Why strategic realism is shit

Realism as a doctrine is very useful. It basically holds that people are all self-interested bastards. According to strategic realism, whenever people are involved in a prisoner’s dilemma they think that if they can betray when the other person cooperates that is ‘the win’. In a multiplayer game, like a multilateral trade agreement, strategic realism holds that the politicians involved will consider it a win if everyone else drops their tariff barriers while they get to keep their own. In actual fact, if everyone including them dropped their barriers that would be an even bigger win.

In realist strategic discourse, there is never any suggestion that mankind could possibly get over its differences and achieve cooperation, peace, harmony, wellbeing or even just a degree of friendship. Conflict is inevitable and ongoing.

I have several issues with strategic realism. None of them write it off as a doctrine. I think it is very useful. The problem is more that we increasingly see strategic realism as the only doctrine in the same way that we see neo-liberal efficiency maximisation as the only way to do economics.  This is problematic; not least of all because it fosters ridiculous neo-conservative tribal-style responses to political issues that end up fucking everyone over. Too many geo-political games are ending with no cooperation and no winners.

The strategic realist belief that ‘states’ of some sort will always exist and always be in competition encourages a paranoid protection of what we have. International relations, especially under the Bush administration, are dominated by a belief that if ‘we’ don’t act ‘they’ will come over here and take our stuff.

This is stupid and strikes me as one of those ‘rules of the playground’ that should be abandoned upon reaching adulthood. At the end of the day we are all human and all dealing with the same issues. States need to start seeing each other as sources of cooperation rather than competition. Geopolitics needs to be more akin to dungeons and dragons (with the US as dungeon master) than a great big game of poker. For those who didn’t get that analogy, you can only win poker by taking your opponent’s money. In order for someone to win, someone must necessarily lose. By contrast, D&D is a cooperative game played against external enemies under the guidance of a narrator (the DM).

 Resources are obviously scarce and very few affluent developed world individuals want to give up their preferential position, but everything has its limits. None of the developed countries really need the resources under the Artic/Antarctic. We could just get out of the way and give them over to developing nations. Perhaps they don’t have the infrastructure. Well then we could give them that too. Obviously economic theory has a role to play here in maximising efficiency, but the key underlying objective should be to maximise happiness/wellbeing/goodness for mankind not ‘get it before they do’.

Something that all too seldom comes up in strategic discourse is the fact that most strategic ‘threats’ are coming from places that are in a complete shambles. The way to protect yourself from such places isn’t to treat them as an enemy and defend your strategic interests with an ‘us’ vs. ‘them’ attitude circa 1914 but to extend the credit line of peace. Fostering development through peaceful means is much more likely to mitigate undesirable behaviour on the part of threats than some neo-con pre-emptive strike al la Afghanistan.

I say again though, the problem isn’t that strategic realism is not correct but rather that we assume that it is always correct. There are other viewpoints from which to approach strategic problems, many of which will produce a geo-political environment more conducive to human flourishing.

As the world globalises the humanistic project needs to get more involved in making states more cooperative for the betterment of mankind generally. China isn’t going to engage the US military anytime soon (I think it is much more likely that they will cooperatively engage North Korea, though that too is unlikely) but all the talk of it happening is making everyone a little crazy. Australia is throwing millions at submarines and some huge boat in SA when all we need is a couple of small gunboats to patrol the coast. Greg Sheridan and his mates over in talkback are stoking the fires of fear and bigotry and our politicians are riding the wave of terror into disgraceful policies. People are talking about how the carbon tax is expensive. Hello? We are rich! We are secure! The sun is shining! Everyone just chill out and love everyone else.

Just remember that self-interest can encourage people to cooperate as well as betray. Not everything is a zero-sum game. The real big wins are the win-win situations.