If you buy into John Mearsheimer's Offensive Realism, then all Great Powers are power-maximisers and therefore revisionist. Because all Great Powers possess some offensive military capability, Mearsheimer concludes - directly contradicting Defensive Realist Kenneth Waltz - there are no status quo powers. All Great Powers have revisionist aims with the supreme goal of hegemony.
Because Iran does not yet possess nuclear weapons, its revisionist hegemonic strategy is conflict via proxy, which it has executed very successfully. Greater Iran now spans from Lashkar Gar and Gwadar in the East to Tyre in the West, and has Finlandised the Gulf.
Post-Soviet Russia was for years a crippled Great Power (much like Weimar Germany), but its actions in 2014 were a claiming of its stake in Ukraine against the EU Great Power (that is, Bundesrepublik Germany) using the words of NATO-hatred.
As for Appeasement, the British Empire was not ready even for a defensive war with its new radar not working properly till early 1939, and the first squadron of Spitfires becoming operational just a fortnight before Munich. The Royal Navy - the Empire's offensive military capability - was ready, though, and scored victories from the start, so Chamberlain was Britain's Realpolitiker.
"For example, Russia and Iran, avowed opponents of the American system, cannot be said to be revisionist powers for the simple reason that they are too weak to even consider fighting a great power war against the United States and its allies"
States can be locally revisionist even if they are too weak to be globally revisionist. I believe that the focus on global great powers is not useful here. A state's capability and will for power projection also quickly reduces with distance, though the distance penalty to power projection becomes less steep with improving transport and communication. Therefore, a medium power may locally be stronger than a global hegemon.
Being disruptive globally helps countries being revisionist locally.
If you buy into John Mearsheimer's Offensive Realism, then all Great Powers are power-maximisers and therefore revisionist. Because all Great Powers possess some offensive military capability, Mearsheimer concludes - directly contradicting Defensive Realist Kenneth Waltz - there are no status quo powers. All Great Powers have revisionist aims with the supreme goal of hegemony.
Because Iran does not yet possess nuclear weapons, its revisionist hegemonic strategy is conflict via proxy, which it has executed very successfully. Greater Iran now spans from Lashkar Gar and Gwadar in the East to Tyre in the West, and has Finlandised the Gulf.
Post-Soviet Russia was for years a crippled Great Power (much like Weimar Germany), but its actions in 2014 were a claiming of its stake in Ukraine against the EU Great Power (that is, Bundesrepublik Germany) using the words of NATO-hatred.
As for Appeasement, the British Empire was not ready even for a defensive war with its new radar not working properly till early 1939, and the first squadron of Spitfires becoming operational just a fortnight before Munich. The Royal Navy - the Empire's offensive military capability - was ready, though, and scored victories from the start, so Chamberlain was Britain's Realpolitiker.
"For example, Russia and Iran, avowed opponents of the American system, cannot be said to be revisionist powers for the simple reason that they are too weak to even consider fighting a great power war against the United States and its allies"
States can be locally revisionist even if they are too weak to be globally revisionist. I believe that the focus on global great powers is not useful here. A state's capability and will for power projection also quickly reduces with distance, though the distance penalty to power projection becomes less steep with improving transport and communication. Therefore, a medium power may locally be stronger than a global hegemon.
Being disruptive globally helps countries being revisionist locally.