Liberalism goes abroad

That formidable state will end up embracing liberal hegemony, a highly interventionist foreign policy
that involves fighting wars and doing significant social engineering in countries throughout the world.
Its main aim will be to spread liberal democracy. 147

In effect, a state pursuing liberal hegemony aims to remake the international system in its own image.

Not only does this policy hold out the promise of protecting the rights of people all around the world, it
is also said to make the world more peaceful and protect liberalism at home from its enemies.
Moreover, liberal hegemony provides the foreign policy elite with many attractive career
opportunities. 148

I take issue with this story on two counts.

1- First, liberal great powers are seldom in a position to pursue liberal hegemony. They normally
have little choice but to act according to realist principles, because they are usually in
competition with one or more other great powers. As long as liberal states operate in either
bipolarity or multipolarity, they have no choice but to act toward each other according to realist
logic. 149
2- Second, circumstances sometimes arise where the balance of power is so favorable to a liberal
state that it is free to pursue liberal hegemony. This situation is most likely to occur in
unipolarity, which is defined as the presence of only one great power in the system.

When it comes to politics among states, liberalism is no match for nationalism and realism. Those
two isms together have played the leading role in shaping the modern international system, and their
influence is likely to continue. 150

Anarchy is here to stay, and as long as it does, liberalism cannot provide a sound basis for a state’s
foreign policy. 151

The Case for Liberal Hegemony 151

A liberal state, of course, does significant domestic social engineering to protect and promote the rights
of its citizens. But because those rights are universal, that same state feels a genuine sense of
responsibility to intervene, perhaps even militarily, on behalf of people in other countries if it sees
their rights violated. 151-152
One particular aspect of nationalism—a deep-seated sense of superiority over other nations—helps
reinforce a liberal state’s belief that it can affect fundamental change all over the world. This
combination of nationalist chauvinism and liberal idealism is plainly reflected in the frequent claims of
American policymakers who see the United States as having special qualities that enable it to instruct
and transform other less fortunate countries. 152

Causing Peace 152

Transnational respect for individual rights fosters a powerful sense of community among liberal states,
where trust among them is commonplace. It is striking how often the word community appears in liberal
discourse. In addition to the familiar term international community, one often hears reference to the
transatlantic community, the European Community, and security communities more generally. 152

War remains an acceptable instrument for protecting human rights abroad and for spreading liberal
democracy around the world. Doyle points out that liberal democracies are inclined to wage wars against
non-democracies with “imprudent vehemence.”

For liberals, as R. H. Tawney notes, “war is either a crime or a crusade. There is no half-way house.”153

Modern liberalism appears to have a more relaxed attitude toward sovereignty than either nationalism
or realism.

Norms about individual rights overshadow the norm of sovereignty in a world of liberal states 154

Protecting Liberalism at Home 155

A liberal state will always have internal enemies, although the severity of the threat varies. That problem
is exacerbated when there are non-liberal countries that can join forces with those domestic anti-
liberals and increase the threat to the liberal order. 155

This threat gives liberal states a powerful incentive to eliminate the external enemy by transforming it
into a liberal democracy. 156

Precisely because the threat is transnational,” he writes, “the government can degrade it by attacking it
abroad as well as at home. By suppressing an enemy ideology abroad, it can remove a source of moral
and perhaps material support for enemy ideologues at home.” John M. Owen 156
[The Clash of Ideas in World Politics: Transnational Networks, States, and Regime Change, 1510–2010
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), p. 4.]

The bottom line is that liberal states have three reasons for adopting a policy of regime change:
1- protecting the rights of foreigners,
2- facilitating peace,
3- and safeguarding liberalism at home 156-157

It will also pursue two other noteworthy missions: building international institutions and advancing
economic intercourse among states. These goals follow from the twin claims that international
institutions and economic interdependence promote peace.

An open international economy, they believe, not only generates prosperity—which is a good in itself
that inclines people toward peace and liberalism—but also makes states economically dependent on
each other. 157

Elites, the Public, and Liberal Hegemony

Finally, it is important to note that liberal hegemony is largely an elite-driven policy. The foreign policy
establishments in liberal states are generally more internationalist than their publics.

There is little doubt that foreign policy elites are more interested in pursuing liberal goals abroad than
are their broader publics.

The top colleges and universities have become thoroughly liberal places where nationalist sentiments
are seldom on display.

Hobnobbing with fellow elites from other countries. Academics, professionals, business leaders,
journalists, policymakers, and think tankers all travel abroad.

Additionally, foreign policy is le domaine réservé of the state, generally carried out without much
public involvement. 158

Elites run it, and they have a material interest in pursuing activist policies like liberal hegemony

As Stephen Walt puts it, liberal hegemony “is a full-employment strategy for the foreign policy
establishment 159
Liberalism Prescribes Realism 159

It cannot afford to privilege individual rights in its foreign policy, because the world is too dangerous to
let protecting the rights of others come at the expense of one’s own security. 160

Realism 101 160

The basic theory is built on five assumptions, which describe the system’s basic architecture.

1- First, states are the main actors on the world stage and there is no centralized authority above
them. 160

2- The second and third assumptions deal with capabilities and intentions, the two key factors
states consider when assessing each other 160-161

Realists tend to focus on great powers because they have the biggest impact on international politics;
but even among great powers, some have more capability than others.

3- The third assumption is that states can never know for certain whether a potential rival’s
intentions are benign or hostile. They can sometimes make reasonable guesses, but they can
never be sure. 161

One might concede the Soviet case and counter that the United States has surely known since at least
the start of World War II that Britain has peaceful intentions toward it. There is no question that
American policymakers have long viewed Britain as a friendly country, but that is because of its
capabilities: it was too weak to threaten the United States. It depended on Washington to help protect it
from Nazi Germany during World War II and the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

One might argue that policymakers can make their intentions clear through their words, but talk is cheap.
Leaders sometimes misrepresent their views or simply lie.
4- Fourth, survival is every state’s primary goal. States always have other aims as well—one reason
it is difficult to know their intentions—but survival must always take priority. 162
They do not want another state to be able to dictate important aspects of their domestic or foreign policy,
as the Soviet Union did with the countries of Eastern Europe during the Cold War.
5- Fifth, states are rational actors. They have the ability to devise strategies that maximize their
prospects for survival. States, in other words, are instrumentally rational. 162
Because international politics is a complicated business, the strategies sometimes fail, even disastrously,
but the point is that they are consciously devised to advance some goal. The theory makes no judgments
on whether a state’s goals are rational, with the one exception of survival. {Anlamadım}

The five assumptions together tell us that states exhibit three kinds of behavior.

First, they tend to fear each other. The level of fear varies, but there is always some residual fear among
the great powers, partly because no state can be sure another state will not have formidable offensive
capabilities and hostile intentions. 163

When a threatened state dials 911, there is nobody at the other end to answer the phone and send help.
Because of the anarchic structure of the international system, states have a powerful sense there is always
potential for serious trouble. 163

States therefore aim to maximize the military assets they control and make sure other states do
not gain power at their expense, while also looking for opportunities to shift the balance of power in
their favor. 164

In short, great powers are trapped in an iron cage where they have little choice but to compete for power,
because power is the means to survival in an anarchic system where conflict is an ever-present
possibility. 164

Realism’s Wide-Ranging Relevance 164

Realism is a timeless theory, simply because the international system has always been anarchic and there
has never been a way to discern the intentions of its constituent units with certainty. 164

Realism, Rights, and the International Community 165

Because states do whatever they deem necessary to guarantee their survival, rights are not an important
part of the realist story.

One might think the realist story contains one inalienable right, the right to survive. But states tend to
think they alone have the right to survive. They do not apply the right to other states. 166

Liberalism and International Anarchy 167

Where liberalism differs from realism is in its emphasis on natural rights, tolerance, and norms of
peaceful conflict resolution, all of which are supposed to provide the necessary ingredients for making
the world more peaceful. 168

At the international level, this means that political liberalism cannot work as advertised unless there is
a world state. As long as the international system is anarchic, liberalism is no different from realism in
that realm 168

Liberalism can be a powerful force for good inside states, but not when states are dealing with the wider
World. 169

Nationalism and the Limits of Social Engineering 169

It is important to note that a unipole, liberal or not, can pursue strikingly different foreign policies. Nuno
Monteiro points out that the dominant power has three basic choices:

 it can retreat from the world stage, knowing that it is both powerful and secure;
 it can remain a central player in international politics and seek to maintain the status quo; or
 it can attempt to change the status quo in ways favorable to itself. 170

A powerful liberal democracy that finds itself in unipolarity will reflexively pursue liberal hegemony,
at least initially, because remaking the world in its own image is baked into its DNA and the costs will
appear manageable. 170

Promoting individual rights and turning other countries into liberal democracies is an exceedingly
difficult undertaking. 170

One reason is that any country so targeted will have a deep-rooted culture that is hard to manipulate and
reorder. 170
There is the remarkably powerful force of nationalism, which further complicates the task of spreading
liberalism.

Liberalism is not an easy sell in alien lands. 173

Building international institutions and promoting an open international economy? These two
missions are more likely to succeed because, unlike democracy promotion, they are consistent with a
realist foreign policy as well as a liberal one. 174
Liberals believe they ameliorate conflict; realists do not.

The Making of the Modern International System 177

After 1800, those dynastic states slowly gave way to nation-states, and that political form eventually
spread across the globe until today, the international system is made up almost exclusively of nation-
states. As David Armitage notes, “The great political fact of global history in the last 500 years is the
emergence of a world of states from a world of empires 177

The two main driving forces, however, were nationalism and realism, which interacted in important
ways to help create the modern state system. 177

Realism and the Rise of the Modern State

Staying alive in that cutthroat world largely depended on military performance, where, unsurprisingly,
the most powerful actors tended to prevail. Charles Tilly famously tells the story of how the state proved
superior to all other organizational forms at building military power and winning wars 178

States proved to be superior to all other political forms at extracting resources from the resident
population and translating them into military might. 178

While that early version of the state was good for extracting resources from its population, it elicited
little loyalty from the people living within its borders 179

By the early twentieth century, every state in Europe was effectively a nation-state. Sovereignty no
longer resided in the crown but was lodged in the people.

Nations and States 180

Nationalism also played a crucial role in making the present-day international System

What makes nations so special is that they are the highest form of social group in the contemporary
world. 180

The best way for a nation to guarantee its survival is to have its own state, which is not to say nations
are condemned to ruin if they do not control a state.
Irresistible incentive to have a state

Given that those states operate in international anarchy, each nation wanted its own state to be especially
powerful, so as to guarantee the nation’s long-term survival.

Not only does it make good economic sense to have a national culture with a common language and
educational system, it also makes sense administratively. It is much easier to run a country whose
citizens are part of a standardized culture and also feel a strong bond with the state. States want nations
and nations want states, and the result is that nation-states 181

Is a World State Possible? 182

There would be only one supersized state, and people everywhere would presumably have some sort of
universal identity linked with that state, which would override, or at least dampen, their long-standing
nationalisms. But even if that proved not to be the case, the überstate would work to keep those rival
nations from fighting. 183

For starters, there is virtually no chance that any nation with its own state will voluntarily give it up.
And it is hard to imagine that those nations clamoring for a state will abandon that aspiration. Nations
are obsessed with self-determination and thus unlikely to be willing to put their fate in the hands of a
superstate over which they have at best limited control. 183

One might argue that globalization is causing nations to converge toward some universal culture that
can serve as the foundation of a world state. There is little evidence to support this belief, and abundant
evidence that even in the age of the Internet, deeply rooted cultures remain distinct in ways that are
widely recognized and often celebrated.

There will likely be no viable world state with a liberal political system

The other conceivable route to a world state is via conquest. One especially powerful nation-state would
have to take the offensive and subjugate the other countries. This is also not going to happen. The planet
is simply too big for one country to conquer all or even most of it, especially when you consider the
difficulty of projecting military power across oceans. 183-184

Anarchy Is Here to Stay 184

If we have no world state in our future, it means international anarchy is here to stay, and the great
powers have little choice but to act according to realist dictates.

Liberalism has many virtues as a political system, but when it is applied to international politics, the
resulting policies do not succeed 184