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A Review Essay A Review Essay Michael W. Doyle, Ways of War and Peace: Realism, Liberalism, and Socialism. New York: W.W. Norton, 1997. International relations is one of the last academic disciplines still to take seriously the Western canon, that body of philosophical and literary work that has shaped the Western world. The natural sciences and most social sciences, when bothering to notice the Aristotles and Descartes, do so to remind themselves of just how far they have come. The humanities have for years been engaged in a project of deposing “dead white males” and enthroning in their place critical theorists (many of whom are also white, male, and dead). But many international relations scholars believe that the classics more or less got it right, particularly about politico-military affairs. Other international relations scholars would prefer it if there were one less discipline that still paid attention to the dead white males. They might be disinclined to read Michael W. Doyle‘s big book, Ways of War and Peace: Realism, Liberalism, and Socialism.’ Also disinclined might be many scholars who do value the philosophical canon, because such scholars tend to be realists, and Doyle is a liberal. Both of these groups should overcome their disinclinations. Doyle has written one of the most important books on international politico- military theory since Kenneth Waltz’s Theory of International Politics.2 Doyle has made many important contributions to the field, but is best known as an early and profound expositor of the liberal (or democratic) peace, the proposition that liberal democracies do not fight wars against one another. In John M Oweii, W, IS an Assistant Professor in the Department of Government and Foreign Afairs at the University of Virginia The author wishes to thank Dale Copeland, Philip Hill, and especially Randall Schweller for comments on an earlier draft. 1. Michael W. Doyle, Ways of War and Peace: Realism, Liberulism, and Socialism (New York: W.W. Norton, 1997). Subsequent references to this book appear in parentheses in the text. 2. Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979). lnfernnfionaf Security, Vol. 23, No. 3 (Winter 1998/99), pp. 147-178 0 1998 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 147 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/isec.23.3.147 by guest on 26 September 2021 International Security 23:3 I 148 arguing for a liberal peace, Doyle credited Immanuel Kant with predicting something very much like it back in the 1790s, and with offering an explanation of it that seemed to have aged extremely well.3 In a subsequent treatment of the question, Doyle invoked Niccolo Machiavelli and Joseph Schumpeter (a spring chicken among this group, having died in 1950) as sources of insight as well.4 Although the treatments of Kant by other international relations scholars since Doyle's seminal articles suggest that few actually bothered to read more than one paragraph of "To Perpetual Peace"-the one stating that average citizens will be hesitant to go to war because they were the ones to pay for it-the consensus was that Kant had at least come up with an interesting and testable (and probably true) proposition. Now comes Doyle again, trying to spark interest in such thinkers as John Locke, Jeremy Bentham, and Karl Marx, and persuade us to reread Machiavelli, Hobbes, Rousseau, Kant, Lenin, and of course Thucydides. He sets out to show us that the canon has much to say about the cannon (and the ICBM). Doyle, then, is a champion of long-deceased philosophers, a Knight of the Living Dead, tilting at those who would forget the sources of the categories that structure our field. But he is not simply offering new interpretations and typologies of the canon; such scholars as Martin Wight, Kenneth Thompson, W.B. Gallie, Kenneth Waltz, F.H. Hinsley, Stanley Hoffmann, and Hedley Bull have done that well en~ugh.~Doyle's ambitions are many, but four central ones are (1) to show that positivistic researchers in security studies should take the time to reread the canonical sources; (2) to demonstrate that realism, liberalism, and socialism are each coherent traditions-a term he borrows from the phi- losopher Alasdair MacIntyre; (3)to test empirically the truth of each tradition via crucial hypotheses; and, although he does not put it this way (4) to synthesize the traditions. 3. Michael W. Doyle, "Kant, Liberal Legacies, and Foreign Affairs," Parts 1 and 2, Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 12, Nos. 3 and 4 (Summer and Fall 1983), pp. 205-254 and 323-353, respectively. 4. Michael W. Doyle, "Liberalism and World Politics," American Political Science Review, Vol. 80, No. 4 (December 1986), pp. 1151-1169. 5. Martin Wight, "Why Is There No International Theory?" in Herbert Butterfield and Martin Wight, Diplomatic Investigations (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1966); Kenneth W. Thompson, Fathers of International Thought: The Legacy of Political Theory (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1994); W.B. Gallie, Philosophers of Peace and War: Knnt, Clausewitz, Marx, Engels, and Tolstoy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1978); Kenneth N. Waltz, Man, the State, and War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959); F.H. Hinsley, Power and the Pursuit of Peace (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1963); Stanley Hoffmann, "Rousseau on War and Peace," in Hoffmann, junus nnd Minerva (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1987), pp. 25-51; and Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society, 2d ed. (New York Columbia University Press, 1995). Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/isec.23.3.147 by guest on 26 September 2021 The Canon and the Cannon 1 149 In this essay I argue that Doyle realizes his first and second ambitions; partially realizes his third; and only realizes his fourth for thoroughgoing liberal scholars such as himself. First, in close and often brilliant readings of difficult texts, Doyle shows that not only is it not necessarily a vice for an explanation to be ”multi-image,” but that it can be a great virtue. A theory that incorporates more than one level of analysis need not be inferior, and may be more adequate because it tells a more complete story. Hobbes, for example, purports to tells us with a single parsi- monious theory not only why anarchy leads to insecurity, but also why we have an anarchical system at all. Second, Doyle also shows that the time-honored realist-liberal-socialist ty- pology remains the best we have, in that each school of thought has an underlying coherence. Realists of all stripes are united by the premise of a permanent state of war among states, and have as their primary goals power and security. Liberals share the premise that sometimes the state of war is overcome, and they have as their primary goal individual autonomy. Socialists start with a premise of class (rather than state) struggle, and are committed to economic, political, and social equality. Third, Doyle’s empirical tests of realism, liberalism, and socialism are thoughtful and persuasive, but in the case of realism and socialism do not bear the inferential weight he places upon them. Although he is almost certainly correct that structural realism cannot wholly account for balancing behavior, his single case study cannot show that. His attempt to resuscitate socialist security theory involves showing (pace Waltz) that European socialists were being orthodox Marxists in supporting war in August 1914. He makes a good case, but even that case cannot revive socialism. Finally, Doyle’s synthesis involves not combining valid elements from each tradition into a single theory, but rather asking us, the scholars and policymak- ers, to assume multiple identities as realists, liberals, and socialists. This syn- thesis, however, is liberal in character, and thus will not be accepted by realists or socialists. Below I address these issues somewhat out of order. First, I argue that Doyle should win a hearing for the canon from all scholars who study politico- military affairs. His glosses on these old texts, while sometimes open to chal- lenge (e.g., in the case of Kant), turn up profound theoretical insights and testable propositions. In the second section, I argue that his empirical tests are genuine contributions to the literature. In particular, his test of balance-of- power theory is ingenious and raises the question of why such tests have been Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/isec.23.3.147 by guest on 26 September 2021 lnternational Security 23:3 1 150 so rare. That test, and the test of socialism, however, are not as decisive as Doyle suggests. I also devote special attention to socialism as a framework for understanding security, arguing that its potential remains slight. In the third section, I examine Doyle’s account of what unites each tradition, and conclude with him that moral propositions are at the heart of each. In the final section, I argue that Doyle’s metatheoretical synthesis is well motivated, but will fail to convince nonliberals precisely because it is a liberal synthesis. Why We Should Read the Canon Doyle’s first task is to convince today’s average researcher of international security to read these difficult, seemingly archaic works, or at least to read his own closely argued interpretations of the works. A certain type of scholar will want to read the canon simply out of respect, just as a certain type of Yankees baseball fan will always attend Old Timers’ Day. But a majority of those who have kept the classics alive have done so out of a conviction that the historico- philosophical approach they take is superior to the positivistic approach that dominates major political science departments in North America today.
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