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Systemic pressures and domestic ideas: a neoclassical realist model of grand strategy formation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2010

NICHOLAS KITCHEN
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Abstract

Scholars in international relations have long known that ideas matter in matters of international politics, yet theories of the discipline have failed to capture their impact either in the making of foreign policy or the nature of the international system. Recent reengagement with the insights of classical realists has pointed to the possibility of a neoclassical realist approach that can take into account the impact of ideas. This article will suggest that the study of grand strategy can enlighten the intervening ideational variables between the distribution of power in the international system and the foreign policy behaviour of states, and thus constitute the key element in a neoclassical realist research agenda.

Type
Research Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 36 , Issue 1 , January 2010 , pp. 117 - 143
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 2010

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References

1 Gideon Rose, ‘Neoclassical Realism and Theories of Foreign Policy’, World Politics, 51:1 (1998). The best current overview of neoclassical realism is Jeffrey W. Taliaferro, Steven E. Lobell, and Norrin M Ripsman, Neoclassical Realism, the State and Foreign Policy (Cambridge University Press, 2009). Examples of neoclassical realist works include Thomas J. Christensen, Useful Adversaries: Grand Strategy, Domestic Mobilization, and Sino-American Conflict, 1947–1958, Princeton Studies in International History and Politics. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996); Colin Dueck, Reluctant Crusaders: Power, Culture, and Change in American Grand Strategy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006); Christopher Layne, The Peace of Illusions: American Grand Strategy from 1940 to the Present (Ithaca, N.Y.; London: Cornell University Press, 2006); Randall L. Schweller, Deadly Imbalances: Tripolarity and Hitler's Strategy of World Conquest (New York; Chichester: Columbia University Press, 1998); William Wohlforth, The Elusive Balance: Power and Perceptions During the Cold War (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993); Fareed Zakaria, From Wealth to Power: The Unusual Origins of America's World Role, Princeton Studies in International History and Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998).

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9 The plethora of intervening variables addressed by neoclassical realist is detailed in Taliaferro, Lobell, and Ripsman, Neoclassical Realism, the State and Foreign Policy, pp. 1–41. The authors argue that there is no single neoclassical realist theory of foreign policy, but rather a diversity of neoclassical realist theories.

10 Dueck, Reluctant Crusaders, pp. 9–10.

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14 Ibid., p. 338.

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17 Ibid., p. 5.

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26 Krasner, Defending the National Interest, p. xi.

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29 Alexander Wendt, ‘Collective Identity Formation and the International State’ American Political Science Review, 88:2 (1994), pp. 385. For an overview of the extent to which the two approaches represent incommensurable epistemologies, see John Mearsheimer, ‘The False Promise of International Institutions’ International Security, 19:3 (1994/5). and Alexander Wendt, ‘Constructing International Politics’ International Security, 20: 1 (1995), p. 75.

30 Wendt, ‘Collective Identity Formation’ p. 394.

31 Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics, pp. 111–3.

32 Mark Laffey and Jutta Weldes, ‘Beyond Belief: Ideas and Symbolic Technologies in the Study of International Relations’ European Journal of International Relations, 3: 2 (1997), p. 195.

33 Taliaferro, Lobell and Ripsman, Neoclassical Realism, the State and Foreign Policy, p. 14. The clearest statements of modern realism's attitude to human nature are Hans J. Morgenthau, Scientific Man Vs. Power Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1946); Kenneth Waltz, Man, the State, and War: A Theoretical Analysis (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959).

34 Hans J. Morgenthau, W. David Clinton, and Kenneth W. Thompson, Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2006), p. 4. Morgenthau was the most influential of all the classical realists, and his arguments remain the most systematic exposition of classical realist thought. Other examples of classical realist theory include Raymond Aron, Peace and War: A Theory of International Relations (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1966); Edward Hallett Carr and Michael Cox, The Twenty Years' Crisis, 1919–1939: An Introduction to the Study of International Relations (New York: Palgrave, 2001); John Hermann Herz, Political Realism and Political Idealism: A Study in Theory and Realities (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1951).

35 For Morgenthau, ‘national security must be defined as integrity of the national territory and its institutions.’ Morgenthau and Thompson, Politics among Nations, p. 586.

36 Michael Cox, ‘Introduction’ in Edward Hallett Carr and Michael Cox (eds), The Twenty Years' Crisis, 1919–1939: An Introduction to the Study of International Relations (New York: Palgrave, 2001), pp. xxi-xxii.

37 Colin Dueck, ‘New Perspectives on American Grand Strategy’ International Security, 28:4 (2004), p. 215. Kennan and Morgenthau, for example, were concerned by the impact of idealist liberal ideas on American foreign policy. George F. Kennan, American Diplomacy, 1900–1950 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951), pp. 65–90; Morgenthau and Thompson, Politics among Nations, pp. 155–64.

38 Hans J. Morgenthau, Science: Servant or Master?, Perspectives in Humanism (New York,: New American Library; distributed by Norton, 1972), p. 11.

39 Anthony F. Lang Jr., ‘Morgenthau, Agency and Aristotle’ in Michael C. Williams (ed.), Realism Reconsidered: The Legacy of Hans Morgenthau in International Relations (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).

40 Richard Ned Lebow, The Tragic Vision of Politics: Ethics, Interests and Orders (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 231.

41 Morgenthau, Clinton, and Thompson, Politics among Nations, p. 152. See also pp. 539–68.

42 Carr and Cox, The Twenty Years' Crisis, p. 120.

43 Ibid., p. 87.

44 Ibid., p. 121.

45 W. David Clinton and Kenneth W. Thompson, ‘Foreword’ in Hans J. Morgenthau (ed.), Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2006), pp. xxii-xxvii.

46 Morgenthau, Clinton, and Thompson, Politics among Nations, p. 11.

47 Carr and Cox, The Twenty Years' Crisis, pp. 125–6.

48 Ibid., p. 142.

49 Daniel Philpott, Revolutions in Sovereignty: How Ideas Shaped Modern International Relations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), p. 62.

50 Carr and Cox, The Twenty Years' Crisis, pp. 199–202.

51 Hans J. Morgenthau, ‘The Problem of Neutrality’ University of Kansas City Law Review VII (1939), pp. 125–6.

52 Niccolò Machiavelli, Bernard R. Crick, and Leslie Walker, The Discourses, The Penguin Classics (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970), pp. 62–3.

53 Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics (New York: Scribner, 1949), p. 71.

54 Carr and Cox, The Twenty Years' Crisis, p. 151.

55 J Samuel Barkin, ‘Realist Constructivism’ International Studies Review, 5:3 (2003), p. 336.

56 Waltz, Man, the State, and War.

57 Muriele Cozette, ‘Reclaiming the Critical Dimension of Realism: Hans J. Morgenthau on the Ethics of Scholarship’ Review of International Studies, 34:1 (2008). On the contemporary role of prominent realists speaking truth to power see Rodger A. Payne, ‘Neorealists as Critical Theorists: The Purpose of Foreign Policy Debate’ Perspectives on Politics, 5:3 (2007).

58 Michael C. Williams, ‘What Is the National Interest? The Neoconservative Challenge in IR Theory’ European Journal of International Relations, 11:3 (2005).

59 Michael Joseph Smith, Realist Thought from Weber to Kissinger, Political Traditions in Foreign Policy Series (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1986), p. 160.

60 Michael C. Williams, ‘Why Ideas Matter in International Relations: Hans Morgenthau, Classical Realism, and the Moral Construction of Power Politics’ International Organization, 58: 3 (2004), p. 634.

61 William E. Scheuerman, Hans Morgenthau: Realism and Beyond, Key Contemporary Thinkers (Cambridge: Polity, 2009), pp. 70–100.

62 Aron, Peace and War, p. 77.

63 Quoted in Williams, ‘Why Ideas Matter’, p. 634.

64 As Keohane puts it, ‘creating this dichotomy is a bit like arguing whether the heart or the brain is most fundamental to life.’ Robert O. Keohane, ‘Ideas Part-Way Down’ Review of International Studies, 26 (2000), p. 127.

65 Michael P. Marks, The Formation of European Policy in Post-Franco Spain: The Role of Ideas, Interests and Knowledge (Aldershot: Avebury, 1997), p. 27.

66 Laffey and Weldes, ‘Beyond Belief’ p. 197.

67 Keohane and Goldstein undermine their theoretical construction that posits a null hypothesis that ‘variation in policy across countries, or over time, is entirely accounted for by changes in factors other than ideas’ with their belief that ‘ideas and interests are not phenomenologically separate’. See Kathryn Sikkink,‘The Power of Principled Ideas: Human Rights Policies in the United States and Western Europe’ in Judith Goldstein and Robert O. Keohane (eds), Ideas and Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions, and Political Change (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), pp. 26–7.

68 The philosophy of human altruism makes this case. See Samir Okasha, ‘Biological Altruism’ in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2003).

69 Jutta Weldes, Constructing National Interests: The United States and the Cuban Missile Crisis (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), p. 7.

70 Judith Goldstein, Ideas, Interests, and American Trade Policy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), p. 11.

71 Judith Goldstein and Robert O. Keohane, ‘Ideas and Foreign Policy: An Analytical Framework’ in Ideas and Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions, and Political Change (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), pp. 3, 20.

72 Laffey and Weldes, ‘Beyond Belief’ p. 206.

73 Ibid.

74 Marks, The Formation of European Policy in Post-Franco Spain, p. 28.

75 Max Weber, ‘The Social Psychology of the World Religions’ in H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (eds), From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (London: Routledge, 1948), p. 280.

76 Goldstein and Keohane, ‘Ideas and Foreign Policy’ pp. 8–10.

77 Albert S. Yee, ‘The Causal Effects of Ideas on Policies’ International Organization, 50:1 (1996), p. 86. For psychological approaches to the role of ideas in policy see Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1976); Jeffrey Legro, ‘The Transformation of Policy Ideas’ American Journal of Political Science, 44: 3 (2000); David O. Sears, Leonie Huddy, and Robert Jervis, Oxford Handbook of Political Psychology (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).

78 Philpott, Revolutions in Sovereignty, p. 68.

79 Walter Russell Mead, Power, Terror, Peace, and War: America's Grand Strategy in a World at Risk, 1st ed. (New York: Knopf, 2004), pp. 18–9.

80 Yee, ‘Causal Effects of Ideas’ pp. 86–94.

81 Peter M. Haas, ‘Epistemic Communities and International Policy Coordination’ International Organization, 46:1 (1992), pp. 2–4.

82 For a more detailed overview of how ‘idea-infused’ institutions operate within the bureaucratic order, see Daniel W. Drezner, ‘Ideas, Bureaucratic Politics and the Crafting of Foreign Policy’ American Journal of Political Science, 44:4 (2000).

83 Goldstein and Keohane, ‘Ideas and Foreign Policy’ p. 20.

84 Peter A. Hall, Governing the Economy: The Politics of State Intervention in Britain and France, Europe and the International Order (Cambridge: Polity, 1986), p. 280.

85 Yee, ‘Causal Effects of Ideas’ p. 92.

86 Dueck, Reluctant Crusaders, pp. 21–30.

87 Sheri Berman, ‘Ideas, Norms and Culture in Political Analysis’ Comparative Politics, 33:2 (2001), pp. 238–9.

88 Dueck, ‘New Perspectives’ p. 215.

89 Michael C. Desch, ‘Culture Clash: Assessing the Importance of Ideas in Security Studies’ International Security, 23:1 (1998), p. 167.

90 Philpott, Revolutions in Sovereignty, p. 58.

91 Philip Zelikow, ‘Foreign Policy Engineering: From Theory to Practice and Back Again’ International Security, 18:4 (1994), p. 153.

92 Ibid., p. 156.

93 A classic and controversial example of powerful ideas affecting foreign policy processes is the Israel lobby in the United States. Here democratic and religious ideas both have strong congruence with prevailing American ideology, and powerful couriers in think-tanks, academia and the media enhance the influence of those ideas. See John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007).

94 Randall L. Schweller, ‘Unanswered Threats: A Neoclassical Realist Theory of Underbalancing’ International Security, 29:2 (2004); Randall L. Schweller, Unanswered Threats: Political Constraints on the Balance of Power, Princeton Studies in International History and Politics (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University, 2006).

95 Jeffrey W. Taliaferro, ‘State Building for Future Wars: Neoclassical Realism and the Resource-Extractive State’ Security Studies, 15:3 (2006); Zakaria, From Wealth to Power.

96 Krasner, Defending the National Interest, pp. 12–3. This definition can be developed by disaggregating the democratic ‘state’ into two elements, the representative (legislative) element and the foreign policy executive (composed of high-ranking bureaucrats and elected executive officials charged with the overall conduct of foreign affairs). Strategy derives from the balance of the necessary tensions between the societal pressure of the representative element which acts in the interests of society, and the strategic pressures of the executive which acts in the interests for society. David A. Lake, ‘The State and American Trade Strategy in the Pre-Hegemonic Era’ International Organization, 42:1 (1988).

97 Taliaferro, Lobell, and Ripsman, Neoclassical Realism, the State and Foreign Policy, p. 25.

98 Mead, Power Terror Peace and War, p. 17. See also Norrin M Ripsman, ‘Neoclassical Realism and Domestic Interest Groups’ in Jeffrey W. Taliaferro, Steven E. Lobell and Norrin M. Ripsman (eds), Neoclassical Realism, the State and Foreign Policy (Cambridge University Press, 2009).

99 Taliaferro, Lobell, and Ripsman, Neoclassical Realism, the State and Foreign Policy, pp. 25–6.

100 Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine, p. 13.

101 Dueck, Reluctant Crusaders; Layne, The Peace of Illusions; Rose, 'Neoclassical Realism'.

102 Steven E. Lobell, ‘Threat Assessment, the State and Foreign Policy’ in Jeffrey W. Taliaferro, Steven E. Lobell, and Norrin M Ripsman (eds), Neoclassical Realism, the State and Foreign Policy (Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 46–56, 61–68.

103 Clausewitz, Howard, and Paret, On War, p. 117.

104 Morgenthau and Thompson, Politics among Nations, p. 225.

105 Michael Fitzsimmons, ‘The Problem of Uncertainty in Strategic Planning’ Survival, 48:4 (Winter 2006–7), p. 135.

106 Richard K. Betts, Surprise Attack: Lessons for Defense Planning (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1982), p. 103.

107 A number of studies have identified cases where misperception of the strategic situation by opinion formers and leaders within states was instrumental in policy outcomes. See Thomas J. Christensen, ‘Perceptions and Alliances in Europe, 1865–1940’ International Organization, 51:1 (1997); Aaron L. Friedberg, The Weary Titan: Britain and the Experience of Relative Decline, 1895–1905 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988); Wohlforth, The Elusive Balance. Morgenthau specified three ‘typical errors of evaluation’: 1) disregarding the relativity of power by regarding the power of one particular nation as absolute; 2) assuming permanency of a certain factor of power when in fact most are subject to dynamic change; and 3) attributing to a single factor decisive importance. Morgenthau and Thompson, Politics among Nations, p. 174.

108 Stephen M. Walt, ‘Alliance Formation and the Balance of World Power’ International Security, 9:4 (1985), pp. 8–9.

109 Ibid., pp. 12–3. Henry Nau goes further, to plausibly argue that power can only really threaten when national identities diverge, and that we should can therefore usefully think of the international system in terms of a ‘distribution of identity’, alongside the distribution of power. Henry R. Nau, At Home Abroad: Identity and Power in American Foreign Policy, Cornell Studies in Political Economy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002).

110 For example, internal instability may be seen as a threat (UN Resolution 1556 describes genocide in Darfur as ‘a threat to international peace and security’). Some argue that dictatorships, irrespective of their particular character, are necessarily threatening. Robert D. Kaplan, ‘Old States, New Threats, Washington Post (23 April 2006).

111 Walter Russell Mead disaggregates this spectrum to isolate four tools of strategy: ‘sharp power’, ‘sticky power’, ‘sweet power’ and ‘hegmonic power’. See Mead, Power Terror Peace and War, pp. 26–58.

112 Colin Dueck, ‘Ideas and Alternatives in American Grand Strategy, 2000–2004’ Review of International Studies, 30 (2004), pp. 521–23.

113 Edward Luttwak, Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace, Rev. and enl. ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2001), p. 182. The author mistakenly excludes the possibility of declinist grand strategies, perhaps because of an underlying assumption that strategy refers to a state's purposeful interactions with others, rendering a minimally activist strategy almost a contradiction in terms. Eric A. Nordlinger, Isolationism Reconfigured: American Foreign Policy for a New Century (Princeton, N.J.; Chichester: Princeton University Press, 1995), p. 8. On declinist grand strategies see Paul M. Kennedy, ‘Grand Strategies and Less-Than-Grand Strategies: A Twentieth Century Critique’ in Michael Howard et al (eds), War, Strategy, and International Politics: Essays in Honour of Sir Michael Howard (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), pp. 239–40; Paul M. Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500–2000 (London: Fontana, 1988), pp. 534–5.

114 Charles A. Kupchan, The Vulnerability of Empire (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), pp. 67–8.

115 Dueck, Reluctant Crusaders, p. 12.

116 Ibid., p. 12–3.

117 Emily O. Goldman, ‘New Threats, New Identities, and New Ways of War: The Sources of Change in National Security Doctrine’ Journal of Strategic Studies, 24:2 (2001), p. 54.

118 Waltz, Theory of International Politics, pp. 74–7, 93–7, 127–8.

119 Goldman, ‘New Threats’ p. 54.

120 Kenneth Waltz, ‘Structural Realism after the Cold War’ International Security, 25:1 (2000), p. 24.

121 Rosecrance and Stein, ‘Beyond Realism’ p. 5.

122 Dueck, Reluctant Crusaders, p. 18.

123 For example, Peter Trubowitz argues that significant American strategic adjustment coincided with and grew out of shifts in the underlying regional structure of political and economic power within the United States. Peter Trubowitz, Defining the National Interest: Conflict and Change in American Foreign Policy, American Politics and Political Economy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998).

124 I am grateful to an anonymous referee for Review of International Studies for this point.

125 For a critique of over-simplistic understandings of realism see Cozette, ‘Reclaiming the Critical Dimension of Realism'.

126 G. John Ikenberry, After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order after Major Wars, Princeton Studies in International History and Politics (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001).

127 This section draws on the lists of realism's core tenets in Stephen G. Brooks, ‘Dueling Realisms’ International Organization, 51:3 (1997); Jeffrey W. Legro and Andrew Moravcsik, ‘Is Anybody Still a Realist?’ International Security, 24:2 (1999); Taliaferro, Lobell, and Ripsman, Neoclassical Realism, the State and Foreign Policy.

128 Jack L. Snyder, Myths of Empire: Domestic Politics and International Ambition, Cornell Studies in Security Affairs (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991), p. 19.

129 Krasner, Defending the National Interest p. 346.

130 Jeffrey Legro, Rethinking the World: Great Power Strategies and International Order, Cornell Studies in Security Affairs (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2005), p. 1.

131 Dueck, Reluctant Crusaders.

132 Gaddis, We Now Know, p. 291.

133 Rathbun, ‘A Rose by Any Other Name: Neoclassical Realism as the Logical and Necessary Extension of Structural Realism'.

134 William C. Wohlforth, ‘Realism and the End of the Cold War’ International Security, 19:3 (1995), p. 107.

135 For example, Christensen discusses the ‘political hurdles to mobilisation’ Christensen, Useful Adversaries, p. 14. Similarly, Zakiria defines state power as the government's ability to put national resources to the ends of its choice. Therefore, societies with weak states are unable to exploit their resources fully, so that only strong states can successfully pursue expansionist grand strategies. Zakaria, From Wealth to Power, pp. 38–9.

136 For example, Goldman notes that air power, nuclear weapons and the information age have all reduced the ‘space’ between states, effectively altering the nature of their environment. Goldman, ‘New Threats’ p. 48.

137 Barry Buzan, Charles A. Jones, and Richard Little, The Logic of Anarchy: Neorealism to Structural Realism, New Directions in World Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), p. 28.

138 Ibid., p. 29.

139 Taliaferro, Lobell, and Ripsman, Neoclassical Realism, the State and Foreign Policy, p. 281.

140 Morgenthau, Science: Servant or Master?, p. 15.