Does the US Fight Rational Wars?
Xander and Erik are bigtime Realists–we assume international relations are fairly rational. What if this model is flawed, and even biased? Richard Hanania, of Columbia University’s Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies, makes his case that international relations are more like politics than we Realists would like to admit. Watch Erik actively ReConsider (with considerable anguish) his entire model of global politics makes sense!
Xander and Erik decided to ReConsider one of our own career-held models: that war and international relations are, generally, driven by state actors with a rational regard for security (“Realism.”). Richard Hanania, awarded scholar at Columbia University, joins us to challenge Realism, something he’s been doing for years.
Richard makes the case that international relations should be studied as much more like domestic politics than Realists might think. He even believes there are longstanding structural biases in the international relations academic community which make it hard for scholars to see the similarities.
We dive into a number of great topics, including:
- Whether the United States acted in its security interests in wars over the past 20+ years
- Whether the United States and China are at major risk of going to war, barreling towards the Thucydides Trap
- Do states have individual agency in international relations, or do they express the preferences of their voters and elites?
- What risks does media sloppiness cause to democratic institutions?
- Why has great power war essentially stopped, why is territorial aggrandizement limited, and why has violence decreased?
In that conversation we talk at length about Stephen Pinker’s Better Angels of Our Nature.
About Richard
Richard Hanania is a postdoctoral research fellow at Columbia University’s Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies. He received his PhD from UCLA in Political Science, where his dissertation focused on how moral psychology relates to the support for war. He’s a prolific writer and researcher, and has written on topics ranging from nuclear policy to psychological differences between elites and the general public, to whether or not liberal governments are actually as cooperative as its proponents claim it is.
He’s given talks all over the country on American Grand Strategy, the intersection of domestic politics with foreign policy, and lots, lots more (we’ll have a link to his research on the show notes so you can do in more yourself). He’s currently working on a book called “Rational Individuals, Irrational States: The Illusion of American Grand Strategy”
More about Richard:
- Richard in the Washington Post: https://muckrack.com/richard-hanania/articles
- Richard at Columbia: https://www.siwps.org/people/richard-hanania/
- Richard’s publications: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=xJ-71I0AAAAJ&hl=en
- Richard’s website: https://www.richardhanania.com/
Sources:
- Richard’s papers & articles that we cite:
- “Are liberal governments more cooperative? Voting trends at the UN in five anglophone democracies”
- “The Personalities of Politicians: A Big Five Survey of American Legislators.” Personality and Individual Differences 108(1): 164–167.2015.
- Can China and the United States Escape the Thucydides Trap?
- https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-social-science-and-media-bias-11562264207?mod=searchresults&page=1&pos=1
- https://www.bbc.com/news/business-53928783
- https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/americas/2020-08-11/end-american-illusion
- Obama interview w/ Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic, on his way out of office: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/04/the-obama-doctrine/471525/
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