LLVING IN AN INTRACTABLE WORLD: THE LOST TRADITION OF REALISM

During the past twenty years western governments, led by America, have tried to export a version of liberal values to the world. These policies have been distinguished by the nebulous grandeur of their goals, but the overall aim was a mutation in the nature of war and power, which would come about as a result of the universal adoption of democracy. The attempt to remake the international system has had effects similar to those of previous Utopias. The disaster that continues to unfold in Iraq is the result of an entire way of thinking, and it is this that must be abandoned.

New thought is needed, but it must renew an old tradition. The pursuit of Utopia must be replaced by an attempt to cope with reality. We cannot return to the writings of the realist thinkers of the past with the hope that they will resolve all our dilemmas.⁹ The root of realist thinking is Machiavelli’s insight that governments exist, and must achieve all of their goals in a world of ceaseless conflict that is never far from a state of war. Despite the distance between Renaissance Italy and the present, this continues to be true; but the implications of Machiavelli’s insight change according to circumstances, and even in their time the realist theories of recent generations were seriously flawed. Yet it is from realism more than from any other school that we can learn how to think about current conflicts.

Realism is the only way of thinking about issues of tyranny and freedom, war and peace that can truly claim not to be based on faith and, despite its reputation for amorality, the only one that is ethically serious. This is, no doubt, why it is viewed with suspicion. Realism requires a discipline of thought that may be too austere for a culture that prizes psychological comfort above anything else, and it is a reasonable question whether western liberal societies are capable of the moral effort that is involved in setting aside hopes of world-transformation. Cultures that have not been shaped by Christianity and its secular surrogates have always harboured a tradition of realist thought, which is likely to be as strong in future as it has been in the past. In China, Sun Tzu’s Art of War is a bible of realist strategy, and Taoist and Legalist philosophies contain powerful currents of realist thinking, while in India, Kautilya’s writings on war and diplomacy have a similar place. Machiavelli’s writings were a scandal because they subverted the claims of Christian morality. They have not had the same explosive force in non-Christian cultures, where realist thinking comes more easily. In post-Christian liberal democracies it has been political and intellectual elites, more than the majority of voters, that have favoured war as an instrument for improving the world; but public opinion still finds realist thinking distasteful. Can the task of staving off perennial evils satisfy a generation weaned on unrealizable dreams? Perhaps it prefers the romance of a meaningless quest to coping with difficulties that can never be finally overcome. But this has not always been so, and only a couple of generations ago realist thinking enabled western governments to prevail in conflicts far more dangerous than any they have yet had to face in the present century.

It was realism rather than secular faith that allowed liberal democracies to defeat Nazism and contain communism. The long secret telegram that George F. Kennan sent to Washington in 1946, which shaped the policy that averted nuclear disaster during the Cold War while preventing the expansion of Soviet power, did not seek to work up a frenzy of rectitude. It urged that the Soviet system be studied ‘with the same courage, detachment, objectivity and the same determination not to be emotionally provoked or unseated by it’ as a doctor studies an unruly and unreasonable patient. It did not take for granted that the Soviet elites were ruled by ideology, or always reasonable. Instead it warned against being infected by their irrationality: ‘The greatest danger that can befall us … is that we shall allow ourselves to become like those with whom we are coping.’¹⁰ Though the dangers are different, Kennan’s style of thinking is urgently needed today. Dealing with terrorism and proliferation is not a job for missionaries or crusaders. The heady certainty of faith, which sees every crisis as a heaven-sent opportunity to save humanity, is ill-suited to dealing with dangers that can never be defused. In times of danger, stoical determination and intellectual detachment are more useful qualities, and at its best realism embodied them.

Realist thinking is not error-proof. There are many examples of realist policies failing in their goals, or causing immense suffering while achieving nothing – the bombing of Cambodia during the period when Henry Kissinger was American secretary of state is an obvious example of the latter. A realist approach to international affairs does not ensure success, and there is a kind of crackpot realpolitik that is extremely unrealistic. Albert Wohlstetter’s picture of the Soviet Union was far removed from actual conditions, as was his disciple Paul Wolfowitz’s view of Iraq. Wohlstetter’s strategic calculus may seem a world away from Wolfowitz’s delusional programme to install liberal democracy in Iraq. Yet the idea that decisions about war and peace can be reduced to a game-theoretic calculus is a symbiosis of rationalism and magic – in other words, a superstition.

Realists do not accept that international relations, any more than human life in general, consist of soluble problems. There are situations in which whatever is done contains wrong – for example, the situation that has been created by American intervention in Iraq. Certainly we can avoid multiplying these situations: we may have to deal out mass death to defeat Hitler but we need not wade in blood to democratize the world. Realism is an Occam’s Razor that works to minimize radical choices among evils. It cannot enable us to escape these choices, for they go with being human.

In the past, realist thinkers wanted to replace talk of morality in politics with the analysis of power and interest, which were supposed to be defined in rigorously factual terms. States were supposed to be entities devoted to maximizing their power, and their relations with one another were theorized in terms borrowed from natural science. Developing a discipline of this kind is a type of scientism – the mistaken application of scientific method to areas of experience where universal laws do not exist – and helped discredit realist thinking. There is a good deal of regularity in the behaviour of states that can be identified by a study of history, but these regularities cannot be formulated as universal laws. Again, all the ideas we use to understand politics – such as legitimacy, tyranny and the concept of violence –contain values as an essential part of their meaning. Thinking about international relations cannot avoid being a moral enterprise.

Realists take for granted a number of facts about how the world works. However much empty chatter there may be about the end of the Westphalian era, sovereign states remain the central actors in world affairs. Transnational institutions such as the UNare devices for moderating the rivalries of sovereign powers, not embryonic forms of global governance. In this sense the world of states is a realm of anarchy and will remain so. Of course, states accept many restraints, including those imposed by international treaties, such as the Geneva Convention, that lay down norms of civilized behaviour, and to some extent mutually beneficial trade and civil traditions can replace destructive conflict with competition and cooperation. But such conventions and practices are fragile, and over the long run war is as common as peace.

Realists should reject teleological views of history. The belief that humanity is moving towards a condition in which there will be no more conflict over the nature of government is not only delusive but also dangerous. Basing policies on an assumption that a mysterious process of evolution is taking mankind to a promised land leads to a state of mind that is unprepared for intractable conflict. At its most extreme, historical teleology is embodied in programmes that aim to accelerate this process of evolution, such as the neo-conservative ‘global democratic revolution’ that for a time deformed American foreign policy. But ‘passive teleology’ that rejects any attempt to force the pace of evolution is also an unsafe basis for policy. There is nothing in the process of modernization that points to a time when all or most states will be variants of a single type. Modern states come in many varieties – good and bad, intolerable and indifferent. Hitler’s Germany was no less modern than social-democratic Sweden, and the popular theocracy that rules Iran is as much a modern system of government as that of contemporary Switzerland. As the world becomes more modern it does not become more uniform. Modern states use the power of knowledge to serve their different ends and are as prone to conflict as any others.

If realists reject any belief in ultimate convergence in history, one reason is that they resist the lure of harmony in ethics. Moral conflicts, sometimes of a kind that cannot be fully resolved, are permanent features in the relations of states. Many moral philosophies take for granted that the requirements of morality, or at least of some part of it, such as the demands of justice, must all be compatible. At least in principle, it is assumed no dictate of morality can collide with any other. This belief underlies all varieties of utopianism, and a version of it underpins the theories of human rights that have been used to justify pre-emptive war. As Isaiah Berlin observed, this belief in moral harmony does not rest on experience; when it is accepted by Enlightenment thinkers it expresses an idea of perfection that is owed to religion. Among Enlightenment thinkers, Berlin writes,

we find the same common assumption: that the answers to all the great questions must of necessity agree with one another; for they must correspond with reality, and reality is a harmonious whole. If this were not so, there is chaos at the heart of things: which is unthinkable. Liberty, equality, property, knowledge, security, practical wisdom, purity of character, sincerity, kindness, rational self-love, all these ideals … cannot (if they are truly desirable) conflict with one another; if they appear to do so it must be due to some misunderstanding of their properties. No truly good thing can ever be finally incompatible with any other; indeed they virtually entail one another: men cannot be wise unless they are free, or free unless they are just, happy and so forth.

Here we conspicuously abandon the voice of experience – which records very obvious conflicts of ultimate ideals – and encounter a doctrine that stems from older theological roots – from the belief that unless all the positive virtues are harmonious with one another, or at least not incompatible, the notion of the Perfect Entity – whether it be called nature or God or Ultimate Reality – is not conceivable.¹¹

Liberalism has been as utopian as other philosophies in positing a kind of ultimate harmony as an achievable goal. The vision of a world where human rights are universally respected belongs in the same category as Fourier’s idea of ‘anti-lions’ and ‘anti-whales’ that exist only to serve humans. It is a daydream, which obscures the conflicts among rights and the many sources of human violence.

Realists accept that states are bound to rank what they take to be their vital interests over more universal considerations. They cannot avoid trying to sustain themselves as legitimate institutions. This involves giving priority to their citizens – protecting them from insecurity and conquest, securing a decent subsistence for them and embodying their values and identities. Because they must first serve the interests of those they rule, states cannot adopt an impartial perspective of the kind often thought to be essential to morality; but that does not mean their policies cannot be judged morally. In its ethical aspect a realist foreign policy might be described as one that aims to hold the worst evils at bay. Tyranny and anarchy, war and civil war are threats to what Hobbes called commodious living. No power will ever exist that can rid the world of these evils; but states can refrain from adding to their sum for the sake of inchoate ideals that will never be achieved. A state that acts to suppress torture in its own institutions is more civilized than one that practises it in the pursuit of universal human rights, and more likely to succeed in its goals.

A commitment to civilized restraints on the use of force is a necessary part of realism. Contrary to the thinking of post-modernists who believe all human values are cultural constructions and reject the idea of human nature, there are some values that reflect universal human needs. But these needs are many and discordant, and universal values can be embodied in different ways. If many types of government have been accepted as legitimate, it is not because humanity has yet to accept the local pieties of Atlantic democracy. It is because there is no one right way of settling conflicts among universal values. The prevention of great evils may involve rationally unresolvable dilemmas, as when reasonable people differ on the aerial bombing of civilian populations in the struggle to defend civilization against Nazism. Rationalist philosophers will ask the meaning of civilization, as if in the absence of a definition it could not be defended, while liberal humanists will say that the necessary restraints are provided by human rights. But the problem is not that we do not agree on moral issues, or fail to enforce human rights – it is that there are moral dilemmas, some of which occur fairly regularly, for which there is no solution. Liberal thinkers view human rights as embodying a kind of universal moral minimum that should be secured before any other goals are pursued. A worthy notion, but it passes over the fact that the components of the minimum are often at odds with one another. Toppling a tyrant may result in anarchy, but propping up tyranny can worsen the abuse of power. Freedom of religion is good, but where it leads to sectarian strife it is self-destroying. A private realm protected from intrusion is part of civilized life, but some incursion into privacy may be unavoidable if other freedoms are to be secure. It is better to accept these conflicts and deal with them than deny them, as liberals do when they look to theories of human rights to resolve dilemmas of war and security.

The cardinal need is to change the prevailing view of human beings, which sees them as inherently good creatures unaccountably burdened with a history of violence and oppression. Here we reach the nub of realism and its chief stumbling-point for prevailing opinion: its assertion of the innate defects of human beings. Nearly all pre-modern thinkers took it as given that human nature is fixed and flawed, and in this as in some other ways they were close to the truth of the matter. No theory of politics can be credible that assumes that human impulses are naturally benign, peaceable or reasonable. As Jonathan Swift acknowledged when he placed the only Utopia he could imagine in the kingdom of horses, the pursuit of harmony envisions a form of life that humans cannot live.

Realism need not be a conservative stance. The slow development of institutions, which was favoured by Burke and other conservative thinkers, is very often impracticable. Revolution cannot always be prevented, and may not be undesirable. In any case the sudden destruction of societies and ways of life, which recurs throughout history, has today become normal. Nostalgia for the supposed organic unity of previous societies, to which conservatives are often prone, is a type of utopianism. Nor does realism have anything to do with moral fundamentalism of the kind that promotes the ‘right to life’, ‘traditional values’, and similar nonsense. It is nevertheless true that realists share with the conservative philosophies that once existed the perception that no change in human institutions can resolve the contradictions of human needs. Human beings may want freedom, but usually only when other needs have been met, and not always then. Tyrants are not only feared, they are often loved. States do not act only to protect their interests; they are also vehicles for myths, fantasies and mass psychosis. Neo-conservatives and liberal internationalists are fond of saying freedom is contagious, but tyranny can also be contagious. During much of the last century dictators were worshipped. It would be a bold prophet who forecast that this could not happen again.

While realists have accepted that the world of states will remain an arena of conflict, most have worked within schools of social science that rest on principles of rational choice. This Enlightenment tradition can help explain behaviour such as suicide bombing, but it has definite limits. Theories of rational choice assume human beings have reasonable goals – if people seem to behave irrationally it is because they are frustrated. The implication of this benignly reductive analysis is that if the causes of frustration could be removed, harmony would follow. But not all reasonable objectives are compatible, and rational choices can lead to horribly destructive conflicts. Such is often the case in asymmetric warfare. Though the insurgents usually win, occupying powers also have interests that compel them to fight. Both parties may have reason to engage in a mutually damaging conflict.

Above all, human beings have needs that cannot be satisfied by any rational means. The Aum cult that tried to obtain the ebola virus had few achievable goals. Its activities were shaped by classical chiliastic fantasies: the end of the world followed by a post-apocalyptic paradise. A portion of the terrorist violence of al-Qaeda follows a similar pattern. It is no use seeking the causes of this brand of terrorism in unresolved political conflicts. The disorder that is at work is a derangement of the need for meaning like that which energized millenarian movements and totalitarian regimes. This is a disease that may afflict marginal groups more than others, but it may also be endemic in late modern societies. As the means of mass destruction become more accessible to small groups and individuals, anomic terrorism may come to pose a larger threat than the use of terrorist techniques in asymmetric warfare.

The complex phenomenon of terrorism implies a shift in realist thinking away from an exclusive focus on states. States remain pivotal, but they are no longer the sole or always the most important arena for war. Classical warfare – sometimes called Clausewitzian war after the early nineteenth-century Prussian military strategist Carl von Clausewitz – was armed conflict between forces controlled by states. It inflicted huge casualties in the twentieth century as it expanded to include the targeting of civilian populations. Though many assume this kind of warfare lies in the past, armed conflicts between great powers could still recur. Classical warfare remains a major evil, but even when it is total it can be ended by agreement – diplomats can meet, negotiate a settlement and declare peace. No such agreement can be reached with global terrorist networks, which may be internally divided and lack negotiable goals. Armed conflict now involves highly dispersed groups and even entire societies acting beyond the control of any government. If realist thinking is to be productive it must accept that warfare has ceased to be the prerogative of states and become the privilege of Everyman.

Realist thinking cannot avoid the threats posed by environmental crisis. Peaking oil reserves and global warming are the other face of globalization – the worldwide spread of the mode of industrial production based on fossil fuels that has enabled the economic and population growth of the past two centuries. This process is not far from reaching its limits, which are not so much political as ecological. Industrial expansion has triggered a shift in global climate that is larger, faster and more irreversible than anyone imagined, while the non-renewable fuels that power industry are becoming scarcer as demand for them continues to rise.¹² These facts have implications for war and peace, some of which I have touched on in earlier chapters. Yet the military-strategic implications of ecological crisis have rarely been examined, and the subject remains taboo. When a Pentagon group issued a report on ‘An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for US National Security’ in October 2003, its analysis and proposals were uncongenial to the Bush administration and it was shelved.

The report considered the geo-political consequences of abrupt climate change, and identified food shortages due to decreases in net global agricultural production, decreased availability and quality of fresh water in key regions and disrupted access to energy supplies. The overall effect of these changes would be ‘a significant drop in the human carrying capacity of the Earth’s environment’ – in other words, a reduction in the human population the planet can support. The report went on:

As global and local carrying capacities are reduced, tensions could mount around the world, leading to two fundamental strategies: defensive and offensive. Nations with the resources to do so may build virtual fortresses around their countries, preserving resources for themselves. Less fortunate nations, especially those with ancient enmities with their neighbours, may initiate struggles for access to food, clean water, or energy. Unlikely alliances could be formed, as defence priorities shift and the goal is resources for survival rather than religion, ideology or national honour.¹³

The Pentagon report was pioneering in accepting that abrupt climate change could lead to a drop in the planet’s capacity to support human life. Its account of the types of conflict that could follow is plausible, though it may have underestimated their intensity. The analysis assumed they would be rational-strategic conflicts with religion playing no part in them, but much of the planet’s remaining patrimony of oil lies in Muslim lands, and conflict over resources could be intensified by antagonisms surrounding the ‘war on terror’. The risk is that resource war will be mixed with wars of religion and the otherwise far-fetched theory of clashing civilizations become self-fulfilling.

Unless they can find alternatives to oil, industrial states will be locked in conflict for the foreseeable future. The process of diversifying out of oil will be a good deal harder than most environmentalists believe. If world oil production is near its peak – as seems likely – the shift to other types of energy is an urgent necessity; but there may be no easily available alternatives that will support the world’s present human population. It has become conventional wisdom that the basic environmental problem is not human numbers but their per capita resource uses – in other words, the way humans live. In fact, humanity has probably already overshot the carrying capacity of the planet. Current human numbers depend on petroleum-based agriculture, which hastens global warming. Population growth is not always highest in developing countries – it is around twice as fast in the United States as in China, for example – but it is much too high overall for a worldwide switch to alternative technologies to be practicable. A mix of solar power, wind farms and organic farming cannot support six to nine billion people.

If there is a way through the bottleneck, it involves making the most of high-tech fixes. The best prospects may lie with the technologies to which Greens are most hostile, such as nuclear power and GM crops, which despite their hazards do not require further destruction of the biosphere.¹⁴ The alternative is not a low-tech Utopia, as many Greens like to think. As James Lovelock has written, it is ‘global decline into a chaotic world ruled by brutal war lords on a devastated Earth.’¹⁵

Many of those who grasp the scale of the crisis continue to believe it can be overcome by changes in human behaviour. Jared Diamond has presented a powerful argument that contemporary societies could self-destruct by disregarding environmental limits. He suggests that catastrophe can be averted by enhanced cooperation, and cites the Dutch system of polders – areas of land that have been reclaimed from the sea in the Netherlands – as a model that can be adopted throughout the world. Diamond writes:

Our whole world has become one polder … When distant Somalia collapsed, in went American troops; when the former Yugoslavia and Soviet Union collapsed, out went streams of refugees over all of Europe and the rest of the world; and when changed conditions of society, settlement and lifestyle spread new diseases in Africa and Asia, those diseases moved over the globe. The whole world today is a self-contained and isolated unit.¹⁶

Diamond is right that the world is more interdependent than in the past, but that is no reason for thinking that it is going to become more cooperative. The Pentagon report suggests a likelier scenario. Where states remain strong and effective, they will act to secure the resources under their control. Where states are weak or collapsed, the struggle will devolve to other groups. The overall result is intensified conflict rather than global cooperation. The Kyoto Treaty illustrates the difficulty. The treaty may have been inherently flawed inasmuch as the targets it set did not apply to emerging countries, but its basic weakness was that it contained no mechanism of enforcement. States could sign up or not as they pleased, and the US and a number of others refused. There is no way round this difficulty. In an anarchical world, global environmental problems are politically insoluble.

Environmental crisis is a fate humans can temper but not overcome. Its origins are in the power to grow knowledge that distinguishes humans from other animals. The advance of knowledge has enabled humans to multiply their numbers, extend their lifespans and create wealth on a scale that has no precedent. But global warming and energy shortage are results of advancing industrialism, which is also a by-product of scientific progress. The proliferation of means of mass destruction, not only to states but also to forces states do not control, is another of its effects. Today the worry is that nuclear materials may slip into terrorist hands, but tomorrow the fear may be of biological weapons doing so. Genetic science enables humans to intervene in the creation of life, but it will surely be used to wreak mass death as well. It cannot be long before genetically selective devices are feasible that can act as tools of genocide, and when this happens there may be no means of preventing them being diffused across the world. Future threats to security may not come mainly from terrorism as conventionally understood. Instead they may come in outbreaks of disease whose origins are never known. The paradigm of future terror may be an inexplicable breakdown in the structures of everyday life.

The increase of knowledge magnifies human power while it creates insoluble dilemmas. We need to accept that the gravest human disorders cannot be remedied, only treated day by day. But can we live with this fact? Ditching the myths of historical teleology and ultimate harmony is highly desirable, but it is also extremely difficult. The western belief that salvation can be found in history has renewed itself again and again. The migration of utopianism from Left to Right testifies to its vitality. An irrational faith in the future is encrypted into contemporary life, and a shift to realism may be a utopian ideal.