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Security Seeking Under Anarchy 129 Security Seeking under Jeffrey W. Taliaferro Anarchy Defensive Realism Revisited Does the international system provide incentives for expansion? If so, should the United States seek to guarantee its long-term security through a grand strategy of preponderance (or primacy) and pursue opportunities to weaken potential great power com- petitors, such as China? Alternatively, does the international system provide more disincentives than incentives for aggression? If this is the case, should the United States seek to guarantee its long-term security through a grand strategy of selective engagement? Two strands of contemporary realism provide differ- 1 entSecurity Seeking under answers Anarchy to these questions. Offensive realism holds that anarchy—the absence of a worldwide govern- ment or universal sovereign—provides strong incentives for expansion.2 All states strive to maximize their power relative to other states because only the most powerful states can guarantee their survival. They pursue expansionist policies when and where the beneªts of doing so outweigh the costs. States un- der anarchy face the ever-present threat that other states will use force to harm or conquer them. This compels states to improve their relative power positions Jeffrey W. Taliaferro is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Tufts University. I wish to thank Dale Copeland, Bernard Finel, Benjamin Frankel, Benjamin Miller, Jennifer Ster- ling-Folker, and the anonymous reviewers for International Security for comments on various drafts. I am responsible for any remaining errors or omissions. Earlier versions of this article were presented at the 1999 annual meetings of the International Studies Association and the American Political Science Association. 1. For an overview of competing post–Cold War U.S. grand strategies derived from offensive real- ism and defensive realism, see Barry R. Posen and Andrew L. Ross, “Competing Visions for U.S. Grand Strategy,” International Security, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Winter 1996/97), pp. 5–53. 2. The terms “aggressive realism” (or offensive realism) and “defensive realism” originated in Jack Snyder, Myths of Empire: Domestic Politics and International Ambition (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univer- sity Press, 1991), pp. 11–12. Overviews of the offensive realism–defensive realism debate include Sean M. Lynn-Jones and Steven E. Miller, “Preface,” in Michael E. Brown, Owen M. Coté, Lynn- Jones, and Miller, eds., The Perils of Anarchy: Contemporary Realism and International Security (Cam- bridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1995), pp. ix–xii; Benjamin Frankel, “Restating the Realist Case: An Intro- duction,” Security Studies, Vol. 5, No. 3 (Spring 1996), pp. xiv–xx; and Sean M. Lynn-Jones, “Realism and America’s Rise: A Review Essay,” International Security, Vol. 23, No. 2 (Fall 1998), pp. 157–182. 3. Examples of offensive realism include John J. Mearsheimer, “Back to the Future: Instability in Europe after the Cold War,” International Security, Vol. 15, No. 1 (Summer 1990), pp. 5–56; Mearsheimer, “The False Promise of International Institutions,” International Security, Vol. 19, No. 3 (Winter 1994/95), pp. 5–49, especially pp. 10–15; Fareed Zakaria, FromWealth to Power: The Unusual International Security, Vol. 25, No. 3 (Winter 2000/01), pp. 128–161 © 2000 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 128 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/016228800560543 by guest on 01 October 2021 Security Seeking under Anarchy 129 through arms buildups, unilateral diplomacy, mercantile (or even autarkic) foreign economic policies, and opportunistic expansion.3 Defensive realism holds that the international system provides incentives for expansion only under certain conditions. Under anarchy, many of the means a state uses to increase its security decrease the security of other states. This se- curity dilemma causes states to worry about one another’s future intentions and relative power. Pairs of states may pursue purely security-seeking strate- gies, but inadvertently generate spirals of mutual hostility or conºict. States of- ten, although not always, pursue expansionist policies because their leaders mistakenly believe that aggression is the only way to make their states secure. Defensive realism predicts greater variation in internationally driven expan- sion and suggests that states ought to generally pursue moderate strategies as the best route to security. Under most circumstances, the stronger states in the international system should pursue military, diplomatic, and foreign economic policies that communicate restraint.4 Defensive realism has recently come under attack from critics of realism and even from fellow realists. Critics of realism, such as Andrew Moravcsik and Jeffrey Legro, fault various defensive realist theories for positing a role for do- mestic politics, elite belief systems and misperceptions, and international insti- tutions. By including such variables in their theories, the critics argue, defensive realists effectively repudiate the core assumptions of political real- ism.5 Offensive realists, such as Fareed Zakaria and Randall Schweller, charge Origins of America’s World Role (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998); Randall L. Schweller, “Bandwagoning for Proªt: Bringing the Revisionist State Back In,” International Security, Vol. 19, No. 1 (Summer 1994), pp. 72–107; Schweller, Deadly Imbalances: Tripolarity and Hitler’s Strat- egy of World Conquest (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997); Samuel P. Huntington, “Why International Primacy Matters,” International Security, Vol. 17, No. 4 (Spring 1993), pp. 68–83; and Eric J. Labs, “Beyond Victory: Offensive Realism and the Expansion of War Aims,” Security Studies, Vol. 6, No. 4 (Summer 1997), pp. 1–49. 4. Robert Jervis, “Cooperation under the Security Dilemma,” World Politics, Vol. 30, No. 2 (January 1978), pp. 167–214, provides the theoretical foundations for defensive realism. Examples of defen- sive realism include Stephen M. Walt, The Origins of Alliances (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1987); Walt, Revolution and War (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1995); Barry R. Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain, and Germany between the World Wars (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1984); Thomas J. Christensen and Jack Snyder, “Chain Gangs and Passed Bucks: Predicting Alliance Patterns in Multipolarity,” International Organization, Vol. 44, No. 2 (Spring 1990), pp. 137–168; Christensen, “Perceptions and Alliances in Europe, 1860–1940,” Inter- national Organization, Vol. 51, No. 1 (Winter 1997), pp. 65–98; Stephen Van Evera, “Offense, De- fense, and the Causes of War,” International Security, Vol. 22, No. 4 (Spring 1998), pp. 5–43; and Van Evera, Causes of War: Power and the Roots of Conºict (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1999). 5. Jeffrey W. Legro and Andrew Moravcsik, “Is Anybody Still a Realist?” International Security, Vol. 24, No. 2 (Fall 1999), pp. 5–55. Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/016228800560543 by guest on 01 October 2021 International Security 25:3 130 that defensive realism cannot explain state expansion because it argues that there are never international incentives for such behavior.6 I argue that the debate between defensive realism and offensive realism over the implications of anarchy and the need to clarify defensive realism’s auxil- iary assumptions deserve attention for three reasons. First, the outcome of this theoretical debate has broad policy implications. Defensive realism suggests that under certain conditions, pairs of nondemocratic states can avoid war, states can engage in mutually beneªcial cooperation without the assistance of international institutions, and norms proscribing the development and use of weapons of mass destruction are largely epiphenomenal.7 In addition, offen- sive realism and defensive realism generate radically different prescriptions for military doctrine, foreign economic policy, military intervention, and crisis management.8 Second, debates within particular research traditions, not debates between them, are more likely to generate theoretical progress in the study of interna- tional politics. By developing and testing theories derived from the same core assumptions, researchers can more easily identify competing hypotheses, reªne scope conditions for theories, and uncover new facts. Arguably, this is a more productive strategy for the accumulation of knowledge than the current tendency among some scholars to brand entire research programs as “degener- ative.”9 As Robert Jervis observes: “Programs—and, even more, their ªrst 6. Randall L. Schweller, “Neorealism’s Status Quo Bias: What Security Dilemma?” Security Studies, Vol. 5, No. 3 (Spring 1996), pp. 90–121; and Fareed Zakaria, “Realism and Domestic Politics: A Re- view Essay,” International Security, Vol. 17, No. 1 (Summer 1992), pp. 177–198. 7. See Charles L. Glaser, “Realists as Optimists: Cooperation as Self-Help,” Security Studies, Vol. 5, No. 3 (Spring 1996), pp. 122–166; Robert Jervis, “Realism, Neoliberalism, and Cooperation,” Inter- national Security, Vol. 24, No. 1 (Summer 1999), pp. 42–63; and Kenneth N. Waltz, “Structural Real- ism after the Cold War,” International Security, Vol. 25, No. 1 (Summer 2000), pp. 5–41. 8. For examples of competing foreign policy prescriptions drawn from offensive realism and de- fensive realism, see Mearsheimer, “Back to the Future,” especially pp.
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