Dangerous changes in international relations

Every nation on Earth now faces security threats that exceed any in history. These include (1) irreversible disruption of the planet’s climate and biosphere and (2) risks to human life, health, and civilization, even for people nominally at peace, from fighting or deliberate destruction by any people unconstrained by international law and able to employ nuclear, biological, or major conventional weapons, with the possibility of drawing on boxcutters, planes, drones, missiles, and satellites, to mention only some of the possibilities. In responding to today’s increasingly grave challenges, most of the world’s main centers of power, which are entrenched in national governments and corporate board rooms, seem unaware or uncaring about the scope and depth of threats to human life. To be sure, they generate self-serving statements to assure themselves and concerned constituents that they are making responsible decisions. However, even a cursory glance at the unsatisfactory consequences of their actions reveals that either they do not fully appreciate the nature and scale of the problems or do not speak honestly about their inability or unwillingness to address them satisfactorily.

Missed opportunities for global peace building

Despite this bleak security picture, Where the Evidence Leads indicates that, if United States officials were to work closely with other willing governments to implement what researchers know about peace building strategies that do work, forward-looking governments could probably prevent future wars and build sustainable peace with enhanced justice, human rights, and economic well-being for all, while still averting planetary environmental destruction.

the future of human civilization is threatened because the great powers insist on taking national approaches to global problems

However, rather than construct a more dependable peace based on an unflinching appraisal of security dangers and opportunities, policymakers in Washington, Beijing, Moscow, New Delhi, and other capitals of major powers continue to rely primarily on the ideas of “political realism” in which they have been schooled and which may unconsciously justify their own power positions. 

As a result, the future of human civilization is threatened because the great powers insist on taking national approaches to global problems. Their leaders believe that they can continue to flourish as separate, sovereign entities. Yet if crises are to be addressed rather than kicked haphazardly down the road, global problems will require globally inclusive decision-making and enforcement mechanisms, animated by universally inclusive human identities and informed by cosmopolitan values. 

Replacing political realism with empirical realism

The assumptions of “political realism,” which emphasize ever higher levels of military preparedness in an international system mistakenly assumed to be unchangeable, have caused unnecessary wars or other security losses in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, North Korea, Ukraine, and elsewhere. Perhaps most harmful of all, these assumptions have perpetuated the militarized balance-of-power system, which has enabled repeated acts of aggression, including Vladimir Putin’s attacks on Ukraine in 2014 and 2022. 

Where the Evidence Leads substantiates that today’s security challenges require replacing “political realism” with a more “empirical realism” capable of addressing new international realities and encouraging a global grand strategy for human security rather than continuing a national grand strategy focused on maximizing national military power. The theory of empirical realism, developed in Where the Evidence Leads, differs from traditional political realism in showing that anarchy in the international system can be reduced in order to increase security. It also shows that maximizing the likelihood of multilateral peace and security can be a higher goal than maximizing US military power, because the latter encourages destabilizing, counter-productive, open-ended military rivalries, lawless expansion of destructive technologies, and unnecessary violence. Empirical realism emphasizes working to achieve common security, building effective multilateral institutions, and enabling all human beings to meet their basic needs.

This analysis revolutionizes thinking about national security by encompassing it directly in a human security framework and shifting US security policy away from a preoccupation with expanding military power for the United States and toward increasing human security and lawful conduct for all nations. A global grand strategy for human security is likely to produce more security for the United States, and for all other nations, than to continue current US grand strategy for national security pursued as an end in itself.

To build a successful security policy, US policymakers need to take new security realities more fully into account. Four of these actually worsen traditional US security problems and increase the dysfunctionality of the existing international system:

• increasing dangers from virulent nationalisms armed with ever more dangerous weapons, 
• declining utility of military power for purposes other than destruction, 
• rising non-military threats to security, and 
• growing threats from non-state actors. 

Three promising changes offer new possibilities for enhancing US and world security:

• expanding applications of the rule of law internationally, 
• increasing promise in global governance, and 
• rising potential in nonviolent direct action for advancing social justice and upholding human rights. 

Because US national security managers have downplayed foundational changes in political reality, they have also failed to align US power effectively to meet desirable security goals. In effect, their policies have undermined the sustainability of peace and hindered the prospects for economic justice and human rights. US policymakers have underestimated the dangers inherent in US unilateralism and in maintaining the anarchic, militarized balance-of-power system. While increasing their own military power within the international system, US officials and members of Congress are unable to constrain the role of such power for all other states in a remodeled international system. In modernizing and expanding US nuclear and conventional arsenals, officials are unable to limit the dangers posed by the weapons built by others. They are also increasing economic gains for the world’s wealthy rather than eliminating poverty. They are slowing a number of multilateral initiatives for environmental protection, economic equity, and international economic integration. They voice indifference toward or oppose expanding multilateral lawmaking and law enforcing processes. From time to time, they have ignored specific possibilities for new constraints on nuclear weapons, armed drones, attack satellites, and other military technology, while opposing permanent upgrades to UN peacekeeping and refusing to join the International Criminal Court, even though such initiatives could help to constrain some bellicose states and non-state actors. 

Potential for implementing the correlates of peace

The most effective way to increase US security in the long run is to increase the influence of the correlates of peace rather than to increase U.S. capabilities to fight wars. A synthesis of research and diplomatic experience identifies six correlates of peace. Together these 

1. acknowledge and address all nations’ security fears, not simply one’s own; 
2. emphasize human security no less than national security, thereby enabling all people to meet their basic needs;
3. entrench reciprocity in rights and duties for all international relationships;
4. implement equity in political, economic, and environmental affairs;
5. expand the rule of law in the international community, helping everyone to benefit from more predictability in a system governed by law; and 
6. build democratic global governance to enable formation and enforcement of international laws essential for human security and the institutionalization of peace while empowering people to participate in the decisions that affect their lives. 

National security policy can be transformed into human security policy because most US security problems, ranging from terrorism to the spread of weapons of mass destruction, from a more assertive China to devastation of the environment, and from unwanted migration to gross violations of human rights, can be more effectively dealt with if they are addressed as problems of global governance rather than as problems to be solved by deploying US military power. Although military means cannot be abruptly dismissed, their recurring use needs to be internationally constrained with agreed-upon rules to control destructive technologies, meet human needs, protect the environment, and enable cosmopolitan law enforcement. 

Strengthening and democratizing international institutions could be the most effective action that the United States is able to take to reduce armed conflict and foster human freedom. To design global institutions that can be built now, without incurring unacceptable risks and which will lead to more far-reaching structural changes down the road, can safely advance the systemic change needed to achieve sustainable security.  Promising initiatives include:

• Creation of a standing, individually-recruited, multinational UN peacemaking service to prevent Rwandan-like genocides and small-scale violent conflicts; 
• Establishment of a comprehensive UN monitoring system for the purpose of enhancing international law enforcement, utilizing satellite and drone surveillance, to expand oversight by the International Atomic Energy Agency of the development of all countries’ weapons of mass destruction, to verify arms control agreements, to observe any major expansion of governments’ war-making potential, and to gather information about violations of international human rights and humanitarian laws anywhere on Earth; 
• Creation of a world environmental security council with legally binding authority; 
• Expansion of economic and educational opportunities to end chronic global poverty and systemic joblessness, and to enable universal public education for all girls and boys throughout the world;  
• Establishment of a democratic global people’s parliamentary assembly; and 
• Provision of a secure system of online collaborative communication for and possible action by all legislators seated in every democratically-elected national parliament and congress in the world. 

Global governance can supersede military power

Because successful US security policies in the future will require implementing the correlates of peace rather than simplistically maximizing US military power, forward-looking policymakers and citizens will need to exert substantial pressure within the United States, while fostering supportive relationships with like-minded transnational social activists in all countries, in order to bring desired policies into being. To achieve change at home necessitates bolstering US democracy by requiring the electoral college to implement the popular vote; reducing gerrymandering; stopping voter suppression; encouraging honest public debate and civic education on global issues; and countering threats to democratic integrity from officials’ dishonesty, populist extremism, social media amplification of falsehoods, and the influence of huge contributions of dark money to electoral and legislative processes. 

To promote change, concerned policymakers and citizens could withdraw their support from national leaders and policies that do not serve the common good and work to implement a global grand strategy that would serve legitimate US security interests by helping to uphold human dignity for all. Transnational political networking could also begin to address democratic deficits that are increasing for citizens of every country as they face unavoidable consequences from major economic, military, and environmental decisions made by other countries’ governments, often implementing exclusionary national interests. By addressing all nations’ security fears, respecting reciprocity, increasing equity, expanding the role of international law, and growing democratic global governance, forward-looking governments will increase the governability of the international system. It can then be employed more effectively to address dangers from hyper-independent and dangerously armed states, terrorists and populist extremists, and environmental and other non-military security threats. Today’s militarized balance-of-power system could be transformed into a more sophisticated and dependable global governing system able to channel transnational political, economic, religious, and other influences to guide states’ conduct toward serving the common good. Where the Evidence Leads confirms that although a grand strategy relying on national military power to achieve US security is likely to backfire and fail in the long run, a global grand strategy for human security, with US security included within it, would be more likely to succeed.