First, to whatever extent anarchy deserves its place among realist presumptions, the evolution of human groups interacting in conditions of anarchy deserves study within realism. First, offensive realism fails to explain why costly wars sometimes occur against the interests of the states that initiate them. However, there is, of course, considerable variation in egoism, dominance, and ingroup/outgroup bias. Therefore, to the extent that it matters, let us address the bonobo-chimpanzee issue briefly here, because certain phylogenetic and socio-ecological factors suggest that we are more like chimpanzees than bonobos. State as primary actor 2. However, we need to see the world as it is, not as we would like it to be. In other words, since imbalances of power offer systematic opportunities for low-cost aggression over time, we should expect human groups to have developed a disposition to act aggressively against others when the opportunity arises, because opportunistic aggression is a strategy that pays off on the average. The international system is anarchic. By making implicit assumptions about human behavior explicit, offensive realism may become a more powerful theory. The rest of the 500-plus page book more closely outlines. Offensive realists and other theorists of international relations may see more or less of each. Classical realists (such as Thucydides, E.H. Carr, Arnold Wolfers, and Hans Morgenthau) and offensive realists share the assumption that states seek to maximize power - that states are relentless seekers of power and influence.Specifically, for classical realists "nations expand their political interests abroad when their relative power increases . The anarchic state of the international system means that states cannot be certain of other states' intentions and their security, thus prompting them to . Evolutionary theory would expect that intergroup conflict contributes to fitness in certain circumstances if successful defense and offense against outgroups yield resources and reduce competition in an environment defined by finite resources.60,61 A resource is any material substance that has the potential to increase the individuals ability to survive or reproduce, such as food, shelter, territory, coalition allies, and members of the opposite sex.Reference Low, Zimmerman and Jacobson62, What an evolutionary perspective allows us to understand is that the origins of warfare and the functions of warfare are interconnected. Rathbun, Brian C. Mearsheimer and Walt in particular make cases for "restraint" and "offshore balancing," meaning a reservation of the use of force to the most serious threats to US power, coupled with a policy to prevent China's assumption of regional hegemony in Asia (Mearsheimer and Walt 2016). Again, the political world mirrors nature: Not everyone can be the alpha male. The most well-known advocate of this view in recent years has been John Mearsheimer, whose offensive realism is articulated in his book The Tragedy of Great Power Politics: Has data issue: false Indeed, cultural selection has often reinforced, not reduced, these very behaviors over human history. Men, more often than women, lead states. However, he criticized post-Cold War U.S. foreign policy for overestimating the countrys military power and its capacity to project that power at will. This realist assumption, however, is incorrect . His current work focuses on evolutionary dynamics, evolutionary psychology, and religion in human conflict and cooperation. The Yanomamo among whom I lived were constantly worried about attacks from their neighbors and constantly lived in fear of this possibility. However, the Ngogo group and their neighbors are chimpanzees. Others are even older, such as the limbic system, hormones, and sexual dimorphism, which are shared by countless species extending across all mammals and beyond. Natural selection has led to a variety of contingent, context-dependent adaptations for maximizing survival and reproduction that include cooperation and alliances as well as self-help and aggression. Bradley A. Thayer is professor of political science at the University of Iceland. Table4. Major realist theories and their predictions,154 plus predictions from human evolution. States are much the same. Table3. Who wants power? Structuralism is a method of study that focuses on the interaction of the parts, or units of a system, seeing them as more useful to study than the individual units themselves.27 Waltz uses structuralism to demonstrate how the distribution of power in international politics is critical for understanding whether war is more or less likely.28 By wedding anarchy as an ultimate cause and structuralism as a method of analysis, Waltzs neorealism improves upon Morgenthaus realism in two ways. Mearsheimer's main innovation is his theory of 'offensive realism' that seeks to re-formulate Kenneth Waltz's structural realist theory to explain from a structural point of departure the sheer . Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings. Few principles unite the discipline of international relations, but one exception is anarchythe absence of government in international politics. Looking at the environment in which our own species evolved, we find significant empirical evidence for, and a Darwinian logic favoring, intergroup aggression. For example, among wolves, lions, and chimpanzees, when members of rival groups are found alone, they are extremely vulnerable and risk being killed.140,141,142 We discussed intergroup killing in chimpanzees earlier, but the pattern is notable among social carnivores, too: Studies of undisturbed wolf populations in Alaska have found that 39 to 65 percent of adult deaths were due to intergroup killing.Reference Mech, Adams, Meier, Burch and Dale143, Of course, the ability to assess threats is much more complex in humans than it is in other animals, and human intelligence gives us a greater repertoire of behavior. Debate continues as to whether modern states actually do, or should, behave in this way, but we are struck by a different question. Scholars often argue over whether historically humans experienced a Hobbesian state of nature, butwhatever the outcome of that debateit is certainly a much closer approximation to the prehistoric environment in which human brains and behavior evolved.48,Reference Buss49,Reference Mirazn Lahr, Rivera, Power, Mounier, Copsey, Crivellaro, Edung, Maillo Fernandez, Kiarie, Lawrence, Leakey, Mbua, Miller, Muigai, Mukhongo, Van Baelen, Wood, Schwenninger, Grn, Achyuthan, Wilshaw and Foley50 This legacy heavily influences our decision-making and behavior today, evenperhaps especiallyin the anarchy of international politics. At worst, this perspective will make us err on the side of caution. Reckless States and Realism John J. Mearsheimer Abstract Kenneth Waltz opted to reject the rational actor assumption in developing his theory of international politics. Genes obviously do not want or try to spread, but the machinery of natural selection means that self-serving alleles will generally increase in relative frequency in the population over time, at the expense of alleles that are neutral or self-sacrificing for no return benefit. Andr Munro was an editor at Encyclopaedia Britannica. We find that these precise traits are not only evolutionarily adaptive but also empirically common across the animal kingdom, especially in primate and human societies. Efforts to make positive political change may be more effective if we view humans as offensive realists and intervene accordingly. Debates about evolved human propensities have often centered on whether human behavior more closely resembles the behavior of common chimpanzees or that of bonobos (pygmy chimpanzees that live in central Africa and are somewhat less aggressive than common chimpanzees). Mearsheimer is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. Our approach also suggests that if offensive realism is a product of human nature, rather than merely a consequence of international anarchy, it can be broadened to explain human conflict at many levels, from tribal warfare, ethnic conflict, and civil wars to domestic politics, commercial competition, and international relations. Whereas classical realists such as Hans Morgenthau had traced international conflicts to the natural propensity of political leaders to seek to increase their power, neorealists (or structural realists) such as Waltz located the cause of war in the structure of international relations. As well as being the key behavioral traits identified by Mearsheimer, self-interest, social stratification, and groupish behavior are three of the most prominent behavioral features of social animals. His new book, God is Watching You: How the Fear of God Makes Us Human (Oxford University Press, 2015), examines the role of religion in the evolution of cooperation and how cross-culturally ubiquitous and ancient beliefs in supernatural punishment have helped human society overcome major challenges of collective action. We thank Robert Jervis for bringing this point to our attention. As such, an evolutionary account does not necessarily expect animals, humans, or states to act as offensive realists all the time and in all situations. Given the prominence of the concept in present-day international relations theory, it is striking that anarchy only took hold as a central feature of scholarship in recent decades, since the publication of Kenneth Waltzs Theory of International Politics in 1979. This idea is important because, if individuals are working for the good of the group rather than only for themselves, then groups composed of more-cooperative individuals may do better than less-cooperative groups, meaning that genuinely altruistic traits (sacrificing ones own interests for the good of others) can spread in the population.Reference Wilson184,Reference Wilson and Sober185 However, there are several reasons why this possibility does not affect our argument. Evolution is sometimes argued to operate on groups rather than individuals (group selection). The fact that these evolved behaviors are not always beneficial today does nothing to undermine their evolutionary logic or empirical presence. "Mearsheimer's WorldOffensive Realism and the Struggle for Security: A Review Essay" International Security 27:1 (2002): 149-174; View all Google Scholar citations Defensive realists argue that too much powerclassically, too much military powerdecreases a states security because other states will balance against it. We reiterate the point above, however, that it is the context of our own evolution as hunter-gatherers in the socio-ecological conditions of the Pleistocene era that offers the crucial evidence on human behavioral adaptations. Despite realisms long history as a theory of international politics and its widespread use by scholars and policymakers such as E.H. Carr, George Kennan, Henry Kissinger, and Hans Morgenthau, the traditional realist argument rests on weak foundations. The impressive design, by Tom Piper, comprises two very tall ladders, and . Clearly, not all individuals or businesses or states act the same way all the time or in all circumstances. The second contribution of our theory is that it offers an explanation of the behavior of humans in a wide variety of contexts extending beyond international politics. This match, in turn, should be no surprise because human behavior evolved under conditions of anarchy, which pervaded throughout our evolution as well as in international politics today. As a result of our evolution, humans will act like offensive realists even inside the statethat is, in conditions of hierarchy (as far as they are be able to)as well as in relations between states. Those conditions, according to Mearsheimer, create strong incentives for states to behave aggressively toward each other. Because states cannot know with certainty the present or future intentions of other states, he concluded, it is rational for them to attempt to preempt possible acts of aggression by increasing their military might and adopting an assertive position whenever their core security interests are at stake. As evolutionary economist Robert Frank has explained, Evidence suggests that we come into the world equipped with a nervous system that worries about rank. Chagnon, Wrangham and Glowacki and others have also shown that individuals, as well as the group, may gain significant reputational and reproductive advantages of participation in warfare. Similarly formidable obstacles to cooperation exist in international relations. The theory might thus be extended to explain the behavior and actions of many phenomena: the Roman Empire, warfare among Papua New Guinean or Native American tribes, the European conquest of South America, the race for the American west and the failed Mormon and Confederate secessions, the imperialist scrambles over African colonies, institutions like the medieval Catholic Church, commercial organizations from the East India Company to Coca-Cola, the struggles of rival ethnic groups the world over, and the ruthlessness of electoral campaigns. Collective action to attain public goods, however, is much harder to attain because of the threat of free-riders (as demonstrated, for example, by the slow response to climate change, the reluctance of states to accept Syrian refugees, and Eurozone fiscal responsibility). This story might have come from any number of bloody human conflicts around the world. An individuals Darwinian fitness therefore includes the success of related others (hence the phrase inclusive fitness). In short, the core elements of Mearsheimer's offensive realism are the five assumptions, states, fear, self-help, relative power maximization, the balance of power and war. Offensive Realism and Maximizing Power. As we have noted, offensive realism contains explicit assumptions about how states behave in international politicsgiven the hostile environment, states are (and ought to be if they are to survive) self-interested, power maximizing, and fearful of others. John Mearsheimer's Theory and its Major Assumptions|Realism #realpolitik International Relations & Politics 13.4K subscribers Subscribe 153 2.4K views 6 months ago Talk given on December. Correspondence: Dominic D. P. Johnson, Alastair Buchan Professor ofInternational Relations, Department of Politics andInternational Relations, University of Oxford, St. Antonys College, 62 Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6JF, United Kingdom. No theory is perfect. Our evolutionary approach predicts the same behavior as offensive realism but derives from a different ultimate cause. If anything, group selection would tend to increase violence, since between-group competition (conflict among strangers) can be more brutal than within-group competition (conflict among kin and fellow group members).

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