A Review of Michela Fontana's Matteo Ricci: A Jesuit in the Ming Court

Michela Fontana’s Matteo Ricci: A Jesuit in the Ming Court presents the fascinating adventures of the eponymous Jesuit and his travels to China in 1582. The award winning book is a riveting account of this crucial period in history, the age of exploration made possible by the Portuguese and Spanish being the first to circumnavigate the entire globe. It was the former who established a settlement in the Chinese territory of Macao, and hence launched an important phase of extensive interactions with this ancient civilization, a country which, for many Europeans, was wrapped in mystery and intrigue, in part because by then most European intellectuals had either read, or were familiar with, Marco Polo’s account of the Middle Kingdom published over 3 centuries prior.

 

The Jesuits had a mission to spread the faith around the world, and their approach to accomplishing this was to transmit Western knowledge and science, which by then had significantly advanced as evidenced by many breakthrough inventions including microscopes, clocks, maps, and other instruments of measurement. It was partly for this reason that the Jesuit order stressed the importance of secular and scientific knowledge and education alongside theology. Membership required rigorous and extensive training and Jesuits, as a result, were composed only of the brightest and talented individuals. A small portion of Jesuits took on the arduous task of travelling to far away places in the Americas and Asia to carry out their mission, and here, too, only the extraordinary were selected. Travelling to Asia, for example, required six months by ship, and 25% of ships and their passengers were lost either to bad weather, pirates, or sickness. Moreover, they had to leave their relatively comfortable lives in Europe forever, and therefore had to abandon the attachments of friends and family to live in strange lands where they would be exposed to violence, pathogens, and other life threatening challenges. Consequently, many died relatively young, including the Jesuit who is the focus of this blogpost.

 

Thus, only the most talented, committed, and physically fit members were suitable for the mission to Asia, and Matteo Ricci fit this profile. Given his talents, he could have remained in Europe and prospered in any field (most likely in his case, academia), while enjoying the comforts of living in Rome, Milan, or Paris, but he decided to renounce this and take the risky voyage to China with the knowledge that he would never return. This in itself makes Ricci an extraordinary character, but his adventures in China were even more remarkable as they would end up changing the history of China, Europe, and their relations with each other. He not only successfully converted many Chinese, he also brought Western science and knowledge. Throughout, he mastered the language and developed a deep affection for China, which was reciprocated by the Chinese, who were very fond of Li Madou (Ricci’s Chinese name) and who continue to celebrate him in the present era. This blogpost will highlight Ricci’s adventures in the Middle Kingdom as recounted in Fontana’s superbly written text. Additionally, an effort will be made to relate Ricci’s story to the present state of China and its relations with the outside world.

 

The Silk Road

 

The geographical space we now call Europe had extensive trade ties with China during antiquity. Via the ancient Silk Road, elite Romans were able to purchase luxuries from the far East especially silk, porcelain, and tea, while the Chinese purchased horses, honey, and wine from the Romans. Given the distances, however, direct contact was rare or perhaps non-existent, as a round trip took 18 months, and it was middle men, usually Persian, Turkish or Arab traders, who transported the goods in both directions. Nonetheless, Rome and China were aware of each other, as evidenced by the names in their respective languages (“Sinae” and “Daqin”). This mainly economic interaction survived many upheavals, until it was permanently closed by the Ottoman conquests of Constantinople in 1453, giving them a monopoly on trade with China.

 

Marco Polo’s travels represent the next important phase in Europe’s relations with China. He travelled there with his father and brother in 1271 mainly looking for trading opportunities. At the time, China and large parts of Eurasia were ruled by the Mongol empire, and Marco Polo travelled to their territories and lived there for 24 years, and was even made an official by Mongol Emperor Kublai Khan. When he returned to Italy, he recounted his story which was published in 1300 and which circulated widely, helping to fuel Europe’s enduring curiosity about China.

 

The Portuguese established a settlement in Macao in 1557 and from there helped to launch evangelization missions across Asia. China, for many, was the main prize, in part because of its size and in part because it by then had a very advanced civilization. Rome was recruiting members who could help to carry out this mission, and Matteo Ricci volunteered.

 

He arrived on 1582, and the first task was to study Mandarin. By then he already spoke Latin, Italian, Hebrew, and Greek, but this did not prepare him for the difficulty of learning Chinese in part because it has a completely different writing system, and at the time, there was no pinyin—the phonetic spelling of Chinese using the Roman alphabet—to assist in the endeavour. Despite the difficulty, within a year he could speak without an interpretor, and after three years, his Chinese was sufficient to carry out his duties as a Jesuit priest—carry out the Catholic mass, evangelization, and communication, written and oral, with local parishioners and officials.

 

He would eventually master the language, such that he was able to write and publish widely books entirely in Chinese, such as The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven, that presented Christian thought and Western philosophy. He also translated important books to Chinese including Euclid’s The Elements, which introduced Western geometry.  These textual and literary accomplishments represent a major advance in China-Europe relations, in part because they greatly facilitated the transmission of knowledge. A mastery of language led to an in-depth knowledge of China, making Matteo Ricci history’s first Sinologist. And it is here where Fontana’s text really fires up the imagination, as Ricci’s observations allow us to better compare the similarities and differences between Europe’s and China’s respective civilizations.

 

One difficulty encountered by Ricci was convincing locals about the existence of the Christian diety, which was personal, monotheistic, generative, a perfectly loving and just lawgiver. Such a conception required several ontological assumptions which were absent in China’s civilization; if nature was characterized with decay and death, while God was not, the latter had to be in a sense separate from nature even though he created it. And the monotheistic element required the belief that all other deities were false. In the Chinese conception of the cosmos, there was no clear separation between nature and the spirit world. The various aspects of nature— the heavens, seasons, etc—were divine, and this conception influenced how society was organized. The emperor, for example, was also called the son of heaven and represented, among other things, the link between the people and the cosmos. Partly for this reason, one of his major duties was to calculate the major dates on the calendar.

 

In Europe at the time, ordinary people and the elite—i.e., the nobility and aristocracy—shared the same religion. In China, in contrast, the elite were most Confucian, which was more a philosophy about how to live and govern well than a religion. The masses, meanwhile, believed in various divinities, mainly Bhuddist but also Taoist. China, therefore, was polytheist, and different religions had co-existed for thousands of years. Existing religions erected statues of the various divinities and worshipped them. For Ricci, this was idolatrous, and convincing them of this, and that there existed a single invisible God who loved them, and with whom they would be reunited after death, represented a radical rupture from existing beliefs.

 

For Ricci as for other Catholics, Jesus was God incarnate, and the crucified Christ provided an image which helped to give flesh to the narrative about the relationship between humans and the divine. But for the Jesuits, it was science which provided the basis for the faith, as it revealed a universe governed by precise laws and regularities which implied a kind of intelligent law giver. Western science showed the law of cause and effect, and if such a pattern occurred chronologically, there needed to be a First Cause, given that it would be illogical to posit retrospectively an infinity of causes. Many elite Chinese were convinced by these explanations and converted, yet the pace of conversions was relatively slow compared to elsewhere in Asia, in part because of the incompatibility of some local practices.

 

For example,  polygamy was a common practice especially among the elite. Ricci discovered that many had concubines. When Ricci told them that such as practice was forbidden among Catholics, and that sexual relations were only permitted among married and monogamous couples, many balked about the necessity of denying themselves a custom that few every questioned. A Jesuit in the Ming Court tells the story of the scholar-bureacrat Li Zhizao, who had to grapple with this dilemma. Like other Chinese literati, he was fascinated by Ricci’s scientific knowledge, and especially by the predictive accuracy of his calculations which contrasted with the erroneous ones of locals; for Zhizao, this was proof that Ricci’s religion represented truth. But he had a mistress with whom he enjoyed the pleasures of the flesh, and giving her up while committing exclusively to his wife and the mother his children seemed like an unreasonable sacrifice. Many other Chinese undoubtedly struggled to resolve the conundrum, and many likely were unwilling to convert precisely for this reason. A similar situation occurred half a century after Ricci’s travels at the highest level of the Chinese state. Emperor Zhu Youlang, whose mother and sister had converted to Christianity, refused to baptism because of the prohibition on polygamy.

 

Another local characteristic Ricci had to contend with was the tendency of Chinese to consult astrologers and fortune tellers. For Catholics, this practice is forbidden in part because a core feature of the faith is that humans’ destiny is determined by the choices they make—their commitment to God, church, family, and virtuous living. Fortune tellers, for Ricci, denied the importance of human agency, and its popularity was the consequence of the fear of death which resulted from the absence of the concept of heaven; for the Chinese, death meant nothingness, and this motivated their desire to avoid it as long as possible. Fortune tellers, many Chinese believed, possessed knowledge that could help them in this regard, who in turn exploited this fear by charging fees for telling them what they wanted to hear. This tendency to be susceptible to quackery because of the wish to avoid death existed at the highest levels of society: emperors throughout China’s history, for example, paid handsome amounts of money to alchemists in their pursuit of elixirs of immortality. Ricci observed the huge market for these kinds of services and made great efforts to convince the Chinese that it was a complete waste of money, rooted in irrational fears. And he practiced what he preached, as he himself had no fear of death; this was another factor that greatly impressed locals and undoubtedly led to some conversions.

 

Ricci’s interactions with government officials allowed him to observe and understand the political system in China, and this too is a fascinating part of A Jesuit in the Ming Court. The most salient aspect he discovered was the influence of the Confucian governing philosophy, which emphasized the importance of virtue and merit as the basis of governing. This belief was manifest in the annual ritual of the imperial examinations, where Chinese across the country from all social classes competed to obtain high scores on exams which tested their knowledge of Confucius, plus poetry, history, and public administration. The best performers would be selected as government officials in the highest echelons of the administration, an outcome which promised status, income, and security. Competition was therefore fierce and students spent immense amounts of time, and families spent large amounts of money, to prepare for this exam which helped ensure that only the most talented governed the various parts of the country. This practice still exists 400 years later in the form of the gaokao, showing that, despite the many changes in regime during that period (monarchy, liberal republic, socialist republic, empire, nation, etc) there is a continuity which speaks to some enduring aspects of the civilization encountered by Ricci.

 

Another feature encountered by Ricci which has endured to the present is political centralization. The Europe that Ricci left had a fragmented political system governed by many different independent political entities, as after the collapse of Rome the continent remained mostly divided. China, comparable in size and even ethnic diversity, had unified under a single emperor in 221 BC, and when Ricci arrived, had a single emperor who ruled all its territories. From antiquity to the period of Ricci’s arrival, the state had collapsed at least 6 times, but seemed to have always reconstituted itself so that power once again became centralized in the capital. Of course, such a pattern is observable in the present era even though the reigning form of political organization—nation, republic, socialism—is very different from previous regimes. This too provides evidence of a kind of civilizational DNA which transcends history’s political upheavals.

 

The Europe that Ricci left behind was very violent, something recognized by Ricci himself. Street brawls were a common occurrence, many walked in public fully armed, and there were wars of conquest on the continent and beyond. Perhaps in part from the Roman legacy and from the medieval honour system, war and violence were important elements of politics and hence philosophy. In China, Ricci discovered the reigning philosophy—Confucianism—had little to say about military strategy or defense, and emphasized the importance of virtue, harmony, and stability. Public violence was rare, and locals were never armed. Although the Chinese had invented gun powder, they had little interest in wars of conquest or in colonization. Contemporary China, again, displays the same pattern. The last war fought by this great power was in 1979 against Vietnam, whereas its peers—for example the US and Russia—have in the past 40 years fought multiple wars. Moreover, the latter two countries are relatively violent, with high homicide rates, while in China murder is relatively rare, and in fact it is one of the most secure countries in the world.

 

This centralization of political power entailed a specific form of governing, derived from Confucianism, which emphasized the importance of social harmony. And it was this which provided the criteria for determining whether foreign ideas and activities were allowed to operate in the country. The Jesuits received permission to evangelize mainly because Chinese officials, including the emperor, were deeply impressed by their scientific knowledge, which, they correctly concluded, offered an opportunity for learning which could enrich and strengthen the empire. A Jesuit in the Ming Court recounts how some local officials deemed the religious aspect to be a threat to domestic stability, but when a decision on the question had to be made by the highest political authority in the capital, it was observed how the Catholic faith was conducive to harmony and stability. One reason is that Confucianism was wholly compatible with Catholicism, especially the emphasis on virtue, community service, and self improvement.

 

Since then, with some brief interruptions, Catholicism has been an officially recognized religion. There are now approximately 10 million Catholics in the country who can practice their faith without molestation. This reveals another enduring tendency in Chinese governance: religions require official permission to operate and this is granted only if they are deemed to be consistent with stability and harmony. Partly for this reason, many protestant sects—such as Christian Zionism, or the prosperity gospel, or Jehovah’s Witnesses, to name a few—would not be granted permission to operate as they all contain beliefs which are not religious as such.

 

The ultimate purpose of Ricci’s travels was to convert China to Catholicism. On this measure, he perhaps did not achieve his objectives, as during his 27 years of evangelization, Fontana calculates that maybe 2500 conversions occurred.  Nonetheless, Ricci and the Jesuits left an enduring legacy which remains to the present day. In China, he is referred to affectionately with his Chinese name, Li Madou, and is celebrated by the highest authorities, as is Marco Polo, with statues, monuments, and by being part of educational curriculum, such that most Chinese, even ordinary ones, are familiar with his story. His mastery of the language and even culture in some ways made him an honorary Chinese; in the words of Ricci’s contemporary Guo Qinluo, “Li Madou has lived in the Middle Kingdom for a long time. He is no longer a foreigner but Chinese, as he belongs to China”. One sees his legacy in the beautiful cathedral in Shanghai, built by French Jesuits between 1905-1910, and in the Jesuit library which preserves their texts and documents.

 

Ricci’s adventures also helped to fuel Europe’s enduring fascination with China and even the tendency of Sinophilia observable among some intellectuals. In the 400 years since, relations between China and Europe have been characterized with oscillations of opening and closing, cooperation and conflict. In the most recent phase of interaction, which can be dated from China’s opening in 1978 to the present, relations have flourished as measured by the amount of trade and travel between the two continents. Moreover, the opening of over 200 Confucian institutes across Europe highlights the two-way direction of cultural transmission which, despite some tensions and setbacks, continues to be highly enriching for both.

A Review of Kenneth Waltz's "Man, State, and War"

During the academic year 2024-2025, a colleague requested that I lead a seminar for PhD students, one that  would be organized around a key text considered to be a classic in the field. He sent me a list of potential books, and I selected Kenneth Waltz’s Man, State, and War. His works are required reading around the world for majors in international relations, and in my career as a teacher of the discipline I have assigned his works when discussing questions of war and peace, so that students may learn the particular answers provided by the school of thought commonly known as ‘realpolitik’ or simply ‘realism’. With wars raging in Europe and the Middle East, the question of why wars occur has become pressing. Science, in my view, cannot provide a definitive answer, but theories which aim to explain war can help to sharpen our thinking, assist in considering plausible explanations, and establish the parameters of testing our arguments in the light of evidence in the form of observable events, facts, patterns, or tendencies.

Man, State, and War is very helpful for this endeavour. Unlike most scholarship, which usually and understandably interrogates narrow or niche nodes of inquiry, the text aims to answer one of the big questions of human affairs, which can be pithily summarized as “Why War”? Or, more specifically, why do wars persist throughout history despite very different epochs, cultures, economic and political structures? Man, State and War provides an answer which itself was not original but which—and here is the novelty and value of the text—is expressed in a very accessible form, in a way which provokes fruitful thought and generative discussion.

 The reason for the recurrence of war, argues Waltz, is that the overarching system of international relations is anarchical in the sense that there are no authorities above the state which can peacefully resolve conflict the way, say, a court or legislature can do domestically. Consequently, states must rely on themselves for dispute resolution, and in the absence of an overarching political or legal structure with legitimate coercive power, it is their strength—in the form of economic and military power—which will determine the outcome. The incentive for states, then, is to maximize power, and since all are behaving this way, there is a constant struggle for supremacy which often breaks out in war.

 One reason for the argument’s importance is that it challenges other explanations, such as a corrupted human nature or the notion of “bad” states, which most believed before Waltz’s text and perhaps still do. In part because of the way the argument is presented, and in part because it challenges widely held views on the reasons for war, the text has become a classic, meaning it has value that transcends the period in which it was written (mid-1950s), and had a significant influence on later writers in a way that makes it required reading for understanding the history of thought.

 The first time I read parts of the text was during my MA and PhD studies between 2007-2013, and I closely re-read the text in its entirety in the Spring of 2025 to help ensure fruitful discussions during the seminar. Re-reading the text after so many years and the accumulation of knowledge and experience allowed, I think, for a more in-depth interpretation of Man, State, and War. This blogpost will present my analysis of the text’s main contributions to our understanding of war and peace, while making connections to the wars currently raging in Ukraine and the Middle East.

 Commonly held—and wrong—explanations for war

 Most people most of the time perhaps do not theorize the question of war for any number of reasons. One may be that for some, war is a just a part of human affairs, similar to other social practises, and hence there is little need for explanation anymore than we need to explain why, for example, we eat, sleep, poop, marry, and reproduce. Others take this supposed natural tendency as their starting point in attempting to explain war, and in fact classical thinkers have linked war to features of human nature which predispose man to violence. Man, State and War cites thinkers as diverse as Confucius, Saint Augustine, and Niebuhr who observe some intrinsic defects, moral or cognitive, which prevent groups from peacefully and rationally resolving their differences. For Christian thinkers, this was ultimately the result of man’s original sin, which came from Adam’s disobedience and desire to become a god himself. More secular thinkers writing in the 20th century, such as Henry Morgenthau, discarded the religious content but maintained the form of a defective human nature which he called animus dominandi, or the desire/wilfulness to dominate.

 The chief critique of this argument in Man, State and War is that human nature is too imprecise a variable. Human nature is related to everything, including, importantly, peace, and so if it is the cause of war, it must also be the cause of the absence of war. Intellectually this does not take us very far, because over-explanations by definition are hard to test or refute. If we want to explain why, for example, WW1 occurred, and we posit human nature as the explanation, and can say the same for why the war ended, we are not in fact providing an explanation for the war that can be challenged with other arguments (such as German militarism, or British and French colonial supremacy, etc).

 Another widely held explanation is that it is the character of the state which generates war. This explanation is indissoluble from the modern state system which emerged in the 17th century, and the birth of two ideologies—liberalism and socialism—in the 18th and 19th centuries. The latter ideologies not only provided ideals around which states and societies should be organized, they also attempted to explain many social institutions, including war. For liberals, the main cause of war was non-liberal states, by which they meant monarchy, mercantilist, or other political forms which did operate on the basis of their understanding of liberal democracy, which includes enshrining the right to property, and votes in multiparty elections. Most people most of the time want to better their economic condition, and it is they who mostly pay the price of war; it follows that if citizens have a say, they will vote against war. Ergo, wars occur because small unrepresentative political authorities such as monarchies want to gain glory or territory. It follows that if all countries became liberal democracies, war would disappear from human affairs.

 Waltz also shows how implausible this. To say that war would disappear if all countries were liberal democracies is tantamount to say we would stop fighting if we all agreed on the fundamentals of life; in this sense, in form it is little different from saying war would end if we were all Muslims, Christians, or Bhuddists. This may or may not be true, but it is trivial, speculative, utopian, and hence does not conform to the rigours of scientific investigation. Moreover, the core belief that liberal democracies are more peaceful than monarchies does not stand up to scrutiny. Man, State, and War cites England’s Glorious Revolution in 1688, which many liberals see as a key historical turning point. Waltz shows how England subsequently became more entangled in the affairs of other nations and hence more prone to war. The reason is that a change in the regime led to a change in the nature of warfare. Under monarchy, wars were fought mainly by mercenaries and for limited objectives; consequently the damage was often minimal. Liberal states, in contrast, justify war on the basis of ideals, and in this sense was similar to a religious crusade. Wars become, as a consequence, more frequent and destructive.

 The ideological elements of socialism—critical of private property and markets—differ significantly from liberalism, but for our purposes they have more in common than they like to admit. Both are products of the 18th and 19th centuries, are utopian, and teological. Both also derive from their ideology explanations of war, and blame small coteries of unrepresentative elites who act on the basis of selfish or narrow interests. While for liberals it is monarchies or authoritarians, for socialists it private capital who profit from war and are able to use their influence to capture the state apparatus. If capitalism is the cause of war, the solution is for all countries to adopt socialism. Here we encounter the same trivial observation made by liberals, mainly, if we were all the same, we would not fight. Waltz also cites evidence from WW1 to show the failure of this theory’s predictions. As war fever was heating up, socialists across Europe shared the above-mentioned explanation. Representatives of workers, who were the majority, were determined to not participate unless the war was “defensive”. As fighting became inevitable, workers and socialists almost invariably sided with their nations rather than with workers in neighbouring countries, and when fighting began, almost all of them contributed to their nation’s efforts on the ground that it was “defensive”. Thus, when push came to shove, loyalty to the nation trumped any socialist convictions about the reasons for the war.

 The reason both of the main explanations mentioned above—human nature, and the structure of the state—fail, says Waltz, is that they do not take into account the structure of the international system. To help readers understand on a deep level how this system works, Man, State and War relies especially on the thought of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and particularly the stag hunt parable. Imagine 5 starving men go hunting for a stag, and that success requires their combined efforts. During the hunt, one man sees a rabbit, if he kills and eats it he will satisfy his own hunger and improve chances of survival, but this will undermine the interests of the group. If he refuses because of an ironclad commitment to the group, he risks missing this opportunity and starving to death. Which option does he take? According to the parable, taking the former option places him in a state of war with his fellows, and this will occur frequently. In a state of anarchy, there is no system to punish that individual for betraying the interests of the group.

 The point of the intellectual exercise is to highlight several features of anarchy. One is that self-interest will trump the collective interest especially when valuable resources are in play. Second is that under anarchy one cannot rely on others because the threat of defection is very high. Third, self-reliance creates competition for scarce resources, and when inevitable disputes occur, they are resolved through force not law or morality. Fourth, if power determines outcomes, intentions or the character of states does not matter. Rather, coercive power—economic and military capability—is determinative. Consequently, states may feel threatened by the relative not absolute capabilities of their rivals. From this emerges the balance of power, a feature that is structural and cannot be wished away.

 From this perspective, wars occur relatively frequently because there is nothing to stop them. The immediate causes are usually the kinds of common disputes which arise because men want things, not because they are devils, but it is anarchy which ultimately turns these disputes into war. For Waltz, this explanation is neither moral nor immoral, it is amoral, similar to a fact of nature. Does this mean that the utopian desire for eternal peace is a pipe dream? Most likely war can never be abolished, but its outbreak can be mitigated via a judicious adjustment of the balance of power. According to the theory presented in Man, State, and War, a major cause of the outbreak of war is the security dilemma, which occurs when one state threatens others because of its asymmetric capabilities. Excessively powerful states feel less obliged to avoid war because weaker states cannot retaliate in a way that imposes severe costs. At the same time, if states increase their relative power too rapidly, weaker states may be inclined to strike before it is too late, leading to the outbreak of war. In contrast, a stable balance of power creates mutual deterrence, whereby states know that they will pay a high price if they attack, making them more reluctant to fight and more likely to negotiate a peaceful settlement of the dispute. In latter works, Waltz uses this framework to explain why the Cold War did not break out in direct fighting between the USA and the USSR: they were relatively militarily balanced, especially because of the possession of nuclear weapons, and this imposed restraint and hence peace.

 This places a responsibility on all states to maintain a relatively stable and equal balance of power, despite the inevitable inequalities among them. Powerful states must avoid provoking their rivals by engaging in action which makes their capabilities overwhelmingly preponderate and therefore threatening. Weaker states, meanwhile, must also resist the temptation to surpass other states in terms of coercive power. Achieving this when only conventional military forces are involved is very hard in part because of the high degree of uncertainty, but nuclear weapons can alter calculations in a way conducive to peace, as they are relatively equal in their destructive capacity, and leave little room for uncertainty. Consequently, states which possess them have a de facto equality of power. For this reason, many realists have defended the counter-intuitive position that allowing states to develop these weapons is conducive to peace not war.

 During the seminar, students and I discussed some of the problems with this explanation. Regarding the Cold War, it was rightly pointed out that, although there was no direct conflict between the USA and the USSR, they fought indirectly—in Korea or Vietnam—which led to millions of deaths. Thus, rather than preventing war, relative parity between the two superpowers only served to redirect it in other directions, and in ways that were very destructive for other countries. Moreover, the emphasis on power inequalities in the context of an anarchical system does not explain why, for example, two unequal states like the US and Canada, or China and Singapore, can have very peaceful relations.

 We can now attempt to see the practical and contemporary value of the arguments presented in Man, State, and War via a consideration of two conflicts raging at the time of writing, in Ukraine and Middle East. Regarding the former, realists almost universally blame Western countries, and in particular their attempt to expand NATO, on the grounds that it destabilized the balance of power. NATO is a military organization controlled by the US, and members states have offensive military hardware controlled by the Washington on their territories. American statesmen such as George F. Kennan knew that this would antagonize Russia, for this reason Secretary of State James Baker assured Russian leaders that NATO would not expand. This promise was not kept, triggering hostilities. Those who blame Putin or Russian imperialism are relying, consciously or not, on the “bad states” argument presented above, which assumes, of course, that the US and its European partners are “good” states. They neglect to consider that if, for example, Mexico were to join a military bloc controlled by Beijing, military action from Washington would be inevitable. The solution, then, is for Western countries to renounce their goal of Ukraine’s membership in NATO. Under the presidency of Donald Trump, the US has already done this, and major European countries will eventually have to accept the same terms.

 The war between Israel and Iran is perhaps more complicated. The former launched the war to prevent the latter from obtaining a nuclear weapon, yet from the perspective of Waltz’s arguments, had Iran possessed such a weapon, the war would not have happened. Many Israelis and their backers say a nuclear Iran poses an existential threat, but the text under discussion leads to other conclusions, namely, that it would be conducive to peace because of the effects of deterrence. A nuclear Iran could not use the weapon against Israel because it knows that Israel’s counter-attack with nuclear weapons would destroy Iran. Many Israelis might reply that the logic of deterrence doesn’t work because Iran led by suicidal Islamists. This is said despite the fact that Iran has all the trappings of a modern state—clearly defined territories, citizens and responsibilities towards them and towards its neighbours. Therefore, Iran, like all other states, would not risk its own survival. It follows that the logic of deterrence would be just as effective between Israel and Iran as, say, between the nuclear armed Pakistan and India. In the latter case, you also have one side with an Islamic government, but there is no evidence that this has altered its calculations on the potential use of nuclear weapons. In fact, a case can be made that, although fighting has broken out between India and Pakistan, it has always almost always quickly resolved in part because both sides want to avoid the existential risk of nuclear confrontation.