Hedley Bull and His Contribution to International Relations Author(s): Stanley Hoffman Source: International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1944-), Vol. 62, No. 2 (Spring, 1986), pp. 179-195 Published by: Wiley on behalf of the Royal Institute of International Affairs Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2618360 . Accessed: 15/10/2013 06:20 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Wiley and Royal Institute of International Affairs are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1944-). http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 137.204.120.49 on Tue, 15 Oct 2013 06:20:01 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions HedleyBull and his contributionto international relations* STANLEYHOFFMANNt It was an honourand a privilegeto be asked to reviewHedley Bull's contributionto thestudy of internationalpolitics. Over theyears we had discoveredmany affinities. We had a commonway of lookingat thetheory and practiceof internationalpolitics, evenif we did not alwaysgive the same answersto thequestions we bothasked. I was always impressedby the extraordinaryclarity and lucidityof his arguments,and by theirfairness-by his way of takinginto account all thepoints in his adversary'scase, and all the objectionsto his own argumentsand assumptions.Both of us looked at a disciplinethat had developed in the United Statesafter the Second World War as outsiders who did not support all the premises of its main practitionersand theoreticians. I was alwaysan admirerof theextraordinary sweep of Hedley Bull's mind,and yet when I reviewedhis work I was leftwith an inevitablesense of incompleteness.He accomplishedso much,but there were also so manymore directions in whichhe might have gone and in whichhe was beginningto go. The moststriking aspect of his workis itsextraordinary unity and thecoherence of his approach: the unity of method and of substance,and the consistencyand continuityof his concernabout internationalsociety and thosecontemporary issues which are decisivefor the survivalof an internationalsociety. However, therewere also significanttensions in his work: theygave it its density,and makeit particularly instructiveand thought-provoking. The firstpart of this essay will be devotedto Hedley Bull's worldview, and parttwo to his writingsabout thecontemporary world political scene. Hedley Bull's world view The firstquestion to be takenup hereis, wheredoes Hedley Bull belongwithin the studyof internationalrelations? The second is his unityof methodand substance,to whichI have alreadyalluded; and thethird is Bull's view of internationalsociety. At firstsight it appearsto be obvious whereHedley Bull fitsinto the disciplineof internationalrelations. He seemsto takeup a positionclose to realism,the school of thoughtthat looks at internationalrelations as the politicsof statesin theirexternal aspects,to quote fromhis own accountof Martin Wight's approach.' Realism starts by rejectingall formsof utopianism,as Bull himselfdid. His mostmagisterial criticism of utopianismis to be foundin The anarchicalsociety, where he disposed decisivelyof such conceptsas world government,a new medievalism,a regionalreconstruction of Hedley Bull, MontagueBurton Professor of InternationalRelations at OxfordUniversity since 1977, died on 18 May 1985. This is the revisedtext of the 1985 CyrilFoster lecture, delivered at Oxfordon 17 October 1985. t StanleyHoffmann is Professorof French Civilization and Presidentof the Center for European Studies at HarvardUniversity. 1. Introductionto MartinWight, Systems of states (Leicester:.Leicester University Press, 1977). 0020-5850/86/2/0179-17$3.00(0)1986International Affairs This content downloaded from 137.204.120.49 on Tue, 15 Oct 2013 06:20:01 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 180 HEDLEY BULL AND HIS CONTRIBUTION TO INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS theworld, and revolutionaryschemes for change.2 Even in his firstbook, The control ofthe arms race, he had been incisivelycritical of proposalsfor world disarmament.3 And yet thingsare not so simple.Unlike manydestroyers of utopias and many realists-I have in mind George Kennan and Henry Kissinger-Bull nevershowed great enthusiasmfor giving policy advice to usually indifferentprinces. Many contemporaryrealists have been attractedto policy guidancelike mothsto a flame. Bull had no particularobjection to scholarsgiving policy advice as long as it wentto a morally acceptable government;4he himselfserved as an adviser to the British governmenton armscontrol matters for several years. Yet, on thewhole, he showed more tolerancethan enthusiasmfor this task. His attitudewas similarto that of RaymondAron: in thefield of internationalrelations, as indeedin politicalscience in general,what Aron called 'wise counsel' was quite naturallyderived from scholarly research,but themain purpose of scholarshipwas to advanceknowledge. To be sure,not all realistshave felta need to outdo the bureaucratson theirown ground (certainlyHans Morgenthaunever did). But therewere two other very importantdifferences between Bull's approachand thatof therealists. The firstcame fromhis distrustof therealist model of statebehaviour, which lies behindthe realists' prescriptions.Morgenthau was theone who putit most forcefully in thefirst few pages of Politicsamong nations:the strugglefor power and peace (5th edn, New York: Knopf, 1973): one can derivefrom the studyof history,from the logic of interstate relationsin the internationalmilieu, and fromthe geopoliticalposition of a state, somethinglike a rationalset of rulesfor the conduct of itsforeign policy. Instances of departurefrom such rational behaviour are treated,in the realists' works, as aberrations.Hedley Bull was no believerin theordinary rationality of states, nor in the usefulnessof developingprescriptions for rational action, because he was even more pessimisticthan the realists.To them,departures from the normare exceptions;to Hedley Bull, stupidity,folly, miscalculations and mischiefwere alwayspossible. The secondmajor point of difference between Bull and therealists lay in hispoint of departure.He did not beginhis study,as therealists do, by lookingat thestate and its power,a conceptabout whichhe has ratherlittle to say. (And whathe does say about power is actuallyquite close to therealist emphasis on militarypower as theheart of the matter.)Bull's whole body of work takesas its point of departurethe group,or milieu,or 'ensemble'which states form by interacting.It is theinternational system, and,above all,international society. When, in hisfamous article attacking the so-called scientificapproach, he drewup a listof important questions to be askedin thestudy of internationalpolitics, Bull's firstquestion was: 'does thecollectivity of sovereign states constitutea politicalsociety or system,or does it not?'5Similarly, in his critiqueof E. H. Carr's Twentyyears crisis, 1919-39: an introductionto thestudy of international relations(2nd edn,London: Macmillan,1946), written thirty years after its publication, he concluded that 'in the course of demonstratinghow appeals to an overriding internationalsociety subserve the special interests of theruling group of powers, Carr 2. Hedley Bull, The anarchicalsociety: a studyof orderin worldpolitics (London: Macmillan,1977). 3. Hedley Bull, The controlof the arms race: disarmamentand armscontrol in thenuclear age (2nd edn, New York: Praeger,1965). 4. In 'Strategicstudies and its critics',World Politics, July 1968, Bull statesthat being an adviserto a governmentis, fora scholaror a scientist,unbecoming or not dependingon 'whatwe takethe moral nature of thatgovernment and its objectivesto be' (p. 599). 5. Hedley Bull, 'Internationaltheory: the case fora classicalapproach', in Klaus Knorrand JamesN. Rosenau, eds., Contendingapproaches to internationalpolitics(Princeton, NJ: PrincetonUniversity Press, 1969), p. 27. This content downloaded from 137.204.120.49 on Tue, 15 Oct 2013 06:20:01 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions StanleyHoffmann 181 jettisonsthe idea of internationalsociety itself. This is the idea with which a new analysisof theproblem of international relations should now begin.'6Bull's interestin thisidea was constant.Between the late 1950s and the 1980s,American scholarship movedaway fromgeneral theories towards greater specialization, and it has tendedto split into two groups-the strategistsand the political economists. Bull never separatedhis interest in strategicquestions from his investigation of the nature, history and evolutionof internationalsociety. Method and substance Thus we come to whatI calledthe unity of methodand substancein Bull's work.The mostfruitful way of graspingthis is to startwith his critiqueof thescientific approach to internationalrelations theory: his rejectionof 'propositionsbased on logical or mathematicalproof, or upon strictempirical procedures of verification'.7 He attacked thepractitioners of thescientific approach for a numberof reasons.In thefirst place, this method kept its practitionersfrom