Deterrence is a precondition for ethics—the alt devolves into fascism

Crucially, if we could know for certain what states will do on the basis of either the structure of the system or some predetermined motives of the subjects within the system, the uncertainty of international life would disappear and the ‘politics’ of international politics would lose its meaning.14 Rather than trying to rectify the lack of certainty by creating a stronger sense of certainty, it is therefore imperative to affirm the uncertainties created by the system. It is important, moreover, to oppose the distinction between ethical desirability and political possibility, since the reproduction of this distinction blocks from view the conditions of international life that make ethical thinking and action possible in the first place. Positivist social science and liberal interpretations of Kant are thus, very crudely put, the main obstacles to grasping the ethics of international life. In resisting both moves, neorealism does not seek to close down the violent opening of ethics inherent in the structure of anarchy, for example, by formulating metaphysical ideals informing states how they should act or how they ought to become friends rather than enemies. There can be no absolute friendship between states, and no state can ever offer absolute hospitality to another state. At the heart of every inter-state relation, there is mistrust, uncertainty and incalculability. To positively affirm the latter is not to say that uncertainty or incalculability is good per se. Rather, it implies that they are seen as basic and irrefutable conditions of international life, which, consequently, are not even desirable to overcome. Hence, it also implies that as long as there is international life, there must be ‘the ominous shadow of the future [that] continues to cast its pall over interacting states’ (Waltz, 2000: 39). Crucially, Waltz’s reference to this shadow should not be read as an expression of determinism. It expresses rather an affirmation of uncertainty: the ‘uncertainty of each about the other’s future intentions and actions’ (Waltz, 1979: 105). In order to give friendship in international politics a chance, so to speak, the possibility that a friend suddenly becomes an enemy must never be eliminated. Attempts to create absolute trust in inter-state relations are therefore not only impossible to achieve in the practical sense, but essentially undesirable.15 Along similar lines, Derrida explains how friendship is possible only if one remains open to the deception of the other, since it is precisely the unconditional openness to whatever may happen in the encounter between self and other that makes it possible to develop any sort of friendship in the first place (Derrida, 2005: 219). Even if we were to accept Alexander Wendt’s (1999) distinction between different ‘cultures of anarchy’, some of which are more ‘friendly’ than others, it is not self-evident that a culture in which friendship is prioritized over enmity is actually a better one. This is because in order to exclude the possibility that a friend may suddenly become an enemy, one must first eliminate the time of international life that makes the self–other encounter possible in the first place. For the same reason, the key message of democratic peace theory — that all states should become democracies in order to minimize or eliminate the possibility of wars — is not only practically impossible, but also ethically undesirable. It is impossible to verify because there is no democracy that is immune to corruptibility (Waltz, 2000: 10), but, in addition to that, it can be seen as undesirable since the notion that all states must conform to the same universal ideal cancels out their freedom to act, to take moral responsibility and so on. The undesirability of a system that eradicates violence, borders and discrimination is further underlined by Waltz (1979: 111–114) in his discussion of the ‘virtues of anarchy’. Therein, he attacks the idea of transforming the international system into a world government. Not only would such a transformation ‘be an invitation to prepare for world civil war’ (Waltz, 1979: 112), but it would take away the constitutive violence at the heart of inter-state relations in the structure of anarchy. The constant possibility of war in the international system means that states will always be wary of provoking others in the search for security. As he puts it: The constant possibility that force will be used limits manipulations, moderates demands, and serves as an incentive for the settlement of disputes. One who knows that pressing too hard may lead to war has strong reason to consider whether possible gains are worth the risks entailed.… The possibility that conflicts among nations may lead to long and costly wars has … sobering effects. (Waltz, 1979: 113–114) In this way, the conditions of peace in the international system can be said to rest on the constant possibility of war. In making this point, Waltz argues against moral universalism. Hence, unwittingly or otherwise, he also opens up space for ethical negotiation by recognizing the finitude of the political subject, who is free to interact with others only on the condition that self and other do not have to conform to the ‘same’ universal ideal. The subject is thus able to take moral responsibility and ponder on how to make ethical decisions, which, without difference and alterity, would turn into a strictly formal procedure based on the ‘mechanical application of rules’ (Zehfuss, 2009: 146). Responsibility and ethical decisions are, thus, made possible precisely by the impossibility of predetermining what is the ‘right’ decision in any given context. As Derrida argues, irrespective of how thorough the decision-making procedure is, and regardless of how much knowledge is acquired before taking a decision: the instant of the decision, if there is to be a decision, must be heterogeneous to this accumulation of knowledge. Otherwise, there is no responsibility. In this sense only must the person taking the decision not know everything. Even if one knows everything, the decision, if there is one, must advance toward a future that is not known, that cannot be anticipated. (Derrida, 2002b: 231) The impossibility of anchoring the decision in rational calculation is, in this sense, what creates the chance for any decisions to be taken at all. The instant of the decision belongs, then, not to a fully present moment in which the subject calculates the future consequences of the decision, but to a future that is incalculable (see Derrida, 2002a). It is precisely this incalculability, and the uncertainty of the future, that Waltz’s conception of anarchy positively affirms. Rather than making the instant of the decision obsolete by transforming the decision into a mere application of rules, anarchy makes the ethical decision ‘possible’. Even if Waltz repeatedly claims that the desire to survive is a purely pragmatic assumption made strictly for the purpose of constructing an explanatory theory, it is not neutral or innocent. First and foremost, Waltzian neorealism expresses an ethics due to the way it affirms states’ desire to survive by stipulating the necessary conditions of their survival. More precisely, it affirms the uncertainty of international life by refusing to reduce the play of relations between states to a calculable formula or a regulative ideal, and that rather embraces chance and contingency as central features of the anarchic system — features that make states simultaneously free and insecure.16 In this light, the primary significance of Waltz’s theory is not as an explanatory theory, but as a theory that affirms the time of international life, defined by the uncertainty of the future and the logic of the erasable mortal trace.17 It is this notion of the future that makes it possible for states, as finite political subjects, not only to survive, but also to try to take moral responsibility and make ethical decisions. Why universal ethical ideals are both impossible and undesirable What are the implications of my reading of Waltzian neorealism as an ethics? First of all, it contributes to a new understanding of the difficulties inherent in any attempt to theorize what it might mean to replace the structure of anarchy with an international or world political order that is supposedly ‘more’ ethical. If ethics is inextricably interlinked with the structural conditions of survival, then any attempt to challenge neorealism from an ‘ethical’ perspective must do so by replacing one structure of survival with another, and there can be no guarantees that the new structure will be less violent. While this does not in any way prevent such attempts from being made, it does highlight the risky nature of trying to resolve problems of war and violence in international politics on ethical terms. For example, the idea of creating a new form of political community that transcends the exclusionary borders of states may seem naturally desirable (e.g. Linklater, 1982). Yet, regardless of how sophisticated theories become in terms of articulating the content and meaning of such a community, there can be no guarantees that attempts to actualize it will not result in even more violence. There are no guarantees, as John Mearsheimer (1994: 44) puts it, that ‘a fascist discourse far more violent than realism will not emerge as the new hegemonic discourse’. Moreover, it is important to point out that the value of a neorealist ethics is not that it provides a ‘coherent ethical theory’. One interesting attempt to create such a theory is found in Frost’s (2009) Global Ethics: Anarchy, Freedom and International Relations. For Frost, the point of developing a coherent ethical theory is to demonstrate how international relations can be grasped primarily in ethical terms, rather than as a struggle for power and survival. His assumption is that ‘to engage in international relations at all … is to make ethical claims for oneself and to recognize the ethical standing of others’ (Frost, 2009: 19). Frost links his theory partly to the diverse practices that shape international interactions, and partly to an ‘ethical background theory which justifies the whole set of rules which constitute the practice’ (Frost, 2009: 27). While the background theory is based on an English School-inspired notion of the anarchic system/society of states, the practices added to it have the potential to shape international relations in a direction that is ethically desirable. Arguing for and against the ethical standing of our interlocutors, ‘we construct and reconstruct the social practices within which international relations are conducted’ (Frost, 2009: 94). The main goal of these practices, according to Frost, should be nothing less than resolving the tensions within the current international system between citizen rights and global human rights (Frost, 2009: ch. 3). In contrast to cosmopolitan theories, however, he argues that this goal is attainable within the anarchic structure of the system, through the ethical adjustment of that system (Frost, 2009: 113). This adjustment involves renegotiating the relationship between citizen rights and human rights through practice. Frost (2009: 173) writes: ‘Participants in global civil society and the society of states need to take their own values seriously and need to attempt to make them real for everybody everywhere’. According to Frost, the segregating borders of states are thus meant to persist, while the violent forms of exclusion that these borders enable are to gradually fall away through the aspiration of a common goal that embraces everybody everywhere. From the perspective of my reading of a neorealist ethics, however, the notion of a common universal goal underpinning Frost’s ethical theory is not only impossible, but also undesirable. This is not because the ideal itself is ‘bad’. Rather, it is because it is precisely the absence of a common goal beyond segregating borders that makes ethical negotiation possible in the first place. As soon as such an ideal has been formulated, and the guidelines for how to attain it have been articulated, the incalculable future in which the encounter between self and other is allowed to play out is cancelled out. As previously noted, while this encounter might result in more or less violence, it is the uncertainty of the future that makes the encounter possible in the first place. Frost’s attempt to formulate a universal ethical ideal that embraces everyone everywhere while, at the same time, retaining the segregating borders of the international system is thus problematic. The primary reason for this, then, is that in articulating a universal ethical ideal, his theory works to undermine the conditions of international life. In brief, what Frost fails to recognize is that what makes international ethics possible is also what makes impossible the aspiration of a universal ethical ideal that is applicable to everybody everywhere — like that of a perfect alignment of citizen rights and human rights. Rather than seeking to resolve these tensions, the tensions should be kept alive. Only in this way can we, moreover, maintain a distinctly international ethics without reverting to a ‘global ethics’. For the latter to make any sense, it has to be based on ideals that transcend the borders of states, whether those ideals are linked to a specific goal or just to a general attitude of openness to political negotiation and contestation (Hutchings, 2010: 215). Irrespective of what precisely they are supposed to entail, the ideals associated with a global ethics become problematic as soon as the attempt is made to transform difference and the plurality of wills into one and the same will. It is problematic for the same reason that philosophical attempts to create a new metaphysics that is supposed to resolve the violence of metaphysics. Such attempts can only have as their aim the ultimate destruction of the very possibility of philosophical thought and writing, which, per definition, are metaphysical and therefore violent (see Derrida, 1978).