There Is A Reason I Don't Take Mearsheimer's "Realism" Seriously.

Realistically speaking he is a second rate geopolitical thinker who loves to claim to be a realist. There are NO world-class geopolitical thinkers in the West today for reasons which I explained on many occasions: most "thinkers" do not grasp the nature of modern military power because they lack background for understanding all technological intricacies and ways escalation dominance affects the balance of power. Yes, there are very few people of the scale of Douglas MacGregor who get it, but these exceptions merely confirm the rule. The actual claim to "authority" in geopolitics by Mearsheimer has nothing to do with geopolitics (of what passes for it today in the West) per se but with his and Walt's famous work on Israeli Lobby in the US. 

Moreover, Mearsheimer was unlucky enough to graduate West Point in 1970 at the height of the America's humiliation in Vietnam and then served in the USAF precisely through the very end of America's Vietnam debacle in 1975. In other words, he was privy only to the US Armed Forces'  doctrinal confusion and the early start of third stage of technological development of warfare which would manifest itself only in 1980s and into 1990s. So, speaking plainly, he missed most of it and his pseudo-academic trope of "offensive realism" is nothing more than a euphemism for American exceptionalism based on ignorance of the outside world and, as a matter of fact, America's main geopolitical rival today, Russia. Here is his today's piece about escalation. 

I can easily answer his question about "where it all stops"--it is stopping now and those deliveries from NATO (and the US) make no difference whatsoever for the outcome and many in Washington begin to get it. But it is not what really makes it funny, no, it is the fact that he still uses beaten to death BS about "democracy". The fact that he doesn't understand how risible those statements about "democracy" and America's "desire to spread it" are, testifies to his lucid moments and grains of the common sense appearing periodically in his talking being merely sporadic, if not accidental altogether, touches with reality. The United States spreads not "democracy" but chaos and puppet regimes serving US' interests. He also needs to accept a simple fact of which I speak for many years now--NATO cannot fight the conventional war in Russia's geographic vicinity and hope to avoid catastrophic losses. Because of that the US will escalate to nuclear threshold because it is incapable of sustaining such losses on the battlefield and war effort economically. Mearsheimer doesn't understand that, as he doesn't understand the nature of escalation dominance. 

About it. Get this:

ST. LOUIS — The Biden administration's plan to sell four large, armable drones to Ukraine has been paused on the fear its sophisticated surveillance equipment might fall into enemy hands, according to two people familiar with the matter. The technical objection to the sale was raised during a deeper review by the Pentagon's Defense Technology Security Administration charged with keeping high value technology safe from enemy hands. Previously the plan, which has been circulating since March, had been approved by the White House, three people said. The plan to sell Ukraine four MQ-1C Gray Eagle drones that can be armed with Hellfire missiles for battlefield use against Russia was first reported by Reuters earlier in June. The objection to the export of the drones arose due to concerns the radar and surveillance equipment on the drones could create a security risk for the United States if it fell into Russian hands.

No, the concern about this "sensitive technology" falling into Russian hands" as a reason for snag is a complete malarkey, albeit I do not state that there are no such concerns, they do exist but they are not about "security" primarily. 

They are primarily about the fact that MQ1C Grey Eagle is not survivable in the real combat environment against Air Defense, Air Force and EW capabilities of Russia. Delivering those will simply add to an embarrassing "performance" of the US technology in Ukraine against Russian forces, with the latest US wunderwaffe such as vaunted Switchblade loitering munition which became a butt of jokes in Russia now because of its dismal combat "effectiveness" or, rather, lack thereof, amounting by different sources of SMO to a whopping... 20%. Clowns at Forbes rushed to do a damage control on the account of this munition, but the data (however incomplete) is already in and it is not good across the board for practically any type of the Western combat technology fighting in Ukraine. But then again, the problem is systemic and it cannot be resolved within present framework of America's combat technological culture which grew out of wars with grossly inferior enemies. One cannot buy this with money, period. 

So, in this case Colonel Douglas MacGregor, a man who actually, unlike Mearsheimer, not only lived through but fought within new technological paradigm, contradicts Merasheimer dramatically, being, indeed, a true realist and a competent military observer. 

However, the effects of repeated strategic failures in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria are cumulative. In the 1980s, General Motors wanted to dictate the kind of automobiles Americans would buy, but American consumers had different ideas. That’s why G.M., which dominated the U.S. market for 77 years, lost its top spot to Toyota. Washington cannot dictate all outcomes, nor can Washington escape accountability for its profligate spending and having ruined American prosperity.

Succinct, and that is why I am on record that the United States loses its wars due to ignorance and a systemic flaw in its strategic thinking and R&D and procurement philosophy, that is why I stated a few years ago that the United States lost the arms race to Russia, because it failed to adapt to fast changing realities of modern combat.