He argues, like Waltz, that the anarchic international system is responsible for much troublesuspicion, fear, security competition, and great power warsin international politics. Our point is therefore not that humans are naturally good or naturally bad at all times and in all circumstances, but rather that people have evolved mechanisms for egoism, dominance, and groupishness that are activated and amplified in certain settings. George C. Williams famously made this point in response to so called nave group selectionists of the time, and his insight has continued to be reiterated to biology students ever since.Reference Williams189. Third, exploring how evolution intersects with other theories of international relations would advance the goal of consilience, fusing theoretical and empirical knowledge drawn from both the social and natural sciences. Limits of Realism after Liberal Hegemony | Journal of Global Security He is missed. Indeed, a wide range of empirical evidence from psychology and neuroscience suggests instead that humans, especially men, not only want to be leaders but also enjoy the pursuit of power (as well as its material fruits).156,Reference Robertson157,158 The force of this motivation is frequently revealed in victors expressions of the satisfaction of conquest. (PDF) John J. Mearsheimer: An offensive realist between - ResearchGate 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. The 10 Best Things To Do In Provo | Visit Utah Gat, 2006, p. 427; see also Elizabeth Knowles, ed.. See, for example, the recent articles and responses here: Steven Pinker, The false allure of group selection. Defensive realists argue that too much powerclassically, too much military powerdecreases a states security because other states will balance against it. Napoleon Chagnons work among the Yanomamo of the Amazon revealed that indigenous groups had a constant need to find new territory as they expanded and split, and they experienced a constant fear of other groups because violent conflict was a recurring strategy used to stake out a livelihood.Reference Chagnon75 The Yanomamo are just one example of a pattern that extends to a wide range of indigenous societies around the world.76,77 Across such societies, around 15 percent of male deaths occurred in warfare, which compares to a figure of around 1 percent for the United States and Europe in the so-called bloody 20th century (and in many of those small-scale indigenous societies, the rate of male deaths from warfare is much higher than the average figure of 15 percent).78,Reference Bowles79, It has been argued that such high levels of conflict among indigenous societies might have been caused by pressure from more developed societies encroaching on their territories and way of life from the outside. In other words, since imbalances of power offer systematic opportunities for low-cost aggression over time, we should expect human groups to have developed a disposition to act aggressively against others when the opportunity arises, because opportunistic aggression is a strategy that pays off on the average. Second, critics of offensive realism point to countering factors such as the democratic peace or international institutions. Although it is not our intention to resolve offensive realisms theoretical lacunae, an evolutionary account can help to explain them. Evolutionary theory explains why humans are egoistic, strive to dominate others, and make ingroup/outgroup distinctions. Mearsheimer based his theory on five core assumptions: (1) the international system is anarchic (there is no authority that exists above the states to arbitrate their conflicts), (2) all states have some military capability (however limited), (3) states can never fully ascertain the intentions of other states, (4) states value survival above all else, and (5) states are rational actors that seek to promote their own interests. His new book, God is Watching You: How the Fear of God Makes Us Human (Oxford University Press, 2015), examines the role of religion in the evolution of cooperation and how cross-culturally ubiquitous and ancient beliefs in supernatural punishment have helped human society overcome major challenges of collective action. for this article. Wilson captures the evolutionary logic succinctly, saying that humans would fight wars when they and their closest relatives stand to gain long-term reproductive success, and he continues, despite appearances to the contrary, warfare may be just one example of the rule that cultural practices are generally adaptive in a Darwinian sense.Reference Wilson73 An evolutionary approach allows the expectation that contemporary humans possess specific behavioral traits that contributed to fitness in the past, including the willingness to fight to retain or gain the resources necessary so that the individual, the family, and the extended family group would continue to survive and reproduce.Reference Lopez74, Unsurprisingly, direct evidence of human behavior from the Pleistocene era is rare, but in addition to archeological finds, we have evidence from recent and contemporary indigenous societies that offer a model for the behavior of our distant ancestors, who lived under similar social and ecological conditions. The optimistic message of our argument is that understanding human nature will make efforts toward international institutions, democracy, and cooperation more effective. It is hard to escape the conclusion from the ethnographic and archeological evidence from Europe, North America, South American, Australia, and New Guinea that hunter-gatherers both simple and complex engaged in socially sanctioned lethal conflict between independent polities, suggesting an extremely long history of warfare that can ultimately be traced back to early hominins., Terry Jones and Mark AllenReference Allen and Jones58, Humans evolved as a distinct lineage principally in the Pleistocene era (from 2 million to 10,000 years ago), and our analysis therefore requires a discussion of the small-scale hunter-gatherer groups that formed the social and ecological context for that period of human evolution. Note that we did not pick the traits of egoism, dominance, and ingroup/outgroup bias out of a hat. Utah's Office of Licensing, which provides oversight to youth residential treatment centers, has conducted 341 investigations in the past five years at Provo Canyon School's four campuses. The most well-known advocate of this view in recent years has been John Mearsheimer, whose offensive realism is articulated in his book The Tragedy of Great Power Politics: What is more important is the ecological differences and similarities that we shared with the two species. Part of the reason for its intuitive and explanatory success is, we suggest, its close match with human behavior. 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. The fifth assumption is that states are rational actors, which is to say they are capable of coming up with sound strategies that maximize their prospects for survival. In this section, we have presented standard biological arguments that egoism, dominance, and ingroup/outgroup bias are deeply rooted behavioral adaptations common among mammals in general and primate species in particular. We prefer a more positive picture of human nature, perhaps one that accords with comfortable modern life in developed states. Mearsheimers contrasting view, which he called offensive realism, holds that the need for security, and ultimately for survival, makes states aggressive power maximizers. The strength of dominance hierarchies in humans is debated and varies empirically, but such hierarchies are always evident in some form or other. However, there is, of course, considerable variation in egoism, dominance, and ingroup/outgroup bias. Humans and chimpanzees shared some features of their socio-ecological environment, such as spatially and temporally variable food resources, which required that individuals leave the protection of the group to forage in open or bordering areas, often alone or in small groups, subjecting them to greater risks of predation or ambush from conspecifics.Reference wrangham, Pilbeam, Galdikas, Briggs, Sheeran, Shapiro and Goodall167 In contrast, the ecology of bonobos has been relatively benign. Egoism and dominance are important mechanisms for attaining security, but also important is attaining security from members of other groups. Evolutionary theory accounts for egoism and explains why cooperation can extend to the family or close kin group but remains difficult between unrelated individuals. Mearsheimer based his theory on five core assumptions: (1) the international system is anarchic (there is no authority that exists above the states to arbitrate their conflicts), (2) all states have some military capability (however limited), (3) states can never fully ascertain the intentions of other states, (4) states value survival above all Evolutionary theory is especially helpful here because it advances our understanding of the proximate (biological) causes of offensive realist behavior and the conditions under which mistakes are more likely to be made (i.e., conditions that exacerbate egoistic, dominating, and groupish behaviors even where such behaviors may not help to achieve strategic goals). Table1. John Mearsheimer's Theory and its Major Assumptions|Realism The modern understanding of evolution rejects the simplistic stereotype that selfish genes equates to selfish organisms (Richard Dawkins carefully explained why that is not a logical consequence in The Selfish Gene Reference Dawkins6). This article is dedicated to the memory of Rafe Sagarin, an exceptional ecologist, colleague, and friend who devoted much of his life to bridging the gap between the life and social sciences. The role of war in the evolution of political systems and the functional priority of defense,, For an excellent review of the logic for, and evidence of, adaptations for war, see, Inclusive fitness has recently been the subject of a heated debate in the biological literature; see M. A. Nowak, Corina E. Tarnita, and Edward O. Wilson, The evolution of eusociality,, There is copious evidence from historical and contemporary times that such nepotism is a significant influence in politics. Mearsheimer notably advocated the withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Europe, arguing that their presence there was irrational, as no state currently threatened to dominate the continent. When the stakes are high and ones livelihood or survival is threatened, the traits of egoism, dominance, and fear of outgroups come to the forea conclusion we can draw from any number of conflicts in the Balkans, Northern Ireland, Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, Nigeria, India, and elsewhere. Thus, humans may consider other variables, such as the possibility of future trade or cooperation, when assessing outgroups. Because states operate with imperfect information in a complicated world, they sometimes make serious mistakes. Offensive realism holds that states are disposed to competition and conflict because they are self-interested, power maximizing, and fearful of other states. The imperative for survival in a hostile environment also requires that an individual organism places its survival, especially in a time of danger or stress, above the survival of others. Evolutionary theory also allows realist scholars to explain the intellectual foundations of offensive realism: Why individuals and state decision-makers are egoistic and strive to dominate others when circumstances permit, and why they make strong ingroup/outgroup distinctions. Between groups, group selection would do the opposite, maintaining or even exacerbating conflict.187 Because the premise is that selection operates at the level of groups, altruistic traits can only spread if altruism helps spread the genes responsible for it at the expense of other genes, and that must occur via intergroup competition or conflict. Collective action to attain public goods, however, is much harder to attain because of the threat of free-riders (as demonstrated, for example, by the slow response to climate change, the reluctance of states to accept Syrian refugees, and Eurozone fiscal responsibility). Although Mearsheimer recognized war as a legitimate instrument of statecraft, he did not believe that it was always justified. Mearsheimer's main innovation is his theory of 'offensive realism' that seeks to re-formulate Kenneth Waltz's structural realist theory to explain from a structural point of departure the sheer . Behavior under anarchy in different domains. The first assumption is that there is anarchy in the international system, which means that there is no hierarchically superior, coercive power that can guarantee limits on the behavior of states (Mearsheimer 2001, 30). Drawing on both disciplines, he is interested in how new research on evolution, biology, and human nature challenges theories of international relations, conflict, and cooperation. Thus far, we have emphasized a state of anarchy in evolutionary history, in which there was no overarching power to provide protection from predators, rivals, or other threats. At worst, this perspective will make us err on the side of caution. However, rapid advances in the life sciences offer increasing theoretical and empirical challenges to scholars in the social sciences in general and international relations in particular, who are therefore under increasing pressure to address and integrate this knowledge rather than to suppress or ignore it. Third, the group could acquire more of the resource from outside of their territory through migration to uninhabited areas, trade, theft, or warfare.65,77,Reference Guilaine and Zammit67,Reference LeBlanc and Register68,Reference Wrangham and Peterson69,70, Although warfare is certainly costly to any member of a group who is killed or wounded, as well as in terms of the resources and time expended, it can become the sole (or least bad) choice for a group if migration is risky due to factors such as inhospitable or unproductive terrain or hostile neighboring groups, and where trade is difficult or impossible. A comparison among alternative realist theories. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. The anarchic state of the international system means that states cannot be certain of other states' intentions and their security, thus prompting them to . But what was that context? This strategy was clearly not an option for critical resources, such as food and water. http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/59922#eid5780558, http://edge.org/conversation/steven_pinker-the-false-allure-of-group-selection. Therefore, to advocate group selection over individual selection does nothing to reduce predictions regarding human conflict or aggression. Each season at Evermore Park brings new adventures, fit for all ages. 2022. First, ambitious leaders self-select themselves into seeking high-profile roles in the first place.Reference Ehrenhalt191 Second, strong leaders are selected into power over weak-willed or hesitant candidates.Reference Todorov, Mandisodza, Goren and Hall192,Reference Van Vugt and Ahuja193 Third, leaders rise to the top of their respective hierarchies through an intensively competitive process that compels them to be increasingly attentive to self-interest and self-preservation.Reference Shenkman194 Fourth, once in power, decision-makers tend to heed hawkish rather than dovish advice.Reference Kahneman and Renshon195 Fifth, the experience of power itself is well known to corrupt, precisely because being a leader elevates ones sense of worth and power.196 Taking these phenomena together, a skeptic of our argument that humans are generally egoistic, dominance-seeking and groupish may nevertheless concede that the small subset of humans that become political leaders tend to express these traits. This collective benefit points to the special and much more significant role of anarchy at a higher levelanarchy between groups. II, Despotism and Differential Reproduction: A Darwinian View of History, Five rules for the evolution of cooperation, 16 common misconceptions about the evolution of cooperation in humans, Choosing the Right Pond: Human Behaviour and the Quest for Status, Behavioural Ecology: An Evolutionary Approach, Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior, King of the Mountain: The Nature of Political Leadership, Teeth, horns and antlers: The weapons of sex, States in mind: Evolution, coalitional psychology, and international politics, Sex Differences: Summarizing More Than a Century of Scientific Research, Biobehavioral responses to stress in females: Tend-and-befriend, not fight-or-flight, Sex differences in leadership emergence during competitions within and between groups, The feeling of rationality: The meaning of neuroscientific advances for political science, Descartes Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain, Violence and sociality in human evolution, Policing stabilizes construction of social niches in primates, Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex Among Apes, Managing ingroup and outgroup relationships, What we know about bias and intergroup conflict, problem of the century, Social Dominance: An Intergroup Theory of Social Hierarchy and Oppression, The coevolution of parochial altruism and war, Groups in mind: The coalitional roots of war and morality, Human Morality and Sociality: Evolutionary and Comparative Perspectives, Meeting at Grand Central: Understanding the Social and Evolutionary Roots of Cooperation, The paranoid optimist: An integrative evolutionary model of cognitive biases, Negativity bias, negativity dominance, and contagion, Presidential Leadership, Illness, and Decision Making, Political Psychology in International Relations, The Winner Effect: How Power Affects Your Brain, Chimpanzees and the mathematics of battle, After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy, Why Nations Cooperate: Circumstance and Choice in International Relations, Divergence population genetics of chimpanzees, All Apes Great and Small. Correspondence: Dominic D. P. Johnson, Alastair Buchan Professor ofInternational Relations, Department of Politics andInternational Relations, University of Oxford, St. Antonys College, 62 Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6JF, United Kingdom.
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