…And We Thought That Nation-States Were a Bad Idea – Propagandhi
Peter at the Duck of Minerva discusses Stephen Walt’s non-realist assessment of defense spending:
Lets review: Realism assumes an anarchic world of rational state actors maximizing security, defined as sufficient military force to defend the integrity of a the state. In that anarchic environment, systemic pressures are the primary factor states rationally consider in security decisions.
In other words, all states act the same, the only thing that differentiates them is their relative position in world politics, ie their relative power.
What Walt claims in his post is that the systemic pressures of anarchy have absolutely no bearing on US defense budgetign and policy. Rather, crazy domestic lobbies have hijacked USFP for some damn fool ideological crusade. This analysis is all well and good, but, and here’s the kicker, Walt’s theory–Realism–says this shouldn’t matter, not one lick! States can have all the internal politics they want, but in the end, systemic pressures shape security policy.
I don’t really see the problem here. The absolutist realist position, that literally every state behaves in purely objective security interests in all cases is, of course, on-its-face wrong. But no one actually thinks that. Not even Mearsheimer.
What “realists” really think is that the theory of realism is the most effective means of conceptualizing international relations. For them, it is the backdrop against which all other issues must be understood. Thus, if a specific issue fails to comport with realist theory, it demands explanation.
And while every state will operate in a variety of non-realist manners, on the whole they will fall in line with the larger theory. Any state which routinely and regularly flaunts its own security interests will encounter ever-increasing problems and either fall in line or collapse under the weight of its ‘irrational’ decisions.
In short, realists take their theory as the ‘natural’ condition for international politics and therefore are keenly interested in situations where the theory fails to correspond with reality. Folks like Walt clearly find it a lot more interesting to explore the limits of realism than it would be to re-hash the same discussions of force dynamics and bargaining theory.
There is, of course, PLENTY of room for criticism of such efforts. And I also agree with the sentiment from the DoM post that suggests that Walt (and all realists, really) tread remarkably close to constructivism as they dance their way through the hurdles created by their insistence on seeing the world through the lens of a universalizing theory. But that’s just a reason to recognize that constructivism – in its more ‘conservative’ forms, at least – is little more than a self-aware realism, and therefore not nearly the threat to institutionalized theory than the more mainstream folks might imagine.
UPDATE: Dan Nexon has a more complete post on this subject (with a reference to Guzzini, even!).