I was reading a Foreign Affairs article titled "The Case for Offshore Balancing" by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt in which they make the case for offshore balancing, a policy in which the US would, amongst other things, seek to maximize its own power by promoting states that counter other states that might threaten the US. The theory itself is only relevant because it contextualizes how idiotic this historical mistake is for two well-respected IR scholars who have significant works within offensive neo-Realism (AKA "more guns and bombs good; fuck world peace and idealism")

The quote, from page 74 of the journal is:

At other times, the United States might wait to intervene after a war starts, if one side seems likely to emerge as a regional hegemon. Such was the case during both world wars: the United States came in only after Germany seemed likely to dominate Europe

There are several basic problems with this:

1) The idea that "coming in" to a war is defined strictly by participating as a belligerent. The US was providing weapons, supplies, credit, and aid to the allies well before its participation in either world war. The dumbest thing about this is that the US' behavior of aiding their allies while not directly fighting fits perfectly into the theory the authors present in the article, meaning they shot themselves in the foot here for no real reason beyond historical name-dropping.

2) The idea that the US government (or at least the Roosevelt and Wilson administrations) was only interested in intervening if shit hit the fan. Both Wilson and Roosevelt genuinely favored the allies over the central/axis powers, as demonstrated by their increased economic ties before popular support was behind entering the wars and policies that obviously favored the allies.

3) The idea that the US "chose" to declare war in both WW1 and WW2

This is more true for WW2 than WW1 but that's the problem with generalizing isn't it? Outside of conspiracy theories the US didn't choose Pearl Harbor, and didn't choose the rest of the axis declaring war on the United States. The prime factor here wasn't "oh the state of Germany threatens to become a regional hegemon we better respond by blowing up Hawaii."

4) It is debatable that Germany was likely to "dominate Europe" in 1917 or late 1941 without US military intervention.

Yeah I guess Germany was ostensibly doing well as of Dec. 7th 1941. El Alamein and Stalingrad didn't really have much to do with the belligerency of the US in the war so that undermines the idea of the unstoppable Wehrmacht but really? Germany in 1917 was about to dominate Europe? At best you could say they just had a windfall due to the Russian Revolution but on the edge of total victory is far fucking fetched.

In conclusion I am flabbergasted that two well-respected scholars just casually threw this line out there in a well-respected journal to back up a point within a theory that would do just fine without this badhistory. They absolutely should've known better or at least asked their colleagues at Uchicago or Harvard.