As we have been at pains to explain, much of this variation stems from contextual differences (behavioral ecology)that is, a given individuals behavior can change across circumstances. Some decried the work as conspiratorial or factually weak, whereas others applauded its authors for having the courage to raise an important policy issue. In 1982 he became a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, where he was appointed the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science in 1996. Offensive realists and other theorists of international relations may see more or less of each. Fourth, group decision-making may actually amplify the influence of human dispositions; it is groups of men that are especially prone to behaviors associated with dominance, aggression, and coalitionary psychology.Reference Baumeister, Boden, Geen and Donnerstein203,Reference Janis204,205,206,Reference Wrangham and Wilson207. In short, on the basis of the family tree, there is little reason to assume that humans should be more or less like bonobos or chimpanzees. Biology, politics, and the emerging science of human nature, Violence and Warfare among Hunter-Gatherers, Behavior, Culture, and Conflict in World Politics, Blood Is Their Argument: Warfare Among the Mae Enga Tribesmen of the New Guinea Highland, War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage, The Origins of War: Violence in Prehistory, Constant Battles: The Myth of the Peaceful, Noble Savage, Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence, Human aggression in evolutionary psychological perspective, The evolution of war: theory and controversy, Life histories, blood revenge, and warfare in a tribal population, Group competition, reproductive leveling, and the evolution of human altruism, Intergroup aggression in chimpanzees and war in nomadic hunter-gatherers: Evaluating the chimpanzee model, Warfare and reproductive success in a tribal population, The genetical evolution of social behavior. Our approach also suggests that if offensive realism is a product of human nature, rather than merely a consequence of international anarchy, it can be broadened to explain human conflict at many levels, from tribal warfare, ethnic conflict, and civil wars to domestic politics, commercial competition, and international relations. 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. Sexual selection is typically responsible for the hierarchical nature of group-living animal species, including humans, as males fight for rank and the reproductive benefits in brings. However, our contention is that significant aspects of political behavior could be given a stronger foundation if we acknowledge the powerful and basic biological principles that are chronically ignored in the political science literature, as well as the conditions under which they become exacerbated or suppressed. Previous work has explored the implications of evolved human behaviors for specific aspects of politics and international relations, such as the causes of war or risk-taking.19 However, we ask a bigger-picture question, identifying whether core assumptions underlying international relations theory match scientific knowledge about human evolution and behavior. In the right contexts, helping others can help oneself. Something inherent in our biological makeup motivates us to try to improve, or at least maintain, our standing against those with whom we compete for important positional resources.Reference Frank94 In the context of evolutionary theory, dominance usually means that particular individuals in a social group have priority of access to resources in competitive situations.Reference Milinski, Parker, Krebs and Davies95 A wide variety of animals exhibit a form of social organization called a dominance hierarchy, in which members of a social group each have a status rank descending from the alpha male down through all the other individuals to the lowliest subordinates. 15, No. He uses and adapts on Waltz's theory to paint a much more pessimistic and altogether darker picture of International relations theory. and Self-help, power maximization, and fear are strategies to survive nature, not just contemporary international politics. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. As we show in the next section, competition between groups is especially significant for human evolution, and for international politics, precisely because it is at the intergroup level where anarchy reigns supreme and is much harder to suppress. Destined for War gets its Thucydides wrong, but its intentionsto warn that China and the US are on course to stumble into an unwanted warare noble. The result was that the theory lacked, and still lacks, a scientifically describable ultimate cause. Like egoism, the desire to dominate is a trait of human nature (which, as with egoism, we stress does not necessarily apply to every individual or situation but is a statistical tendency underlying behavior). He was later a research fellow at the Brookings Institution (197980) and a research associate at Harvard University (198082). The imperative for survival in a hostile environment also requires that an individual organism places its survival, especially in a time of danger or stress, above the survival of others. or Kenneth Waltz's structural realism. He expands on Waltz's idea of structure causing behaviour . Under an iron fist, even the most egotistical, dominating, and xenophobic actor will be prevented from realizing his or her goals. Incorporating ideas from the life sciences into the social sciencesrich in the study of culture and institutions and other influences on political behaviorwill help scholars base their theories in rigorous scientific principles and subject their assumptions to empirical testing.Reference Wilson20,21 Our approach draws heavily on evolutionary anthropology, which recognizes that human behavior is in large part the result of evolved cognitive, physiological, and behavioral mechanisms designed to solve recurrent problems confronted by our ancestors in the environment in which we evolved. The international system is anarchic. Core Assumptions of Realism (5) 1. States do not cooperate, except during temporary alliances, but constantly seek to diminish their competitors power and to enhance their own. Chimpanzees do at least have some important ecological similarities to humans. 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. However, the Ngogo group and their neighbors are chimpanzees. The modern understanding of evolution rejects the simplistic stereotype that selfish genes equates to selfish organisms (Richard Dawkins carefully explained why that is not a logical consequence in The Selfish Gene Reference Dawkins6). Such comparisons are not central to our argument. Table2 illustrates the range of domains to which an evolutionary theory of offensive realism applies. John Mearsheimer also sees a looming tragedy, one that (he argues) is inevitable. Given the prominence of the concept in present-day international relations theory, it is striking that anarchy only took hold as a central feature of scholarship in recent decades, since the publication of Kenneth Waltzs Theory of International Politics in 1979. We thank Robert Jervis for bringing this point to our attention. Table4. Evolutionary theory can also explain dominance. 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. Mearsheimer, taking his geography argument further, asserts that stopping the power of w ater is precisely why no state can be a global hegemon. Scholars often argue over whether historically humans experienced a Hobbesian state of nature, butwhatever the outcome of that debateit is certainly a much closer approximation to the prehistoric environment in which human brains and behavior evolved.48,Reference Buss49,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 Foley50 This legacy heavily influences our decision-making and behavior today, evenperhaps especiallyin the anarchy of international politics. Table1. As we have stressed, the human traits of egoism, dominance, and ingroup/outgroup bias are adaptations to the ecological conditions prevalent in human evolution. However, offensive realism is one of the most compelling current theories for explaining major phenomena across the history of international politics, such as great power rivalries and the origins of war. However, a key insight from evolution is that the primacy of self-help, power maximization, and outgroup fear does not necessarily condemn individuals or groups to competition and conflict; rather, these traits can in themselves give rise to cooperation and alliances. The fundamental differences and similarities between our theory of offensive realism and Mearsheimers arecaptured in Table4. His new book, God is Watching You: How the Fear of God Makes Us Human (Oxford University Press, 2015), examines the role of religion in the evolution of cooperation and how cross-culturally ubiquitous and ancient beliefs in supernatural punishment have helped human society overcome major challenges of collective action. Even optimists acknowledge that remarkable mechanisms and institutions are required to generate and sustain cooperation, and the identification and implementation of these conditions occupies many of our colleagues.180,Reference Milner181,182 183 The European Union, to give one flagship example, is often put forward as a vision of the future, demonstrating that democratic states are willing to subordinate self-interest for a greater good, and that war is becoming obsolete. 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. We should therefore expect instances of evolutionary mismatch in which evolved behaviors lead to poor decisions in modern settings. Mearsheimer explains that when following a realist policy . 6,No. Two theories of offensive realism. Mearsheimer outlines five bedrock assumptions on which offensive realism stands: (1) the international system is anarchic; (2) great powers inherently possess some offensive military capability; (3) states can never be certain about the intentions of other states; (4) survival is the primary goal of great powers; and (5) great powers are rational actors.39 From these core assumptions, Mearsheimer argues three general patterns of behavior result: fear, self-help, and power maximization.40 It is these three behaviors that are the focus of our article.
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