mearsheimer's 5 assumptions of realism

Mearsheimers contrasting view, which he called offensive realism, holds that the need for security, and ultimately for survival, makes states aggressive power maximizers. More important, however, is that we both evolved in conditions of free-for-all competitionof anarchywithout any Leviathan to administer life-and-death struggles with rival groups, a situation well recognized in the study of international relations among states. We reiterate the point above, however, that it is the context of our own evolution as hunter-gatherers in the socio-ecological conditions of the Pleistocene era that offers the crucial evidence on human behavioral adaptations. Unsatisfied with military life, he decided to pursue graduate studies rather than become a career officer. The preeminent evolutionary theorist J.B.S. We realize international cooperation is prevalent, but that does not mean such cooperation is easy to obtain. Offensive realism, more than other major theories of international relations, closely matches what we know about human nature from the evolutionary sciences. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. Second, our argument makes two contributions to the theory of offensive realism: We ground the theory in human evolution (instead of the international system), and we extend it into new domains (beyond the interaction of states as units of analysis). John J. Mearsheimer, in full John Joseph Mearsheimer, (born December 14, 1947, New York, New York, U.S.), prominent American scholar of international relations best known for his theory of offensive realism. Evolutionary theory offers a powerful explanation for the trait of egoism (by which we mean the nonpejorative definition of self-regarding, prompted by self-interest).86 Given competition for limited resources and threats from predators and the environment, an individual organism is primed to seek its own survival andthe Darwinian bottom linereproductive success. Cooperation and peace efforts often fail precisely because people have too rosy a view of human nature and thus fail to structure incentives effectively. Conventional offensive realism cannot explain such events well. Some decried the work as conspiratorial or factually weak, whereas others applauded its authors for having the courage to raise an important policy issue. Neorealism or structural realism is a theory of international relations that emphasizes the role of power politics in international relations, sees competition and conflict as enduring features and sees limited potential for cooperation. The particular socio-ecological setting in which humans evolved meant that egoism, dominance, and groupishness were important behavioral adaptations, irrespective of the traits found in related species. for this article. The strength of dominance hierarchies in humans is debated and varies empirically, but such hierarchies are always evident in some form or other. The genes of egoistic individuals survive and spread at the expense of those that fail to effectively put their own interests first. It is also worth noting that offensive realism may often be derided because we do not want it to be true. We find that these precise traits are not only evolutionarily adaptive but also empirically common across the animal kingdom, especially in primate and human societies. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. However, another important source of variation is individual differencesthat is, specific people exhibit these traits to greater or lesser degrees. The legacies of this long evolutionary history exert powerful influences on our behavior, including our political behavior, even today in large settled societies and in the global arena. Total loading time: 0 Although Thomas Hobbes claimed to have deduced Leviathan scientifically from motion and the physical senses, he was writing two hundred years before Darwin and so had no understanding of evolution.Reference Hobbes53 International relations scholars have tended to claim to deduce their own theories from Hobbes, or subsequent philosophers who followed him, and we suggest it is time to revisit the idea of foundational scientific principles. Conflict may seem costly to all parties involved, winners and losers alike, but what matters for natural selection is whether fighting, despite its costs, can bring net benefits to Darwinian fitness. Natural selection has led to a variety of contingent, context-dependent adaptations for maximizing survival and reproduction that include cooperation and alliances as well as self-help and aggression. Psychologists argue that the ingroup/outgroup distinction develops from a need for social identity. In some species, reproductive access is settled by coercion, in which the strongest male defeats rivals to dominate a harem. Will a male from the outgroup present competition for mates, or will his presence threaten the ingroup males position in the extended family or group? Why would hunter-gatherer groups fight at all? Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford, Stjrnmlafrideild/Department of Political Science, Hskli slands/University of Iceland, Reference Wilson, Boesch, Fruth, Furuichi, Gilby, Hashimoto, Hobaiter, Hohmann, Itoh, Koops, Lloyd, Matsuzawa, Mitani, Mjungu, Morgan, Muller, Mundry, Nakamura, Pruetz, Pusey, Riedel, Sanz, Schel, Simmons, Waller, Watts, White, Wittig, Zuberbuhler and Wrangham, Reference Sidanius, Kurzban, Sears, Huddy and Jervis, Reference Mirazn Lahr, Rivera, Power, Mounier, Copsey, Crivellaro, Edung, Maillo Fernandez, Kiarie, Lawrence, Leakey, Mbua, Miller, Muigai, Mukhongo, Van Baelen, Wood, Schwenninger, Grn, Achyuthan, Wilshaw and Foley, Reference Milinski, Parker, Krebs and Davies, Reference Ellis, Hershberger, Field, Wersinger, Pellis, Hetsroni and Geary, Reference Taylor, Klein, Lewis, Gruenewald, Gurung and Updegraff, Reference Flack, Girvan, de Waal and Krakauer, Reference Tooby, Cosmides and Hgh-Olesen, Reference Mech, Adams, Meier, Burch and Dale, Reference wrangham, Pilbeam, Galdikas, Briggs, Sheeran, Shapiro and Goodall, Reference Todorov, Mandisodza, Goren and Hall, Reference Baumeister, Boden, Geen and Donnerstein, Lethal intergroup aggression leads to territorial expansion in wild chimpanzees, Lethal aggression in Pan is better explained by adaptive strategies than human impacts, Intergroup aggression in chimpanzees and humans, Missing the Revolution: Darwinism for Social Scientists, Darwins Conjecture: The Search for General Principles of Social and Economic Evolution, The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture, Darwin and International Relations: On the Evolutionary Origins of War and Ethnic Conflict, Evolutionary approaches to political psychology, The origin of politics: An evolutionary theory of political behavior, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, The Peace of Illusions: International Relations Theory and American Grand Strategy in the PostCold War Era, Beyond victory: Offensive realism and the expansion of war aims, Realism and Americas rise: A review essay, The false promise of international institutions, Noble Savages: My Life Among Two Dangerous TribesThe Yanomamo and the Anthropologists, World of Our Making: Rules and Rule in Social Theory and International Relations, Inter-group violence among early Holocene hunter-gatherers of West Turkana, Kenya, International relations as a social science. Our point is therefore not that humans are naturally good or naturally bad at all times and in all circumstances, but rather that people have evolved mechanisms for egoism, dominance, and groupishness that are activated and amplified in certain settings. A larger, more powerful community from Ngogo launched a systematic campaign of aggressive and lethal attacks against its neighbors. https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Mearsheimer, The University of Chicago - Biography of John J. Mearsheimer. For example, Western Europeans feel relatively secure (at least while the United States provides for their security). The impressive design, by Tom Piper, comprises two very tall ladders, and . Aggression may be a risky strategy, but it is a more attractive option than starvation or other lethal dangers. | Find, read and cite all the research you . Historically, evidence has often supported this hypothesis.199,200,201 However, we take the position that, on average, state leaders personal interests have significant and genuine overlap with national security interests, not least of which is the survival and prosperity of the state for themselves and their progeny. Note that we do not intend to make the full case forthe role of evolution in human behavior. If women led them, or were better represented in legislative or executive branches of government, a logical prediction of our theory is that egoistic, dominant, and groupish tendenciesbeing primarily male traitswould be less likely to influence state behavior. Offensive Realism and Maximizing Power. As with all things in nature, dominance hierarchies vary considerably. Due to the legacy of our evolutionary past, the anarchic state system is not required to obtain offensive realist behavioronly humans are. 17 This is why he considers the US a regional hegemon, not a global one. Still, humans exhibit an instinctive fight or flight response, just as other animals do, which operates below (and faster than) conscious awareness.Reference Axelrod144,Reference Cronk and Leech145 Befriending or cooperating with a stranger may have benefits, but those benefits are uncertain and limited whereas the costs of trusting an outsider may be lethal. It contended that a powerful lobby skews U.S. foreign policy against the countrys national interests by securing unconditional support for Israel. However, even fellow realists have found problems and inconsistencies with Waltz's structural realism. 21 June 2016. 6,No. Evolution is sometimes argued to operate on groups rather than individuals (group selection). 4 (December 1997), pp. These findings may be surprising for those who hold to the popular notion of a harmonious and peaceful past in which humans were at one with nature and each other, but the evidence suggests the opposite. Indeed, the possibility of even more intense security competition in the Sino-American relationship, between India and Pakistan, and in the Middle East highlights the importance of making the theorys logic explicit and revealing and testing its foundations. The Stratford scenes play out before a large, A-shaped wooden structure that represents Shakespeare's childhood home. Indeed, there is a considerable literature on animal and human adaptations for cooperation.Reference Fehr and Fischbacher170,Reference Dugatkin171,172 However, while cooperation is frequent and widespread, this empirical observation does nothing to dent the evolutionary logic that cooperation helps the helperit evolved to occur only where it brings return benefits.Reference Trivers173,174 This is precisely why the cooperation literature has remained so heated. Third, state leaders are the actors who make important strategic decisions from a set of options, and they are potentially affected by their human dispositions and those of their advisers, even if their actions are tempered by checks and balances. Mearsheimer thus judged U.S. participation in World War II to have been entirely appropriate, since Nazi Germany and imperial Japan sought to dominate their respective regions. Destined for War gets its Thucydides wrong, but its intentionsto warn that China and the US are on course to stumble into an unwanted warare noble. Other recent work has been an International Security paper, with Monica Toft, Grounds for War: The Evolution of Territorial Conflict, which explores the behavioral origins of fighting over land. The second contribution of our theory is that it offers an explanation of the behavior of humans in a wide variety of contexts extending beyond international politics. That is, there is no ultimate authority in international politics comparable to a domestic government that can adjudicate disputes and provide protection for citizens.Reference Waltz25,Reference Waltz26 Without governmental authority, Waltz argues, the international system is a self-help system, where states must provide for their own protection through arms and alliances. Eric Labs captured this logic in his argument that, a strategy that seeks to maximize security through a maximum of relative power is the rational response to anarchy.38. As an alpha male provides stability to the group, so too a hegemon in international politics, as many scholars recognize, may provide stability for lesser states both in the realm of international security and for international political economy. Who wants power? Table3. Who wants power? It is hard to escape the conclusion from the ethnographic and archeological evidence from Europe, North America, South American, Australia, and New Guinea that hunter-gatherers both simple and complex engaged in socially sanctioned lethal conflict between independent polities, suggesting an extremely long history of warfare that can ultimately be traced back to early hominins., Terry Jones and Mark AllenReference Allen and Jones58, Humans evolved as a distinct lineage principally in the Pleistocene era (from 2 million to 10,000 years ago), and our analysis therefore requires a discussion of the small-scale hunter-gatherer groups that formed the social and ecological context for that period of human evolution. We prefer a more positive picture of human nature, perhaps one that accords with comfortable modern life in developed states. Previous work has explored the implications of evolved human behaviors for specific aspects of politics and international relations, such as the causes of war or risk-taking.19 However, we ask a bigger-picture question, identifying whether core assumptions underlying international relations theory match scientific knowledge about human evolution and behavior. This is what neorealists call a self-help system: Leaders of states are forced to take these steps because nothing else can guarantee their security in the anarchic world of international politics. Mearsheimer does use his theory to predict the future of great power Chimpanzees with larger territories have higher body weights, and females in those territories give birth to more offspring. An article adapted from the book had previously been published by Foreign Affairs. Chagnon, Wrangham and Glowacki and others have also shown that individuals, as well as the group, may gain significant reputational and reproductive advantages of participation in warfare. Realism, under Mearsheimer's perception, suggests states are rational since they ought to think strategically about their survival (Shadunts, 2016). Our theory is also unlimited in domain, explaining behavior wherever there are human actors and weak external constraints on their actions, from ancestral human groups, ethnic conflict, and civil wars to domestic politics, free markets, and international relations. Men, more often than women, lead states. Incorporating ideas from the life sciences into the social sciencesrich in the study of culture and institutions and other influences on political behaviorwill help scholars base their theories in rigorous scientific principles and subject their assumptions to empirical testing.Reference Wilson20,21 Our approach draws heavily on evolutionary anthropology, which recognizes that human behavior is in large part the result of evolved cognitive, physiological, and behavioral mechanisms designed to solve recurrent problems confronted by our ancestors in the environment in which we evolved. Whereas classical realists such as Hans Morgenthau had traced international conflicts to the natural propensity of political leaders to seek to increase their power, neorealists (or structural realists) such as Waltz located the cause of war in the structure of international relations. By contrast, as rational actor theorists would expect, hunter-gatherers are averse to the risk of fighting symmetric battles with roughly equivalent numbers on each side.82 Importantly, sustained instances of imbalances of power over evolutionary history would have led to the selection of contingent aggression. Behavior under anarchy in different domains. Third, it is important to remember that the empirical observation of altruism in nature does not imply or demand group selection. Recently, a 10-year conflict in the Kibale Mountains of Uganda came to an end. Chimpanzees do at least have some important ecological similarities to humans. Omissions? Mearsheimer outlines five bedrock assumptions on which offensive realism stands: (1) the international system is anarchic; (2) great powers inherently possess some offensive military capability; (3) states can never be certain about the intentions of other states; (4) survival is the primary goal of great powers; and (5) great powers are rational actors.39 From these core assumptions, Mearsheimer argues three general patterns of behavior result: fear, self-help, and power maximization.40 It is these three behaviors that are the focus of our article. Retaliation and collaboration among humans, Interests, Institutions, and Information: Domestic Politics and International Relations, Evolutionary biology: Struggling to escape exclusively individual selection, Reintroducing group selection to the human behavioural sciences, The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Origins of Cooperation, Not by Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution, The United States of Ambition: Politicians, Power and the Pursuit of Office, Inferences of competence from faces predict election outcomes, Selected: Why Some People Lead, Why Others Follow, and Why It Matters, Presidential Ambition: Gaining Power at Any Cost, Women and the evolution of world politics, Madam President: Women Blazing the Leadership Trail, Misperception and the causes of war: Theoretical linkages and analytical problems, Aggression and the self: High self-esteem, low self-control, and ego threat, Human Aggression: Theories, Research, and Implications for Social Policy, Victims of Groupthink: Psychological Studies of Policy Decisions and Fiascoes, Collective violence: comparisons between youths and chimpanzees. Others are even older, such as the limbic system, hormones, and sexual dimorphism, which are shared by countless species extending across all mammals and beyond. Second, the evolutionary approach helps make a given theorys assumptions about human nature explicit, exposing them to empirical validation. However, an evolutionary perspective is particularly useful here because it predicts that behavior is contingent, not fixed. Some of these date from the split with our last nonhuman primate ancestor at the beginning of the Pliocene, around 5 million years ago. Examples of offensive realism include John J. Mearsheimer, "Back to the Future: Instability inEurope after the Cold War,"International Security, Vol. Any given individuals Darwinian fitness will be increased if they can successfully seize the resources of others at sufficiently low cost.Reference Buss and Shackelford71 Of course, warfare also may be waged for defensive reasons, such as to defend critical resources from the advances of others.72 E.O. Hamilton used genetic models to show that, while individual organisms are egoistic, they should be less so in their behavior toward genetic relatives, especially in parent-offspring and sibling relationships.Reference Hamilton87,Reference Hamilton88 This decrease in egoism is because close relatives share many of the same genesone-half for siblings and parents, one-quarter for aunts, uncles, and grandparents, and one-eighth for cousins. However, offensive realism is one of the most compelling current theories for explaining major phenomena across the history of international politics, such as great power rivalries and the origins of war. Far from the original view of chimpanzees as boisterous but peaceful human cousins, researchers in recent decades have uncovered that these primates have a systematic tendency to kill males from rival groups.Reference Wilson, Boesch, Fruth, Furuichi, Gilby, Hashimoto, Hobaiter, Hohmann, Itoh, Koops, Lloyd, Matsuzawa, Mitani, Mjungu, Morgan, Muller, Mundry, Nakamura, Pruetz, Pusey, Riedel, Sanz, Schel, Simmons, Waller, Watts, White, Wittig, Zuberbuhler and Wrangham2,Reference Wrangham3,Reference Manson and Wrangham4 As primatologist Richard Wrangham put it, violence between groups of chimpanzees is like a shoot-on-sight policy.Reference Wrangham5 The strategic rationale is very simple: to eliminate rivals and increase territory. It is therefore no surprise, as psychologists have argued, that evolution has favored a bias to be fearful of strangers to avoid the costlier error.Reference Haselton and Nettle146,Reference Rozin and Royzman147. Part of the reason for its intuitive and explanatory success is, we suggest, its close match with human behavior. Depending on the time of year, visitors can enjoy a Mythological Fair in the summer (MYTHOS), a Haunted Festival & Adventure in the fall (LORE) and a Magical Christmas/Winter . Moreover, the very acquisition and exercise of power itself is known to inflate dominance behavior further.161. Offensive realists and other theorists of international relations may see more or less of each. With regard to U.S. foreign policy, he advocated a strategy of global balancing rather than global hegemony. A superpower such as the United States, he argued, should not try to impose its rule on all continents but should intervene only when another major power threatens to rule a region of strategic importance. While biological group selection in humans is possible in theory, there have not been any published empirical examples. Individuals fight when benefits are expected to exceed costs (on average), and not otherwise. He uses and adapts on Waltz's theory to paint a much more pessimistic and altogether darker picture of International relations theory. Evolutionary theory can also explain dominance. Deriving a theory of structural realism that he has famously branded "offensive realism," Mearsheimer speaks with admirable clarity: "China cannot rise . That choice, I argue in this article, creates three problems for his theory. States do not cooperate, except during temporary alliances, but constantly seek to diminish their competitors power and to enhance their own. Huda, Mirza Sadaqat A caveat to this prediction is that women in power may tend to act like men, either because selection effects trump stereotypical sex differences (female leaders may have personalities similar to male leaders), or because egoism and dominance are necessary traits in order to survive in the system of international anarchy (or on Capitol Hill).Reference Fukuyama197,Reference Clift and Brazaitis198. Second, even if group selection does occur, it can only increase altruism within groups. A states elitesits captains of industry and media and its military and political leadersmay be more likely than average to show these traits in abundance for five reasons. Clearly, not all individuals or businesses or states act the same way all the time or in all circumstances. The result was that the theory lacked, and still lacks, a scientifically describable ultimate cause. For their exceptional advice and comments, we thank lafur Darri Bjrnsson, Dan Blumstein, Miriam Fendius Elman, John Friend, David Galbreath, Azar Gat, Matthew Gratias, Valerie Hudson, Patrick James, Robert Jervis, Robert Keohane, Charles Lees, Anthony Lopez, Curt Nichols, Rose McDermott, Steven Pinker, Michael Price, Stephen Peter Rosen, Rafe Sagarin, Dominic Tierney, Monica Toft, Peter Turchin, Mark Van Vugt, Richard Wrangham, Remco Zwetsloot, and the anonymous reviewers. The Yanomamo among whom I lived were constantly worried about attacks from their neighbors and constantly lived in fear of this possibility. Egoism, dominance, and ingroup/outgroup distinctions have previously been attributed to variables such as culture, economics, or religion.148,149 For example, Karl Marx and his followers identified egoism as a result of capitalism and called for its suppression and the triumph of class consciousness. Indeed, cultural selection has often reinforced, not reduced, these very behaviors over human history. Similarly formidable obstacles to cooperation exist in international relations. Bradley A. Thayer is professor of political science at the University of Iceland. Both laboratory experiments and real-world observations have identified empirical differences between men and women in a range of social behaviors, not least that men tend to have relative-gains, or zero-sum motivations (wanting to get ahead at the expense of others), whereas women tend to favor payoff-maximization, or variable-sum motivations (content to do well even if others also do well in the process).Reference Lopez, McDermott and Petersen106,Reference Ellis, Hershberger, Field, Wersinger, Pellis, Hetsroni and Geary107,Reference Taylor, Klein, Lewis, Gruenewald, Gurung and Updegraff108,Reference Van Vugt and Spisak109, It is well established that dominance and status-seeking behaviors in humans are based on many of the same biochemical and neurological processes as in other mammals, such as the secretion and uptake of testosterone and serotonin, which modify status-challenging behavior.110,111 However rational we may like to think we are, our judgments and decision-making are nevertheless influenced by cognitive mechanisms and biochemicals circulating in our bodies and brains that relate to dominance behavior.Reference McDermott112,Reference Damasio113,114,115, Dominance hierarchies need not only benefit those at the top. Nevertheless, in evolutionary biology, the attribution of traits to common ancestry (a species phylogenetic history) can be important too. The ultimate causation offered by Morgenthau, the major theorist of classical realism, is noumenaloutside the realm of what science can investigate and demonstrate.Reference Morgenthau23,Reference Morgenthau24 Morgenthau argued that an animus dominandi (desire for power) motivates humans, but he did not explain how such a spirit may be derived logically from his theory or how his theory could be tested scientifically. The environment in which we evolved typically implies the Pleistocene era, lasting from 2 million years ago until around 10,000 years ago. Two theories of offensive realism. Therefore, to advocate group selection over individual selection does nothing to reduce predictions regarding human conflict or aggression. However, while the resulting behavior may have been adaptive in our ancestral environment, it may be maladaptive, or even disastrous, today. Under these conditions, such behavior will have been favored by natural selection and spread. First, the preferences of individual citizens are, at least to a degree, represented in those elected toor tolerated inoffice, and those preferences may also be seen in the goals of the state. and Waltzs core concept in Theory of International Politics is the anarchy that reigns in world politics. The international system is anarchic. 5-57; Eric J.Labs, "Beyond Victory: Offensive Realism and the Expansion of War Aims,"Security Studies,Vol. Ethological studies have shown that hierarchical dominance systems within a primate groups social network can reduce overt aggression, although aggression increases again when the alpha male is challenged.Reference Knauft116,Reference Flack, Girvan, de Waal and Krakauer117,Reference de Waal118.

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