On the contrary, it provides or adds to the reasons why we demand and need them, and indeed why they are so hard to establish and maintain. Sexual selection has led to costly biological adaptations, such as fighting, the growth of heavy weapons (e.g., antlers), risky courtship displays, or adornments that signal genetic quality (e.g., gigantic tails). http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/59922#eid5780558, http://edge.org/conversation/steven_pinker-the-false-allure-of-group-selection. A key debate in evolutionary anthropology has revolved around the origins and extent of intergroup conflict among hunter-gatherers, and the emerging consensus is that such conflict is (and has long been) significant and widespread, and that it serves adaptive functions.59, Let us first consider these functional advantages. With regard to phylogeny, most primates and all the great apes (the group to which humans belong) have strong social dominance hierarchies, and humans are no exceptiondominance hierarchies have been extensively documented among humans in a wide variety of settings and eras.Reference Wason96,Reference Mazur and Booth97,98 With regard to ecology, dominance hierarchies are a common form of social organization in the kind of ecological settings in which humans evolved (social groups with competing interests, variation in power, and finite resources). Mearsheimer's 5 Assumptions 1) International System is Anarchic 2) Great Powers possess military capability 3) States can't be certain about other state intentions 4) Survival is the primary goal of great powers 5) Great powers are rational actors Mearsheimer's 3 Functions of State Behavior 1) States fear each other In some species, reproductive access is settled by coercion, in which the strongest male defeats rivals to dominate a harem. In this article, we ask whether the three core assumptions about behavior in offensive realismself-help, power maximization, and outgroup fearhave any basis in scientific knowledge about human behavioral evolution. This story might have come from any number of bloody human conflicts around the world. If anything, group selection would tend to increase violence, since between-group competition (conflict among strangers) can be more brutal than within-group competition (conflict among kin and fellow group members). Haldane thus quipped that he would give his life to save two of his brothers (each sharing half of his genes) or eight of his cousins (each sharing one-eighth of his genes).Reference Haldane89,90 Inclusive fitness provides a biological basis for the common intuition that individuals favor those who are close genetic relatives.Reference Betzig91. Indeed, the possibility of even more intense security competition in the Sino-American relationship, between India and Pakistan, and in the Middle East highlights the importance of making the theorys logic explicit and revealing and testing its foundations. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). He was later a research fellow at the Brookings Institution (197980) and a research associate at Harvard University (198082). Behavior varies considerably, just as standard offensive realism predicts for states, and countervailing forces would sometimes mitigate power-maximization strategiesalthough the very need for and difficulties of those countervailing forces help to demonstrate the fact that offensive realist behavior remains an underlying problem. Mearsheimer and Walt in particular make cases for "restraint" and "offshore balancing," meaning a reservation of the use of force to the most serious threats to US power, coupled with a policy to prevent China's assumption of regional hegemony in Asia (Mearsheimer and Walt 2016). Still, humans exhibit an instinctive fight or flight response, just as other animals do, which operates below (and faster than) conscious awareness.Reference Axelrod144,Reference Cronk and Leech145 Befriending or cooperating with a stranger may have benefits, but those benefits are uncertain and limited whereas the costs of trusting an outsider may be lethal. Evolutionary theory explains why humans are egoistic, strive to dominate others, and make ingroup/outgroup distinctions. Self-help, power maximization, and fear are strategies to survive nature, not just contemporary international politics. However, an overtone of this argument is that power or domination is distasteful for leadersthat they tolerate it only for the sake of their states security. Up to now, our claims have focused on traits that are common to all humans. The constraints on biological group selection, such as significant differences in a given trait between groups and low migration, are relaxed in the case of cultural traits, since groups actively promote cultural distinctions and have many mechanisms to prevent flows between them.Reference Richerson and Boyd190 Therefore, it is not just likely but quite apparent that many cultural traits have evolved out of group-level competitionsometimes referred to as memes, as opposed to genes. Neorealism therefore works from realism's five base theoretical assumptions as outlined by offensive neorealist scholar John J. Mearsheimer in "The False Promise of International Institutions". The theory of Mearsheimer has five basis assumptions: 1. These findings may be surprising for those who hold to the popular notion of a harmonious and peaceful past in which humans were at one with nature and each other, but the evidence suggests the opposite. Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford, Stjrnmlafrideild/Department of Political Science, Hskli slands/University of Iceland, Reference Wilson, Boesch, Fruth, Furuichi, Gilby, Hashimoto, Hobaiter, Hohmann, Itoh, Koops, Lloyd, Matsuzawa, Mitani, Mjungu, Morgan, Muller, Mundry, Nakamura, Pruetz, Pusey, Riedel, Sanz, Schel, Simmons, Waller, Watts, White, Wittig, Zuberbuhler and Wrangham, Reference Sidanius, Kurzban, Sears, Huddy and Jervis, Reference Mirazn Lahr, Rivera, Power, Mounier, Copsey, Crivellaro, Edung, Maillo Fernandez, Kiarie, Lawrence, Leakey, Mbua, Miller, Muigai, Mukhongo, Van Baelen, Wood, Schwenninger, Grn, Achyuthan, Wilshaw and Foley, Reference Milinski, Parker, Krebs and Davies, Reference Ellis, Hershberger, Field, Wersinger, Pellis, Hetsroni and Geary, Reference Taylor, Klein, Lewis, Gruenewald, Gurung and Updegraff, Reference Flack, Girvan, de Waal and Krakauer, Reference Tooby, Cosmides and Hgh-Olesen, Reference Mech, Adams, Meier, Burch and Dale, Reference wrangham, Pilbeam, Galdikas, Briggs, Sheeran, Shapiro and Goodall, Reference Todorov, Mandisodza, Goren and Hall, Reference Baumeister, Boden, Geen and Donnerstein, Lethal intergroup aggression leads to territorial expansion in wild chimpanzees, Lethal aggression in Pan is better explained by adaptive strategies than human impacts, Intergroup aggression in chimpanzees and humans, Missing the Revolution: Darwinism for Social Scientists, Darwins Conjecture: The Search for General Principles of Social and Economic Evolution, The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture, Darwin and International Relations: On the Evolutionary Origins of War and Ethnic Conflict, Evolutionary approaches to political psychology, The origin of politics: An evolutionary theory of political behavior, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, The Peace of Illusions: International Relations Theory and American Grand Strategy in the PostCold War Era, Beyond victory: Offensive realism and the expansion of war aims, Realism and Americas rise: A review essay, The false promise of international institutions, Noble Savages: My Life Among Two Dangerous TribesThe Yanomamo and the Anthropologists, World of Our Making: Rules and Rule in Social Theory and International Relations, Inter-group violence among early Holocene hunter-gatherers of West Turkana, Kenya, International relations as a social science. Collective action to attain public goods, however, is much harder to attain because of the threat of free-riders (as demonstrated, for example, by the slow response to climate change, the reluctance of states to accept Syrian refugees, and Eurozone fiscal responsibility). Ethological studies have shown that hierarchical dominance systems within a primate groups social network can reduce overt aggression, although aggression increases again when the alpha male is challenged.Reference Knauft116,Reference Flack, Girvan, de Waal and Krakauer117,Reference de Waal118. (Examples include the spread of Christianity or Islam at the expense of traditional religions over the last 2,000 years.) Feature Flags: { Bradley A. Thayer is professor of political science at the University of Iceland. However, an evolutionary perspective raises new doubts about the significance of such evidence. Moreover, the very acquisition and exercise of power itself is known to inflate dominance behavior further.161. The legacies of this long evolutionary history exert powerful influences on our behavior, including our political behavior, even today in large settled societies and in the global arena. 15, No. (PDF) Effects of Face Masks on Emotion Interpretation in Socially Classical realists (such as Thucydides, E.H. Carr, Arnold Wolfers, and Hans Morgenthau) and offensive realists share the assumption that states seek to maximize power - that states are relentless seekers of power and influence.Specifically, for classical realists "nations expand their political interests abroad when their relative power increases . Strikingly, therefore, behavioral dispositions that enhanced success in the small-scale intergroup anarchy of humans evolutionary past may have endowed us with behaviors that also enhance success in the anarchy of the international system. We recognize that offensive realism remains controversial, and we would like to address three fundamental problems with the theory. Is John Mearsheimer right that his five assumptions make it We see several reasons why human behavior is an important predictor of state behavior in the context of this article. Mearsheimer based his theory on five core assumptions: (1) the international system is anarchic (there is no authority that exists above the states to arbitrate their conflicts), (2) all states have some military capability (however limited), (3) states can never fully ascertain the intentions of other states, (4) states value survival above all The most enduring theories of international relations, therefore, will be ones that are able to incorporate (or at least do not run against the grain of) evolutionary theory. This idea is important because, if individuals are working for the good of the group rather than only for themselves, then groups composed of more-cooperative individuals may do better than less-cooperative groups, meaning that genuinely altruistic traits (sacrificing ones own interests for the good of others) can spread in the population.Reference Wilson184,Reference Wilson and Sober185 However, there are several reasons why this possibility does not affect our argument. Provo Canyon School's history of abuse accusations spans decades, far Evolutionary theory is especially helpful here because it advances our understanding of the proximate (biological) causes of offensive realist behavior and the conditions under which mistakes are more likely to be made (i.e., conditions that exacerbate egoistic, dominating, and groupish behaviors even where such behaviors may not help to achieve strategic goals). In short, our theory is one of behavioral ecologyhuman and animal behaviors are not constants, but are contingent strategies that become engaged or elevated in order to best seek payoffs depending on the particular circumstance or environment. Reckless States and Realism John J. Mearsheimer Abstract Kenneth Waltz opted to reject the rational actor assumption in developing his theory of international politics. Mearsheimers offensive realism argues that states gain power to ensure security. Second, critics of offensive realism point to countering factors such as the democratic peace or international institutions. Conventional offensive realism cannot explain such events well. Mearsheimers other works included Conventional Deterrence (1983), Liddell Hart and the Weight of History (1988), Why Leaders Lie: The Truth About Lying in International Politics (2011), The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities (2018), and scores of articles published in academic journals. With regard to U.S. foreign policy, he advocated a strategy of global balancing rather than global hegemony. A superpower such as the United States, he argued, should not try to impose its rule on all continents but should intervene only when another major power threatens to rule a region of strategic importance. First, the group could eliminate or reduce consumption to make the resource last. Although we have stressed that evolved behavior is often contingent on circumstances, this matching is not perfect, especially when human decision-makers are faced with an evolutionarily novel environmentas witnessed today with mass societies, modern technologies, and interactions with distant peoplesfor which the human brain was not designed. Where a states own security is threatened or the state becomes vulnerable to exploitation, alliances offer one means of increasing or preserving power. Survival of the disciplines: Is international relations fit for the new millennium? When grounded in evolutionary theory, offensive realism need not simplify structure to interpret behavior and can parsimoniously develop and test corollaries over the entire span of human history. Wherever actors are left to compete with each other by relying on their own devices (whether in the human evolutionary past or today), we predict that actors within those systems will exhibit similar behavior, not least self-help behavior to maximize power. Under these conditions, such behavior will have been favored by natural selection and spread. We are positively biased toward our own groups and negatively biased toward other groups. Third, we illuminate offensive realisms new explanatory power when wedded to evolution. Email: Association for Politics and the Life Sciences 2016, For an analysis of offensive realism and defensive realism, see. Cooperation and peace efforts often fail precisely because people have too rosy a view of human nature and thus fail to structure incentives effectively. We invoke anarchy in all situations in the table because, while our core argument is that evolved dispositions (egoism, dominance, groupishness) give rise to offensive realist behavior today even in the absence of anarchy, these evolved dispositions will be more prominent and influential where regulation is lax. The rest of the 500-plus page book more closely outlines. Indeed, the competition for mates is subject to a special type of evolutionary selection processsexual selection, as opposed to standard natural selection. He is the author of Overconfidence and War: The Havoc and Glory of Positive Illusions (Harvard University Press, 2004), which argues that common psychological biases to maintain overly positive images of our capabilities, our control over events, and the future play a key roles in causing war, and, with Dominic Tierney, Failing to Win: Perceptions of Victory and Defeat in International Politics (Harvard University Press, 2006), which examines how and why popular misperceptions commonly create undeserved victories or defeats in wars and crises. The key observation is that bonobos are less aggressive than chimpanzees. Anarchy is, ironically, the ordering principle of the global state system and the starting point for most major theories of international politics, such as neoliberalism and neorealism.42,Reference Keohane43,Reference Jervis44,Reference Nye45 Other theoretical approaches, such as constructivism, also acknowledge the impact of anarchy, even if only to consider why anarchy occurs and how it can be circumvented.Reference Wendt46,Reference Onuf47 Indeed, the anarchy concept is so profound that it defines and divides the discipline of political science into international politics (politics under conditions of anarchy) and domestic politics (politics under conditions of hierarchy, or government). Even where dominance hierarchies are actively suppressed, such as in more egalitarian small-scale societies, suppression itself is evidence of the competition for status that simmers beneath the surface.Reference Boehm99 In historical and contemporary societies, competition for power is all too obvious, and the quest for status, dominance, and leadership is ancient and ever present.Reference Mazur100,101,Reference Ludwig102,Reference King, Johnson and Van Vugt103. After graduating from the United States Military Academy (West Point) in 1970, Mearsheimer served for five years as an officer in the air force, rising to the rank of captain. As we have explained, there are several mechanisms by which altruistic or helping behavior can (and have) evolved because of the benefits of helping others that accrue to oneselfnot least, altruistic behavior among kin, reciprocity, and reputation formation. for this article. 21 June 2016. He is missed. We find that these precise traits are not only evolutionarily adaptive but also empirically common across the animal kingdom, especially in primate and human societies. For an excellent general analysis of the genetic origins of aggression and its chemical mediators in humans such as the hormone testosterone, its derivative dihydroxytestosterone (DHT), neurotransmitters such as serotonin, and some of the differences in behavior caused by these factors in men and women, see William R. Clark and Michael Grunstein, In this respect, too, international politics resembles animal behavior. We recognize that many factors may affect the behavior of states, including bureaucracies, types of government, culture, international institutions, or the international system itself, but we also recognize, as traditional theories of international politics have from the time of Thucydides, that humans affect state behavior as well.Reference Levy202 Many factors come between an individual leader and the behavior of a state, but that does not mean leaders have no effect at all. We do not need to resort to group selection unless altruism cannot be explained by more conventional mechanisms based on individual selection. realism's 5 assumptions about the international system o 1)the international system is anarchic (no higher ruling body) o 2) states inherently possess some offensive military capability which gives them the wherewithal to hurt and possibly to destroy each other o 3) states can never be certain about the intentions of other states and Rather, as Mearsheimer points out, states do best if they expand only when the opportunity for gains presents itselfthey try to figure out when to raise and when to fold.163 Evolution has been doing this for a long time. Mearsheimer explains that when following a realist policy . First, ambitious leaders self-select themselves into seeking high-profile roles in the first place.Reference Ehrenhalt191 Second, strong leaders are selected into power over weak-willed or hesitant candidates.Reference Todorov, Mandisodza, Goren and Hall192,Reference Van Vugt and Ahuja193 Third, leaders rise to the top of their respective hierarchies through an intensively competitive process that compels them to be increasingly attentive to self-interest and self-preservation.Reference Shenkman194 Fourth, once in power, decision-makers tend to heed hawkish rather than dovish advice.Reference Kahneman and Renshon195 Fifth, the experience of power itself is well known to corrupt, precisely because being a leader elevates ones sense of worth and power.196 Taking these phenomena together, a skeptic of our argument that humans are generally egoistic, dominance-seeking and groupish may nevertheless concede that the small subset of humans that become political leaders tend to express these traits. It is hard to escape the conclusion from the ethnographic and archeological evidence from Europe, North America, South American, Australia, and New Guinea that hunter-gatherers both simple and complex engaged in socially sanctioned lethal conflict between independent polities, suggesting an extremely long history of warfare that can ultimately be traced back to early hominins., Terry Jones and Mark AllenReference Allen and Jones58, Humans evolved as a distinct lineage principally in the Pleistocene era (from 2 million to 10,000 years ago), and our analysis therefore requires a discussion of the small-scale hunter-gatherer groups that formed the social and ecological context for that period of human evolution. Instead, we can make more concrete predictions about how humans tend to think and act in different conditions, based on new scientific knowledge about human cognition and behavior, and in particular a greater understanding of the social and ecological context in which human brains and behaviors evolved.

Philadelphia Police Deputy Commissioner, Articles M