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Talk:John Mearsheimer/Archives/2024/July

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Latest comment: 3 months ago by Defenestrator12 in topic Night Watchman


Deletion of bibliography

Latest comment: 4 months ago24 comments4 people in discussion

@Hipal you just deleted the entire Article section of the bibliography @Walter Tau wrote. It was an uncritical deletion on the grounds of "poor sources" (per your edit summary). Bibliographies don't actually need <ref>{{cite X}}</ref> citations because they are self-sourced. If you want to weed out the magazine and newspaper articles, go ahead. Many of the entries are scientific articles published in peer-reviewed journals. If you want to introduce reviews of those works, it is standard practice to indent such annotations following the entry itself. Ivan (talk) 21:03, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for starting a discussion.
Wikipedia articles are not resumes. Some articles may be noteworthy, but we need some criteria for what we include. --Hipal (talk) 01:57, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
We need some criteria for what we include. Then please go back and prune the bibliography section rather than deleting the entire section. Neither I nor Walter are John Mearsheimer, therefore the self-promotion section of the policy you referenced in your edit summary does not apply. Mearsheimer is notable for his academic (and other) positions. Unfortunately, the guidelines at BLP actually don't cover bibliographies, but it is established practice to allow even extensive bibliographies for academics even of significantly less notability than the present subject.
The difference between a CV and the type of bibliography typically allowed on the English Wikipedia is that a CV usually includes unpublished works (such as presentations at conferences) and unauthored works (such as works edited). There probably isn't even justification to remove newspaper and magazine articles from the bibliography. A number of very inclusive bibliography articles have passed relatively rigorous evaluation to acheive high ratings. Dan Savage bibliography and William Gibson bibliography both reached FA status, and more that reached GA status. There are GA status biographies of living academics with an internal bibliography that features magazine and newspaper articles, such as Brian Josephson or Sean B. Carroll. Or even works edited, such as John B. Cobb or Carlos Mesa. All above examples are bibliographies of living persons. In bibliographies within articles, it is ofte the case that bibliographies will be tagged for being incomplete than for being too comprehensive. Even bibliographies including magazine and newspaper publications. See Atul Gawande for an example that reached GA status. Again an academic, again a BLP.
Many biographies with academic bibliographies that include journal articles have reached FA status (i.e. Martin Rundkvist) or GA status (i.e. Elizabeth Warren, Christine Blasey Ford, Elena Kagan, Sunil Kumar Verma, Robert C. Michelson, Emmanuël Sérusiaux, Ikuhiko Hata, Ralph Larkin, Gerald Fischbach, Barbara Rae-Venter, Daire Keogh, Bette Korber, Michael Kremer). Some are more exhaustive than others. If the bibliography grows too long, it is split. That was the case with Noam Chomsky bibliography and filmography, Richard Dawkins bibliography and too many others to list here. All examples cited in this paragraph are biographies of living persons.
If you accept my arguments, please self-revert. If you do not, show me concrete evidence from policy pages to justify deleting his entire journal output from the article. If we cannot agree, you can open an RFC. I don't revert-war. Ivan (talk) 04:05, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
You're aware of WP:OSE? Identifying other articles is a waste of time. If you can find discussions about bibliographies, especially RfCs and noticeboard discussions, those would be helpful. You'll find that I've been involved in many of them.
You've suggested some initial criteria, weed out the magazine and newspaper articles. That seems a good start. --Hipal (talk) 16:46, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
Yes, I am aware of WP:OTHERCONTENT. But since you have failed to produce an RFC that clearly backs up your indiscriminate deletion and have now indicated that journal articles should be kept (and therefore that you were overly zealous), I am going to take the persistence of such bibliographies in GA and FA class BLP articles as a sign that an RFC applicable to this case does not exist (BLP, academic bibliography, no WP:COISELF editors). The burden of proof is not on Walter, nor on myself (originally a third party). If you are sincere, please revert your edit as a sign that you intend to respect even a pruned bibliography. Given your recent reversion-heavy approach with several of my recent, unrelated edits, I have no indication yet that further engagement with you would be worth my time. Ivan (talk) 17:48, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
The burden of evidence rests with the editor who adds or restores the material. - WP:BLP.
have now indicated that journal articles should be kept No I have not. Please strike the misrepresentation. --Hipal (talk) 01:36, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
The burden of evidence rests with the editor who adds or restores the material. Since you have not disputed the factual correctness or neutrality of the bibliography, I do not interpret this qualification in the must be written conservatively and with regard for the subject's privacy paragraph as applicable. You have cited multiple broad policies of tangental relevance to bibliographies in biographies of living persons, but have yet to produce clear justification from existing policy to justify your deletion. So I have called for an independent assessment. Ivan (talk) 01:52, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
  Response to third opinion request:
The section is way too long and needs to be trimmed. I would settle on notable works. If something has received significant coverage from WP:RS then it can be included, but y'all may have different ideas on how to prune it. Thanks! Nemov (talk) 02:55, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
Thanks.
I don't believe there is any general consensus on how to determine what to include. High citation counts or emphasis in historical accounts are two waysis a way to get find most if not all of the very best articles to include. --Hipal (talk) 17:01, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
I'm rewriting the bibliography right now. I will post the result to this talk page with citation counts and then we can vote on the inclusion of individual entries in the article with a   after each entry the user believes should be included. The rest will not be included in the John Mearsheimer article. The subject of the article is more prominent than I had realised, so you may have to wait several hours. Ivan (talk) 17:22, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
What, exactly, is the criteria for inclusion you are proposing?
I'm always wary when I see citation counts mentioned in these kinds of discussions. Citations counts are not inherently reliable without context, and that context comes from reliable, independent sources. For one thing, citation counts do not exclude unreliable sources, and trivial passing cites are given the same weight as substantial commentary. Further, such counts are often just flat-out wrong, as well. (I've repeatedly found examples which implied a work was cited many years before it was written). Grayfell (talk) 18:46, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
The intended section title is "Selected works" or "Selected publications" and I'm only here to rescue a bibliography. Yes, citation counts are usually overestimated. Duplicates are the main cause. I am only including citation counts because Hipal wants them, and since he wants them I will provide my own heavily curated (reduced) counts for his benefit. Whatever he includes, I will include (I don't expect him to be generous). I am actually writing an annotated bibliography, which I may publish as a standalone article. Basically, every review or significant treatment published in an allowed source, with summary of perspectives and references. If it grows too long, I condense views into camps using {{unbulleted list citebundle}} unless an individual review is notable enough to be included separately. Mearsheimer's works have already generated several standalone articles and a few more could probably be written, but they are outside my scope as an editor. Ivan (talk) 19:39, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
Forget the citation counts. Thanks, Grayfell! --Hipal (talk) 21:16, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
While I appreciate the intention here, as this is very much part of Wikipedia's mission as an encyclopedia, there is a high risk of original research and editorializing with such things. Ideally we avoid requiring individual editors to be generous or to heavily curate such things, but obviously, this is unavoidable to some extent. Grayfell (talk) 21:59, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
Annotated bibliographies are a well-established genre of Wikipedia. But there is a difference between an annotated bibliography on Wikipedia and an annotated bibliography on a website like Oxford Bibliographies. The latter hires researchers specialising in their field to write their entries. Wikipedia has no expert verification system, so it requires the citation of expert sources. See Bibliography of fly fishing for such an example that covers multiple types of annotation. This being a "bibliography of living persons" and with my tendency to adhere to stricter standards of neutrality relative to the project as a whole at least inasfar as BLP and WikiNews/ITN heavy editors are concerned, I will welcome any criticism of individual annotations on NPOV grounds. But like you said, such articles are very much part of Wikipedia's mission as an encyclopedia. I have been editing regularly for just over a decade now, first as an IP then under the username Inatan then under an IP again. My focus on bibliographies and other less controversial topics has resulted in some embarassing lacunae in my understanding of many aspects of the bureaucracy, but I run into other editors with almost no understanding of bibliographies with equal frequency. Not a reference to you, Hipal: I do mean almost no understanding. The only reason I have a username at all is because no one seems to think twice when they see an IP. Thank you all for your concern. Ivan (talk) 00:15, 15 June 2024 (UTC)
Hopefully, all involved editors will agree that it doesn't necessarily matter how experienced any one of us is, because we cannot rely solely on any individual editor's personal expertise to decide what is and what is not neutral. To be honest, bringing up your own editing history seems to undermine this point, as do some of your prior confrontational comments. Regardless, this is a biography of a living and controversial person, so this kind of scrutiny should not come as a surprise to any experienced editor. Grayfell (talk) 02:04, 15 June 2024 (UTC)
I did not mean for it to come across as an appeal to experience. I noticed policies were being cited without reference to concrete sections and became worried this might be because you thought I was a new editor, unfamiliar with policy. What is helpful to newer editors is lazy to older ones. I have no excuse for my confrontational attitude, and apologise to the human beings behind both of your usernames. The human behind this account was editing multiple very technical articles at the time, which is already enough to make one irritable. As for the bold deletionist approach led to this talk page dispute, I do have have an aplogy. It would have been scrutiny to remove only those sources not published in peer-reviewed journals. This is an encyclopedia. And for scientific purposes, an encyclopedia with a NOR policy is only as good as its bibliography. So it is my duty as an editor with experience in bibliographies to defend the place of a worthy if unpolished bibliography in this article. Ivan (talk) 04:01, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

@Walter Tau, @Hipal, @Grayfell. I have prepared a bibliography for the "Journal articles" section. Citation counts are temporarily included to help you grasp the amount of coverage they received in this field. Here are three representative examples together with the annotations I will provide in the standalone bibliography (but not in the main article), where all his publications will be included per WP:NLIST (not long enough for WP:LSC to apply).

  • Mearsheimer 1979. "Precision-guided munitions and conventional deterrence". Survival. 21 (2): 68–76. 1979. doi:10.1080/00396337908441802. ISSN 0039-6338. cite-37
  • Mearsheimer 1982a. "Maneuver, Mobile Defense, and the NATO Central Front". International Security. 6 (3): 104–122. 1982. doi:10.2307/2538609. ISSN 0162-2889. cite-98
    • Described by Barry Posen as "a critical discussion of the possible tactical implications of the military reformers' prescriptions for ground warfare"[6] and regarded as important though not convincing by David P. Calleo,[7] it was referenced in the first years after its publication,[8] but its first detailed critique came from Joshua M. Epstein[9] and several others in the context of the replacement of combined arms with maneuver doctrine in the United States Armed Forces around 1989[10] and in the context of NATO's tactical future after the First Cold War.[11] It has seen occasional treatments in retrospective literature since that time.[12]
  • Mearsheimer 1982b. "Why the Soviets Can't Win Quickly in Central Europe" (PDF). International Security. 7 (1): 3–39. 1982. ISSN 0162-2889. cite-219
    • Also published as a chapter of Conventional Deterrence in 1983. The context of the article was described in Matthews 1996,[13] as standing in opposition US president Ronald Reagan's strengtening of NATO forces in Europe, supported by Samuel P. Huntington[14] (who had initially reviewed Mearsheimer's article favourably)[15]: 28  and others.[16] Also relevant was the debate over whether or not the US nuclear weapons in West Germany were necessary.[17] Positively received by Posen and Evera 1983,[18]: 15  Brauch and Unterseher 1984,[19]: 195  Lübkemeier 1985,[20]: 250  Dean 1986[21] and to some extent Weinstein 1983,[22]: 22–23  and Strachan 1985[23] and Simpson 1985.[24]: 85  Its conclusions were opposed on methodological grounds by Jack Snyder[25] and with alternative models by William Kaufmann,[26] William Mako[27] and Andrew Hamilton.[28]: 125  With the exception of Corcoran 1983,[29]: 9–10  most concrete opposition did not come until three separate articles published in 1988 by Snyder,[30] by Joshua Epstein[9] and by Eliot A. Cohen,[31] building on an earlier review by Aaron Friedberg.[32] Although the reception that year was not entirely negative,[33][34]: 141 [35]: 92  most papers published in the immediate aftermath of these were critical.[36]: 535 [37] Employed favourably in some retrospective analyses.[38][39]: 3  That by Barry D. Watts, then director of the Northrop Grumman Analysis Center, relayed Cohen's criticisms.[40] The 2016 review by military Kenton White criticised it for not taking USSR and general WTO airborne capabilities[a] or their OMG concept, while following Cohen in arguing for an alternative view that the WTO might have been able to prepare a "standing start"[b] attack undetected enough for the resulting delay to allow for the WTO to potentially collapse part of the NATO front, which Mearsheimer had argued was not a danger.[43] White followed this up in more detail in 2017.[44] A less detailed critique was published by international relations professor Arash Heydarian Pashakhanlou.[45] The approach of Cohen and Kenton was in turn criticised in the overview of Tecott and Halterman, which defended Mearsheimer while warning about his "over-extrapolation" on the basis of a single scenario,[41] echoing Richard Stoll's 1990 defense of Mearsheimer's article to justify further model-based approaches.[46] But outside the context of the debate[47] and with the passage of time, the article began to see uncritical use,[48][49] especially with the successful urban defences of the Russo-Ukrainian War.[50][51]: 57  More widely read than his previous studies, it is this study along with his 1983 book that propelled him onto the academic scene as an "Optimist"[c] in their debate with the "Pessimists",[53] which has been termed the "Great Debate" in security circles,[54]: 20  in which moderate Pessimists held a majority.[55]: 38 

The credibility of NATO’s defences was analysed and discussed ... Many of the contemporary analyses looked at strategy or numbers, taking a wholesale approach, but failed to address the overall capability based on existing force structures. An example is the analysis given by Dr J Mearsheimer, which provides an example contemporary to the period. It provides a useful perspective on the difficulties inherent in assessing the credibility of defence policy from a purely academic standpoint.

— Kenton White, Credibility Analysis – Mearsheimer’s viewpoint (2016)

With the exception of Mearsheimer 1979 itself, as his first article, it seems appropriate to exclude most works with similar citation counts from the Selected works section. On the other hand, very few academics publish anything with a citation count that even approaches that of Mearsheimer 1982a. Mearsheimer 1982b deserves a section in a standalone article. Some of these articles, like The False Promise of International Institutions (2017), Back to the Future: Instability in Europe after the Cold War (2018), The Gathering Storm: China's Challenge to US Power in Asia (2010), Structural Realism (2013), China's Unpeaceful Rise (2014) and Bound to Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Liberal International Order (2019) have received more attention than some of his books, and the older ones deserve standalone articles. One could probably say the same for a number of his magazine articles, such as Why the Ukraine Crisis is the West's Fault (2014) with over 2000 citations.

If the list grows too long, the final version will be split into two columns (similar to Brian Josephson#Selected works).

Please place   next to the entries you would like to see in the Selected works section of this article.

Notes

Notes

  1. ^ Tecott and Halterman defended Mearsheimer's omission. "He omits airpower variables from his model not because he thinks these variables are irrelevant to the outcome, but because he argues that airpower would favor NATO, only strengthening his argument."[41]
  2. ^ A possibility publicised by senators Sam Nunn and Dewey F. Bartlett in a 1977 report.[42]
  3. ^ Optimistic from a NATO perspective, regarding its ability to defend in the European theatre. Not to be confused with the "Peace movement".[52]: 147 
References

References

  1. ^ Gouré, Daniel; McCormick, Gordon (1980). "Debate on precision‐guided munitions: PGM: No Panacea)". Survival. 22 (1): 15–19. doi:10.1080/00396338008441859. ISSN 0039-6338.
  2. ^ Mearsheimer, John J. (1980). "Debate on precision‐guided munitions: Rejoinder". Survival. 22 (1): 20–22. doi:10.1080/00396338008441860. ISSN 0039-6338.
  3. ^ Mandel, Robert (2004). "The Wartime Utility of Precision Versus Brute Force in Weaponry". Armed Forces and Society. 30 (2): 171–201. ISSN 0095-327X. JSTOR 48608627.
  4. ^ Blagden, David (2020-10-12). "Strategic stability and the proliferation of conventional precision strike: a (bounded) case for optimism?". The Nonproliferation Review. 27 (1–3): 123–136. ISSN 1073-6700.
  5. ^ Kahn, Lauren; Horowitz, Michael C. (2022-07-11). "Who Gets Smart? Explaining How Precision Bombs Proliferate". Journal of Conflict Resolution. 67 (1): 3–37. eISSN 1552-8766.
  6. ^ Posen, Barry R. (1985). "Measuring the European Conventional Balance: Coping with Complexity in Threat Assessment". International Security. 9 (3). ISSN 0162-2889.
  7. ^ Calleo, David Patrick (1983). "Domestic Priorities and the demands of alliance: An American perspective". The Adelphi Papers. 23 (184): 2–11. doi:10.1080/05679328308457436. ISSN 0567-932X.
  8. ^ Facer, Roger L. L. (1985). Conventional Forces and the NATO Strategy of Flexible Response. ISBN 0-8330-0623-1.
  9. ^ a b Epstein, Joshua Morris (1988). "Dynamic Analysis and the Conventional Balance in Europe". International Security. 12 (4): 154–165. doi:10.2307/2538999. ISSN 0162-2889.: 157 
  10. ^ Lauer, G. S. "Maneuver Warfare Theory and The Operational Level of War: Misguiding The Marine Corps?". Fort Leavenworth: School of Advanced Military Studies, United States Army Command and General Staff College.
  11. ^ McKeown, Alex Raymond (1990). An Analysis of the Conventional Military Balance on the European Central Front: Some Implications for NATO Strategy and Tactics (Thesis). Madison: University of Wisconsin.
  12. ^
  13. ^ Matthews, John C. III (1996). "Current Gains and Future Outcomes: When Cumulative Relative Gains Matter". International Security. 21 (1): 112–146. ISSN 0162-2889. It was thought by som analysts that NATO forces were at a good force-to-space ratio, and that cuts might jeopardize the ability of the NATO divisions to hold.
  14. ^ Huntington, Samuel Phillips (1984). "Conventional Deterrence and Conventional Retaliation in Europe". International Security. 8 (3s): 32–56. ISSN 0162-2889.
  15. ^ Huntington, Samuel Phillips (1983). "Broadening the strategic focus: Comments on Michael Howard's paper". The Adelphi Papers. 23 (184): 27–32. doi:10.1080/05679328308457439. ISSN 0567-932X.
  16. ^
  17. ^
    • Frei, Daniel (1984). Alternatives to the First Use of Nuclear Weapons. ISBN 9781003053828.
    • Garnham, David (1985). "Extending Deterrence with German Nuclear Weapons". International Security. 10 (1): 96–110. doi:10.2307/2538791. ISSN 0162-2889. Page 99.
    • Kolodziej, Edward A. (1988). "SDI, Alliance Coherence, and East—West Nuclear Stability". Rethinking the Nuclear Weapons Dilemma in Europe. Houndmills. pp. 29–58. ISBN 978-1-349-09181-2.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  18. ^ Posen, Barry R.; Van Evera, Stephen. "Defense Policy and the Reagan Administration: Departure from Containment". International Security. 8 (1): 3–45. ISSN 0162-2889. An excellent essay on the NATO conventional balance
  19. ^ Brauch, Hans Günter; Unterseher, Lutz (June 1984). "Review Essay: Getting Rid of Nuclear Weapons: A Review of a Few Proposals for a Conventional Defense of Europe". Journal of Peace Research. 21 (2): 193–199. doi:10.1177/002234338402100209. ISSN 0022-3433. The ESEC study is in line with the 'bean counting' philosophy, a force balance that only marginally takes into account qualitative aspects — contrasting what Mearsheimer has done recently in a convincing manner.
  20. ^ Lübkemeier, Eckhard (1985). "Extended Deterrence: Implications for Arms Limitation and Reduction". Bulletin of Peace Proposals. 16 (3): 249–254. doi:10.1177/096701068501600306. ISSN 0007-5035.
  21. ^ Dean, Jonathan (1986). "Assessing the Warsaw Pact Threat to NATO's Central Front". The International Spectator: Italian Journal of International Affairs. 21 (3): 26–34. doi:10.1080/03932728608456594. ISSN 0393-2729.
  22. ^ Weinstein, John M. (1983-07-15). "All Features Grate and Stall: Soviet Strategic Vulnerabilities and the Future of Deterrence" (PDF).
  23. ^ Strachan, Hew (1985). "Conventional Defence in Europe". International Affairs. 61 (1): 27–43. doi:10.2307/2619778. ISSN 1473-799X.
  24. ^ Simpson, John (1985). "New conventional weapon technologies and conventional disarmament". Arms Control. 6 (1): 82–96. doi:10.1080/01440388508403813. ISSN 0099-4561.
  25. ^ Snyder, Jack Lewis (1985). "Richness, Rigor, and Relevance in the Study of Soviet Foreign Policy". International Security. 9 (3): 89–108. doi:10.2307/2538588. ISSN 0162-2889.
  26. ^ Kaufmann, William Weed (1983). "Nonnuclear Deterrence". Alliance Security: NATO and the No-First-Use Question. pp. 88–89. ISBN 0815781180.
  27. ^ Mako, William P. (1983). U.S. Ground Forces and the Defense of Central Europe. ISBN 0815754442.
  28. ^ Hamilton, Andrew (1983). "Redressing the Conventional Balance: NATO's Reserve Military Manpower". International Security. 10 (1): 111–136. doi:10.2307/2538792. ISSN 0162-2889.
  29. ^ Corcoran, Edward A. (1983-06-01). Improving Europe's Conventional Defenss. Strategic Issues Research Memorandum.
  30. ^ Snyder, Jack Lewis (1988). "Limiting Offensive Conventional Forces: Soviet Proposals and Western Options". International Security. 12 (4): 48–77. ISSN 0162-2889.
  31. ^ Cohen, Eliot Asher (1988). "Toward Better Net Assessment: Rethinking the European Conventional Balance". International Security. 13 (1): 50–89. ISSN 0162-2889.
  32. ^ Friedberg, Aaron Louis (1988). "Review: The Assessment of Military Power: A Review Essay". International Security. 12 (3): 190–202. doi:10.2307/2538805. ISSN 0162-2889.
  33. ^ Sens, Allen Gregory (1988-08-17). NATO and the INF Controversy: Nuclear Weapons, Deterrence, an the Atlantic Alliance (Thesis). Vancouver: University of British Columbi.
  34. ^ Makinda, Samuel M. (1988). "Moscow and the INF treaty". Australian Outlook. 42 (3): 133–144. doi:10.1080/10357718808444974. ISSN 1035-7718.
  35. ^ Thomson, James A. (1989). "An Unfavorable Situation: NATO and the Conventional Balance" (PDF). The Adelphi Papers. 29 (236): 72–102. ISSN 0567-932X.
  36. ^ Borinski, Phillipp (1989). "Mitigating West Germany's Strategic Dilemmas". Armed Forces & Society. 15 (4): 531–549. doi:10.1177/0095327X8901500404. ISSN 0095-327X.
  37. ^ Jones, Peter (1985). "New Conventional Technologies and Their Possible Impact on Conventional Arms Control Verification in Europe". Arms Control. 10 (2): 152–167. doi:10.1080/01440388908403907. ISSN 0099-4561.
  38. ^ Van Evera, Stephen (2009). "Foreword". American Foreign Policy and the Politics of Fear: Threat inflation since 9/11. pp. xi–xvi. ISBN 9780203879092.
  39. ^ Thomson, James A. (2018). "Deterrence Then and Now". SIRIUS - Zeitschrift für Strategische Analysen. 2 (2): 1–8. eISSN 2510-2648.
  40. ^ Watts, Barry D. (2007-12-24). "Ignoring reality: Problems of theory and evidence in security studies". Security Studies. 7 (2): 115–171. doi:10.1080/09636419708429344. ISSN 0963-6412.
  41. ^ a b Tecott, Rachel; Halterman, Andrew (2020-09-30). "The Case for Campaign Analysis: A Method for Studying Military Operations" (PDF). International Security. 45 (4). ISSN 0162-2889.
  42. ^ Nunn, Sam; Bartlett, Dewey Follett Sr. (1977). NATO and the New Soviet Threat: Report of Senator Sam Nunn and Senator Dewey F. Bartlett to the Committee on Armed Services, United States Senate. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.
  43. ^ White, Kenton (October 2016). "Credibility Analysis – Mearsheimer's viewpoint". British Defence Planning and Britain’s NATO commitment, 1979 – 1985 (PDF) (Thesis). pp. 283–288.
  44. ^ White, Kenton (2017). "Mearsheimer's Folly: NATO's Cold War Capability and Credibility". Infinity Journal. 5 (4). eISSN 2312-5888.
  45. ^ Heydarian Pashakhanlou, Arash (2016-10-23). "Fear in the Works of Morgenthau, Waltz and Mearsheimer". Realism and Fear in International Relations: Morgenthau, Waltz and Mearsheimer Reconsidered. pp. 23–44. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-41012-8_2. ISBN 978-3-319-41012-8.
  46. ^ Stoll, Richard J. (1990). "The Russians Are Coming: A Computer Simulation". Armed Forces & Society. 16 (2): 193–213. ISSN 0095-327X.
  47. ^ Hardin, Bristow (June 1991). The militarized social democracy and racism: The relationships between militarism, racism and social welfare policy in the United States (Thesis). Santa Cruz: University of California.
  48. ^ Leah, Christine M. (2015). "Deterrence and Arms Control in a Second Conventional Age". Comparative Strategy. 34 (5): 401–421. doi:10.1080/01495933.2015.1089122. ISSN 0149-5933.
  49. ^ Motin, Dylan (2018-04-20). "The Making of a Blitzkrieg: Russia's Decision to Go to War with Afghanistan, Georgia, but not Ukraine" (PDF). The Institute for Basic Social Science. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2022-04-12.
  50. ^ Rippy, Julian T. (2022-08-17). A Mixed-Methods Approach to Force Estimation in Military Operations Other Than War (Thesis). Department of Political Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
  51. ^ Motin, Dylan (June 2024). "The Logic of U.S. Deployment in Norway: The Trump Administration and NATO's Northern Front". Journal of Global Strategic Studies. 4 (1): 50–71. eISSN 2798-4427.
  52. ^ Dankbaar, Ben (1984). "Alternative Defense Policies and the Peace Movement". Journal of Peace Research. 21 (2): 141–155. doi:10.1177/002234338402100205. ISSN 0022-3433.
  53. ^
  54. ^ Christian, Joshua T. (2019). "An Examination of Force Ratios" (PDF). Fort Leavenworth: School of Advanced Military Studies, US Army Command and General Staff College.
  55. ^ Rohn, Laurinda L. (May 1990). Conventional Forces in Europe: A New Approach to the Balance, Stability, and Arms Control (PDF). ISBN 0-8330-0687-8.

Bibliography discussion

Hello. I appreciate the large amount of effort here, and I'm sorry that my response is going to be so brief and likely unsatisfying. Earlier I asked what the inclusion criteria was going to be, and this doesn't really answer that question. I would suggest, therefor, that this proposal may be premature. For now, and very tentatively, I think that only full-length books and any work which is directly cited as an important example via WP:IS in the body of the article should be included here. Ultimately, there should be some indication to readers why a work is selected. Without that context, any choice will be subjective. The standalone bibliography will ultimately also keep this section short, since having dozens of entries in this article based on sources at some other article is both subjective and redundant. For this article's bibliography, including any work in a list without any context (based partly on a citation count that isn't going to be included in the article) is another form of editorializing. Bibliographies suggest to readers that these works are important and worth their time if they wish to understand Mearsheimer, but we are not capable of explaining in these bibliographies why those works are particularly important, nor of providing important context. Grayfell (talk) 06:07, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

If only full-length books and any work which is directly cited as an important example via WP:IS (emphasis mine) is a selection criterion, the list will look very similar to the one I have added to the article. Several entries longer, in fact. I gave three examples above of what an entry looks like with its annotations as it will appear in the standalone bibliography. All but the first of those three are cited as "important" in the sources below. The inclusion criteria I am using are closer to that you described than to citation-counting, but I haven't finished the annotated bibliography yet, so I have given you examples to extrapolate from. "Selected works" sections almost never name selection criteria (possibly never?), but in this case since John Mearsheimer bibliography will be linked in a hatnote at the head of the section, so the reason for selection should be obvious to the reader upon reading the annotations in the standalone article. Including the reasons for inclusion and exclusion at the head of the "Selected works" section would grow that lead so long, it would defeat the purpose of selection. Since you are not comfortable extrapolating, would you be open to (a) going through each entry yourself, or (b) voting to back my selection in the interest of developing a consensus? Ivan (talk) 06:33, 26 June 2024 (UTC)
I think you have misunderstood what I am saying. Being cited is not, itself, an indication something is important to understand Mearsheimer as an encyclopedia topic. Wikipedia is a tertiary source. If secondary sources are not saying, in essence, 'to understand Mearsheimer one should read the seven-page article he wrote in International Security in 1990 titled "Back to the Future, Part III: Realism and the Realities of European Security"' than we shouldn't be implying it to readers based on our own understanding of the situation. Grayfell (talk) 20:03, 26 June 2024 (UTC)
I could give brief summaries of these articles in the "Select bibliography", but I prefer to include them in the biography itself. Ivan (talk) 20:21, 26 June 2024 (UTC)
For the specific case of Back to the Future I-III, I cannot imagine a good article on him without coverage of I, but II and III would receive briefer mentions, in the context of I. Ivan (talk) 20:23, 26 June 2024 (UTC)
Coverage of an article is very different from inclusion in a bibliography. The current article doesn't mention any "Back to the Future" article directly. What you can or cannot imagine in the article is essentially WP:OR. That's the problem, here, and that's why none of this belongs as it stands. Grayfell (talk) 20:45, 26 June 2024 (UTC)
Are you objecting to the inclusion of Back to the Future? In the select bibliography? You can. Then I will have to find one of the many sources describing it as a notable work and then append it to the entry as a citation. Or you could do that. It may be WP:OR as it stands, but once the standalone bibliography is back up it will be WP:BLUE unless someone has different ideas on criteria, and since no policy adequately covers the issue, whatever criteria they come up with will consequently be their own WP:OR unless they launch a successful RFC on "Select bibliography" inclusion criteria. The issue I am running into is a lack of patience. In most fields here on Wikipedia, when an editor encounters an issue with my work they identify it and fix it themselves. If they do not know how, they contact me on the article's or my own talk page. No encyclopedia was ever finished by authors with real-time editorship. Ivan (talk) 21:32, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

Insertion of disputed material

Latest comment: 3 months ago15 comments5 people in discussion

@Manyareasexpert

First of all, can you point to a comparable article that contains inline criticism of the subject’s work in a similar format? IME it’s generally not done.

Now, as for the actual content being inserted…

The main (but not the only issue) is that it’s in pretty major contravention of WP:BLPBALANCE and related guidelines.

(It’s also amusingly cringe to criticize the reigning realist theoretician on the basis of a non-realist framework and then just conclude as the authors did that applying realist analysis makes you a Putin apologist. Like a progressive social psychologist criticizing a cultural anthropologist for not analyzing a pre-industrial society with an intersectional feminist toolkit and that they’re an instrument of the dominant group for using any other framework.)

“An RS publication hosted an opinion piece that said it, so let’s just quote them because RS!” is a pretty common fallacy (there’s prob an essay but I can’t find it rn). Sometimes editors can get away with that sort of thing…but not in BLP. Ever. BLP is sacred ground consecrated by the Policies and Guidelines.

RadioactiveBoulevardier (talk) 13:29, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Hope I didn't step on your toes by amending some of this disputed material. I won't object if you want to remove it again while a discussion is held about it on the talk page. Burrobert (talk) 13:43, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

a comparable article that contains inline criticism
— User:RadioactiveBoulevardier 13:29, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

What do you mean?
We should differentiate between the person and his works. I've added two more articles discussing subject's works on Ukraine war. ManyAreasExpert (talk) 13:48, 11 March 2024 (UTC)
…I think you may be missing the forest for the trees. Have you considered frankly what the overall effect of your edit(s)/restoration might be? Have you read the relevant guidelines? BLP is no joke. For example, one can't call a person convicted of common murder a war criminal if they technically aren't that.
You restored content that was quoting a source that had originally been added with the apparent purpose of essentially using said source as a transparent proxy to characterize the subject as a Russian apologist. Apart from the self-evident issues with the authors' process[a]…this is a violation of BLP, pure and simple!
One does not simply bring one's POV into BLP. RadioactiveBoulevardier (talk) 14:02, 11 March 2024 (UTC) RadioactiveBoulevardier (talk) 14:02, 11 March 2024 (UTC)
More editors to discuss are invited at Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard#Academic criticism removed . ManyAreasExpert (talk) 19:40, 11 March 2024 (UTC)
Unfortunately, both sources are behind paywall. Can you copy paste here specific statements that support your edit? Sources themselves seem to be good, but what exactly do they say? In general, including some criticisms is fine. But the whole "Ukrainian" section seems to be out of proportion for this page. My very best wishes (talk) 22:44, 17 March 2024 (UTC)
There were 3 sources removed which were in the article for long. Two are
It makes no sense to blame the west for the Ukraine war | Financial Times (archive.ph)
Rightsizing the Russia Threat: Whatever Putin’s Intentions Are, He Is Hemmed In by Limited Capabilities (archive.ph)
I also had a closed look at Anti-Mearsheimer: Putin's Unjust War and His American Apologists (irdiplomacy.ir) criticized for "unreliability" and it is the article by Kaveh L. Afrasiabi - Iranian-American political scientist.
There were also 2 journal articles removed [1] from "Links" section:
Mearsheimer, Realism, and the Ukraine War (degruyter.com)
Offensive ideas: structural realism, classical realism and Putin's war on Ukraine | International Affairs | Oxford Academic (oup.com) ManyAreasExpert (talk) 23:15, 17 March 2024 (UTC)
Thank you! 2nd ref: The political scientist John Mearsheimer ... has argued that “there is no evidence in the public record that Putin was contemplating, much less intending to put an end to Ukraine as an independent state and make it part of greater Russia when he sent his troops into Ukraine.”, and so on. But this should be properly summarized. My very best wishes (talk) 23:26, 17 March 2024 (UTC)
  • Here is main problem of this page. It uncritically describes views of the subject at great length, mainly based on his own publications. But it does not provide well sourced criticisms of his views by others, which would be very much appropriate here given the non-orthodox views of the subject (to say this politely). Therefore, I think the recent edit by Manyareasexpert was an improvement, even though one could probably summarize the criticisms in a more neutral fashion. My very best wishes (talk) 13:23, 23 March 2024 (UTC)
    I have no problem with applying summary style to the whole section. In terms of non-orthodox views, that would be measured within the specific field. To my knowledge, realism is, relatively, significantly more orthodox within int'l rel than analogues such as Austrian economics and certain schools of thought within psychology and sociology (the latter of which, as taught in the US at least, is based on somewhat heterodox theoretical foundations like Comte's positivism and Marxist economics, but I have a significant pro-anthro/anti-socio bias to be honest)…<scoots off to check the BLPs of heterodox economists and psychologists to see how it's handled there>… RadioactiveBoulevardier (talk) 20:51, 14 April 2024 (UTC)
  • So, @RadioactiveBoulevardier, please suggest how the removed material can be improved to meet BLP. Thanks! ManyAreasExpert (talk) 20:26, 10 April 2024 (UTC)
    @RadioactiveBoulevardier, you commented Talk:Russo-Ukrainian War#c-RadioactiveBoulevardier-20240318055000-Manyareasexpert-20240317205900 that The Mearsheimer removal was because of tone and BLP concerns, not so much the content but how it was presented and that the nature and formatting of the inline wikivoice rebuttal was inappropriate for that article. So, how the removed text can be improved? ManyAreasExpert (talk) 18:42, 14 April 2024 (UTC)
    One sentence to the effect of "Mearsheimer's views have attracted much controversy/criticism in the press" would do it. The main issue is BLP which should be easy to understand given that it was immediately apparent to others. The tone can probably be sideslipped by using summary style; part of the issue with it is that it was presenting opinion pieces as an academic rebuttal, and IIRC leaning toward a Wikivoice endorsement. My general principle is that if oneself or another editor feels an urge to stick it in, it helps to look and consider whether it's because there's objectively a gap in coverage or because one's POV feels certain info should be in there (this is a significant problem in AmPol and so significant that a WP article about a certain prominent Wikipedian shows hints of it when describing that Wikipedian's work).
    The biggest sub-issue with the presentation is that a consensus by pundits doesn't not necessarily translate to an academic consensus in the specific field of international relations.
    Also, you could find other non-BLP articles to stick these things in if you so wish, since it's much less straightforward to contest stuff outside BLP. Albeit that I don't think realism is even discussed in one of the sub-articles yet (although it should be, considering the length of those articles and the thing that Mearsheimer is not the most prominent person to have said such things).
    Does that help? Cheers, RadioactiveBoulevardier (talk) 20:41, 14 April 2024 (UTC)
    This is an extremely inappropriate misuse of WP:BLP. There is no justification in BLP for automatically deleting attributed criticism of the subject's views and demanding that mention be restricted to a single line saying "Subject's views have attracted controversy in the press." Currently there is no indication in the article that anyone disagrees with Mearsheimer on the Ukraine invasion, which in terms of NPOV is a disaster. I don't understand what happened here. GordonGlottal (talk) 22:44, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
    Have you read the contested insertion? RadioactiveBoulevardier (talk) 00:00, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Notes

  1. ^ see above…they seem to be incapable of holding a contrary viewpoint in their head without rejecting it as foreign tissue

Night Watchman

Latest comment: 3 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

I'm re-reading Tragedy of Great Power Politics for an article I'm working on, and I am troubled by the phrase here that Mearsheimer considered global hegemony a "theoretical impossibility". He described "global hegemony" as "not feasible except in the unlikely event that a state achieves nuclear superiority over its rivals." (Tragedy, 2001, p. 140). Thus "theoretical impossibility" seems flat out wrong...theoretically possible but practically infeasible seems much more accurate. Also, more of a pet peeve here but I really would prefer that the intro emphasize that Kenneth Waltz's neorealism/defensive realism (1979) was the original and Mearsheimer's theory is a modification of his...the whole offensive realism concept boils down to the difference between security-seeking (Waltz) and power-seeking (Mearsheimer) behavior being incentivized by the international system, and as well written as Tragedy is, most of the theretical foundation is a restatement or development (?) of Waltz. Implying that Waltz and Mearsheimer started at the same place and went down different paths obfuscates the intellectual history of neorealism. Defenestrator12 (talk) 05:50, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

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