Mingst and Arreguin-Toft (2017) Essentials of International Relations - PDF

76  CHAPTER three I n t e r n at i o n a l R e l at i o n s T h e o r i e s meaning they incorporate all three BOX 3.1 levels of ana...

76  CHAPTER three I n t e r n at i o n a l R e l at i o n s T h e o r i e s meaning they incorporate all three BOX 3.1 levels of analy­sis. Yet each of the theories is not as ­simple or as uni- Pos­si­ble Explanations for the fied as presented. Many scholars United States’ Invasion of Iraq in have introduced variations, modifi- 2003 by Level of Analy­sis cations, and problematics, and they have even changed positions over Individual Level time. Thus, each theoretical per- 1. Saddam Hussein was an evil leader who spective is introduced h ­ ere only committed atrocities against his own in terms of its essential character- ­people and defied the West. 2. Saddam Hussein was irrational; other­wise, istics. he would have capitulated to the superior capability of the U.S. and British co­ali­tion. 3. George W. Bush and his advisers targeted Realism (and Saddam Hussein and Iraq in 2001. Neorealism) State Level Realism is the product of a long 4. The United States must protect its national security, and Iraq’s weapons of mass historical and philosophical tradi- destruction threatened U.S. security. tion, even though its direct appli- 5. Ousting the Taliban from Af­ghan­i­stan was cation to international affairs is only the first step in the war on terrorism; more recent. Realism reflects a invading Iraq, a known supporter of view of the individual as primarily terrorism, was the second. fearful and power seeking. States 6. The United States must be assured of a stable oil supply, and Iraq has the world’s act as individuals might, meaning second largest reserves. that each state acts in a unitary 7. The United States must not permit states way in pursuit of its own national that support terrorism or terrorist groups interest, defined in terms of access to destructive weapons. power. Power, in turn, is primarily 8. It is in the U.S. national interest to build a thought of in terms of the material progressive Arab regime in the Middle East. resources necessary to physically International System Level harm or coerce other states: in 9. UN resolutions condemning Iraq had to be other words, to fight and win wars. enforced to maintain the legitimacy of the ­These states exist in an anarchic United Nations. international system, a character- 10. A unipolar international system is uniquely ization in which the term anarchy capable of responding to perceived threats highlights the absence of an author- to the stability of the system, and the U.S. invasion was one manifestation of this itative hierarchy (i.e., a single state capability. power­ f ul enough to conquer all 11. There is an international moral imperative other states). ­Under this condi- for humanitarian intervention—to oust evil tion of anarchy, realists argue that leaders and install demo­cratic regimes. states in the international system ESSIR7_CH03_070-105_11P.indd 76 6/14/16 10:03 AM  Realism (and Neorealism)   77 can rely only on themselves. Their most impor­tant concern is to increase their own relative power. They can do so by means of two logical pathways: (1) war (and con­ quest) or (2) balance (­either dividing the power of real or potential rivals by means of alliance politics or economic sanctions, or multiplying their own power by raising armies, or manufacturing fearsome weaponry). The Roots of Realism At least four of the essential assumptions of realism are found in Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War.3 First, for Thucydides, the state (in this case, Athens and Sparta) is the principal actor in war and in politics in general, just as ­today’s realists posit. Although other actors, such as international institutions, may participate, their impact on the system is marginal. Second, the state is assumed to be a unitary actor. Although Thucydides includes fascinating debates among dif­fer­ent officials from the same state, he argues that once a state decides to go to war or capitulate, it speaks and acts with one voice. No subna­ tional actors are trying to overturn the government’s decision or subvert the state’s interests. Third, decision makers acting in the name of the state are assumed to be rational actors. Like most educated Greeks, Thucydides believed that individuals are essentially rational beings who make decisions by weighing the strengths and weaknesses of vari­ ous options against the goal to be achieved. Thucydides admitted that potential imped­ iments to rational decision making exist, including wishful thinking by leaders, confusing intentions and national interests, and misperceiving the characteristics of the counterpart decision maker. But the core notion—­that rational decision making leads to the pursuit of the national interest—­remains. Likewise for modern realists, rational decisions advance the national interest—­the interests of the state—­however ambiguously that national interest is formulated. Fourth, Thucydides, like con­temporary realists, was concerned with security issues—­the state’s need to protect itself from enemies both foreign and domestic. A state augments its security by increasing its domestic capacities, strengthening its eco­ nomic prowess, and forming alliances with other states based on similar interests. In fact, Thucydides found that before and during the Peloponnesian War, fear of rivals motivated states to join alliances, a rational decision by their leaders. In perhaps the most famous section of History of the Peloponnesian War, the Melian dialogue, Thucydides summarized a key tenet of realist thinking: “[T]he strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” More generally, do states have rights based on the con­ ception of an international ethical or moral order, as liberals suggest? Or is a state’s power, in the absence of an international authority, the deciding f­ actor? Thucydides did not identify all the tenets of what we think of as realism ­today. Indeed, the tenets and rationale of realism have unfolded over centuries, and not all ESSIR7_CH03_070-105_11P.indd 77 6/14/16 10:03 AM  78  CHAPTER three I n t e r n at i o n a l R e l at i o n s T h e o r i e s realists agree on what they are. For example, six centuries a­ fter Thucydides lived, the Christian bishop and phi­los­o­pher Saint Augustine (354–430) added a fundamental assumption of realism, arguing that humanity is flawed, egoistic, and selfish, although not predetermined to be so. Augustine blames war on ­t hese basic characteristics of humanity.4 Although subsequent realists dispute Augustine’s biblical explanation for humanity’s flawed, selfish nature, few realists dispute the fact that h ­ umans are basi- cally power seeking and self-­absorbed. The central tenet virtually all realist theorists accept is that the chief constraint on “better” state be­hav­ior—­especially enduring peace—is that states exist in an anarchic international system. This tenet was forcefully articulated by Thomas Hobbes (see Chap- ter 1), who lived and wrote during one of history’s greatest periods of turmoil (the Thirty Years’ War, 1618–48, and the En­glish Civil Wars, 1641–51). Hobbes maintained that just as individuals in a hy­po­thet­i­cal “state of nature” have the responsibility and the right to preserve themselves—­including a right of vio­lence against o­ thers—so too does each state in the international system. In his most famous treatise, Leviathan, Hobbes argued that the only cure for perpetual war within a state was the emergence of a single power­ful prince who could overawe all o­ thers: a leviathan. Applying his argu- ments to relations among sovereigns, Hobbes depicted a condition of anarchy where the norm for states is “having their weapons pointing, and their eyes fixed on one another.”5 In the absence of an international sovereign to enforce rules, few rules or norms can restrain states. War—­defined by Hobbes as a climate in which peace cannot be guaranteed—­would be perpetual. In sum, by the twentieth c­ entury, most of the central tenets of realism w ­ ere well established. Given a system in which no single power was capable of imposing its ­w ill on all the ­others (anarchy), states in the system had to rely on self-­help. ­Because even allies might, in a crisis, hesitate or refuse to come to an ally’s aid, a state’s only rational policy in a self-­help world would be to seek power. According to one promi- nent post–­World War II realist, international relations theorist Hans Morgenthau (1904–80), this idea explained why peace in the inter­national system would always prove elusive. Realism in the Twentieth and Twenty-­First Centuries In the aftermath of World War II, Morgenthau wrote the seminal synthesis of real- ism in international politics and offered what he argued was a methodological approach for testing this theory. For ­Morgenthau, just as for Thucydides, Augustine, and Hobbes, international politics is best characterized as a strug­gle for power. That strug­gle can be explained at the three levels of analy­sis: (1) the flawed individual in the state of nature strug­gles for self-­preservation; (2) the autonomous and unitary state is constantly involved in power strug­gles, balancing power with power and react- ESSIR7_CH03_070-105_11P.indd 78 6/14/16 10:03 AM  Realism (and Neorealism)   79 ing to preserve what is in the national interest; and (3) ­because the international sys­ tem is anarchic—no higher power exists to defeat the competition—­t he strug­gle is perpetual. ­Because of the imperative to ensure a state’s survival, leaders are driven by a morality quite dif­fer­ent from that of ordinary individuals. Morality, for realists, is to be judged by the po­liti­cal consequences of a policy.6 Morgenthau’s international relations textbook Politics among Nations became the realist bible in the years following World War II. Policy implications flowed naturally from the theory that the most effective technique for managing power is balance of power. Both George Kennan (1904–2005), a writer and chair of the state department’s policy planning staff in the late 1940s and ­later the U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, and Henry Kissinger (b. 1923), a scholar, foreign policy adviser, and secretary of state to presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, are known to have based their policy recommendations on realist theory. As we saw in Chapter 2, Kennan was one of the architects of the U.S. Cold War policy of containment, an interpretation of the balance of power. The goal of contain­ ment was to prevent Soviet power from extending into regions beyond that country’s immediate, existing sphere of influence (Eastern Eu­rope), thus balancing U.S. power against Soviet power. Containment was an impor­tant alternative to the competing strategy of “rollback,” in which a combination of nuclear and conventional military threats would be used to force the Soviet Union out of Eastern Eu­rope and, in par­tic­ u­lar, Germany. Kennan’s keen analy­sis of Soviet intentions and his fear of uncontrolled escalation to a third world war ultimately led to the adoption of containment as U.S. foreign policy. During the 1970s, Kissinger encouraged the classic realist balance of power by supporting weaker powers such as China and Pakistan to exert leverage over the Soviet Union and to offset India’s growing power, respectively. At the time, India was an ally of the Soviets. Whereas realism appears to offer clear policy prescriptions, not all realists agree on what an ideal realist foreign policy might look like. Defensive realists observe that few if any major wars in the last ­century ended up benefiting the state or states that started them. Threatened states, they argue, tend to balance against aggressors, invariably over­ whelming and reversing what­ever initial gains ­were made. Saddam Hussein’s attempt to conquer and annex neighboring Kuwait in 1990 serves as a classic example. In August 1990, Iraq’s armed forces quickly overwhelmed the pal­ try defenses of Kuwait, and Saddam’s soldiers followed their victory with rape and looting. Before the invasion, Kuwait had been a ­little-­k nown, oil-­rich Arab state in which a repressive hereditary elite ruled over a population composed mainly of servants hired from surrounding Arab countries (in par­tic­u ­lar, Palestinian Arabs). However, although critics pointed out that Kuwait was itself a less-­than-­ideal candidate for res­ cue, Saddam’s aggression provoked a power­ful international reaction. In 1991, an inter­ national co­ali­tion of armed forces, led by the United States, invaded Kuwait and ESSIR7_CH03_070-105_11P.indd 79 6/14/16 10:03 AM  80  CHAPTER three I n t e r n at i o n a l R e l at i o n s T h e o r i e s rapidly forced the retreat and l­ ater surrender of the Iraqi army. Iraq was forced to repay all the damages of its conquest, and its sovereignty was abridged by two “no-­fly” zones, which offered some protection to Kurds in the north and Shia Muslims in the south from Saddam’s harsh reprisals. Conquest, in other words, did not pay for Iraq. For defensive realists, the outcome of Iraq’s 1990 war forms part of a long histori- cal pattern of effective (and inevitable) balancing. In this case, Saudi Arabia, the United States, and ­others supported Kuwait to balance against Iraq’s regional power. As a result, defensive realists argue that states in the international system should pursue policies of restraint, ­whether through military, diplomatic, or economic channels. Such defensive moderate postures can be pursued without leading to dangerous levels of mistrust among states and, more importantly, without fear of unintended or uncontrolled esca- lation to counterproductive wars. Offensive realists, by contrast, note that periodically demonstrating a willingness to engage in war, though perhaps costly in the short run, may pay huge dividends in reputation enhancement l­ater. They argue that the credible threat of conquest can often act as a motivation to alter a target state’s interests, leading states that might have opposed the threatening state to ally with it in a pro­cess international relations theo- rists call bandwagoning. The logic is that the more power you have, the more power you get. Conquest, in other words, pays. States may thus pursue expansionist politics, building up their relative power positions and intimidating potential rivals into coop- eration. Consider the stunning case of Libya’s decision in December 2003 to publicly acknowl- edge and then abandon its years-­long efforts to acquire nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, along with the vehicles to launch them. To an offensive realist, Libya’s decision could well have been the result of the George W. Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq in March 2003, an invasion justified to halt Saddam’s production or dissemination of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). ­After years of opposing the United States, Libya chose instead to bandwagon in the face of this demonstration of U.S. power. By offensive realist logic, the costs of the war against Iraq ­were at least partly redeemed by Libya’s change of policy: conquest, or the credible threat of conquest, paid. Thus, defensive and offensive realists have significant differences of view about appropriate foreign policy.7 In fact, realism encompasses a ­family of related arguments, sharing common assumptions and premises. It is not a single, unified theory. Among the vari­ous reinterpretations of realism, the most impor­tant is neorealism (or struc- tural realism), as delineated in Kenneth Waltz’s Theory of International Politics.8 Rea- soning that lack of pro­gress in social scientific theory of international politics was due to lack of theoretical rigor (especially in comparison to steady theoretical pro­gress in the natu­ral sciences), Waltz undertook this reinterpretation of classical realism to make po­liti­cal realism a more rigorous theory of international politics. Neorealists ESSIR7_CH03_070-105_11P.indd 80 6/14/16 10:03 AM  Realism (and Neorealism)   81 therefore propose general laws to explain events: they simplify explanations of be­hav­ ior in anticipation of being better able to explain and predict trends. Neorealists give pre­ce­dence in their analyses to the structure of the international system as an explanatory f­ actor, while traditional realists also attach importance to the characteristics of states and ­human nature. According to Waltz, the most impor­tant object of study is the structure of the international system. Attempting to understand the international system by reference to states is analogous, in Waltz’s view, to attempt­ ing to understand a market by reference to individual firms: unproductive at best. Neorealism thus advances two normative arguments and one theoretical. The first nor­ mative argument is that we need theory to understand international politics (and that prior to the publication of Waltz’s book, we had none), and the second is that his theory, neorealism, explains international politics since 1648, the date scholars cite for the advent of the state system. Waltz’s theoretical argument is that the amount of peace and war in an anarchic international system depends critically on the distribution of power, described in terms of system structure. Critics of classical realism noted that if the h ­ uman desire for power, inscribed on states, was driving the recurrence of interstate war, how could we explain long periods of peace? Waltz argued that the distribution of power in the international system can be described as having one of three pos­si­ble forms: (1) unipolar (where one state in the system has sufficient power to defeat all the ­others combined against it; w ­ e’ve never seen a true unipolar situation); (2) bipolar (where most of the system’s power is divided between two states or co­a li­tions of states; as between Rome and Carthage, or Athens and Sparta); and (3) multipolar (in which power is divided among three or more states or co­ali­tions of states, as in Eu­rope in 1914). Thus, according to neorealists, the structure of the system and the distribution of power within it, rather than the characteristics of individual states, determine outcomes. This is why, in the neorealist view, the closer the overall distribution of power approaches unipolarity, the greater the likelihood (but never the certainty) of peace.9 This observation leads to another key question, the answers to which lie at the root of the disagreement between liberals and realists. Why, we might ask, have not two or more ­great powers ever cooperated to become a single leviathan, thus ending war? Neo­ realists posit two answers: first, cooperation is difficult ­under conditions of anarchy due to concerns over relative gains; and second, states in an anarchic system must be on constant guard against cheating. The importance of relative power means that states hesitate to engage in cooperation if the benefits to be gained might be distributed unevenly among participating states. For example, if you and I are trading partners, and ­after each trade I gain $3.00 and you gain $1.50, we both gain in absolute terms. But, over time, I w ­ ill accumulate more cash than you ­will; I might then use my advantage in wealth to coerce you. In a neorealist’s ESSIR7_CH03_070-105_11P.indd 81 6/14/16 10:03 AM  82  CHAPTER three I n t e r n at i o n a l R e l at i o n s T h e o r i e s Theory In Brief Realism / Neorealism Key actors States (most power­ful ­matter most) View of the Individual Insecure, selfish, power-­seeking Insecure, selfish, unitary, power-­seeking as evidence View of the State of rationality View of the International Anarchic (implies perpetual threat of war); more stable System as distribution of power approaches unipolarity Possibility of perpetual peace logically precluded; Beliefs About Change emphasis shifted to managing the frequency and intensity of war Thucydides, Saint Augustine, Hobbes, Morgenthau, Major Theorists Waltz, Gilpin, Mearsheimer balance-­of-­power world, a state’s survival depends on its having more power than other states. Thus, all power, and gains in power, is viewed in relative rather than absolute terms.10 Neorealists are also concerned with cheating. States may be tempted to cheat on agreements so they can gain a relative advantage over other states. Fear that other states ­will renege on existing cooperative agreements is especially potent in the military realm, in which changes in weaponry might result in a major shift in the balance of power. Self-­interest provides a power­ful incentive for one state to take advantage of another. The awareness that such incentives exist, combined with states’ rational desire to pro- tect their own interests, tends to preclude long-­term cooperation among states. As the popu­lar paraphrase of Britain’s Lord Palmerston (1784–1865) puts it, “Nations have no permanent friends or allies, only permanent interests.” Scholars have developed other interpretations of realism as well. Although neoreal- ism simplifies the classical realist theory and focuses on a few core concepts (system structure and balance of power), other reinterpretations add increased complexity to realism. In War and Change in World Politics, Robert Gilpin offers one such reinter- pretation. Accepting the realist assumptions that states are the principal actors, deci- sion makers are basically rational, and the international system structure plays a key role in determining power, Gilpin examines 2,400 years of history, finding that “the distribution of power among states constitutes the principal form of control in ­every international system.”11 What Gilpin adds is the notion of dynamism, of history as a series of cycles—­c ycles of the birth, expansion, and demise of dominant powers. ESSIR7_CH03_070-105_11P.indd 82 6/14/16 10:03 AM  Liberalism and Neoliberal Institutionalism   83 Whereas classical realism offers no satisfactory rationale for the decline of powers, ­Gilpin finds the answer in economic power. Hegemons decline ­because of three pro­ cesses: the increasingly marginal returns of controlling an empire, a state-­level phe­ nomenon; the tendency for economic hegemons to consume more over time and invest less, also a state-­level phenomenon; and the diffusion of technology, a system-­ level phenomenon through which new powers challenge the hegemon. As Gilpin explains, “disequilibrium replaces equilibrium, and the world moves t­oward a new round of hegemonic conflict.”12 In short, t­ here is no single tradition of po­liti­cal realism; ­there are “realisms.” Although each is predicated on a key group of assumptions, each attaches dif­fer­ent importance to the vari­ous core propositions. Yet what unites proponents of realist theory—­their emphasis on the unitary state in an anarchic international system, and a threat of war that can be managed but never done away with—­distinguishes them clearly from both the liberals and the radicals. Liberalism and Neoliberal Institutionalism Liberalism holds that h ­ uman nature is basically good and that p ­ eople can improve their moral and material conditions, thus making societal pro­gress—­including lasting peace—­pos­si­ble. Bad or evil h ­ uman be­hav­ior, such as injustice and war, is the product of inadequate or corrupt social institutions and misunderstandings among leaders. Thus, liberals believe that injustice, war, and aggression are not inevitable but can be moderated or even eliminated through institutional reform or collective action. Accord­ ing to liberal thinking, the expansion of ­human freedom is best achieved in democra­ cies and through well-­regulated market capitalism. The Roots of Liberalism The origins of liberal theory are found in eighteenth-­century Enlightenment optimism, nineteenth-­century po­liti­cal and economic liberalism, and twentieth-­century Wilso­ nian idealism. The contribution of the Enlightenment to liberalism rests on the Greek idea that individuals are rational h ­ uman beings, able to understand the universally applicable laws governing both nature and h ­ uman society. Understanding such laws means that p ­ eople have the capacity to improve their condition by creating a just soci­ ety. If a just society is not attained, then the fault rests with inadequate institutions, the result of a corrupt environment. The writings of the French phi­los­o­pher Charles-­Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu (1689–1755), reflect Enlightenment thinking. He argued that ­human nature is not defective, but rather, prob­lems arise as humanity enters civil society ESSIR7_CH03_070-105_11P.indd 83 6/14/16 10:03 AM