The War against Ukraine & How the World's Minds are Shaped by Theories

The full article titled "The problem of war" was published in the January/February 2024 (Vol.49#1) issue of the New Zealand International Review 

The most popular theories of political strategy nowadays are still political realism and liberal internationalism. When trying to explain state aggression, over centuries, political realists have developed a message that wars are always driven by a mix of personal and state self-interest, and hence ineradicable. Liberal internationalists, on the contrary, keep trying to abolish state aggression as a continuation of state politics by evolving the framework of global institutions, common law, and collective security, although not very successfully so far. Today, the former promote isolationism and appeasement, while latter – alliances and armament.

While scholars debated whether wars were declining or just transforming, in February 2022 the world sleepwalked into the biggest interstate war in Europe since 1945. Despite the state-aggressor (Russia) being evident, some politicians, analysts and scholars managed to contrive alternative – sometimes truly Orwellian – versions of the motives of the invasion. As John Baylis observes, while some scholars consider the causes of every war to be unique, others try to generalise explanations. Two mainstream political theories today – political realism and liberal internationalism – have different approaches to the problem of state aggression or interstate war. Realists are rather concerned with elaborating why war is an ineradicable element of world politics and humanity, and which liberal misstep shall cause the next big one, downplaying the possibility of abolishing state aggression. Liberal internationalists tend to analyse causes in persistent attempts to improve their already complex but never complete formula for global peace. 

Classical realists asserted that wars are incited by humans’ self-interest; neoclassical realists retorted them by adding the personal ambitions of state leaders and state ideology to the driving forces of state aggression. Ancient Greece, as per Thucydides, was dominated by the law of the strongest, and hence the fear of a neighbour’s rising power made armed clashes and preventive strikes inevitable. Kauthitlya of the 4th century guided Indian rulers in a strategy of maximising their power via waging wars. Arab sociologist Ibn Khaldun of the 14th century concluded that conflict is hard coded in human nature. Machiavelli in the 15-16th centuries suggested that to go to war rulers are often motivated by a desire to aggrandise state and personal power and glory. In the opus ‘On War’ published in 1832, Prussian officer Carl von Clausewitz inferred that a war is a continuation of politics to persuade an opponent to comply by other means. Israeli military theorist Van Creveld in 1991 advanced the thought that a war is “a ‘form of sport’ rather than a ‘continuation of policy’ animated by ideas”.

Neorealists elaborated that wars are caused by states craving for more power and hegemony within the structural anarchy of the modern international system. They argue that each state is solely responsible for its security and survival, and no one is genuinely interested in helping others. Therefore, states prepare and go to war to preserve themselves and their interests, as viewed by defensive realists, or to take advantage and multiply their power, as admitted by offensive realists. Any change in the equilibrium of material power among states or even a threat to their prestige may trigger a conflict. Neorealists emphasise the chronic constraints and structural weaknesses of the liberal international system as an inexhaustible fuel for conflicts – “wars occur because there is nothing to prevent them”, as concluded by Kenneth Waltz in his 1959 book on international relations ‘Man, the State, and War’. To prove the theories, during the 2008 invasion of Georgia, the then-president of the invading Russia “coined a strikingly realist term ‘sphere of privileged interests’” to claim Moscow’s hegemony across countries which at any point of long history were at least once under its control. This was also a manifestation of nationalism which realists expected to cause widespread conflicts in the world along with ethnic rivalries. In essence, the theory of political realism considers war to be a natural state of international relations.

War anomaly

Liberal internationalism considers wars to be anomalies, caused by misunderstandings and diplomacy failures, unaddressed grievances and material inequalities, incompatible systems of values. It is striking how writings on liberal theories, in contrast to realist ones, are not absorbed with war and power, but with peace and self-restraint instead – for instance, Fukuyama in his recent book ‘Liberalism and its Discontents’ hardly mentions the words ‘war’, ‘violence’, ‘aggression’ or ‘conflict’ at all. Ever since the classical doctrine of liberalism was formed at the conclusion of the European wars of religion in the 1600s, its followers – such as English jurist Jeremy Bentham, the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, or modern French political scientist Stanley Hoffman – developed arguments for the international rule of law, ‘perpetual peace’, moderation and compromise.

The first liberal world order, promoted during the interwar period in Europe, was greatly derailed by the Second World War. Among the causes for the first liberal attempt’s demise were too idealistic views about international values against still strong imperial sentiments, driven by inequalities of wealth and exclusions, and combined with protectionist trade policies. A threat and actual use of violence remained a potent force in diplomacy. Therefore, many liberal policymakers and scholars came to believe that interstate aggression is a result of distorted communication and misunderstandings between political leaders. However, since Russia’s full-scale attack on Ukraine in February 2022, it has become clear that for some leaders like Putin interstate aggression remains a tool to revise world order and rebuild an empire. Modern liberal internationalists argue that many conflicts nowadays are the results of constraints appearing out of varying values, preferences, and interests of state powers. In a nutshell, within a framework of the liberal world order, state aggression is not a trait, but a bug to be fixed.

Political realists suggest that balance of power, appeasement and isolationism constitute a workaround to avoid greater interstate wars. In 1934 Winston Churchill rebuffed that those are exactly the principles which encourage state-aggressors “to think they have good hopes for victory”. For realists, no permanent peace is achievable as stronger states will always crave hegemony. Therefore, as advised by Machiavelli, Lipsius and other classical philosophers, states and rulers must continuously prepare for wars. The balance of ‘great powers’ during the Cold War created an impression of peace and stability from the perspective of peoples of the opposing blocs, while for the Third World it manifested in numerous ‘hot’ wars and millions of deaths .

To avoid wars, both contemporary realists like Mearsheimer, and those of the past like Edward Hallett Car in the 1930s, advocated for a sacrifice of smaller countries’ sovereignty or their coercion into some kind of neutrality status on a whim of their more powerful neighbours. To avoid conflicts they tend to suggest the appeasement and accommodation of growing powers, dissatisfied with the existing world order, and even those clearly declining. Isolationism has become another revived dogma among realists nowadays. Isolationism used to dominate the minds of statesmen on the eves of great world wars until it was no more once wars started, escalated, and impacted most of them anyway. Political scientist Johnathan Kirshner argues in his recent book ‘An Unwritten Future’ that neorealists’ analyses and solutions to conflicts are barely helpful nowadays as they are too narrowly focused on the perspective of a struggle between bigger powers. He notes that realists overlook smaller states’ perspectives and discard ideational and human factors, arguing that “structural realism is often better at pointing out the errors in others’ approaches than at suggesting its own solutions”.

Constructed peace

Liberals in their turn evolved to realise that peace does not happen naturally and must be constructed. They tried to promote public reprimands and disarmament only to witness a virus of aggression improving its resistance and thriving even more. Ever since the First World War many politicians and activists advocated vigorously “that the best way to escape war is to dwell upon its horrors and to imprint them vividly upon the minds of the younger generation”, while “disarming ourselves in order to set an example to others”. These quotes might sound as if they were told by someone from New Zealand in 2022, while in fact are part of Winston Churchill’s BBC radio broadcast in 1934 – “[b]ut how would it help us if we were attacked or invaded ourselves?” – he logically asked further and admitted that “[e]veryone would be glad to see the burden of armaments reduced in every country, but history shows on many a page that armaments are not necessarily a cause of war”. Both paths brought the opposite results for the world back then, and it sadly repeats today. Japan and Germany long limited their military power deliberately out of moral principles, but today, realising a building threat to their securities from China and Russia, revive and rapidly advance their defence programs to deter adversaries.

Liberal internationalists have worked hard over decades to create multinational institutions, a framework of international law, and promote democracy and collective security. They genuinely believed that every world’s state and some non-state actors would be willing to submit to common rules for the sake of everyone’s security. The ambiguity of that law, however, enabled lawfare and hybrid surrogate warfare with the increasingly dangerous role of mutated private military formations serving government interests, like Russia’s ‘PMC Wagner Group’. Ever since Kant’s ‘Perpetual Peace’ of 1795, liberal internationalist thinkers promoted the democratisation of world countries to achieve global peace, observing that liberal polities do not go to war with each other. However, wars of regime change in Afghanistan and Iraq and humanitarian interventions in Libya demonstrated that replication of doctrines and principles does not work in all cultures.

Practical solutions

The League of Nations and the United Nations (UN) organisations stand as practical solutions internationalists came up with to achieve collective security and deter aggression. Yet the first proved impotent and the second has been ineffective in preventing new wars. “Peace must be founded upon preponderance; there is safety in numbers” – Churchill in 1934 echoed the 28th American president Woodrow Wilson and many liberals called for and built security coalitions ever since. The collective efforts of the Allied Powers proved decisive in the defeat of the Axis Powers in the Second World War. The unity in support of Ukraine against invading Russia proves successful today. But why does unity always come only after the war is on and not before? Why, having international organisations at their disposal, did states fall into disunity and fail to agree on a common effective deterring stance to prevent aggressions in the first instance? – the Security Council is disabled by the veto power, and the UN lacks effective executive power and its own military…

"Theory is always for someone, and for some purpose" as Robert W. Cox summed up in 1981. The predominant theories of political strategy nowadays remain political realism and liberal internationalism. When trying to explain state aggression, political realists’ core message is that it is unavoidable and always driven by self-interest and greed – a mix of personal and state – so the best everyone can do is to mind their own business, effectively limiting potential solutions to workarounds at best. Liberal internationalists, on the contrary, stand out relentlessly in trying to abolish state aggression as a continuation of state politics by evolving the framework of global institutions, common law, and collective security, whose practical fallibility, unfortunately, continues to manifest through new wars of aggression being launched yet again by states. Which theory every one of us chooses to pursue in life will collectively shape the world we and our children shall live in.