Neil Vickers

Professor of English Literature and the Health Humanities at King’s College London. Codirector of the Centre for the Humanities and Health.
Dubliner
Europhile

[Professor Azeem Majeed @Azeem_Majeed]

Older adults and people with complex health needs are often the highest users of healthcare, yet they are the least likely to possess smartphones or have high digital confidence. When appointments are claimed rapidly online, less digitally fluent patients are at a disadvantage.

[John McTernan @Johnmcternan]

Zoe Williams is correct! https://t.co/oDZpPddM4z

[William Dalrymple @DalrympleWill]

There are few more revolting sights than a careless, over-paid Murdoch hack smearing a principled writer who is bravely opposing the brutal slaughter of innocent civilians, many of them children

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

As someone who wrote an article literally titled "Why Mearsheimer is wrong on China" (https://t.co/8mqY524iLg), it's clear I'm no diehard fanboy of the guy.

However, on Ukraine, honesty requires recognizing that he was more right than most, starting with predicting the war in the first place. At the beginning of the war I wrote a long thread listing all the strategic thinkers who predicted it (https://t.co/Yme3Cdrc8l), and Mearsheimer's prediction really stands out as the most complete, almost like a script of what followed.

It is true, though, that since the war started, he's sounded a bit like a broken record in announcing Ukraine's imminent collapse, which hasn't exactly materialized.

He has this bad habit of running everything through the iron laws (according to him) of great-power competition, the very same framework that leads him astray on China.

A framework that, as per his own admission, doesn't leave any room for the individual characteristics of a state: as he himself puts it in his book The Tragedy of Great Power Politics “The theory pays little attention to individuals or domestic political considerations such as ideology. It tends to treat states like black boxes or billiard balls”.

Which is very unnuanced: it’s painfully obvious to any student of history that there is more to geopolitics than raw power, and that a nation’s history, culture, sense of itself, contemporary zeitgeist and ideology are absolutely critical in shaping its behavior.

In many ways, Mearsheimer's "offensive realism" is the lazy man's approach to geopolitics: it spares you the trouble of reading a country’s history or understanding how its people see the world.

Mearsheimer actually tacitly recognizes this. If you listen to him on his own country, the US, what he is ironically very good at predicting is how they WON'T follow his theory: in the same breath, he’ll tell you the US should stop wasting resources in Europe and the Middle East to focus on China, and that it won’t, because of the Israel lobby, a crusading liberal ideology and the groupthink of the "blob". In other words, because of domestic politics, ideology and individuals: precisely what his theory tells you ought to be ignored.

Which shows that when it’s a country he actually knows from the inside, he has no trouble seeing that the black box/billiard ball is in fact a living, breathing nation in all its complexity and nuance.

All that being said, what is his main point on Ukraine? Famously, and bluntly, that “the end result is that Ukraine is going to get wrecked.”

With about a fifth of its territory under Russian control, about half a million Ukrainian casualties (https://t.co/DLwPDaZ13U), a population that has shrunk from almost 42 million before the war to around 29 million in government-controlled areas (https://t.co/7kinxp04xv), 14% of its housing stock damaged or destroyed (https://t.co/VJiel2DHDx), an economy a fifth smaller than before the war in real terms (https://t.co/HKjT1jhA8Y), and a state whose entire civilian budget is financed by foreign aid (https://t.co/afZ6U1Mn7m), it’s hard to think of a more fitting word.

Ukraine is, factually, wrecked. Still fighting, with a courage and resilience no black-box theory could have predicted, but wrecked.

I don’t think anyone can seriously argue otherwise. The most direct responsibility lies with Russia, which made the choice to invade. But nobody - on either side - can be happy with that outcome, or deny that more could have been done to avoid it.

Which is, when you strip it down to its essence, the gist of what Mearsheimer is saying. It's not that sophisticated but it's also common sense, and probably the most humanistic position one could have held: for all his talk of black boxes, he turned out to be the one most concerned with the people inside them.

So, no, long story short: Mearsheimer hasn’t “discredited himself over Ukraine”. The ones who should worry about their credibility are those who led Ukraine down the very primrose path he warned about, and still haven’t had the decency to admit where it took the country.

[Noah Vickers @noahvickers14]

NEW: London Conservatives call for 'conversation' on whether to scrap Sadiq Khan's free school meals programme if they win City Hall in 2028:

https://t.co/jgGzq4gO6x

[French Response @FrenchResponse]

And stopped you must be, from passing four-year-old videos off as breaking news.

[Noah Vickers @noahvickers14]

"We’re certainly in multi-party politics for the time being and my suspicion is that that isn’t going to settle down just yet."

My @TheHouseMag cover interview with Conservative deputy leader Alex Burghart:

https://t.co/b6FlIGfQyy

[Noah Vickers @noahvickers14]

He also argued at the time that Reform was an "anti-fragile" party, by which he meant that whenever it encounters resistance or conflict, it actually grows stronger. That thesis is currently being tested:

https://t.co/HChbsrPHtg

[Victoria Moul @victoriamoul]

Interesting if oddly ineffective long piece about James Orr in the FT. I knew James a bit both as an undergraduate (same course, same year) and as a graduate (same college), i.e. either side of his conversion. https://t.co/hmm27Epztf

[Neil Vickers @NeilVickers2]

@ArmandDAngour Looking 20years younger!

[Neil Vickers @NeilVickers2]

@csandis A wonderful person.

[Neil Vickers @NeilVickers2]

Delighted that the special number of @HistHum on the history of the medical humanities in France and the English-speaking world is now available with many of the papers being open access, thanks to Jisc. It's been a long but very exciting haul. https://t.co/tPP4TESLHm

[Neil Vickers @NeilVickers2]

@ajlees And the better one gets at it the more conscious one becomes of the scale of the drop!

[Neil Vickers @NeilVickers2]

@Nikolas_S_Rose Dear Nikolas, I am so sorry to hear this. Such a distinguished woman. Thinking of you.

[Led By Donkeys @ByDonkeys]

Immigration makes Britain brilliant.

[Have I Got News For You @haveigotnews]

After losing over 400 seats (and counting) in the local elections, Kemi Badenoch has declared the Conservative Party "back", to levels of delusion not seen since the days of Liz Truss

[Neil Vickers @NeilVickers2]

I sympathise strongly with your frustration but I'd like to know how you know that "an IRGC cut out is recruiting disaffected Islamist-radicalised men... to conduct a targeted intifada against the London Jewish community." Did the IRGC also order the stabbing of a Muslim man?

[Ben Judah @b_judah]

I am, like most British Jews, growing really frustrated with this vague talk about “division and unity and hate.”

We have a very specific problem here. An IRGC cut out is recruiting disaffected Islamist-radicalised men, many long known to the police and negligently left ambling about, to a conduct a targeted intifada against the London Jewish community. And both our counter intelligence and counter terror forces are failing to intercept them.

I don’t need a mass London rally of well wishers or cultural luminaires to post their wishes — nice as that is — I need an actual security strategy to clamp down on this so my community can go about our lives in peace as is our absolute minimum right. And I need politicians to call the problem for what it is — not good vibes.

[Neil Vickers @NeilVickers2]

@NewtonEmerson @williamcrawley Quite right. It's only 8% of GDP.

[Neil Vickers @NeilVickers2]

@melfrar @simon_schama There's nothing symbolic about stabbings.

[Vali Nasr @vali_nasr]

Sharif University of Technology (founded as Arya Mehr University in 1966) is an icon of modernization and progress in Iran. Its alumni include the first woman to win the Field Medal in Mathematics, Maryam Mirzakhani. It has been a national symbol of achievement, gaining international recognition for the quality of its graduates, large number who have been admitted into the very best engineering programs in the West. The aim of this kind of wonton destruction could only be the nation of Iran itself.