humble3d Posted December 28, 2016 Share Posted December 28, 2016 This is ponderous, Man! ...Really ponderous... What is Thucydides’s Trap ? And, how does it inform U.S.-China relations in the 21st century? The Thucydides Trap: Are the U.S. and China Headed for War? If you're a strategic thinker, this game will have you hooked! Stormfall: Age Of War has taken the web by storm. Test your skills against millions of players. As Harold Kingsberg, Kyle Murao and Jon Mixon have sufficiently defined Thucydides’s Trap, let me explain why Thucydides’s Trap has Z-E-R-O informational value in the 21st century (especially considering that it applied to all centuries before). Graham Allison has put forward a great theory, it just has one minor flaw, it fails to sufficiently explain why the last three power struggles didn't result in war: The key for understanding why humanity has finally overcome Thucydides’s Trap lies in Allison's explanation for how the 16th & last conflict was resolved: Henry Kissinger recently noted, “The paradox is that seventy years after having defeated German claims to dominating Europe, the victors are now pleading with Germany to lead Europe.” How has this occurred without Thucydidean consequences? Because Germany is not a ‘normal’ power, as defined by students of international relations. Angela Merkel's Germany is the first truly post-Thucydidean power and the subsequent Merkel Doctrine (supported by Obama, Hollande and Cameron) will inform E.U./U.S. - China relations for the foreseeable future. But let me first explain on which giants' shoulders Merkel is standing: Escaping Thucydides’s Trap It shouldn't surprise anyone that Graham Allison is not the first who has studied Greek history and Thucydides’s Trap. Therefore it shouldn't surprise that Europe's greatest minds debated and wrote extensively on how to escape Thucydides’s Trap, like William Penn (of Pennsylvania), Tadeusz Kosciuszko, Immanuel Kant, Victor Hugo, and Giuseppe Garibaldi. In the 20th century proponents were Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Konrad Adenauer, Robert Schuman and Winston Churchill among many, many others (I just mention those, so you can feel comfortable that this question has finally been settled for good - 30 years ago) How did we settle this question and why did it take us so long? The main reason for adopting the solution is obvious: nuclear deterrence - every nuclear power has the power to annihilate humanity. So it's a no-brainer to adopt the mechanism which prevents war in the first place. This mechanism is the central founding idea for the European Union and it's called T-R-A-D-E. The founding idea of the European Union is to so deeply link and intertwine nation economies that conflict becomes unthinkable. That war between France and Germany is as unthinkable as a war between Paris and Versailles or New York and Boston. When China opened its economy under Deng Xiaoping to the West, it began its inadvertent signing of an eternal peace accord with Western Powers. The U.S. cannot attack China, because then we're running out of iPhones, iMacs, and iPads! China cannot attack the West, because then the chips who power the iPhones, iMacs and iPads will not be delivered to China and then China will be running out of their favorite toys as well! For me, the U.S. can attack Russia anytime soon, because there is no Russian product I would miss, but attacking China and the prospect of no longer having the latest cell phone or computer - that's a war I and most Western people would have serious reservations and be seriously against. Seriously!!! I urge every single reader of this thread to think of their 10 most favorite toys and then think where those toys are produced and also think of the key ingredients that feed into those toys. And then you know which countries your government can never ever attack. I bet China will be on everyone's list. The Merkel/Obama Doctrine The Chinese government has engaged in some nationalist saber-rattling and expansionism in recent years mainly over Senkaku/Diayou Islands, and some atolls in the South China Sea. This saber-rattling would have been worrisome in the 1940es, but in the era of the Merkel/Obama-Doctrine, this hic-up and all other Chinese-Western relations will be handled as follows: 1. Escape Thucydides’s Trap! 1914 must never happen again! Just because we have the best hammer (military), not every problem is a nail. 2. Listen to everybody. 3. Talk to everybody. 4. Think and work in alliances and never act alone. 5. Appear as a neutral arbiter. Or delegate the problem to one of your allies who can appear a neutral arbiter. 6. Always strive to strike a deal ("compromise") even if it looks like a bad deal - because trade is the best insurance policy against war. 7. If all of the above fail, punish with selective economic sanctions - maximizing the recipient's pain while minimizing its trade impact; e.g. target the ruler's family and friends with sanctions and not the adversarial economy as a whole (this worked beautifully with George W. Bush, but not with Putin). UPDATE / ENDNOTE As former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is a contributor and maybe key source of inspiration to the Thucydides Project, something felt odd, so I went back and read the methodology, case file of the Thucydides Project as well as Kevin Rudd's contribution PDF on harvard.edu where Rudd writes: Xi Jinping is deeply aware of this strategic literature (“Thucydides’ Trap”) and potential implications for U.S.-China relations. This has, in part, underpinned his desire to reframe U.S.-China relations from strategic competition to “a new type of great power relationship. In plain English: Xi Jinping fears that China could end up in a Thucydides’ Trap situation because: China sees America as deeply opposed to China’s rise, and driven to do whatever it takes to prevent China usurping American regional and global power. Under Xi, the ultimate purpose of China’s military expansion and modernization is not to inflict defeat on the U.S., but to deter the U.S. Navy from intervening in China’s immediate periphery by creating sufficient doubt in the minds of American strategists as to their ability to prevail. (…) For these reasons, the report concludes that the likelihood of U.S.- China conflict in the medium to long term remains remote. This is why Xi Jinping is more attracted to the idea of expanding China’s regional and global footprint by economic and political means. This is where he will likely direct China’s diplomatic activism over the decade ahead. In other words, Xi Jinping and the politburo around him came to the same conclusion as The Founding Fathers of the EU, that Pooling Supply-Chains internationally would make war between historic rivals "not merely unthinkable, but materially impossible". To make my point more clear, if you compared the ascendancy of the Japanese in the 80es and 90es (or the Koreans) with China, then you would realize that the Japanese and Koreans always strove to make everything themselves (thus insulating them against supply-chain disruptions due to war), while the Chinese always went for the polar opposite direction by interconnecting supply-chains of Western Powers with China as in my example with the Apple products. This means that any war would immediately collapse the Chinese economy but also ours. What I forgot in my analysis was that "it takes two to tango" meaning that like the EU, the Chinese see the interconnectedness of global-supply chains as their prime insurance policy against any further attack by Western Powers on China. According to Rudd, Xi Jinping sees China as the victim of centuries old Western aggression and considers the saber-rattling as a way of asserting (security) independence. Hence the whole point of the Thucydides’ Trap-Project is to help policy makers in Washington, Canberra and Berlin in dealing with Xi Jinping and a resurgent China. I was quite astounded that Kevin Rudd's policy recommendations are quite consistent with what I described as the Merkel/Obama-Doctrine. Much more astounding is the fact that Xi Jinping also sees the Merkel/Obama-Doctrine as the gold standard, albeit with a distinct Chinese flavor. The Thucydides Trap is a term coined by Graham T. Allison, a Harvard professor and recognized US national security and defense policy expert. The concept itself comes from, fittingly, Thucydides, a Greek historian from about 2400 years ago who wrote a book entitled The History of the Peloponnesian War, generally regarded as the first work of history as we'd recognize it. Thucydides argued that the cause of the Peloponnesian War was “the growth of Athenian power and the fear which this caused in Sparta.” In other words, as one power rises, an already established power gets nervous and gears up for war, with this devolving into a vicious cycle that eventually results in war. Now, if we apply the Thucydides Trap to the US-China relationship, China is the counterpart of Athens, the US is the counterpart of Sparta, and there's going to inevitably be war between the two. And certainly, there are people in the US who feel that the rise of China is a direct threat to the dominance of the US and we should all gear up for war because... well, mostly yellow peril. Thirty years ago, there was another East Asian power on the rapid economic rise. It owned a massive chunk of US debt, it was buying up US property left, right and center, it had a well-funded military and a history of using it. Of course, as Japan is in its third Lost Decade, it's fairly clear to see that Japan's meteoric rise came crashing to a halt, and most of the comments made about how the Japanese would eat the US' lunch now seem dated in the extreme. Which is to say that the Thucydides Trap requires the continued rise of the emerging power. It is not difficult to imagine China continuing to rise; however, it is also not difficult to imagine China stalling out for a few years. It is this latter possibility that makes the Thucydides Trap eminently avoidable. China's economy has boomed in a frankly unparalleled way since Deng Xiaoping introduced the socialist market economy. Much of this growth has been genuine. Some of it has been anything but. The latter is most evidently seen in China's ghost cities, which the government keeps erecting. Ordos, in Inner Mongolia, is probably the most famous of these, but the basic problem is that the city was erected with the idea that people would flock to it and that didn't happen. This constitutes a pretty stunning waste of resources, and it's not a tenable strategy for long-term growth. Similarly, when the Shanghai Stock Exchange tanked in August of 2015, the Chinese government's management of the situation was to pour money into it – again, not a viable strategy for maintaining a robust market economy in the long-term. It's clear that the Chinese government has done something right these past few decades, but it's increasingly unclear if the Chinese government can continue that record of success for very much longer. There's also another problem China's looking at that makes the parallel to Japan even more pronounced: an aging population. China's attempts at controlling demography have been deeply problematic and left it with serious issues. Mao Zedong's attempts to boost the population beyond sustainable levels was overly successful and led to problems, but the subsequent walking back of Mao's demography with the One Child Policy has led to a gender imbalance and a smaller younger generation than the older one. This is the exact opposite of what you want in an age pyramid, because the elderly produce less than do young adults, and consume considerably more health care (among other things). This is a problem that Japan has been trying to figure out for years, and they've had no success. Singapore has had issues reversing their own highly successful demographic programs. China may figure out how to crack the tough nut, but it's not going to have an easy time of it. This is all very well-known to the people at the helm of American foreign policy, so it's quite unlikely that they're going to fall into the Thucydides Trap, simply because they're going to be a little leery of China's continued rapid growth. Yes, the IMF cites China as having a larger economy (based on GDP PPP) than the US', but when you look at it per capita, China lags Turkmenistan. It's therefore a country still punching well below its weight. Now, it's true that if China continues to rise, it may yet get the US nervous – but most economists predict a slowdown in China, so we're a ways from that happening, anyway. Most of the people worrying about China's rise would worry about any Asian country doing well, even an ally's. However, the slowdown in the Chinese economy does cause issues of its own. Like many other governments facing economic worries, the Chinese government has engaged in some nationalist saber-rattling and expansionism in recent years. Combine this with Japan's recent law allowing the JSDF to be deployed away from Japan, and Japan being a key US ally, and you're looking at a very uncomfortable situation. The majority of analysts don't expect a war between Japan and China over the Senkaku/Diayou Islands, but then, most didn't expect a war between the UK and Argentina over the Falklands, either. So long as it all remains just talk, this is fine, but if either side actually does something, that could destabilize quickly, and the US isn't about to hang Japan out to dry. This is known by all parties, and seeing as how war would be terrible for everyone's bottom line, everyone's generally trying to avoid it while still getting a little bump in the polls all the same. This isn't so much the Thucydides Trap so much as it is a rough analogue of what's going in with Russia and Ukraine or what happened with Russia and Georgia back in 2008. Thus, in many ways, the continued rise of China is a preferable outcome from the perspective of a US foreign policy analyst. Now, you can argue that this is another manifestation of Thucydides' Trap, but frankly, I don't think that doing so is a valuable exercise. Thucydides was specifically referring to the continuing rise of one country causing another to react with great hostility, and this paragraph does not describe that in the slightest. And even ignoring all of the above, Thucydides lived 2400 years ago and some of the facts on the ground have changed. We spent forty years following the Second World War of the rising power not getting into a big fight with the established one, the US and the UK didn't go to war during the early twentieth century and neither did the US and Japan in the back half of the twentieth century. I'm not saying that Thucydides has stopped being accurate altogether, but it was always a massive generalization and it seems to be holding less and less true the longer the Long Peace goes. The bottom line is that Daniel Defoe's more applicable than Thucydides here: the only things certain in life are death and taxes. [1] Yes, Herodotus is called the “Father of History,” but he tended to attribute events to the wills of specific gods. Thucydides kept everything grounded in the human sphere, although precisely how much of the History is dead accurate and how much he invented is a matter of some controversy. His records of speeches – for example, Pericles' funeral oration and the Melian dialogue – are generally viewed with a little bit of suspicion. Alternatively, one can take the view that the city was built to prop up the construction industry, but I tend to doubt that. In any event, here's a link to an article about the deserted city:Welcome to The World's Largest Ghost City: Ordos, China And remember, that was another case of a country whose growth rate had stalled but good going up against an established power. It would also be preferable if Japan could also get its internal issues sorted for the same reason. Not counting proxy conflicts, of course. There were US-USSR dust-ups, but no direct fighting between the two. Ths Thucydides Trap is a currently popular theme that the Greek political philosopher Thucydides was always correct in his assessment that a rising power always manages to come into conflict with a dominant one. Lately some political observers have seen that this concept might be coming into play between the United States and China. This, however, seems to be an inaccurate reading of the situation for the following reasons: 1. China has been a superpower before - Several times in fact. And each time it was, it managed to fumble in that position by not carefully consolidating its alliances prior to engaging in conflict. This seems to be occurring yet again as Japan's legislature, the Diet recently approved the ability to deploy its military forces beyond Japan's territorial waters. This will result in the US and Japan constructing an alliance which can easily outflank China. 2. China's military isn't a modern force - For China to directly combat the US, it will need some "tuneup fights." Since the US is allied with nearly all of the other world military powers and the Monroe Doctrine precludes fighting in the Americas. That leaves Russia and perhaps Iran as potential combatants and each of them presents their own particular risks. They also aren't at the same level as the US. 3. Failure has different meaning for China than it does for previous powers - If China fights the US and fails, then it's quite possible that China as we know it might no longer exist. With a population nearing 1.5 billion, the loss of face and strategic displacement could easily result in a Chinese government collapsing and being replaced by multiple conflicting entities. This would result in a smaller China or several Chinas instead of a single one, thus lessening its power and influence. With great deference to Thucydides, while there may be such a conflict in the future, for the next 10-20 years keeping trade going and localizing its ambitions are more beneficial for China than engaging the US in a conflict that it couldn't win. Any "trap" that exists would be created by Chinese leaders forgetting that. The Thucydides Trap appears to be a very simple allegorical model for conflict based on Graham Allison's interpretation of the statement by Thucydides that Spartan anxiety at Athens' rise caused the Peloponnesian War. I say "appears" because I haven't actually read any books by Allison so I could be misconstruing the Trap in some fundamental way. Assuming I'm not misunderstanding it though, it strikes me as untestable and incomplete. So in the strictest sense it's not really a model at all; mathematicians might call it a a conjecture and professional diplomats and soldiers might call it bullshit. It's worth remembering that Thucydides didn't just say, "Athens got powerful, then Sparta got worried so it started a fight". He first started on a much more fundamental level: With the axiom that rulers' actions were governed by three key human forces, to wit fear, honor and profit. To me, the effect of these forces can be tested and considered in lots of different cases throughout history; but taking one very specific event-- Sparta's march to war with Athens--and trying to generalize it like Allison does has no such powers of prediction in my opinion. So I don't think there is such a thing as a Thucydides Trap, or if there is one, it's not clear what it would look like. Does it matter, for example, that by the time Sparta became truly alarmed at Athenian power, Athens was arguably much more powerful than the older power? Who really was challenging who? And what about the 800-lb, no, the 8,000-lb gorilla in room? Laconophiles (admirers of Sparta) conveniently like to forget that the true vanquisher of the mighty Persian Empire--and therefore the biggest military threat in Persian eyes--was not Sparta, but Athens. I doubt the producers of that idiotic movie 300 would like most people to know that by the mid-5th c. BC, the Spartans were very enthusiastic recipients of huge amounts of gold and occasionally military assistance from Persia. Why? Because until Alexander the Great came along, the real superpower of the region was Persia, and a decades-long, ruinously expensive Hellenic fratricidal slugfest was nothing so much as a welcome reprieve so that Persepolis could get on with the business of ruling its vast, wealthy, cosmopolitan dominions. If alien foreign policy experts from Mars suddenly appeared in the Mediterranean basin in 440 BC, they might well conclude that the conflict between the Delian and Lacedemonian Leagues was just a pointless sideshow betweeen squabbling peripheral states who would soon spend the next several millennia being conquered over and over again, by Macedonians, Romans, Turks, Venetians, and so on. To me, these problems--ill-defined roles, and missing the forest for the trees--show that Allison's model has some serious problems, Eurocentric conceit being not the least of them. So is there a read-through from this model (such as it is) to the present situation between America and China? Well, again, since the Thucydides Trap itself is a grossly simplistic view of what was in reality a very complex situation, it's not clear how it could. For example, who is the true upstart in the Western Pacific? The nation that has exerted immeasurable cultural and linguistic influence on every place from Llasa to Manila and has spent all but a couple of centuries over the last 4,000 years as the world's largest economy? Or the 200-year-old politically-divided republic whose control over the global system rests entirely on preserving complete military supremacy over key waterways and (tough-to-defend) bases thousands of miles from its own shores? At the end of the day, I do not think the example of Athens vs. Sparta is a viable model of America vs. China or Germany vs. Britain. Or at least, it isn't a viable one as conceived by Allison. Judging from the linked article, Thucydides' Trap is a cautionary tale. Not about great powers, but about why scholars shouldn't attempt anything resembling quantitative analysis without the proper training. Allison is a widely respected political scientist, and I've actually cited his work on bureaucratic processes and their effect on international relations in other answers on Quora. Here, his methodology consisted of identifying the cases over the last 500 years where a rising power met an established power. Then he counted the number of times where the result was war, and compared it to the number of times where war was avoided. Based on that "analysis" he concluded that such situations generally lead to war. Rocket science it is not, but admittedly history doesn't lend itself easily to advanced statistical methods, and it would be meaningful if we accept that the cases are comparable. The problem is that Allison's own data shows that this assumption is flawed. Looking at Allison's table, it immediately jumps out that the cases where "Thucydides' Trap" didn't lead to war are all clustered in the 20ths century, and include all the cases since the end of World War II. Meanwhile, every single case before 1900 led to war. Obviously this data set needs to be looked at as a time series, and it suggests strongly that something important changed in the 20th century. Yet Allison never acknowledges this; he argues as if all the cases were equally relevant. At that point, it's clear that he's either overlooked or chosen to ignore a critical aspect of the problem, and his analysis can be dismissed without knowing or even considering why the world changed in the mid-20th century. But that's no fun. So, can you think of anything important that changed in the 1940s or 1950s? Anything that might explain why great power competition hasn't led to war lately? Hmm. I seem to recall something about 1945. What happened then? Oh, yeah, how about the advent of nuclear weapons? Allison has somehow managed to write an entire article about the potential for war between China and the U.S. without once mentioning nuclear deterrence. Here's a historical precedent that's a lot more relevant than Ancient Greece: since 1945 there have been zero large-scale wars between nuclear powers. What else might be different? Oh, yes, I think something else important might have happened in 1945. Was that the year the United Nations was founded? What a coincidence! I wonder what its purpose was. Oh yes... prevent another World War. Today we have a venue for discussing and resolving disputes peacefully, and mechanisms for the international community to band together and punish states that don't behave. That didn't exist when most of Allison's examples were happening. The founding of the U.N. wasn't some kind of random happenstance, either. It coincided with major shifts in how people think about war. War and conquest is no longer seen by most of the world as a legitimate tool of routine international relations. There still are cases where might makes right, but almost nobody thinks that's OK anymore. Then there's globalization. Allison does touch on this slightly, but only by pointing out that economic interdependence and good intentions didn't prevent World War I. But globalization in 1914 wasn't the same thing as globalization in 2014. I can't seem to find international trade statistics dating back nearly as far as 1914, but according to the World Bank, even since 1988 the value of trade as a percentage of GDP has gone up from 25% to 40% for China, and from 19% to 30% for the United States. The point is, trade is far more important to economic stability than it used to be. And given how much of the Chinese government's legitimacy derives from continuing to provide economic growth, that can't be ignored. The sad thing is, Allison has to know better. It's not as if he's unaware of the United Nations or nuclear deterrence or globalization, or of their importance. But in this case, I think he got so distracted by his attempt at formal analysis that he didn't step back and sanity-check his conclusions. The resulting analysis is, frankly, an embarrassment, and that's why as I said in the beginning, it highlights the need for scholars in disciplines like political science or history to either abstain from structured analysis entirely, or learn the statistics and data analysis concepts needed to do it properly. A more reasonable conclusion from Allison's data would be that some form of conflict is likely between the U.S. and China. That's an important point by itself. But given the changes in the world, I see no reason to believe that that conflict is likely to take the form of conventional warfare. https://www.quora.com/What-is-Thucydides%E2%80%99s-Trap-and-how-does-it- inform-U-S-China-relations-in-the-21st-century A REMINDER... Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, Fifth Edition, Revised, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978, pp. 4-15 SIX PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL REALISM 1.Political realism believes that politics, like society in general, is governed by objective laws that have their roots in human nature. In order to improve society it is first necessary to understand the laws by which society lives. The operation of these laws being impervious to our preferences, men will challenge them only at the risk of failure. Realism, believing as it does in the objectivity of the laws of politics, must also believe in the possibility of developing a rational theory that reflects, however imperfectly and one-sidedly, these objective laws. It believes also, then, in the possibility of distinguishing in politics between truth and opinion-between what is true objectively and rationally, supported by evidence and illuminated by reason, and what is only a subjective judgment, divorced from the facts as they are and informed by prejudice and wishful thinking. Human nature, in which the laws of politics have their roots, has not changed since the classical philosophies of China, India, and Greece endeavored to discover these laws. Hence, novelty is not necessarily a virtue in political theory, nor is old age a defect. The fact that a theory of politics, if there be such a theory, has never been heard of before tends to create a presumption against, rather than in favor of, its soundness. Conversely, the fact that a theory of politics was developed hundreds or even thousands of years ag~as was the theory of the balance of power-does not create a presumption that it must be outmoded and obsolete. A theory of politics must be subjected to the dual test of reason and experience. To dismiss such a theory because it had its flowering in centuries past is to present not a rational argument but a modernistic prejudice that takes for granted the superiority of the present over the past. To dispose of the revival of such a theory as a "fashion" or "fad" is tantamount to assuming that in matters political we can have opinions but no truths. For realism, theory consists in ascertaining facts and giving them meaning through reason. It assumes that the character of a foreign policy can be ascertained only through the examination of the political acts performed and of the foreseeable consequences of these acts. Thus we can find out what statesmen have actually done, and from the foreseeable consequences of their acts we can surmise what their objectives might have been. Yet examination of the facts is not enough. To give meaning to the factual raw material of foreign policy, we must approach political reality with a kind of rational outline, a map that suggests to us the possible meanings of foreign policy. In other words, we put ourselves in the position of a statesman who must meet a certain problem of foreign policy under certain circumstances, and we ask ourselves what the rational alternatives are from which a statesman may choose who must meet this problem under these circumstances (presuming always that he acts in a rational manner), and which of these rational alternatives this particular statesman, acting under these circumstances, is likely to choose. It is the testing of this rational hypothesis against the actual facts and their consequences that gives theoretical meaning to the facts of international politics. 2. The main signpost that helps political realism to find its way through the landscape of international politics is the concept of interest defined in terms of power. This concept provides the link between reason trying to understand international politics and the facts to be understood. It sets politics as an autonomous sphere of action and understanding apart from other spheres, such as economics (understood in terms of interest defined as wealth), ethics, aesthetics, or religion. Without such a concept a theory of politics, international or domestic, would be altogether impossible, for without it we could not distinguish between political and nonpolitical facts, nor could we bring at least a measure of systematic order to the political sphere. We assume that statesmen think and act in terms of interest defined as power, and the evidence of history bears that assumption out. That assumption allows us to retrace and anticipate, as it were, the steps a statesman--past, present, or future--has taken or will take on the political scene. We look over his shoulder when he writes his dispatches; we listen in on his conversation with other statesmen; we read and anticipate his very thoughts. Thinking in terms of interest defined as power, we think as he does, and as disinterested observers we understand his thoughts and actions perhaps better than he, the actor on the political scene, does himself. The concept of interest defined as power imposes intellectual discipline upon the observer, infuses rational order into the subject matter of politics, and thus makes the theoretical understanding of politics possible. On the side of the actor, it provides for rational discipline in action and creates that astounding continuity in foreign policy which makes American, British, or Russian foreign policy appear as an intelligible, rational continuum, by and large consistent within itself, regardless of the different motives, preferences, and intellectual and moral qualities of successive statesmen. A realist theory of international politics, then, will guard against two popular fallacies: the concern with motives and the concern with ideological preferences. To search for the clue to foreign policy exclusively in the motives of statesmen is both futile and deceptive. It is futile because motives are the most illusive of psychological data, distorted as they are, frequently beyond recognition, by the interests and emotions of actor and observer alike. Do we really know what our own motives are? And what do we know of the motives of others? Yet even if we had access to the real motives of statesmen, that knowledge would help us little in understanding foreign policies, and might well lead us astray. It is true that the knowledge of the statesman's motives may give us one among many clues as to what the direction of his foreign policy might be. It cannot give us, however, the one clue by which to predict his foreign policies. History shows no exact and necessary correlation between the quality of motives and the quality of foreign policy. This is true in both moral and political terms. We cannot conclude from the good intentions of a statesman that his foreign policies will be either morally praiseworthy or politically successful. Judging his motives, we can say that he will not intentionally pursue policies that are morally wrong, but we can say nothing about the probability of their success. If we want to know the moral and political qualities of his actions, we must know them, not his motives. How often have statesmen been motivated by the desire to improve the world, and ended by making it worse? And how often have they sought one goal, and ended by achieving something they neither expected nor desired? Neville Chamberlain's politics of appeasement were, as far as we can judge, inspired by good motives; he was probably less motivated by considerations of personal power than were many other British prime ministers, and he sought to preserve peace and to assure the happiness of all concerned. Yet his policies helped to make the Second World War inevitable, and to bring untold miseries to millions of men. Sir Winston Churchill's motives, on the other hand, were much less universal in scope and much more narrowly directed toward personal and national power, yet the foreign policies that sprang from these inferior motives were certainly superior in moral and political quality to those pursued by his predecessor. Judged by his motives, Robespierre was one of the most virtuous men who ever lived. Yet it was the utopian radicalism of that very virtue that made him kill those less virtuous than himself, brought him to the scaffold, and destroyed the revolution of which he was a leader. Good motives give assurance against deliberately bad policies; they do not guarantee the moral goodness and political success of the policies they inspire. What is important to know, if one wants to understand foreign policy, is not primarily the motives of a statesman, but his intellectual ability to comprehend the essentials of foreign policy, as well as his political ability to translate what he has comprehended into successful political action. It follows that while ethics in the abstract judges the moral qualities of motives, political theory must judge the political qualities of intellect, will, and action. A realist theory of international politics will also avoid the other popular fallacy of equating the foreign policies of a statesman with his philosophic or political sympathies, and of deducing the former from the latter. Statesmen, especially under contemporary conditions, may well make a habit of presenting their foreign policies in terms of their philosophic and political sympathies in order to gain popular support for them. Yet they will distinguish with Lincoln between their "official duty," which is to think and act in terms of the national interest, and their "personal wish," which is to see their own moral values and political principles realized throughout the world. Political realism does not require, nor does it condone, indifference to political ideals and moral principles, but it requires indeed a sharp distinction between the desirable and the possible-between what is desirable everywhere and at all times and what is possible under the concrete circumstances of time and place. It stands to reason that not all foreign policies have always followed so rational, objective, and unemotional a course. The contingent elements of personality, prejudice, and subjective preference, and of all the weaknesses of intellect and will which flesh is heir to, are bound to deflect foreign policies from their rational course. Especially where foreign policy is conducted under the conditions of democratic control, the need to marshal popular emotions to the support of foreign policy cannot fail to impair the rationality of foreign policy itself. Yet a theory of foreign policy which aims at rationality must for the time being, as it were, abstract from these irrational elements and seek to paint a picture of foreign policy which presents the rational essence to be found in experience, without the contingent deviations from rationality which are also found in experience. Deviations from rationality which are not the result of the personal whim or the personal psychopathology of the policy maker may appear contingent only from the vantage point of rationality, but may themselves be elements in a coherent system of irrationality. The conduct of the Indochina War by the United States suggests that possibility. It is a question worth looking into whether modern psychology and psychiatry have provided us with the conceptual tools which would enable us to construct, as it were, a counter-theory of irrational politics, a kind of pathology of international politics. The experience of the Indochina War suggests five factors such a theory might encompass: the imposition upon the empirical world of a simplistic and a priori picture of the world derived from folklore and ideological assumption, that is, the replacement of experience with superstition; the refusal to correct this picture of the world in the light of experience; the persistence in a foreign policy derived from the misperception of reality and the use of intelligence for the purpose not of adapting policy to reality but of reinterpreting reality to fit policy; the egotism of the policy makers widening the gap between perception and policy, on the one hand, and reality, on the other; finally, the urge to close the gap at least subjectively by action, any kind of action, that creates the illusion of mastery over a recalcitrant reality. According to the Wall Street Journal of April 3, 1970, "the desire to 'do something' pervades top levels of Government and may overpower other 'common sense' advice that insists the U.S. ability to shape events is negligible. The yen for action could lead to bold policy as therapy." The difference between international politics as it actually is and a rational theory derived from it is like the difference between a photograph and a painted portrait. The photograph shows everything that can be seen by the naked eye; the painted portrait does not show everything that can be seen by the naked eye, but it shows, or at least seeks to show, one thing that the naked eye cannot see: the human essence of the person portrayed. Political realism contains not only a theoretical but also a normative element. It knows that political reality is replete with contingencies and systemic irrationalities and points to the typical influences they exert upon foreign policy. Yet it shares with all social theory the need, for the sake of theoretical understanding, to stress the rational elements of political reality; for it is these rational elements that make reality intelligible for theory. Political realism presents the theoretical construct of a rational foreign policy which experience can never completely achieve. At the same time political realism considers a rational foreign policy to be good foreign policy; for only a rational foreign policy minimizes risks and maximizes benefits and, hence, complies both with the moral precept of prudence and the political requirement of success. Political realism wants the photographic picture of the political world to resemble as much as possible its painted portrait. Aware of the inevitable gap between good—that is, rational—foreign policy and foreign policy as it actually is, political realism maintains not only that theory must focus upon the rational elements of political reality, but also that foreign policy ought to be rational in view of its own moral and practical purposes. Hence, it is no argument against the theory here presented that actual foreign policy does not or cannot live up to it. That argument misunderstands the intention of this book, which is to present not an indiscriminate description of political reality, but a rational theory of international politics. Far from being invalidated by the fact that, for instance, a perfect balance of power policy will scarcely be found in reality, it assumes that reality, being deficient in this respect, must be understood and evaluated as an approximation to an ideal system of balance of power. 3. Realism assumes that its key concept of interest defined as power is an objective category which is universally valid, but it does not endow that concept with a meaning that is fixed once and for all. The idea of interest is indeed of the essence of politics and is unaffected by the circumstances of time and place. Thucydides' statement, born of the experiences of ancient Greece, that "identity of interests is the surest of bonds whether between states or individuals" was taken up in the nineteenth century by Lord Salisbury's remark that "the only bond of union that endures" among nations is "the absence of all clashing interests." It was erected into a general principle of government by George Washington: A small knowledge of human nature will convince us, that, with far the greatest part of mankind, interest is the governing principle; and that almost every man is more or less, under its influence. Motives of public virtue may for a time, or in particular instances, actuate men to the observance of a conduct purely disinterested; but they are not of themselves sufficient to produce persevering conformity to the refined dictates and obligations of social duty. Few men are capable of making a continual sacrifice of all views of private interest, or advantage, to the common good. It is vain to exclaim against the depravity of human nature on this account; the fact is so, the experience of every age and nation has proved it and we must in a great measure, change the constitution of man, before we can make it otherwise. No institution, not built on the presumptive truth of these maxims can succeed. It was echoed and enlarged upon in our century by Max Weber's observation: Interests (material and ideal), not ideas, dominate directly the actions of men. Yet the "images of the world" created by these ideas have very often served as switches determining the tracks on which the dynamism of interests kept actions moving. Yet the kind of interest determining political action in a particular period of history depends upon the political and cultural context within which foreign policy is formulated. The goals that might be pursued by nations in their foreign policy can run the whole gamut of objectives any nation has ever pursued or might possibly pursue. The same observations apply to the concept of power. Its content and the manner of its use are determined by the political and cultural environment. Power may comprise anything that establishes and maintains the control of man over man. Thus power covers all social relationships which serve that end, from physical violence to the most subtle psychological ties by which one mind controls another. Power covers the domination of man by man, both when it is disciplined by moral ends and controlled by constitutional safeguards, as in Western democracies, and when it is that untamed and barbaric force which finds its laws in nothing but its own strength and its sole justification in its aggrandizement. Political realism does not assume that the contemporary conditions under which foreign policy operates, with their extreme instability and the ever present threat of large-scale violence, cannot be changed. The balance of power, for instance, is indeed a perennial element of all pluralistic societies, as the authors of The Federalist papers well knew; yet it is capable of operating, as it does in the United States, under the conditions of relative stability and peaceful conflict. If the factors that have given rise to these conditions can be duplicated on the international scene, similar conditions of stability and peace will then prevail there, as they have over long stretches of history among certain nations. What is true of the general character of international relations is also true of the nation state as the ultimate point of reference of contemporary foreign policy. While the realist indeed believes that interest is the perennial standard by which political action must be judged and directed, the contemporary connection between interest and the nation state is a product of history, and is therefore bound to disappear in the course of history. Nothing in the realist position militates against the assumption that the present division of the political world into nation states will be replaced by larger units of a quite different character, more in keeping with the technical potentialities and the moral requirements of the contemporary world. The realist parts company with other schools of thought before the all- important question of how the contemporary world is to be transformed. The realist is persuaded that this transformation can be achieved only through the workmanlike manipulation of the perennial forces that have shaped the past as they will the future. The realist cannot be persuaded that we can bring about that transformation by confronting a political reality that has its own laws with an abstract ideal that refuses to take those laws into account. 4. Political realism is aware of the moral significance of political action. It is also aware of the ineluctable tension between the moral command and the requirements of successful political action. And it is unwilling to gloss over and obliterate that tension and thus to obfuscate both the moral and the political issue by making it appear as though the stark facts of politics were morally more satisfying than they actually are, and the moral law less exacting than it actually is. Realism maintains that universal moral principles cannot be applied to the actions of states in their abstract universal formulation, but that they must be filtered through the concrete circumstances of time and place. The individual may say for himself: "Fiat justitia, pereat mundus (Let justice be done, even if the world perish)," but the state has no right to say so in the name of those who are in its care. Both individual and state must judge political action by universal moral principles, such as that of liberty. Yet while the individual has a moral right to sacrifice himself in defense of such a moral principle, the state has no right to let its moral disapprobation of the infringement of liberty get in the way of successful political action, itself inspired by the moral principle of national survival. There can be no political morality without prudence; that is, without consideration of the political consequences of seemingly moral action. Realism, then, considers prudence-the weighing of the consequences of alternative political actions-to be the supreme virtue in politics. Ethics in the abstract judges action by its conformity with the moral law; political ethics judges action by its political consequences. Classical and medieval philosophy knew this, and so did Lincoln when he said: I do the very best I know how, the very best I can, and I mean to keep doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me won't amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference. 5. Political realism refuses to identify the moral aspirations of a particular nation with the moral laws that govern the universe. As it distinguishes between truth and opinion, so it distinguishes between truth and idolatry. All nations are tempted-and few have been able to resist the temptation for long-to clothe their own particular aspirations and actions in the moral purposes of the universe. To know that nations are subject to the moral law is one thing, while to pretend to know with certainty what is good and evil in the relations among nations is quite another. There is a world of difference between the belief that all nations stand under the judgment of God, inscrutable to the human mind, and the blasphemous conviction that God is always on one's side and that what one wills oneself cannot fail to be willed by God also. The lighthearted equation between a particular nationalism and the counsels of Providence is morally indefensible, for it is that very sin of pride against which the Greek tragedians and the Biblical prophets have warned rulers and ruled. That equation is also politically pernicious, for it is liable to engender the distortion in judgment which, in the blindness of crusading frenzy, destroys nations and civilizations-in the name of moral principle, ideal, or God himself. On the other hand, it is exactly the concept of interest defined in terms of power that saves us from both that moral excess and that political folly. For if we look at all nations, our own included, as political entities pursuing their respective interests defined in terms of power, we are able to do justice to all of them. And we are able to do justice to all of them in a dual sense: We are able to judge other nations as we judge our own and, having judged them in this fashion, we are then capable of pursuing policies that respect the interests of other nations, while protecting and promoting those of our own. Moderation in policy cannot fail to reflect the moderation of moral judgment. 6. The difference, then, between political realism and other schools of thought is real, and it is profound. However much the theory of political realism may have been misunderstood and misinterpreted, there is no gainsaying its distinctive intellectual and moral attitude to matters political. Intellectually, the political realist maintains the autonomy of the political sphere, as the economist, the lawyer, the moralist maintain theirs. He thinks in terms of interest defined as power, as the economist thinks in terms of interest defined as wealth; the lawyer, of the conformity of action with legal rules; the moralist, of the conformity of action with moral principles. The economist asks: "How does this policy affect the wealth of society, or a segment of it?" The lawyer asks: "Is this policy in accord with the rules of law?" The moralist asks: "Is this policy in accord with moral principles?" And the political realist asks: "How does this policy affect the power of the nation?" (Or of the federal government, of Congress, of the party, of agriculture, as the case may be.) The political realist is not unaware of the existence and relevance of standards of thought other than political ones. As political realist, he cannot but subordinate these other standards to those of politics. And he parts company with other schools when they impose standards of thought appropriate to other spheres upon the political sphere. It is here that political realism takes issue with the "legalistic- moralistic approach" to international politics. That this issue is not, as has been contended, a mere figment of the imagination, but goes to the very core of the controversy, can be shown from many historical examples. Three will suffice to make the point.3 In 1939 the Soviet Union attacked Finland. This action confronted France and Great Britain with two issues, one legal, the other political. Did that action violate the Covenant of the League of Nations and, if it did, what countermeasures should France and Great Britain take? The legal question could easily be answered in the affirmative, for obviously the Soviet Union had done what was prohibited by the Covenant. The answer to the political question depends, first, upon the manner in which the Russian action affected the interests of France and Great Britain; second, upon the existing distribution of power between France and Great Britain, on the one hand, and the Soviet Union and other potentially hostile nations, especially Germany, on the other; and, third, upon the influence that the countermeasures were likely to have upon the interests of France and Great Britain and the future distribution of power. France and Great Britain, as the leading members of the League of Nations, saw to it that the Soviet Union was expelled from the League, and they were prevented from joining Finland in the war against the Soviet Union only by Sweden's refusal to allow their troops to pass through Swedish territory on their way to Finland. If this refusal by Sweden had not saved them, France and Great Britain would shortly have found themselves at war with the Soviet Union and Germany at the same time. The policy of France and Great Britain was a classic example of legalism in that they allowed the answer to the legal question, legitimate within its sphere, to determine their political actions. Instead of asking both questions, that of law and that of power, they asked only the question of law; and the answer they received could have no bearing on the issue that their very existence might have depended upon. The second example illustrates the "moralistic approach" to international politics. It concerns the international status of the Communist government of China. The rise of that government confronted the Western world with two issues, one moral, the other political. Were the nature and policies of that government in accord with the moral principles of the Western world? Should the Western world deal with such a government? The answer to the first question could not fail to be in the negative. Yet it did not follow with necessity that the answer to the second question should also be in the negative. The standard of thought applied to the first--the moral question—was simply to test the nature and the policies of the Communist government of China by the principles of Western morality. On the other hand, the second—the political question—had to be subjected to the complicated test of the interests involved and the power available on either side, and of the bearing of one or the other course of action upon these interests and power. The application of this test could well have led to the conclusion that it would be wiser not to deal with the Communist government of China. To arrive at this conclusion by neglecting this test altogether and answering the political question in terms of the moral issue was indeed a classic example of the "moralistic approach" to international politics. The third case illustrates strikingly the contrast between realism and the legalistic-moralistic approach to foreign policy. Great Britain, as one of the guarantors of the neutrality of Belgium, went to war with Germany in August 1914 because Germany had violated the neutrality of Belgium. The British action could be justified either in realistic or legalistic- moralistic terms. That is to say, one could argue realistically that for centuries it had - been axiomatic for British foreign policy to prevent the control of the Low Countries by a hostile power. It was then not so much the violation of Belgium's neutrality per se as the hostile intentions of the violator which provided the rationale for British intervention. If the violator had been another nation but Germany, Great Britain might well have refrained from intervening. This is the position taken by Sir Edward Grey, British Foreign Secretary during that period. Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs Hardinge remarked to him in 1908: "If France violated Belgian neutrality in a war against Germany, it is doubtful whether England or Russia would move a finger to maintain Belgian neutrality, while if the neutrality of Belgium was violated by Germany, it is probable that the converse would be the case." Whereupon Sir Edward Grey replied: "This is to the point." Yet one could also take the legalistic and moralistic position that the violation of Belgium's neutrality per se, because of its legal and moral defects and regardless of the interests at stake and of the identity of the violator, justified British and, for that matter, American intervention. This was the position which Theodore Roosevelt took in his letter to Sir Edward Grey of January 22, 1915: To me the crux of the situation has been Belgium. If England or France had acted toward Belgium as Germany has acted I should have opposed them, exactly as I now oppose Germany. I have emphatically approved your action as a model for what should be done by those who believe that treaties should be observed in good faith and that there is such a thing as international morality. I take this position as an American who is no more an Englishman than he is a German, who endeavors loyally to serve the interests of his own country, but who also endeavors to do what he can for justice and decency as regards mankind at large, and who therefore feels obliged to judge all other nations by their conduct on any given occasion. This realist defense of the autonomy of the political sphere against its subversion by other modes of thought does not imply disregard for the existence and importance of these other modes of thought. It rather implies that each should be assigned its proper sphere and function. Political realism is based upon a pluralistic conception of human nature. Real man is a composite of "economic man," "political man," "moral man," "religious man," etc. A man who was nothing but "political man" would be a beast, for he would be completely lacking in moral restraints. A man who was nothing but "moral man" would be a fool, for he would be completely lacking in prudence. A man who was nothing but "religious man" would be a saint, for he would be completely lacking in worldly desires. Recognizing that these different facets of human nature exist, political realism also recognizes that in order to understand one of them one has to deal with it on its own terms. That is to say, if I want to understand "religious man," I must for the time being abstract from the other aspects of human nature and deal with its religious aspect as if it were the only one. Furthermore, I must apply to the religious sphere the standards of thought appropriate to it, always remaining aware of the existence of other standards and their actual influence upon the religious qualities of man. What is true of this facet of human nature is true of all the others. No modern economist, for instance, would conceive of his science and its relations to other sciences of man in any other way. It is exactly through such a process of emancipation from other standards of thought, and the development of one appropriate to its subject matter, that economics has developed as an autonomous theory of the economic activities of man. To contribute to a similar development in the field of politics is indeed the purpose of political realism. It is in the nature of things that a theory of politics which is based upon such principles will not meet with unanimous approval-nor does, for that matter, such a foreign policy. For theory and policy alike run counter to two trends in our culture which are not able to reconcile themselves to the assumptions and results of a rational, objective theory of politics. One of these trends disparages the role of power in society on grounds that stem from the experience and philosophy of the nineteenth century; we shall address ourselves to this tendency later in greater detail. The other trend, opposed to the realist theory and practice of politics, stems from the very relationship that exists, and must exist, between the human mind and the political sphere. For reasons that we shall discuss later5 the human mind in its day-by-day operations cannot bear to look the truth of politics straight in the face. It must disguise, distort, belittle, and embellish the truth-the more so, the more the individual is actively involved in the processes of politics, and particularly in those of international politics. For only by deceiving himself about the nature of politics and the role he plays on the political scene is man able to live contentedly as a political animal with himself and his fellow men. Thus it is inevitable that a theory which tries to understand international politics as it actually is and as it ought to be in view of its intrinsic nature, rather than as people would like to see it, must overcome a psychological resistance that most other branches of learning need not face. A book devoted to the theoretical understanding of international politics therefore requires a special explanation and justification. https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/morg6.htm BIO: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Morgenthau Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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