The challenge of connecting IR theory to policy

In a discussion on the utility of international relations theory to policymakers, Justin Logan defends neorealism (or “structural realism”) as a useful approach, countering a simple critique:

There’s nothing you can do. Ride the structural wave. Let it buffet you. You have no free will. No one will remember you anyhow.

I think this misses what structural realism could contribute. I agree that it wouldn’t tell leaders of a unipolar power much about what they should do, because by definition there are few structural constraints on a unipolar power. But what structural realism may help you do is to think more clearly about why other countries are acting in the manner that they are.

A structural realist wouldn’t have a very hard time coming up with an answer why Iran might be seeking nuclear weapons, for instance. That understanding might help policymakers think more carefully about how they could (or couldn’t!) change the incentive structure to make nukes look less appealing to a country like Iran.

But a policymaker will gain a better understanding of countries’ behavior through the neorealist philosophy only if its underlying assumptions are correct in that instance. Sure, neorealism (much like classical realism) provides easy answers to why states behave in certain ways. That doesn’t make those answers correct. In the instance of Iran, neorealism’s assumptions are actually a shortcoming. Neorealism downplays ideology and domestic politics as factors of policy, but most Iran experts believe the regime’s anti-Americanism is not only genuine, it is a defining and decisive determinant of its foreign policy.

In other cases, neorealism’s predictions of state behavior would lead policymakers to wildly misjudge world events. In a prototypical example, the Ukraine actually surrendered its nuclear weapons after the Cold War ended, handing them over to Russia in the mid-1990s. This cannot be explained (at least not fully) by neorealism.

The origins of this discussion came from the Ryan Lizza article on Obama’s foreign policy, where the president is discussed trying to refresh himself on IR scholarship. I would recommend POTUS complement his strategic thinking with some regional and country-specific studies to get a better picture than is offered by IR theory.