Why IR Theory? The Gif is the Answer

 I saw this thread about International Relations Theory at the war and staff colleges, and I had to
respond:

Why do basically all staff and war college curricula include lengthy discussions of schools of international relations?

Why does any of that matter?

Practitioners don’t use it. It’s mostly just erotica for academics.

— the duality of man (@JungianThings) July 30, 2022

Practitioners don't use it?  Hmmm.  I wonder.  A year hanging out with practitioners--desk officers in the Pentagon, and, no, they didn't include citations of Waltz, Keohane, and Wendt in their one page action memos.  So, let's just skip this stuff, eh?  

Before going on, a caveat: I am not really an IR theorist despite what I claimed on my job applications way back when.  Sure, I theorize about international relations, but when folks say IR theory, they tend to mean the big approaches to understanding the international system--realism, liberalism, constructivism, critical theory, etc.  My only piece that directly engaged that literature only tests hypotheses about trends in IR theory.  I have always considered myself a middle-range theorist, focusing on how the domestic politics of countries influence what they do abroad.  It is IR theory, but it isn't IR THEORY.  

Anyhow, getting back to this discussion, I always taught the big approaches in my Intro to IR classes for a few reasons:

1. 
   The concepts actually do have much to say about how the world operates.  None of them are always right, but each has something to contribute to our understanding of why countries do what they do. They are very helpful for understanding the limits of agency of any one country, why patterns recur over time and place, and, yes, that deeper structures produce tendencies.  Once I learned about the security dilemma--that in a world of suspicion, any unilateral effort to improve one's security will make others less secure, leading them to do stuff that will make the initial actor less secure, hence the dilemma, I got less interested in studying arms races.
   
2. Most folks in and near the IR biz will have elements of these theories deep inside their heads, one way or another.  So, examining these theories helps people examine their own biases and perceptions.  If confirmation bias dominates (as I think it does), the best way to see that which we don't always notice is to examine one's own biases.  Taking the implicit IR theory out of one's head, considering the assumptions and logics of the approach and maybe how well it has done in explaining and predicting stuff, is key to reducing bias.
3. Critical thinking.  Taking a concept and making it travel is important for sharpening one's thinking.  Does theory x that explains this place and time over here explain something over at this other place and time?  This leads to the next reason, specific to the schools mentioned in the tweet.
   
4. Thinking theoretically is important if one wants to strategize.  Do they teach strategy at the war and staff colleges?  What assumptions are used to build war games?  How does one think of the adversary and their likely decisions?  Anytime one is thinking about what is likely to happen, they are relying on theory and IR theory can be useful for setting the stage for decision-making.  If folks say, we study history and go from there, well, which histories speak to you, which lessons from history speak to you?  Chances are you are simplifying from history, which means, yeah, you are thinking theoretically.
   

Folks may say that they get tons of information about the adversary and about the allies (folks often lose wars they start because they got wrong what the likely allies of the adversary would do--see Iraq 1990-1 and, yes, Ukraine 2022).  But that is the precise problem that Robert Jervis identified long ago--having a lot of information just means that folks need to simplify to focus on that which is truly important.  How do we sift that information?  With the theories we already have in our heads.  Again, the best way to address the biases these cognitive maps are likely to cause is to be aware of them.  

 

The International Relations of Pandemics: Where is the Hegemon?

Yesterday, I blogged about how I was feeling during week 1 of the quarantine.  Today, I want to put my IR Theory hat back on and explain why we got here.  To be clear, I am IR scholar, not an epidemiologist or public health expert, so I am just talking about the political dynamics of the pandemic, not how the virus itself operates.

Others have had great stuff on this--Paul Poast has podcasted his twitter thread, Tanisha Fazal has a great twitter thread, and Jeremy Pressman has a great slideshow.  They all focus on important dimensions of the crisis as do many posts at Duck of Minerva.  One could just read Dan Drezner's Theories of International Politics and Zombies, and replace Zombie with COVID-19 and get much help in understanding why cooperation has been so hard.  To be clear, as this NYT infographic makes clear, this thing was going to spread.

I am going to focus on a single theory here--hegemonic stability theory.  Used to explain the failure to respond to the Great Depression and the successful boom in international trade and such after World War II, Charles Kindleberger (book, article), Robert Gilpin, and others have argued that international cooperation is difficult.  When there are collective goods that require international cooperation--stable exchange rates, open trade system, etc--it is far more likely that countries will cooperate if there is one major player who is powerful enough to provide some of the key ingredients to make the cooperation happen as well as encourage (with carrots and sticks) others to join in.  The classic tale is that the UK was the hegemon on the 1800s, facilitating free trade and such, and that it was no longer able or willing after World War I.  The US might have been able at the time, but was not willing.  This was a lesson learned by FDR and then Truman, so that the seeds of the international trading order and exchange system and such were drawn up during WWII at Bretton Woods (some of my UVM students would answer "what is Bretton Woods" with "a ski resort in New Hampshire).

In the long run since the end of WWII, the American leaders largely continued to support the various cooperative mechanisms with some famous exceptions (Nixon going off the gold standard if I remember my grad school readings right).  One of these collective goods has been an international health regime--a set of principles, norms, rules, and decision-making procedures to handle .... pandemics.  The World Health Organization is part of that system, but it crucially relied on American power--that the US in an emergency would provide expertise (CDC), troops, dollars, and, yes, leadership.  We saw some of this in action during the Ebola outbreak that caused Trump to famously freak out about.

This time around, well, the US did not provide leadership.  Unlike 1920s Britain, the US still had plenty of capacity to lead the world to respond to this.  China clearly was not ready as it lied about the early numbers and reacted poorly at first. Key ingredients for any regime, but especially the public health regime (I have not studied it so I am just riffing here), is credibility and transparency.  These bits and pieces of governance do much of their work by providing clarity and by defining the rules and expectations (yeah, I guess Keohane was mostly right).  China is poorly suited to provide the leadership needed since, well, as an authoritarian regime, its first instincts are to deny and to limit the spread of information.

Alas, the US is currently led by autocrat-wannabe's.  Trump and his coterie did not want concerns of a pandemic to undermine markets, mostly because his key card to play in November in his re-election campaign was the state of the economy.  So, the US did not generate good information (very limited testing, a desire to keep the numbers down), which meant it could not lead even if the President wanted to do so.  Plus the President is a unilateralist to his core, so he had no instincts to bring the international community together on this.  Last week, we saw the G-7 meet online, and, damn, little got done.  And it happened last week, not in January or February.  The thing about pandemics is that it is a race against the virus, and the US chose not to run that race.  And because the US did not, there was not much ability or interest for anyone else to facilitate cooperation to manage this fight together.

There was and is a failure to cooperate.  There is some bilateral stuff going on, but the credibility of the CDC is now tarnished because it is locked into the yes-man system imposed by the Trump administration.

This is all incredibly frustrating because the US and the world could have done much more.  Yes, the virus would have gotten out, but its spread could have been limited.  The WHO could have had more assets and heft behind it with US leadership, the CDC could have done more to get tests out earlier, and on and on.

But it did not happen.  Maybe one does not need a hegemon, a very powerful acting willing to lead, to have international cooperation, but in a crisis, having such an actor sure is handy. 

Teaching with Pop Culture: Footloose FTW!

I love this tweet as it puts the usual dynamics on their head:

Tip for students going off to college: study 80s/90s pop culture. Particularly Ferris Beuller, Princess Bride, Simpsons seasons 2-5. Your gen x/early millennial profs will try to connect with you through these, and will be confused/sad when you stare blankly at them. Not joking.

— David Mimno (@dmimno) August 2, 2019

Each summer, profs are reminded how much younger the students are and then the onus is on them to update their references.  This tweet nicely makes fun of profs by suggesting the reverse.

As always, I have two reactions to this:
a)  I use Harry Potter, which is timeless.  Or at least, not yet obsolete.  I long ago gave up references to Monty Python.
b)  When a pop culture reference is super-handy, I show it.  I have used Star Trek and Babylon 5 to show the different notions of ethnic identity--ancient hatreds vs. infinitely elastic, for example.  But the go-to reference for me is Footloose.  It shows the power of a fully armed and operational cultural reference.  And, yes, I have discussed this before, but not everybody is going to dig through my old posts where I explain how to make a good pop culture reference for IR.

Let me explain, show, and then explain some more:
One of the key concepts for the discussion of international security is the use of threats.  Thomas Schelling did great work to explain the complexities of using threats in competitive situations.  The game of Chicken where two players have the choice of heading directly at each other or swering to avoid disaster.  This can be expressed in a 2x2 of payoffs that help to illustrate the use of threats and their limitss.  Boomer profs might refer to James Dean, but this one scene from Footloose shows lots of the dynamics that Schelling sought to explain and which do play out in many situations in International Relations.  Indeed, Schelling and Kevin Bacon go together like the music in this video with the action:


So, Ren (Kevin Bacon) is driving one tractor, and Rusty is driving another.  The stakes essentially are the girl (Lori Singer), and I will let those using a feminist lens problematize that.  When I show this to the students, they notice the most obvious and important thing: Kevin Bacon is tied to the tractor so he can't swerve.  That one of the ways to win Chicken to surrender one's ability to swerve.  This puts the onus on avoiding disaster on the other player.  Schelling talks about burning bridges beyond oneself, for example.  In IR, tripwires serve the same kind of purpose--that the deaths of many of one's soldiers ties one's hands and create the sense of automaticity.  The idea of a dead man's switch fits in here.

Ah, but this example allows me to point out to the students that Ren did not communicate being tied to the tractor to Rusty, so things get closer than they should have.  That communicating threats and how firmly one is locked in is key.  To be fair to Ren, his mishandling of the tractor itself is useful signalling--that he can't control it as well as Rusty can control his tractor, so, again, the onus for avoiding disaster is on Rusty.

But that is not all.  I point out that both teens (who both look like they are in their mid 20's) have their friends with them.  This is not at night, they are not alone.  In the IR literature, the parallel is audience costs.  That threats are more credibly if there are domestic audiences who might punish a leader for not following through on their threats.  One could even suggest that Ren has more audience costs than Rusty since Ren is more of a consensus seeking (democratic) kind of guy, and Rusty is a bit of a dick (an autocrat) who cares less about his friends' admiration, etc. I never did play this regime type stuff up before, but that is the joy of this short video--each time I watch it, I see another IR dynamic playing out (not sure how making fun of a young Sara Jessica Parker fits, but whatever).

I always ask what did Rusty do wrong, and the students say that he smoked pot (yes, these Canadian kids!)  My response is that the mistake was not smoking pot, but not telling Ren that he is high.  Pot slows reaction times, reduces (perhaps) sensitivity to costs, and makes it more likely he will not swerve (or at least swerve at the last minute).  My point is that Rusty needs to inform Ren so that the latter is more nervous and swerves. This is the equivalent of Schelling's "toss the steering wheel out the window" to signal a loss of control.

Finally, Ren is new to town, his reputation is not clear.  Which makes it harder for Rusty to figure out what Ren would do.

I just realized something I need to ask the next batch of students (yes, I am teaching undergrads IR theory again--woot!): what happens if they play this game a second time.  A third?  Hmmmm.

Nice to be excited about teaching again with, gulp, just one month left before the students come back.

Is Trump a Realist?

Given that I am likely to teach IR Theory next year (for the first time in a long time) and given that some folks like to argue that Trump is a Realist, I can't help myself but respond to this Pence speech in Munich (at the big security conference):

.@VP Mike Pence spoke at #MSC2019 today to lay out the U.S. administration's view on international affairs and the U.S. role in the world. pic.twitter.com/Wy7xHqBk8A

— Security Conference (@MunSecConf) February 16, 2019

 While there are now many versions of realism (Classic, Structural, Offensive, Defensive, Neo-Classical, Constructivist and soon Neo-Neo), there are some core aspects and "seeing the world as it is, not as we would like it to be" is about as core as it gets.  So, too, is focusing less on institutions and law and norms and what is right, but what is best for a country, putting it "first."  That Trump occasionally says that the US should get out of various wars plays well in the Realist Restraint crowd.

However, the fundamental shared component of most, if not all, flavors of realism is that countries pursue either security or power, and that a Realist foreign policy would focus on maximizing one or or the other in a rational way.  That means gathering as much info as one can about the capabilities of the adversaries (and allies), trying to assess which options will lead to which outcomes, and picking the ones that are most likely to do the least harm to one's own standing and perhaps pick those that are most likely to improve one's standing. 

Is Trump Kennan or Kissinger?  That is, focusing on how best to maximize American security or power? Just focusing on the intel end should be instructive---that Trump blows secrets when he pays attention and he mostly does not pay attention to the intel.  How can you maximize security or power if you don't pay attention to the capabilities of the adversaries and the allies? 

Realists tend to disagree about the value of allies, although they are generally seen as more valuable in a multipolar world.  Antagonizing allies by levying tariffs on them is not something most realists would recommend.

Realists would generally argue that allowing one's country to be penetrated by the intelligence efforts of an adversary to be a bad thing.  While realists vary in how important they consider domestic politics, I am pretty sure most would find interference in one's own elections to be problematic and that they would recommend both penalizing the perpetrator and improving one's defenses.  What does Trump do?  Cut the folks doing the defending.

Realists would never give up a bargaining chip without getting something for it--again, maximizing power or security tends to mean not giving things away.  Agreeing to move the US embassy to Jerusalem without getting anything from Israel is the example in my head at the moment, but I am sure we can think of others.  Oh wait, how about meeting with the leader of North Korea, a key concession that they wanted and getting nothing for it?

Containing adversaries is a favorite Realist tactic, so the Trans Pacific Partnership, aimed at containing China, would seem to be a good thing, but was one of the first things Trump rejected.

The whole North Korean situation should drive Realists mad.  That the US bargains hard with South Korea over the costs of basing troops at a time where the US is negotiating over North Korea's weapons programs would seem strange to any Realist, right?  Unless the cost of basing is more important than NK's nuclear weapons programs?

I could go on and on.  The key thing is this: has Trump acted to protect American security and/or maximize American power?  Mostly not.  He has frittered away key elements of American power, mostly for his own personal interests, partly due to his embraced ignorance.  Would Pence have a more Realist foreign policy?  Maybe, hard to be less Realist than Trump's.

The Rise of the Bullies and IR Theory

The past few years challenge much of the conventional understanding of international relations.  One of the big lessons from the IR scholarship of the 1970s is that the nature of international relations is that threats and bullying don't work.  As Robert Jervis discussed it, the world can be either a constant chicken game or a repeated prisoner's dilemma--aka deterrence vs. spiral model.  In short, is international relations an environment (a system!) where countries cave into threats or do they balance against them, that those who believe that pushing countries around are usually confronting with coalitions created by such bullying.  Kaiser Wilhelm, as IR scholars use as a example, threatened everyone, hoping that they would back down.  Instead, these countries solidified their alliances and showed up in Europe in August 1914.  Oops.

Over the past several years, we have seen a series of countries engage in bullying behavior--Russia, Saudi Arabia, Trump's US and China.  Russia has wielded nuclear threats to encourage Europeans to not deploy troops to the Baltics and to dissuade them from supporting Ukraine.  How has that worked so far?  Saudi Arabia has seemingly become unhinged as of late, overreacting to Canadian discussions of Saudi human rights and all but warring upon Qatar.  Trump, well, is a bully, so we ought not be surprised by his threats nor by his ignorance of IR scholarship. Threatening the allies has led them to ponder hedging and alternatives.  He might think the North Koreans have submitted after last year's threats, but I am pretty sure the North Koreans think they have the upper hand.

The big surprise, to me anyway, is China.  China has managed its rise so very well in large part because it has mostly wielded a velvet fist.  Yes, it has buzzed American planes and ships, had friction with Indonesia, and other stuff.  But generally, the China of the 2000s and early 2010s has been replaced by a more aggressive and obnoxious China.  The tiff with Canada is important since Canada was the western democracy least likely to object to the Huawei company getting inside Canada's 5G.  Well, not any more.  The current standoff is causing Canadian parties to rally against China--who is arguing now that Canada should submit?  Moreover, a conversation with a European diplomat today reminded me that Canada has more influence than folks think.  Not necessarily to push China back into the straight and narrow but to serve as bellwether.  If  a country has a problem with the US or EU, well, those are powerful entities that can antagonize.  But a country has a problem with Canada?  That suggests that the particular country is problematic... and, jeez, is China problematic these days.

I am not a China expert so I don't really know what is driving China to behave this way.  I would guess domestic politics and nationalism (populism?  Not quite).  But everything I have learned in my career tells me that China's choices now are self-destructive--that being aggressive does not pay in the long run.  That bullying is counter-productive.  Perhaps China is encouraged because the US led by Trump is so incompetent and unreliable, which means balancing will be late, inept and weak.  But it is still a dumb move--the Chinese have been gaining strength with little opposition because they were not overly aggressive.

The thing about IR theory stuff--it didn't say that bullying didn't happen. It just said it was not productive.  So, the question for future IR scholars, if we live so long, is whether China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Trump's US are punished or not.  We shall see. 

About that Primacy Thing

Given many of my posts, one might think that I am not a Realist.  In some ways, I am and, in many ways, I am not.

I am writing this because I saw a tweet thread about "primacy" that was, um, greatly annoying.

1) Good discussion involving @MaxBoot @charlie_simpson @stephenwertheim @MaxAbrahms involving NDS Commission report and virtues of American primacy. I am not neutral (was lead writer for NDS Commission report and agree with most of what it says) but thread raises key issues.

— Hal Brands (@HalBrands) December 14, 2018

This one thread reminds me how I am and am not a Realist.  Reading Ken Waltz's Theory of International Politics in grad school changed my career because I found his take (and I realized Later John Herz's, etc) on the security dilemma to be compelling.  I didn't need to study arms races because I found this simple idea--that the unilateral effort by a country to improve its security will threaten its neighbors/adversaries who will then respond in kind, leaving the first country worse off.  This idea made so much sense to me.  Yes, lots of folks have revised it, questioned it, developed it, but for my view of IR, Waltz said it and I buy it.

So, the pursuit of primacy is a bad idea because it will antagonize other states, make them redouble their efforts, causing the state pursuing primacy to expend yet more resources and yet find itself being ever more challenged and losing its advantage.

However, structural realism a la Waltz is indeterminate--multipolarity may be worse than bipolarity (I am not so sure) but it isn't always going to be the Germans and Japanese.  Brand includes this tweet:

10) Maybe against Russia, but not China. But main point is that free-riding is a feature of current system, not glitch. We have seen what happens when fully armed Germany and Japan, living in regions not pacified by superpower, have to fend fully for themselves. Not good.

— Hal Brands (@HalBrands) December 14, 2018

Um, Japan is not the same country it was in 1936 and Germany is not what it was in 1939.  Domestic political institutions and dynamics matter greatly.  I am not worried about these countries becoming authoritarian regimes that seek to gobble up the neighbors.  I am worried that the US is becoming an authoritarian regime that will ... give up its role as a key stabilizer in international relations.

And, for those fans of Neo-Classical Realism, I am not one of you.  While I see some key Realist logics about the nature of IR, I find myself more persuaded by the roles played by interests and institutions at both levels.  I need to read more NCR, but the stuff I have read thus far makes me think that it is oxymoronic--neither classical nor realist.  That synthesis paves the way to incoherence.  But that is a fight for another day.

Anyhow, when anyone pushes for American primacy, remember that the US got into this position by accident--the collapse of the USSR.  It was fun while it lasted (well, sometimes), but maintaining it requires lots of things to happen that aren't going to happen.  So, rather than pursuing it, the US should get used to the basic realities of International Relations--one can be first among equals, but the quest to dominate ends in horror and tears.

Myth-Busting Trends in IR, Finally Published

Other than my books, I think I have blogged about one particular article (open access, pre-publication version here) more than any other: a piece that examines whether the gods of IR are correct that their kind is disappearing.  It finally moved from "First View" or "Early View" to Published, appearing in the December 2018 issue of International Studies Review!

Of all the stuff I have written, this has the clearest origins.  John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt circulated a working paper that argued that increased professionalism via the focus on citation counts had led to the demise of grand theory and the rise of hypothesis testing.  I reacted rather strongly to that piece via blogpost.  The irony is that their piece produced a series of testable hypotheses, which were begging to be tested.  And so I did, with the help of TRIP data about what is published (a dataset on IR articles), about attitudes (their surveys of what people think about the field and teach), and citations.

What did I find?  That grand IR theory, however defined, was never something that lots of scholars did. Rather it has always been something that only a small percentage of the IR professors did, it was only a small percentage of what appeared in the major journals, and that it peaked in the mid-90s.  So, when people think that there has been a decline, there really has mostly been a regression to the mean and that maybe prospect theory applies here--people perceive a loss due to a particular reference point and then, well, overreact to that reference point.* 

*The problem with this hypothesis is that certain of these folks were wildly overreacting to their losses when they were at the peak of their powers.

To be clear, this was not just the misperception of M&W but of the field as surveys of attitudes tended to show that folks think of Realism, Liberalism, and Constructivism dominate the literature even though much of what is written is "non-paradigmatic."

I also busted a related myth.  One could also read their piece as being a screed against quantitative work, but only in recent years are the numbers of quantitative articles starting to exceed (but not erase) the numbers of qualitative pieces in the major journals.

I also addressed the concern raised that the "professionalization" provides disincentives to do grand theory.  In the piece, M&W suggest essentially that to get hired and promoted, one needs more citations (which might be true), as opposed to the past where some other force mattered more (their original paper referred to a lamentation of the end of the Old Boys Network, Ido Oren in his piece more directly laments the days where a phone call to/from Waltz or Keohane was all that mattered--my piece also targets some of his assertions about funding).  The data on citation counts shows that actually grand theory stuff gets more citations, so not so much of a disincentive, eh?

I argue but do not really test that other stuff led to some trends and changes--mobilization by specific groups in the discipline to create more journals, more sections of conferences and ultimately more outlets for more different kinds of stuff.  That the discipline of IR is may be more diverse now not because the structure imposed constraints and incentives on the agents, but that the agents (individual scholars organizing collectively) did stuff to change the structure.  Lots of implied irony in this piece.  The funny thing is that Mearsheimer and Walt were participants in one of those efforts--the perestroika movement to diversity the American Political Science Review, which led to a new journal.

Another reason to discuss this piece is that its journey shows that publication ain't easy but tenacity can win the day.  It got desk rejected twice, including at the journal that published the special issue where the original piece appeared.  At ISR, it was R&R'ed four times!  Part of that was my fault for misreading the instructions of the editors, and part of that was just the way the editorial process played out.  But I wanted to note this as I see on twitter people want to know more about survivor bias (which I definitely have).

I used to scoff at time spent navel-gazing at the discipline, but that was mostly efforts to re-rank one's one department.  Now, I do some of this navel-gazing because I do think perceptions matter, and it is better to bust myths to counter arguments about how things were better in the good old days.  I am firmly convinced that the profession of IR is better, stronger, more interesting, more relevant than it once was. But then again, I think diversity is a good thing.  Maybe as some in that special EJIS volume argue we no longer talk to each other as much, that the common conversation has suffered.  I think we can figure out ways to improve the conversation without squelching dissent and without returning to a mythical ideal past.

Pondering the Near Term: What of Populism?

Nice combo of Pearson Building (GAC's home),
infrastructure (embedded liberalism), and ice.

Today, I was part of a roundtable at Global Affairs Canada (think Canada's Foreign Ministry or State Dept) where they were asking a group of sharp Carleton and U of Ottawa academics and me what we should be thinking about over the next five years.  I can't write about what the other folks said--implicit Chatham House rule--but I can always talk about what I said. 

When the New Guys Exceed the Old Guys

This week is the anniversary of the start of the Iraq War.  The Bush team got much criticism, and deservedly so, for its core approach: to be arrogant enough that they believed that the realities did not matter as they were going to impose their views on reality.  All the noise and complications of what might happen in Iraq were dismissed because it was their mission to revise the map and the realities of the Mideast by removing Hussein. This was an awful approach for many reasons, including empowering Iran, energizing the radical Islamists, and breaking Iraq which has ramifications we are facing in Mosul today. 

The new team of Trump folks seem to be even more arrogant and definitely more ignorant as they seek to act in ways that ignore the very basics of international relations.  What basics are these?

• Countries respond to threats by balancing--either via building up their arms or by developing new alliances (Realism).
• The recent news that Russia is cutting back might suggest this is wrong ... unless Russia views the US as less threatening.  
• The recent news that some Germans are now pondering what it means for the US to be an adversary is one hint of this dynamic
• That Tillerson, Secretary of Dumb Diplomacy, is now semi-encouraging Japan to develop nuclear weapons suggests a path for Japan.  Which would, of course, lead to counter-responses by South Korea, China, etc.
• Reciprocity is key to international relations (Liberalism). Trump seems to think he can impose policies upon trading partners, including building barriers to trade.  It is most likely that if he imposes tariffs, others will respond.  
• The domestic politics of other countries matter (much of the rest of IR). Bullying friends and foes alike will make it harder for them to compromise since their domestic audiences will be upset if they see their leader submitting to Trump.  Merkel, for instance, has an election coming up, so her performance last week was all about making clear that she would stick by German values (which are also translatlantic values, thanks to generations of US-European institution building and cooperation and reciprocity).

So, Tillerson blunders through Asia and Trump keeps on Trumping along.  Ignorance is bliss until you need friends to do something for you.  The future is not bright, but we might need to wear shades anyway (nuclear explosions are oh so bright).  Ok, that is a bit much, but if the Iraq War of 2003 tells us anything, it is to be wary of those who think that the realities of International Relations can be ignored or overcome via enough confidence.

Great Men? Depends

I was reminded on twitter that international relations professors have trained students for generations to focus on the third and second levels of analysis and dismiss the first--that individuals and their characteristics matter much less than the constraining impact of institutions and the incentives provided by the international system.

So, should we just apologize as Trump sells out the postWWII order and ends American hegemony by whim or fiat?  No, we need to drink heavily.  Seriously, there are a few real responses to this question of agency and structure (I promise not to get very constructivist or intersubjective as I am not very good at that).

First, realists will say, and mostly rightly so, that their main focus is not on what states do but on how the system punishes states.  That the security dilemma operates always--so attempts to improve security vis-a-vis China will only threaten China, producing a reaction by the Chinese that will leave the US worst off (Herz, Waltz).  I have no doubt this is going to play out.  The more recent realists added stuff to their theories so they can predict foreign policy better, but the strength of it was and is how the system produces dynamics that are enduring.  And they will endure during the Trump era, but his complete lack of awareness will mean that the tendencies of IR will be exacerbated, not mitigated or managed by the strongest player in the system (until the US is so weakened that it is not).
International institutionalists have been mostly right in that anarchy can be mitigated by cooperation, but cooperation is not easy.  Institutions endure and adapt because building new ones takes a lot of work.  So, an alliance built to deter the Soviet Union got in the business of peacekeeping, democratization (teaching civilian control of the military to Eastern Europe--one of the real boons of enlargement), counterinsurgency, and now back to deterring Russia.

Second, domestic institutionalist types (that would be me) would say that institutions tell us when individual personalities matter (Presidential systems, not coalition governments).  The problem with Trump for these folks is: he is unconstrained by institutions and owes no interest groups much fealty.  He violates norms and rules without much penalty, undermining the institutions.  He is rich (sort of) and has a cult of supporters.  And polarization has broken US institutions.  The Republican Party is so hostile to Obama and Clinton that they are supporting someone who might be an agent of Russia and who is definitely acting as if he will be drunk at the wheel of government, careening from one crisis to another.

To be fair, the international structure and domestic institutions had a good run--the US followed a relatively stable set of policies for over 70 years through Democratic and Republican Administrations.  But as social scientists we have to admit a couple of things.  First, individuals have agency.  We (IR types) most don't like studying individuals (see Elizabeth Saunders as a timely exception) because it is easier to risk tautology and harder to make predictions.  Second, and relatedly, we might be better at getting outcomes right than intentions.  Third, Trump is, indeed, a black swan event--he had a low probability of success at first, he got empowered by a bunch of things in the primaries, won the general election due to a tainted opponent, a misguided media and much help from Russia.  And now he stands ready to gut American Foreign Policy, because, as we have long taught, whatever constraints there are on Presidents, they are weaker on foreign policy than domestic policy.  It is far easier to sell out to Russia than to end the Affordable Care Act.  That the GOP is so obsessed about the latter that they are willing to overlook the former speaks poorly of them. 

So, did we mis-teach the kids for so long? Perhaps we could have played up the role of individuals a bit more, but mostly, I think we got it right.  And we will keep on getting it right--we may not be able to predict what Trump does (Trump's razor tends to work--the dumbest policy is most likely), but we will get right the effects.  Hegemonic instability theory is going to become quite hip.

Oh and one last thing: when say Great Men here, we are talking about great as in big, not great as in good.

Update: I was pushed on twitter, where folks suggested there was plenty of first level analysis stuff, which returns me to TRIP data and to the class question of how much is a lot or little.  You make hte call (number and percentage of articles over thirty years that use first level of analyis--see TRIP codebook):

The New Kaiser?

In an argument about monarchy, someone pushed back and pointed at Trump, suggesting that inheritance might be just as good of a way to select leaders as elections in democracies.  A lousy argument, of course, but it came back to me this morning when I saw that Trump's "doctrine" might be "Peace Through Strength." 

Sure, it sounds Reagan-esque except for a few things:

• Reagan was really only dealing with the Soviet Union in a bipolar world, so confronting the other superpower was not as complicated as confronting many potential adversaries (more on that in a minute).
• Reagan went from being confrontational to cooperative pretty damned quickly, trying to radically reverse the arms race during a walk in Reykjavik. 
• The US might have been in a better position then to run up huge deficits in an arms race.  Now?

The key now is that the US faces multiple adversaries--mostly Russia and China (one could toss in Iran, North Korea, and non-state actors I suppose).  Which means multipolarity--that misperceptions and reactions to reactions can be all so complicated.  Fundamentally, the problem with pushing too hard, being a bully, to engage in the Kaiser's risk theory, is that countries will react.  The fundamentals of IR have not changed--the security dilemma remains operative--that any effort to increase one's security unilaterally threatens others, leading them to react, causing the first player to be less secure.  Being aggressive in such a situation exacerbates the basic tendencies of international relations.  The Kaiser ended up provoking the creation of a coalition against his country and paid an enormous price. 

The US has benefited from a liberal international order based largely on positive reciprocity, which has meant peace among the great powers and prosperity.  Antagonizing those whose help we might need to fight terrorism, to contain North Korea, to sanction Iran or whoever is simply a bad idea.

Oh, and of course, this peace through strength thing seems to run directly counter to the love fest for Putin's Russia, so there's that as well.

Of course, Trump has no education in international relations, and his primary foreign policy advisers seem to be blithely ignorant of the security dilemma and the basic reality that being a bully does not pay in international relations.  General Mattis may try to instruct Trump, but, so far, he has largely been neither seen nor heard as Trump builds his team and enunciates his "grand strategy" which is neither grand nor much of a strategy.

So much for ending 2016 on a happy note.

A Focal Point for Those Who Study Conflict

Thomas Schelling died yesterday.  He was one of the most influential scholars of the past fifty years, complete with a Nobel Prize in economics and tens of thousands of citations.  His work shaped not just that field but that of political science, especially those who study strategy and conflict.  Indeed, those words almost seem to be Schelling's thanks to Strategy of Conflict, the book that informed not just American social scientists but, well, the arms race and then some.  Like Kenneth Waltz's work, Schelling's ideas are now common sense:

• the importance of focal points around which behavior converges
• the power to hurt is the power to bargain
• the importance of signaling
• the dynamics of tying hands and making commitments
• and, for me, what is so key today, the threat that leaves something to chance.

Schelling's work is relevant in so many areas.  Lately, for me, I have focused on its implications for European security and international peace.  That NATO can deter Russia even if no one really wants to sacrifice their national capital for Estonia, Latvia, or Lithuania.   That deployments of NATO troops to the region embody the threat that leaves something to chance.  That is, it is not really a commitment to certainly escalate to nuclear war--that would be ridiculous--incredible in the sense of not being believable.  However, what it does do is this: it puts the onus on taking the next decision, which might lead to a series of moves that would produce escalation, in Putin's hands.  This deterrent threat--building a modest tripwire in the Baltics--builds on Schelling's ideas in a big way.  I should have been citing him every time I blogged about this (although that is one of the joys of blogging--no requirements to cite).

Anyhow, of all the stuff I read in grad school, the concepts that I rely on most often, that give me the most insight into contemporary international relations, are those I found in Strategy of Conflict and Arms and Influence. 

Trends in IR: Domestic Politics?

I have a broken computer so I can't do much right now to address a silly assertion about the state of IR--that we have long ignored domestic politics.  A simple approach, given that I can't make any cool graphs right now, is to simply display one key variable over time--whether a work is "second level" or not.  That is, are the key independent variables focused on domestic political properties:

    Level2
year    No    Ye    Total
           
1980    52    81    133
1981    64    85    149
1982    49    93    142
1983    61    77    138
1984    51    75    126
1985    64    67    131
1986    40    101    141
1987    63    80    143
1988    65    64    129
1989    56    78    134
1990    58    74    132
1991    54    81    135
1992    54    95    149
1993    55    95    150
1994    52    91    143
1995    67    102    169
1996    54    101    155
1997    66    108    174
1998    51    123    174
1999    43    109    152
2000    46    101    147
2001    52    102    154
2002    46    119    165
2003    51    108    159
2004    41    128    169
2005    39    135    174
2006    46    144    190
2007    64    137    201
2008    61    127    188
2009    66    134    200
2010    71    147    218
2011    75    129    204
2012    83    155    238
           
Total    1,860    3,446    5,306

Note that the yes column is generally twice as much as every other kind of IR published in the major journals between 1980-2012.  Oops.

Trolling Works: Ask Dan

Absolute trends in Grand Theory

Today, Dan Drezner pulled on my chain more effectively than damn near any other scholar I respect.  I should keep quiet (not my strength) as I have an article* I am revising for resubmission that addresses this very argument--that big IR theory has gone away somehow.  But I cannot help but respond, partly because this article may not make it past the next stage, partly because by the time it does, people will have moved on (or not, as this argument keeps coming up).

Relative trends in grand theory

* The rejected draft is here. The revised version is, um, being revised.

The basic realities in this area are this: the early 1990s were a rare moment in IR, where much of the focus was on big/grand theory (my paper addresses perhaps inadequately how to define and think about "big"/"grand").  People are nostalgic not for how things used to be but for a blip in time.  The producers of grand theory were never that numerous, although they made heaps of noise (grand theory is better cited than the rest of IR--which cuts against arguments about how professionalization deters grand theory). 


The real thing is this: there has been a proliferation of outlets when it comes to IR articles (I have no idea if there  are more or less IR books).  That is, there is more IR being produced and published.  In absolute terms, there is not less grand theory, there is not less qualitative work, there is not less of much (perhaps less marxist analyses).  There is more of everything (well, realism is basically staying the same).  Is there relatively less grand theory?  Again, it depends on the point of comparison--compared to 1994?  Yes.  Compared to the mid 1980s?  No.

There is something else that would never make it into a refereed journal: why should we give a rat's ass about there being more "big" ideas?  Is another relative gains debate going to help us much?  How about medium sized ideas that help us figure out how to deal with the problems of today?  There is plenty of stuff being produced that asks questions about how to win/lose counter-insurgencies, about the politics of alliances (oops, self-promotion), about coups, and on and on (I am sure there is good work on questions about the politics of international economic relations but that is not what I pay attention to).  Dan always wonders whether we are policy relevant, and the answer is that the medium and micro work are quite policy relevant with the grand theory not so much.

Oh, perhaps the world would be better off with less big ideas like "clash of civilizations" which is not only bad social science but destructive social science. 

So, Dan, thanks for producing this cathartic moment this morning even if it reduces my chances of publishing the R&R piece (if reviewers/editors read my Spews). 

Working With What We Have: NATO edition

Is NATO a perfect alliance?  Is it the best multilateral security organization that we can imagine?  Hell no.  The Dave and Steve book documents some of the many challenges and the problems inherent in the organization.  But discussions of replacing it turn me into a Keohanian Liberal (as opposed to my usual stance as a Moravcsikian Liberal).  Huh?

If I remember correctly, Robert Keohane argued that transaction costs often get in the way of bargaining.  Each new round of negotiations needs heaps of work just to set up the negotiations.  International organizations, by creating rules and procedures, finesse these costs that impede getting to a good bargain.  Once an IO is established, they become handy.  Countries resist getting rid of them even if their original purpose is no longer quite relevant because it is far easier to adapt an institution than set a new one up.  The best example might be the International Monetary Fund, which was set up to deal with crises where countries run out of foreign exchange (they run out of dollars or yen or whatever) because such crises would interrupt trade (again, I might be off here since my memory is not great).  Now, the IMF has taken its broad mandate of providing international financial stability, and become a major player in facilitating the economic development of the less developed countries, something that the founders of the IMF probably didn't care much about.

Anyhow, back to NATO: since the end of the cold war, the alliance has shifted back and forth, moving from deterring the Soviet Union to facilitating the development of civilian control of the military in the East to peace-making/enforcing in the Balkans to counter-piracy/terrorism on the nearby seas (including off of Somalia) to counter-insurgency in Afghanistan and back to deterrence in the East. 

The efforts to develop other security organizations in this region have produced mixed results at best, including the EU and the OSCE.  Membership makes a difference as the US is not in the former and Russia is in the latter.  Which makes for different kinds of institutions.  While NATO has enlarged (too far some would say), the basic political dynamics have not changed: the US is more than first among equals but it also keeps the UK, Germany and, yes, France, together on security issues. 

Yes, there is a burden-sharing problem, but the US mostly accept it because European security is in US interests.  Yes, there are hedges/opt outs built in as nothing, not even Article V (attack upon one = attack upon all), is obligatory, but that is as the US wanted it long ago. 

But the various institutions built over 70 years--not just the personnel and procedures in Brussels but the entire apparatus throughout Europe and North America--make it far easier to do stuff in the world.  The interoperability that exists is not just about having guns shoot the same bullets and have planes that can refuel other planes.  There is political and military interoperability at all levels thanks to years of training together, operating together, and arguing.  Starting from scratch would ditch all of that which has been invested, and every new effort would be harder.  Indeed, even coalition of the willing operations often depend on the NATO backbone. 

So, once again, I paraphrase Churchill: NATO is the worst form of multilateral military cooperation except for all the others.  What Churchill really said was: the only thing that is worse than fighting with allies is fighting without them.

Alas Those Poor Realists

Today is yet another day where folks are pondering whether realists are oppressed or underrepresented or whatever.

I don't have much patience for this, having written much about it.  But my real frustration is that I have a piece that takes some data and applies it to the question of the plight of the Realists and of Grand theory in general, and this piece is having a hard time at ye olde journals.

So, here is a link to a draft of it.  It basically argues that:

• the growth in publication outlets means that there is not actually less stuff (less realism, less qualitative work, less grand theory), but perhaps relatively less Realism and less qual work.  
• that both Realism and the paradigm wars peaked in the mid 1990s, so the question is not really whether there is more or less, but whether the mid 1990s were typical or normal or the right amount of attention.  Assessing the state of play today by comparing to an abnormal peak makes sense for those who focus on loss aversion and the key of identifying the point of comparison.  BUT Realists and Grand Theorists are doing fine compared to any other time, except the mid-1990s, in recent IR scholarship history. 

The reality is that IR scholarship is and always has been a big tent.  Realism has always had a prominent place, and that remains the case.  If there are fewer realists now than before, who can they blame?  They can try to blame the structure of the system, but they have controlled the commanding heights of key parts of the IR scholarship system for decades.   Or maybe they can blame themselves for not being persuasive enough?  Or blame themselves for not reproducing enough?

What I do know is that the term IR Troll fits so very well, since one Realist makes a bad argument and then everybody else gets sucked into the discussion.  Well done, sir, well done.

Predicting Canada's Reaction

While folks say that theories cannot predict a specific outcome, our theories do arm us with expectations about likely behavior.  As Canada faces the ISIS challenge, what will it do?  I have consulted the Canadian Foreign/Defence Policy Literature and distilled a few predictions from the various theories:

Canadian Foreign/Defence Policy Theory	Prediction
Sokolsky’s Canadian realism focuses on how much is just enough?*  Canada will contribute just enough to please US.  [This coincides with my guess--that Trudeau will keep his promises.	End Fighter Mission, More Training
Massie's Atlanticism: Canada will follow the US/UK/France	Stay in Fighter Mission
Massie's Prestige: Canada wants to be seen as a good ally, punching above its weight and all that.	Stay in Fighter Mission
Role theory: Trudeau's Canada will want to be seen as honest broker	End Fighter Mission
Structuralism and Critical theory types: Canada is constrained by US.	Stay in Fighter Mission
Nossal: Canada will do very little but talk lot about whatever it does.	End Fighter Mission
Elite consensus/bureaucratic politics: new government will be pushed by CAF and Ottawa's bubble of elites	Stay in Fighter Mission
Domestic Politics: New government will focus on domestic dynamics, and keep its promises	End Fighter Mission

 
So, whichever way Trudeau goes, we can find about half of the theories wanting.  We would need more predictions to separate the "stay" arguments from each other and the "end" arguments from each other.  Still, we can use this event to discern which dynamics seem to be at play.  Of course, a one-time event is not sufficient to eliminate a theory for all time.  However, it does help us as we teach our students about how to extend theories to understand current events and what kind of outcomes might lead one to find one set of theories to be more helpful/more predictive than others.

*And, yes, in thinking about this, I have realized I am a bit of a Sokolskian as I have repeatedly described many Canadian efforts as the least/most they can do.

Oh, and Vegas happens to be more convinced by the domestic politics argument, so you would have to bet 200 to win 150 if you bet on leaving the mission and you can win 300 if you bet 100 if you think Canada will stick around in the fighter mission.

H/T to twitter friends for inspiring this post and for dreaded reviewer number 2 for making me read some of this stuff (I had read Sokolsky, Nossal, bureaucratic politics/elite consensus folks before I wrote Adapting in the Dust).