his tendency to make illogical and self-destructive decisions”.
Rationality and Final Effect
The presumption behind these 2 statements is that rational leaders start wars only in the event of a likely victory. erstwhile they started the war in advance, Putin proved irrational. Others felt that Vladimir Putin had acted irrationally due to the fact that he had broken basic global standards. In their belief, the only case of ethically justified war is self-defense, and the invasion of Ukraine was an assault war. Expert on Russian Affairs Nina Khrushcheva considers that "by making this unprovoked aggression, Mr Putin joined a long scope of irrational tyrants"adding that "it appears that he has plunged into his individual obsession to reconstruct Russia to the position of a large power having a clearly designated sphere of influence".
Bess Levin In “Vanity Fair” he described the Russian president as “the power-hungry megalomaniac, so impertinently ambitious that he decided to attack the neighbouring country”. erstwhile British Ambassador to Moscow, Tony Brenton, he preached that putin' "the assassination of Ukraine's sovereignty..., his almost clinically obsessive desire to bring another country to its knees" indicate that he is "unbalanced autocrat", not ‘rational player’He utilized to be.
What is rationality
These claims are based on the common knowing of rationality, which is intuitively common, but turns out to be incorrect. Contrary to the belief of many people, we cannot identify rationality with success and irrationality with failure. Rationality is not related to results. Rational players are frequently incapable to accomplish their goals, not due to the fact that they think in an unreasonable way, but due to factors they were incapable to foretell or control. There is besides an influential tendency to align rationality with morality, for both are to be elements of enlightened thinking. That's a mistake, too. Rational policies may sometimes violate widely recognised standards and may be deadly unfair.
So what is “reasonability” in global policy? Contrary to expectations, technological literature does not supply appropriate definitions. According to us, rationality is to give the planet any sense – that is, to discover how it functions and why – in order to be able to decide how to accomplish certain goals. It has an individual and collective dimension. Rational politicians follow the theory; they are homo theoreticus. They have reliable theories – logical explanations of how the global strategy functions, based on realistic statements and supported by applicable evidence – they usage to realize their situation and find the best way to deal with it. Rational states gather views of key politicians in a process of deliberalisation characterised by a lively and unfettered debate. In summary, rational decisions in global policy are based on reliable theories about the functioning of the planet and consequence from the resulting deliberalisation of the decision-making process.
Russia's decision was rational
This means that Russia's decision to invade Ukraine was rational.
Consider that Russian leaders relied on credible theory. Most commentators question this, claiming that Putin wanted to win Ukraine and another east European countries to make a large Russian empire, thus satisfying the nostalgic longing among the Russians, although it does not make strategical sense in the modern world. president Joe Biden maintains that Putin is pursuing “will become the leader of Russia who will unite all Russian-speaking people. I think... I think it's just irrational". erstwhile National safety Advisor, Herbert McMasterstates: "I don't think he's a rational player due to the fact that he's full of fears, is he? The thing he wants most is to reconstruct Russia to its national size. It directs him”.
In fact, Putin and his advisors thought in terms of the conventional explanation of balance of forces, recognizing the West's attempts to make Ukraine a bridgehead at the borders of Russia as an existential threat that cannot be tolerated. The Russian president presented this logic in a speech explaining his decision to start the war: "Each year, with NATO's expansion to the east, the situation of Russia became worse and more dangerous... We cannot be passive and indifferent to these phenomena. This would be highly irresponsible on our part". Then he said, “For our country it is simply a substance of life or death, a substance of our historical future as a nation. It's not an exaggeration; it's a fact. This is not only a real threat to our interests, but a threat to the existence and sovereignty of our country. It's a red line we've talked about many times. They crossed it’. In short, it is simply a defensive war to prevent a change in the balance of power.
It is worth noting that Moscow preferred to face this increasing threat at its borders through aggressive diplomacy, but the United States and their allies decided not to take Russian safety concerns into account. In this situation, Putin decided to fight a war that, according to analysts, would consequence in a fast takeover of Ukraine by Russian troops. Describing the views of American politicians in the Washington Post David Ignatius He wrote just before the invasion that Russia “He will rapidly win in the first tactical phase of war if it explodes. A immense Russian army concentrated on the Ukrainian border will most likely master Kiev within a fewer days and take control of the full country in just over a week.”. In fact, the intelligence community “She informed the White home that Russia's triumph was a substance of days, given its advantage over the Ukrainian army”.
Reasoned decision
The Russian invasion decision was besides a consequence of the deliberalisation process. Many observers are besides questioning this, claiming that Putin acted alone, without a greater engagement of civilian and military advisers who would argue against his ruthless pursuit of the empire. Like the senator said. Mark Warner, president of the legislature Intelligence Commission: "There were not many people who would influence him. Therefore, we fear that specified an isolated man could become a megalomaniac in the sense of seeing himself as a historical figure capable of rebuilding the erstwhile Russia or of recreating the concept of the russian sphere of influence”. erstwhile Ambassador to Moscow, Michael McFaulsuggests that 1 of the factors of Russia's irrationality is that Putin is "totally isolated, surrounded by sociators who cut him off from actual knowledge".
Existing evidence points to something rather different: Putin's colleagues shared his view of the nature of the threat facing Russia, and he consulted them before deciding about the war. The consensus among the Russian leaders on the threats related to Ukraine's relations with the West was noted in a memo by the then ambassador to Russia, William Burns, from 2008, in which he warned that "Ukrainian NATO membership is the most bright of red lines for the full Russian elite (not just Putin). In over 2 and a half years of talks with key Russian politicians, from hawks in the dark corners of the Kremlin, to the harshest liberal critics Putin, I have not yet met anyone who would not consider Ukraine's accession to NATO as a direct challenge to Russia's interests... I do not see any anticipation of a deal that would let the Russians to swallow specified a pill”. So it does not appear that Putin decides to start the war himself. erstwhile the abroad Minister was asked Sergei LavrovWhether the Russian president consulted his most crucial advisors, he replied that "Every country has its decision-making mechanisms. In this case, the mechanics existing in the Russian Federation has been full activated’. All of this means that the Russian decision to invade most likely resulted from the process of deliberalisation.
There is no politics without rationality
Russia's decision to invade Ukraine was not only rational, but besides not unusual. Many large powers are said to have acted irrationally, while they were actually rational. They would have included Germany in the years before planet War I and during the July crisis, as well as Japan in the 1930s and the preday of Pearl Harbor. This does not mean that states are always rational: a British decision to abandon Nazi balance Germany was not rational in 1938, as was the American decision to invade Iraq in 2003. However, these are exceptions. Contrary to the increasingly common view among researchers of global relations that global policies and states are frequently irrational, we say in this book that most countries are usually rational.
This issue has immense implications for both investigation and global policy practice. In a planet where irrationality prevails, they would not be understood. In the academic world, our claim strengthens the thesis about the rationality of players, which for a long time has been the foundation of knowing planet politics, although late it has been caught in the heat of criticism. If the norm were irrational, we could not realize or anticipate the behaviour of the states and so the examination of global policy would become a barren undertaking. From the point of view of practice, rationality enables effective state policy. It is only possible to anticipate how allies and enemies will behave in a circumstantial situation and to conduct a self-interest policy if another countries are rational players.
John J. Mearsheimer, Sebastian Rosato
Fragments of the Book Introduction – John J. Mearsheimer, Sebastian Rosato, How States Think – The Rationality of abroad Policy, Yale University Press, 2023. p. X-XIV.
Crowd. M. Piskorski, mid-titles come from Editorial.
