Defensive realism and the Concert of Europe

Why do great powers expand? Offensive realist John Mearsheimer claims that states wage an eternal struggle for power, and that those strong enough to seek regional hegemony nearly always do. Mearsheimer's evidence, however, displays a selection bias. Examining four crises between 1814 and 1840, I show that the balance of power restrained Russia, Prussia and France. Yet all three also exercised self-restraint; Russia, in particular, passed up chances to bid for hegemony in 1815 and to topple Ottoman Turkey in 1829. Defensive realism gives a better account of the Concert of Europe, because it combines structural realism with non-realist theories of state preferences

Carbon leakage and the argument from no difference

Critics of carbon mitigation often appeal to what Jonathan Glover has called ‘the argument from no difference’: that is, ‘if I don’t do it, someone else will’. Yet even if this justifies continued high emissions by the industrialised countries, it cannot excuse business as usual. The North’s emissions might not harm the victims of climate change in the sense of making them worse off than they would otherwise be. Nevertheless, it receives benefits produced at the latter’s expense. This enrichment is unjust; unjustly-enriched agents ought to make compensation. The best form of compensation is vigorous action against climate change

Mere addition and the separateness of persons

How can we resist the repugnant conclusion? James Griffin has suggested that part way through the sequence we may reach a world—let us call it “J”— in which the lives are lexically superior to those that follow. If it would be better to live a single life in J than through any number of lives in the next one (“K”), we may judge the smaller world preferable, as if aggregating the lives in the larger world intrapersonally. I argue that the mere addition paradox arises because adding new people with separate preferences renders such lexical rankings untenable. Whereas in comparing J and K we could legitimately infer that the former was lexically preferable, we cannot “suspend addition” when comparing J+ and K. Instead, for half of these worlds’ populations, it will be preferable to move to K. When one ranking suspends addition and the other does not, the result is an intransitive value judgement: J < J+ < K < J, producing the mere addition paradox

Discounting, Climate Change, and the Ecological Fallacy

Discounting future costs and benefits is often defended on the ground that our descendants will be richer. Simply to treat the future as better off, however, is to commit an ecological fallacy. Even if our descendants are better off when we average across climate change scenarios, this cannot justify discounting costs and benefits in possible states of the world in which they are not. Giving due weight to catastrophe scenarios requires energetic action against climate change

Nuclear weapons and intergenerational exploitation

Nuclear weapons’ defenders claim that they lower the risk of war, at the price of devastation if war breaks out. But sooner or later, on a realist analysis, catastrophic nuclear war is almost sure to come. Nuclear deterrence thus buys us a better chance of dying in bed, while each post-holocaust generation will have to pick up the pieces. If the nuclear optimists are wrong, hoping to spread or perpetuate nuclear deterrence is foolish. But if they are right, it is exploitative. Like big cars and cheap flights, nuclear deterrence benefits us at the expense of future generations. States that do not already have the bomb should not get it. Britain and France should consider disarmament, while Russia and the United States should slash their arsenals. Minimum deterrence should be equally stable, but most nuclear optimists, being neorealists who hold that war will continue, should want deep cuts even if it is not

Public debt and intergenerational ethics: how to fund a clean technology 'Apollo program'?

If the present generation refuses to bear the burden of mitigating global heating, could we motivate sufficient action by shifting that burden to our descendants? Several writers have proposed breaking the political impasse by funding mitigation through public debt. Critics attack such proposals as both unjust and infeasible. In fact, there is reason to think that some debt financing may be more equitable than placing the whole burden of mitigation on the present generation. While it might not be viable for all countries to take this route simultaneously, a vanguard state, or group of states, could use public debt to fund an ambitious programme to develop inexpensive forms of clean low-or no-emission technology. This would ensure that vanguard actor or set of actors a leading role in those sectors while at the same time benefiting future generations around the world. Key policy insights: • Debt-financed clean technology research can shift part of the burden of greenhouse gas mitigation to our descendants, breaking the political impasse of inaction or delayed action. • Far from being an injustice to future generations, this could actually be fairer than expecting the present generation to bear the full burden of mitigation. • Such an initiative may be most feasible if pursued by a vanguard actor

Climate change and the threat of disaster: the moral case for taking out insurance at our grandchildren's expense

Is drastic action against global warming essential to avoid impoverishing our descendants? Or does it mean robbing the poor to give to the rich? Alas, we don’t yet know. Yet most of us can agree on the importance of minimizing expected deprivation. Because of the vast number of future generations, if there is any significant risk of catastrophe, this implies drastic and expensive carbon abatement unless we discount the future. I argue that we should not discount. Instead, the rich countries should stump up the funds to support abatement both for themselves and the poor states of the world.Yet to ask the present generation to assume all the costs of drastic mitigation.is unfair. Worse still, it is politically unrealistic. We can square the circle by shifting part of the burden to our descendants. Even if we divert investment from other parts of the economy or increase public debt, future people should be richer, so long as we avert catastrophe. If so, it is fair for them to assume much of the cost of abatement. What we must not do is to expose them to the threat of disaster by not doing enough

Nuclear war as a predictable surprise

Abstract: Like asteroids, hundred‐year floods and pandemic disease, thermonuclear war is a low‐frequency, high‐impact threat. In the long run, catastrophe is inevitable if nothing is done − yet each successive government and generation may fail to address it. Drawing on risk perception research, this paper argues that psychological biases cause the threat of nuclear war to receive less attention than it deserves. Nuclear deterrence is, moreover, a ‘front‐loaded good’: its benefits accrue disproportionately to proximate generations, whereas much of the expected cost will be borne in the distant future. Recent surveys indicate that the US and Russian publics assign a surprisingly high likelihood to nuclear war. Nevertheless, earlier research suggests that it is probably not believed to be just around the corner. This, along with the absence of easy solutions, encourages governments and publics to give priority to more pressing concerns. The danger is that the pattern will continue clear up to the point that nuclear war arrives

Realism, reckless states, and natural selection

Why is daredevil aggression like Russia’s war on Ukraine such an important factor in world politics? Neither offensive nor defensive realists give a fully satisfactory answer. This paper maintains that the problem lies in their shared assumption that states pursue security. Tracing neorealism’s roots in evolutionary economics, and hence indirectly in biological theories of natural selection, I argue that many policies are compatible with state survival. What is hard is surviving as a great power. States that rise to that rank, and remain there, behave as if they sought to maximize their influence, not their security. This Darwinian competition selects in favor of states with expansionist institutions and ideologies. Failing to recognize this phenomenon risks conferring a spurious legitimacy on imperialism. At the same time, neorealists have also committed a fallacy familiar to biologists: assuming that traits enhancing group fitness are selected even when they diminish fitness in intragroup competition. Whereas interstate competition selects in great powers for traits that promote influence-maximization, with the spread of democracy, intrastate competition increasingly selects for security-seeking. Yet the former process sometimes still dominates the latter, above all in authoritarian great powers