Statism and Realism are inevitable products of history. Only a complex realist analysis of state behavior avoids critical reductionism while predicting future events

More than a cause of mere mischief, realists appear in Linklater’s eyes as members of an insidious, centuries-long conspiracy (à la Thomas Pynchon) called the totalizing project, ‘the high point’ of which ‘was reached in Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Russia’ (p. 213). His discussion of neorealism gives the strange impression that Waltz set out to construct the ultimate theoretical critique of reformist approaches to world politics—the final culmination of the grand realist plot to enslave and divide the human race by means of the state’s monopoly power. Indeed, neorealists go so far as to claim that ‘international anarchy prevents human beings from leading a moral life’ (p. 61). One could, perhaps, reach such a verdict from Waltz’s Theory of International Politics, but it would have to be a particularly tortured reading of it. True, neorealism is not a theory about the process of historical change or the possibility of creating an alternative world. It does not, however, gainsay these pursuits; it simply says nothing about them. Instead, neorealism seeks to understand and explain constant features of the current epoch of world politics, in which states are the primary actors on the world stage and principal aggregations of political power. Specifically, Waltz shows how the interaction of states generates a structure that constrains them from taking certain actions and disposes them toward taking others. As a theory of international politics, neorealism resides at the systemic-structural level of analysis or third image; theories that include unit-level causal variables are, in Waltz’s view, not systemic but rather reductionist. Like any good (useful) theory, neorealism excludes virtually all of reality’s complexity and does not claim to explain everything (otherwise it would not be a theory). Derived in part from economic theories of imperfect competition and oligopolistic markets, neorealism yields only imprecise predictions and precious few of them; from theories of competition among a small number of powerful actors able to manipulate their environment and each other, outcomes are necessarily indeterminate. What Waltz’s theory tells us is ‘a small number of big and important things’ about international politics: how external forces shape, pull, and shove states’ behaviour in certain directions and not others; why states similarly situated in the international system behave similarly despite internal differences; and why ‘the style and substance of international politics has remained strikingly constant’ through all of the changes in social, economic, political, and military relations and activities that have occurred since the birth of the modern state system in 1648.3 Neorealists believe that a truly systemic theory—one that does not confound the internal attributes of states with their external environment—is required for an adequate understanding of international politics. But they do not claim, as Linklater suggests, that internal forces have no effect on the behaviour of states. To the contrary, Waltz declares: ‘Under most circumstances, a theory of international politics is not sufficient, and cannot be made sufficient, for the making of unambiguous predictions. An international political theory can explain states’ behavior only when external pressures dominate the internal disposition of states, which seldom happens.’ 4 Because it is a theory of international politics and not one of foreign policy, neorealism says nothing about the causal effects of national- or unit-level processes and attributes. But this is not to say that all that is important for a system is its structure, and so we can safely ignore its constituent units. It is an admission that the construction of a grand theory of internal and external politics is unlikely anytime soon. Linklater’s thesis about the emergence of ‘new forms of political community which sever the links between sovereignty, territoriality, citizenship, and nationalism’ rests on his conviction that ‘various trends create the expectation of [the sovereign state’s] steady decline as the most effective and legitimate instrument of close political cooperation’ (p. 34). (Can any liberal resist retelling the ‘hollow state’ myth?) Linklater admits that ‘neo-realism recognises [sovereign states] are unlikely to last forever’ (p. 15) but then lambasts the theory for obstructing challenges to the ‘totalizing project, in which states seek to construct homogeneous national communities which are sharply distinguished from the world of outsiders and largely unconcerned about their interests’ (p. 16). Curiously, Linklater himself concludes that he does ‘not anticipate the demise of the state but envisage[s] its reconstruction . . . This is not to advance the unlikely proposition that conventional state structures either will or should disappear, but rather to suggest that states should assume a number of responsibilities which have usually been avoided in the past’ (p. 44). Is this a challenge to the neorealist view of the primacy of states in world politics?