Grieco Article

While I feel that Grieco has a well-articulated and researched position with a certain amount of logic behind it, I find his argument over paranoid. Perhaps it is my own personal distaste for power politics, but his defense of some aspects of realism is something I disagree with. His main claim is that neoliberals only focus on the overall gain of their own country and not of the potentially greater gains of other countries. So if these other countries (even if they are staunch allies) have greater gains and wish to wage war on your country, you are in deep trouble because you didn't pay attention before when they had greater gains than you're nation. Realists are skeptical of the advantages gained by their allies. That means in today's world a US realist politician would be wary of anything the UK did to advanced its power, even though they are one of our greates allies.
To further enhance my criticism of this argument I will draw upon the writings of JRR Tolkien's epic triology The Lord of the Rings (it said in the syllabus we could connect things to movies if we wanted). Those unfamilar with the The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King should know that there are two main nations fighting for the world men against the evil darkness of Sauron, being Rohan and Gondor. Rohan fights a major battle against an ally of Sauron in 'The Two Towers' and is recuperating within it's own borders when Gondor calls for military assistance to fight a battle with Sauron's armies at it's own border. At first Theoden, King of Rohan is skeptical, claiming that once Gondor (the mightiest nation in Middle Earth) has borne the brunt of the fighting then his own nation will be the most powerful. But is this any way to think when facing down the forces of darkness? Rohan was worried about the relative gain at first, its gain by comparison. But after some convincing from Gandalf the wizard, Theoden agrees to go to Gondor's aid and help fight the forces of evil.
Now, perhaps this is not the best example, but it came to my mind as well-suiting Grieco's point. I'm not saying states shouldn't worry about how much the power of other states is changing, but it seems paranoid at times to always worry about what allies are doing. If Rohan hadn't come to Gondor's aid, perhaps Sauron's armies could have trampled both nation's forces seperately, even if Rohan would have fared a little better in the end. JRR Tolkien didn't write this ending, but his books do have clear parallels to world affairs at the turn of the 20th century, so perhaps Grieco should pick up a fantasy novel instead of a history textbook.