Back to the Future, Part III: Realism and the Realities of European Security

Correspondence Back to the Future, Part 111: Realism and the Realities of European Security T othe Editors: Bruce M . Xussett Thomas Xisse-Kappen JohnJ. Mearsheimer In ”Back to the Future: Instability in Europe after the Cold War,” John Mearsheimer gives an allegedly ”realistic” and certainly pessimistic forecast.* One definition of an optimist is “a person who says this is the best of all possible worlds.” A pessimist can be defined in precisely the same terms. Mearsheimer, lamenting the passing of the Cold War, qualifies as a pessimist. His classical “realist” proposition is that states must inevitably fight one another in the unceasing anarchic struggle for power and security. Whether that proposition is in fact accurate or realistic, however, is a question about which observers have profound disagreement. If we all act as though the world is an arena of raw struggle, red in tooth and claw, we can surely make it so. Mearsheimer’s remedies-continued reliance on nuclear weapons and their proliferation, and on the continued deployment of American and Soviet military forces in Europe-would help to make his prophecy self-fulfilling. It is pernicious and erroneous as well as pessimistic to pretend that there is no alternative. Mearsheimer’sargument implies that institutions and ideologiesare irrelevant; only the “realities“of power competition matter. Thus how we govern ourselves, and how our adversaries and former adversaries govern themselves, makes no difference to the prospects for war-avoidance. But do we really believe that about the demise of Soviet communism? Moreover, he conveniently ignores the vast and powerful network of institutions that have been painstakingly built up to help keep West EuroBruce M . Russett is Dean Acheson Professor of International Relations at Yale University. Thomas Risse-Kappen, a German, is an Assistant Professor of Government af Cornell University’s Peace Studies Program, and is currently on leave at International Security Programs, Yale University. John J. Mearsheimer is Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago. 1. 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. International Security, Winter 1990191 (Vol. 15, No. 3) 0 1990by the President and Fellows o f Harvard College and of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 216 Correspondence I 217 peans at peace with one another for almost half a century. Were the founders of European integration really so ignorant? His chain of argument has many weak links, including the arguments about the alleged stability of bipolar systems and the alleged virtues of nuclear proliferation. I will concentrate, however, on his attempt to compare the explanatory power of his theory with the theory that democracies respect the democratic rights of other peoples , and hence that democracies rarely fight each other. Like realism, this is a venerable theoretical position, dating back to Immanuel Kant. Unfortunately, Mearsheimer does not give it a fair shake empirically. It does not depend on a mere few prominent examples: from 1900 to 1939 there were as many as 28 democracies, none of which warred against each other. Since 1945 the number has often been as high as 25 and sometimes as high as 50, still with no wars, and with relatively few militarized disputes, between democracies. Mearsheimer says that there have been some almost-wars, and that’s true-but just the point: democracies, whatever their conflicts of interest, have held back from full-scale wars with each other. It may not be as absolute as a law of physics that democracies will not war against each other, but a few quasi-exceptions (and there are one or two more plausible than Wilhelmine Germany as a quasi-democracy) do not undermine the generalization or the theoretical argument. Furthermore, since World War I1 the evidence seems to hold up, even when controlling for possible confounding variables: e.g., that rich states, or economically growing states, or allies, or physically distant states rarely fight each other.z Nationalism in emerging democracies can be a dangerous instrument where state boundaries and ethnic boundaries do not coincide. But nationalism can also discourage conquest by making conquered nations ungovernable by imperial powers. This, as much...