Realism and Foreign Policy

Dr. Ibrahim Koncak

International Ataturk AlatooUniversity

Key Questions

• What is realism?

• How is it applied to the analysis and practice of foreign policy?

• What are the main pitfalls in applying realist theories to FPA?

• What is a useful set of guidelines for avoiding these pitfalls and using realist insights to sharpen the analysis of foreign policy?

What is Realism?

• Three Core Assumptions about how the world works:– Groupism

Group solidarity- potential conflict with other groups

The most important human groups are nation states; the most important source of in-group cohesion is nationalism. Nature of the polity is NOT important for realism.

– Egoism

Self-interest ultimately drives political behavior. Egoism is rooted in human nature. Certain conditions can facilitate altruistic behavior –ultimate trade-offs between collective and self-interest must be confronted , egoism tends to trump altruism.

What is Realism?

Power-centrism: Power is the fundamental feature of politics. Senses of power:

Social influence or control: Some groups or individuals always have an outsized influence on politics.

Resources: Some groups or people are always disproportionately endowed with the material wherewithal to get what they want.

Kenneth Waltz:’ The web of social and political life is spun out of inclinations and incentives, deterrent threads and punishments. Eliminate the latter two, and the ordering of society depends entirely on the former- a utopian thought impractical this side of Eden’ (Waltz 1

What is Realism?

• The most powerful groups (the most resource rich and influential) today-major powers like USA, China

• Realist checklist for FPA: look for where the power is, what the group interests are, and the role power relationships play in reconciling clashing interests. Look beyond rhetoric.

• Realists: Thucydides, Machiavelli, Weber, Carr, Morgenthau and Waltz.

What is Realism?

• Even though the thinkers associated with realism are a highly diverse lot, and even though their ideas contradict each other, the threads of those three core assumptions tie them all together into a coherent intellectual school.

• Question: How scholars transform the basic assumptions about the world into theories?

• Theory: School of thought• Sub-schools within realism: neo-realism, the

balance of power, the security dilemma oroffence-defense balance

The Development of Realist Theories

• If human affairs are characterized by groupism, egoism, and power-centrism, then politics is likely to be conflictual unless there is some central authority to enforce order. When no authority – a condition theorists call anarchy- any state can resort to force to get what it wants.

• Three steps: a knowledge of theoretical schools within realism, familiarity with specific realist theories, clarity how theories, assumptions, and conditions are related.

Theoretical schools within realism

• Defensive realism

• Offensive realism

• Neoclassical realism

Theories within realism

• Balance of threat theory– Three key variables: Aggregate capabilities, Geography,

Perceptions of aggressive intentions Example: USA policy after the Cold War (USA-USSR)

• Hegemonic stability theory– Fostering some degree of hierarchy– Comprising rules, norms, institutions

• Power transition theory– Dominant states will prefer to retain leadership– Distribution of power– Prediction: When two sites come to parity war or a cold

war will occur.

Assumptions, conditions and theories

• Question: How do we know whether one of these theoretical subschools or specific theories applies to specific foreign policy issue?

– Be clear about how the various part of any theories fit together.

The assumptions of groupism, egoism, power centrism+ Scope condition (anarchy)= general theory; politics in anarchy is conflictual.

Two Errors

• The first error is to confuse assumptions with scope conditions.

• Anarchy is variable; great powers seek to enforce order among nearby small states, for those states anarchy is attenuated.

• Examples: » the USA in Central America

» The EU in the Balkans

» Russia in Central Asia (?)

• Then second error is to confuse assumptions with predictions.

– States are nice to each other= realism does not apply

Realist theories explain not only war but also peace. (is it really so?)

Realist theories can be powerful tools in FPA, but applying them is harder than it might seem.

‘States are main actors’ Current manifestation of the groupism assumption

‘Universal moral principles do not apply to states’

Predictions/arguments derived from three assumptions

States calculate interest in terms of power

‘Skepticism toward international law and institutions’

‘International politics is essentially conflictual’

‘Humankind cannot transcend conflict through the progressive power of reason’

‘Primacy of balance of power politics’

International system is anarchic

Scope conditions Uncertainty

The utility of force

Propositions commonly seen as definitive ‘assumptions of realism’

Actual relation to three assumptions

‘Politics not a function of ethics; reason of state trump ethics’

Implication of egoism

‘State interest is survival’ Implication of groupism

‘Realist assume tendency to evil’

Mis-stated implication of egoism

Practitioners’ foreign policy approaches

• The report of Prince Kuropatkin, the Russian Minister of War, to Tsar Alexander 2, in 1900.

Russia was a satisfied power.

Any expansion would only frighten other states.

Other states would build up their own forces or ally against St. Petersburg.

It was Russia’s interest to reduce tensions with other major powers.

Kuropatkin’s analysis built on all the core realist assumptions. In today’s terms the report relies on balance of threat and the general assessment of the security dilemma found in defensive realism.

Sir Eyre Crowe’s memorandum

• Sir Eyre Crowe, a British diplomat, wrote a memorandum for the government.

– The need reorientation of Britain’s foreign policy

– Britain’s power position and the fundamental challenges presented by the rise of Germany.

– Crowe used balance of power theory to contain Germany

– Detailed examination of German domestic policies, statecraft, and intentions.

George Kennan’s long telegram

• George Kennan, the US Ambassador to the Soviet Union, drafted the most famous memoranda of modern times in 1946.– Soviet Union in position to threaten the global

balance of power– The country was disposed to continue expansion if not

met with a powerful counterweight.– Features: analysis of Soviet, US, and British

capabilities, and world’s key power centers.– Focus on narrow group interest, potential for conflict,

balance of power, an in-depth and insightful analysis of domestic Soviet politics.

Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger

• President Richard Nixon and secretary of state Henry Kissinger engineered reorientation of US FP in 1970s.– Relative decline in US power against the allies in Europe

and Asia and the main rival the Soviet Union many other regional states.

– Need to get allies and partners to shoulder the burden of containing the Soviet Power

– Reduce the number of potential enemies by reaching out to China,

– Attenuate the rivalry with the Soviet Union with détente – Features: the security dilemma. Balance of threat theory+

familiarity with the history, culture and collective mindsets. Neoclassical Realism?

E.H. Carr flip-flop

• Morality is the product of power. • In 1999, NATO bombed Serbia. • Russia protested strongly; violation of sovereignty,

illegal because it was neither for self-defense nor authorized by UN security council. NATO: Humanitarian crisis, a threat to regional security.

• Russia invaded its neighbor Georgia nine years later.• NATO: violation of sovereignty, illegal because it was

not for self-defense.• Russia: Humanitarian crisis, a threat to regional

security.

Scholars’ realist foreign policy approaches

• Mikhail Gorbachev’s diplomatic strategy ‘new political thinking’

• Stephan Sestanovich’s article ‘Gorbachev’s foreign policy: diplomacy of decline?’– Group interest and power not the global vision of new thinking

are the key to politics.– Underlying power position of the Soviet Union– It was response to power shift– States tend to generate ideas to transcending conflict when they

lack the power to carry on the struggle.– Declining states do have options– But also declining power can use force to try to rescue its

position– General theory + detailed knowledge of Cold War

Pitfalls

• Never-ending Cold War-Kenneth Waltz-1988 – ‘Cold War was firmly rooted in the structure of postwar

international politics and will last as long as that structure endures’

– Theory-a case without detail- scope conditions are present?

Major power war in 1990s EuropeJohn J. Mearsheimer- end of the cold war-more war-prone

EuropeAnti-US counterbalancing in the 1990s

multipolar balance of power- other major powers- USNATO expansion

Balance of power theory BUT no scope of conditions

How to avoid the pitfalls?

• To know the specifics of foreign policy case at hand

• Pay close attention to the scope conditions that may connect it to realist precepts.

• Know the details of a given foreign policy issue

• ‘The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.’ Greek Poet Archilochus

Key points

• Realism is a foundational approach to IR theory, and other approaches are mainly responses to it, so who wish to use IR theory in FPA must be knowledgeable about realism.

• Realism is diverse intellectual approach that combines a general school of thought about IR, with schools like neorealism, and specific theories like the security dilemma or the balance of power.

• All these diversity can be understood as derived from three basic assumptions: groupism, egoism, and power centrism.