Classical realism emerged for two reasons in the 1930s. It constituted a reaction by academics to Western diplomacy after World War I, which realists derided as a prolonged exercise in Wilsonian idealism, and it also reflected a practical reaction to the emergence of aggressive, nationalistic states, particularly Nazi Germany. In order to understand why the realists con-sidered idealism an impracticable explanation and analysis of global politics, it is important to understand their portrayal of its basic features and weaknesses, even though this portrayal has been criticised as a simplistic and misleading caricature.
In 1918, President Wilson, in response to the devastation and horrors of World War I, delivered to Congress a program designed to prevent another global conflict from occurring.
The program proposed such measures as the creation of a League of Nations, respect for international law, and the abolition of secret diplomacy and bilateral treaties. It served as a model for a theoretical approach to global politics that the classical realists labelled
‘idealism’. Idealism, in its simplest form, promoted international organisations such as the League of Nations and international law as the basic means to preserve peace in the world. International organisations would circumvent secret negotiations between states and alliances and serve as forums to debate issues in public, as well as solve international crises before they erupted into conflict. States were expected to abide by international legal norms because of world public opinion directed against any transgressors as well as the value of reciprocity. Reciprocity stipulated that states would have an inherent interest in upholding international laws because they expected others to do the same. According to E. H. Carr and Hans Morgenthau (see Box4.3), Wilson and his fellow idealists assumed that citizens of the world and its institutions shared a ‘harmony of interests’ that induced them to seek cooperation and mutual understanding.
Classical realists accused the idealists of seeing and interpreting the world through their own subjective lenses and values, describing the world as it ought to be rather than as it was.
They disputed the notion that states would abide by international law or that international organisations without enforcement power could curb the aggressive tendencies of states. The events of the 1930s gave an impetus to the realist view that means other than international law and organisations had to be devised to meet the challenges of revisionist states such as Germany and Japan. The unfolding and conclusion of World War II intensified the need to search for practical means by which aggressive behaviour in global politics could be controlled or deterred. Classical realists believed firmly in the state as the principal actor in world politics, whose interest had to be taken into account, and on which world peace relied. According to realists, states pursue their own interests in an international system that is anarchic.
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Box 4.3: Discussion points
Hans J. Morgenthau’s six principles of political realism
1. Realism is governed by ‘objective laws’, which have their roots in human nature.
2. The concept of national interest, defined in terms of power, is the most important foreign policy goal.
3. While ‘interests defined in terms of power’ are not subject to historical change, the exercise of power is fluid.
4. Universal morality cannot be used to judge the actions of states.
5. Political realism refuses to identify the moral aspirations of a particular nation with the moral laws that govern the universe.
6. The political sphere is distinct from economics and law, and international and domestic politics operate according to different principles (Morgenthau,1973).
The national interests as perceived by leaders of different states were inevitably at odds with each other and could easily lead to conflict. Instead of depending on international organ-isations and law, the realists postulated a balance of power system as the primary means by which peace among nation-states could be preserved, and were deeply concerned with the emergence of nuclear weapons in a world dominated by two hostile superpowers.
Neorealism
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the realist preoccupation with anarchy and the alleged ubiquity of human aggressiveness generated widespread dissatisfaction with the classical real-ist approach to international relations. Critics were quick to point out that the approach overlooked growing interdependence in the international system, and the gradual develop-ment of international legal norms to govern and regulate interstate relations, and additionally had little to contribute to our understanding of the relationship between states and markets at a global level.
In the face of growing criticisms, some realists made attempts to save the theory from its alleged obsolescence, and in so doing defended the bipolar balance of power, in contrast to their classical predecessors. Kenneth N. Waltz’s Theory of international politics (1979) was the first serious attempt to modify the classical realist theory, and to set it on a firmer scientific basis. Waltz’s ‘neorealism’ is based on three key assumptions.
1. Anarchy (the absence of any common sovereign) is the distinguishing feature of a ‘self-help’ international system, in which states must rely upon their own means to protect their interests. In this system, security is the highest goal of states. It is therefore not necessary to use vague philosophical arguments about ‘human nature’ to see why the distribution of power is central in explaining the stability of the system.
2. States are the most important actors in the international system. While non-state actors, such as corporations and multinational organisations, play an important role, the state is paramount. Neorealists are often criticised for overlooking the importance of other actors.
Waltz conceded that:
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. . . states are not and never have been the only international actors. But then structures are defined not by all of the actors that flourish within them, but by the major ones’ (Waltz1986:
88).
3. States are rational actors. As Robert Keohane explains, ‘they have consistent, ordered preferences, and that they calculate the costs and benefits of all alternative policies in order to maximize their utility in light both of those preferences and of their perceptions of the nature of reality’ (Keohane1986: 11). However, although states are rational, they may miscalculate from time to time because they operate in a world of imperfect information (Mearsheimer2001).
Kenneth Waltz no doubt rescued realism from the threat of obsolescence by shifting attention to competitive systemic pressures that define the basic parameters of security for states. Nonetheless, there were still sharp intellectual reactions to this ‘rescue attempt’ and Waltz was criticised on a number of fronts. Some scholars accused Waltz of being immune to change in the international system, others argued that he failed to demonstrate the autonomy of structure over agency (Griffiths1992), whilst more radical observers accused him of defend-ing the Cold War and perpetuatdefend-ing a dangerous discourse of power politics in defenddefend-ing bipo-larity (George1994). The criticisms have encouraged other realist scholars to further improve and build on Waltz’s theory of structural realism. Stephen Walt (2002: 204–10) divides the new generation of realists into two broad camps – offensive neorealists and defensive neorealists.
Offensive neorealists (Copeland2001; Mearsheimer2001; Zakaria1998) stress the lim-ited capacity of states to accurately determine the real intentions of other states that might use force against them in the future. This encourages states to increase their power to meet any future challenges. In particular, major powers are engaged in a constant effort to improve their relative power position. Security is scarce, making international competition intense, and war likely. Mearsheimer is the clearest proponent of offensive neorealism. He argues that alliances are only temporary marriages of convenience. Furthermore, offensive neorealists make no distinction between status quo and revisionist states, the former content to main-tain their existing level of power and the latter seeking to enhance their international status.
According to Mearsheimer, international cooperation is inhibited by two main factors: rela-tive gains considerations, and concern about cheating, both of which stem from the logic of anarchy (see also Grieco1988). When a state contemplates cooperation it can think about it in terms of absolute gains, which means the state cares only about what it gains from the cooperation. Or it can think about it in terms of relative gains, which means the state con-siders how well it does compared to other states. According to offensive neorealists, states are primarily concerned with the distribution of gains from cooperation, which will rarely be equitable in a hierarchical and competitive world. The second factor inhibiting cooperation, according to offensive neorealists, is concern over cheating. States are reluctant to enter into cooperative agreements for fear that the other side will cheat on the agreement and gain a relative advantage. In a world where there is no ultimate arbiter, this will always be a possibil-ity. International institutions, in this context, can do little to moderate the security dilemma among states. States may choose to operate through institutions, but those institutions do not shape them. Institutions do not have an independent quality; they only mirror the distribu-tion of power in the internadistribu-tional system.
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Defensive neorealists (Glaser 1994–95; Lynn-Jones 1995; Snyder1991; Walt1987) accept that anarchy remains at the heart of insecurity for states and that states survive by forming balances of power, but they acknowledge the role of other factors that can mitigate competition for security in the international system. The three most often discussed among defensive neorealists are the balance between offensive and defensive military technologies, the degree to which states consider other powerful states as ‘threats’, and the role of institu-tions in deterring potential revisionist powers from the use of force to improve their relative power in the international system. The concept of the ‘offense-defense’ balance shapes the ease or difficulty of conquest. According to defensive neorealists, defensive military postures help states to promote their own security while posing no threat to the security of other states, and existential nuclear deterrence among the most powerful states ensures that territorial expansion is both difficult and unprofitable. Rather than focusing upon the state’s search to enhance their power, defensive realists emphasise the search for security. In this context, the prospects for cooperation are high when two status quo powers face each other in a security dilemma, but not where a status quo power faces a revisionist power. In the former situation, security will be made more likely where there is increased transparency; where the gains from cheating and the costs from being cheated on are low; where mutual cooperation is more ben-eficial than defection; and where each side employs strategies of reciprocity. Thus defensive neorealists seek to overturn the ‘competition bias’ of offensive neorealism by illustrating the range of cooperative options available to states.
In this context, institutions can play an important role in international relations, par-ticularly in the security arena. Defensive neorealists believe that countries primarily ‘balance’
against others that appear especially threatening to them; they do not balance against power per se. Thus Walt (1987) argues that balance of threat is a much better predictor of alliance formation than the crude balance of power. For example, in accounting for the Cold War, he argues that the geographic proximity, offensive power, and aggressive intentions of the Soviet Union promoted balancing behaviour by regional powers in Europe and Asia in the form of alliances with the US. ‘Balance of threat’ theory helps to explain why, despite concerns about American foreign policy in the wake of 11 September 2001, it is unlikely that other states will attempt to balance the US, alone or with others.