Realism, reckless states, and natural selection
| Published date | 01 December 2024 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00471178221136993 |
| Author | Matthew Rendall |
| Date | 01 December 2024 |
https://doi.org/10.1177/00471178221136993
International Relations
2024, Vol. 38(4) 635 –656
© The Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1177/00471178221136993
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Realism, reckless states,
and natural selection
Matthew Rendall
University of Nottingham
Abstract
Why is daredevil aggression like Russia’s war on Ukraine such an important factor in world politics?
Neither offensive nor defensive realists give a fully satisfactory answer. This paper maintains that
the problem lies in their shared assumption that states pursue security. Tracing neorealism’s
roots in evolutionary economics, and hence indirectly in biological theories of natural selection,
I argue that many policies are compatible with state survival. What is hard is surviving as a great
power. States that rise to that rank, and remain there, behave as if they sought to maximize
their influence, not their security. This Darwinian competition selects in favor of states with
expansionist institutions and ideologies. Failing to recognize this phenomenon risks conferring a
spurious legitimacy on imperialism. At the same time, neorealists have also committed a fallacy
familiar to biologists: assuming that traits enhancing group fitness are selected even when they
diminish fitness in intragroup competition. Whereas interstate competition selects in great
powers for traits that promote influence-maximization, with the spread of democracy, intrastate
competition increasingly selects for security-seeking. Yet the former process sometimes still
dominates the latter, above all in authoritarian great powers.
Keywords
democratic peace, evolution, imperialism, multilevel selection, neorealism, structural realism
If states’ main aim is security, why are some great powers so reckless?1 Neorealists hold
that aggressive efforts to accumulate power often backfire, with coalitions forming
against overweening states. Would-be hegemons have been repeatedly defeated.2
Nevertheless, risk-acceptant aggressors play a leading role in international politics, from
Napoleonic France and Hitler’s Germany to Putin’s Russia today.3
Corresponding author:
Matthew Rendall, School of Politics and International Relations, University of Nottingham, University Park,
Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK.
Email: matthew.rendall@nottingham.ac.uk
1136993IRE0010.1177/00471178221136993International RelationsRendall
research-article2022
Article
636 International Relations 38(4)
Defensive realists often attribute risky aggression to ideas or domestic politics. Jack
Snyder and Christopher Layne cite a combination of interest group politics and mis-
guided ideology.4 Stephen Van Evera notes the pernicious effects of militarism, social
imperialism, and ‘hypernationalism’ in early 20th-century Europe.5 Critics attack such
accounts, which invoke factors exogenous to neorealist theory, as ad hoc and degenera-
tive.6 Offensive realists have a simpler explanation: aggressive expansion often increases
states’ security. John Mearsheimer considers even Hitler’s and Japan’s efforts to conquer
their regions gambles that were ex ante rational in view of the security that regional
hegemony can provide.7 This cure for the theoretical problem is worse than the disease.
To treat Hitler’s foreign policy as a rational attempt to increase German security is pre-
posterous.8 So long as neorealism assumes that states pursue security, all versions will
struggle to explain the high-stakes gambling of great powers.
This paper challenges that assumption. Many neorealists simply postulate security-
seeking, but in Kenneth Waltz’s Theory of International Politics, it is derived from the
logic of natural selection. Just as firms must earn profits or risk bankruptcy, Waltz main-
tains, states must promote their security or risk decline and destruction.9 In so arguing
Waltz drew inspiration from economic theories modeled on evolutionary biology. Some
firms, these theories held, survive, and prosper, because they are already suited to their
economic environments. Others emulate successful competitors, or succeed through trial
and error. Profit-maximizers survive while others fail, and profitable policies come to
prevail in the market.10 Employing parallel logic, Waltz holds that states whose policies
promote state survival tend to survive and prosper, and that these policies predominate in
the international system. Yet a problem in the reasoning soon became apparent: few
states, especially since the Second World War, are destroyed. How stringent can selection
be?11 Moreover, neorealism aims to explain the dominant practices in the system. It is the
great powers that give international relations their shape, yet there is no reason to assume
that traits that maximize states’ survival chances are those that maximize their chances of
becoming and remaining great powers.
This paper rebuilds Waltz’s evolutionary reasoning, showing that its logic implies that
great powers tend to maximize influence, not security. My argument, like Waltz’s, is
strictly analogical: unlike some analysts, I make no effort to show that state behavior is
affected by genetic natural selection.12 Rather, since Waltz reasons by analogy from evo-
lutionary arguments in economics – shown in his references to ‘selection’, ‘survival’,
and ‘death rates’13 – his theory ought to be consistent with natural selection theory. Like
animal populations in nature, or firms in a marketplace, states face competition. Waltz
assumes that international competition selects for traits that help them survive. One prob-
lem with this approach is that it captures only half of the biological conception of fitness,
which depends on both an organism’s survival chances and its ability to reproduce.14
Another is that in contrast to animals, few states nowadays ‘die’. Survival is easy: states
as varied as Norway, Niger, and North Korea manage it. Neorealism’s focus, however, is
on the great powers – which set the tone of international relations – and surviving as a
great power is hard.15 States that become and remain great powers behave as if they
sought to maximize their influence.
This Darwinian competition often selects for traits promoting risky and aggressive
behavior. The policies of Napoleon and Bismarck did not maximize their countries’
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