Rationalist Theories of International Politics and the Problem of the Future

Bibliographic Data

ID6121636
AuthorsDale C Copeland (University of Virginia, corresponding author)
Year2011
Volume20
Issue3
Pages441-450
Publication date2011-07-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueSecurity Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0963-6412 • E-ISSN: 1556-1852
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/09636412.2011.600144
OpenAlexW2111322908
LanguageEN
Citations received5

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Acknowledgments Dale C. Copeland is an associate professor in the Department of Politics at the University of Virginia. For helpful comments on earlier drafts, I wish to thank Kyle Lascurettes and Brandon Yoder. Notes Charles L. Glaser, Rational Theory of International Politics: The Logic of Competition and Cooperation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), subsequent references cited in text. John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: Norton, 2001). For a parallel effort, see Andrew Kydd, Trust and Mistrust in International Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005). That this is Glaser's modus operandi is shown by his two empirical chapters, 8 and 9. These chapters offer no event or policy across a century and a half of history that is seen as disconfirming of his logic. Rather, all events and policies at odds with his expectations are labeled suboptimal and irrational, without any exploration of the documents to see if actors were indeed violating rational-actor assumptions due to poor information searches, cognitive closure, bolstering, the distortions of domestic politics, and so forth (see esp. 229–67). For references to the vast preventive war literature and for my own take on such a dynamic realist approach, including the conditions under which preventive war or preventive containment actions are likely, see Dale C. Copeland, The Origins of Major War (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000), chaps. 1–2. Glaser cannot assert that the security dilemma would be “eliminated” if both actors knew with certainty that the other was also a security-seeker (81, 86–87). Once we bring in the fact that future character can change, the security dilemma races back in, forcing states to be concerned about their future power positions. Thus the irony of Glaser's defensive realism and all theories such as constructivism and liberalism that underscore the importance of variation in state types: it is precisely because the character of actors matters that the problem of changing future intentions hangs over all actors, even when they know each other to be good security-seekers. For more on this, see Dale C. Copeland, “The Constructivist Challenge to Structural Realism,” International Security 25, no. 2 (Fall 2000): 187–212. For the related commitment problem, see Robert Powell, “War as a Commitment Problem,” International Organization 60, no. 1 (Winter 2006): 169–203. The variable “state motives” is brought in only briefly at the end of the main theory chapter, chapter 3 (see 87–90), to cover states that may be more aggressively competitive than would security-seeking actors under similar circumstances. This neoclassical addition to Glaser's defensive realist core is then used in the empirical chapters to mop up variance that is left unexplained by changes in the intensity of the security dilemma. As such, this extra variable represents a degenerative aspect of Glaser's research program: it is used only as an ad hoc variable to explain events outside the theory's core deductive logic. On this, see Jeffrey W. Legro and Andrew Moravscik, “Is Anybody Still a Realist?” International Security 24, no. 2 (Fall 1999): 5–55. Glaser's three paragraphs on preventive war argue that if the current offense-defense balance is defense dominant, the rising state is presently security-seeking, or the declining state is a security seeker, the incentives for preventive war are reduced. To the criticism that state motives can change, Glaser counters that cooperation can still obtain because of the costs of preventive war are often high and because rising actors may indeed remain peaceful in type (109–112). These are reasonable qualifications. But they are only counter-arguments that suggest his variables might occasionally keep states from launching preventive actions. They are not arguments explaining the push to preventive war or preventive containment strategies, behaviors that would clearly undermine his claim that cooperation is typically the most rational strategic option for all players. Interestingly, he is more candid when discussing the implications of a changing offense-defense balance. His paragraph on the subject acknowledges that a balance moving from defense-dominance to offense-dominance would leave states “less confident in their security than [my] static theory suggests.” Nonetheless, cooperation can be saved by the existence of nuclear weapons that “moderate these dynamic concerns” by enhancing deterrence (110–11). Aside from the fact that nuclear weapons are an offensive technology that achieve deterrence by their sheer ability to punish, Glaser's discussion here again shows that he is only countering the counter-arguments using his own static variables rather than demonstrating how his theory could be made truly dynamic in and of itself. After all, it is the malleability of the future, not any worst-case assumption, that gives offensive realism its greatest analytical bite. Glaser does not discuss the arms racing of the first fifteen years of the Cold War, and for good reason. Here it is quite obvious that ongoing fears of the future—delivery systems that the other might be deploying and technological innovations that it might only reveal later—were driving the intense efforts of two largely security-seeking actors to increase their strategic military power. See n. 7. For summaries and references, see Patrick J. McDonald, The Invisible Hand of Peace: Capitalism, the War Machine, and International Relations Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); Dale C. Copeland, “Trade Expectations and the Outbreak of Peace,” Security Studies 9, nos. 1–2 (Autumn– Winter 1999–2000): 15–58; Dale C. Copeland, Economic Interdependence and War (forthcoming). See John J. Mearsheimer, “Disorder Restored,” in Rethinking America's Security, ed. Graham Allison and Gregory F. Treventon (New York: Norton, 1992), 223. By 1890, Germany ranked behind the United States and even Italy, the weakest of the European great powers, in total warship tonnage. See Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (New York: Random House, 1987), 203. On the economic origins of German Weltpolitik or “world policy,” see Woodruff Smith, The Ideological Origins of Nazi Imperialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986). The offense-defense balance in this regard is endogenous to a state's global grand strategy rather than an exogenous variable shaping that strategy, as Glaser's theoretical set-up must presuppose

Argument (complex analysis) · Foreign policy · International relations · Law and economics · Political science · Politics · Power (physics) · Social science · Sociology · Tragedy (event) · Classics · Global Peace and Security Dynamics · History · International Relations and Foreign Policy · Law

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