No More Learning

This chapter examines approaches to international politics that are both political and systemic. What is a systems approach? One way to answer the question is to compare analytic with systemic approaches. The analytic method, preeminently the method of classical physics and because of its immense success often thought of as the method of science, requires reducing the entity to its dis- crete parts and examining their properties and connections. The whole is under- stood by studying its elements in their relative simplicity and by observing the relations between them. By controlled experiments, the relation between each pair of variables is separately examined. After similarly examining other pairs, the factors are combined in an equation in which they appear as variables in the statement of a causal law. The elements, disjoined and understood in their sim- plicity, are combined or aggregated to remake the whole, with times and masses added as scalars and the relations among their distances and forces added accord- ing to the vector laws of addition (see, e. g. , Rapoport 1968, and Rapoport and Horvath 1959).
This is the analytic method. It works, and works wonderfully, where rela- tions among several factors can be resolved into relations between pairs of vari- ables while "other things are held equal" and where the assumption can be made that perturbing influences not included in the variables are small. Because analy- tic procedure is simpler, it is preferred to a systems approach. But analysis is not always sufficient. It will be sufficient only where systems-level effects are absent or are weak enough to be ignored. It will be insufficient, and a systems approach will be needed, if outcomes are affected not only by the properties and intercon- nections of variables but also by the way in which they are organized.
If the organization of units affects their behavior and their interactions, then one cannot predict outcomes or understand them merely by knowing the charac- teristics, purposes, and interactions of the system's units. The failure of the reduc- tionist theories considered in Chapter 2 gives us some reason to believe that a sys- tems approach is needed. Where similarity of outcomes prevails despite changes in the agents that seem to produce them, one is led to suspect that analytic approaches will fail. Something works as a constraint on the agents or is inter- posed between them and the outcomes their actions contribute to. In interna- tional politics, systems-level forces seem to be at work. We might therefore try
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Reductionist and Systemic Theories
Chapters 2 and 3 are highly critical. Criticism is a negative task that is supposed to have positive payoffs. To gain them, I shall in this chapter first reflect on the theoretical defects revealed in previous pages and then say what a systems theory of international politics comprises and what it can and cannot accomplish.
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In one way or another, theories of international politics, whether reductionist or systemic, deal with events at all levels, from the subnational to the supranational. Theories are reductionist or systemic, not according to what they deal with, but according to how they arrange their materials. Reductionist th"eories explain international outcomes through elements and combinations of elements located at national or subnationallevels. That internal forces produce external outcomes is the claim of such theories. N . . . X is their pattern. The international sys- tem, if conceived of at all, is taken to be merely an outcome.
A reductionist theory is a theory about the behavior of parts. Once the theory that explains the behavior of the parts is fashioned, no further effort is required. According to the theories of imperialism examined in Chapter 2, for example, international outcomes are simply the sum of the results produced by the separate states, and the behavior of each of them is explained through its internal characteristics. Hobson's theory, taken as a general one, is a theory about the workings of national economies. Giyen certain conditions, it explains why demand slackens, why production falls, and why resources are under- employed. From a knowledge of how capitalist economies work, Hobson
believed he could infer the external behavior of capitalist states. He made the error of predicting outcomes from attributes. To try to do that amounts to over- looking the difference between these two statements: "He is a troublemaker. " "He makes trouble. " The second statement does not follow from the first one if the
Reductionist and Systemic Theories 61
attributes of actors do not uniquely determine outcomes. Just as peacemakers may fail to make peace, so troublemakers may fail to make trouble. From attri- butes one cannot predict outcomes if outcomes depend on the situations of the actors as well as on their attributes.
Few, it seems, can consistently escape from the belief that intemational- political outcomes are determined, rather than merely' affected, by what states are like. Hobson's error has been made by almost everyone, at least from the nine- teenth century onward. In the earlier history of modem great-power politics, all of the states were monarchies, and most of them absolute ones. Was the power- political game played because of international-political imperatives or simply because authoritarian states are power-minded? If the answer to the latter part of the question were "yes," then profound national changes would transform inter- national politics. Such changes began to take place in Europe and America most strikingly in 1789. For some, democracy became the form of the state that would make the world a peaceful one; for others, later, it was socialism that would turn the trick. Not simply war and peace, moreover, but international politics in gen- eral was to be understood through study of the states and the statesmen, the elites and the bureaucracies, the subnational and the transnational actors whose behav- iors and interactions form the substance of international affairs.
Political scientists, whether traditional or modem in orientation, reify their systems by reducing them to their interacting parts. For two reasons, the lumping of historically minded traditionalists and scientifically oriented modernists together may seem odd. First, the difference in the methods they use obscures the similarity of their methodology, that is, of the logic their inquiries follow. Second, their different descriptions of the objects of their inquiries reinforce the impression that the difference of methods is a difference of methodology. Tradi- tionalists emphasize the structural distinction between domestic and international politics, a distinction that modernists usually deny. The distinction turns on the difference between politics conducted in a condition of settled rules and politics conducted in a condition of anarchy. Raymond Aron, for example, finds the dis- tinctive quality of international politics in lithe absence of a tribunal or police force, the right to resort to force, the plurality of autonomous centers of decision, the alternation and continual interplay between peace and war" (1967, p. 192). With this view, contrast J. David Singer's examination of the descriptive, explanatory, and predictive potentialities of two different levels of analysis: the national and the international (1961). In his examination, he fails even to mention the contextual difference between organized politics within states and formally unorganized politics among them. If the contextual difference is overlooked or denied, then the qualitative difference of internal and external politics disappears or never was. And that is indeed the conclusion that modernists reach. The differ- ence between the global system and its subsystems is said to lie not in the anarchy
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or if the government controls prices. Perfect competition, complete collusion, absolute control: These different causes produce identical results. From unifor- mity of outcomes one cannot infer that the attributes and the interactions of the parts of a system have remained constant. Structure may determine outcomes aside from changes at the level of the units and aside from the disappearance of some of them and the emergence of others. Different "causes" may produce the same effects; the same "causes" may have different consequences. Unless one knows how a realm is organized, one can hardly tell the causes from the effects.
The effect of an organization may predominate over the attributes and the interactions of the elements within it. A system that is independent of initial con- ditions is said to display equifinality. If it does, lithe system is then its own best explanation, and the study of its present organization the appropriate meth- odology" (Watzlawick, et al. , 1967, p. 129; cf. p. 32). If structure influences with- out determining, then one must ask how and to what extent the structure of a realm accounts for outcomes and how and to what extent the units account for outcomes. Structure has to be studied in its own right as do units. To claim to be following a systems approach or to be constructing a systems theory requires one to show how system and unit levels can be distinctly defined. Failure to mark and preserve the distinction between structure, on the one hand, and units and pro- cesses, on the other, makes it impossible to disentangle causes of different sorts and to distinguish between causes and effects. Blurring the distinction between the different levels of a system has, I believe, been the major impediment to the development of theories about international politics. The next chapter shows how to define political structures in a way that makes the construction of a sys- tems theory possible.
Political Structures
We learned in Chapters 2, 3, and 4 that international-political outcomes
be explained reductively. We found in Chapter 3 that even avowedly approaches mingle and confuse systems-level with unit-level causes. on theories that follow the general-systems model, we concluded at once that Inter- national politics does not fit the model closely enough to make the model useful and that only through some sort of systems theory can international politics be understood. To be a success, such a theory has to show how international politics can be conceived of as a domain distinct from the economic, social, and other international domains that one may conceive of. To mark international-political systems off from other international systems, and to distinguish systems-level from unit-level forces, requires showing how political structures are generated and how they affect, and are affected by, the units of the system. How can we conceive of international politics as a distinct system1 What is it that intervenes between interacting units and the results that their acts and interactions
To answer these questions, this chapter first examines the concept of SOCIal struc-
ture and then defines structure as a concept appropriate for national and for inter- national politics.
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A system is composed of a structure and of interacting units. The structure is the system-wide component that makes it possible to think of the system as a
The problem, unsolved by the systems theorists considered in IS to contrive a definition of structure free of the attributes and the InteractIons of units. Definitions of structure must leave aside, or abstract from, the characteris- tics of units their behavior, and their interactions. Why must those obviously important be omitted1 They must be omitted so that we can distinquish between variables at the level of the units and variables at the level of the system.
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Anarchic Structures and Balances of Power
Two tasks remain: first, to examine the characteristics of anarchy and the expectations about outcomes associated with anarchic realms; second, to examine the ways in which expectations vary as the structure of an anarchic sys- tem changes through changes in the distribution of capabilities across nations. The second task, undertaken in Chapters 7, 8, and 9, requires comparing differ- ent international systems. The first, which I now turn to, is best accomplished by drawing some comparisons between behavior and outcomes in anarchic and hier- archic realms.
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1. VIOLENCE A T HOME AND ABROAD
The state among states, it is often said, conducts its affairs in the brooding shadow of violence. Because some states may at any time use force, all states must be prepared to do so-or live at the mercy of their militarily more vigorous neighbors. Among states, the state of nature is a state of war. This is meant not in the sense that war constantly occurs but in the sense that, with each state deciding for itself whether or not to use force, war may at any time break out. Whether in the family, the community, or the world at large, contact without at least occasional conflict is inconceivable; and the hope that in the absence of an agent to manage or to manipulate conflicting parties the use of force will always be avoided cannot be realistically entertained. Among men as among states, anarchy, or the absence of government, is associated with the occurrence of violence.
The threat of violence and the recurrent use of force are said to distinguish international from national affairs. But in the history of the world surely most rulers have had to bear in mind that their subjects might use force to resist or
Anarchic Orders and Balances of Power 103
overthrow them. If the absence of government is associated with the threat of violence, so also is its presence. A haphazard list of national tragedies illustrates the point all too well. The most destructive wars of the hundred years following the defeat of Napoleon took place not among states but within them. Estimates of deaths in China's Taiping Rebellion, which began in 1851 and lasted 13 years, range as high as 20 million. In the American Civil War some 600 thousand people lost their lives. In more recent history, forced collectivization and Stalin's purges eliminated five million Russians, and Hitler exterminated six million Jews. In some Latin American countries, coups d'etats and rebellions have been normal features of national life. Between 1948 and 1957, for example, 200 thousand Colombians were killed in civil strife. In the middle 19705 most inhabitants of Idi Amin's Uganda must have felt their lives becoming nasty, brutish, and short, quite as in Thomas Hobbes's state of nature. If such cases constitute aberrations, they are uncomfortably common ones. We easily lose sight of the fact that struggles to achieve and maintain power, to establish order, and to contrive a kind of justice within states, may be bloodier than wars among them.
If anarchy is identified with chaos, destruction, and death, then the distinc- tion between anarchy and government does not tell us much. Which is more pre- carious: the life of a state among states, or of a government in relation to its sub- jects? The answer varies with time and place. Among some states at some times, the actual or expected occurrence of violence is low. Within some states at some times, the actual or expected occurrence of violence is high. The use of force, or the constant fear of its use, are not sufficient grounds for distinguishing inter- national from domestic affairs. If the possible and the actual use of force mark both national and international orders, then no durable distinction between the two realms can be drawn in terms of the use or the nonuse of force. No human order is proof against violence.
To discover qualitative differences between internal and external affairs one must look for a criterion other than the occurrence of violence. The distinction between international and national realms of politics is not found in the use or the nonuse of force but in their different structures. But if the dangers of being violently attacked are greater, say, in taking an evening stroll through downtown Detroit than they are in picnicking along the French and German border, what practical difference does the difference of structure make? Nationally as internationally, contact generates conflict and at times issues in violence. The dif- ference between national and international politics lies not in the use of force but in the different modes of organization for doing something about it. A govern- ment, ruling by some standard of legitimacy, arrogates to itself the right to use force-that is, to apply a variety of sanctions to control the use of force by its subjects. If some use private force, others may appeal to the government. A government has no monopoly on the use of force, as is all too evident. An effec-
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Structural Causes and
EconoDlic Effects
Chapter 6 compared national and international systems and showed how behav- ior and outcomes vary from one system to another. Chapter 7, 8, and 9 compare different international systems and show how behavior and outcomes vary in systems whose ordering principles endure but whose structures vary through changes in the distribution of capabilities across states. The question posed in this chapter is whether we should prefer larger or smaller numbers of great powers. Part I carries the theory further. Part II moves from theory to practice. *
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1. COUNTING POLES AND MEASURING POWER
How should we count poles, and how can we measure power? These questions must be answered in order to identify variations of structure. Almost everyone agrees that at some time since the war the world was bipolar. Few seem to believe that it remains so. For years Walter Lippmann wrote of the bipolar world as being perpetually in the process of rapidly passing away (e. g. , 1950 and 1963). Many others now carry on the tradition he so firmly established. To reach the conclu- sion that bipolarity is passing, or 'past, requires some odd counting. The inclina- tion to count in funny ways is rooted in the desire to arrive at a particular answer. Scholars feel a strong affection for the balance-of-power world of Metternich and Bismarck, on which many of their theoretical notions rest. That was a world in which five or so great powers manipulated their neighbors and maneuvered for advantage. Great powers were once defined according to their capabilities. Stu- dents of international politics now seem to look at other conditions. The ability or inability of states to solve problems is said to raise or lower their rankings. The
*Some parts of this chapter and the next one were written as a study of interdependence for the Department of State, whose views may differ from mine.
tude was well expressed by Trotsky, who, when asked what he would do as foreign minister, replied, "I will issue some revolutionary proclamations to the peoples and then close up the joint" (quoted in Von Laue 1963, p. 235). In a com- petitive arena, however, one party may need the assistance of others. Refusal to play the political game may risk one's own destruction. The pressures of competi- tion were rapidly felt and reflected in the Soviet Union's diplomacy. Thus Lenin, sending foreign minister Chicherin to the Genoa Conference of 1922, bade him farewell with this caution: "Avoid big words" (quoted in Moore 1950, p. 204). Chicherin, who personified the carefully tailored traditional diplomat rather than the simply uniformed revolutionary, was to refrain from inflammatory rhetoric
for the sake of working deals. These he successfully completed with that other pariah power and ideological enemy, Germany.
The close juxtaposition of states promotes their sameness through the disad- vantages that arise from a failure to conform to successful practices. It is this "sameness," an effect of the system, that is so often attributed to the acceptance of so-called rules of state behavior. Chiliastic rulers occasionally come to power. In power, most of them quickly change their ways. They can refuse to do so, and yet hope to survive, only if they rule countries little affected by the competition of states. The socialization of nonconformist states proceeds at a pace that is set by the extent of their involvement in the system. And that is another testable statement.
The theory leads to many expectations about behaviors and outcomes. From the theory, one predicts that states will engage in balancing behavior, whether or not balanced power is the end of their acts. From the theory, one predicts a strong tendency toward balance in the system. The expectation is not that a balance, once achieved, will be maintained, but that a balance, once disrupted, will be restored in one way or another. Balances of power recurrently form. Since the theory depicts international politics as a competitive system, one predicts more
specifically that states will display characteristics common to competitors: namely, that they will imitate each other and become socialized to their system. In this chapter, I have suggested ways of making these propositions more specific and concrete so as to test them. In remaining chapters, as the theory is elaborated and refined, additional testable propositions will appear.
? ? 160 Chapter 7 8 compared to those of chess. Neither game can be successfully played unless the
chessboard is accurately described.
So far I have shown that smaller are better than larger numbers, at least for
those states at the top. Defining the concept, and examining the economics, of interdependence did not establish just which small number is best of all. We could not answer that question because economic interdependence varies with the size of great powers and their size does not correlate perfectly with their number. In
the next chapter, examination of military interdependence leads to an exact answer.
Structural Causes and Military Effects
Chapter 7 showed why smaller is better. To say that few are better than many is not to say that two is best of all. The stability of pairs-of corporations, of political parties, of marriage partners-has often been appreciated.
Although most students of international politics probably believe that systems of many great powers would be unstable, they resist the widespread notion that two is the best of small numbers. Are they right to do so? For the sake of stability, peace, or whatever, should we prefer a world of two great powers or a world of several or more? Chapter 8 will show why two is the best of small numbers. We reached some conclusions, but not that one, by considering economic interdependence. Problems of national security in multi- and bipolar worlds do clearly show the advantages of having two great powers, and only two, in the system.
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To establish the virtues of two-party systems requires comparing systems of dif- ferent number. Because the previous chapter was concerned only with systems of small and of still smaller numbers, we did not have to consider differences made by having two, three, four, or more principal parties in a system. We must do so now. By what criteria do we determine that an system changes, and conversely, by what criteria do we say that a system is stable? Political scientists often lump different effects under the heading of stability. I did this in 1964 and 1967 essays, using stability to include also peacefulness and the effective management of international affairs, which are the respective concerns of this chapter and the next one. It is important, I now believe, to keep different effects separate so that we can accurately locate their causes.
Anarchic systems are transformed only by changes in organizing principle and by consequential changes in the number of their principal parties. To say that an international-political system is stable means two things: first, that it remains
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The ManagelDent of International Affairs
The Management of International Affairs 195
If power does not reliably bring control, what does it do for you? Four things, primarily. First, power provides the means of maintaining one's autonomy in the face of force that others wield. Second, greater power permits wider ranges of action, while leaving the outcomes of action uncertain. These two advantages we have discussed. The next two require elaboration.
Third, the more powerful enjoy wider margins of safety in dealing with the less powerful and have more to say about which games will be played and how. Duncan and Schnore have defined power in ecological terms as lithe ability of one cluster of activities or niches to set the conditions under which others must function" (1959, p. 139). Dependent parties have some effect on independent ones, but the latter have more effect on the former. The weak lead perilous lives. As Chrysler's chairman, John Riccardo, remarked: "We've got to be right. The smaller you are, the more right you've got to be" (Salpukas, March 7, 1976, III, p. 1). General Motors can lose money on this model or that one, or on all of them, for quite a long time. Chrysler, if it does so, goes bankrupt. Be they cor- porations or states, those who are weak and hard pressed have to be careful. Thus with the following words Nguyen Van Thieu rejected the agreement for
ending the war in Vietnam that Kissinger, the ally, and Le Duc Tho, the enemy, had made in October of 1972:
You are a giant, Dr. Kissinger. So you can probably afford the luxury of being easy in this agreement. I cannot. A bad agreement means nothing to you. What is the loss of South Vietnam if you look at the world's map1 Just a speck. The loss of South Vietnam may even be good for you. It may be good to contain China, good for your world strategy. But a little Vietnamese doesn't play with a strategic map of the world. For us, it isn't a question of choosing between Mos- cow and Peking. It is a question of choosing between life and death (quoted in Stoessinger 1976, p. 68).
Weak states operate on narrow margins. Inopportune acts, flawed policies, and mistimed moves may have fatal results. In contrast, strong states can be inatten- tive; they can afford not to learn; they can do the same dumb things over again. More sensibly, they can react slowly and wait to see whether the apparently threatening acts of others are truly so. They can be indifferent to most threats because only a few threats, if carried through, can damage them gravely. They can hold back until the ambiguity of events is resolved without fearing that the moment for effective action will be lost.
Fourth, great power gives its possessors a big stake in their system and the ability to act for its sake. For them management becomes both worthwhile and possible. To show how and why managerial tasks are performed internationally is the subject of this chapter. In self-help systems, as we know competing parties consider relative gains more important than absolute ones. Absolute gains become more important as competition lessens. Two conditions make it possible for the United States and the Soviet Union to be concerned less with scoring rela- tive gains and more with making absolute ones. The first is the stability of two- party balances, a stability reinforced by second-strike nuclear weapons. Where a first-strike capability is almost as difficult to imagine as to achieve, gains and losses need not be so carefully counted. The second condition is the distance between the two at the top and the next most powerful states, a distance that removes the danger of third states catching up. The United States gained relative- ly when OPEC multiplied oil prices by five between 1973 and 1977 (cf. above, pp. 153-55). The other noncommunist industrial countries suffered more than we did. At times it was hinted that, for this reason, the United States more readily acquiesced in OPEC's actions. In the past, with many competing powers, one might have credited the aspersion, but not now. In a self-help system, when the great-power balance is stable and when the distribution of national capabilities is severely skewed, concern for absolute gains may replace worries about relative ones. Those who are unduly favored can lead in, or lend themselves to, collective efforts even though others gain disproportionately from them.
In this chapter, I first show how managing is done internationally despite the difficulties, and then consider three tasks that the managers may perform. We shall, as usual, notice how tasks are differently performed as the number of their performers varies.
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In the relations of states, with competition unregulated, war occasionally occurs.