Thread by @ProfPaulPoast

Why is there pain, suffering, and war in the world?

That is what International Relations theory sought to explain.

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Last year I wrote a piece for @ForeignAffairs titled "A World of Power and Fear". The piece discussed "Realism", making a distinction between Realism as "theory" and Realism as "Policy prescription".

foreignaffairs.com/articles/ukrai…

I wrote, "Rather than being a strictly coherent theory, realism has always been defined not by what it prescribes but by what it deems impossible. It is the school of no hope, the curmudgeon of international relations thought....

...the enduring power of realism is its ability to offer a clear baseline for coming to grips with why the world is and will likely remain a world full of pain and despair."

At the time, I acknowledged that "this is probably the closest thing I've written to a theodicy."

What did I mean by that?

https://twitter.com/ProfPaulPoast/status/1537552444384739330

To start, what is theodicy? It is the branch of theology focused on what Leibniz called "the problem of evil".

plato.stanford.edu/entries/evil/

More precisely, theodicy seeks to explain why pain and suffering are persistent features of a world created by an all loving and all powerful God: if God exists and is all loving and all powerful, why does God allow evil?

amazon.com/Gods-Problem-A…

I don't want to spend this 🧵 going into the ins-and-outs of theodicy itself. But given that a key source of pain and suffering in the world is the pain and suffering that humans inflict on one another, it's of keen importance to the social sciences.

For instance, think of how the existence of "scarcity", the baseline assumption of economics, is a driver of pain in the world.

amazon.com/God-Evil-Scarc…

When it comes to International Relations (IR) as a social science, one could claim that theocidy is not just important, but central. This is especially the case when thinking about IR theories (like Realism).

For instance, in exploring how theodicy applied to International Political Economy, David Blaney writes "we do not need now to bring religion back into IR; IR has always been in some sense theological"

tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.108…

According to Blainey, Martin Wight once asked on a comprehensive exam, "International Relations is a theodicy? Discuss."

You can read a bit more about Wight's views on the topic in this 1987 RIS piece

cambridge.org/core/journals/…

Blainey attempts to show that reading IR theory as theodicy applies to more than just Realism, as "It might seem obvious that IR in its realist variants may be little more than a theodicy, an attempt to explain the necessity of conflict and war to order itself"

I agree.

Focusing on Realism, a key figure to put forward the view that Realism should be understood as theodicy was Reinhold Niebuhr.

I will write more about him in another 🧵. Since Reinhold was a theologian at Union Theological Seminary, one might say, "Well of course he's going to see IR theory as theodicy".

amazon.com/Moral-Man-Immo…

The idea that IR theory is theocidy does indeed go beyond Niebuhr. As Nicholas Guilhot argues, IR theory was primarily a theodicy (or, more broadly, political theology) up until the late 1950s.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.111…

According to Guilhot, the publication of Waltz's "Man, the State, and War" in 1956 marked "the end of the theological moment" for IR theory (though it should be noted that Waltz himself cites Niebuhr numerous times in the book).

amazon.com/Man-State-War-…

Prior to Waltz, Guilhot argues that finding theodicy in IR theory is not about subtext; it is in the text itself. To see this, look no further than in "Mr Realism" himself, Hans Morgenthau.

If one thinks of Niebur as representing the theological era of realism and Waltz as representing the scientific era of realism, then Morgenthau is an important figure because he bridges the two.

Morgenthau directly addressed the role of evil in the world in a paper published in 1945 in the journal "Ethics"

journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/29…

A year later, Morgenthau elaborated on these argument in his book, "Scientific Man and Power Politics."

amazon.com/Scientific-Ver…

In that book, Morgenthau pushes back against claims that pain and suffering enter the world due to a lack of "right reasoning", specifically a lack of adherence to the principles of liberalism: democratic governance, international organization, and open economic exchange.

Morgenthau starts by quoting Woodrow Wilson (page 51), drawing on Wilson's arguments for US involvement in World War I: "When all nations are united under their own governments and all governments are subject to democratic control, war will have lost its rational justification".

Hence, Morgenthau writes, "The war for national unification and for `making the world safe for democracy' is then indeed, as Wilson put it in his message to Congress on January 8, 1918, the `culminating and final war for human liberty,' the `last war', the `war to end war'"

Morgenthau labels Wilson's view an "eschatological hope" and that such a hope is "deeply imbedded in the very foundations of liberal foreign policy".

Morgenthau also uses the word "eschatological" to describe liberalism's competitor, Marxism: "the same eschatological hope, based upon the same intellectual procedure, is to be found in the Marxian conception of the revolutionary war which will do away with the class war."

Morgenthau's choice of the word "eschatological" is important. This is another theological concept, one closely related to theodicy.

Eschatology focuses on "the consummation of all things", meaning the ultimate end state of humankind. As Michael Peterson points out in this chapter:

- eschatology without theodicy is implausible.
- theodicy without eschatology is incomplete.

academic.oup.com/edited-volume/…

It doesn't make sense to have eschatology without theodicy because eschatology is a way of saying "the evil exists but will ultimately be triumphed over."

And theodicy without eschatology is incomplete because you are essentially leaving the listener hanging: you're saying "here is why pain exists" and the listener wants to know, "to what end?"

Back to Morgenthau, his use of the word "eschatological" is a key reason why, as Allison McQueen points out, you can't read Morgenthau without recognizing that he is grappling with the potential apocalyptic ("end times") scenario of nuclear annihilation.

cambridge.org/core/books/pol…

Where Morgenthau's realist argument enters is not in saying that the pursuit of liberal ideals is undesirable. They are highly desirable. But they are not realistic in the here and now.

As Morgenthau writes (Page 67), "Liberalism expresses its aims in the international sphere not in terms of power politics, that is, on the basis of the international reality but in accordance with the rationalist premises of its own misconception"

For Morgenthau, liberalism's "misconception" is to see international affairs as "rational" rather than the "political reality where power is pitted against power for survival and supremacy"

Morgenthau then elaborates (page 67-68), stating that non-liberal aims in international politics [examples being `living space' or `encirclement'] will retain their appeal because they are focused on tangible objectives that will be definable to a particular peoples.

In contrast, liberal aims [examples being ``collective security'' and ``universal democracy''] focus on abstract future goals of that have little hope of being immediately achieved.

He writes, "Collective security, universal democracy, permanent and just peace are in the nature of ultimate, ideal goals which may inspire the actions of men...but which are not capable of immediate complete realization through political action."

And now for his coup de grace

"Between them and the political reality there is bound to be a permanent gap."

There is much more to be said about the role of theodicy in Morgenthau's work and in international relations theory more generally (including work in the 70's 80's and 90's). I'll write about that in a future 🧵.

But the above should help show that IR theory is grounded in ideas of eschatology and theodicy.

Indeed, building on the relationship between the two, one could say:

- Realism is theodicy without an eschatology
- Liberalism is theodicy grounded in eschatology

In short, viewing IR theory as theodicy provides a coherence and grounding to the discipline of IR.

IR theory is a constant argument between those who see the greater good of humanity triumphing, as those who do not.

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