Evil? Maybe. Crazy? Don’t Bet On It.

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David Gordon
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How States Think: The Rationality of Foreign Policy
by John J. Mearsheimer and Sebastian Rosato
Yale University Press, 2023; 304 pp.

In this very useful book, the political scientists John J. Mearsheimer and Sebastian Rosato warn against a logic that leads to war: America is challenged by an evil dictator who will not respond rationally to incentives. Such a person can be dealt with only through overwhelming force and must be eliminated from the scene. Today Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un are the world’s irrational dictators, and in past years it was Saddam Hussein.

The fallacy in this way of thinking, Mearsheimer and Rosato aver, is that these dictators, however evil we may consider them, and the states they represent are in fact acting in a rational way. This at once raises the question of what counts as rational, and the authors answer that a policy is rational if it aims at the preservation of the state, is based on a credible theory, and is arrived at through a deliberative process that doesn’t exclude alternatives.

They say that Putin’s actions in Ukraine were rational judged by these criteria:

“Consider that Russian leaders relied on a credible theory. ... The fact is that Putin and his advisers thought in terms of straightforward balance-of-power theory, viewing the West’s efforts to make Ukraine a bulwark on Russia’s border as an existential threat that could not be allowed to stand. ... In short, this was a war of selfdefense aimed at preventing an adverse shift in the balance of power.

“It is worth noting that Moscow preferred to deal with the growing threat to its borders through aggressive diplomacy [proposals backed by the implicit threat of force], but the United States and its allies were unwilling to accommodate Russia’s security concerns. This being the case, Russia opted for war, which analysts expected to result in the Russian military’s overrunning Ukraine.

“The Russian decision to invade was also the product of a deliberative process. ... Nor does Putin appear to have made the decision for war alone. When asked whether the Russian president consulted with his advisers, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov replied, ‘Every country has a decision-making mechanism. In that case the mechanism existing in the Russian Federation was fully employed.’”

By no means, though, do Mearsheimer and Rosato maintain that states always act rationally, and in fact the United States has sometimes operated based on theories that aren’t credible. George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq was based on two such theories:

“But forcible democracy promotion theory and domino theory are both noncredible. It is clear from the historical record that attempts to force democracy on other states almost always fail. The United States’ own dismal track record made this clear. ... The argument is that since publics around the world yearn for democracy and only tyrants stand in their way, a democracy can use its military to do large-scale social engineering in another country. But there is hardly any evidence that this strategy ever succeeds — although this is not to deny that states can promote democracy abroad in other ways. Several studies show that the United States, which has frequently tried to impose democracy abroad, routinely fails in these efforts.

“There is also hardly any evidence that the domino theory works as advertised. The theory was tested in a variety of circumstances following World War II and found wanting.

“… the policymaking process was also nondeliberative. Although he was determined to go to war to democratize the greater Middle East, Bush himself was not deeply involved in the relevant debates inside his administration.

“Proponents of the war used coercion to get their way. It is well-known, for example, that [Secretary of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld would not tolerate disagreement with his views.”

The authors anticipate an objection that may occur to libertarian readers. Won’t those who control the state be concerned with their own survival rather than the survival of the society they rule over? They answer that in most cases, keeping their state in existence is the best means to ensure their own survival:

“Apart from public posturing, there is no evidence that leaders seeking nuclear weapons have not cared about the survival of their states. In fact, the pursuit of such weapons suggests the opposite. A nuclear weapons capability is the ultimate deterrent; it maximizes a country’s prospects of surviving. Consider that Beijing has had a nuclear arsenal for well over fifty years and has never threatened to use it — let alone actually used it — in ways that could risk China’s destruction ...

“There is abundant evidence that states are goal rational, which is to say they have sought to survive and have placed survival above other goals. To be clear, this does not mean states always manage to survive. The Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia died after the Cold War ended. But in each case, the leaders preferred to keep their countries intact; they were simply unable to do so.”

In speaking of credible theories, Mearsheimer and Rosato also raise a crucial methodological point that will be of interest to students of Austrian economics. Credible theories of political action, they argue, must be supported by empirical evidence. They cannot be purely a priori because, unlike Austrian economics, they are concerned with particular actions rather than action in general:

“After all, a theory that does not mesh with actual cases cannot explain events in the real world. Maurice Allais made the point well ... : ‘Any theory whatever, if it is not verified by empirical evidence, has no scientific value and should be rejected.’” Further, they hold, these credible theories must be based on realistic assumptions. In this connection, they make some criticisms of Milton Friedman that will resonate with Austrians:

“Some scholars argue that assumptions need not reflect reality; what matters is whether a theory based on a particular set of assumptions makes claims that are supported by the empirical record. [Milton] Friedman went so far as to maintain that the best theories ‘will be found to have ‘assumptions’ that are wildly inaccurate descriptive representations of reality and, in general, the more significant the theory, the more unrealistic the ‘assumptions.’ As Ronald Coase wrote in response to Friedman’s claim, ‘Realism in our assumptions is needed if our theories are ever to help us to understand how the system works in the way it does. Realism in assumptions forces us to analyze the world that exists, not some imaginary world that does not.’”

It is ironic that the leaders of the American state are quick to condemn foreign dictators as irrational when their own policies are often irrational themselves.