Richard Betts, "Realism"

uh those of you in my course on war peace and strategy will unfortunately hear a lot of familiar points today uh but you probably still shouldn't do off since I'll sneak a few new ones in too realism uh is a messy Theory uh if you take the whole tradition spanning Millennia and thinking about international relations as with other major compelling ideas uh like Christianity or Marxism uh original precepts spawn a lot of sects which develop in various directions uh they share some basic principles but they differ a lot on many related issues uh realists disagree with each other frequently they are classical realists and structural or Neo realists offensive realists and defensive realists on uh variations of other kinds uh some realists are Democrats some Republicans some marxists some Libertarians uh so realism does definitely not provide a formula for policy in any detail and this will lead some practical people to be impatient with the notion that grappling with the theories necessary or worth the time my bias is eclectic I've been accused in print by a realist of being a non-realist and by a non-realist of being a realist uh I do believe realism is in inadequate in many respects but I view it as Winston Churchill viewed democracy I think realism is the worst theory of international relations except for all the others now remember these paradigms uh we deal with and we insist inflicting on you uh at Colombia are General predispositions a few people's views fit very snugly in any of the paradigms except for a few Fanatics uh and note eh car's Reflections on the limitations of realism uh which he includes uh in a book which is otherwise consumate statement of realist thought now some people believe realism is a scientific theory and others that it's really just an attitude toward the Human Condition I incline more toward the latter view in any case realism is a general theory about how the world uh usually works uh but it's not a formula for predicting how things will work in specific cases uh where particular circumstances idiosyncrasies of political leaders or other sources of chance may produce Decisions by governments that don't Accord with the tenants of realist Theory uh classical realism we usually think of in terms of the tradition of fusi makavelli Hobs uh and in more recent times Hans morgantha and eh Carr Reinhold neor uh it emphasizes flaws in human nature the natural prevalence of conflicts of interests power seeking motives the dominance of material interests over legal or moral Norms in determining the actions of political units mainly nation states but within fractured polities that are undergoing Civil War contending groups that want to create or replace regimes and build new States uh Robert Gilpin notes three assumptions of realism uh first the essentially conflictual nature of international Affairs second that the essence of social reality is the group not the individuals of liberal thought nor the classes of Marxism Homo sapiens is a tribal species he says and third the Primacy in all political life of power and security and human motivation this is not to say that power and security are the sole or even the most important objectives Gilpin writes he says we prize Beauty truth and goodness what the realist seeks to stress is that all these more noble goals will be lost unless one makes provision for ones Security in the power struggle among social groups well more recently structural Neo uh realism or Neo realism associated with Kenneth Waltz and John mimer uh try to present a more rigorously scientific formulation of the realist tradition on the emphasize uh even more the causal effect of international Anarchy uh in another book that you're not assigned for this course at least um Walt's man the state in war four he talks about the difference between permissive and efficient causes the permissive cause is what makes something possible though not inevitable and the efficient cause is what makes it happen in a particular instance the permissive cause is the International System defined in terms of Anarchy there's just no Sovereign above the level of States uh or as he quotes rouso Wars occur because there is nothing to prevent them now note in this Anarchy does not mean chaos or constant violence uh it means simply the lack of a sovereign the lack of enforcement Authority above the level of the state without World Government Anarchy makes States or groups within countries uh without coherent or effective functioning States uh makes them the ultimate judges and enforces of their own rights and interests moral or material rights and interests as they see them when States or groups uh in civil conflict disagree about whose claims are legitimate power determines which of the claims will prevail nothing but counterpower can prevent the use of force by a stat or group that considers the status quo unacceptable uh for the efficient cause uh Walt says look to the levels of analysis below the International System domestic politics particular leaders and ideologies uh there's a prevent misconception uh that Waltz believes that domestic factors don't matter he thinks they matter a great deal if you're trying to explain why something happens at a particular time and he makes an important distinction which is lost on many people between a theory of international politics and a theory of foreign policy theory of international politics is about average outcomes over time why Wars recur uh a theory of foreign policy is one that explains why a government makes a decision for or against war in particular circumstances for particular reasons Waltz says in man the state in war war may result because State a has something that state B wants the efficient cause of the war is the desire of State B the permissive cause is the fact that there's nothing to prevent State B from undertaking the risks of War he goes on if an effect is produced by two or more causes the effect is not permanently eliminated by removing one of them an Endeavor launched against one cause to the neglect of others may make the situation worse instead of better thus as the Western democracies became more inclined to peace Hitler became more belligerent The increased propensity to peace of some participants in international politics may increase rather than decrease the likelihood of War Anarchy defines political order in the international sphere because there's no world government no legislature court or executive complete with police force to arrest those who violate the law and threaten public order that's why Waltz calls the International System a self-help system or as John mimer says what happens when a country calls 911 nothing there's no one on the other end of the line there is no 911 in the International System well wait a minute you might say is the United Nations 911 or NATO or Uncle Sam no it's not the same those organs are like a friendly neighbor you can call on to ask for help uh if you're getting burglarized they are only organizations with member countries who may or may not come to your Aid if it suits them Bon kimoon has no troops of his own and never will have at least until the United Nations becomes uh some form of world government you can try calling a friendly neighbor another country you want to Ally with and support you but whether that Neighbor comes to your Aid is up to her when Kuwait called in 1990 we answered and came when Dar War called last year or this year we said sorry can't make it this time there's no organized institutionalized enforcement Authority always standing by in the International System that you can count on to make governments or groups uh do the right thing as we've seen the United Nations and the world Court in the ha don't fill the bill when the world Court gave a verdict against the United States on the mining of Nicaraguan Harbors in the 1980s the Reagan Administration said get lost and nothing happened to the United States nobody arrested the United States and sent it to prison maybe somebody should have but no one no International institution no other government could so no one did in the International System you're on your own you and your friends have to to act as your own court and your own police or else submit to whoever else is willing to do so multilateral enforcement for example uh NATO's action against Serbia in 1999 uh the war over Kosovo uh is not analogous to domestic law enforcement by courts or legal authorities rather it's more analogous to Vigilantes organizing aasi same logic can apply to conflicts within states to Civil War Wars or revolutions when central government institutions collapse or when large segments of populations no longer consider them legitimate and seek to overthrow them or seced from them at that point you can say there's Anarchy within the state until orders reestablished by a new regime or partition that comes out of Civil War just like Anarchy that's the permanent condition in the International System a realists are most focused on the problem of War and Peace un like Liberals are constructivists who are at least as interested and probably more so in some other issues such as economic development and trade ideology the character of domestic regimes and other big issues that affect human welfare how do they as opposed to other schools of thought see the problem of War uh well one difference I think that uh defines the instincts a lot of people bring to this question uh is the difference between seeing the of war in evil or in tragedy uh to oversimplify very roughly liberals tend to assume the problem of War uh comes from Evil and realists tend to assume that it comes from tragedy evil in the sense of aggression aggression comes from Human Nature and sin bad people commit aggression aggression is a crime or aggression comes from bad States bad regimes while good States only defend themselves autocracies make war democracies make peace and so on uh the view that emphasizes tragedy tends to believe that war comes from genuine conflicts of interests sometimes in which both sides have reasonable claims or certainly claims that they themselves see as reasonable or it can come from misunderstanding misperception miscalculation uh the problem of the security dilemma the security dilemma image means that you have two states neither of whom uh want war with each other uh but who are suspicious of each other's intentions so State a in order to guard against the worst possibilities uh starts arming itself so that state B can't take advantage of it State B sees State arming and says uhoh uh we'd better tool up too and starts increasing its armaments state a then sees that and says aha we knew it uh they're out to get us and you get this figurative uh cycle or uh escalation of action and reaction uh competition that increases suspicion and tension uh causes arms races uh may make crises more likely and at worst potentially inadvertent War well which is the main danger uh the security dilemma or aggression and a way uh these Notions are capsulized in the prevalent images people have of the origins of World War I and World War II um in 1914 the image many have is that uh a cycle of action and reaction got out of control and the states of Europe were unable to escape the escalation that led to war even though none of them really uh wanted what followed whereas in uh uh 1938 at Munich people seeking to avoid uh exactly that problem of escalating tension uh solved the problem they thought in a different way by reassuring Germany uh but turned out to be wrong about Germans uh the Germans Ambitions and the limits of those Ambitions and ended up allowing aggression to succeed but how do you know which situation you're in uh that is often what the most intense National Security debates are about uh there are risks of misperception in either direction uh you can try to deter a state you're worried about uh but then risk provoking it if you assume aggression is the danger uh while the reality is the security dilemma as in the popular image of 1914 or you can reassure that state and be victimized if its real intent is aggressive uh as with Germany uh at the end into the 1930s uh I also find it useful to sort of clarify some images to make analogies to uh domestic law and adjudication those who focus on the problem of evil or unprovoked aggression tend to see War as a matter figuratively of criminal law one transgressor is at fault like a murderer or Thief who threatens Dom domestic peace uh that transgressor has to be stopped and taken out of action instead of Charles Manson or Ted Bundy and domestic uh Arenas uh it's an Adolf Hitler or Saddam Hussein those who focus on tragedy or misund understanding tend to see war is a problem uh more akin to civil law where disputes over contracts or divorce or similar matters have two sides where right and wrong are not always clearly divided where both sides believe themselves to be in the right whichever the case may be why do political disputes produce War rather than litigation because litigation only resolves problems when either both parties to the case accept the legitimacy and finality of the Court's decision even if it goes against them or if either of the parties does not accept it the court can enforce its decision it does that by dispatching police to arrest off ing parties and put them in jail or by garnishing a salary to pay a judgment or by seizing property and transferring it to the party who won the suit uh litigation would have worked in regard to the mining of Nicaraguan Harbors if the world Court in the ha could have punished the United States uh the point is uh within a state a court can make its RIT stick because there's an executive authority to enforce it there is no comparable structure of accepted legitimate Authority or of enforcement power in the International System to repeat myself uh or within failed States or ones driven by rebellion and this is above all what uh realism emphasizes about the meaning of Anarchy uh in fact war is the real analog to litigation in the International System peaceful settlements are analogous to settling out of court in domestic legal disputes in the domestic legal system if you're getting a divorce challenging the interpretation of a bequest in a will or suing a contractor for fraud it's in everyone's interest normally to reach a settlement out of court because litigation is expensive and it could leave both parties to the dispute worse off than if they can agree on a resolution of the dispute don't have to pay all that money for lawyers for years on end uh but sometimes it proves impossible to settle out a court and litigation ensues same in international disputes usually the parties to international disputes settle peacefully because they know War would be awful might leave them both worse off but sometimes they can't agree and the equivalent of litigation violent contest uh ensues as some at times have hoped that the United Nations would be that supranational Authority that could enforce international law that so-called Global governance uh would supersede self-help in the International System and reign in the resort to war but exactly what is the difference between Global governance and World Government now I know there are political scientists who will make very clear what the difference is um but in uh my obtuse way I just went to the dictionary and looked and the dictionary doesn't distinguish the two very clearly uh in any case the United Nations uh is not a world government so should Warriors now Proclaim that the United Nations is in crisis because the United States ignores it when deciding to wage war no or at least not the current crisis is newer or deeper than in the past uh I'd say uh the United Nations recently has just reverted to what it has been for most of its history that is during the Cold War and the real unmasking of the United Nations overreaching in the post-cold War era came long before the United States ignored it in attacking Iraq uh and this I think illustrates some of the criticisms that realists uh level at idealists uh who don't pay attention to power uh and uh that is I'd say the real unmasking of the limits of the United Nations came in 1995 at Sanita when the United Nations boldly proclaimed a safe area uh for Bosnian Muslims uh to be protected from Attack by Bosnian serbs problem was the UN had no means to enforce it if I recall correctly it was one puni Dutch Battalion which when faced with the Serb Army just uh melted away uh as a result of that uh approximately 7,000 Bosnian Muslims by the most prominent estimates were rounded up and murdered uh I think it's a shameful but classic example of what realism sees as Folly the Reliance on law or rhetoric to protect people without backing by military power uh realism's argument is if you make demands or assurances that you can't back up with power you're foolish at best and at worst horribly destructive there been a lot of rhetoric about the rule of international law but a realist would say the only law that rules is the interpretation of international law by the most powerful states in the system when they disagree about what international law really says as prosecution and defense attorneys disagree in domestic courtrooms the law has no effect independent of Power claims of universal jurisdiction which have become more popular in recent times are really statements of aspiration or wishfulness rather than reality in this view when a great power refuses to sign a treaty it's not bound by the treaty uh despite what some observers now assert is when they claim that treaties like the npt the nonproliferation treaty become binding once they've passed a certain threshold in the number of ratifications uh even uh binding on those who don't adhere to them but the United States is not going to be bound by the international criminal court uh whether it should be or not and in fact uh the United States is using its power to induce other countries to back off uh from their adherence to the international Court by exempting Americans in those countries from the jurisdiction of the ICC power Trump's law and other ways in international life that differ profoundly from the role of law inside stable societies realists would argue for example Belgium was compelled to scale back its own war crimes law in order to appease the United States after the US government threatened to move NATO headquarters out of Belgium what about realism and morality there's a prevalent image of realism as a moral in one sense this is true but not really uh instead uh I think it has to be understood in terms of utilitarian or consequentialist versions of morality where ethics are shaped by the imperatives of survival and see the Holzman and Leven article on that that you're assigned I apologized I recommended uh Elliot cohens and my little article be assigned before I had read the lein one uh which you can probably get away with substituting for that if you haven't read them all yet uh Hans Morgan thought would emphasize that uh you should focus on the difference between what is and what ought to be between the desirable and the possible if what's desirable is not possible trying to do what's desirable may be at best feudal at worst counterproductive and destructive realist worry about Paving the road to hell with good intentions reita yesterday Dar for tomorrow uh eh Carr argues that idealists let wishing dominate thinking and that realists make thinking dominate wishing Robert gilpen writes moral commitment lies at the heart of realism what morgantha and many other realists have in common is a belief that ethical and political Behavior will fail unless it takes into account the actual practice of states and the teaching of sound Theory makavelli argues in various ways that sometimes the prince has to do evil in order to do good um thus in the liberal tradition of the West makavelian has a pejorative connotation and it is often said the ends do not justify the means well of course the ends don't always justify the means but they must sometime if you ever believe in waging War for any purpose uh because a decision to wage war including in self-defense simply resisting an attack means a decision to get a lot of people killed who might otherwise live a decision that that is the Lesser evil a decision that defending some value uh whether it's uh humanitarian relief for bited populations or your own political Integrity or anything else is the Lesser evil uh compared to war at that point if you believe the end never justifies the means then it seems to me you can never believe in any War however Noble or just the asserted purpose might be uh no war against Hitler to prevent national socialism for ruling all of Europe no war against the Confederacy in the United States in the 1860s to free the slaves no war for anything but if you believe that some things are worth killing for some values are so important self-defense or uh other values uh then uh you're on that slippery slope of deciding exactly when and how much certain ends May justify certain means morgantha emphasizes that realists aim for the Lesser evil and they subordinate abstract principle to material interest um essenti actually a pragmatic argument in a sense also the difference between what Max vber calls the ethic of absolute ends and the ethic of responsibility uh in other words a realist would say no principle should be honored to the absolute if it has uh awful consequences so in a way one thing that illustrates this argument starkly in a way that's maybe surprising to Modern sensibilities is the the lying the controversy over the lying Baptists and I don't remember the details but essentially if I recall somewhat correctly there was a controversy in the 19th century uh between different sects of Baptists over uh this hypothetical situation if a family on the frontier is attacked by Indians or Native Americans and uh the parents tell the kids to go out and hide uh in a culvert behind the barn and the Indians take the parents prisoners and ask if there's anyone else there should the parents tell the truth and say the children are out behind the barn or should they lie and say no one else is here and the argument was for some the absolute principle that you must not lie had to be honored because uh you couldn't compromise the principle and the pragmatic counterargument is that's ridiculous because then that gets your children killed uh well that may seem the simplistic form of the argument but in more complex ways that is uh part of the realist critique of taking principles too far or the example morgantha gave about the Soviet invasion of Finland in 1939 to 40 after the outbreak of uh War over Poland uh British wanted to Aid the fins against the Soviets and were prevented uh because Sweden wouldn't allow troops to Transit their country and Morgan tha's argument was how insane it was for the British to think about going to war with the Soviet Union at that point to defend Finland just over the principle of aggression when they're already as it were fighting for their lives against Germany this would have been cutting their own throats um would it have been moral to invite defeat and War at the price of letting the Nazis ruled Europe just to uphold finland's legal rights in a certain way one might argue and I'll maybe reveal my biases uh uh you see something of that with neoconservative arguments about Iran today uh there are some arguing that the United States should attack Iran despite the fact that we happened to be bogged down in a catastrophic war in Iraq already um realists would criticize that as unwise at best realism's view on the use of force as an instrument of policy is sometimes misconstrued there's a prevalent notion that realists are hawks and like to use Force no uh at least not all the time they're Hawks about preparing capabilities for war but much less so about fighting Wars uh when they can be avoided uh there's no simple correlation between ideologic values uh or international relations theories and opinion on the use of force during the Cold War both realists and liberals were split on uh the matter of the Vietnam War you had realists like uh George Kennan opposing the war and a realist like Henry Kissinger supporting it uh similarly you had liberal Senators like scoop Jackson and George McGovern on opposite ends of that issue some people forget that Jackson Ada rating was higher than George McGovern's uh Jackson was a big supporter of the war well on balance uh the question is what's the standard for going to war realists would tend to say that it's when important national interests in a material sense or the maintenance of the balance of power is at stake whereas liberals would tend to say that it should be when political values or moral principles are at stake plenty of exceptions to this simplistic formulation but I think that's the sort of crayon version of the difference uh in the postc Cold War era who was most often calling for the use of force by the United States for intervention uh with military means I think it was more often liberal Hawks um you didn't find many people identified as realists clamoring uh to go to war in the Balkans or Iraq um and then you have the phenomenon of the present president of the United States who started out as in some rough ready sense more or less uh a cautious realist saying the United States shouldn't be involved in nation building or uh interventions uh here and there but then was converted overnight by the events of September 11th into a liberal Crusader um why do realists Focus so much on military power war is never a First Choice instrument policy but it's always an available instrument it's preferred when other instruments fail and the alternative of Peace poses unacceptable losses force is the Ultima ratio regam that is the final Arbiter of disputes when all else all peaceful means of negotiation and bargaining fail to resolve it most disputes are settled without violence because no one wants to spend blood and treasure if it can be avoided but occasionally conflict of interest proves intractable compromise proves infeasible and neither side would rather concede than fight then force of the threat of force determines who rules on the matter countries need military power not because war is likely but just because it's possible they need to keep military forces at the ready in peace time because they never know when things may go bad when an adversary may change his intentions and intentions can change quickly overnight in an election or coupet uh or a cabinet Shuffle but modern military capabilities cannot change overnight it takes many years to field a modern Army Navi and Air Force it takes time to convert resources into mobilized Force structures to recruit organize equip train and deploy them in forms capable of combat so if you want the option to fight next year you need to have begun preparing many years ago now here I'm talking about Modern Warfare uh not primitive lowtech Warfare that has characterized uh much of uh recent conflict in the International System in the Balkans and Africa in the 1990s or insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan today um one statement compatible with realism uh was used graphically by someone who who is generally identified as a Critic of realism that's Joseph NY uh who was a Harvard professor and uh served in the Carter state department and in the course of The Rebirth of the Cold War in the 1970s began uh adjusting some of the ideas he had become famous for in Academia declaring the declining utility of force and the obsolescence of realism uh and he later served as assistant Secretary of Defense in the Clinton Administration but I said security is like oxygen uh you never worry about it until you don't have it and then it's all you worry about so military power in a sense is the emergency oxygen tank for the rare occasions uh when an adversary May suck security away realists believe that war is natural natural meaning what occurs in nature not meaning good uh just natural uh and states are also subject to Natural Selection uh now it's true in recent years not many states have gone out of business completely although historically a number did but a lot of them suffer a great deal Germany lost a third of its territory in the 20th century as a result of trying to enlarge itself uh in the last century Mexico lost almost half its territory to Guess Who Um and there are other examples uh so States need military power to prevent War if possible and if they can't prevent it to win it military power may also hopefully prevent War via deterrence that is by making clear to an adversary that if she attacks either your successful defense or your devastating retaliation will make her wish she hadn't me that the costs exceed the gains and therefore uh prevent the resort to to war in this sense military power need not be used to be useful in fact the most successful use of military power uh is when it remains in the background and never has to actually uh be employed in combat it's always in the background of diplomacy on significant International political disputes even when the option to use Force doesn't appear to be on the table now this is not true of all negotiations of course not about trade negotiations or uh disputes uh on many matters but uh regarding any dispute over who will make a final political decision on a matter of vital political interest K clitz said that combat is like cash payment in Commerce there are a lot of interactions and deals that occur without any money actually changing hands but always in the background of all these deals is what would happen at the end of the day when money does does change hands uh similarly many deals are made uh many coercive actions undertaken uh in international Affairs uh that are shaped by the estimates of what would happen if it were to come to blows military power may keep some grievances from being pursued since it's clear that the weaker party can't do anything to force a rectification of Injustice why has Mexico stopped uh complaining about all the territory the United States grabbed from it uh in the 1840s uh well I suspect one reason is I know they can't do anything about it realism focuses on military power because it determines whose claims Prevail when disagreements can't be resolved by negotiation so war is about who rules who controls the disposition of whatever Stakes are in dispute who calls the tune in peace time after the shooting stops for realists this usually means which countries will or more importantly will not control internation the International System or which groups will control the government within a country in a civil war for liberals uh usually uh this means which type of regime will rule within countries thus realists generally prefer not to intervene in Civil Wars unless the result is likely to affect the balance of power among states while liberals believe ultimate stability of the International System system depends on the quality of governments within it and thus are more interested in promoting democratization and improvements of governments uh sometimes by force consider Bosnia why did some oppose Western intervention and others support it uh liberals tended to see the serbs as culprits guilty of aggression or war crimes realists tended to see the moral claims as less clear or more mixed uh and saw the issue as being in a gray area rather than one of black of black or white uh liberals in the West in the early 1990s wanted to intervene to stop Bloodshed and roll back Serb conquests but few wanted to pay very significant costs for doing so uh liberals want enforcement uh but often back away if the price is much Bloodshed finally in 1995 NATO did some serious bombing which in combination with the unilateral Croatian offensive in on the ground and Cina put the serbs on the defensive and we got the Dayton agreements uh which appeared to settle the war peacefully but how by incorporating mutually contradictory Provisions that aimed in principle to reestablish an integrated unitary Bosnian state but also recognized de facto the partition of the country among the three contending ethnic groups the settlement thus did not settle the political question the question of who rules and rested on the continuing presence of and policing by outside occupiers so I can only wonder how Iraq and we will avoid that fate can the United States uh really shape and control uh some rocky transition toward democracy uh uh in a way that doesn't leave uh the Shiites attempting to impose tyranny of the majority or leaving the Kurds determined to exclude the rid of baghdad's authority leaving the sunnis desperate to prevent their marginalization can such a situation be brought about without going from current low-grade Civil War to allout Civil War realists would be skeptical that it's going to be possible to do that uh without a much larger War uh liberals would be more hopeful uh that the process of uh government development and Reconciliation May avoid that and all this also indicates that war is usually about States the relations between them in the international sphere or regarding Civil Wars or revolutions or Wars of Independence about how States will be formed and organized and controlled whose state it will be under what conditions it's realism emphasis on States P um there's a lot more sentiment in that direction uh perhaps right after the Cold War U before a number of things started going sour again but also the conflicts of of post September 11th world are not so clearly about States uh the perpetrators of those attacks were transnational group uh concerned mainly with opposing the effect of American power and perhaps Western culture on numerous societies so this evokes the question of new cleavages in World politics uh argued by Samuel Huntington in his book The Clash of civilizations and the remaking of World Order which I see as a constructivist argument about uh International conflict and Order uh but States certainly are critical ingredients in any political violence uh the formation of an anti-terrorist Coalition for example depends on States US military action against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda uh in uh the Middle East depends on relations with governments that Supply bases and cooperate in anti-terror campaigns Pakistan usbekistan Saudi Arabia and others it's often said that states have become much less important in World politics that globalization reduces the ability of states to control things does this mean then that war has become less important perhaps is even becoming obsolete well first there's less to the decline of the state than meets the eye in some respects States now have less control over some important aspects especially of Economics uh than they once did yet States remain alive and kicking and it's interesting how many people in so many places around the world uh since the end of the Cold War have been fighting like hell uh to get uh and shape their own States um and some who see globalization is an unprecedented wave of the future perhaps exaggerate how much control States had traditionally uh and indeed States Loom larger in the lives of their citizens uh than they did in earlier times Kenneth Waltz likes to point out that Western States now dispose of far larger proportions of gross economic product of their societies than ever before and for some reason there have been more people organized and organized groups in the world in the past few years as I said fighting fiercely to establish their own States or take control of them uh than ever before in the past Century whether it's Bosnia Tajikistan Cambodia Afghanistan Armenia aeran Rwanda Kosovo Sudan East timour Chia and the list goes on um some contemporary Wars take place in Weak failed or non-existent states for example Somalia or Congo but they're about States attempts to create states to take control of them and reshape them or develop them into functioning authorities or at least if not in the sense of some elaborate articulated uh Modern Nation State uh at least a political unit uh uh that at least provides opportunities for kleptocracy well is realism a guide for policy uh said it's not a formula for policy and there's also Al uh always been an argument about uh whether realism is an empirical Theory or a normative one and I'd say the answer is both essentially it's an argument that the odds are over time if States or groups do not act in a certain way uh to watch out for their power position uh they're going to be vulnerable uh and suffer for it uh and therefore since that happens as a matter of reality states have to act in accord with those principles uh to survive and therefore they should do it it's a somewhat circular and confusing argument but I think that's essentially what most realists would say when they're charged with uh making an argument that it's both the way the world works and criticizing governments for not uh acting in the way that realism dictates sometimes realists and Liberals are constructivists agree on what policy choices should be made but for different reasons and sometimes realists disagree among themselves about what should be done in a specific case as much as they do with other schools of thought the main point that differentiates realists is their focus on how policy options depend on and will affect the balance of power in the International System as opposed to what the legal or moral principles in dispute are which are the priorities to idealists some examples of situations where realism and idealism diverge I mentioned uh the winter war in Finland in 1939 to 40 or Nixon and the rap pron with China in 1972 Nixon was a conservative uh and China uh was at that time in the midst of the cultural revolution maoism was the ultimate anti-liberal ideology uh viewed at that time as every bit as wild and crazy as North Korea or Iran or Saddam Hussein's Iraq have been viewed in uh your lifetimes uh but the realist argument uh that Nixon and Kissinger had was essentially an order to counterbalance a rising Soviet Union Yes at that time the Soviet Union was seen as rising uh that the ideological differences the difference and values that was so profound between the United States and China had to be disregarded in order to form a tacit Reliance against the Soviet Union uh Iraq in 1991 after the first Persian Gulf War uh you had the realist view that was dominant in daddy Bush's Administration people like Brent skof or the old Dick Cheney uh before his heart operations uh making The Prudent argument that it was not a good idea to try to overthrow Saddam Hussein because that would threaten to break up Iraq uh make Iran more powerful um the opposition uh maybe uh most articulately uh voiced by Paul Wolowitz saying uh that we had encouraged the Iraqis to revolt we'd uh put them out on a limb especially what happened with the Shiites in the South uh after the end of the war and the Kurds in the north and that we were morally bound to support them uh and to do everything we could to overthrow Saddam Hussein because his regime was so awful I also mentioned shanit 1995 un legalism without backing by military power ending in Massacre um what about in the future what would realism uh or liberalism suggest about uh how to handle us Chinese relations if China continues to rise economically should the United States want China to develop economically to become rich and prosperous uh as it has been doing for the past 25 years well liberals would generally say sure economic interdependence Fosters peace uh now this is opposed to the argument in waltz's book uh that interdependence causes conflict but in Liberal ideology the trading system based on comparative advantage and peaceful competition makes both the United States and China richer and better off so a rich China will be a bigger market for American Products more Chinese military power won't matter because Mutual interests in cooperation for economic purposes to profit through peaceful exchange rather than destructive conflict will prevent military conflict which would only seem irrational realists though uh would be probably more inclined to say probably not the United States should not be happy about uh an economically developing China the argument being that a rich China uh will be powerful and more able to throw its weight around and threaten the interests of the United States and its allies in the region uh that Growing Power creates growing Ambitions and if there's nothing bad or evil or wrong about this it's natural uh Robert gilpin's argument that a rising challenge to a hegemonic power often produces a war of hegemonic transition is realism uh a guide for dealing with the war on terror uh well it's not a perfect framework for understanding radical islamist reaction against the West Al qaeda's militants or other aspects of the problem Al Qaeda is a collection of trans non-state actors uh Al-Qaeda and many other terrorist groups are idealists more than realists uh the conflict with West is in large part a conflict of ideals so perhaps constructivism and realism in some combination might be better than liberalism for diagnosing the islamist terrorist threat um liberalism would tend to emphasize the importance of spreading Western democracy and values as a way of getting at the root causes of terrorism uh now I'm not trying to Tar all liberals with this given the unpopularity of the C current president but I'd say uh this is in large part uh the argument of uh the bush the younger uh Administration after September 11th their argument that American values are really Universal values and that the challenge is to do in the evildoers uh in order to solve the problem um of course the counterargument then is that Western values AR part what provokes the problem and energizes the opposition from radical islamists what about constructivism well most of the constructivists we read in Academia uh tend at least in the Norms they value to be uh liberal in some form or other uh the Huntington variant is somewhat different uh where Huntington argues in favor of non-intervention in other culture areas as necessary to keep the clash of civilizations which he believes is real from becoming a war of civilizations which he wants to avoid and by the way if like so many people uh your view of Huntington's argument is what appeared in the original article in foreign affairs 15 years ago uh bear in mind that people often infer things from that that are not what he argues if you read the whole book especially the last chapter sometimes realism and idealism converge and sometimes realists are split uh convergence for example the Titanic struggles against German fascism and Japanese militarism in the 1940s and against Soviet communism and the Cold War United realists and liberals because all of those enemies combined both great military power and alien ideologies and values realists who are concerned with might and liberals who are concerned with right both pointed to a militant Western policy of war against the axis and containment against the Soviet Union this was not true after the Cold War uh one of the reasons for the decline of realism in uh favor it tends to follow events in the real world after the Cold War there was no major military threat to the West no glob spanning ideology to compete with Western liberalism on the same scale that Marxism leninism did the issue is should powerful states stand down and remain Vigilant but restrained in intervention abroad or should they take the opportunity to use Force to advance Western values and reshape other countries in our image realists tend toward the former non-interventionist viewers as I argued though they're not United in that and liberals tend toward the latter uh wisian use of force to reform non-liberal regimes are create a safer liberal International order um there are splits among realists some interventionists uh believing that bad regimes abroad will come to threaten Western Security in the future so for example in 2003 most realists probably opposed uh the American invasion of Iraq but some who believed Sadam Hussein was crazy and might use wmd once he had enough favored War this was symbolized on the uped page of the New York Times on September 22nd 2002 and there was a quarter page anti-war ad signed by 33 Scholars of security studies mostly identified as realists next to a huge oped essay by Ken Pollock a disciple of Barry Posen one of the s of the ad but recommending Invasion and sometimes anti- interventionist realists misjudge threats eh car endorsed appeasement indeed that was one of the principal uh motives behind that book uh and Chamberlain was probably more realist than Churchill Churchill was if anything an idealist uh so where I and 32 others who signed that anti-invasion ad in September 2002 chamberlains and poic Churchill don't think so but you never know for sure until you get the verdict of history I mean we all think of Churchill is a savior of Western Civilization now but in June 1940 uh it didn't look like a very good bet Britain was alone Germany ruled the continent of Europe what sense did it make to fight on when they might have struck a deal with Germany and there's evidence that Hitler was willing to let the British keep their empire as long as they' let him keep the continent um but Churchill said no you know we'll fight on the beaches we'll fight in the Hedge RS We Will Never Surrender and there's one uh famous line of his that's really Grizzly says if this island story of ours must end let it be uh when all of us are lying on the ground choking in our own blood not a realist rationale that puts material interest above all um no the basic problem was that eh car and Chamberlain and most other people at the time of the Munich agreement in 1938 believed it was a great Triumph because it avoided another catastrophe like World War I uh and that Hitler while he was a nasty opportunistic statan Statesman uh was not crazy uh and therefore he could do a deal with them what they didn't recognize was that he was not a normal opportunistic real Statesman they didn't realize that Hitler was an idealist who put his principles about the German folk and uh expansion to the East and other rights of uh the germs as our whole society that the only political debates in the United States are between contending schools within liberalism um so realism is not an answer to positive things that you want to accomplish to make the world a better place um but realism I think helps to suggest what's necessary to prevent negative developments uh that threaten to your ability to do good well I can follow up on any of that or any other other things you want to bring up [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Columbia University

Views: 58,192

Keywords: columbiauniversity, sipa, politics

Id: DCE7EB1Nvq4

Length: 55min 48sec (3348 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 24 2009