What Would Be Prudent?: Forms of Reasoning in World Politics

What Would Be Prudent? Forms of Reasoning in World Politics Robert Hariman and Francis A. Beer The combination of anarchy and diversity in the international environment brings a central question of political studies into sharp focus. This question is: What are the essential elements of political thinking? Generally, the answer should outline an intelligence that is optimally suited to defining interests, organizing groups, controlling resources, and resolving conflicts advantageously. In the international arena, there has been additional sensitivity to equipping political actors to achieve these ends in situations where they cannot rely on any common knowledge, values, or language. We shall argue that the premodern theory of political intelligence known as "prudence" provides an important model for political analysis in the contemporary world. Realism, Prudence, and Complexity For the past half-century, the Western political establishment has relied on a single answer to the question before us. Put bluntly, the answer was Realpolitik. In its more sophisticated form, it was the theory of political realism. The key to political success was to see through all the distractions of culture in order to assess the material conditions of state power. Political actors were assumed to be self-interested power maximizers, defined by their resources for effective action to that end and regulated by their perceptions of others' capacity to affect them in return. Political analysis consisted in assessing all of the means for action according to calculations of gain and risk. By giving priority to material and especially military capabilities, and being suspicious of verbal intentions and agreements, one could objectively determine the best possible course of action for survival in a world of force and fraud. This program for political thinking had the authority of a long intellectual history and the good fortune to be validated by recent history. There is no doubt that Robert Hariman is Endowment Professor of the Humanities and Professor of Rhetoric and Communication Studies at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. Francis A. Beer is Professor of Political Science at the University of Colorado in Boulder, Colorado. © Rhetoric & Public Affairs Vol. 1, No. 3,1998, pp. 299-330 ISSN 1094-8392 300 Rhetoric & Public Affairs realism provided a sound explanation of the 1930s, and that many realists provided good advice throughout the Second World War and the early years of the Cold War. Moreover, there is no question that realism is parsimonious, elegant, and powerful, or that those involved in many conflicts around the world today would be foolish to ignore it. History does not stop for a good theory, however. The Soviet Union disintegrated , the Iron Curtain came clanging down, the global economy kicked into high gear, and modern communication technologies further accelerated the processes of change. If there are universal elements of a political consciousness, they nonetheless always are inflected through the conditions of thought and action defining a given time and place. Although realism has provided a useful model of political rationality in the past, today it is easier to recognize that it also can be unrealistic. Instead of bracketing ethics from calculations of expediency, today the successful political actor needs to recognize how moral values are important sources of political action. Instead of concocting an Esperanto of balanced interests contained in spheres of influence, now negotiators have to become adept in many language games that appeal to diverse audiences. As we have argued elsewhere, these changes in political and intellectual history suggest a paradigm shift in political thought.1 The first step in this shift is to recognize how realism functioned as more than a substantive theory of international relations. Indeed, much of the importance of realist texts from Thucydides to Machiavelli to Morgenthau lies not in their historically specific accounts of foreign affairs, but rather in their persuasive success as models of how to think and speak in any political situation. Realism has supplied modern political thought with its epistemology and, most important, its dominant style for describing the world.2 A richer understanding of political cognition requires more than a critique of how realism functions rhetorically, however. It is at least as important to identify alternative models for the analysis, direction, and explanation of political action. This shift in...