The Realist Case for Global Reform E-Book

William E. Scheuerman

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 444

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

Does a hard-headed Realist approach to international politics necessarily involve skepticism towards progressive foreign policy initiatives and global reform? Should proponents of Realism always be seen as morally complacent and politically combative? In this major reconsideration of the main figures of international political theory, Bill Scheuerman challenges conventional wisdom to reveal a neglected tradition of Progressive Realism with much to contribute to contemporary debates about international policy-making and world government.

Far from seeing international reform as well-meaning but potentially irresponsible , Progressive Realists like E. H. Carr, John Herz, Hans J. Morgenthau, and Reinhold Niebuhr developed forward-looking ideas which offer an indispensable corrective to many presently influential views about global politics. Progressive Realism, Scheuerman argues, offers a compelling and provocative vision of radical global change which -- when properly interpreted, can help buttress current efforts to address the most pressing international issues.

After recovering key subterranean strands in mid-twentieth century Realism, Scheuerman underscores their relevance to contemporary international theory. Criticizing more recent Realists for abandoning their tradition's best insights, he also demonstrates that reform-minded international theories --including versions of Cosmopolitanism, Constructivism, the English School, Liberalism, and Republicanism - could all benefit from taking Progressive Realism seriously.

A major contribution both to the history of international relations and contemporary debates in international theory, The Realist Case for Global Reform concludes by considering how Progressive Realism informs the foreign policies of US President Barack Obama.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Title page

Copyright page

PREFACE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION

1 WHY (ALMOST) EVERYTHING YOU LEARNED ABOUT REALISM IS WRONG

International Morality and Law

Realist Political Ethics

Machiavellianism Without Virtu?

National Interest

Balance of Power

Security Dilemma

2 REALISTS AGAINST THE NATION STATE

What is the Nation State Good For?

The Nation State and Social Integration

The Staying Power of National Identity

How Nation States Destroy Morality

Economic Globalization vs. the Nation State

The Political and Military Decay of the Nation State

3 REALIST GLOBAL REFORMISM

World Federalism or Bust

First World Community Then World Government

A Socialist United Europe?

Functionalism and the “Future of the Civilized World”

Backlash Against Functionalism

World Community and World Statehood: An Interactive Relationship?

The Apex of Realist Reformism

The Demise of Progressive Realism

4 WHAT COSMOPOLITANS CAN LEARN FROM PROGRESSIVE REALISM

A Realist – Cosmopolitan Alliance?

Realist Contributions to Cosmopolitan Democracy

5 WHAT OTHER GLOBAL REFORMERS CAN LEARN FROM PROGRESSIVE REALISM

Liberal Transgovernmentalism’s New World Order

English School Global Reformism

Neorepublican One-Worldism

Constructivism and the World State

6 WHO’S AFRAID OF THE WORLD STATE?

Why Defenders of the Global State Need to Stay Sober

World Government Means Nowhere to Hide

World State Means World (or at least Civil) War

World State Means the End of Politics

World Government Means No Real Political Identity

World Government Means Homogenization

World Statehood Means Despotism

Global Government Means the End of Democracy

World State Means Class Rule by the Poor

World Statehood as an Empty Illusion

CONCLUSION: A NIEBUHRIAN PRESIDENT?

REFERENCES

Index

Copyright © William E. Scheuerman 2011

The right of William E. Scheuerman to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2011 by Polity Press

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ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-5029-6 (hardback)

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PREFACE

[T]he argument of the advocates of the world state is unanswerable: There can be no permanent international peace without a state coextensive with the confines of the political world.

(Morgenthau, 1954: 477)

What follows is an unabashedly contrarian book by an author who – or so I have been told by those closest to me – exhibits a strong streak of intellectual stubbornness. The conventional wisdom is that Realist International Theory offers an institutionally complacent vision of global politics, wedded to the existing state system and congenitally opposed to far-reaching global reform. To be sure, some Realists have spoken out powerfully against irresponsible foreign policies like those which produced the Vietnam and Second Gulf Wars. Yet Realists supposedly remain a cautious and even pessimistic bunch, defenders of the thesis that in global affairs

states are the only major actors, and no structure of power or authority stands above them to mediate their conflicts; nor would they peacefully consent to such a structure, even if it could be shown to be workable. States act according to their power interests, and these interests are bound at times to conflict violently. Therefore, even if progress toward community and justice is possible within states, the relations between them are doomed to a permanent competition that often leads to war. However deplorable, this permanent competition remains an unavoidable reality that no amount of moral exhortation or utopian scheming can undo.

(Smith, 1986: 1)

Though initially attracted to this interpretation, I have decided that it is not only misleading, but also gets in the way of formulating an international theory properly attuned to the moral and political imperatives of globalization. What ensues is an openly revisionist view of significant strands in mid-century Realism, in which I counter the standard portrayal of Realism as intellectually and institutionally conservative.

Admittedly, this must initially seem like an odd and indeed implausible endeavor, given the unabashedly anti-reformist instincts of prominent Realists like Henry Kissinger, Kenneth Waltz, or John Mearsheimer. Contemporary Realists have indeed closed ranks around a stodgy and rather self-satisfied defense of the international status quo. However, its most important mid-twentieth-century representatives – E. H. Carr (1892–1982), Hans J. Morgenthau (1904–80), Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971), as well as some unfairly neglected secondary figures: John Herz (1908–2006), Frederick Schuman (1904–81), Georg Schwarzenberger (1908–91), and Arnold Wolfers (1892–1968) – developed a forward-looking reformist Realism very different from that now pervasive in both the academy and halls of government. Those whom I dub Progressive Realists typically were situated on the political left during some juncture in their long careers. Most were influenced by the experiences of the interwar European (and especially German) left. With many left-leaning refugees among its ranks, mid-century Realism indeed drew on a so-called “Germanic tradition” – of Weimar reformism, and not as commonly asserted, reactionary Bismarckian Realpolitik.

Starting from the assumption that the nation state was increasingly anachronistic, Progressive Realists engaged in a fierce debate with proponents of global transformation, including the “one-world” global federalist movement which briefly flourished in the aftermath of the Second World War. Unfortunately, the debate’s heated character masked important programmatic overlap; the comparatively conservative predilections of more recent Realists encouraged them to ignore it as well. Like global federalists, Progressive Realists sought extensive international reform. They argued, however, that many of its proponents neglected the centrality of supranational society, or what they occasionally called world community: any desirable as well as viable system of postnational governance would need to rest on a corresponding postnational society capable of exercising basic integrative functions akin to those regularly achieved by successful national political communities. From this standpoint, dramatic global reform and perhaps even world statehood constituted admirable goals, but they were only achievable if reformers figured out how the necessarily thick societal background for a prospective postnational political order might be constructed. Global liberal democracy remained for them a distant goal, albeit one having immediate consequences, whose social preconditions would have to be constructed in a gradualist and reformist spirit.1

The volume’s first half thus offers a critical-minded revisionist intellectual history of mid-twentieth-century Realism. Yet its aims are by no means chiefly antiquarian: intellectual history can help shed fresh light on conventional disciplinary divides and shake up ossified ways of thinking. As such it remains an indispensable component of any international theory aspiring to counter present-day fashions or the widespread “presentist” bias which dogmatically posits that contemporary modes of thinking are necessarily more advanced than those of our historical predecessors. Unfortunately, such presentism is ubiquitous among scholars of international politics; it needs to be challenged. Without a creative retelling of the history of twentieth-century Realism, we simply miss its most provocative and surprisingly relevant ideas.

I begin by briefly revisiting the complex intellectual and political universe in which mid-century Progressive Realists came of age, along the way explaining why existing attempts to define “Realism” mask core elements of the story. In particular, the conventional category of “classical Realism” gets in the way of serious discussion more than it helps ignite it. Chapter 1 shows how Progressive Realists, while defending refreshingly nuanced theses about international law and morality, interpreted some of the conceptual mainstays of their intellectual tradition – the national interest, balance of power, and security dilemma – so as to leave open extensive possibilities for international reform. Most important perhaps, their sophisticated and surprisingly demanding political ethics underscored the necessity of changes to the global status quo. Chapter 2 then reconsiders their appreciative but ultimately critical views about the nation state, while Chapter 3 turns directly to Progressive Realism’s lively internal debate on global reform, and especially its discussion of the pros and cons of David Mitrany’s competing functionalist theory of international change. There I also outline why attempts by contemporary Realists (including Kissinger, Waltz, and Danilo Zolo) to transcend the reformist impulses of their mid-century predecessors ultimately founder.

The second half of the volume then shows why and how contemporary defenders of global reform can gain from a serious engagement with Progressive Realism. Chapter 4 argues that the commonplace dichotomy between Realism and Cosmopolitanism is overstated: more common ground is shared by the two intellectual tendencies than is widely presupposed. To be sure, some Cosmopolitan ideas remain vulnerable to Progressive Realist criticisms. When properly interpreted, however, the Progressive Realist critique is by no means exclusively destructive in character. On the contrary, Realist insights can be welded effectively to the present-day Cosmopolitan argument for democracy “beyond the nation state.” In particular, Progressive Realist ideas about the centrality of supranational society remain vital for present-day Cosmopolitans, as does the Realist defense of robust statehood as ultimately essential to successful global governance. Realism, in short, offers powerful untapped intellectual resources for criticizing the presently fashionable idea of “global governance without government.” Even a recent editor of the journal Global Governance has begun to acknowledge the limits of this concept: Progressive Realism can help us see why such skepticism remains pertinent (Weiss, 2009: 215–33). Cosmopolitans can strengthen their arguments by reintegrating some forgotten Realist ideas. They should join Progressive Realism in seeking ways to deepen supranational society; they would also do well to abandon their kneejerk hostility to world statehood.

Chapter 5 examines other notable recent attempts to further global reform – as advanced by Liberal Transgovernmentalism, the English School, Republicanism, and Constructivism – from the standpoint of Progressive Realism. Notwithstanding their many virtues, each of these competing approaches is found wanting. At the very least, each can learn something from the reform-minded Realism of Carr, Morgenthau, Niebuhr, and others. Chapter 6 argues that Realists were right to argue that even if world statehood represented a long-term aspiration manifestly unachievable in the foreseeable future, a properly conceived model of it remains a suitable goal. I defend this unfashionable and seemingly farfetched intuition by responding to the most commonly voiced criticisms of world statehood, most of which turn out to rely on intellectual caricature. Even hardheaded rational choice legal scholars now concede that “problems of global collective action have multiplied and increased in seriousness” and will probably continue to do so (Posner, 2009: 38).2 Progressive Realists were justified in viewing global government as ultimately the best way to tackle them. Finally, I reflect briefly on US President Barack Obama’s apparent sympathies for Reinhold Niebuhr, perhaps the most important figure in mid-century Progressive Realism, considering the possibility that Obama’s policies may be shaped to some degree by Progressive Realism.

Global reform today seems at a standstill, with the United Nations unable to pursue minimal yet overdue changes, and the European Union mired in internal divisions about how best to deal with the ongoing economic and financial crisis. For reasons to be described below, this situation should worry us. Yet the momentarily frozen character of some present-day global institutions perhaps provides a useful opportunity to re-think many of the increasingly tired clichés that dominate thinking about global-level change. A reconsideration of the neglected reformist legacy of Progressive Realism can help us do so.

Notes

1 Although my account differs in ways to be discussed in the text, let me give proper credit where credit is due: I have been inspired by a fascinating recent book by Campbell Craig (2003) on Realist reformism.

2 Eric Posner’s rational choice-inspired critique of “global legalism” in fact points implicitly to the necessity of ambitious varieties of postnational statehood. Unfortunately, Posner fails to follow this path because he uncritically endorses a dismissive view of world government (2009: 8–10).

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks are owed to many who helped in the pursuit of this project. My editor at Polity, Louise Knight, enthusiastically supported it, while audiences at Cornell, University of Iowa Law School, Ohio State University, Prague Conference on Philosophy and the Social Sciences, and Yale offered critical feedback on its main arguments. In particular, I thank Seyla Benhabib, Peter Hohendahl, Alexander Somek, and Alexander Wendt for gracious invitations to present parts of the project. Joohyung Kim helped locate articles and essays, and the wonderfully competent staff at the Indiana University Wells Library was generous with its time. I should also thank the Indiana University Institute for Advanced Studies, where I served as a resident fellow while writing it.

Some sections of the manuscript previously appeared in Ethics and Global Politics, International Politics, International Theory, and Transnational Law and Contemporary Problems, to whom I am grateful for allowing me to integrate them here.

The book is dedicated to my most important undergraduate and graduate teachers – Seyla Benhabib, Ingeborg Maus, as well as the late George Schrader and Judith Shklar – in gratitude for their patience with an ignorant and stubborn student who under their tutelage became a marginally less ignorant and stubborn scholar.

INTRODUCTION

Meet the Progressive Realists

Ernest (alias “Ernie”) had studied hard for his final written examination in international relations theory. When the test instructions asked for a concise definition of Realism, he was happy to be able to display his new knowledge. During the course of the semester, Ernie had carefully read the assigned texts on Realism (few of which, however, were original sources), and his professor had also lectured twice on Realism’s core theoretical attributes; he had conscientiously taken good notes. Confident that this was a question he could easily “ace,” Ernie wrote:

Realism denies morality any meaningful role in international politics. It takes this hostility to “moralism” from the political theories of Machiavelli and Hobbes, who exerted a substantial influence on Realism. Machiavelli argued in favor of discarding traditional moral norms in order to ensure self-preservation in a dangerous political universe; Hobbes believed that shared ideas about justice presuppose a system of shared sovereignty. Realists point out that because there is no sovereignty or state at the global level, interstate affairs are characterized by a perilous “state of nature” in which no common moral framework operates. Realism affirms Realpolitik, meaning that individual states can legitimately pursue their vital power interests even when doing so conflicts with morality. Realism’s skepticism about international law stems from the same roots. As Machiavelli and Hobbes asserted, binding law requires sanctions backed up by a coercive state apparatus. Because interstate affairs remain characterized by anarchy, the regular enforcement of law there inevitably is plagued by massive deficits. More often than not, international law – like many appeals to a shared moral code – serves as little more than the political instruments of powerful global interests or Great Powers. When international morality or international law operates effectively, it does so only because big power interests at the global level happen to decide that it is in their interest for it to do so. But in a Hobbesian world, their support necessarily remains fragile. This is why Realists are hostile to what they call “moralism” and “legalism.”

Because the essay question also asked of Ernie that he outline one of the main flaws of Realism, he added that

Realism’s main flaw is its institutional conservatism. Because of international anarchy, Realists say, states can do little more than pursue their parochial national interests. International organizations always represent fragile creatures, dependent on the cooperation of power units whose interests may conflict. The basic dynamics of an international system in which rival states compete for power and security render utopian any attempt to establish ambitious varieties of global governance. This is why Realists even today remain committed to maintaining the primacy of the nation state, despite evidence that globalization is undermining it. They discount even modest attempts at international reform. Rather, they believe that peace is best preserved by the realities of the “balance of power,” on which they sometimes offer a backwards-looking and nostalgic gloss. Their dogmatic view of international anarchy makes them skeptical of attempts to reform international politics in the direction, for example, of “cosmopolitan democracy,” as advocated by some writers. Such skepticism also partly derives from the pessimistic (and highly dubious) view of human nature endorsed by some early or “classical” Realists. But even among Realists who do not base their views in ideas of human nature, skepticism about global reform is widespread. Such Realists often focus on the “security dilemma,” which basically says that because no state can feel perfectly secure in a world with competing autonomous political units, each state is driven to acquire as much power as possible. Even these Realists miss the need today, in the face of globalization, to develop new forms of political organization. Consequently, Realism cannot make sense of the rapid growth of international organizations, appearance of new political systems like the European Union, or the emergence of a global system of human rights, all of which have already transformed so-called anarchy. Realism’s main nemesis, Cosmopolitanism, probably does a better job understanding the emerging realities of globalization.