Walt was my first political science professor. He was an amazing lecturer and his first book wasn’t bad, but he should never go anywhere near policy advice. He’s just consistently and laughably wrong. - ThreadSky

seandehrlich.bsky.social • 9 days ago

Walt was my first political science professor. He was an amazing lecturer and his first book wasn’t bad, but he should never go anywhere near policy advice. He’s just consistently and laughably wrong.

Reposted from Steve Saideman

Oh my

Comments

davidkarol.bsky.social•9 days ago

It's not a crime to be wrong,-we've all been- but he never seems to be humbled in the slightest.

smsaideman.bsky.social•9 days ago

Part of SW's and JJM's success is that they are really articulate--they present their stuff really, really well.

Doesn't make their stuff all that great, just that they can make it shine.

smsaideman.bsky.social•9 days ago

I only directly engaged their work in published form once https://saideman.blogspot.com/2018/12/myth-busting-trends-in-ir-finally.html but my blog has repeatedly addressed their sense of oppression https://saideman.blogspot.com/2018/10/iraq-war-myths-academic-edition.html and this piece on Mearsheimer's Ukraine take in 2015 holds up https://saideman.blogspot.com/2015/04/when-realists-are-bad-realists-part-xiv.html

smsaideman.bsky.social•9 days ago

and, to be honest, yes, I have a grudge in all of this: https://saideman.blogspot.com/2013/09/pondering-prejuices-in-ir-mine.html

smsaideman.bsky.social•9 days ago

although I will say that Walt's balance of threat theory was useful as a way to produce testable alternative hypotheses in my earlier work.

seandehrlich.bsky.social•9 days ago

Balance of threat was an interesting advancement on balance of power and I used to teach it in my field seminar (I dropped it to include more recent pieces). Behind the terrible current events analysis and his anti-anti-realism grievances, he remains a good, if old fashioned, scholar. M, not so much

smsaideman.bsky.social•9 days ago

I disagree a bit. That in the 1990s, he followed JJM's lead of being a troll, so he'd write stuff that was mostly aimed at getting negative cites like his trashing of quant/formal theory--Old Wine in New Bottles. And then the Israel Lobby stuff unless that counts as his anti-anti-realism thing

seandehrlich.bsky.social•9 days ago

To me, the former counts as anti-anti-realism and the latter as current events prognostication. I admit this means he has done precious little actual scholarship in the past 25+ years.

jasont66.bsky.social•9 days ago

When is this dated? He has written this recently. Which is pretty good. https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/11/15/chomsky-foreign-policy-book-review-american-idealism/

kilzeus.bsky.social•9 days ago

In one part he's not wrong, the pivot to Asia has been going for over a decade and Europe's been told longer it needs to take care of the continental defense. Biden never went for Ukrainian victory either. Real change is how incapable and dumb the new admin is, elephants in glassware shop.

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