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2. Capabilities, discourses, and the power of persuasion
2.1 Capability-based models: classical and structural realism
Materialist takes on power assume that it can be possessed, accumulated, quantified, and utilized. It is consequently enshrined in an actor’s capabilities such as military capacity, its economic base, demographic developments, or geopolitical location. Power, if understood as an accumulation of capabilities, operates largely on the surface of the political plane and contributes to an ever shifting balance among actors.300 Despite impacting decisively on the international system’s
297 Steven Lukes, “Power and the Battle for Hearts and Minds”, Millennium: Journal of International Studies 33, no. 3 (2005): 478.
298 Ibid., 478 ff.
299 Ibid., 479.
300 Jennifer Sterling-Folker & Rosemary E. Shinko, “Discourses of Power: Traversing the Realist-Postmodern Divide”, Millennium: Journal of International Studies 33, no. 3 (2005): 637.
distributive hierarchy materialist notions of power do not have any influence on its operating-principles. The deep-structure of the state-based international system remains essentially leaderless, and the distribution of capabilities changes only relations among states, but leaves the anarchical character of ‘the international’ intact. Power as capability becomes then a necessary means for survival in a world of states that lacks a centralized ordering force. Over the past decades theorists have offered various explanations for states behavior in this particular setting.
Classical realists such as Morgenthau301 and Niebuhr302 are typical first and second-image thinkers, for whom individuals as well as states are characterized by a deeply rooted drive for domination - an animus dominandi - that translates into a fierce quest for power. International politics is routinely perceived as being driven by this virtually limitless lust for power and embraces tragical elements of passion, fear, glory, and self-interest.303 Although third-image explanations, which take the structuring effects of anarchy on the international system into account are not absent from Morgenthau’s theory of international politics, they are none the less heavily under-theorized and trumped by first- and second-image interpretations. What drives international politics is then not inscribed into the anarchical makeup of the international system as such, but can rather be traced back to the behavior of individual states and their respective desires for syndetic domination. Any notion of anarchy - a concept absolutely central to structural realism - counts only as a second-order phenomenon and springs from the initial, individually rooted urge to dominate. In this narrative power does not count as a means to an end that would increase competitiveness across units. Its is rather an end by and in itself, utilized for the sole purpose of increasing superiority in opposition to ones competitors. The facets of power offered by classical realism are, however, much more dazzling than the ones mobilized in the neo-realist
301 Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations.
302 Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society - A study on Ethics and Politics (Eugene: Wipf &
Stock, 2010).
303 Schmidt, “Competing Realist Conceptions of Power”, 533.
school of thought, since as they pay attention to both, material capabilities and relational forces in international affairs.304 Central to Morgenthau’s national power-approach are not only material capabilities, i.e. industrial capacity or military preparedness, but also relational factors such as national character, national morale, and the quality of diplomacy.305 All of these factors are supposed to enhance the state’s fitness for the purpose of dominating other states and to resist, conversely, its own domination: keeping power (securing the status quo), increasing power (an imperialist or revolutionary element), and demonstrating power (for the purpose of deterrence) are the recurring logics of international affairs.306 Unpredictability and uncertainty are ever present conditions in global politics, and since there is virtually no stabilizing or ordering element present in the international environment the only way of safeguarding ones survival comprises in the cultivation and maximization of all sorts of capabilities and the enhancement of a state’s national-power-score.
Structural realism shares with its classical predecessor the general conviction of an inseparable intertwinement of politics and power. Yet, classical realism’s power-centered first- and second-image interpretations (with their respective emphasis on the actions of individuals and states) has become dislodged in favor of a security-centered reading which claims that “the quest for power is due not to any desire for power as such, but to a general human craving for security”.307 Structural realism substitutes “tragedy for evil” by means of replacing the “‘mad Cesar’ (...) of the pure power model (...) by the ‘hysterical Cesar’ who” is haunted by fear.308 By shifting the focus of its analysis away from ontological claims about human nature, and gearing its inquiry decidedly towards the structural determinisms immanent to the international system, neo-realism moved anarchy into the spotlight of IR theorizing. Anarchy - or the absence of an overarching,
304 Ibid., 531.
305 Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations, 113 ff.
306 Schmidt, “Competing Realist Conceptions of Power”, 535.
307 Arnold Wolfers, “The Pole of Power and the Pole of Indifference”, World Politics 4, no. 1 (1951):
42.
308 Ibid.
centralized, ordering force in international affairs - disembogues into a condition of general insecurity and portraits the international as a realm dominated by a self-help logic: in order to further the state’s primary interest of survival it needs to marshal its own capabilities as effectively as possible in order to enjoy a maximum degree of non-domination. A strategy favored by states for the purpose of securing their survival is the accumulation of sufficient assets - i.e.
offensive military capabilities - that help to deter competitors, allow for limited freedom of action, and guarantee a sufficient degree of independence. The international’s anarchical makeup is stabilized in the form of a fragile equilibrium manifest in the figure of balance of power.309
In this context defensive realism stresses the security-maximizing character of states: cautious sovereign polities only wish to accumulate an appropriate amount of power that helps them to secure their essential interest in survival, without triggering significant balancing-responses from competing sovereigns.310 On the contrary offensive realism leans heavily towards the previously discussed classical reading of international affairs and argues that power-maximization is the best way of safeguarding the integrity of ones interests. Consequently expansionist and hegemonic foreign policies are perceived as a legitimate way of securing a state’s survival under anarchy and in the context of a self-help system.311
Neo-realism offers an important contribution to the field of IR research as a result of highlighting the elements of structural power. It portrays the international not only as a discrete political realm, but highlights its qualities as an autonomous facet of power in its own right due to its prolific effects on inter-state relations: in the same way the market dictates the logic of profit to a corporation, the international dictates the logic of security to the state.312 Regardless of its valuable contributions to the IR-field neo-realism also suffers
309 John J. Mearsheimer, “The False Promise of International Institutions”, International Security 19, no.
3 (1994/95): 9 ff.
310 Waltz, Theory of International Politics.
311 John J. Mearsheimer, The tragedy of Great Power politics (New York: Norton, 2001).
312 Waltz, “The Origins of War in Neorealist Theory”, 618 f.
from a poverty of imagination since it abandons power’s relational features (which were so vividly drawn by Morgenthau) in favor of a reductionist materialist/capability-based perspective. The complications that loom when slashing power down to its discrete and non-relational components, as well as the conceptual limitations attached to Waltz’ lump-concept of power, will be addressed in greater details in section three.