The clash of international relations theories.

The outbreak of ground war between two industrialized states on European soil marks the return of history. Russia’s bucking of international trends and perceived order allows for a real life example of practice in the theories of international relations built and developed since the end of the second world war. The conflict over prevailing thought between realists and liberals has waged on with mostly hypotheticals and tangential ‘proofs’ offered by each side. Both theories have developed offshoots in their many years of existence, so we have such designations as neorealists, defensive realists, offensive realists, neoliberals, complex interdependencists, and post-liberals. With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, can we finally answer some of IR theories most pressing questions? Just how do states actually perceive of and interact with their friends and rivals?

Realism is a school of thought which assumes broadly that the world is always in a state of anarchy. This means that states have no assurances from other states that they won’t be attacked, annexed, decimated, or simply squashed via nonviolent means. The realist viewpoint argues that little else matters than pure power; economic, militarily, and even culturally. Liberals and neoliberals see a world where cooperation between states is possible. Cooperation is possible because states bring their internal values onto the world stage. This is a worldview that establishes institutions like the UN or the EU. Importantly, liberals see a greater role for cultural and economic strength in the relationship between states. The more economically interconnected states are, the less likely they are to go to war against one another.

The development of modern realist (neorealist) and liberal (neoliberal) theory has mostly been in the post world war era. The bipolar world constructed by the Soviet and American spheres of influence in the cold war supplemented assumptions by both schools. For the realist, the cold war was an example of how two competing powers use their strength to shape the world around them; waging proxy wars in third countries and establishing military bases outside of one’s border. For the liberal, the cold war showed a level of competing co-operations on both sides. The American backed West was a collection of countries coming together under economic and cultural agreements which brought their fates closer together. Meanwhile, the Russian led Soviet bloc built a system roughly modeled on a Marxists political economy. 

Scholars from both fields would criticize the characterizations of the other during this period. For the realist, the liberal conception of cooperation was nothing more than the figment of power emanating from the bases in Russia and the United States. The fact that smaller states worked together with larger states was little more than coercion and acquiescence to greater powers. For the liberal, the realist conception lacked the nuance of small state decisions, which they argued were bargaining away some foreign policy control for the assurance of security from the stronger power. 

The end of the cold war brought with it the ‘End of History,’ so dubbed by Francis Fukuyama. This was a world where economic liberalism and democratic order would now reign supreme, having won the ideological battle over the state controlled economies and authoritarian regimes of the Soviet bloc. Fukuyama portrayed a liberal vision for the future, in which states would become increasingly interdependent until war and major power conflict was simply impossible to withstand both domestically and externally. This analysis was contested by John Measheimer in his book The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, where he argued that multipolar moments inevitably lead to great power conflict as states attempt to wrestle control of the international order from other great power competitors. 

Neither thesis looked particularly strong leading up to the invasion of Ukraine. Democracy has been in retreat across the globe as former democracies backslide and democratically elected officials use the levers of the rules-based-state to remain in power far longer than law would normally allow. The Freedom House annual report of democracies around  the globe recorded its 15th consecutive year of decline. 2020 marked the lowest average score for democracy by the Economists Intelligence Unit since they started their system in 2006. Meanwhile, great power war had not broken out, and the likelihood of it occurring seemed slim. Certainly the expansion of the Chinese economy and the power that came along with it has many predicting a conflict between China and the United States as both sides wrestle for international control, but actual conflict has yet to occur, in no small part to the incredible interconnectedness of the global economy. Russian belligerence in smaller conflicts continued as a sort of post-soviet tribute to the great power that used to be, but it seemed unimaginable that such a handicapped state would actually attempt much direct conflict with America. 

The Russian invasion could upend all our assumptions of the global order. Already, the conflict has shocked leaders and academics around the world as politicians attempt to chart a new path in the global system. The perceived order brought about by the end of the Cold War has been disrupted. This certainly appears to support the realist school; Russia, attempting to show its strength on the world stage, is doing the unthinkable, boldly invading a neighbor on little more than the belief that they are more powerful and can therefore do as they please. This of course is not unthinkable if we had listened more closely to the realists. Russia’s desire to return to its former Soviet strength, and their belief that America and their western coalition never pulled back from their Cold War power flexing, led to an expression of pure power in international affairs. 

But this conflict isn’t only a point in support of the realist view, it also has supplemented the strength of the liberal perspective. Part of Russia’s calculus was clearly the belief that America and its Western allies were in a state of disarray, riven by internal conflicts (often supported via cyber warfare from the Russian state) and dubious of the belief in a liberal international order. If anything, the Western response the Russian aggression has gone further in uniting allies and aligning values and beliefs in the liberal system. Even small, troublesome states like Hungary, Turkey, and Poland have reacted sharply against the Russian war, betraying the more friendly tone they had set with Moscow in the previous several years. No doubt history plays a roll in the calculus of both Poland and Hungary, having been Soviet republics under the Russian yoke for nearly 50 years. But the support for the liberal Western order from a leader in Budapest who has proudly coined the term “Illiberal Democracy” is no small victory for the liberal theorist. 

NATO and the EU, both products of the liberal perspective, had been seen as losing purpose and fracturing respectively. NATO seemed little more than an American military assurance club as few members met their military spending obligations regularly and most seemed to just expect American superiority to be enough. The EU faced crisis after poorly managed crisis starting with the Eurozone debt crisis during the global recession of 2009 to the refugee crisis in 2014-2015 which also saw the United Kingdom vote to leave the bloc, in no small part due to the xenophobic fears of migrants coming from the Middle East and North Africa. German’s reluctant hegemony in the Union has led to many botched decisions and a lack of serious leadership towards greater cooperation.

But the invasion of Ukraine, at least here in the early days, has led to a remarkable coming together of both organizations. NATO members, seeing actual belligerence on their Eastern border, sprung into action. Germany, which has long shirked the NATO soft requirement that states pay 2% of their GDP in defense spending, announced that they would be doubling their spending to well over the 2% requirement. They also announced that they would be sending lethal aid (a new term to come from this conflict) to Ukraine after resisting to do so for weeks leading up to Russia’s invasion. Meanwhile, NATO immediately activated it’s defensive response forces to its Eastern most states in order to deter further Russian aggression. Finland, which has the longest land border with Russia of any European state, announced that they would be seeking membership to the defensive alliance after preferring to remain neutral between the two rival powers. This following news that Sweden and Finland (neither NATO members) would be receiving advanced NATO intelligence about Russia as the conflict moved forward. 

The European Union meanwhile has responded with economic sanctions that would have seemed impossible just weeks ago. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced that the long planned and recently finished Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline connecting Russian gas with European markets would not be approved for use, a major blow to the decades-long plan. The Russian central bank’s assets in EU banks were frozen, certain Russian banks were locked out of the SWIFT communication system, and Russian aircraft were banned from EU airspace. Even the former EU member state the United Kingdom joined in, launching similar bank freezing measures and restricting Russian air travel prior to the decision by the EU. 

The joint actions of both NATO and the EU have signaled a sort of victory for the idealism of the liberal theorist. Even during dark days when realism’s worst outcomes seem ascendant, cooperation around a mutual set of values has led to an unprecedented response from the Western world. Even states that have flirted with both Russia and the Western order have joined with the anti-war posture. Turkey, formerly a candidate for EU membership but a long time member of NATO, announced that they would close the Russian access through the Bosphorus strait, cutting off the Russian navy from their forces stationed outside the Black Sea. Switzerland, a country known famously for its neutrality and banking system which doesn’t discriminate against genociders or war criminals, joined with EU sanctions thereby freezing Russian assets in their banks. 

But even as countries pull together to formulate a response and condemn the Russian war, the fact that Russia was able to gallingly attempt such a maneuver is, in and of itself, a validation of realist theory. Russia spent the eight years since the 2014 annexation of Crimea ‘sanction proofing’ the Russian economy. Buying up huge amounts of foreign reserves and deliberately slowing the flow of natural gas and oil streaming into Europe in order to leave the continent with less in the tank. The preparation stage signals a belief that, at least in the halls of the Kremlin, realist theory reigns supreme. A world in which you have the power to do what you desire is the world in which Putin and his governing class inhabit. In this respect, the West must approach Russia with equal but unified force. The world is more than pure power, humans have agency, morals, ethics, and values. The fight over the future of Ukraine and the resumption of possibility in Europe will be fought not just in the streets of Kyiv, it will be fought on social media, in parliaments and congresses, during cabinet meetings, on cable TV panel shows, amongst friends after dinner, with the neighbor, during casual discussions at work, and at family gatherings. 

The war in Ukraine is significant because it will reshape the next age. If we are lucky, Russia’s bellicose imperialism will remind the westerner that their values matter and that the survival of those values require effort and sacrifice. Russia is inviting us to view the world as nothing more than an anarchic sandbox, where the strongest flex their muscles and cow the weak into submission. The liberal democratic order must play along, at least in terms of power, but the belief in our values cannot be forgotten. While the realist view of the world may be correct; power matches power with little else in between, the liberal view that values have purpose on the world stage has the added benefit of human support and belief. Russians don’t seem keen on this war, they will see nothing but economic pain and suffering from this aggression. Westerners will also feel some economic hardship, but the enduring of that hardship is made easier when a common set of values drives behavior. 

The battle between IR theories finally has a new case study. This conflict will not settle the dispute, but it could go a long way in explaining each theory’s accuracies and oversights. I don’t doubt that this conflict will spawn another host of offshoot theories based specifically on what we will see in the coming weeks, months, and years. Ultimately the battle over theory means more to decision makers than ordinary people. When the average European sees missiles fired into the streets of Kharkiv they don’t think about whether John Mearsheimer or Francis Fukuyama have a more accurate read of the world. The average European sees destruction of buildings and the slaughtering of people who look like them. Fear and the resumption of history will be the lasting effects of this conflict. Maybe that’s a cause for optimism.