ABSTRACT OF “REALISTS AS OPTIMISTS”, BY CHARLES L. GLASER.
ð The standard structural-realist argument predicts that cooperation between adversaries, while not impossible, will be difficult to achieve and, as a result, will be rare and contribute relatively little to states’ well being.
o E.G: Waltz argues that “rules institutions, and patterns of cooperation … are all limited in extent and modified from what they might otherwise be”.
o E.G: Grieco says that “realism presents a fundamentally pessimistic analysis of the prospect for international cooperation”.
o E.G: Keohane concludes that “realism sometimes seems to imply, pessimistically, that order can be created only by hagamony”.
o E.G: Steve Weber declares that “any cooperation that emerges under anarchy will be tenuous, unstable, and limited to issues of peripheral importance”.
ð Contrary to the conventional wisdom, structural realism properly understood predicts that, under a wide range of conditions, adversaries can best achieve their security goals through cooperative policies, not competitive ones, and should, therefore, choose cooperation when these conditions prevail.
ð More clear when looking to military-policy options during peacetime.
o In this context, cooperation refers to coordinated policies designed to avoid arms races.
o Competition refers to unilateral military buildups, which are likely to generate arms races, and to alliance formation.
ð Beyond being more optimistic about the prospects for peacetimes cooperation, CONTINGENT REALISM is also more optimistic about the likelihood of avoiding war than is the standard structural-realist analysis.
ð Other recent critics to structural realism advance competing theories more than correcting flaws within structural realism, and that’s the main goal of contingent realism.
ð Contingent realism focuses more closely on the elements that structural realists identify as most important than propose new theoretical tools.
ð Contingent realism challenges neo-institutional realists, who see institutions as the key to cooperation, by explaining international cooperation without focusing on institutions.
o But, still, it explains why institutions are necessary for cooperation and how they help.
ð 3 core arguments of contingent realism:
1. Standard explanation is biased, because it emphasizes the benefits of competition while overlooking the its risks, and it implies that “self-help” necessitates competition;
a. in fact, cooperative policies are an important type of self-help
2. In accessing their security, sates should focus on their ability to perform military missions, however, the standard structural-realist argument is cast in terms of power.
a. Defines power as the distribution of these resources among the states in the system.
i. Suggests that the only way to measure such a broad notion of power is through the ability to protect those resources, which is ultimately the military capability.
b. Power influences mission capability, but it is only the beginning of the story.
c. Contingent realism corrects this miss-specification by integrating offense-defense variables into structural-realist theory
i. This distinction is useful to highlight, as the literature on security-dilemma argues, that cooperation can be a country’s best option, and identifies the conditions under which states should prefer arms control or unilateral defensive policies to arms racing.
ii. Raising the security-dilemma explicative analysis also evokes other two concepts necessary to shift the focus from power to military capabilities:
· Offense-defense balance.
o Determines how much military-mission capability a country can get from its power.
o Can be determined in terms of the investment in forces that support offensive missions that an opponent must make to offset a defender’s investment in forces that support defensive missions..
o The offense-defence balance is the ratio of the cost of the offensive forces to the cost of the defensive forces.
§ Therefore, the defender’s power multiplied by the offense-defense balance tell us much more about the defender’s prospects for maintaining effective defensive capabilities than does considering power alone.
· Offense-defense distinguishability as key variables.
o This enable us to consider whether states can choose to convert their power into different types of military capability, specifically, offensive and defensive mission capability.
o When offense and defense are completely distinguishable, the forces that support offensive can be differentiate from the forces that support offensive missions.
o When offense and defense are not distinguishable, the forces that support offensive missions can be used as effectively in defensive missions.
iii. This leads to a shift, from the balance of power theory to a military-capabilities theory.
· Security is much more closely correlate with mission capabilities than with power.
iv. The basic argument of structural realism is not altered by using the dimensions of the security dilemma to shift from a focus on power to a focus on military capability.
v. Explicitly including the dimensions of the security dilemma as variable increases the ability of a structural theory to explain variations in states’ choices between competitive and cooperative options for acquiring necessary military capabilities.
· In contrast, Waltz formulation focuses on a single variable – the degree of polarity – and explores its implications for the probability of war.
· E.G: Cold war showed how the path for choice was vast in spite of the static bipolarity.
d. This way, a security-seeking state comparing competition and cooperation must confront 2 fundamental questions:
i. Which will contribute more to its military capabilities for deterring attack, and for defending if deterrence fails?
ii. Appreciating the pressures created by anarchy and insecurity, the state should ask which approach is best for avoiding capabilities that threaten others’ abilities to defend and deter, while not undermining its military capabilities?
3. Countries should not focus solely on capabilities, but also on motives. Consequently, countries should sometimes exercise self-restraint and pursue cooperative military policy, because these policies can convince a rational opponent to revise favorably its view of the country’s motives.
a. The rational actors posited by structural realism can under certain conditions communicate information about their motives by manipulating their military policies.
b. Because greedy states have an incentive to misrepresent their motives, a pure security seeker can communicate information about its motives only by adopting a policy that is less costly for it than it would be for a greedy state.
i. When the policies that indicate that a state is not greedy are more costly for greedy states than for pure security seekers, greedy states are less likely to adopt them.
c. 3 ways of communicating state’s benign acts:
I. Arms control:
a. The costs of agreement are higher for the greedy state.
i. IN CASE THE OFFENSIVE CAPABILITIES HAVE THE ADVANTAGE, the costs of agreement are higher for the greedy state.
ii. IN CASE OF DEFENSIVE CAPABILITIES HAVE THE ADVANTAGE, agreements provide less informations since arms race is less likely to make expansion possible.
iii. WHEN OFFENSE AND DEFENSE ARE INDISTINGUISHABLE, it can also communicate information about motives if we assume that both countries have some chance of gaining an offensive military advantage in the race, the costs of accepting limits on force size will be greater for greedier states.
II. Unilateral defense:
a. WHEN OFFENSE HAS THE ADVANTAGE, compared to the arms control approach, this state will have indicated not only its willingness to forgo offensive capabilities, but also a willingness to invest greater resources to send this message.
III. Unilateral restraint:
a. The state has reduced its offensive capability, which a greedy state would be less likely to do
b. The state has incurred some risk, due to the shortfall in military capabilities, which the adversary could interpret as a further indication of the value the state places on improving relations.
è States are to turn to unilateral restraint only when other options are precluded, e.g. when unilateral defense is impossible because offense and defense are indistinguishable, or when it is unaffordable, because offense has a large advantage over defense, or when, or when they conclude that an especially dramatic gesture is necessary.
ð Those claims are based on 3 main assumptions of traditional structural-realism, now re-interpreted regarding offense-deffense differentiation and the other 3 core purposes of contingent realism:
1. States try to maximize relative power, which creates a zero-sum situation that usually precludes cooperation.
a. Highlights that this position is rejected by some major structural-realists like Waltz.
b. Still, this claim can be identified in traditional structural-realists if we note that they perceive that their conclusions about maximizing power are conclusions about means, not ends.
c. Three arguments why increasing relative power may not always be the best way to increase security:
i. It overlooks the security dilemma: more security to him may mean more insecurity to its neighbors and raise some competing behavior in the region.
ii. It could increase the probability of losing an arms race.
· Even a country that would prefer to win an arms race - that is, that would prefer superiority to parity – might choose cooperation over arms racing to avoid the risk of losing the race.
iii. Not distinguishing among offensive and defensive potential may miss that maximizing relative power may not maximize military capabilities that a country needs for defense and deterrence.
· E.G: A country may maximize its offensive power, however, at the cost of a very vulnerable defensive capability.
d. Some traditional structural realists claims that states choose to maximize or not their power, however, this approach is paradoxal and goes against the realist paradox of systemic constraining being more relevant than states will.
e. It also wouldn’t answer to the first and second reasons why power maximization may not be the best alternative to maximize power.
f. Contingent realism points that under a wide range of conditions, cooperation should be a country’s preferred option; significantly, two or more countries could simultaneously reach this conclusion, thereby making security cooperation feasible.
i. Claims for eliminating the bias towards competition in the standard argument.
ii. This bias is the result of several mistakes:
1) Although the standard argument equates self-help with pursuit of competitive policies, in fact cooperative policies are an important type of self-help.
a. Thus, by itself, self-help tells us essentially nothing about whether states should prefer cooperation or competition.
2) If military advantages are extremely valuable, then military disadvantages can be extremely dangerous. Therefore, when uncertain about the outcome of an arms race, which it would like to win, a risk-averse state could prefer an arms control agreement that accepted the current military status quo to gambling on prevailing in the arms race.
3) The standard argument fails to recognize that uncertainty about motives also creates powerful reasons for states to cooperate.
iii. When the risk of competition exceed the risks of cooperation, states should direct their self-help efforts toward achieving cooperation.
2. States’ concerns over relative gains make security cooperation especially difficult.
a. In security real, military assets are the instruments of politicy, while security is the end.
b. In the economic realm, tariffs and other barriers are instruments of policy, while wealth is the end.
c. A policy provides the state with gains when it increases what the state values, not when it increases the instruments the state has available or employs.
d. Correctly formulated, in the security realm the “absolute gains” from cooperation refer to an increase in security.
i. When cooperation would result in a relative loss in military assets, and when this loss reduces mission capability and security, the state will refuse to cooperate. However, this refusal would reflect the failure of cooperation to increase security, that is, to provide absolute gains, not the state’s concern over relative gains.
e. All else being equal, increases in the adversary’s security often increase one’s own security because a more secure adversary has smaller incentives for pursuing an expansionist foreign policy, and therefore will pose a smaller threat.
i. This argument does not depend on whether the increase in the adversary’s security exceeds or trails the increase in the defender’s security, because the change in the adversary’s motives reflects its absolute security, not a relative measure of it’s security compared to the defender’s.
ii. Two particular cases:
1) WHEN FACING AN ADVERSARY THAT IS MOTIVATED BY GREED
a. It may be said that in case of agreement for offensive control, if the greed cheats than, the defender would have less counteroffensive capability and, so, some kind of less security.
i. One must note, however, that an improved defense capability could make the defender even more safer than a counteroffensive capability.
ii. One must focus at security, the goal, and not the means.
b. Really loss in this case wouldn’t come from the fact that the adversary gains more security, but rather that the defender does not gain.
2) WHEN COUNTRIES HAVE CONFLICTS LYNG BEYOND THEIR PRIMARY SECURITY INTERESTS – SECURITY.
a. He argues, however, that relative gains in security could influence countries’ abilities to prevail in these secondary conflicts, if the advantaged country is willing to risk major war to prevail.
f. Points that even if the country suffers a relative loss in security there may still be path for cooperation if not-cooperating proofs to be no better for the interests of this country.
g. Criticize the interpretation according to which cooperation in economic areas may enable the other country to prosperate more and convert this surplus in advantages for future security.
i. Points that such studies have not established a strong relationship between defense spending and economic growth.
ii. In the fewer cases where it proofs to be true, there are three additional considerations which influence whether the risk would outweigh the defender’s direct gains in security:
1) The beneficial effects of the adversary’s increased security make its increased relative economic strength less threatening, since it would be less inclined to use this economic potential for security-driven expansion.
2) The disadvantaged country would be able to offset any increased military threat made possible by growth in the adversary’s GNP by increasing the percentage of GNP that it spends on defense.
a. When the adversary’s relative economic gains are small, the defender risks a loss of prosperity, but not of security.
3) When defense has a large advantage over defense, the possibility of relative gains should do little to inhibit economic or security cooperation.
a. Consequently, countries that possess large nuclear arsenals and that rely heavily on nuclear deterrence for their security-related relative-gains constraints, since nuclear weapons create a very large advantage for the defense.
3. States adopt competitive policies because the possibility of cheating makes cooperation too risky.
ð Contingent realism doesn’t claim to necessarily explain states’ behavior correctly, but rather that such a baseline is essential for assessing the explanatory power of structural realism relative to theories buit on other assumptions and at other levels of analysis.
ð Contingently realism suggests that structural realism, correctly understood, can explain the end of the Cold War relatively easily, but has greater difficulty explaining the latter half of the Cold War.
ð Structural realism does not assume the presence of greedy states in the system.
ð The types of policies that states can choose from depend on whether the forces required to support offensive strategies are distinguishable from those required to support defensive strategies.
è IF THEY ARE DISTINGUISHABLE
ð Than states can choose to build offense, defense or both.
ð They can also engage in arms control to limit offensive forces, defense, or both.
ð This offers 3 possibilities:
1. Cooperation via arms control.
a. Whether arms control is preferred depend on the offense-defense balance.
i. When defense has large advantage, arms control will be largely unnecessary.
ii. When offense has the advantage arms control has far more to contribute.
· Arms control would likely be necessary to avoid this emphasis on offensive forces and on the arms race that could ensue, since both countries would find it difficult, technically or economically, to counter the adversary’s offense with defense.
o FAILURE POINT: If offense advantages increases to much the temptation for cheating will be bigger and the possible gains of a headstart would be substantial enouth to jeopardize agreements.
o The author points, however, that in such cases states shall engage on banning the offensive forces instead of simply controling.
§ Still, it would be very dependent on the institutional design to restrain cheating.
§ Also, because arms control can definitely improve the military status quo, states should be inclined to prefer arms control.
2. Unilateral defense.
3. Arms racing.
è IF THEY ARE INDISTINGUISHABLE
ð Build larger forces and risk generating an arms race.
ð Pursue arms control that reduces or caps the size of their forces.
o Less clearly useful because there is no general conclusion.
§ It would be more dependent on net assessments of the variation in mission capability as a function of force size for specific cases.
§ This would lead us to the same conclusions of rather to cooperate or not in case the specific situation shows to have advantage of the offense or defense, however, when offense is to have the advantage, it will be harder and riskier to settle an agreement because the knowledge about whether the capability is really playing an offensive role will be less credited than in case it was typical and clear recognizable offensive capability.
· It would be riskier also because large defense forces wouldn’t be deployed as a hedge against cheating.
· EXAMPLE I HAVE CREATE E.G: If we have a sword and a shield, than we can agree on keeping the shield, and this agreement would be enforced also by the possibility of restraining cheats by using the shields. However, if we have just swords, or swords and knifes, than an agreement for keeping them all wouldn’t count on any enforcement possibility. Or else, if we allow any knife or sword to not be kept, than the agreement was just useless.
ð This analysis leads to conclude that, contrary to the standard structural-realist analysis, arms racing is only clearly preferred to less competitive policies under rather narrow conditions:
o When offense has the advantage and is indistinguishable from defense;
o When the risks of being cheated exceed the risks of arms racing.
ð Support for contingent realism also comes from the game theory literature applied to cooperation under anarchy:
o The country comparing the value of the arms agreement and the risk of being cheated faces four possible outcomes:
§ The agreement prevaisl (CC)
§ The adversary cheats, leaving the country one step behind in ensuing arms race (CD)
§ An equal arms race (DD)
§ The country cheats, gaining a one step lead in the arms race (DC)
o The country’s willingness to risk cooperation grows as:
§ The difference between falling behind by a step and running an equal arms race (CD-DD) decreases
§ The difference between the arms control agreement and the equal arms race (CC-DD) increases
o Improving the country’s ability to monitor an agreement reduces the difference between the adversary getting a lead and starting the race on equal footing.
o Cooperation should occur if the countries believe they are playing stag hunt.
§ Cooperation can also be possible if the countries believe they are playing prisioner’s dilemma, since, given their strategy for dealing with defection, the overall game that results with interaction can be a stag hunt.
ð Despite resorting to Game Theory, contingent realism does not establish an important role for institutions.
o The role played by these institutions is modest since states remain the key actors and anarchy remains unchanged.
o Contingent realism sees institutions as the product of the same factors – state’s interests and the constraints imposed by the system – that influence whether states should cooperate.
§ It sees institutions not as having much explanatory power of their own, but instead as a part of what is being explained.
ð Highlights that, according to him, most of the neo-realist x neo-liberalist debate (neo-neo debate) is a consequence of the reduced amount of cooperation the neo-realist prescribe, leaving a gap which was filled by institutionalist arguments, which purpotrated to diverge from structural realism.
o Contingent realism reclaims much of the territory that the standar argument gave to neoinstitutionalists.
ð Implications for structural-realist arguments:
1) Contingent realism predicts cooperation under certain conditions and competition under others.
2) Development of an improved structural-realist baseline improves our ability to explore the value of alternative explanations for competitive and cooperative policies.
· E.G: Since contingent realism predicts cooperation in certain cases, alternative and complementary explanations for cooperation - for example, institutions and regimes – could become less compelling.
· E.G: On the other hand, in cases where contingent realism predicts extensive cooperation but little occurs, other theories that explain competition become more important.
3) Because contingent realism identifies countervailing pressures, it will, at least sometimes, not clearly prescribe either competitive or cooperative policies. In these cases, other level of analysis will necessarily play a more important role in explaining state behavior.
4) Contrary to what appears to be the conventional wisdom, structural realism, properly understood, has more trouble explaining the competitive military policies the superpowers pursued during the latter half of the Cold War than it does explaining the less competitive policies that have followed it.
· This because standard arguments claims that bipolarity is more stable and that rivalry is the pattern to be maintained, however, they miss the fact that was the aarms competition of this bipolar rivalry that lead to a situation in which the security dilemma was greatly reduced, if not entirely eliminated, by the superpowers’ acquisition of nuclear weapon in a level that defense dominance was clear enough and distinguishable enough from offensive capabilities as to reduce the complexity of arms control agreements that were required to slow competition.
5) Contrary to the standard interpretation, structural-realist analysis offers generally optimistic predictions about the future of conflict between Europe’s major powers.
a) Uncertainties about whether allies will meet their commitments matter less because countries can maintain adequate deterrent capabilities on their own.
b) Increases in the miscalculation of capabilities will be smaller because capabilities are less sensitive to differences in the size and quality of forces.
c) The ability of a major power to gain military superiority by ganging up against other major powers is greatly reduced if not eliminated.
o Because nuclear weapons provide very large advantage for defense, a multipolar Europe can largely avoid these problems.
6) This analysis also indicates a likely source of tension. Current nuclear powers will face conflicting pressures if other major or intermediate powers – most obviously Germany and Ukraine – decide they need nuclear power.
o On the one hand, structural arguments hold that the nuclear powers should welcome security that nuclear brings.
o On the other hand, nuclear powers also tend to avoid traditional wars because nuclear development lead to a decrease in traditional weapons, reducing their confidence in a traditional war.
o NATO comes as a security measure which stops the Germany nuclear claim, however, there is no such thing for Ukraine.
