Realists and Iraq The Intellectual Bankruptcy of "Realist Theory" Various commentators have brought up the fact that the political scientists and policy wonks from the "realist" school have expressed opposition to war in Iraq. The New Republic has a description of their positions here, which you may want to peruse before continuing. The sight of cold customers like Brent Scowcroft on the same side of the barricades as the peace activists was bizarre enough to warrant investigation. My curiosity was further piqued by the insistence of one of our contributors on the relevance of realist theory to the invasion of Iraq. She recommended that I investigate the realist school and the theory of "just wars" before jumping to conclusions. [1] I have to say that I'm underwhelmed by what I've found. But before I describe why, I suggest you read John Mearsheimer's short outline of the three major strains of realism. This is a good starting point for understanding the perspective of the realists and their differences with the liberalists, particularly because Mearsheimer himself is one of the architects of the field. (I'm going to assume you've read the essay from this point on.) Political science isn't a "science" in the same way math and physics are. So I went in skeptical that these men had the answer. And I was not disappointed. These guys disagree about fundamental axioms - are states defensive and seek the status quo to fend off anarchy like Waltz says? Are they offensive and seek to use the international system to advance their agenda like Mearsheimer contends? Or are they aggressive actors that seek power without limit like Morgenthau thinks? When you disagree about fundamental axioms, it says much about the state of your discipline. For one thing, it indicates that interventions advocated by "realist theory" are not guaranteed to be successful, because much of their theoretical edifice is built around ex post facto rationalizations of historical events...not the analysis of controlled experiments. They have a few good points, mainly at the expense of naive proponents of liberalism, but the realists - like the randroids - tend to ride their ideological rails into oblivion. In particular, they're overly enamored with the conceit that they're the hard-boiled individuals steady enough to see the world for what it really is rather than what people wish it would be. The fact of the matter is that they are vulnerable to the same affliction that afflicts the liberalists: the refusal to accept facts that induce cognitive dissonance. A non-comprehensive list of these facts:

• They don't account for non-state actors and seem to think that Al Qaeda et. al. fit into their framework. Of course, they don't, because such actors have little or no stake in the international order, and no territory to defend or expand.
• They fail to account for the fact that in a nuclear state, small deviations from "rational self interest" can have unacceptable consequences. Take these typical comments from Waltz, who seems to be a fan of gradual, unlimited nuclear weapons proliferation:

  "Waltz published a monograph, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons, his first of many proclamations arguing for the potentially positive effects of nuclear weaponry's gradual spread. He still insists on this reasoning today. "Countries that have nuclear weapons co-exist peacefully," says Waltz, "because each knows the other can do horrendous damage to it." When asked about the fear of rogue leaders possessing nuclear capabilities, Waltz explains, "The characteristics of these people you can't overlook is that they survive. They're ugly; they're nasty; but when it comes to the preservation of their regimes, they are not reckless." And so, they will not provoke disastrous attacks on themselves, Waltz says. "

  Everything depends upon that "not reckless" assumption. Waltz assigns probability zero to a patently self-destructive move, but in the case of (say) someone like Hussein (who has made at least one unbelievably reckless move in his attack on Bush 41) that probability is appreciably nonzero. Waltz's theories are blue sky nonsense, worthy of little more than a dismissive eye roll. Any engineer knows that you don't design a system for the ideal case in which fault probabilities are zero. If you have a network of states with nuclear weapons pointed at each other, and each state has some nonzero probability of irrational action, you will eventually roll the dice and come up snake eyes. Realists don't like to acknowledge this fact , because it shoots irreparable holes in their models. Instead they come up with elaborate rationalizations of past follies to make a two-bit thug sound like Machiavelli himself in terms of diplomatic savvy and "survival ability".
• Realists fail to account for the fact that different states have different information/interpretations and thus different "rational" decisions in the presence of limited information. For example, the Taliban/Al Qaeda probably thought that the US couldn't be provoked into retaliating because of its history of weak retaliation to terrorist attacks. They simply did not understand how bloody and brutal the West is capable of being when it feels its survival is at stake. Had Mullah Omar had a nuke, he would certainly have given it to bin Laden (the Taliban defense minister), and it would have been used against the United States. A reckless, rash decision by our standards? Assuredly. An impossible outcome? Of course not. Yet the realists would have you believe that the Taliban wouldn't do anything so rash as to precipitate the downfall of their regime. The key distinction lies in the asymmetry of the situation: the Taliban didn't know that their actions would lead to their ruin, but any American could have picked out the analogy to Pearl Harbor and predicted what would happen next. Another example would be the Arab/Muslim states' aggression towards Israel; despite getting their ass handed to them repeatedly in combat, they persist in funding terrorism against Israel, a nuclear state that could turn their countries into glass if sufficiently provoked. I could go on and on, but you get the picture: the assumption that states will not engage in self-destructive behavior is not justified by even a cursory reading of history.
• Perhaps most damningly for those who style themselves "realists", they fail to account for the heritable cultural and behavioral differences between human groups. An intervention that works in Asia will not work in Africa, because Asians are different from Africans, and this behavioral difference cannot be neglected in international relations. For example, I am thankful beyond words that South Africa voluntarily dismantled its nuclear program, because South Africa is experiencing an exodus of its technically savvy personnel that will eventually result in anarchy comparable to the rest of sub-Saharan Africa (save Botswana). Realists wouldn't acknowledge any difference between the pre- and post-apartheid chances of using nuclear weapons, because they assume the motivations of states to be independent of the dispositions of their citizenry. As another example, "realists" would not grant that a Marshall Plan style intervention is more likely to work in some countries (e.g., Iran) and not in others (e.g., Nigeria) because of the relative abundance of human capital. Indeed, they make a fetish of their determined ignorance of the internal characteristics of regimes.

Those are some of the major holes I could poke in realist theory, but you get the picture. The problem with the realists is that they try to shoehorn everything into their (flawed) axioms - "all states are offensive/defensive" or "all actors are rational", etc. They've won too many easy victories over the largely idiotic liberalists, and so they think they're king of the hill. They're wrong. Justification for Invading Iraq As for why we should invade Iraq, I'm not going to fall into the same "shoehorning" trap of justifying it in terms acceptable to a realist. My theory for invading can be enumerated as follows:

• No nation currently poses a threat to US conventional forces. [2] Thus, the only contemporary threat that US citizens face from foreign nationals is the threat of terrorism. This threat is real, as evidenced on 9/11. As the security of US citizens is the first priority of the state, the problem of terrorism is the first priority of the Armed Forces.
• It is impossible for the USA to win a preventative war against terrorism, particularly WMD terrorism. Homeland security is a joke, and our society is too free to impose restrictions on movement. A purely retaliatory strategy will likewise fail, because the first strike may be too costly to be acceptable. [3]
• Thus, if we wish to prevent further major acts of terrorism, we must take the offensive. In particular, we must preempt groups that mean us harm before their plans come to fruition. We must also enforce a muscular non-proliferation doctrine to ensure that WMDs never get into the hands of terrorist groups or hostile states sympathetic to terrorism. Finally, we must effect cultural change to eliminate the motivations for attacking the United States.
• Iraq has biological and chemical weapons, and is currently pursuing nuclear weapons. It would already have them had Hussein been rational enough to wait six months before invading Kuwait - see here. It is a known state sponsor of terrorism, possibly against the continental United States [4] and certainly against its allies and citizens abroad. Its ruler has done many things in the past that throw the "survivor" label into question, including his refusal to back down in the face of a credible assault by US Armed Forces in 1991, his ill advised provocation of Iran in 1974, his purely vengeful assassination attempt on a former US president in 1993, and his decision to put limits on "unconditional inspections" in the face of *another* credible assault by US Armed Forces in 2002. In the face of this evidence, it is the height of obstinacy and insistent blindness to claim that Saddam can be "trusted" to do things that will not bring about his downfall. He does not have to be a madman to make consistently self-destructive decisions.
• There are ancilliary benefits to invading Iraq. Prime among them are oil reserves which will break the back of OPEC and a geopolitical location that will allow us to put massive pressure on SA, Syria, and Iran without actually invading them. I want what John Hawkins wants:

  So if someone walks up to a thug like Bashar Assad in Syria and says, "We have a terrorist group that is seeking our help. Should we help them?" I want Assad to say something like, "A terrorist group? Are you mad? The United States will kill us all! Exterminate them like rats before the United States finds out they're on Syrian soil!" Sanctions, aid, and finger wagging are not going to produce that reaction.

  Furthermore, the invasion of Iraq will send a signal to these regimes: cease your attempts to obtain nuclear weapons or we will destroy you. This is nonproliferation with teeth - the only kind that works.
• The costs of invading Iraq can be categorized: military, financial, diplomatic, and post-invasion. Military costs will be very low, because Gulf War 1 was prosecuted with only 148 KIAs, Saddam is now weaker, and we're far stronger. Financial costs will be substantial, but not an important obstacle and will be partially recouped from oil sales. Diplomatic costs are nil if we get a Security Council resolution authorizing the use of force, because the vaunted "Arab street" will not arise to defend Saddam. This leaves the costs of the post-invasion occupation force, which will be financially substantial. The main post-invasion military problem is the possiblity of ethnic unrest in the north (the Kurds) and that's also been dealt with.

[1] This essay talks about just war theory, which I haven't covered in detail because it's laughably incompatible with some of the (correct) assumptions of realist theory, particularly the amorality of states. Basically, "just war theory" is a bunch of arbitrary strictures and conditions on when war is justified and what retaliation is proportional. For example, if country A attacks country B, just war theory says that country B is not justified in taking any of country A's land. It should act to restore the status quo that existed before A's aggression, and the claim that only the invasion and pacification of A can ensure B's security is "controversial". It's essentially a recipe for purely retaliatory warfare, one that's not followed by most states and obsolete in an era of increasingly lethal first strikes by clandestinely state-supported individual agents. [2] China might eventually do so, but that's a story for another day. [3] This is one of the reasons why just war theory is not applicable in this case (if it ever was...) [4] Possible involvement in Oklahoma City as well as reports of Mohammed Atta meeting with Iraqi nationals in Prague.