Anya Palkowski

The Expanding Toolkit of Statecraft and the End of “Might Makes Right”

Capstone Seminar in Political Science | Professor Douglas Foyle | Wesleyan University | 2012

This essay received a designation of High Honors from Wesleyan University’s political science department.

The ultimate goal of statecraft is one of international relations scholarship’s greatest ongoing debates. The realist answer has always been the gaining of absolute military power in pursuit of survival and sovereignty through the use of “particular material capabilities” and “socio-economic ingredients that go into building military power” (Mearsheimer 2001, 55). Liberal thought focuses on the promise of institutions and the future of cooperation rather than relying on self-interest alone to explain state behavior. In light of the constantly evolving interactions of states in the international system, both approaches are flawed: the assertion that state competition for survival “belongs to a stage of development out of which we have passed”[1] was not particularly true even in the pre-World War period during which it was written. Conversely, the realist view that the state “strives not only to be the most powerful actor in the system, but also to ensure that no other state achieves that lofty position” (Mearsheimer 1995, 9) has become problematic in describing an era characterized by many successful states that use cooperation and soft power to achieve myriad goals.

As states diversify into multiple hierarchies of needs, we must find different ways to conceptualize the behaviors of state actors. Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye stated in their theory of complex interdependence that “multiple channels connect societies” (Keohane and Nye 1989, 21); this perspective allows us to reframe the issue as a series of questions about state goals and the methods states use to pursue their preferences. Does the nation-state exclusively pursue survival? Are states capable of using soft in addition to hard power to achieve their goals? Have armies and tangible economic resources become something other than purveyors of the realist hard power agenda? To address these questions, I will deconstruct the realist concept of existential survival while offering alternative motivations for state action, explore how the hard power of military might and the soft power of economic and social interdependence factors into those motivations, and discuss the role of international institutions as a vital complement to a new conceptualization of state preferences on the global scale.

As early as 1909, Norman Angell claimed that globalized economic borders and the diminished effectiveness of hard military power indicated that state competition for survival was a thing of the past. Claiming that “war, even when victorious, [could] no longer achieve those aims for which peoples [strove],” Angell sought to prove that military growth and actions had ceased to matter in the calculus of state interests, and that the self-interested desire for survival had completely given way to a mutual desire for cooperation.[2] Conversely, neorealists and offensive realists in the tradition of Hans Morgenthau continue to maintain that in world politics, self-help and the constant threat of elimination or loss of sovereignty are the sole determinants of state behavior. What both views hesitate to concede is that the world is neither fully liberal nor fully realist – that state relationships have, since the end of the Cold War, been using a combination of hard and soft power to interact with other states based on a set of ever expanding wants and needs.

As states have grown to adopt new methods of interstate interaction, certain branches of realist thought have attempted to append alternate meanings to the concept of self-interest. However, in a society of intermingled economic assets and complex cultural self-determination, “interest” is suddenly meaningful in multiple ways. The “self,” as Keohane and Nye point out, is no longer simply definable by political borders (Keohane and Nye 1989, 30).

The “survival” sought by a state has indeed assumed manifold meanings – environmental health, economic stability, international influence – as have the tools that states use to achieve their new hierarchies of needs. In conceding that survival must now encompass the facets of the post-nuclear age, one must also reject the idea that states can achieve their goals solely through the channels of hard power and forcible coercion. A state, however well-endowed with resources, may use any number of strategies to achieve its own conceptions of success – many of which fall outside the realist blanket of “relentless security competition” (Mearsheimer 1995, 9). In a liberal world where states are possessed of multiple channels of interaction, resources and hard economic power exist, but “are merely instruments… no better or worse than the manner with which they are used” (Gallarotti 2010, 34). As critical theorist Alexander Wendt posits, material resources do not carry the single-minded hard-power-maximizing agenda that realists suppose they do, but “only acquire meaning for human action through the structure of shared knowledge in which they are embedded” (Wendt 1995, 73).

Many of the nation-state’s expanded priorities originate in economic interdependence. Whereas Morgenthau considered it necessary to separate the military from the economic and cultural spheres – to respect a clear dichotomy between “political and nonpolitical facts” (Morgenthau 1978, 8) – a modern view of state actors shows that sovereignty is inexorably tied to the economic cross-currents that have given every nation-state a stake in another’s economy. The limits of a state’s punitive and legal enforcement capabilities do not also necessitate the limits of its soft economic and cultural influences on the international system.

The integrated sovereignty of states is not a novel concept: digital communication and information fluidity have not created but merely expanded international interdependence. The argument can be made that global economic interconnectedness is a transient concept that wanes as soon as linkages are unfavorable to powerful states, but evidence of capital flow and economic dependency stretches far beyond the modern era. The trade routes, exchange of labor, and international ownership of land that characterized ancient civilizations tempered the state’s tendency to act in unilateral self-interest, just as an integrated network of individuals, cultures and companies does in the 21^st century. It is only by degrees of magnitude that the two manifestations of globalized economies are separated, as states now explicitly trade sovereignty for other needs, such as international approval, favorable reputation, and soft economic benefits. With capital and labor in constant flux across state borders, it is difficult to envision a plan for the future of a modern nation that disregards its linkages to myriad other states, actors, and groups in favor of pursuing unilateral power maximization.

The study of social cross-pollination in addition to economic linkages is grounded in the constructivist viewpoint that “the fundamental structures of international politics are social rather than strictly material” (Wendt 1995, 71). The liberal view of Michael Doyle, pioneer of the liberal democratic peace theory, describes a kindred identity and culture of identification that prevents the citizens of democratic countries from allowing their elected officials to wage war against other freedom-loving peoples. Doyle argues that a “separate peace… impervious to the quarrels with our allies that bedeviled the Carter and Reagan administrations” characterizes the newfound kinship between democratic nations, and in doing so places too much faith in the abilities of cultural feelings of solidarity to override the hard power need for domination (Doyle 1986). Theorists of cosmopolitanism advance the idea of social capital as the more versatile “endearment,” or any manifestation of a “positive image in world affairs” (Gallarotti 2010, 8), to explain the mechanics by which states seek ends other than survival. Although Doyle’s democratic peace theory is riddled with speculation and dubious commitment to a social norm that simply has not been broken yet, one cannot deny that social linkages between politically separate societies exist at the individual level, whereas they previously existed primarily among statesmen and characterized only top-level governmental interaction. Endearment as defined by cosmopolitans certainly explores a theme of culturally based influence that purely realist thought fails to grasp as an important facet of international politics.

Time has changed not only the scale of social spheres, but also society’s view of military hard power itself. Just as two decades of military development transformed the rank-and-file personnel-driven warfare of the French Revolution into the heavy artillery and technological warfare that characterized World War I,[3] the modern generation of war is increasingly reliant on remote weapons, drone warfare and other cost-minimizing applications of force such as those that characterize the Western powers’ ongoing conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq. The advent of the post-Cold War nuclear age has undeniably changed the way countries view coercion, security and threat: following the development and proliferation of nuclear armament, states must contend with a “diminished utility of coercion in a world where force could impose far greater costs on societies than they are willing to bear” (Gallarotti 2010, 37).

The bygone age of hard military power was largely defined by attrition wars that relied on military size and brute force; with the total effectiveness of nuclear power has come a higher potential cost of making unilateral threats. Rather than seeing hard power as a backup, so that nations “will have something to fight with in case good will fails to attract supporters” (Gallarotti 2010, 7), one could consider the decline of military power as an agent of threat or coercion a feedback loop based on the ever more deadly effects of military technology. As war becomes more absolute in its potential destructive power, soft power becomes an increasingly viable currency of state interaction.

Nevertheless, it is important to qualify this liberal-leaning view of the world. By claiming that “military power is socially and economically futile,” Sir Norman Angell strove too hard to undermine the realist obsession with hard power and thus misrepresented the ongoing evolution of the role of military power and tangible resources in society.[4] A nuanced view of state goals in an interdependent era suggests not that survival no longer factors into a state’s priorities, but that realist assumptions about anarchy and self-help manifest less concretely and absolutely than they did when large standing armies still offered vital defense against the threat of elimination.

Despite evidence that state interests have expanded beyond simple survival and military might, divorcing martial power from the modern state’s standing in international society understates the military’s changing role in the complex machinery of the modern nation-state. In keeping with a tendency towards multilateral action and soft economic goals, militaries are utilized for humanitarian, peacekeeping and constabulary missions as frequently as for aggressive overtures. National and institutional militaries have begun to assume duties of “framing agendas, persuading other governments, and attracting support in world politics”[5] – pursuits altogether better suited to a community of interrelated nation-states than to a grimly pessimistic world of militant self-help. Numerous developed countries, as a requirement for membership in the United Nations, contribute armed forces and labor resources to a number of United Nations peacekeeping initiatives. Even dedicated national armed forces have begun to specialize in humanitarian missions: Japan’s Self-Defense Forces (SDF), unequipped for large military operations and explicitly prohibited from doing so by the country’s constitution, is confined to missions of disaster relief and peacekeeping and has conducted missions in conflict-ridden areas like the Persian Gulf, Cambodia, Iraq, and the Indian Ocean.[6]

Aside from heralding a new use for armies in a post-nuclear world, the transformation of the military suggests some noteworthy auxiliary points: first, that possessing a strong military does not necessarily result in good outcomes; second, that numerous states have devised successful national strategies unrelated to military strength.

Despite waning hard-power roles for militaries, military strength still acts as a reliable indicator of the prosperity of a nation. However, it is equally evident that certain states’ prerogative for superfluous military development has sapped their resources while slowly degrading their supranational relationships. An overreliance on defense spending, coupled with a reactionary and culturally imperialistic take on foreign policy, damages reputation of the nation. This feasibly increases the probability of conflict by eliminating instances of a state’s soft influence while simultaneously draining its resources. A country like North Korea, equipped with formidable military capabilities but bereft of social capital, has few prospects for integration or security after being labeled the single defector amidst a sea of cooperative states. As for the “great powers” in international society, nothing is more illustrative of the haphazardness of military conflict than the Western powers’ intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Just as military strength is no guarantee that a state will flourish, military power is not a necessary precondition for “success” in statecraft – far from emulating a grimly realist world where “every state would like to be the most formidable military power in the system because this is the best way to guarantee survival” (Mearsheimer 1995, 12), the international system contains myriad examples of states with low military funding and either negligible or unconventional aspirations for military development. Small nation-states such as Costa Rica, which abolished its military program in 1949 and remains under the protection of the multilateral Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance of 1947, provide minor examples of new methods of statecraft. Japan, with its military ambitions fettered by a constitutional stipulation that it “forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes,” nonetheless maintains a presence and importance in world politics unmatched by many nations that invest more heavily in a standing army. For it to utilize its army for violent purposes would “not only violate the Constitution, but would also be undesirable from the perspective of international confidence.”[7]. Even Kenneth Waltz is forced to admit that Japan has not developed a strong postwar military culture despite having the economic and social resources to do so, and instead uses its hard power resources for peacekeeping and other postmodern military pursuits (Waltz 2000, 33). It is clear that at least for now, Japan’s technologically formidable yet small and geographically confined self-defense forces are not at all integral to its survival.

Understanding the military’s changed structure and usefulness helps us to accept that a survival-based view of international politics is an incomplete model of state behavior. However, even though the power of a standing military has become less integral to a state’s success in the wake of nuclear proliferation, it remains linked to a state’s success, and cannot be dismissed as a tool of achieving the goals outlined in each state’s national hierarchy of needs.

If any realist claim has endured, it is that rational states are expected to pursue policies that will benefit them. Bereft of punitive enforcement methods, the global system can turn to no Leviathan or supreme ruler to arbitrate conflicts. Yet somehow, states operate within multilateral contexts, using alliances and institutions to achieve mutual goals. It is possible, but difficult, to argue that international institutions have tangible effects on state decisions – in fact, if institutions affect power balances in any way, it is in their ability to “allow small and weak states to pursue linkage strategies” (Keohane and Nye 19989, 31) – but at the very least, the fact of their prevalence and longevity can be used to gauge the decline of a realist interpretation of the international system and the rise of multiple avenues of pursuing state goals.

Institutions are valuable vehicles by which war and peace become dependent upon more than a traditionally realist balance of power. It is most useful to view them as tools of transparency and facilitated community deliberation whereby selfishness and warmongering behavior can be delegitimized as driving forces of state behavior. As institutions become more effective, the ease and likelihood of cheating in agreements declines; in an environment of transparency, “multiple issues imperfectly linked” may provide the opportunity for dialogue where none existed before (Keohane and Nye 1989, 30). In many of these institutions, unilateral action is socially shunned, and results in the shaming of improperly behaving states. By increasing the “minimum level of civil behavior in international politics,” (Gallarotti 2010, 23), institutions use valuable social norms to constrain, if not explicitly change, state behavior.

Institutions, once established, may expand beyond their original roles as buttresses of the existing power structure. When the cost of reneging on mutual agreements is public shame and a possibly crippling loss of foreign support, members of visible international communities are unlikely to act out antiquated conceptions of survival in unilateral attempts to assure their absolute power. Contrary to neorealist skepticism, which anticipated the dissolution of NATO following the disappearance of the threat it meant to combat, both NATO and the EC have impelled even small governments to “invest significant material and reputational resources” in their upkeep (Keohane & Martin 1995, 40). In a subversion of realist assumptions, international institutions clearly provide benefits that supersede the mistrustful needs of states to unilaterally preserve their sovereignty.

Despite the evidence that institutions are not simply vehicles for the propagation of self-interest, there is inadequate information regarding institutions to reach a conclusion about their effectiveness. Realists have long suspected – and rightly so – that international institutions are unlikely to transform existing power balances. Liberal institutionists Robert Keohane and Lisa Martin were careful to warn against the conflation of real effects of international institutions, if any exist, with underlying circumstances present in the international system (Keohane and Martin 1995, 47). However, it is reasonable that only prominent, wealthy states with the socially reinforced “right” to establish international structures were able to form communities such as NATO, the EEC, the EU, etc.; some mistake correlation for causation by assuming that NATO is a means of “maintaining and lengthening America’s grip on the foreign and military policies of European states” (Waltz 2000, 20). However, even the idea that institutions reflect “state calculations of self-interest based primarily on the international distribution of power” (Mearsheimer 1995, 13) would not be detrimental to a moderate view of international politics.

Viewing the political history of the world as a linear timeline, the exact effects of institutions are less important than what both their creation and ongoing existence imply about the goals of their organizers – namely, that unilateral survival is no longer the sole motivation behind state behavior. Whether institutions themselves influence states and contribute to an increasingly liberal world or simply reflect preconditions in the international system, the implication is the same: the community of states that makes up the cosmopolitan global system has toyed with, and in some cases succeeded in implementing, international regulation. Mearsheimer acknowledges that despite his suspicions that NATO reflected the existing Western power balance, it “certainly played a role in preventing World War III and helping the West win the Cold War” (Mearsheimer 1995, 13-14). Engaged in a slow transformation from national isolation to forced structures like NATO during World War I to the civil and mutually beneficial dealings of the contemporary EU and WTO, the degree to which institutions positively influence state cooperation exhibits an optimistic trend. From this data, one can extrapolate a future of socially enforced institutions that propagate transparency in foreign policy and amplify the costs of cheating. This method of constructively envisioning mutual goals nicely complements an age where the absolute annihilation threatened by military technologies has made military power a poor transaction method. Due to their possible facilitation of multilateral decision-making and minimization of uncertainty, institutions provide a realistic and forward-looking way of understanding state goals and behavior in the digital age.

The realist view that cooperation is impossible absent obvious positive gains for all parties suffers from a one-dimensional focus on a pre-Cold War era of limited communication and single hierarchies of need. Mearsheimer cites the cooperation and dissolution of European powers prior to World War I as evidence of the impermanence of institutions (Mearsheimer 1995, 13), but does not give proper weight to the fact that modern countries are socialized to one another in terms of culture and civilian populace rather than solely top-level intergovernmental interaction. In their insistence that power, survival, and self-interest remain at the pinnacle of a hierarchy of needs to which all rational nation-states adhere, both neorealism and classical realism fail to accurately describe the complex relationships between state economies, military power, and institutions. Conversely, the aforementioned liberal view is idealistic to a fault, and simultaneously attributes too much to the transformative power of institutions and too little to the continued importance of hard power and military capabilities in determining the success of a state. Liberals often make the mistake of assuming that institutions ungoverned by social or physical enforcement capabilities are, or will be, capable of obsolescing self-interest, whereas self-interest is and will remain one of many observable, rational and justifiable ends of statecraft. Far from claiming that institutions “push states away from war and promote peace,” or even that they have the power to affect state behavior (Mearsheimer 1995, 36), one can safely view the continued existence of international institutions merely as evidence of statecraft’s ongoing evolution.

Given the evidence for an increasingly liberal world, it is tempting to conclude that either world politics has moved beyond the use of unilateral hard power to achieve self-interest, or that they will in the foreseeable future. After all, evolution away from a purely power- and survival-driven set of goals was a necessary determinant of the modern international system. However, it is clearest when speaking about the preference determination of states that neither a realist nor a liberal approach offers a realistic view of the present and future of world politics. Either stance, taken in the extreme, runs the risk of becoming a shortsighted refusal to adopt new variables or an idealistic, reversal of millennia of political history and analysis. The changing currency of international relationships necessitates a multidimensional view of state goals; one must synthesize elements from both realist and liberal thought to construct a nuanced view of state goals in the modern international system.

Joseph Nye noted in 2010 that the interplay of hard military capabilities and the soft propagation of influence defines the “smart” approach to foreign policy in the modern era.[8] The cosmopolitan viewpoint adds that nations can maximize their benefit by considering their well-being “inextricably tied to the collective structures in which they operate” (Gallarotti 2010, 44). Ample evidence exists that the “smart” way to conduct foreign policy has moved away from the realist paradigm of “might makes right,” and has become as complex as the new hierarchies of needs that define state preferences. By expanding their toolkits of statecraft to include institutional structures and novel applications of military assets, numerous governments have devised multiple ways to successfully flourish in a modern world. This multifaceted approach to governance is what defines of international relations in the post-Cold War age.