Classical realism

That classical realism was less constrained by the epistemological rigidities that characterise neorealism and social constructivism accounts for both its explanatory strengths and theoretical weaknesses. Whilst prioritising power, classical realists admitted a role for ideas alongside material considerations. First and foremost a philosophical position, modern variants of realist theory can trace their lineage from the writings of Thucydides through to Hobbes and Machiavelli. This philosophy is pessimistic about the human condition, rejects teleological notions of political progress and regards ethics and morality as products of power. From its assessment of humans in the state of nature realism identifies competition for resources among tribal groups as the most basic feature of social organisation, which is therefore defined by the facts of power.Footnote ³³ Classical realists therefore build upon the foundations of this attitude towards human nature to derive a set of principles about the nature of international politics, to argue that ‘politics, like society in general, is governed by objective laws that have their roots in human nature.’Footnote ³⁴ The state in the international system is analogous to man in the state of nature; thus international politics is most fundamentally about power, which is accrued, defended and wielded only in pursuit of the national interest defined as national security, the nature of which can be identified and assessed in terms of material capabilities. The international system has no sovereign and is therefore anarchic, and so state action within it can be reduced to the national interest: thus the security of the nation-state is the sole determinant of foreign policy.Footnote ³⁵

Classical realist works are therefore not in any sense congested with enthusiastic championing of the ability of ideas to shape international politics. Indeed, the original title for EH Carr's Twenty Years Crisis was Utopia and Reality, and Carr's project was to demolish the notion that international politics could be subjugated to the force of human reason.Footnote ³⁶ Yet at the same time classical realists see realism as a necessary corrective to the dangerous naivety of idealism, not as a replacement for it; indeed classical realists cautioned statesmen to abide by the more stable maxims of power because they realised that ideas and culture could have ‘a profound effect on the strategic behaviour of states.’Footnote ³⁷

At the individual level, Morgenthau identifies ideas as sources of change, since ‘when people see things in a new light, they may act in a new way.’Footnote ³⁸ Indeed, Morgenthau's Aristotelian conception of human agency and his emphasis on both the virtue of prudence and diplomacy suggests a more complex picture of the role of ideas in international politics than he is often credited with having held.Footnote ³⁹ Politics Among Nations offers numerous examples of states with incongruous political power and material capabilities, a gap deriving from the abilities of their leaders, for whom the strategies and tactics used to convert the potential attributes power into influence are as important as the attributes themselves.Footnote ⁴⁰ The role of the statesmen was therefore to mitigate the more turbulent forces of anarchy through wise leadership, to moderate power and pursue peace. As Morgenthau writes, diplomacy is the instrument of peace through accommodation:

EH Carr too, saw that rhetoric, ‘the art of persuasion’, has always been ‘part of the equipment of a political leader’ in mobilising the minds of men alongside the material elements of military and economic might.Footnote ⁴² Carr therefore offers the hope that not only is ‘there is something which man ought to think and do, but that there is something which he can think and do, and that his thought and action are neither mechanical nor meaningless.’Footnote ⁴³ Carr sees a role for ideas at the domestic level in the use of propaganda and the education of the nation: ‘the state which provides the education necessarily determines its content. No state will allow its future citizens to imbibe in its schools teaching subversive of the principles on which it is based.’Footnote ⁴⁴ Ideas, classical realists knew, are powerful things, and power over them is one of the greatest assets a state can procure for itself. Indeed, the basic moral ideas that statesmen themselves hold precludes them from even considering certain means and ends, a process which could ‘tame’ the national interest and moderate self-interest and conflict.Footnote ⁴⁵ Morgenthau therefore argues that beyond the irreducible minimum of the survival of the state, statesmen would take into account the cultural and moral ideas of their people to pursue goals which could ‘run the whole gamut of objectives any nation has ever pursued or might possibly pursue.’Footnote ⁴⁶

Carr's analysis that the most influential ideas have been based on professedly universal principles also allows that ideas may operate at the international level, moving across borders as tools or effects of foreign policy, but only successfully when backed in some way by national political power.Footnote ⁴⁷ In addition, Carr identifies a ‘general sense of obligation’, a norm that operates between states, thus rendering treaties and agreements useful elements of international politics.Footnote ⁴⁸ Similarly, both Kissinger and Morgenthau grant a role to the generation of legitimacy, and wrote approvingly of the international society of the European royal families, whose aristocratic ideals moderated competition.Footnote ⁴⁹ So conceptions of justice do matter in international politics, and the production of peaceful change in that arena involves a compromise between utopian ideas of common right and realist adjustments to shifts in the balance of power.Footnote ⁵⁰ In this sense, the international environment is composed not just of the distribution of power but also a climate of ideas, which contains certain moral values with enough force to delimit ‘the sphere of possible political interests itself’.Footnote ⁵¹

Thus even the most strident classical realists do not regard the accumulation of power for the purposes of national survival as the only logic of realism. Machiavelli for example is emphatically not a determinist who views power as impelling action, instead insisting that necessity narrows the range of alternatives to which statesmen may apply their wisdom and exercise choice.Footnote ⁵² Niebuhr also admits the possibility that states may ‘do justice to wider interests than their own, while they pursue their own.’Footnote ⁵³ Although in the international order ‘the role of power is greater and that of morality less’, Carr accepts that in some cases ideas of morality can trump concerns of power to result in ‘self-sacrifice’ on the part of the state.Footnote ⁵⁴ As Barkin notes:

For classical realists then, what happens at the levels of the state and the individual, what Waltz called the first and second images, matters.Footnote ⁵⁶ It is for this reason that classical realists are political advocates, whose critical role is to ‘speak truth to power’ and unmask relations of domination that are concealed by the moral rhetoric of statesmen.Footnote ⁵⁷

There is therefore the theoretical space within classical realism for the integration of ideas, first at the unit level as part of its stress on political judgement, and secondarily between states as a product of the interactions of those judgements. Michael Williams has attempted to emphasise the impact of ideas within Morgenthau's writings, with particular focus on the role of ideas in identity formation and the construction of the national interest.Footnote ⁵⁸ Similarly, Smith notes that how a statesman ‘defines the national interest depends on the values he espouses and the way he ranks them.’Footnote ⁵⁹ Yet Williams stretches the point when he regards the role of ideas in classical realist thought as ‘crucial’.Footnote ⁶⁰ Morgenthau repeatedly argued against the ‘sentimental illusion’ that America's Cold War rivalry was a struggle between good and evil, and regarded such ideologising of the national interest as potentially hazardous to its effective construction and pursuit. Whilst Morgenthau doesn’t regard the national interest as a fixed, impenetrable entity and requires political actors to make difficult choices in order to identify and pursue it, he like other classical realists is concerned to make the point that the task of the statesman is to discover and act upon the national interest defined as material power.Footnote ⁶¹ That ideas may impact upon international relations is not in doubt, but the extent that they do, Aron notes, creates dangerous utopias that serve ‘as an excuse, not an inspiration’ for wilful leaders who ‘desired power as an instrument of their own glory.’Footnote ⁶² Morgenthau's rejoinder that ‘all politics is power politics’Footnote ⁶³ therefore remains an accurate summary of classical realist thought, affirming that the object of all politics is power whilst nevertheless implying that power is not the only feature of politics.

A positivist conception of ideas

Classical realists’ limited admission of the impact of ideas requires an epistemological approach to ideas that allows their influence to be assessed alongside the force of material capabilities. Neoclassical realism thus places the impact of ideas alongside the imperatives of material power in the making of foreign policy, rejecting the notion that either ideas or material factors are somehow ‘most fundamental’ and therefore deserving of analytic focus to the exclusion of the other.Footnote ⁶⁴ However, both the definitional status and conceptual implications of the term ‘idea’ are, to put it mildly, the subject of some debate. To date, no single definition has emerged, nor is there agreement on the causal roles ideas play in political processes.Footnote ⁶⁵ Unfortunately, in much of the literature the necessity of clear definition is either ignored and the assumption of definitional transparency erroneously made; or the term is confusingly equated and used interchangeably with, variously, ‘belief’, ‘ideology’, ‘theory’, ‘models’, ‘schools of thought’ and even ‘intellectual idiosyncrasies’.Footnote ⁶⁶ In order to integrate ideas into a neoclassical approach that focuses on grand strategy we need to construct a positivist approach that is both clear about how it defines its terms and rigorous about the accuracy of their application.

First, and contrary to what some have suggested, it is important that ideas and interests are maintained as conceptually distinct phenomena.Footnote ⁶⁷ Although many ideas that people hold reflect their interests, and it may even be the case that an individual holds an idea because it is in their interest to do so, these are not reasons to logically conflate ideas with interests. There is no logical impediment to our holding ideas that directly contradict our interests, and that therefore the two should remain conceptually distinct.Footnote ⁶⁸ Against Waltz's assertion that Neoclassical realists require that interests, in contrast to ideas, are those things that we can know as material facts about the world and which constitute power relations between states. They are those things that a state must secure if it is to maintain its place in the balance-of-power.

The idea that there is an independent reality directly available to state officials and analysts is not an uncontroversial one. It has been suggested that even the identification of a state's material interests is a process that requires ‘significant interpretive labour’.Footnote ⁶⁹ Certainly there is something to this criticism, yet even were this always the case, and it is by no means clear that it is, we should not derive the conclusion that material interests are unknowable, that the concept is not a useful one. Instead we should seek to isolate the material from the ideational, to identify how particular ideas provide context within which states’ pursue their paramount objective of securing those things they identify as key material interests.

The second mistake that rationalist approaches have tended to make to date is that they identify ideas with beliefs, a definition that confuses far more than it clarifies.Footnote ⁷⁰ The same authors that define ideas as ‘beliefs held by individuals’ claim that ‘ideas can have an impact even when no one genuinely believes in them.’Footnote ⁷¹ Such thinking invites the criticism that for this to be the case, ‘ideas’ must be distinct from the ‘beliefs’ without which they can still have impact.Footnote ⁷² This critique erroneously assumes that for something to be a belief, at least someone needs to believe in it. This is transparently not the case. To say that one does not believe x is to say that one does believe x's negation. Yet it makes little sense to say, even on the basis of universal disbelief, that a statement is not a belief but its negation is. Despite the failure of this critique however, the shared belief characterisation is fundamentally weakened by the fact that by defining ideas as beliefs we remove their power. A rationalist approach to ideas envisages ideas as having force alongside material interests, but by defining ideas as mere beliefs it becomes difficult to see them as (effective) weapons in policy debates.Footnote ⁷³

Insisting on the distinctions between ideas and interests on the one hand and ideas and beliefs on the other does not however entail that each may not interact with or influence the others. Ideas may fill gaps in policymakers’ knowledge of interests.Footnote ⁷⁴ Ideas can establish the framework within which interests are pursued and resolve uncertainty about how to pursue them. Thus, for Weber, ‘not ideas, but material and ideal interests, directly govern men's conduct. Yet very frequently the “world images” that have been created by ideas have, like switchmen, determined the tracks along which action has been pushed by the dynamic of interest.’Footnote ⁷⁵ Similarly, Goldstein and Keohane's ‘typology of belief’ provides us with an indication of how individuals’ worldviews and ethical ideas may prioritise certain ideas over others or lead them to particular ideas.Footnote ⁷⁶

Phenomenological separation of ideas, beliefs and interests allows us to isolate three very specific types of ideas involved in policy formulation. The first, scientific ideas, tell us about how the world works. Scientific ideas establish the relations between things in the international environment. Examples might include the stopping power of water, or the idea that liberal democracies will not go to war with each other. These ideas establish the boundaries of possibility for state strategies by describing and interpreting the relations of empirical realities in the international system.

Second, what one might call intentional ideas, are normative suggestions that seek to establish goals for foreign policy. These types of ideas reflect ethical prejudices on the part of their proponents. They articulate in the realm of foreign policy what the nation should seek to do, simply because it is the right thing to do. For example, a state may seek to use its foreign policy to advance the cause of human rights. It should be noted that this is not the same as it being in that state's interests to promote human rights. Whilst intentional ideas that run counter to the national interest are less likely to gain support among either elites, bureaucracies or the national public, there is nothing inherent in the concept that says that they may not – the separation of ideas and interests renders this a contingent rather than logical relation. So rather than seeing, for example, financial aid to impoverished countries in terms of powerful countries wielding economic power for their own ends, or alternatively as part of a process that constitutes the social identities of rich and poor countries, a neoclassical realist approach allows us to view aid as an intentional idea translated into policy because it is simply considered by a state's foreign policy executive as the right thing to do.

Third are what one might call operational ideas. These may be scientific or normative statements that recommend the means by which a certain end should be pursued. As in the case of intentional ideas they may be based on ethical judgements, but they more often arise from the holding of a particular causal belief about how which policies produce which outcomes. A neoclassical realist account might therefore explain the differing approaches of states towards similar threat by reference to differing operational ideas as much as differing coercive capabilities.

Apart from creating a typology of what ideas are, the other question that neoclassical realism must address if it is to properly integrate ideas is how ideas work in the process of foreign policy to mediate structural pressures. Why are some ideas adopted as policy where others founder? What precipitates changes in prevailing ideas?

The intervening variable: ideas within nations

A neoclassical realist approach might usefully require that ideas are treated as objects with force, that is, as elements of power. However, it should be obvious that the relationship between ideas and power is rather different from the relationship between, say, money and power, or military hardware and power. Whereas material capabilities’ power is largely intrinsic and fixed, the power of an idea is both dependent and variable. Therefore I suggest locations at which ideas may intervene at the unit level: through the specific individuals that hold them; through institutions in which they may become embedded; and through the broader culture of the state.

Fundamentally the state is made up of individuals. Individuals construct systems, institutions and bureaucracies; individuals lead and follow; individuals make decisions. On what basis do individuals decide which ideas to hold? The first is the quality of the idea itself – its internal coherence, its congruence with known realities. The second key to success resides in the speaker himself – his intellectual status, his eloquence of advocacy. Thus the power of an idea to persuade others at any one moment in history resides both in itself, and in the power of those who hold it. The causal effect of ideas on policies has tended to be displaced onto the political effects of individuals in IR theory, so that the persuasiveness of ideas is assumed rather than examined, and treated as constant.Footnote ⁷⁷ It is however, important to recognise that some ideas are ‘better’ than others, and are more likely to progress into the policymaking arena, where institutional factors may then come into play.

This is not to deny the crucial role of forces exogenous to them that push certain ideas to heart of policymaking. Whilst the degree to which ideas generate popular support may provide them with power mediated through public opinion, ideas can take a shortcut to policy success if they have the backing of individuals and institutions that themselves have power. The character of these ‘couriers’ of ideas that may be as important, if not more so, than anything intrinsic to the idea itself.Footnote ⁷⁸ At the individual level then, neoclassical realism understands that the ideas held by powerful actors within the state matter. Whilst the intrinsic power of a particular idea makes its progress into such positions more likely, the ideas that will impact most upon foreign policy are those held by those in decision-making positions in the state and those who directly advise them. Thus as Mead notes, ‘It matters who the President is. If Theodore Roosevelt and not Woodrow Wilson had been President when World War I broke out, American and world history might have taken a very different turn.’Footnote ⁷⁹

The second location at which ideas may impact at the unit level occurs when individuals with shared ideas coalesce into groups, organisations, and common practices within the state to form institutions that operate in both formal and informal sectors of the policymaking process. The formation of institutions reflects the fact that ideas that are somehow embedded in particular structures are possessed of greater power. Institutions can act as couriers for ideas in three ways.Footnote ⁸⁰ ‘Epistemic communities’ of experts have the policy-relevant knowledge to exert influence on the positions adopted by a wide range of actors. The extent of the influence of such groups is dependent on their ability to occupy influential positions within bureaucracies from where they may consolidate their power, thereby institutionalising the influence of the community.Footnote ⁸¹ However, their ability to infiltrate bureaucratic posts will depend – at least in part – on the receptiveness of the existing bureaucratic order to their ideas.Footnote ⁸²

A second means by which institutions act as couriers is by the encasing of ideas in formal rules and procedures at the creation of the institution itself. Once they have become embedded in this way, those ideas with which the institution was founded can continue to influence policy even though the interests or ideas of their creators may have changed. Thus, ‘when institutions intervene, the impact of ideas can be prolonged for decades or even generations.’Footnote ⁸³

In both of these ways, ‘ideas acquire force when they find organizational means of expression’.Footnote ⁸⁴ The third way in which ideas can impact is through the structural arrangements institutions create. These structures set up road-blocks and through-routes which determine the ease with which ideas can gain access to the policy process. Indeed, the structure of the institutional framework may determine the political and administrative ‘viability’ of particular ideas, that is, their ability to appeal to current conditions. Institutional structure therefore ensures that policymakers only have access to a limited set of ideas, whether those are percolated up to them or searched for by them.Footnote ⁸⁵ In this way, the ideas that form what some refer to as ‘strategic culture’ may provide a reliable guide to a state's likely reaction to shifts in the structure of the international system.Footnote ⁸⁶

Underlying both individuals and institutions are the ideas contained in the broader cultural context within which the state is located. Ideas that are embedded in social norms, patterns of discourse and collective identities become accepted, ‘instinctual’ parts of the social world and are experienced as part of a natural objective reality.Footnote ⁸⁷ In this way cultural variables subconsciously set the limits and terms of debate for both individuals and institutions, and so have ‘a profound effect on the strategic behaviour of states.’Footnote ⁸⁸ Mediated through institutions and individuals who are blinded to potential alternatives, ideas embedded in national culture therefore have the potential to explain ‘why some states act contrary to the structural imperatives of the international system.’Footnote ⁸⁹

The power of ideas therefore rests on ‘the ability of believers in ideas to alter the costs and benefits facing those who are in a position to promote or hinder the policies that the ideas demand.’Footnote ⁹⁰ In the process of foreign policy ‘engineering’, organisations and the ideas they espouse or represent vie with one another for dominance and autonomy.Footnote ⁹¹ Decisions taken reflect the process of formulating the choices to be presented.Footnote ⁹² Throughout the process of making foreign policy powerful ideas – whether that power resides in their couriers or is internal to the ideas themselves – are prevailing over weaker ideas.Footnote ⁹³

This conception fits with other neoclassical works that focus on the machinations of domestic politics as the intervening variable between systemic pressures and the production of unit-level responses. Randall Schweller has been prominent in identifying the constraints that domestic political processes impose on states that cause them to ‘underbalance’ in the face of external threats.Footnote ⁹⁴ Schweller's argument, although arguably more sophisticated, is similar to Zakaria's concept of ‘state power’ and Taliaferro's resource extraction model, in that they focus on the way in which domestic political processes affect the ability of the state to act in international politics.Footnote ⁹⁵ The implication of these types of account is that states with similar internal bureaucratic structures will address similar threats in similar ways. A theory of ideas however, whilst incorporating these insights about the character of domestic politics, focuses on how prevailing ideas influence the type of foreign policy response to structural imperatives. It can therefore explain how similarly structured states may respond in different ways to similar threats by reference to differing prevailing ideas within the state, whether that be as a result of the particular individuals advocating the ideas, broader cultural preferences, national history or whatever. The response as understood through the prism of ideas can then account for both overreaction and underreaction, as well as for the pursuit of goals unrelated to the notion of threat.

A neoclassical realist model of grand strategy formation

We have now set out both the scope of grand strategy and the way neoclassical realism should conceptualise the role of ideas in policymaking. What follows is an analysis of the making of grand strategy. How does grand strategy operate? What's involved in the process of its formulation? What determines the outcome of that process? Why does it change? These questions and the answers to them may serve to constitute the beginnings of a defined, systematic neoclassical realist approach that views states’ grand strategies as its primary analysis and is able to specify the domestic ideational variables that intervene between system structure and foreign policy outcomes.

Grand strategy involves a number of processes that take place within states, ‘defined as the central decision-making institutions and roles [that] can be treated as unified actors pursuing aims understood in terms of the national interest.’Footnote ⁹⁶ Neoclassical realists do admit that the identities and scope of those central decision-making actors depends on the specific characteristics of a country's political system, but retains a ‘top-down’ conception of the state in which systemic forces are mediated by a national security or foreign policy executive.Footnote ⁹⁷ That executive may however be influenced in their thinking by the cumulative actions of actors as diverse as policy makers, lobbyists, citizens' groups and businesses, and by the process of bargaining with them.Footnote ⁹⁸ Thus ‘leaders define the ‘national interests’ and conduct foreign policy based on their assessment of relative power and other states' intentions, but always subject to domestic constraints.’Footnote ⁹⁹ By using a plural definition of the state neoclassical realism recognises that processes within states are influenced not only by exogenous systemic factors and considerations of power and security, but also by cultural and ideological bias, domestic political considerations and prevailing ideas.

The strategic assessment – defining national security threats

The first, and most significant task of grand strategy formation involves the identification of threats to the security of the state.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ Neoclassical realism begins with a traditionally realist assessment of the strategic context of the state, that considers the geopolitical structure of the international system and identifies the material balance of power that defines and prioritises national interests and the threats to those interests.Footnote ¹⁰¹ It should be remembered that such an assessment is by no means a fait accompli, and that different assessments may follow from particular historical, ideological, political or ideational biases.Footnote ¹⁰² Clausewitz recognised that perfect information was rarely a feature of war and therefore required that officers ‘possess a standard of judgement’ and be ‘guided by the laws of probability’.Footnote ¹⁰³ Morgenthau too, noted that:

Thus uncertainty deriving from imperfect intelligence and the machinations of structure, plus the sheer volume of information involved, may create an imbalance between complexity and the analytic capacity of individuals involved in strategic planning.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ Such an imbalance creates a void that can only be filled by the scientific ideas held by decision-makers, so that ‘the greater the ambiguity, the greater the impact of preconceptions.’Footnote ¹⁰⁶ Having said all that, it should be clear that many features of the international system can be known with a satisfactory degree of certainty, and therefore a consensus on a strategic assessment is more likely to derive from clear facts than any collective cognitive bias. Still, it remains important to recognise that ideas may intervene to fill the knowledge gaps between the actual strategic situation and the conclusions of a strategic assessment.Footnote ¹⁰⁷

A consideration of the empirical facts of the balance of power is not on its own enough to identify a threat to a state.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ Threats come to be identified on the basis of both capability and intent, and in this latter category assessments are more vulnerable to be profoundly affected by perceptions of other states’ strategy, culture, ideology and history.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ Even where threats are agreed upon, different operational ideas may contest the ranking of those threats in terms of imminence and scale. More profoundly, particular scientific or intentional ideas may consider some features of individual states or of the international system itself as simply threatening per se, even in the absence of targeted capability or intent.Footnote ¹¹⁰

The means of strategy – power and appropriateness

The second element in the formulation of grand strategy is the selection of means to address identified threats. This process involves consideration of both what means are available, which will work most effectively, and whether their use can be justified. States have a choice of means with which they may pursue strategic goals, and access to differing aspects of power which they can mobilise against threats, from the soft power of cultural norms to the hard power of military coercion.Footnote ¹¹¹

Actors within states may hold competing operational ideas about which means are most appropriate to address particular threats. For example, within militaries the different forces tend to hold competing ideas about the effectiveness of their respective methods. Elsewhere within the state, some actors may consider that particular goals require the use of economic sanctions and military ‘sticks’, whereas other actors prefer to rely on the ‘carrots’ of trade and softer elements of power. Not only do actors hold different ideas about which means will work, there exists a competition of ideas concerning which means are ethically acceptable. Correspondingly, actors will have different ideas about which means are appropriate, which may reflect both long-standing cultural factors and prevailing domestic political attitudes. Should condom distribution or abstinence programs form the basis of aid to address HIV epidemics? Are sanctions justifiable if they hurt the people as well as their despotic government?

Auxiliary goals – strategy beyond the national interest

Once threats have been identified, ranked and the means to address them decided, the third, tertiary element of grand strategy identifies auxiliary goals and selects the appropriate means to attain them. In an anarchic system with uncertainty of intentions, the primary purpose of the state is to ensure its own survival using the resources available to it. Therefore the scope of a state's auxiliary goals will be constrained by the availability of resources, and so some states in the system may not have auxiliary goals at all, preferring instead to engage all their available resources in the pursuit of security. On the other hand, some states may not have enough resources to provide for security and, considering the attempt fruitless, may therefore instead devote the resources they have entirely towards auxiliary goals. Strong states have excess resources that will allow them to both guarantee their security and pursue auxiliary international goals. Auxiliary goals may be expansionist in terms of territory or economic power; they may create interests for a state based on historic or cultural ties; they may seek to further ethical concerns or political ideas; they may be directed towards ‘global’ interests. The choice of which auxiliary goals to pursue and with which resources to pursue them will always be the result of ideational debate within the state, since systemic imperatives have already been addressed in one form or another.

It could be countered that any free resources are illusory, as security needs grow with states’ disposable power. However, in order for power to be disposable it must by definition be a free resource. The logic of this critique is that at all times the resources of a state are equal to or less than that state's security requirements, which seems empirically dubious. Rather than new threats instantaneously appearing to occupy resources as states expand it seems more likely that states use ‘national security’ rhetoric as a justification for auxiliary goals selected for those increased capabilities.

As this section has shown, grand strategy emerges through these processes of empirical assessment and ideational competition within the state. Although in most cases the primary requirement is for security from threats, placing a systemic analysis of the distribution of power at the heart of grand-strategic decision-making, grand strategy involves much more than simply the identification of, and response to, threats. At the heart of the process, strategic ideas provide policymakers with guidance in conditions of uncertainty, reflecting the considerable autonomy and scope for creativity on the part of the state to use ideas to shape grand strategy in response to external pressures.Footnote ¹¹²

The conceptual framework of neorealism can therefore only have a constraining, rather than determining, effect on grand strategic outcomes. Conversely, the insights of neoclassical realism fit well with a process of grand strategy formation that is plural, constrained by systemic imperatives and yet determined by ideational factors at unit level. Neoclassical realism allows us to understand the choices made between the wide range of grand-strategic options that typically remain following the strategic assessment, choices that are determined by the ideas and positions of individuals and groups that comprise the state.

Accounting for grand strategic change

Neoclassical realism therefore points us towards the processes by which grand strategy comes to be made. However, it is equally important to be able to trace how shifting factors affect strategic thinking, and to understand what is sufficient for that to be significant, that is to say, what is required for grand strategy to change? How and why does strategic adjustment take place?

The first question here is what constitutes ‘change’. Efforts to create typologies of strategy have had mixed success. Although we may recognise and contrast ‘expansionist’ and ‘status quo’ strategies;Footnote ¹¹³ or ‘compellent’, ‘deterrent’ and ‘accomodationist’ strategies,Footnote ¹¹⁴ it seems unlikely that states’ grand strategies fit neatly into these few typologies, or that significant change in grand strategy would necessarily be reflected by a move from one typology to another.

Rather than seeking to identify strategic adjustment in terms of moves from one defined typology to another, Dueck has suggested that we measure change by reference to the policy instruments typically associated with strategic decision-making. Thus we should look for shifts in areas such as military deployments and spending; alliance commitments; foreign aid; and willingness to commit to diplomatic initiatives, as well as considering the overall tone of a state's stance towards its adversaries and the international system in general.Footnote ¹¹⁵

Of course, minor alterations of policy need not indicate strategic adjustment. Strategy is idealised in nature, and contingencies and compromises will impel minor changes in foreign policy as a state is faced with the realities of international politics and picks where and when to fight its battles. Dueck therefore rightly identifies that ‘tinkering’ takes place within a strategic approach without constituting strategic adjustment. He identifies two levels of strategic adjustment – first-order changes entail a ‘massive shift in the extent of strategic commitments’ and second-order changes are ‘less fundamental’.Footnote ¹¹⁶ Dueck rightly points us in the direction of policy instruments as our variable factors, and we might look for rhetorical shifts to indicate whether a shift is ‘massive’ or ‘less fundamental’. So whilst foreign policy tinkering will be justified by both the pre-existing ends in sight and the means to achieve them, strategic adjustment means a shift in the goals and/or the methods of the state in international relations.

Thus we might propose that a first-order change should involve a significant shift in the goals of the state, that is, the identification of a new threat; a change in the ranking of serious threats; or the addition or removal of a significant auxiliary goal. It may also involve, though need not involve, a shift in the means used to pursue those goals. By contrast, a second-order change should involve only a significant shift in the primary means by which to pursue existing goals, that is to say, a shift from a focus on one form of power to another.

It is noted that this distinction may be over-simplistic, and that it is by no means certain that first order changes will have greater systemic impact than second order changes. A state which moves from a grand strategy of democratic enlargement by economic and diplomatic means to the same strategy achieved through the use of military force will clearly have a greater impact on the grand-strategic reactions of others than a state that gives up an auxiliary goal that was supported by little power. If one were able to specify the relation between different elements of power in terms of their coercive impact, one could rank the goals of the state in terms of the power allocated to them and so better specify the impact of a grand strategic shift. But for our purposes here it is enough to distinguish between shifts in goals and shifts in means.

What factors can account for a grand strategic change in ends or means on the part of a state? The neorealist position focuses on shifts in international system, that is, shifts in national security doctrine stem from shifts in the international distribution of power that alter the state's relative position.Footnote ¹¹⁷ Patterns of strategic adjustment are determined by structural pressures at the systemic level, and the pressure of competition is such that states become ‘undifferentiated’ in their strategic behaviour.Footnote ¹¹⁸ However, neorealist approaches are unspecific regarding the causal processes that turn systemic change into unit-level strategic shifts. Unless the international environment is especially highly constrained, that is, external threats to national interests and values are particularly high; it is difficult to deduce security postures directly from the balance of material capabilities.Footnote ¹¹⁹

Waltz himself admits that ‘in the absence of counterweights, a country's internal impulses prevail’.Footnote ¹²⁰ The neoclassical realist position takes that admission further, arguing that variables at the unit-level – in the ideas and perceptions of actors within the state – play a ‘pivotal’ role in the selection of a grand strategy.Footnote ¹²¹ Thus grand strategic change can result from shifts at either the unit or the systemic level. Since the most important element in international relations remains the balance of power between states, changes in the international distribution of power encourage strategic adjustment. At the same time, it is essential to understand the nature of the states in that balance of power in order to understand the structure of relations between them. States do not necessarily regard power as threatening; it is the combination of power and nature that defines enmity in the international environment. It is shifts in the level of external threat that are the most likely cause of strategic adjustment.Footnote ¹²²

Of secondary importance, the introduction of intervening ideational variables means that neoclassical realism is able to account for grand strategic change in an unchanging systemic environment, by observing shifts at the unit that drive strategic adjustment. These shifts may occur within the state, or in the wider populous.Footnote ¹²³ Shifts in personnel, institutional power, or the popularity of particular ideas may precipitate changes in goals or encourage reassessment of the means by which to pursue them. Such shifts may be driven from the bottom up, by electoral results or by the use of bureaucratic leverage; or from the top down, in the form of the executive's power of patronage and final decision.