‘A presumption of trust’ in international society

Nicholas J Rengger was one of the most prodigious talents of British International Relations (IR) in recent decades. His tragic death in 2018 robbed the profession of someone whose knowledge of the history of thought, especially political theory and theology, made an impression on all those who came into contact with him and his work. My intellectual engagement with Nick began in the mid-1980s when our paths first crossed in Aberystwyth, and it continued across the following decades as we conversed over the ideas of the English school, the ethics of war, and humanitarian intervention (my 2000 book Saving Strangers: Humanitarian Intervention in International Society benefited greatly from these discussions). I discovered Nick’s 1997 article on ‘The ethics of trust in world politics’ ¹ when I was writing a book on the security dilemma with Ken Booth in the 2000s. ² I revisited the piece when I began writing my own book on trust a few years later, but I don’t recall Nick and I ever specifically discussing the ideas in his 1997 article.

Rengger’s ambition was to show how international cooperation, and the idea of international society it rests on, cannot be sustained in the absence of what he called ‘a presumption of trust’. However, he viewed this presumption in late modernity as an increasingly fragile one, and whilst he offered some ways to shore up the crumbling foundation of trust, his moral skepticism as to the possibilities of realising this run through the article.

Rengger’s foil in the article was Abram and Antonia Chayes’s 1995 book The New Sovereignty. ³ This book explains international cooperation in terms of efficiency, interests and norms. Rengger appreciated that these factors form part of the explanation why states so often comply with international agreements. However, he maintained that the ‘propensity to comply’ ⁴ was strongly rooted in the background assumption of trust in international relations. The problem, for Rengger, was that this trust needs to rest on shared authoritative practices. Here, he drew on Terry Nardin’s Oakeshottian framing of international society in terms of ‘purposive’ and ‘practical’ association. ⁵ However, these practices, Rengger argued, were eroding as a result of the fragmentation at work in contemporary world politics. He expressed the problem as follows:

This, I suggest, is why, real though the propensity to comply and the presumption of trust are in contemporary world politics, they are often overturned by countervailing factors. The current institutional structure of world politics, in other words, fragments the presumption of trust since too often the practices that might authentically ground it are ignored or allowed to wither. However, the presumption exists since there are some practices that work in this direction and because other reasons (efficiency, interests and norms) serve additionally to support it. ⁶

Rengger’s concern was that as the practices that ‘ground’ trust erode, cooperation will come to depend solely on rational egoist, interest-based calculations, and that such a basis is unstable and prone to breakdown.

What, then, is to be done? Rengger’s characteristic response was to go back to philosophical foundations and identify what is wrong in the contemporary discussion of trust. He divided current thinking into two broad traditions of thought, identifying both as problematic. The first is the position he associates with Chayes and Chayes that views trust as the rational reliance on others. This approach focuses on how trust develops and is sustained through ‘transparency, reciprocity, accountability and reflexivity’. ⁷ Rengger was not satisfied that this way of thinking about trust is actually trust at all, and he is one of the first theorists in IR to explicitly challenge the idea that trust can be defended in rationalist or calculative terms. ⁸ In making this criticism, Rengger borrowed from the non-IR trust theorist Annette Baier, welcoming her claim that trust could not rest on self-interested calculations or contractual agreements. ⁹ For Baier, as for Rengger, trust is a virtue, but, Rengger asked, what grounds such a virtue?

Here, Rengger turned to a second tradition of theorising to see if this could provide the philosophical ballast to sustain the normative practices in international society that could embed habits and practices of trust. This tradition of thought views trust as dependent on a shared moral community. He associated this position with Francis Fukuyama, who in his 1995 book Trust: the social virtues and creation of prosperity, argued that societies with a strong sense of moral community do not depend on contractual and legal regulation (as in a calculative approach) because ‘prior moral consensus gives members of the group a basis for mutual trust’. ¹⁰ Rengger was more sympathetic to this tradition of theorising, but argued that grounding trust in shared values obviates the central problem that a deep moral community of this kind is lacking at the global level. He summed up the problem as follows:

In other words, if we are asking whether the current literature on trust helps us to articulate a sense of how we might develop a reading of contemporary world politics that weds a “progress” oriented approach to international law to a “practical association” approach and in so doing reinforces the habitual aspect of the currently existing presumption of trust in world politics, we are forced to say that it does not. Rationality, on the one hand, and virtue, on the other, are clearly important aspects of trust, but by themselves they can neither account for, nor sustain, practices that can embed trust habitually. ¹¹

Having hit the buffers of moral scepticism, Rengger asked rhetorically, ‘So do we end up with a “realist” conclusion after all? Is it the case that asserting the significance of the ethics of trust in world politics is indeed a quest for fool’s gold?’ ¹² As with the English school theorists Rengger was so strongly influenced by, namely Martin Wight and Hedley Bull, he was not content to succumb to the pessimism of realism that, in John Mearsheimer’s words, sees ‘little room for trust among states because a state may be unable to recover if its trust is betrayed’. ¹³ Instead, he sets out some provisional and challenging thinking as to how the presumption of trust might be strengthened in global politics.

In seeking to change the terms of the contemporary IR debate on trust, Rengger developed Baier’s suggestion that if the virtue of trust is to be enlarged beyond particular moral communities, then this will depend on ‘an international version of godparenting’. ¹⁴ For trust to flourish, the powerful, according to Baier, must be seen to be trustworthy (I return to the concept of trustworthiness below) and one important mechanism to achieve this is that ‘the strong . . . selectively disempower themselves, to be free of the corruptions of power’. She argues that if stronger actors – including nations – can do this in relation to weaker actors, then the more ‘we paralyse ourselves a little, the better to move towards trust-enhancing and trust-increasing forms of cooperation’. ¹⁵ Rengger shared Baier’s view that practices of trust cannot flourish where there are asymmetries of power, and whilst he is cautious about states acting as moral agents of trusting practices, he was open to the progressivist potential of ‘state agencies’ (perhaps operating against other organisations in the same state) working with individuals and groups, both inside that state, and across state borders, to play an international godparenting role. Drawing on Jack Donnelly’s research, he gave the example of the development of the international human rights regime as illustrative of this process by which a myriad of actors at state and non-state levels can develop new normative practices. ¹⁶

It becomes evident, as Rengger’s theoretical reflections on contemporary discussions of trust turn to hard empirical issues like the protection of human rights, that accountability, and indeed trustworthiness, are at the core of a presumption of trust. Those who govern us have a moral responsibility to live up to their promises, crucially to their own citizens, but also to other states and peoples in wider international society. But as I have explored, it was Rengger’s core contention that this presumption is increasingly fragile in the contemporary world, and he concluded his piece by focusing on one practice, international shaming, that he saw as potentially increasing trust. Rengger envisaged state agencies, NGOs, and international organisations (he gave the examples of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ)), working together to hold governments, corporations, and even individuals accountable for their behaviour. He argued that institutionalising a practice of shaming in this way would ‘offer the best chance of evolving a continuation of the existing presumption of trust’ which he saw as so critical to maintaining the ‘propensity of comply’. ¹⁷ What is more, shaming holds out the promise of becoming an authoritative practice which might realise ‘that “practical association”’ (in Nardin’s Oakeshottian framing) that Rengger saw ‘the absence of [as] . . . the chief problem with the existing presumption of trust’. ¹⁸

How, then, does Rengger’s contribution stand up just over two decades later? The answer is that the problem he identifies of how to maintain the presumption of trust remains a critically important one, but I want to end by briefly identifying three problems that his article would have benefited from considering further. These are (1) the relationship between trust and trustworthiness; (2) the neglect of security community theory; and (3) the potential of ‘godparenting’ in international relations.

Trust and trustworthiness

Rengger’s article conflated the concepts of trust and trustworthiness. The two are closely related in that individuals only place their trust in others if they believe they are trustworthy but acquiring a reputation for trustworthiness requires that those who are trusted honour and respect the trust placed in them. However, it is important to keep the two concepts separate for both analytical and policy reasons. Conceptually, trustworthiness is the set of attributes or qualities that trustors (those doing the trusting) look for in trustees (those who are being trusted) and classic formulations in the literature single out ‘ability’, ‘benevolence’ and ‘integrity’, the so-called ‘ABI’ model, made famous by Mayer et al. 1995. ¹⁹ This distinction is important because when Rengger explained the problem of state compliance with international agreements in terms of the weakening of a presumption of trust, he missed what is really at stake here which is how to cultivate a stronger culture of trustworthiness among state leaders. For example, President Trump’s decision in May 2018 to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal, and a year later to leave the Paris Agreement on climate change, highlight the failure of a US president to live up to the trustworthy conduct that those leaders who signed these agreements with the United States expected from US leaders. President Obama had invested years of diplomatic effort in negotiating both agreements, only to see his successor jettison them because he considered them not in the US national interest.

The presumption of trust was missing in action with these decisions by Trump. However, it would be more accurate to say that Trump’s defections illustrate his lack of trustworthiness. Trump felt no obligation to honour the binding agreements the United States had signed under his predecessor, and as a result of this, and other decisions, perceptions of his and US trustworthiness have plummeted. As a result, it will be much harder for future US leaders seeking to negotiate agreements – especially with adversaries like Iran and North Korea – to convince them to trust US promises.

What the examples of the Iran nuclear deal and Paris Agreement illustrate is that for trusting and trustworthy behaviour to be sustained at the international level, it has to become embedded within state bureaucracies, and perhaps even societies. This will help safeguard it against changes in leadership, which in democratic states, is an all too regular occurrence. Rengger appreciated the importance and value of conceiving trust as a non-reflexive, habitual practice in international society, and this conception of trust has become more prominent in the intervening years since he published his article. ²⁰

The neglect of security community theory

Rengger was dissatisfied with existing rationalist and identity-based explanations for how trust becomes possible in international society, but he did not provide his own account as to how trust develops in a condition of international anarchy. He argued that ‘the presumption [of trust] exists since there are some practices that work in this direction’. But he was curiously silent on just what these practices are, and, how they might be enlarged and extended. In this regard, it is striking that his 1997 article makes no mention of the theory and practice of security communities. The concept was first developed by Karl Deutsch and his co-researchers in the late 1950s to explain the peaceful international relations between states in the North Atlantic region. ²¹ The defining characteristic of a security community is that the threat and use of force has not only become de-legitimised as an instrument of foreign policy, but also politically unthinkable.

Rengger was aware of security community theorising, having edited, with John Baylis, a book published in 1992 in which Ken Booth and the author engaged with the concept of security communities. ²² A year after the publication of Rengger’s article, Emanuel Adler and Michael Barnett published their authoritative edited collection on security communities. ²³ In one of their contributions to the book, and bringing trust research and security community theorising together, Barnett and Adler argue that security communities can be viewed as the ‘the deepest expression of trust possible in the international arena’. ²⁴ The gigantic archipelago of peaceful relationships that encompasses relations between all Western liberal-capitalist states depends for its continuation on the deeply ingrained, non-reflexive trusting practices of state leaders, diplomats, officials, and, ultimately, the inter-societal interactions of the peoples who comprise this security community. The role of trust in the development of security communities is not settled in the extant literature, and there are constructivist explanations for the formation of security communities that do not rely on trust. ²⁵ If security communities do depend on trust for their formation, there is the question of whether they can continue in their war-prevention function if that trust erodes, or even disappears. Rengger did not venture into this territory which is a pity because the theory and practice of security communities opens up fertile ground for observing the presumption of trust at work in international society.

Godparenting in IR

My final point concerns a brief reflection on Rengger’s attempt to import Baier’s idea of godparenting into IR. The closest Baier has ventured into IR was to suggest that devices of disempowerment and supervision, potentially involving third-party intermediaries, could be employed to reduce power asymmetries between strong and weak states. In his brief exploration of human rights, Rengger pointed to the glass being half-full, rather than half-empty, in terms of the limits and constraints on state power achieved by the human rights revolution. ²⁶ However, the strong voice of moral scepticism in him also believed that the battle between sovereign rights and human rights could not end in a decisive victory for the latter. Instead, and as the daily record of human rights violations attests all too clearly, far too many governments simply cannot be trusted to honour the trust placed in them by those who they are there to protect.

Rengger, characteristically, asked the big questions about trust. But he overlooked how far habits of trustworthy behaviour are ingrained in parts of international society, especially the practice of security communities. Nevertheless, there is no room for complacency, and developing trust between states and communities who currently distrust each other, remains an urgent moral and political challenge for leaders. With regard to this key question, I’d like to finish on a personal note. My last communication with Nick was an email he sent to me on 26 April 2018. In it, he referred to my 2018 book Trusting Enemies: Interpersonal Relationships in International Conflict. The book is an attempt to develop a theory of how trust can develop between adversaries through interpersonal interaction at the highest levels of diplomacy. Nick wrote in his note, ‘Just to let you know, I have been asked to write a review essay of your trust book for Ethics and International Affairs . . . I received a copy of the book yesterday. It looks tremendous . . . Don’t expect full agreement though’. As far as I am aware, Nick did not finish the review, and it is to my great sadness that we never had a chance to properly talk about our work on trust.