“Eschewing social engineering [i.e., democracy promotion] and minimizing the United States’ military foot­print” abroad.

In Northeast Asia, “rely on local powers to contain China” while recognizing that this strategy “might not work,” at which point the United States should “throw its considerable weight behind them.”

“In Europe, the United States should end its military presence and turn NATO over to the Europeans.”

“With respect to ISIS, the United States should let the regional powers deal with that group and limit its own efforts to providing arms, intelligence, and military training.”

“In Syria, the United States should let Russia take the lead.”

“For now, the United States should pursue better relations with Iran.”

And now I am very puzzled, because there are three problems that I can’t sort out after reading this essay.

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First, just how distinct is offshore balancing from the status quo of “liberal hegemony”? Both strategies are comfortable with U.S. hegemony in the Western hemisphere. Because Mearsheimer and Walt acknowledge China’s continued rise, both strategies advocate the U.S. rebalance to East Asia. Offshore balancing is emphatic about lightening the U.S. military footprint and abandoning regime change in the Middle East. But, hey, what do you know, President Obama feels the same! Indeed, Mearsheimer and Walt’s obsession with the ills of democracy promotion is particularly puzzling, because this is a plank of American foreign policy that has been slowly de-emphasized over the past decade. My basic point, however, is that right now there is way more overlap between offshore balancing and the status quo that they would care to admit.

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The overlap is not perfect, however, which leads to the second puzzle: How is offshore balancing supposed to deal with Russia? That is clearly the country where offshore balancing deviates the most from the status quo. And although I share Mearsheimer and Walt’s skepticism about Russia augmenting its great power status any further, I’m far less sanguine about choosing this particular moment to signal U.S. disengagement from Europe. Russia might not actually be a potential hegemon for all of Europe, but Moscow is sure acting like it thinks it could be.

Offshore balancers tend to think that states that exaggerate their own great power capabilities eventually burn out. That is true in the long run. In the short run, however, matters tend to be far messier, as residents in Ukraine and the Baltics would note. I’m way more comfortable with the role that U.S. deterrence plays in Europe right now than Mearsheimer and Walt. Ideas such as “turning NATO over to Europe” are the kind of moves that lead to severe critiques of academic realism:

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Realism today is unrecognizable from its antecedents. It proposes to voluntarily dissolve an order that is quite popular in Europe and Asia on the basis of an untested theory. To disband or greatly weaken America’s traditional alliances, either tacitly or formally, would be a revolutionary act. It would surely shake the equilibrium. Classical realists would have recoiled at such an experiment. Modern-day realists embrace the prospect of chaos and uncertainty.

The last thing that puzzles me is exactly how offshore balancing would fix the list of ills that Mearsheimer and Walt use to set up their argument for a new grand strategy in the first place. How, exactly, would offshore balancing stop Russia’s annexation of Crimea, nuclear proliferation, turmoil in the Arab world, terrorism or the democratization recession?

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I’m pretty sure the answer is that offshore balancing would fix none of these problems. Rather, the strategy would simply advise Americans not to worry so much about them. There might be some merit to this kind of advice, but then you don’t get to use these problems as a motivation to articulate a new strategy.