mearsheimer's 5 assumptions of realism
Psychologists argue that the ingroup/outgroup distinction develops from a need for social identity. 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. Few principles unite the discipline of international relations, but one exception is anarchythe absence of government in international politics. Humans may pursue self-interest and power by many means, including, for example, patience and reciprocity as well as coercion and violence. This version of realism retains the traditional realist assumption that the primary state goal is power, rather than the defensive realist assumption that states seek security. The result was that the theory lacked, and still lacks, a scientifically describable ultimate cause. 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's main innovation is his theory of 'offensive realism' that seeks to re-formulate Kenneth Waltz's structural realist theory to explain from a struc-tural point of departure the sheer amount of international aggression, which may be hard to reconcile with Waltz's more defensive realism. Humans evolved in a state of nature where competition for resources and dangers from other humans and the environment were great. On the importance of resource harvesting for the development of dominance hierarchies, see James L. Boone, Competition, conflict, and the development of social hierarchies, in. The fact that human evolution occurred under conditions of anarchy, that we evolved as hunter-gatherers in an ecological setting of predation, resource competition, and intergroup conflict, and that humans have been subject to natural selection for millions of years has profound consequences for understanding human behavior, not least how humans perceive and act toward others. Scholars often argue over whether historically humans experienced a Hobbesian state of nature, butwhatever the outcome of that debateit is certainly a much closer approximation to the prehistoric environment in which human brains and behavior evolved.48,Reference Buss49,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 Foley50 This legacy heavily influences our decision-making and behavior today, evenperhaps especiallyin the anarchy of international politics. The constraints on biological group selection, such as significant differences in a given trait between groups and low migration, are relaxed in the case of cultural traits, since groups actively promote cultural distinctions and have many mechanisms to prevent flows between them.Reference Richerson and Boyd190 Therefore, it is not just likely but quite apparent that many cultural traits have evolved out of group-level competitionsometimes referred to as memes, as opposed to genes. Like most international relations scholars of his generation, Mearsheimer was deeply influenced by Kenneth Waltz, the founder of the school of international relations known as neorealism. When the stakes are high and ones livelihood or survival is threatened, the traits of egoism, dominance, and fear of outgroups come to the forea conclusion we can draw from any number of conflicts in the Balkans, Northern Ireland, Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, Nigeria, India, and elsewhere. Bradley A. Thayer is professor of political science at the University of Iceland. (PDF) Effects of Face Masks on Emotion Interpretation in Socially Note: The unit of analysis varies among the theories (states for defensive and offensive realism, humans for classical realism and human evolution), but all predictions are for state behavior. and Studies from an evolutionary perspective of the fundamental assumptions of neoliberalism, constructivism, poststructural approaches, Marxist and dependency theories, and other theories of international relations would be welcomed for four reasons. Given group selections theoretical constraints, it should be a last-resort explanation (subject to empirical testing), not a first point of call. Render date: 2023-05-01T12:27:54.717Z Sexual selection has led to costly biological adaptations, such as fighting, the growth of heavy weapons (e.g., antlers), risky courtship displays, or adornments that signal genetic quality (e.g., gigantic tails). However, a key insight from evolution is that the primacy of self-help, power maximization, and outgroup fear does not necessarily condemn individuals or groups to competition and conflict; rather, these traits can in themselves give rise to cooperation and alliances. He is the author of Overconfidence and War: The Havoc and Glory of Positive Illusions (Harvard University Press, 2004), which argues that common psychological biases to maintain overly positive images of our capabilities, our control over events, and the future play a key roles in causing war, and, with Dominic Tierney, Failing to Win: Perceptions of Victory and Defeat in International Politics (Harvard University Press, 2006), which examines how and why popular misperceptions commonly create undeserved victories or defeats in wars and crises. 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. Under conditions of anarchy, when there is the threat of predation and resource competition (as in many eras and locales in history), cognitive and physiological mechanisms of egoism, dominance, and groupishness are triggered. 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. Is John Mearsheimer right that his five assumptions make it After graduating from the United States Military Academy (West Point) in 1970, Mearsheimer served for five years as an officer in the air force, rising to the rank of captain. Table2. That choice, I argue in this article, creates three problems for his theory. When the stakes are high, such as in 1914, 1939, 1941, or 1962, or today in the Middle East, Ukraine, or the East and South China Seas, offensive realism does not seem so foreign. Ali, Saleem H. Table2 illustrates the range of domains to which an evolutionary theory of offensive realism applies. 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. 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. 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. 1 (Summer 1990), pp. Thus far, we have emphasized a state of anarchy in evolutionary history, in which there was no overarching power to provide protection from predators, rivals, or other threats. Evolutionary theorists now recognize, following William Hamiltons concept of inclusive fitness, that egoism has complexities. The Realist Framework 1 Core Assumptions of Realism - SlideToDoc.com In the Pleistocene era, this strategy could have been an option with some resources but not others. Review: In 'Hamnet,' Shakespeare Becomes Soap Opera What made war inevitable was the growth of Athenian power and the fear which this caused in Sparta.. Warfare might then be necessary for offensive purposes, to plunder resources from others. Feature Flags: { Conventional offensive realism cannot explain such events well. As Chinggis Khan is purported to have said: The greatest happiness is to vanquish your enemy, to drive him before you, to see his cities reduced to ashes.159 Although not usually expressed in such stark terms, the pleasure of competition and victory has been widely recognized as a feature of human nature from classical times to the present day, and success in competitive interactions and the domination of others are known to increase testosterone and dopamine responses in menthe so-called victory effect.160 Such dominance behavior is, we suggest, exaggerated among leaders because they are generally ambitious and competitive, and usually male. in evolutionary biology from Oxford University and a Ph.D. in political science from Geneva University. [2] The five bed-rock assumptions of Mearsheimer's theory of offensive realism are: He is missed. Mearsheimer is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. To the extent that cultural group selection extends back into our evolutionary past, cultural traits have not been consistently or powerfully contrary to the evolved traits of egoism, dominance, and ingroup/outgroup bias. However, a study by Wrangham and Glowacki, which explicitly looked at warfare among hunter-gatherers who were surrounded by other hunter-gatherers, found that warfare was just as common in this more natural setting.Reference Wrangham and Glowacki80 Evidence from across the cumulative research of archeologists and anthropologists indicates that violence is a widespread feature of small-scale foraging societies and follows a pattern that is consistent as far back as we can see in the ethnographic and archeological record.81. So, while the natural sciences recognize the remarkable sociality and mutual dependence exhibited by the human species, these sciences are also unified in recognizing the selective advantages of self-interest and power. Thus, humans may consider other variables, such as the possibility of future trade or cooperation, when assessing outgroups. Theorists have had to explain how cooperation could occur in the face of significant individual self-interest, the difficulties of collective-action, and the free-rider problem.Reference Boyd175,Reference Olson176,Reference Ostrom177 Special conditions are needed for cooperation to emerge and remain stable among unrelated individuals.178,Reference Sigmund179 Typically, those special conditions are ones that make helping advantageous to the genes responsible for the behavior. These adaptations in turn serve as a foundation for offensive realismwhat Mearsheimer independently identified as self-help, power maximization, and fear. Also like Waltz, Mearsheimer argues that bipolarity (where two states have the majority of power and international influence) is more stable than multipolarity for three reasons: First, bipolarity provides fewer opportunities for war between the superpowers; second, there will tend to be smaller imbalances of power between the superpowers; and, third, there is less potential for great power miscalculation.29. Haldane thus quipped that he would give his life to save two of his brothers (each sharing half of his genes) or eight of his cousins (each sharing one-eighth of his genes).Reference Haldane89,90 Inclusive fitness provides a biological basis for the common intuition that individuals favor those who are close genetic relatives.Reference Betzig91. These strategies are not unique to humans and, in fact, characterize a much broader trend in behavior among mammals as a wholeespecially primatesas well as many other major vertebrate groups, including birds, fish, and reptiles. The key observation is that bonobos are less aggressive than chimpanzees. We argue that evolutionary theory also offers a fundamental cause for offensive realist behavior (see Table1). Egoism, dominance, and ingroup/outgroup bias are widespread because they increased survival and reproductive success compared with other strategies and were therefore favored by natural selection. Rather, chimpanzees appear to have evolved an innate aggression toward other groups, a tendency that causes them to attack neighboring males when the opportunity arises, and leads to greater Darwinian reproductive success over time. The Yanomamo among whom I lived were constantly worried about attacks from their neighbors and constantly lived in fear of this possibility. 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. Offensive Realism and Maximizing Power. Fourth, group decision-making may actually amplify the influence of human dispositions; it is groups of men that are especially prone to behaviors associated with dominance, aggression, and coalitionary psychology.Reference Baumeister, Boden, Geen and Donnerstein203,Reference Janis204,205,206,Reference Wrangham and Wilson207. 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. While relations within groups might be characterized by coordination and cooperation (although internal conflict was important too), relations between groups were characterized by competition and conflict (although external cooperation and trade was also possible). The abundance of intergroup threats, which cause the fear and uncertainty Mearsheimer identifies, are deeply rooted in human evolution under conditions of anarchy over millions of years, and not just in the anarchy of the modern state system in recent history. 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. Third, by acknowledging that the social and natural sciences are both necessary to understand human behavior, we advance consilience. Animals do not constantly fight. 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. Older versions of evolutionary theory sometimes presented strategies and behaviors as fixed or hard wired. Modern biology stresses the contingent, context-dependent nature of behavioral adaptations, which generates finer predictions for when we should expect to see different types of behavior.Reference Davies, Krebs and West155 This is an important point to which we will return. We now explore the adaptive logic of these behaviors in turn. Provo Canyon School's history of abuse accusations spans decades, far http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/59922#eid5780558, http://edge.org/conversation/steven_pinker-the-false-allure-of-group-selection. and John J. Mearsheimer | Biography, Books, & Facts | Britannica Chimpanzees do at least have some important ecological similarities to humans. Males of most mammal species are particularly competitive with each other over females. 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. In short, the core elements of Mearsheimer's offensive realism are the five assumptions, states, fear, self-help, relative power maximization, the balance of power and war. 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. This collective benefit points to the special and much more significant role of anarchy at a higher levelanarchy between groups. Some of these date from the split with our last nonhuman primate ancestor at the beginning of the Pliocene, around 5 million years ago. Our theory advances offensive realist arguments without seeking an ultimate cause in the anarchic international state system. In 2003 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Similar patterns are evident in nature. It's located in Utah Valley's Pleasant Grove, which is about 20 minutes North of Downtown Provo. Much of Thayers scholarship centers onlife-sciences insights into political-behavioral topics, including the origins of war and ethnic conflict and the dynamics of suicide terrorism. State as primary actor 2. Wranghams and Glowackis work has also established empirical support for the evolutionary logic in the patterns of intergroup conflict. The fact that there is no world government compels the leaders of states to take steps to ensure their security, such as striving to have a powerful military, forging and maintaining alliances, and acting aggressively when necessary. Major realist theories and their predictions,154 plus predictions from human evolution. Combining the previous two considerations (leaders and sex) raises another problem: If leaders are especially egoistic and domineering, and if sex is a primary cause, does this not mean that we predict state leaders will undertake actions (consciously or subconsciously) that serve to maximize their own personal reproductive opportunitiesperhaps at the expense of state interests? 5-57; Eric J.Labs, "Beyond Victory: Offensive Realism and the Expansion of War Aims,"Security Studies,Vol. Rather, we build on an accumulation of knowledge about human evolution and behavior derived from anthropology, evolutionary biology, experimental psychology, evolutionary game theory, genetics, and neuroscience. Where extensive international cooperation does occur, it is often only by virtue of a hegemon willing to sustain it, and cooperation quickly breaks down if core interests and security are put at risk. As we show in the next section, competition between groups is especially significant for human evolution, and for international politics, precisely because it is at the intergroup level where anarchy reigns supreme and is much harder to suppress. 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. 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. Offensive realism, more than other major theories of international relations, closely matches what we know about human nature from the evolutionary sciences. Although alphas in the hierarchy tend to have the highest reproductive success, other males may benefit from group membership by gaining protection from other groups, or by biding their time for a chance to challenge the alpha male when they become strong enough or old enough. However, if actors seek dominance at least partly because of evolved behavioral dispositions (of which actors may not even be aware), then we may expect sometimes to observe power-maximizing behavior whether or not it is a good strategy. The environment in which we evolved typically implies the Pleistocene era, lasting from 2 million years ago until around 10,000 years ago. Gat, 2006, p. 427; see also Elizabeth Knowles, ed.. See, for example, the recent articles and responses here: Steven Pinker, The false allure of group selection. In this article, In other species, males cannot coerce females, but the females are choosy about with whom they mate, leading to selection pressures for males to demonstrate or signal their quality as attractive partners. 17 This is why he considers the US a regional hegemon, not a global one. "useRatesEcommerce": false 1-49; Robert Gilpin, War and Mearsheimer notably advocated the withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Europe, arguing that their presence there was irrational, as no state currently threatened to dominate the continent.Levittown Schools Staff Email, Publicly Traded Companies In Orange County, Articles M