“Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist,” wrote John Maynard Keynes nearly a century ago. “Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.”
Keynes was speaking of economics, but the same can be said of foreign policy. Practical people in decision-making roles may dismiss the theoretical arguments that consume international relations scholars—about war and peace, order and disorder, interdependence and insecurity—as irrelevant to actual statecraft. But they, too, are hearing voices in the air; their policies and strategies reflect judgments that in fact come straight out of theoretical arguments about international relations. Often enough, those policies and strategies rest on defunct theories and outdated assumptions: about when a leader’s credibility does or does not matter, about when a show of force induces restraint or reaction, about what kinds of interdependence promote peace or war, and more.
The essays that follow trace the history of, and explain the latest thinking on, the ideas most central to current geopolitical debates. They are an attempt to understand the rules that govern international relations and where, how, and why they differ from the often unstated assumptions that shape foreign policy today.
