Third, exploring how evolution intersects with other theories of international relations would advance the goal of consilience, fusing theoretical and empirical knowledge drawn from both the social and natural sciences. What is the logic for risking life and limb in engaging in violent aggression against other groups? The Yanomamo among whom I lived were constantly worried about attacks from their neighbors and constantly lived in fear of this possibility. Like egoism, the desire to dominate is a trait of human nature (which, as with egoism, we stress does not necessarily apply to every individual or situation but is a statistical tendency underlying behavior). In short, offensive realism may really be describing the nature of the human species more than the nature of the international system. Aggression is not a cultural accident, but an evolutionary adaptation for acquiring and securing resourcesjust as it is for other species. Although it is not our intention to resolve offensive realisms theoretical lacunae, an evolutionary account can help to explain them. His current work focuses on evolutionary dynamics, evolutionary psychology, and religion in human conflict and cooperation. Aggression may be a risky strategy, but it is a more attractive option than starvation or other lethal dangers. However, even fellow realists have found problems and inconsistencies with Waltz's structural realism. The theory of Mearsheimer has five basis assumptions: 1. To summarize, a species that lives communally could have two broad forms of social organization. Although Thomas Hobbes claimed to have deduced Leviathan scientifically from motion and the physical senses, he was writing two hundred years before Darwin and so had no understanding of evolution.Reference Hobbes53 International relations scholars have tended to claim to deduce their own theories from Hobbes, or subsequent philosophers who followed him, and we suggest it is time to revisit the idea of foundational scientific principles. In this section, we have presented standard biological arguments that egoism, dominance, and ingroup/outgroup bias are deeply rooted behavioral adaptations common among mammals in general and primate species in particular. Psychologists argue that the ingroup/outgroup distinction develops from a need for social identity. Thus, the power of sexual selection can lead to the evolution of traits that actually damage survival in order to achieve superiority over other males.Reference Lincoln, Short and Balaban104,Reference Trivers and Campbell105 Reproduction trumps survival in evolution. Evolutionary theory explains why humans are egoistic, strive to dominate others, and make ingroup/outgroup distinctions. (PDF) Effects of Face Masks on Emotion Interpretation in Socially As formulated by Mearsheimer, the theory of offensive realism is a type of neorealism because the principal causes of state behavior are rooted in the anarchic international system. Pomeroy, Caleb However, he criticized post-Cold War U.S. foreign policy for overestimating the countrys military power and its capacity to project that power at will. Offensive realism based on evolutionary theory makes the same predictions for state behavior, but the ultimate causal mechanism is different: human evolution in the anarchic, dangerous, and competitive conditions of the late-Pliocene and Pleistocene eras. Genes obviously do not want or try to spread, but the machinery of natural selection means that self-serving alleles will generally increase in relative frequency in the population over time, at the expense of alleles that are neutral or self-sacrificing for no return benefit. All three species descended from an (unknown) common ancestor. The preeminent evolutionary theorist J.B.S. This article is dedicated to the memory of Rafe Sagarin, an exceptional ecologist, colleague, and friend who devoted much of his life to bridging the gap between the life and social sciences. Behavior under anarchy in different domains. Offensive realists can thus explain more than the behavior of states or great powers. Mearsheimer and Walt in particular make cases for "restraint" and "offshore balancing," meaning a reservation of the use of force to the most serious threats to US power, coupled with a policy to prevent China's assumption of regional hegemony in Asia (Mearsheimer and Walt 2016). In some species, reproductive access is settled by coercion, in which the strongest male defeats rivals to dominate a harem. In 2003 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. We should therefore expect instances of evolutionary mismatch in which evolved behaviors lead to poor decisions in modern settings. The genes of egoistic individuals survive and spread at the expense of those that fail to effectively put their own interests first. A dominance hierarchy is created competitively, often violently, and is maintained forcefully, but it can serve to prevent or reduce conflict within a group because it establishes a pecking order that is generally respected. The fifth assumption is that states are rational actors, which is to say they are capable of coming up with sound strategies that maximize their prospects for survival. Debates about evolved human propensities have often centered on whether human behavior more closely resembles the behavior of common chimpanzees or that of bonobos (pygmy chimpanzees that live in central Africa and are somewhat less aggressive than common chimpanzees). An exceptional study of realism, and in some respects the fountainhead of offensive realism is Ashley Joachim Tellis, Gat 2006 and Azar Gat, So why do people fight? They have enjoyed an absence of competition from gorillas (bonobos only live south of the Congo River, while gorillas only live on the north side of the river), high-quality foliage for food, and dense forest, which reduced vulnerability to ambush and thus, it is thought, the utility of aggression in males.168,169 Accordingly, bonobos may not be a good model for understanding human behavior, for reasons of both phylogenetic history and shared ecology. It is very important to notice that anarchy, according to Mearsheimer, . Examples of offensive realism include John J. Mearsheimer, "Back to the Future: Instability inEurope after the Cold War,"International Security, Vol. However, what is striking is the prevalence and potency of dominance in social organization, despite variations in the specifics. We recognize that a challenge to the theory of offensive realism is the empirical mix of cooperation and conflict in the real world. The 10 Best Things To Do In Provo | Visit Utah 6,No. Competition for resources results in situations where consumption by one individual or group diminishes the amount available for others, or where one individual or group controls the distribution of resources and thus can deny them to others.Reference Meggitt63,Reference Keeley64, In the Pleistocene era, any group facing a shortage of resources (or a need for more, as the group expands) could have adopted one or a combination of three basic strategies. First, ambitious leaders self-select themselves into seeking high-profile roles in the first place.Reference Ehrenhalt191 Second, strong leaders are selected into power over weak-willed or hesitant candidates.Reference Todorov, Mandisodza, Goren and Hall192,Reference Van Vugt and Ahuja193 Third, leaders rise to the top of their respective hierarchies through an intensively competitive process that compels them to be increasingly attentive to self-interest and self-preservation.Reference Shenkman194 Fourth, once in power, decision-makers tend to heed hawkish rather than dovish advice.Reference Kahneman and Renshon195 Fifth, the experience of power itself is well known to corrupt, precisely because being a leader elevates ones sense of worth and power.196 Taking these phenomena together, a skeptic of our argument that humans are generally egoistic, dominance-seeking and groupish may nevertheless concede that the small subset of humans that become political leaders tend to express these traits. Of particular note regarding the impact of dominance on human behavior are the roles of both phylogeny (a species ancestral lineage) and ecology (its adaptations to local conditions). Mearsheimer notably advocated the withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Europe, arguing that their presence there was irrational, as no state currently threatened to dominate the continent. Nevertheless, overwhelming evidence shows that people also behave in ways that can be predicted from the biological knowledge outlined above. Reproductive access to females tends to be highly skewed, with a few males responsible for a large proportion of progeny. Structuralism is a method of study that focuses on the interaction of the parts, or units of a system, seeing them as more useful to study than the individual units themselves.27 Waltz uses structuralism to demonstrate how the distribution of power in international politics is critical for understanding whether war is more or less likely.28 By wedding anarchy as an ultimate cause and structuralism as a method of analysis, Waltzs neorealism improves upon Morgenthaus realism in two ways. We do not, however, need to rely on mere analogies linking animal and human behavior. First, the preferences of individual citizens are, at least to a degree, represented in those elected toor tolerated inoffice, and those preferences may also be seen in the goals of the state. This is what neorealists call a self-help system: Leaders of states are forced to take these steps because nothing else can guarantee their security in the anarchic world of international politics. We argue that evolution under conditions of anarchy has predisposed human nature toward the behaviors predicted by offensive realism: Humans, particularly men, are strongly self-interested, often fear other groups, and seek more resources, more power, and more influence (as we explain in full later). And, even then, these arrangements often fail to work. Of course, humans are not the same as chimpanzees, although we are close relatives and share a common ancestor around 5 million to 6 million years ago. I, Classical Realism (3) Emphasis on traits of mankind, Core Assumptions of Neorealism aka Stuctural Realism Waltz:, Core Assumptions of Offensive Realism Mearsheimer -Fear/Self Help W Individuals may follow generalized decision rules, but these rules give rise to different behaviors in different contexts. Classical realists (such as Thucydides, E.H. Carr, Arnold Wolfers, and Hans Morgenthau) and offensive realists share the assumption that states seek to maximize power - that states are relentless seekers of power and influence.Specifically, for classical realists "nations expand their political interests abroad when their relative power increases . Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings. The organism has to ensure that its physiological needs (for food, water, shelter, and so on) are satisfied so that it can survive and reproduce. In other words, since imbalances of power offer systematic opportunities for low-cost aggression over time, we should expect human groups to have developed a disposition to act aggressively against others when the opportunity arises, because opportunistic aggression is a strategy that pays off on the average. Looking at the environment in which our own species evolved, we find significant empirical evidence for, and a Darwinian logic favoring, intergroup aggression. Mearsheimer based his theory on five core assumptions: (1) the international system is anarchic (there is no authority that exists above the states to arbitrate their conflicts), (2) all states have some military capability (however limited), (3) states can never fully ascertain the intentions of other states, (4) states value survival above all else, and (5) states are rational actors that seek to promote their own interests. We recognize that many factors may affect the behavior of states, including bureaucracies, types of government, culture, international institutions, or the international system itself, but we also recognize, as traditional theories of international politics have from the time of Thucydides, that humans affect state behavior as well.Reference Levy202 Many factors come between an individual leader and the behavior of a state, but that does not mean leaders have no effect at all. Offensive realism, thucydides traps, and the tragedy of unforced errors Indeed, a wide range of empirical evidence from psychology and neuroscience suggests instead that humans, especially men, not only want to be leaders but also enjoy the pursuit of power (as well as its material fruits).156,Reference Robertson157,158 The force of this motivation is frequently revealed in victors expressions of the satisfaction of conquest. These adaptations were favored by natural selection over the course of evolution and remain a significant cause of human behavior. 21 June 2016. However, because anarchy is a problem both in nature and in international politics, it is no coincidence at all. Finally, evolution may make significant contributions to other theories of international relations. We argue that evolutionary theory also offers a fundamental cause for offensive realist behavior (see Table1). An article adapted from the book had previously been published by Foreign Affairs. The modern understanding of evolution rejects the simplistic stereotype that selfish genes equates to selfish organisms (Richard Dawkins carefully explained why that is not a logical consequence in The Selfish Gene Reference Dawkins6). The Realist Framework 1 Core Assumptions of Realism - SlideToDoc.com While biological group selection in humans is possible in theory, there have not been any published empirical examples. Hunter gatherers have recurrent tendencies, including hostility toward members of different societies, and for killing to be carried out in relative safetythat is, only when there is a strong asymmetry in power between subgroups, such as in a raid or ambush (the imbalance of power hypothesis).