Man, the State, and War: A Theoretical Analysis

by Kenneth Waltz

1. People / Organizations:

   • St. Augustine (pg. 2)

   • Baruch Spinoza (pg. 2)

   • Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli (pg. 2)

   • Immanuel Kant (pg. 2)

   • Jean-Jacques Rousseau (pg. 2)

   • Jonathan Swift (pg. 3)

   • Thomas Robert Malthus (pg. 3, 5)

   • Dean Inge (pg. 3)

   • Reinhold Niebuhr (pg. 3)

   • John Milton (pg. 3)

   • Alexander Hamilton (pg. 7)

   • Thomas Hobbes (pg. 7)

   • Thucydides (pg. 7)

   • Leopold Ranke (pg. 7)

   • Robert Taft (pg. 8)

   • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (pg. 16)

   • Beverly Nichols (pg. 17)

   • Norman Angell (pg. 17)

   • Bertrand Russell (pg. 17)

   • Harold Dwight Lasswell (pg. 45)

   • J.T. MacCurdy (pg. 45)

   • Clyde Kluckhohn (pg. 45)

   • L.L. Bernard (pg. 46)

   • James Miller (pg. 46)

   • Margaret Mead (pg. 51)

   • Kurt Lewin (pg. 52)

   • Ruth Benedict (pg. 53)

   • Isaiah Berlin (pg. 56)

   • T.H. Pear (pg. 58)

   • John Rickman (pg. 59)

   • Harriet Martineau (pg. 90)

   • John Stuart Mill (pg. 86)

   • Adam Smith (pg. 86)

   • Bernard Mandeville (pg. 88)

   • Abbe Morellet (pg. 89)

   • Lord Shelburne (pg. 89)

   • Thomas Nixon Carver (pg. 95)

   • Wilhelm Ropke (pg. 95)

   • Herbert Spencer (pg. 97)

   • Sir Edward Grey (pg. 97)

   • Jean de La Bruyère (pg. 97)

   • James Shotwell (pg. 98)

   • Thomas Paine (pg. 101)

   • Giuseppe Mazzini (pg. 107)

   • R.G. Collingwood (pg. 111)

   • Michael Straight (pg. 111)

   • R.H. Tawney (pg. 111)

   • F.M. Dostoievsky (pg. 111)

   • Mao Tse-tung (pg. 112)

   • Liu Shao-chi (pg. 112)

   • Karl Liebknecht (pg. 139)

   • Rosa Luxemburg (pg. 139)

   • Franz Mehring (pg. 139)

2. Quotes:

   • "our miseries are ineluctably the product of our natures. The root of all evil is man" -Author (pg. 3)

   • "does man make society in his image or does his society make him?" - Author (pg. 4)

   • "war begins in the minds and emotions of men, as all acts do; but can minds and emotions be changed?" - Author (pg. 9)

   • "history is a succession of moments" - Author (pg. 19)

   • "men are not led by the precepts of pure reason but by their passions [and] men, led by passion, are drawn into conflict" - Author (pg. 24)

   • "the events of world history cannot be divorced from the men who made them" - Author (pg. 27)

   • "the test of political success is the degree to which one is able to maintain, to increase, or to demonstrate one's power over others" - Hans Morgenthau (pg. 35)

   • "society is the patient. According to some, the patient can be cured by doctoring the individuals who compose it, [while] according to others by improving the social arrangements presently producing the tensions" - Author on Lasswell (pg. 45)

   • "it is widely held that increased understanding among peoples means increased peace" - Author (pg. 47)

   • "ignorance of the desires, aims, and characteristics of other people leads to fear and is consequently one of the primary causes for aggression" - James Miller (pg. 48)

   • "answers to problems exist not in rational solutions, but in the removal of the problems themselves" - Isaiah Berlin (pg. 56)

   • "war is an uneconomic venture" - Author on Norman Angell (pg. 74)

   • "knowledge leads to control, and control is possible because institutions and men are infinitely manipulable" - Author (pg. 75)

   • "the best way of preserving a state, and guaranteeing it against sedition, rebellion, and civil war is to keep the subjects in amity with one another, and to this end, to find an enemy against whom they can make common cause" - Jean Bodin (pg. 81)

   • "[Thomas] Hobbes defined 'liberty' as the absence of restraint" - Author (pg. 85)

   • "charity does not cure poverty but increases it, not only by rewarding improvidence but also by encouraging the improvident to increase and multiply" - Author on Harriet Martineau (pg. 90)

   • "policemen are soldiers who act alone; soldiers are policemen who act in concert" - Herbert Spencer (pg. 97)

   • "how does it serve the people and add to their happiness if their ruler extended his empire by annexing the provinces of his enemies?" - Jean de La Bruyère (pg. 97-98)

   • "if real interests were given full play, national boundaries would cease to be barriers" - Author on James Shotwell (pg. 98)

   • "war is destruction and enrichment from war must therefore be an illusion" - Author (pg. 99)

   • "peace is a good cause of war. The existence of a yahoo-state is itself a danger to the peace-state" - Author on R.G. Collingwood (pg. 111)

   • "war, that monster of human fratricide, will inevitably be wiped out by man's social progress and this will come about in the near future. But there is only one way to do it - war against war" - Mao Tse-tung (pg. 112)

   • "external pressure tends to produce internal unity" - Author (pg. 149)

   • "so long as the notion of self-help persists, the aim of maintaining the power position of the nation is paramount to all other consideration" - Frederick Dunn (pg. 160)

   • "states in the world are like individuals in the state of nature" - Author (pg. 163)

3. General Notes:

   • Introduction (pg. 1)

     • "Can we have peace more often in the future than in the past?" (pg. 1)

     • "Are there ways of decreasing the incidence of war?" (pg. 1)

     • "to explain how peace can be more readily achieved requires an understanding of the causes of war" (pg. 2)

     • "Man's behavior, his very nature, is, according to Rousseau, in great part a product of the society in which he lives" (pg. 5)

     • "Rousseau, like Plato, believes that a bad polity makes men bad, and a good polity makes them good" (pg. 5)

     • "as men live in states, so states exist in a world of states. If we now confine our attention to the question of why wars occur, shall we emphasize the role of the state or shall we concentrate on primarily what is sometimes called the society of states?" (pg. 6)

     • "though a state may want to remain at peace, it may have to consider undertaking a preventative war; for if it does not strike when the moment is favorable it may be struck later when the advantage has shifted to the other side. This view forms the analytic basis for many balance-of-power approaches to international relations" (pg. 7)

     • "the study of politics is distinguished from other social studies by concentration upon the institutions and processes of government" (pg. 11)

     • "where are the major causes of war to be found?...[the] three estimates of cause will subsequently be referred to as images of international relations." (pg. 12)

   • The First Image: International Conflict and Human Behavior (pg. 16)

     • "according to the first image…wars result from selfishness, from misdirected aggressive impulses, [and] from stupidity" (pg. 16)

     • "war, in [William James'] view, is rooted in man's bellicose nature" (pg. 17)

     • "prescriptions may vary, but common to them all is the thought that in order to achieve a more peaceful world men must be changed" (pg. 18)

     • "pessimism in philosophy is the belief that reality is flawed" (pg. 18)

       • "one comes back to expectations, but expectations are rooted in different conceptions of the world" (pg. 19)

     • "the optimists see a possibility of turning the wicked into the good and ending the wars that result from present balance-of-power politics. The pessimist, while accepting the derivation of the balance of power and war from human nature, sees little if any possibility of man righting himself" (pg. 20)

     • "for Spinoza, the end of every act is the self-preservation of the actor" (pg. 22)

     • "men are not led by the precepts of pure reason but by their passions [and] men, led by passion, are drawn into conflict" (pg. 24)

     • "the whole man, his mind and his body, are, according to [St. Augustine, Niebuhr, and Morgenthau] defective" (pg. 24)

     • "each [Spinoza, St. Augustine, Niebuhr, and Morgenthau] deduces political ills from human defects" (pg. 24)

     • "Spinoza, though he proclaims peace as the end of the state, finds that states are natural enemies…because they may at any moment become dishonorable and belligerent" (pg. 25)

     • "to relate unwanted events such as crime and war to [man's] viciousness and stupidity…is insufficient to establish the validity of the first image" (pg. 27)

       • "do such evidences of man's behavior as rapes, murders, and thefts prove that he is bad?" (pg. 27)

       • "is the amount of crime in a given society proof that the men in it are bad?" (pg. 28)

       • "or is it amazing that under the circumstances there is not more crime?" (pg. 28)

     • "while human nature no doubt plays a role in bringing about war, it cannot itself explain both war and peace, except by the simple statement that man's nature is such that sometimes he fights and sometimes he does not" (pg. 29)

     • "Morgenthau recognizes that given competition for scarce goods with no one to serve as arbiter a struggle for power will ensue among the competitors, and that consequently the struggle for power can be explained without reference to the evil born in men" (pg. 34)

     • "according to [John] Hertz's analysis, states look to their comparative power positions because of the 'security dilemma', born of a condition of anarchy, that confronts them" (pg. 37)

     • "everyone is for 'the national interest'. No policy is advanced with the plea that, although this will hurt my country, it will help others. The problems are the evaluative one of deciding what policies will best serve them." (pg. 38)

     • "where the pessimist gave up on man, the social scientist attempts to turn his findings into a prescription for social actions" (pg. 43)

     • "[some] argue that wars occur because men expect war; to abolish war, the expectations of men must be changed" (pg. 47)

       • "the only way to end war is then to end the expectation of war" (pg. 67)

     • "every culture has its weaknesses; every culture has its special merits. Variety makes the world a better place to live. Instead of seeking to reduce variety, we should seek to understand the reasons for it and the value of it. If we can come to understand the essential similarities, that we all face the same 'life tasks' even though we may meet them in somewhat different ways, then we will have developed the basis if not for mutual admiration [then] for mutual forbearance" (pg. 49)

       • "Frank urges increased knowledge of other cultures" (pg. 50)

     • ""the fundamental aggressiveness of human beings is, according to [E.F.M.] Durbin, the cause of war" (pg. 71)

       • "if we could remove the cause by changing human beings we could end war" (pg. 71)

     • "if all men were perfectly wise and self-controlled, we would have no more wars. If communities could be constructed, universally, that satisfied all of the desires and provided outlets for all of the potentially destructive drives of men, we would have no more wars. But the implied analysis of cause is inadequate, and the prescriptions based on it are those of idle dreamers" (pg. 76)

   • The Second Image: International Conflict and the Internal Structure of States (pg. 80)

     • "we say that the states act when we mean that the people in it act. The proceeding chapter concentrated on the contents rather than the container…since everything is related to human nature, to explain anything one must consider more than human nature." (pg. 80)

     • "for possible explanations of the occurrence or nonoccurrence of war, one can look to international politics or to the states themselves" (pg. 81)

     • "according to the second image, the internal organization of states is key to understanding war and peace" (pg. 81)

     • "the proposition to be considered is that through the reform of states wars can be reduced or eliminated" (pg. 83)

     • "what definition of the 'good' state is to serve as a standard?" (pg. 83)

       • "Karl Max defines 'good' in terms of ownership an of means of production" (pg. 83)

       • "Immanuel Kant [defines good] in terms of abstract principles of right" (pg. 83)

       • "Woodrow Wilson [defines good] in terms of national self-determination and modern democracy" (pg. 83)

     • "there are 3 major variables in this analysis:" (pg. 85)

       • Individual

       • Society

       • State

     • "the first variables determine the extent and type of functions the state must undertake" (pg. 85)

     • "in individualistic theories, the state becomes the dependent variable" (pg. 85)

     • "at a minimum, government exists [according to liberals and utilitarians] to provide security to persons and their property…Justice is the first concern of government." (pg. 89)

       • "the liberals' insistence on economy, decentralization, and freedom from government regulation makes sense only if their assumption that society is self-regulating is valid" (pg. 95)

     • "does [laissez faire] fairly distribute the fruits? [John Stuart] Mill thinks not" (pg. 94)

     • "Treitschke and Adam Smith had said the same thing: the state is concerned externally with defense and internally with justice" (pg. 95-96)

     • "liberals accept the state as performing necessary function [and] accept war as the ultimate means of settling disputes among states" (pg. 96)

     • "the expenses of conquering and holding [territories] cannot be balanced by advantages in trade, for the same advantages can be had, without expense, under a policy of free trade" (pg. 99)

     • "ultimately, [what liberals] are saying [is] the well-being of the world's people can increase only to the extent that production increases" (pg. 99)

     • "why do government make war? Because war gives them an excuse for raising taxes, for expanding the bureaucracy, [and] for increasing their control over their citizens. These are the constantly iterated accusations of liberals" (pg. 100)

     • "interest and opinion combine to ensure a policy of peace, for in governors are made responsive to the people's wishes, public opinion can be expected to operate effectively as a sanction. [but] faith in public opinion or faith in democracies has proved utopian" (pg. 102)

     • "the 19th century liberals' view of the state was based on an assumption of harmony, often coupled with an assumption of the infinite perfectibility of men, leading to a situation where the functions of government would shrivel and most of them blow away" (pg. 103)

     • "in international affairs, liberals begin with the doctrine of the sterile state. All the good things of life are created by the efforts of individuals; the state exists simply to hold the ring as impartial arbiter among the individual competitors. They end by urging that the state must not only maintain but in certain instances must create the conditions necessary for the functioning of a liberal society and economy" (pg. 108)

       • "some liberals propose nonintervention as a means of allowing the natural harmony of interests among states to take over" (pg. 108)

     • "while Cobden and Bright would use force in international relations only where necessary to make their own democracy safe, Paine, Mazzini, and Wilson set out to make the world democratic" (pg. 109)

     • "the second image [stipulates]…that the internal structure of states determines not only the form and use of military force but external behavior" (pg. 125)

     • Principles of Marxist Theory (pg. 126)

       • The capitalist mode of production gives rise to two antagonistic classes the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.

       • The capitalist state represents control of the machinery of government in the interest of one of these classes.

       • The capitalist state brings the class struggle under a measure of control without actually ending it.

       • War is the external manifestation of the internal class struggle, which makes the problem of war coeval with the existence of capitalist states.

       • Socialism will abolish war.

         • "capitalist states cause war, and socialism spells peace" (pg. 128)

     • "developing economic conditions give rise to a basic harmony of interest among the workers; the function of socialist leadership is to spell out this interest in concrete terms. In theory this sets forth a fairly definite relation of leaders to led" (pg. 139)

     • "in the socialist world, states will exist and will continue to enjoy their independence, but they will be much nicer…this is noble optimism" (pg. 152)

     • "for the revisionists the problem will wither away not as states disappear but as the separate states become internally more perfect. They had thought that the problem of war would be removed by the internal improvement of the conflicting units, which is exactly the solution of the revisionists." (pg. 155)

   • The Third Image: International Conflict and International Anarchy (pg. 159)

     • "with many states, with no system of law enforceable among them, with each state judging its grievances and ambitions according to the dictates of its own reason or desire - conflict, sometimes leading to war, is bound to occur" (pg. 159)

     • "In anarchy there is no automatic harmony. A state will use force to attain its goals if, after assessing the prospects for success, it values those goals more than it values the pleasures of peace. Because each state is the final judge of its own cause, any state may at any time use force to implement its policies. Because any state may at any time use force, all states must constantly be ready either to counter force with force or to pay the cost of weakness. The requirements of state action are, in this view, imposed by the circumstances in which all states exist." (pg. 160)

     • "whether by educating citizens and leaders of the separate states or by improving the organization of each of them, a condition is sought in which the lesson becomes the basis for the policies of states. The result? Disarmament, and thus economy, together with peace, and thus security, for all states…this argument illustrates a supposedly practical application of the first and second images. In emphasizing the interdependence of the policies of all states, the argument pays heed to the third image…[for which] we shall focus primarily upon the political thought of Jean Jacques Rousseau" (pg. 161)

     • "Spinoza explained violence by reference to human imperfections. Passion displaces reason, and consequently men, who out of self-interest ought to cooperate with one another in perfect harmony, engage endlessly in quarrels and physical violence" (pg. 162)

     • "in cooperative action, even where all agree on the goal and have an equal interest in the project, one cannot rely on others. Spinoza linked conflict causally to man's imperfect reason. Montesquieu and Rousseau counter Spinoza's analysis with the proposition that the sources of conflict are not so much in the minds of men as they are in the nature of social activity" (pg. 168)

     • "the problem is now posed in more significant terms. If harmony is to exist in anarchy, not only must I be perfectly but I must be able to assume that everyone else is too" (pg. 169)

     • "the proposition that irrationality is the cause of all the world's troubles, in the sense that a world of perfectly rational men would know no disagreements and no conflict, is, as Rousseau implies, as true as it is irrelevant. Since the world cannot be defined in terms of perfect, the very real problem of how to achieve an approximation to harmony and cooperative and competitive activity is always with us." (pg. 170)

     • "man prior to the establishment of the civil state possesses natural liberty; he has a right to all he can get. This natural liberty he abandons when he enters the civil state. Natural liberty becomes civil liberty; possession become proprietorship." (pg. 172)

     • "the social contract theorist…compares the behavior of states in the world to that of men in the state of nature" (pg. 172-173)

     • "in studying international politics it is convenient to think of states as the acting units" (pg. 175)

     • "Hans Kohn points out that nationalism is impossible without the idea of popular sovereignty; that the growth of nationalism is synonymous with the integration of the masses into a common political form" (pg. 177)

     • "the idea of nationalism does not imply that allegiance to the nation is the sole allegiance. It has been increasingly true in recent centuries that most people feel loyalty to the state that override their loyalty to any other group." (pg. 177)

     • "the unity of a nation is fed not only by indigenous factors but also by the antagonisms that frequently occur in international relations. Such antagonisms become important not when they result in feelings of hatred between individuals in different countries but when the state mobilizes resources, interests, and sentiments behind a war policy" (pg. 179)

     • "the best critical consideration of the inherent weaknesses of a federation of states in which the law of the federation has to be enforced on the states who are its members is contained in the Federalist Papers" (pg. 186)

     • "what effects does the condition of anarchy among states have upon the policy and behavior of states?" (pg. 188)

     • "if the interest of one group in society is sufficiently pressing and circumstances make it possible, the group will fight to preserve the status quo" (pg. 189)

     • "assume two countries each trying to maximize the economic welfare of its members…the important point is that originally each of the two countries sought only to increase its [own] welfare. Unilateral actions in 'rational' pursuance of a legitimate goal led to a net decrease in the welfare of both countries. Should not both countries have foreseen the outcome from the beginning and have refrained from a competition?" (pg. 191)

       • "reason should have told all countries to stay out of the 'competition in foolishness'" (pg. 193)

       • "the trouble [however] is that once the competition in protectionism starts, the immediate interest of each country causes it to follow along" (pg. 192)

       • "the point is that the pursuit of profit produces clearly undesirable results in international relations. We can call these activities rational on a domestic level and irrational on the international level." (pg. 193)

     • "Lionel Robbins call[s] protectionism irrational" (pg. 192)

       • "an act is rational if it turns out well in the long run. Restriction in international trade would be a rational policy if its goal were to increase the economic welfare of the country and it in fact succeeded in doing so" (pg. 192)

       • "an act that is based on a calculation of factors, including the actions of others, is rational." (pg. 192)

     • "if one country inaugurates a policy of protection, other countries are tempted to follow. That one country will adopt a policy of protection is fairly well assured by the desire to maximize economic welfare. That the long run futility of this policy will be overlooked is fairly well assured by the finite quality of human reason and by the requirements of rational action imposed by a condition of anarchy" (pg. 197)

     • "in a zero-sum game, the problem is entirely one of distribution, not at all one of production" (pg. 202)

     • "in a general game…the situation [becomes one] in which we have not just a pie to divide but [also] of how much pie to make as well. Under these conditions the game can tend toward either of two extremes:" (pg. 202-203)

       • "it may become a simple problem in maximization: all the players may cooperate to make the largest possible pie" (pg. 203)

       • "all the players may be so intent on the question of how the pie already in existence should be divided that they forget about the possibility of increasing the amount each will have by working together to make more of it" (pg. 203)

     • "common to the desires of all states is the wish for survival" (pg. 203)

     • "we can define power as the capacity to produce an intended effect. The balance of power among states becomes a balance of all the capacities, including physical force, that states choose to use in pursuing their goals." (pg. 205)

     • "in summary, it can be said that the balance of power…[is] the existence of a number of independent states that wish to remain independent. Competition takes a number of forms, but the units in all systems of competition tend to drive for favored positions. If the drive of some units appears to promise success, it is blocked by other units whose motives cause them in turn to counter and thrust" (pg. 209)

     • "realpolitik is a loosely defined method, which is described as being necessary when a given purpose is sought under a specified condition. The purpose is the security of the separate states and the condition [is] anarchy" (pg. 216)

4. Further Readings:

   • How to Think about War and Peace, by Mortimer Adler

   • A Tale of Tub, Dean Swift

   • The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, by John Milton [The Doctrine & Discipline of Divorce: Book 1 (dartmouth.edu)]

   • An Essay on the Principle of Population, by Thomas Malthus

   • The Theory and Practice of History, by Leopold Ranke

   • A Foreign Policy for Americans, by Robert A. Taft

   • The Nature and Destiny of Man, by Reinhold Niebuhr

   • Beyond Tragedy, by Reinhold Niebuhr

   • City of God, by St. Augustine

   • Scientific Man, by Hans Morgenthau

   • Politics Among Nations, by Hans Morgenthau

   • Ethics, by Baruch Spinoza

   • Realities of an American Foreign Policy, George F. Kennan

   • Political Realism and Political Idealism, by John Hertz

   • Civilization, War and Death, by Sigmund Freud

   • On Liberty, by J.S. Mill

   • The Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith

   • Social Statics, by Herbert Spencer

   • The Rights of Man, by Thomas Paine

   • The New Leviathan, by R.G. Collingwood

   • The Diary of a Writer, by F.M. Dostoievsky

   • Strategic Problems of China's Revolutionary War, by Mao Tse-tung

   • Internationalism and Nationalism, by Liu Shao-chi [Internationalism and Nationalism (commonprogram.science)]

   • The United States and Peace, by William Howard Taft

   • The War in South Africa, by John Hobson

   • Peaceful Change: A Study of International Procedures, by Frederick Sherwood Dunn

   • The Economic Basis of Class Conflict, by Lionel Robbins