No Doves Here!

"Contrary to popular belief, international relations scholars are not doves," according to a new survey of IR scholars (Foreign Policy article here; full results here; hat-tip Daniel Drezner), "most believe that military force is warranted under the right conditions."

What do the others believe? That it's warranted under the wrong conditions? Unwarranted even when the conditions are right?

As Dan remarks, the really interesting result has to do with this bit of realist convergence with liberal thinking: "we found realists to be much more supportive of military intervention with a U.N. imprimatur than they are of action without such backing. Among realists, in fact, the gap between support for multilateral and unilateral intervention in North Korea is identical to the gap among scholars of the liberal tradition, whose theories explicitly favor cooperation." Dan Nexon comments, "I don't believe this is because realists have suddenly turned into Wilsonsians; rather, I suspect the data reflects how a broad cross-section of realist scholars have come to the conclusion that international legitimacy greases the wheels of power and makes counterbalancing less likely." I'm no professor, but it seems to me that reaching that conclusion substantially constitutes turning into a Wilsonian.

Comments

Yes, but for empirical reasons. Non-liberals are never governed by emotions the way liberals are.

Posted by Tim Sullivan | February 21, 2007 2:30 PM

What do the others believe? That it's warranted under the wrong conditions? Unwarranted even when the conditions are right?

Matt, I believe you are perfecting the art of snark. Well done.

Posted by mk | February 21, 2007 2:46 PM

Of all the many things that have mystified me over the last seven years, one of the most mystifying is how "realism" came to be seen as co-extensive with belligerence. It seems to me that if there's one lesson taught both by history and by personal experience, it's that violence almost never works. War is failure. Even WWII, the one hawks remember so fondly, was a failure. Yes, we won it, but there were thousands of opportunities in the years before it started to avoid it. The fact that we won once it started is a relief, but the carnage and loss of millions of lives hardly speak to the benefits of war.

There's plenty of analysis to be done, but really, hawks are just authoritarians with Daddy issues.

Everyone who hasn't read the New Yorker profile of 24 show-runner Joel Surnow should do so immediately. It's all right there: the id of the conservative hawk. It's horrifying to behold.

Posted by Realish | February 21, 2007 2:51 PM

It seems to me that most of the foreign policy "Realists" went the way of the "Progressive Conservatives" in Canada. They suddenly ceased to exist as an independent school of thought, and most of them shifted into the neocon camp or the Wilsonian camp.

I think this is because "Realism," as traditionally understood, was a set of values that were inextricably linked to the Cold War. Realists strongly favored US interests and opposed the Soviet Union, so they rejected international institutions that included the Soviet bloc and opposed human rights treaties that limited the ability of the US to arm right-wing dictators to fight against Soviet proxies.

When the Eastern Bloc fell apart, there was no longer any demand for this particular set of policies. Those who were primarily concerned with the awesomeness of unleashed American military action saw new opportunities for ass-kicking now that the Soviets were no longer around to contain us. Thus, they became even MORE staunchly opposed to multilateral institutions, even alliances like NATO, since the foreigners drag their feet and hinder our ability to kick sweet ass. They also learned that "democracy" and "human rights" now provided political cover for their agenda, so they fell in with the neocons.

Those whose primary opposition to the UN was based on anti-communism no longer had a viable reason to oppose the UN. They began to see the UN as a useful venue for pursuing American interests and providing political cover for military actions against rogue nations. Thus, they became more Wilsonian.

I suppose the two competing archetypes here would be Dick Cheney and Brent Scowcroft.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | February 21, 2007 2:57 PM

Realish,

It isn't terribly mysterious. Afterall, Kissinger is a realist.

I think that to some extent you are conflating "realist" in it's common meaning and as a term used to identify a particular foreign policy school. While I'm no expert, as I understand it the defining characteristic of a foreign policy realist is a belief that states act (and should act) in the international arena soley in pursuit of their own interests. One can certainly see how this point of view could lead to pernicious results (as indeed it has).

Of course, when governed by millenial idealists (and particularly inept ones at that), the realists start to look pretty good by comparison.

Posted by Larry M | February 21, 2007 3:34 PM

I don't think "realism = belligerence". I think realism has come to mean "perpetual paranoia". That is, if there are any "realists" in the GOP camp who are actually sincere and aren't simply adopting a rhetorical pose for the sake of appearances. (I think most "realists" in the GOP are either hoodlums or are working as agents of The Foreign Power Who Cannot Be Named. Nothing makes sense unless this is true.)

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | February 21, 2007 4:11 PM

The vast majority of wrong-thinking people are right!

Posted by John Emerson | February 21, 2007 4:21 PM

Hasn't C2 demanded that ObamaRama denounce it yet?

Posted by tiptap | February 21, 2007 4:30 PM

I would like to offer two points.

First, It was said above: "There's plenty of analysis to be done, but really, hawks are just authoritarians with Daddy issues." This is just an unsubstantiated tantrum. Please don't do that.

Second, I would like someone to address the issue of IR scholars being "anti-war" versus considering "war is failure." While war always has bad consequences by nature, it can also have good consequences from the perspective of the victor or the liberated parties.

Well, I'll let you experts figure this out, that was just my two cents.

Posted by Kevin Murphy | February 22, 2007 12:22 AM

There is an alternative meaning of "realist": someone who believes that abstract constructs are real.

The foreign policy experts are quite devoted to the idea that their abstract constructs are real, like "national interest" or "national security". I do not mean to deny that one can gainfully define such notions, but it is a delusion to treat such definitions as objective entities.

Pretty old example: was the manner land ownership was regulated in Guatemala a subject of our national interests? I am talking about 1950, and the security of the banana supplies was allegedly undermined by the Guatemalan government. We restore our control over this strategic resource by fostering a military coup which led to decades of strife in Guatemala, with several hundred thousands killed. The latter was Guatemalan problem, while we clearly benefited from uninterupted supplies of bananas and, more recently, other delicacies like (usually uncontaminated) raspberries.

More recent example: securing oil supplies is deemed to warrant considerable expenditures of life and treasure. Somehow it eludes experts on foreign affairs that our military budget is much larger than our oil bill (ca 3 times), and regardless how prominent our engagement in oil producing countries is, we still have to pay cash for the stuff. And this cash is accepted even by ostensibly unfriendly regimes. Some calculations suggest that our military engagement makes oil more expensive rather than less.

Posted by piotr | February 22, 2007 1:06 AM

The violence that has plagued most realist thought goes way back before Kissinger, to even before Metternich, Machiavelli and Cardinal Richelieu. It is responsible for the rise of the violent empires of Britain, France, Russia, Japan and others. You could also blame the Mongol empire on strains of thought similar to realism. Realism has always been reductive, trying to cast its bugs as features. Realists missed out all the ways one can read Thucycides, for example, as a warning of bad policies instead of an objective description of how the world works and how it will always come back to bite you in the ass.

However, once you inject the idea of the national interest - especially when you define it as whatever is good (or least bad) for a given nation over a given period of time - into an increasingly liberal world order threatened by nukes, you start to change what realism has to be. It has to adapt to the fact great power war must never happen ever again, which necessitates engagement between nuclear powers. It also requires the creation of a stability with real substance, not the faux stability of the Iron Curtain, the Greater Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere or Pax Britannica that was based on coercion of subject peoples that could not last forever, especially with the rise of nationalism and the spread of small, cheap arms. Increasingly, the type of consent only liberal forms can provide creates what realists must now crave more than anything: stability. Ironically, liberalization brings change, but the most stable changes happen slowly. China, for instance, will likely progress on its own terms instead of via revolution (1911 and 1949 both turned out to be disasters) and without being forced by the outside world. Similarly, the USSR primarily rotted from inside instead of being forced open by outsiders.

As a result, the gains from war become marginally fewer over time as ideology, technology and liberalism spreads. At the present moment, when realism is at its most defensible (see Anatol Lieven), it is at its lowest point of relevance ever. Liberal realists like Robert Wright basically believe we should do things that are good for America both on their own merits and for strategic purposes, but while also keeping in mind our limitations of resources and power. This is just liberalism with "the national interest" thrown in a bit in essays almost as a sound bite. A grounded version of liberalism is simply a more direct route to the same goal with pretty much the same policies. On the other hand, neo-cons have taken the old, indefensible forms of violent-fetishizing realism and put some makeup on it. Neoconservatism is the lovechild of Kissingerian realism and Trotskyism in liberal drag. Neocons say they hate Kissinger, yet (according to Bob Woodward) he was one of the primary people telling Bush behind closed doors to go to war against Iraq. It is utopian and violently cynical and pessimistic at the same time. No wonder it's results are so contradictory. If it was up to neocons, we would have marched onto Moscow in 1945 across war-torn Europe, which only a naive fool would believe would go as planned. If it was up to neocons, we would always isolate our enemies, thus ensuring they will remain insular and paranoid and thus enemies in perpetuity until war comes. Neoconservatism is the latest manifestation of realists' obsession with killing to the sounds of trumpets without any of its wisdom.

"I'm no professor, but it seems to me that reaching that conclusion substantially constitutes turning into a Wilsonian."

Hedley Bull, anyone?

Posted by Reality Man | February 22, 2007 3:46 AM

Yeah, Hedley is teh shit, but a word in defence of realism is needed. If you're a consistent realist, you should usually oppose war, on the grounds that it usually fails.

Posted by Alex | February 22, 2007 5:38 AM

Wilson was a political scientist, and a brilliant one.

It's no surprise that he was right about the future importance of international institutions, and that all thinking people have now realized it, even if they don't want to call themselves "Wilsonian".

How violent was Wilson? He dragged the US into World War I, essentially unnecessarily killing large numbers of American soldiers, because he believed that it would increase US world influence long term -- and he was right. Wilson was a Machiavellian and a practicioner of realpolitik -- he just saw a little farther than most people who adopt those labels.

Posted by Nathanael Nerode | February 22, 2007 7:22 AM

True, realism can be moral, at least moralistic. Despite all the chest-thumping from lesser realists that they put morality to the side and simply act according to the world works, they are rather moralistic. In the end, if one believes one is obeying the national interest, one is doing the best thing they believe for their country. Realism goes awry is when A) realists lose sight of this B) they fail to understand that norms matter C) progress is possible. It is interesting to see now realists like Walt using international polling data of rising anti-Americanism as evidence against neo-conservatism. The smart realists are starting - for probably the first time in centuries - that A, B and C are real and matter. However, that just brings us to anti-utopian liberalism, with possibly higher military spending. The dumb ones, like Samuel Huntington, can't escape realism's history of xenophobia, nativism, and anti-cosmpolitanism, along with the fetishization of violence (Machiavelli's and Rousseau's love of virtu). (Kissinger may have been many bad things, but at least he was rather cosmopolitanism.)

Wilson would probably be remembered as less idealistic than he really was if he hadn't suffered a stroke during the waning years of his presidency and lost his mind a bit and gone on his quest to bypass Congress to get the LoN passed. Also, people forget his stupid invasion of Mexico to catch Pancho Villa that just ended up embarassing the US. Wilson's racism and cultural chauvinism played a role in his policies just as much as his ideals.

Posted by Reality Man | February 22, 2007 3:25 PM