State Building for Future Wars: Neoclassical Realism and the Resource-Extractive State

Abstract Neorealist theory holds that the international system compels states to adopt similar adaptive strategies—namely, balancing and emulation—or risk elimination as independent entities. Yet states do not always emulate the successful practices of the system's leading states in a timely and uniform fashion. Explaining this requires a theory that integrates systemic-level and unit-level variables: a "resource-extraction" model of the state in neoclassical realism. External vulnerability provides incentives for states to emulate the practices of the system's leading states or to counter such practices through innovation. Neoclassical realism, however, suggests that state power—the relative ability of the state to extract and mobilize resources from domestic society—shapes the types of internal balancing strategies that countries are likely to pursue. State power, in turn, is a function of the institutions of the state, as well as of nationalism and ideology. The experiences of six rising or declining great powers over the past three hundred years—China, France, Great Britain, Japan, Prussia (later Germany), and the United States—illustrate the plausibility of these hypotheses. I thank Dale Copeland, Dan Drezner, Benjamin Fordham, Benjamin Frankel, Steven Lobell, Alex McLeod, João Resende-Santos, Julian Schofield, Norrin Ripsman, the participants in the Program on International Politics, Economy, and Security (PIPES) seminar at the University of Chicago, the anonymous reviewers for Security Studies for detailed comments, and Joseph Bodell for research assistance. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago, 2–5 September 2004, and at the workshop on "Neoclassical Realism and the State" at Concordia University, 24–25 May 2006. Notes 1For an overview of the impact of military modernization in Meiji Japan and Qing China, see David B. Ralston, Importing the European Army: The Introduction of European Military Techniques and Institutions into the Extra-European World, 1600–1914 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 107–41; Shin'ichi Kitaoka, "The Army as Bureaucracy: Japanese Militarism Revisited," Journal of Military History 57, no. 5 (October 1993): 67–86; Ernst Presseisen, Before Aggression: Europeans Prepare the Japanese Army (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1965); and S.C.M. Paine, The Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). 2See William H. McNeill, The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force, and Society since A.D. 1000 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 185–215; Peter Paret, "Napoleon and the Revolution in War," in Makers of Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 123–42; Barry R. Posen, "Nationalism, the Mass Army, and Military Power," International Security 18, no. 2 (fall 1993): 80–124; and Geoffrey L. Herrera and Thomas G. Mahnken, "Military Diffusion in Nineteenth-Century Europe: The Napoleonic and Prussian Military Systems," in The Diffusion of Military Technology and Ideas, ed. Emily O. Goldman and Leslie C. Eliason (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), 205–42. 3See Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (New York: Random House, 1979). Throughout this paper, I use the terms "balance-of-power theory" and "neorealism" interchangeably to denote the theory Waltz developed in Theory of International Politics. The term "neorealism," however, also applies to several systemic realist theories that often make predictions that diverge sharply from Waltz's theory. See Jeffrey W. Taliaferro, "Security Seeking under Anarchy: Defensive Realism Reconsidered," International Security 25, no. 3 (winter 2000–2001): 128–61; and Colin Elman, "Horses for Courses: Why Not Neorealist Theories of Foreign Policy?" Security Studies 6, no. 2 (autumn 1996): 7–53. 4The distinction between internal and external balancing originates in Waltz, Theory of International Politics, 168; and Barry R. Posen, Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain, and Germany between the World Wars (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984), 17–18. 5For overviews of neoclassical realism, see Gideon Rose, "Neoclassical Realism and Theories of Foreign Policy," World Politics 51, no. 1 (October 1998): 144–72; Randall L. Schweller, "The Progressiveness of Neoclassical Realism," in Progress in International Relations Theory: Appraising the Field, ed. Colin Elman and Miriam Fendius Elman (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003), 311–48; and Charles L. Glaser, "The Necessary and Natural Evolution of Structural Realism," in Realism and the Balancing of Power: A New Debate, ed. John A. Vasquez and Colin Elman (Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2003), 266–79. 6Jennifer Sterling-Folker, "Realist Environment, Liberal Process, and Domestic-Level Variables," International Studies Quarterly 41, no. 1 (March 1997): 7. 7See Richard W. Cox, "Social Forces, States, and World Order: Beyond International Relations Theory"; and John Gerard Ruggie, "Continuity and Transformation in the World Polity," in Neorealism and Its Critics, ed. Robert O. Keohane (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), 204–54, esp. 227–32, and 131–57; Alexander Wendt, "Anarchy Is What States Make of It," International Organization 42, no. 2 (spring 1992): 391–426; Alexander Wendt, "Collective Identity Formation and the International State," American Political Science Review 88, no. 2 (June 1994): 384–98; and Hendrik Spruyt, The Sovereign State and Its Competitors (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 11–21. 8See Barry Buzan, Charles Jones, and Richard Little, The Logic of Anarchy: Neorealism to Structural Realism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 116–21; Sterling-Folker, "Realist Environment," esp. 16–22; Stephen Hobden, International Relations and Historical Sociology (London: Routledge, 1998), 66–69; and John M. Hobson, The State and International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 24–30. 9See Stephen M. Walt, "The Enduring Relevance of the Realist Tradition," in Political Science: State of the Discipline, ed. Ira Katznelson and Helen V. Milner (New York: W.W. Norton, 2002), 277. See also Ashley J. Tellis, "Reconstructing Political Realism: The Long March to Scientific Theory," in Roots of Realism, ed. Benjamin Frankel (London: Frank Cass, 1996), 91–94. For an attempt to develop such a realist theory of state formation (what he terms a "theory of negative association"), see Ioannis D. Evrigenis, "'Carthage Must Be Saved': Fear of Enemies and Collective Action," Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 2005, esp. chap. 3. 10Coercive theories of state formation include Otto Hinze, "Military Organization and the Organization of the State," in The Historical Essays of Otto Hinze, ed. Felix Gilbert (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975); Charles Tilly, "Reflections on the History of European State Making," in Formation of the National States of Western Europe, ed. Charles Tilly (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975); Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 900–1990 (Cambridge: Basil Blackwell, 1990); Peter Gourevitch, "The Second Image Reversed: The International Sources of Domestic Politics," International Organization 32, no. 4 (autumn 1978): 881–912; Geoffrey Parker, The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 2d ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Karen A. Rasler and William R. Thompson, War and State Making: The Shaping of Global Powers (Boston: Unwin and Hyman, 1989); Bruce D. Porter, War and the Rise of the State: The Military Foundations of Modern Politics (New York: Free Press, 1994); and Michael C. Desch, "War and Strong States, Peace and Weak States?" International Organization 50, no. 2 (spring 1996): 237–68. Economic theories of state formation include Perry Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State (London: NLB, 1974); Douglass C. North, Structure and Change in Economic History (New York: W.W. Norton, 1981); Douglass C. North and Robert Paul Thomas, The Rise of the Western World: A New Economic History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973); and Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World System, vol. 1 (Orlando: Academic Press, 1974). 11For a discussion of what constitutes balancing and whether balances of power recurrently form, see Colin Elman, "Introduction: Appraising Balance-of-Power Theory"; Jack S. Levy, "Balances and Balancing: Concepts, Propositions, and Research Design"; and Richard Rosecrance, "Is There a Balance of Power?" in Vasquez and Elman, Realism and the Balancing of Power, 1–22, 128–53, and 154–65. 12Stephen D. Krasner, Defending the National Interests: Raw Materials Investments and U.S. Foreign Policy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), 10–11. For similar definitions see Thomas J. Christensen, Useful Adversaries: Grand Strategy, Domestic Mobilization, and Sino-American Conflict, 1947–1958 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 14–16; Margaret Levi, "The State and the Study of the State," in Katznelson and Milner, Political Science: State of the Discipline, 39–42; and Fareed Zakaria, From Wealth to Power: The Unusual Origins of America's World Role (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 35–41. 13See Aaron L. Friedberg, In the Shadow of the Garrison State: America's Anti-Statism and Its Cold War Grand Strategy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 9–10. For discussions of comparative state strength, see Krasner, Defending the National Interests, esp. 55–90; Peter B. Evans, Dietrich Rueschmeyer, and Theda Skocpol, eds., Bringing the State Back In (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985); and G. John Ikenberry, David A. Lake, and Michael Mastanduno, eds., "The State and American Foreign Economy Policy," special issue, International Organization 32, no. 1 (winter 1988). 14João Resende-Santos, "Anarchy and the Emulation of Military Systems: Military Organization and Technology in South America, 1870–1930," in Realism: Restatement and Renewal, ed. Benjamin Frankel (London: Frank Cass, 1996), 199. See also João Resende-Santos, "Military Emulation in the International System (Chile, Argentina, and Brazil)," Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1997. 15For example, Napoleon's imposition of the French military system on his protectorates—the kingdoms of Holland, Westphalia, Italy, and Naples, and the Grand Duchy of Warsaw—does not constitute emulation. See Herrera and Mahnken, "Military Diffusion in Nineteenth-Century Europe," 210–212. The selective adoption of Soviet military doctrine, weapons, and organization by Egypt, Syria, and Iraq after the 1967 Middle East war, however, do constitute emulation. See Michael J. Eisenstadt and Kenneth M. Pollack, "Armies of Snow and Sand: The Impact of Soviet Military Doctrine on Arab Militaries," in Goldman and Eliason,The Diffusion of Military Technology and Ideas, 63–92. 16Michael Mastanduno, David A. Lake, and G. John Ikenberry, "Toward a Realist Theory of State Action," International Studies Quarterly 33, no. 4 (December 1989): 460. 17Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, 3d ed. (New York: Knopf, 1966), 102. 18Henry A. Kissinger, A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh, and the Problems of Peace, 1812–1822 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957), 326–28. 19Arnold Wolfers, "The Actors in International Politics," in Discord and Collaboration: Essays on International Politics (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1962), 9. 20Edward Vose Gulick, Europe's Classical Balance of Power (New York: W.W. Norton, 1967), 14. 21Morgenthau, Politics among Nations, 154. 22Wolfers, Discord and Collaboration, 112. 23Morgenthau, Politics among Nations, 138. 24Edward Hallett Carr, The Twenty Years' Crisis, 1919–1939: An Introduction to the Study of International Relations, 2d ed. (1945; New York: Harper and Row, 1964), 132. 25Hobson, State and International Relations, 5–6 and 24–26. Hobson uses the term "domestic agential power," which he defines as "the power of the state to determine (foreign) policy and shape the domestic realm free of domestic structural constraints or non-state actor interference." I prefer the term "state power" because it is more consistent with current usage in the neoclassical realist literature. 26For a definition of major war, see Dale Copeland, Origins of Major War (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000), 3–4. By Copeland's criteria, there have been six major wars in the modern state system: the Thirty Years' War (1618–48), the wars of Louis XIV (1688–1714), the Seven Years' War (1756–63), the Napoleonic Wars (1803–15), the First World War (1914–18), and the Second World War (1939–45). 27Hobson, State and International Relations, 51. 28See Morgenthau, Politics among Nations, 205–6 and 218–19; and Kissinger, A World Restored, 156–57. See also Paul W. Schroeder, The Transformation of European Politics, 1763–1848 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 5–20. 29For similar arguments see Alan C. Lamborn, "Power and the Politics of Extraction," International Studies Quarterly 27, no. 2 (June 1983): 125–46; and Paul A. Papayoanou, "Interdependence, Institutions, and the Balance-of-Power: Britain, Germany, and World War I," International Security 20, no. 4 (spring 1996): 42–76. 30Morgenthau, Politics among Nations, 256. 31Ibid., 167. 32For a recent discussion of the classical realist conception of the European balance of power as a type of "republic" or "society," see Marc Trachtenberg, "The Question of Realism: A Historian's View," Security Studies 13, no. 1 (autumn 2003): 26–27. 33Nicholas John Spykman, America's Strategy in World Politics: The United States and the Balance-of-Power (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1942), 25. Inis Claude, however, draws a distinction between manual balancing and automatic balancing. See Inis L. Claude, Power and International Relations (New York: Random House, 1962). 34See Ruggie, "Continuity and Transformation in the World Polity," 135–36. 35Waltz, Theory of International Politics, 124. 36For critiques of neorealism's "competition bias," see Charles L. Glaser, "Realists as Optimists: Cooperation as Self-Help," in Frankel, Realism: Restatement and Renewal, 122–63, esp. 128–29; and Stephen G. Brooks, "Dueling Realisms," International Organization 51, no. 3 (summer 1997): 445–77, esp. 447–50. 37Buzan, Jones, and Little, The Logic of Anarchy, 117–19. 38Waltz, Theory of International Politics, 124. 39Ibid., 128. Despite Waltz's warnings about falling by the wayside, the death rate of great powers is quite low. See Robert Jervis, System Effects: Complexity in Political and Social Life (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 133–34. 40Waltz, Theory of International Politics, 118. 41Ibid., 95. 42Waltz, "Response to My Critics," 343 emphasis added; see also Waltz, Theory of International Politics, 69. 43David Dessler, "What's at Stake in the Agent-Structure Debate?" International Organization 43, no. 3 (summer 1989): 466. See also Dale Copeland, "The Constructivist Challenge to Structural Realism," International Security 25, no. 2 (fall 2000): 187–212, esp. 205–6; and Sterling-Folker, "Realist Environment," 5. 44Waltz's theory presents an extremely restrictive and static conception of structure and systems. For a discussion of this, see Tellis, "Reconstructing Political Realism," 80–84; Jervis, System Effects, 107–10; Buzan, Jones, and Little, Logic of Anarchy, esp. 29–80; Copeland, Origins of Major War, 12–13; and Glenn H. Snyder, "Process Variables in Neorealist Theory" in Frankel, Realism: Restatement and Renewal, 167–92. 45Tellis, "Reconstructing Political Realism," 75–82. 46Waltz, Theory of International Politics, 127. 47Resende-Santos, "Anarchy and the Emulation of Military Systems," 207–8 emphasis added. See also Buzan, Jones, and Little, Logic of Anarchy, 40–41. 48Matthew Evangelista defines innovation in terms of "new weapons that portend major organizational changes, reallocation of resources, or the possibility of diminished organizational autonomy. … The weapons innovations investigated … entailed major restructuring of military organizations, significant changes in strategy, or both." Matthew Evangelista, Innovation and the Arms Race: How the United States and the Soviet Union Develop New Military Technologies (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988), 12. 49See Waltz, Theory of International Politics, 120. For a definition of potential power, see Copeland, Origins of Major War, 5–6. 50See Buzan, Jones, and Little, Logic of Anarchy, 44. 51See Resende-Santos, "Anarchy and the Emulation of Military Systems"; Colin Elman, "The Logic of Emulation: The Diffusion of Military Practices in the International System," Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1999; and Emily O. Goldman and Richard B. Andres, "Systemic Effects of Military Innovation and Diffusion," Security Studies 8, no. 4 (summer 1999): 79–125. 52The theories of Resende-Santos, Goldman and Andres, and Elman fall under the rubric of defensive realism because they attribute the rate, scope, and likelihood of emulation to both the relative distribution of power and to variables that affect the severity of the security dilemma. See Taliaferro, "Security Seeking under Anarchy," esp. 136–41; Robert Jervis, "Realism, Neoliberalism, and Cooperation: Understanding the Debate," International Security 24, no. 1 (summer 1999): 42–63, esp. 47–50; and Robert Jervis, "Cooperation under the Security Dilemma," World Politics 30, no. 2 (January 1978): 168–214. 53Sterling-Folker, "Realist Environment," 4–8. 54See, for example, Jeffrey W. Legro and Andrew Moravcsik, "Is Anybody Still a Realist?" International Security 24, no. 2 (fall 1999): 5–55, esp. 27–32; Andrew Moravcsik, "Liberal International Relations Theory: A Scientific Assessment," in Elman and Elman, Progress in International Relations Theory, 189–96; John A. Vasquez, "The Realist Research Program and Degenerative versus Progressive Research Programs: An Appraisal of Neotraditional Research on Waltz's Balancing Proposition," American Political Science Review 91, no. 4 (December 1997): 899–912; and John A. Vasquez, "The New Debate on the Balance-of-Power: A Reply to My Critics," in Vasquez and Elman, Realism and the Balancing of Power, 87–113. 55The one exception is Randall Schweller's balance-of-interest theory, which purports to explain both the foreign policies of individual great powers and the likelihood of major war across different types of international systems (multipolar, tripolar, and bipolar). See Randall Schweller, Deadly Imbalances: Tripolarity and Hitler's Strategy for World Conquest (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998). 56Schweller, unlike other neoclassical realists, maintains that a neat division between theories of foreign policy and theories of international politics is unsustainable on logical and methodological grounds. See Schweller, "Progressiveness of Neoclassical Realism" 321–22. I disagree with him on this point. 57See Waltz, Theory of International Politics, 18–19 and 37; and, earlier, Kenneth N. Waltz, Man, the State, and War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959). 58I am grateful to one of the anonymous reviewers of this article for pointing this out. 59Waltz, Theory of International Politics, 64. Waltz also notes that theories of foreign policy can and should include causal factors at the unit and systemic levels. He constructed such a foreign policy theory in his second book. See Kenneth N. Waltz, Foreign Policy and Domestic Politics: The American and British Experience (1967; Berkeley: University of California, of Theory of International Politics, 2 and 3. and Moravcsik, "Is Anybody Still a Realist?" 27–32; and Moravcsik, "Liberal International Relations Theory," to neoclassical realism is not a to defensive realism and realism. See Taliaferro, "Security Seeking under Anarchy," esp. For different discussions about the between neoclassical realism and defensive realism, see Glaser, "The Necessary and Natural Evolution of Structural Realism," and Schweller, "Progressiveness of Neoclassical Realism," Waltz, Theory of International Politics, 69. "What's at Stake in the Agent-Structure Debate?" 466. Sterling-Folker, Theories of International Cooperation and the of Anarchy: Explaining U.S. International after Press, 2002), a detailed discussion of the "theory of negative from Thomas in the to and in the see Evrigenis, "'Carthage Must Be 3 and Sterling-Folker, Theories of International Sterling-Folker, and the Constructivist or International Studies Review no. 1 (spring A. in Theory, Realism, and International Politics," International Security 25, no. 2 (fall 2000): and "Anarchy and International Organization no. 2 (summer Robert "The of the of Political Realism," in Neorealism and Its Critics, and Robert a Political in Frankel, Realism: Restatement and Renewal, Randall L. Schweller, and the Great Power and over in Politics: Realism and State after the Cold War, ed. 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