Complete Anarchy?


A consideration of the interactions between the pressures of anarchy and autonomous sovereign actors seemed like a reasonable way to process this week’s readings. A common theme across all articles was the conviction that anarchy on the level of international politics/relations creates a large system of balances. The self-correcting capacity of that system is a matter on which there is less agreement.

Wendt in particular views the balance as fragile. If one actor enters on the stage with an aggressive approach, the extant actors/agents are most likely going to take a similar approach. This creates a self-propagating cycle that is unlikely to end without disastrous wars or individual, internal changes. Wendt does believe that the possibility for that change exists, and that external powers can influence other, sovereign agents to make those changes. He proposes that by one power, the ‘ego’, treating a second power, the ‘alter’, as though the alter has already made internal changes the ego wished to see, it may trigger the changes. It is a theory of the self-fulfilling prophecy, but if it works in the medical industry with placebos, why should it not work on the international stage.

As Onuf points out, international actors are composed of individual actors, who in a Hobbesian manner have chosen to unite to form a larger entity. It is thus both possible and practical to apply general social theory to international relations. Onuf proceeds to do just that, delineating the purposes of roles, rules, associations, and agency. The agency of sovereign states in an anarchical environment is an interesting concept to ponder. Upon first consideration, it seems natural that sovereign states operating on an international stage with no higher governing body would have complete agency. This brings us back to the extrapolation of individuals’ social theories onto sovereign agents/actors. Individuals are constrained by the rules of society (all social constructs, according to Onuf, but that’s a problem for another day.) With rules comes a limiting of agency.

While international, sovereign actors may not have a higher power enforcing any rules there are considerations that limit their agency, even in anarchical environments. While it is nearly impossible to have two actors with identical strength, great powers keep each other, and often smaller powers in check. The advent of nuclear weapons brought a particularly weighty contribution to this balance. Waltz put it best when he said “because of a change in military technology….waging war has increasingly become the privilege of poor and weak states.” By this logic, even so-called anarchical environments like the world stage have restrictions.
Sources
Waltz, Kenneth N. "The Origins of War in Neorealist Theory." The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 18, no. 4 (1988): 615-28. doi:10.2307/204817.

Wendt, Alexander. "Anarchy Is What States Make of It: The Social Construction of Power Politics." International Organization 46, no. 2 (1992): 391-425. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2706858

Onuf, Nicholas. “Constructivism: A User’s Manual.” Making Sense, Making Worlds. Routledge, 2013.

Comments

  1. AnonymousJune 4, 2018 at 5:59 PM

    I wonder if Waltz would think that the "great powers" today can still keep the international realm in check. His claim that waging war becomes a privilege of the wealthy seems to contradict his other comments where he claimed that excessive strength could force states to "pool their resources" to take down the dominant threat. It seems to suggest that even in anarchy, a powerful-irrational actor could force weaker states around it to exit their isolation to pursue a common good (destroying the large threat). Mexico's recent response to US tariffs kind of pokes exactly at that logic. They felt empowered by the "attacks" on the EU and Canada (via tariffs) to strike out. As a Mexican politician put it, "it's no longer, poor Mexico," bur rather Mexico on the side of the other harmed parties. Anarchy almost forces cooperation among states to deal with threats, which in turn, could lead to giving up sovereignty for the sake of self-preservation.

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    Replies
    1. EHJune 6, 2018 at 7:06 PM

      I think we're in the process of a 'great power' shift. Its happened so many times before; Romans, Ottomans, Persians, Greeks, Huns, British, Russians, all the way up to the present. Of course, the globalized world we see today is also entirely different from anything that's come before, mostly thanks to communications technology. We seem to be moving toward a more equal system, in which case Waltz might indeed see the great powers as more bluster than bite. We're still a ways out from that though.

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