Source of Power to Act in World with other Agents
For the offensive realist and rational strategist, there is one source of power to act in the world: marshaling the instrumental means to threaten other actors.1[331]1 Domination is the means of successful exploitation.
In the nuclear era, as Schelling recognized and emphasized, threatening to harm others is often sufficient, even without actually following through. Within international relations, for the offensive realist and according to the game theoretic approach pioneered by Schelling, it follows deductively from the view of self-preservation and of value that applied violence is the currency of purposive action. Tang describes this position: “[Glen] Snyder explicitly argues that an imperialist state will pursue both conquest and intimidation (Snyder 1985, 165), and Mearsheimer emphasizes that an offensive realist state is not a ‘mindless aggressor’ (Mearsheimer 2001, 37), thus also implying that intimidation is a tool of an offensive realist state.”[332] Conveniently, as Schelling observed in 1960, the threat of applying pain to the opposition is often sufficient, without actually needing to perpetrate violence. Tang continues,Hence, seeking to establish hegemony with intimidation, although perhaps more palatable for the victim, is still a form of intentionally threatening other states. As a matter of fact, intimidation is an especially “wise” strategy when the aspiring hegemon still lacks the material power to impose its will, or it is simply too costly to impose hegemony by force, because it allows the hegemon to be viewed as not “excessively” aggressive.[333]
Violence must be calibrated and prescribed in doses to achieve its greatest effect. The proponents of the nuclear war plan of NUTS stood united with game theorists in perceiving that social order, understood to be the achievement of an actor’s way in the world among other strategic actors such that favorable stability arises, is the product of knowing the oppositions’ preferences and leveraging the threat of punishment to influence their choices.
Rewards also function as incentives and can be perceived as the removal of harm or the threat to harm.The ability to rationally threaten harm in precisely measured doses is both what enables actors to realize goals and the force producing the social order that exists. Social order, such as it exists, is produced out of anarchy by vying for sources of raw power that are independent from sociability. Under the best of circumstances, strategic competition results in regular patterns, as opposed to the unpredictable chaos that could be expected in a perpetual state of war. Where strategists understand perceptions to influence judgment, the most cautious interpretation of others’ intentions is employed in strategic analysis.
The classical liberal and the defensive realist do not dispute that natural resources, subject to the laws of physics, convey the instrumental power to act in the world. However, they depart from strategic rationality in holding the opinion that the ability to act among other purposive agents relies on shared expectations and norms and a tacit or explicit system of rights. These arise from proposing a different reconciliation of the security dilemma that perplexes the offensive realist and the game theoretic approach to security.134 This alternative resolution rests on viewing the requirements of self-preservation to be built up from reproducing patterns of sustainability that respect the status quo rather than reflect an unbounded maximization of expected gain. It pivots on retracting the threat of harming others, in direct contrast to offensive realism and strategic rationality. Classical liberalism proposes pursuing mutual viability and even cooperative exchange through reassurance that one’s intention is not to exploit or dominate others.135 According to this view, agents bear responsibility for not compromising others’ security to pursue their own. A classical liberal could in self-defense act on strategic imperatives, but this would be an aberration rather than the rule.136
By adopting this approach to the security dilemma, the classical liberal and the defensive realist are poised to capitalize on three sources of value that transcend the raw power the offensive realist and rational strategist pursue.
These are the prospect dividend, social capital resulting from shared ventures, and unbounded positive-sum good will and civility that arise from sociability and mutual respect.1371 34 For Kydd, whether a security dilemma is a Prisoner’s Dilemma in which every actor seeks to sucker others is strictly determined from a calculation of fungible rewards; Trust and Mistrust, 2007, 6-7.
1 35 See, e.g., Tang, Theory of Security Strategy, 2010, 70.
1 36 For discussion, see Michael W. Doyle, “Kant, Liberal Legacies, and Foreign Affairs,” Philosophy and Public Affairs (1983) 12:3, 205-235, notice Immanuel Kant’s allowance for asocial sociability.
137 This source of value is achieved by the manifestation of circumstances conveying value to their experiencers that far outpaces the value of the scarce and tangible resources giving them corporeal existence. See, e.g., Seth Godin, Lynchpin: Are You Indispensable? (New York: Penguin, 2010). It builds on the insights of Amartya Sen, who argues that with respect to the social capital of human resources, the experiential value and productive power of capability and
Like the prospect dividend, social capital, or commonly held institutions and infrastructure, is dependent on resources. Yet it too embodies value beyond the raw power to instrumentally achieve goals or strategically intimidate others, through yielding the right to harm others by maintaining a formal or informal set of mutual expectations. This system of tacit or explicit rights is not the product of violent threats and de facto possession. As Hobbes argues, such a system requires the threat of force to assure participants and to thwart rouge predators but otherwise relies on voluntary compliance.138 It is imperative to demonstrate the willingness to cooperate when others do so.
The neoliberal, offensive realist approach flagrantly contradicts this understanding of a shared world of purposive agency by insisting that the rational actor recognizes no limitations to preference satisfaction and the will to power other than incentives.
From this perspective, both oneself and others pursue self-defense and self-gain in a self-help system without exit. The classical liberal calls on two modes of action that the rational strategist disregards for being irrational. The first is voluntarily constraining one’s actions so as not to harm or threaten others. The second is following the norms of a system that provide the extra social capital value over and above raw resources valuable in anarchy. The first may be thought of as side constraints to action that facilitate a universal system of individual, or national, rights to self-preservation.139 The second has the characteristics of fair play, pointed to by both Adam Smith and John Rawls as fundamental to enacting a capitalist system predicated on realizing exchange value beyond the raw power of natural resources that served as the criterion of value under mercantilism.140For the purposes of classical liberalism and defensive realism, it is worth pointing out, but not dwelling on, the other additional source of value available once the security dilemma has been resolved through a system of mutual expectations and rights built up from reciprocal respect rather than the perpetual deployment of threats to harm. Whereas the prospect dividend and social capital discussed earlier are linked to scarce resources, and therefore remain a finite source of value, there is the potential for unbounded positive sum value that may accrue from amicable social relations in the form of friendship, aesthetic beauty, good will, understanding, healing, trust, and esteem that of course remain dependent on the incarnation of ontologically existing properties yet convey potentially unlimited subjective value. The offensive realist and
functioning outpace the sheer financial wherewithal to capture value that must be inherently finite; see Development as Freedom (New York: Knopf, 1999), and Rationality and Freedom (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2002).
1 38 DiscussedinChapter 5.
1 39 Doyle, Ways of War and Peace, 1997, 205-314; this has its parallel in civil society, articulated as side constraints that permit the practice of property rights; see Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1974).
140 Doyle, Ways of War and Peace, 1997, 230-250; see also Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002); for commentary, see S. M. Amadae, Rationalizing Capitalist Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003); John Rawls, Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1970), chaps. 5 and 6. neoliberal approaches, which both instrumentalize and commodify all value, cannot recognize unbounded sources of value because the single criterion metric useful for strategic manipulation cannot stray too far from raw power without taking on the aura of transcendent or metaphysical value.141
Classical liberals and defensive realists stand confident on three points. First, they perceive that the sources of value and the power to act among purposive agents derive from mutual respect over and above raw resources. Second, whereas strategic rationality treats others as mere means to achieve goals, purposive action for the classical liberal is characterized by self-knowledge and the acknowledgment of like-minded agents who see relationships as a way to achieve mutual goals. To prosper is to create constructive channels of mutual exchange based on the right to exist as an end in oneself, rather than a mere means.142 Third, classical liberals see the dictates of their own selfpreservation as compatible with others’ like imperatives, and they have the self-knowledge to be certain that they will cooperate if guaranteed or assured that others will do so as well.
Of course, no reassurance can be offered to an offensive realist to obtain mutual cooperation because the offensive realist views the requirements of selfperpetuation as inherently mutually antagonistic.
A strategic rationalist could, however, accept that the security dilemma is a Stag Hunt. Let us suppose with game theorist Andrew Kydd that a state calculates that it is in its best interest to cooperate.143 If this calculation tracks raw resources over which actors compete, then the classical liberal must always be wary that the rational strategist may at any moment calculate that aggressive expansion is the best policy.144 If this calculation is predicated on subjective factors, then perceptions remain forever opaque. Furthermore, the rational strategist does not admit or act on the perception that mutual respect, rather than a combination of raw power and calibrated incentives some violent, is what enables purposive actors to be the most effective in realizing value. The offensive realist and the rational strategist thus remain perplexed by the Prisoner’s Dilemma model of the national security1 41 Georg Simmel, The Philosophy of Money (New York: Routledge, 2011, reprint edition), 283291, presents a clear argument for how bourgeois capitalism permits the development of value beyond both zero-sum division of tangible resources into allotments bounded by de facto or legal possession and security of possession to the aesthetic products of culture in the arts and humanities.
1 42 Doyle, Ways of War and Peace, 1997, 205-214.
1 43 See how Kydd defines states’ security prerogatives based on whether they view their requirements with respect to a PD or Stag Hunt sheerly as a matter of calculation, Trust and Mistrust, 2005, especially 7-8. Note that with respect to resource dilemmas and the social contract, it is generally accepted that the PD model applies with Brian Skyrm’s The Stag Hunt and the Evolution of Social Structure (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004) being the exception; on the game theoretic analysis of whether Hobbes’s state of nature is best represented by a PD or Stag Hunt, see Chapter 5.
144 Kydd, Trust and Mistrust, 2007, 7-8, makes clear that forming a relationship with a rational strategist depends on always identifying when it may be in that actor’s interest to exploit one’s interests.
impasse. For them, self-help and anarchy cannot be exited or transcended. By making the concessions to the PD payoff matrix and the exhaustive reach of strategic rationality, the offensive realist ends up trapped in the Prisoner’s Dilemma. The focal remedy then is the hope that the situation is indefinitely and exactly repeated, so that incentives are supplied by actors themselves.[334] [335]
So far, the difference between the two realisms and two liberalisms hinges on a difference of opinion about what makes action intelligible and meaningful, with the offensive realists and neoliberal political economists placing their reliance on a single model of instrumental agency, and the defensive realists and classical liberals having a broader scope.146 In looking to mutual respect instead of credible threats to bootstrap out of a state of nature, classical liberals endorse the no-harm principle as the source of the prospect dividend. They understand that fair play is the basis of social capital. They also comprehend that commitment to agreements made is not only fundamental to the prospect dividend and to social capital but further provides the basis for realizing unbounded sources of value in friendship, justice, trust, good will, and fulfillment.
The classical liberal further rejects the idea that all value can be measured on a single scale. A scale tethered to tangible resources of central interest to realists is insufficient to adequately capture the manner in which cooperative ventures that grow out of the no-harm principle, mutual respect, and commitment generate more value than the total allotment of physical attributes permitting them to exist. Game theory purports to acknowledge the same insight by claiming to offer a comprehensive science of decision making. However, the mathematically tractable default of using cash value for payoffs makes it in principle impossible to reflect even the prospect dividend. Agents’ appraisal of value must ultimately be demonstrated by their willingness and ability to pay for goods. As actors’ de facto ability to pay for goods cannot exceed their goods on hand, there is no practical way for any agent to express, or accordingly register, that the value of their lives or property exceeds the raw resources granting their existence.