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IR summary, readings and Lecture 2nd Year
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Notes and summary from readings and lectures of core module IR, 2nd year.
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Week 1Reading
1. Epistemic superimposition: the war in Ukraine and the poverty of
expertise in international relations theory, Jan Dutkiewicz1 and
Jan Smolenski
Notes
- The important dichotomy is not between realism and idealism but between the theory of
realism and the empirical knowledge generated by Ukraine studies. For many Ukraine
specialists, realist commentary on the Russo-Ukrainian war appears to be so utterly and
completely divorced from reality as to be surreal” (Motyl 2015: 77)
- then when it invaded on February February 24, 2022, the scholarly and public debate
was yet again joined by the realists who, 8 years on and showing no more familiarity with
the region, offered the same explanations as they had in 2014.
- two related errors: claiming expertise about the conflict based on theoretical rather than
empirical expertise and reading empirics selectively to match theoretical claims. In this
article, we propose the concept of “epistemic superimposition” to describe the process of
giving primacy to theoretical assumptions in analyzing political current events
Theory Without the Facts
- John Meirshemier blames the West for Russia and Ukraine war
- He claims that its “triple package of policies—NATO enlargement, EU expansion, and
democracy promotion” (Mearsheimer 2014; cf. Mearsheimer 2018: 172) was read by
Russia as a threat to its interests as a great power, forcing its hand in attacking its
neighbor.
- A realist perspective that all states fend for themselves, we are in a constant state of
anarchy and self-help
- Claim follows with offensive realism, aggressive state behavior is a result of the anarchic
nature of the international system, which makes international politics a zero-sum game.
- the admission of Eastern European and Baltic countries to NATO in 1999 and 2004
made the “open door policy” towards Ukraine and Georgia announced at the 2008
, Bucharest conference look like an attempt to turn these two countries into Western
bulwarks on Russia’s south-western border.
- In short: a great power, threatened, made the rational decision to act offensively and the
West is to blame for ignoring Russia’s security concerns.
- The lesson according to him is abandoned the goal of westenrising eastern europe
- He claimed Putin’s troops on ukirane border was, performative brinksmanship
- Mearsheimer uses primary data or makes empirical claims, he often relies on thin or
selective deployment of sources.
- Mearsheimer also relies on statements made by Vladimir Putin about his rationale, which
he uncritically accepts based on the supposition that “it is clear to me that Putin was not
lying”
- He omits ukrainian public opinion or domestic politics
- He suggest those with opposibn opinion use either no evidence or evidence that has no
bearing consequnces on the war
- In eastern Ukraine Russia did not intervene in a preexisting conflict but used social
discontent to manufacture it.
- In other words, Mearsheimer has it exactly backward: Ukraine was already a buffer state
(Bilous 2022; Popova and Shevel 2023) and Ukrainian popular support for NATO
accession and formal abandonment of neutrality were the direct result of Russia’s
invasion.
- Was already a buffer state: a small neutral country situated between two larger hostile
countries and serving to prevent the outbreak of regional conflict.
- One cannot reject empirics because one assumes they know how states feel. It is a
cop-out, planetary Deus Ex Machina: The phrase "explanatory deus ex machina"
suggests that treating fear as the sole explanatory factor is akin to introducing a
convenient, but ultimately unsatisfactory, explanation.
The Author Claims?
- That Russia already had an expansion plan in the workings, the eastern countries
however more suited towards democracy and pro-EU were buffer states, The United
States, NATO and the EU factor into this explanation, but more as an obstacle to the
implementation of imperial designs
Epistemic Superimposition
, - However, the passage highlights Mearsheimer's prescription that states should always
act in alignment with offensive realism, regardless of the specific circumstances they
face
- Logical Tautology: The criticism here is that Mearsheimer's prescription seems to create
a logical tautology. A tautology is a statement that is true by necessity or by its logical
form. In this case, Mearsheimer's prescription essentially states that states should act
according to offensive realism because offensive realism dictates how states should act.
It's a circular argument where the conclusion is already inherent in the assumption.
- Epistemic superimposition is, at best, caused by a methodological error. But it can also
point to a deeper flaw with the epistemological assumptions of a given scholar: the
ideologization (Rosenberg 1990) of the theory itself
- The Great Delusion is nearing 1000 citations.
- And it is precisely his renown as an expert in realist international relations theory and not
his expertise on Russian or Ukrainian politics that gives him the platform from which to
opine nonetheless and claim expertise about Russia and Ukraine. The third section
explores this problem in more depth.
Expertise Without a Subject
- And since February 24th, 2022, many realists have rehashed their 2014 claims,
including blaming NATO (Walt 2022b, Lyne 2023) and its “institutional creep” (Posen
2022) for causing Russia’s attack and called for Ukraine to accept neutrality (Van Evera
2022)
- As Maria Mälksoo (2022) notes, the difficulties of the arguably most important IR theory
to properly understand and appreciate the resistance of Ukrainians to Russian
aggression tells us a lot about the colonial predicament of IR as a discipline.
- The Western-centric char- acter of IR theorizing is manifest in the way in which Eastern
European knowl- edge and experience are ignored in the discipline from the beginning of
its formal existence.
- This is especially the case with offensive realism, which offers “the ‘ring of truth,’
resonating as it does with the common sense we have internalised over the last century
and in a half living in a world hierarchically structured by empires” (Specter 2023: 251).
- Some realists have noticed this, with Paul Poast writing that “realism is both an analytical
school of thought and a policy position.
- He argues that realism, when transposed into policy prescriptions, “becomes realpolitik.”
Conclusion
, - We have then shown how the nature of realist theory makes it particularly fertile as the
basis for engaging in epistemic superimposition given that it can allow experts in theory
to claim expertise in both realpolitik in general and on the politics of specific countries
and regions with which they have little familiarity.
Ways to Improve?
- First, scholars who opine or claim expertise about a subject should be reflexive about
their actual claims of expertise.
- Second, theorists should treat all theories as falsifiable and test them with a deep
engagement with empirical evidence.
- Third, in the context of international relations scholarship, much empirical knowledge is
produced in area studies, which should be both more valued institutionally and consulted
by theorists researching particular regions.
- Fourth, we would urge editors and the news media to interrogate the claims made by
academics rather than assuming their expertise (see, for instance, Chotiner and
Mearsheimer 2022) and seek regional and empirical expertise from experts in particular
regions.
2. Global International Relations (IR) and Regional Worlds A New
Agenda for International Studies, Amitav Acharya
Notes
- This article presents the notion of a “Global IR” that transcends the divide between the
West and the Rest.
- The first part of the article outlines six main dimensions of Global IR:
1. commitment to pluralistic universalism,
2. grounding in world history,
3. redefining existing IR theories and methods and building new ones from societies
hitherto ignored as sources of IR knowledge,
4. integrating the study of regions and regionalisms into the central concerns of IR,
5. avoiding ethnocentrism and exceptionalism irrespective of source and form,
6. recognizing a broader conception of agency with material and ideational elements that
includes resistance, normative action, and local constructions of global order.
The International Relations of Sahibs and Munshis
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