mearsheimer's 5 assumptions of realism

Of course, human behavior is not a direct extension of the behavior of other animals, but, as we have explained, the ecological setting in which our own species evolved made these same traits as or even more important for humans. The constraints on biological group selection, such as significant differences in a given trait between groups and low migration, are relaxed in the case of cultural traits, since groups actively promote cultural distinctions and have many mechanisms to prevent flows between them.Reference Richerson and Boyd190 Therefore, it is not just likely but quite apparent that many cultural traits have evolved out of group-level competitionsometimes referred to as memes, as opposed to genes. In Matt Ridleys words, to prefer group selection over individual selection is to prefer genocide over murder.Reference Ridley188 Group selection can promote cooperation and altruism, but only within the group. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. As we would expect, this leads to sex differences in the desire for status. Mearsheimer explains that when following a realist policy . However, we need to see the world as it is, not as we would like it to be. First, we explain the theory of offensive realism and the place of anarchy in that theory. Will an outsider compete for the current or future resources that the insiders need to survive or expand? Finally, evolution may make significant contributions to other theories of international relations. (Examples include the spread of Christianity or Islam at the expense of traditional religions over the last 2,000 years.) Offensive realists can thus explain more than the behavior of states or great powers. http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/59922#eid5780558, http://edge.org/conversation/steven_pinker-the-false-allure-of-group-selection. Indeed, Wrangham and Glowacki find evidence that after warriors killed members of a neighboring society, the killers group benefited as a whole via territorial expansion83precisely as has been shown for intergroup killings by chimpanzees. Andr Munro was an editor at Encyclopaedia Britannica. However, offensive realism is one of the most compelling current theories for explaining major phenomena across the history of international politics, such as great power rivalries and the origins of war. The most obvious challenge that evolutionary theory presents to international relations concerns our understanding of human nature. As evolutionary economist Robert Frank has explained, Evidence suggests that we come into the world equipped with a nervous system that worries about rank. The cognitive mechanisms underpinning the three traits were established in an environment very different from the one in which humans now live, but they persist because our brains, biochemistry and nervous systems, which evolved over many millions of years, have remained the same despite the rapid sociological and technological advances of the last few centuries. The theory of Mearsheimer has five basis assumptions: 1. Reading the literature of offensive realism can be hauntingly analogous to reading ethnographies of warfare among preindustrial societies such as the Yanomamo in the Amazon, the Mae Enga in New Guinea, or the Shuar in the Andes. No theory is perfect. That certainly may be, as he attempts to demonstrate. Major realist theories and their predictions,154 plus predictions from human evolution. Mearsheimer outlines five bedrock assumptions on which offensive realism stands: (1) the international system is anarchic; (2) great powers inherently possess some offensive military capability; (3) states can never be certain about the intentions of other states; (4) survival is the primary goal of great powers; and (5) great powers are rational actors.39 From these core assumptions, Mearsheimer argues three general patterns of behavior result: fear, self-help, and power maximization.40 It is these three behaviors that are the focus of our article. 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). 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). Chagnon, Wrangham and Glowacki and others have also shown that individuals, as well as the group, may gain significant reputational and reproductive advantages of participation in warfare. We find that these precise traits are not only evolutionarily adaptive but also empirically common across the animal kingdom, especially in primate and human societies. Offensive Realism and Maximizing Power. This is not to deny that they miscalculate from time to time. By contrast, our theory posits that a tendency toward offensive realist behavior, however modulated by other tendencies, would have conferred a fitness advantage in the environment in which humans evolved and should thus have led to dispositions to seek and like power. Rather, we suggest it is an example of what biologists call evolutionary convergencesimilar traits arising in different settings because they are good solutions to a common problem. Far from the original view of chimpanzees as boisterous but peaceful human cousins, researchers in recent decades have uncovered that these primates have a systematic tendency to kill males from rival groups.Reference Wilson, Boesch, Fruth, Furuichi, Gilby, Hashimoto, Hobaiter, Hohmann, Itoh, Koops, Lloyd, Matsuzawa, Mitani, Mjungu, Morgan, Muller, Mundry, Nakamura, Pruetz, Pusey, Riedel, Sanz, Schel, Simmons, Waller, Watts, White, Wittig, Zuberbuhler and Wrangham2,Reference Wrangham3,Reference Manson and Wrangham4 As primatologist Richard Wrangham put it, violence between groups of chimpanzees is like a shoot-on-sight policy.Reference Wrangham5 The strategic rationale is very simple: to eliminate rivals and increase territory. As an alpha male provides stability to the group, so too a hegemon in international politics, as many scholars recognize, may provide stability for lesser states both in the realm of international security and for international political economy. Although Mearsheimer recognized war as a legitimate instrument of statecraft, he did not believe that it was always justified. John J. Mearsheimer, in full John Joseph Mearsheimer, (born December 14, 1947, New York, New York, U.S.), prominent American scholar of international relations best known for his theory of offensive realism. We do not assume that humans and our primate cousins simply inherited these traits wholesale from a common ancestor. Mearsheimer does use his theory to predict the future of great power A caveat to this prediction is that women in power may tend to act like men, either because selection effects trump stereotypical sex differences (female leaders may have personalities similar to male leaders), or because egoism and dominance are necessary traits in order to survive in the system of international anarchy (or on Capitol Hill).Reference Fukuyama197,Reference Clift and Brazaitis198. Will a male from the outgroup present competition for mates, or will his presence threaten the ingroup males position in the extended family or group? Like most international relations scholars of his generation, Mearsheimer was deeply influenced by Kenneth Waltz, the founder of the school of international relations known as neorealism. 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). Where extensive international cooperation does occur, it is often only by virtue of a hegemon willing to sustain it, and cooperation quickly breaks down if core interests and security are put at risk. Indeed, the possibility of even more intense security competition in the Sino-American relationship, between India and Pakistan, and in the Middle East highlights the importance of making the theorys logic explicit and revealing and testing its foundations. Some evidence suggests that the separation between common chimpanzees and bonobos was quite recent, occurring perhaps only 0.86 million to 0.89 million years ago, although it remains possible that the separation occurred much earlier, between 1.5 million to 2.5 million years ago.Reference Won and Hey166 Either way, humans separated from our common ancestor with both chimpanzee species long before, about 5 million to 6 million years ago. Second, even if group selection does occur, it can only increase altruism within groups. First, neorealism does not rely on noumenal ultimate causation, and, second, it explains and predicts variations in the likelihood of war in international politicsparticularly among great powers. Defensive realists argue that too much powerclassically, too much military powerdecreases a states security because other states will balance against it. Strikingly, therefore, behavioral dispositions that enhanced success in the small-scale intergroup anarchy of humans evolutionary past may have endowed us with behaviors that also enhance success in the anarchy of the international system. However, a study by Wrangham and Glowacki, which explicitly looked at warfare among hunter-gatherers who were surrounded by other hunter-gatherers, found that warfare was just as common in this more natural setting.Reference Wrangham and Glowacki80 Evidence from across the cumulative research of archeologists and anthropologists indicates that violence is a widespread feature of small-scale foraging societies and follows a pattern that is consistent as far back as we can see in the ethnographic and archeological record.81. Mearsheimer's theory is a spin-off of Kenneth Waltz's neorealism, also known as structural or defensive realism. Mearsheimer argues that anarchy is the fundamental cause of such behavior. We see several reasons why human behavior is an important predictor of state behavior in the context of this article. A comparison among alternative realist theories. Mearsheimers offensive realism argues that states gain power to ensure security. The impact of these biological factors on social and political behavior will vary depending on context. Self-help, power maximization, and fear are strategies to survive nature, not just contemporary international politics. Total loading time: 0 Dominic Johnson is professor of international relations at the University of Oxford. Recently, a 10-year conflict in the Kibale Mountains of Uganda came to an end. However, unlike Waltz, who fears that too much power for a state will lead other states to seek to achieve a balance of power and thus actually threaten the states security (the genesis of defensive realism),30 Mearsheimer argues that the international system requires that states maximize their offensive power to be secure and keep rivals from gaining power at their expense.31 In fact, this systemic incentive is so powerful that states would become the most powerful of all if they could: A states ultimate goal is to be the hegemon in the system.32 Only by being the hegemon can the state be absolutely sure of its security. Few principles unite the discipline of international relations, but one exception is anarchythe absence of government in international politics. We argue that evolutionary theory also offers a fundamental cause for offensive realist behavior (see Table1). 1-49; Robert Gilpin, War and Given the prominence of the concept in present-day international relations theory, it is striking that anarchy only took hold as a central feature of scholarship in recent decades, since the publication of Kenneth Waltzs Theory of International Politics in 1979. Of course, cooperation and helping behaviors are common in nature, but such behaviors persist only where they help the genes causing that behavior to spread. Natural selection has led to a variety of contingent, context-dependent adaptations for maximizing survival and reproduction that include cooperation and alliances as well as self-help and aggression. The international system is anarchic. Evolutionary theory makes three major contributions to the offensive realist theory of international politics: (1) a novel ultimate cause of the primary traits of offensive realist behavior (self-help, power maximization, and fear); (2) an extension of offensive realism to any domain in which human actors compete for power (e.g., civil war, ethnic conflict, or domestic politics); and (3) an explanation for why individual leaders themselves, not just states, behave as they do. John Mearsheimer also sees a looming tragedy, one that (he argues) is inevitable. The brain may be responding exactly as it was designed to do, given informational inputs from the environment. The second contribution of our theory is that it offers an explanation of the behavior of humans in a wide variety of contexts extending beyond international politics. To summarize, a species that lives communally could have two broad forms of social organization. In general, humans cooperate where we can (e.g., within groups or within alliances deriving mutual benefit), but the anarchy of international relations is a hostile environment that, like the one in which humans evolved, tends to trigger our egoism, dominance, and group bias. Omissions? Offensive realism also does not have such expectations. Yet, it is notable that while humans are indeed a remarkably cooperative species, history shows that we have been remarkably good at cooperating in order toamong other thingsdominate others and kill. First, offensive realism fails to explain why costly wars sometimes occur against the interests of the states that initiate them. Third, state leaders are the actors who make important strategic decisions from a set of options, and they are potentially affected by their human dispositions and those of their advisers, even if their actions are tempered by checks and balances. Although warfare is a high-stakes collective action problem, warriors are willing to participate because over evolutionary time the dividends have tended to outweigh the costs.84,Reference Wrangham and Glowacki85. John Mearsheimer is one of these theorists. He received a D.Phil. However, another important source of variation is individual differencesthat is, specific people exhibit these traits to greater or lesser degrees. For their exceptional advice and comments, we thank lafur Darri Bjrnsson, Dan Blumstein, Miriam Fendius Elman, John Friend, David Galbreath, Azar Gat, Matthew Gratias, Valerie Hudson, Patrick James, Robert Jervis, Robert Keohane, Charles Lees, Anthony Lopez, Curt Nichols, Rose McDermott, Steven Pinker, Michael Price, Stephen Peter Rosen, Rafe Sagarin, Dominic Tierney, Monica Toft, Peter Turchin, Mark Van Vugt, Richard Wrangham, Remco Zwetsloot, and the anonymous reviewers. Theorists have had to explain how cooperation could occur in the face of significant individual self-interest, the difficulties of collective-action, and the free-rider problem.Reference Boyd175,Reference Olson176,Reference Ostrom177 Special conditions are needed for cooperation to emerge and remain stable among unrelated individuals.178,Reference Sigmund179 Typically, those special conditions are ones that make helping advantageous to the genes responsible for the behavior. An organized social structure can help promote the harvesting of resources, coordinate group activity, and reduce within-group conflict. None captures all salient issues. Cooperation is extremely hard to achieve and requires special conditions. On the contrary, it is famously hard to initiate and maintain from both a theoretical and empirical perspective, which is why this topic continues to fill huge volumes of scholarly literature in economics and political science.208,209 As we have emphasized, cooperation is easy to explain where it brings clear mutual benefits to the self-interest of those involved, such as trade or military alliances (in which case offensive realism is as good an explanation of cooperation as any other theory). 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). Second, the group might seek an alternative for the resource, perhaps through technological innovation or by substitution. For Mearsheimer, states seek to maximize power not because they are aggressive, but because the system requires itthis behavior is the best way to maximize security in an anarchic world. A recurrent criticism of any theory of international relations based on the role of individuals is why we should expect individual behavior to tell us anything about state behavior. Individuals may follow generalized decision rules, but these rules give rise to different behaviors in different contexts. Moreover, the very acquisition and exercise of power itself is known to inflate dominance behavior further.161. While biological group selection among humans is unlikely, the selection of cultural traits among groups is possible. realism's 5 assumptions about the international system o 1)the international system is anarchic (no higher ruling body) o 2) states inherently possess some offensive military capability which gives them the wherewithal to hurt and possibly to destroy each other o 3) states can never be certain about the intentions of other states

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