How States Think: The Rationality of Foreign Policy by John J. Mearsheimer and Sebastian Rosato

John J. Mearsheimer is Professor in the Political Science Department at the University of Chicago. He is an "international relations theorist".

Sebastian Rosato is Associate Professor in Political Science at University of Notre Dame, IN.

The book explores "what is 'rationality' in international politics".

"We find that most states are rational most of the time, a result that should not surprise us. Given that international politics is a dangerous business, states think seriously about the strategies they adopt, which is to say they are powerfully inclined to rely on credible theories and deliberate about their every move".

"Contrary to what many people think, we cannot equate rationality with success and nonrationality with failure. Rationality is not about outcomes. Rational actors often fail to achieve their goals, not because of foolish thinking but because of factors they can neither anticipate nor control.

There is also a powerful tendency to equate rationality with morality since both qualities are thought to be features of enlightened thinking. But that too is a mistake. Rational policies can violate widely accepted standards of conduct and may even be murderously unjust".

"rational actor assumption, which has long been a fundamental building block for understanding world politics even if it has recently come under assault.

If non-rationality is the norm, state behavior can be neither understood nor predicted, and studying international politics is a futile endeavor".

Nature of international politics

"international politics is an information-deficient enterprise; much of the data policymakers require to make decisions is lacking, and what information does exist may not be reliable. Policymakers confront information deficits about their own state, about other states—both friends and enemies—and about potential interactions between their state and others. These problems, all intractable in the present, are even more daunting when one tries to anticipate the future".

There is "Uncertainty Writ Large" in international relations. Yet, states do their best to take rational decisions.

"It should be apparent that policymakers routinely confront serious information deficits when formulating grand strategy or managing a crisis".

"They could not fully grasp the situation facing them, nor could they know where their decisions would lead. Even in retrospect, with many additional facts at their disposal, scholars still do not agree about significant aspects of past decisions".

The authors give examples of rationality in international policy decisions such as Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor and Cuban Missile Crisis.

Strategic rationality

"Strategic rationality in international politics is all about how policymakers and states make sense of their situation and decide the way forward in an uncertain world".

"America’s foreign policy since the Cold War has relied on the same theories that populate academia. The United States adopted a policy of liberal hegemony after the superpower competition ended and the world became unipolar.

That policy was based on the 'big three' liberal theories of international relations: liberal institutionalism, economic interdependence theory, and democratic peace theory. Its aim was to expand membership in the international institutions that were created in the West during the Cold War, foster an open world economy, and spread democracy around the globe, all in the belief that such measures would create a safer and more prosperous world".

"If a theory suggests that a certain outcome has a 70 percent chance of occurring, it means the theory holds that that outcome will not happen 30 percent of the time. So when a failure is observed, is it the result of a flawed model or bad luck? Either is possible; it is very difficult to determine which occurred with very small heterogeneous samples. As a result, competing theories are not easily selected out".

Results matter

"American diplomacy has focused on achieving results in particular matters, not on applying theories".

Emotions are important

Emotions are important in theories of international relations. Policy makers, leaders, and general population are emotional and their emotions have to be taken into account.

"Considerable evidence now shows that rational decision-making actually requires emotion to function properly... Specific emotions may even improve decision-making processes".

"emotions typically work hand-in-hand with reason".

"There are also cases where policymakers under extreme pressure are overwhelmed by their emotions and robbed of their critical faculties".

In these cases, the decision makers paralyzed with emotion have to be removed or isolated or managed. The authors gives several examples of Presidents, Czars, and military Generals.

"The imperative of preventing overwrought leaders from influencing the decision-making process is so powerful that other policymakers sometimes move preemptively to sideline them".

Rational policymakers

Rational policymakers must be able to rationally articulate their theory.

"Rational policymakers are homo theoreticus: they employ credible theories to make sense of the world and decide how to act in particular circumstances.

Nonrational policymakers employ noncredible theories, or no theory at all, to deal with the situations facing them".

Credible and non-credible theories

"A theory is noncredible if it commits one or more of the following errors".

"First, it rests on unrealistic assumptions... for a theory to be credible, the assumptions must be at least reasonably accurate".

"Second, a theory is noncredible if its causal story is logically inconsistent. As we have noted, minor issues are hardly fatal: theories always have some gaps, contradictions, and ambiguities. But a theory that contains a serious contradiction in its causal logic is noncredible".

"Third, theories are noncredible if there is little evidentiary support for their causal logics, overarching claims, or both".

The authors gives examples of non-credible theories: "Racial theories, accepted by many international relations scholars in the 1930s, were based on the assumption that there is a biologically rooted racial hierarchy among peoples and nations".

"These noncredible theories maintained that white people are naturally superior to people of color, whom the theorists described as 'savage peoples,' members of a 'child race,' or of 'inferior stock.' Although the assumptions behind 'scientific racism' had already been repudiated, political scientists continued to use it to account for colonial empires; in essence, racial superiority was said to lead to political superiority. This false and racist premise was also the basis for determining how to administer colonies and for justifying colonialism as a noble enterprise".

"Neoclassical realism" is another non-credible theory.

Another non-credible theory: "Audience costs theory holds that democratically elected leaders... are especially good at signaling their resolve in crises because they can make public commitments to act in particular circumstances, on which they are then obliged to follow through". In other words, democratic leaders lie in front of public, but then don’t deliver.

Mistakes are made

"Political psychologists have proposed a common explanation for the purported prevalence of nonrationality in international politics.

Their starting point is that policymakers have significant cognitive limits and cannot carry out the calculations required by the expected utility maximization formula. This being the case, they resort to mental shortcuts —analogies and heuristics—to decide how to move forward. Those rules of thumb in turn lead to biases, which is another word for conclusions that are at odds with expected utility maximization".

"Humans have limited time and brainpower. As a result, they use simple rules of thumb—heuristics—to help them make judgments... Using these heuristics causes people to make predictable errors".

"Analogies are mental shortcuts that are based on the observation of historical events. Reasoning by analogy involves assuming that if there is some similarity between a past event and a current event, then the earlier case is relevant to the present case and prescribes a course of action. Yuen Khong suggests that this phenomenon is commonplace among policymakers: “Statesmen have consistently turned to the past in dealing with the present. . . . They have invoked historical parallels when confronted with a domestic or foreign policy problem.” The canonical example is the Munich analogy, which holds that appeasing Hitler led to war in the late 1930s, and thus appeasement always leads to war".

"Policymakers use analogies and heuristics to process information because of their cognitive limits".

"Political psychologists also argue that the limits of human cognition are what lead policymakers to rely on mental shortcuts".

Rationality of Ukraine War

The authors discuss rationality of Ukraine War.

"Putin and his advisers thought in terms of straightforward balance-of-power theory, viewing the West's efforts to make Ukraine a bulwark on Russia's border as an existential threat that could not be allowed to stand. Russia’s president laid out this logic in a speech explaining his decision for war: 'With NATO's eastward expansion the situation for Russia has been becoming worse and more dangerous by the year... We cannot stay idle and passively observe these developments. This would be an absolutely irresponsible thing to do for us'. He went on to say, 'For our country, it is a matter of life and death, a matter of our historical future as a nation. This is not an exaggeration; this is a fact. It is not only a very real threat to our interests but to the very existence of our state and to its sovereignty. It is the red line which we have spoken about on numerous occasions. They have crossed it'. In short, this was a war of self- defense aimed at preventing an adverse shift in the balance of power".

"The Russian decision to invade was also the product of a deliberative process".

"Not only was Russia’s decision to invade Ukraine rational, but it was also not anomalous".

"Rational decision makers simply try to figure out the most effective strategy for dealing with other states, and as should be apparent by now, threatening or initiating violence sometimes makes sense" in international relations.


"most states are rational most of the time".

"Rational policies can violate widely accepted standards of conduct and may even be murderously unjust". Rationality is not about morality or avoiding war. International policy making is about self-interest.

International policy-making also relies on emotions. However, over-emotionalism can lead to paralysis. Policy-makers that do not understand people's emotions, and policy-makers that are too emotional, must be isolated and sidelined.

Western international relations has been driven by "'big three' liberal theories of international relations: liberal institutionalism, economic interdependence theory, and democratic peace theory".

"we cannot equate rationality with success and nonrationality with failure. Rationality is not about outcomes. Rational actors often fail to achieve their goals, not because of foolish thinking but because of factors they can neither anticipate nor control".

Mistakes are made because of limited human cognitive capacity; tendency to use heuristics, analogies, and mental shortcuts; limited information; deliberately planted false information; under-use or over-use of emotions; use of non-credible theories; luck; and other factors.

"American diplomacy has focused on achieving results in particular matters, not on applying theories". Results matter.



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