IR Moral Realism’s Epistemology

Characterisation of Political Leadership

Rajagopalan thinks that it is tautological to characterise political leadership according to actions since characterisation is used to predict actions (2019, p. 407). Tautology indeed becomes inevitable when an independent variable and a dependent variable are used to define each other. Nevertheless, tautology can be avoided if we distinguish the independent variable from the dependent variable according to chronology. That is to say, the traits of actions characterising leadership should occur before characterisation, while the actions we predict should occur after establishing the characterisation. In moral realist IR theory, actions refer to strategic preference. Based on the past actions or strategic preference, we categorise the type of leadership. Based on that categorisation, we can predict the leadership’s future actions or strategic preference accordingly.

The discipline of international studies is an empirical science quite similar to psychologists. Trained clinical psychologists diagnose a patient’s mental illness according to his/her past behaviours based on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which is a collection of standardised traits. They then predict the potential of harmful behaviours that the patient may exhibit both to themselves and others. Similarly, using standardised traits, IR scholars ‘diagnose’ the type of leadership based on prior policies and then use the ‘diagnosis’ to predict the strategic preferences of the leadership.

For instance, not long after President Donald Trump took over the Oval Office, many American IR scholars predicted that ‘uncertainty’ would be the primary characteristic of Trump’s foreign policy based on his policies in the first half-year of 2017 (Finnegan & Mclaughlin, 2017). A further extrapolation based on the characterisation of Trump administration’s uncertainty is that America’s allies will be reluctant to support American initiatives post-2017. Due to the uncertainty of Trump’s strategic preferences, the Indian government also reduced its support to the Indo-Pacific strategy initiated by Trump in 2017. As seen in the Shangri-La Dialogue of 2018, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, ‘India does not see the Indo-Pacific Region as a strategy or a club of limited members’ (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Indian Government, 2018). Recently, Joseph S. Nye (2019) said, ‘Donald Trump’s long-term impact on US foreign policy is uncertain’. These phenomena confirmed observers’ early judgement of Trump’s uncertainty.

Rajagopalan further suggests that the evaluation of reform capacity based on the results of reform implementation will make it impossible to ‘create typologies of regimes and predict their behavior’ (2019, p. 407). In practice, moral realism theory treats leadership type and reform capability as two distinct concepts. Leadership type is defined by the method of doing thing, while reform capability by the result. Moral realism theory quantifies reform capability as a measure of leadership’s proficiency, which is calculated from two elements: direction and magnitude of reform (Yan, 2019, p. 13). Those who successfully implemented prior reform will be categorised as having a strong reform capability, thus we can predict that the leadership will have great chance to implement future reforms successfully. For instance, based on Modi’s successful reform in Gujarat, Indian people categorised him as having stronger reform capability than Manmohan Singh in 2014 general election.

Rajagopalan claims that global public opinion polls cannot serve as satisfactory empirical basis for judging a given leadership because approval ratings differ from region to region (2019, p. 408). People of different regions may indeed have different views about a given leadership, but that only validates global opinion polls as the empirical judgement of leadership. The characteristic of any leadership can be evaluated only by others not by itself. The global leadership’s morality depends on the collective result of all countries’ evaluation, not solely on its allies or enemies. The broader coverage of global opinion polls provides a more representative base for judging a global leadership’s popularity than regional ones. Since the aim is to evaluate global leadership, regional differences will not reduce the reliability of global opinion polls.

Rajagopalan’s criticism of the empirical reliability of global polling is applicable if IR moral realism employed value-oriented morality. However, IR moral realism subscribes to instrumental morality. Therefore, the popularity of an action defines the morality of the action, irrespective of whether the cause of the popularity is because of political values or secular interest. Philosophical disagreement over the use of value-oriented or instrumental morality is beyond the scope of my theory.

The Judgement of the International Configuration

Rajagopalan suggests that the reduced material power gap between China and the USA can adequately explain China’s growing international influence and America’s declining leadership in the world. Therefore, he views it unnecessary to add the variable of political leadership into realist theory (2019, p. 408). The change in balance of power is indeed used for explaining strategies of great powers by realist theorists, but it cannot adequately explain how changes happen to the balance of power or international configuration. For instance, the closing material gap between China and USA may be able to explain the increase in China’s influence and the decline in America’s, but it cannot tell why the strength gap was reduced rather than enlarged.

Before moral realism theory, no realist theory has been able to explain both the decline of a hegemon and the success of a rising power with a single independent variable. The most important contribution moral realism made to realism theory is that moral realism treats the leadership of leading powers as an independent variable and attributed the change in international configuration or balance of power to the different levels of reform capabilities of various leaderships. This helps us to understand both why a given rising power, but not others, can achieve its goal and why a hegemon declines simultaneously.

In addition to explaining how international configuration changes, treating political leadership as an independent variable can also explain how the type of international norms changes: when the new global leadership is a different type from the previous one, the type of international norms will change. A case illustrating this argument is the change of international norms after Second World War when the United Nations was established based on America’s leadership. The USA provided a different type of international leadership from the traditional one provided by European powers after First World War.

By treating leadership as an independent variable, moral realism also breaks through the rigid epistemological belief that any single IR theory can only adequately function at one of the three analytical levels: individual, state or system. Leadership is composed of individual policymakers, mainly the supreme leader and his cabinet members. They represent the governments of their states. Leadership from the leading states constitutes the international leadership because of the status of their states in the international system. As such, these people’s policy will have a strong impact on shaping international configuration, norms, order and even the whole system.

Regarding the judgement of international configuration, Rajagopalan also notes that defining polarity using alliances is a step back, as this has already been criticised by Kenneth Waltz in his early writings (2019, p. 408). Waltz’s understanding of polarity was strongly influenced by the Cold War bipolarity between the USA and the Soviets. The two superpowers possessed about 90 per cent of nuclear weapons and 80 per cent of aircraft carriers worldwide. In such a situation, it was impossible for the rest of the world to compose a peer pole by making alliances. Nevertheless, Waltz neglected the fact that alliances have the function of strengthening a pole and facilitating the formation of a new one, even though it cannot establish a pole by itself. For instance, nowadays, many people disagree on the judgement that the post-Cold War unipolar world is transferring towards a bipolar one between China and the USA. Nevertheless, it would be very possible for them to agree on that judgement, if China had made an anti-US alliance with Russia, India and Japan while the US had withdrawn from the NATO.

The Declining Influence of Liberalism

Rajagopalan disagrees that liberalism is in decline because he feels I did not provide empirical evidence (2019, p. 408). The decline of liberalism means its global influence becomes less popular than itself during the post-Cold War period from 1992 to 2015, rather than being compared with any other ideologies at present. Liberalism is still the most influential ideology in the world, but it can no longer consolidate the Western countries on strategic issues as effectively as before. For instance, all Western countries join hands to contain China in early 1990s, but they are no longer consolidated ideologically as solid as then. For instance, most democracies including India, Germany, France and the UK rejected America’s requirement to block the 5G technologies of Huawei, a Chinese telecommunication giant. Recently, Japan became hesitated to support America’s containment against Huawei, and the local government of West Australia announced its cooperation with Huawei, ignoring Australian central government’s decision.

It is evident that Rajagopalan doubts the possibility of creating a new ideology by combining Chinese traditional values and liberalism. Due to this, he rejects the idea that the combined ideology has any chance of global popularity in the future (2019, p. 408). I do agree with him that such a scenario cannot happen when the people of our generation are holding the power in China and the USA (Yan, 2019, pp. 143 and 153). Nevertheless, the Chinese and American millennials and generation-Z grew up in the age of post-figurative culture. Their ideology is shaped by the knowledge they get from the internet rather than their parents or grandparents. The same knowledge from internet makes their ideology more similar than different. Young Chinese and Americans do not have that much different views about the world as their parents do. They have larger different world outlook from their parents rather than between themselves. When they take the reign of China and the USA in the next two or three decades, they will shape the world with their own world outlook.

At the end of the Cold War, Francis Fukuyama argued that liberalism would dominate the world forever. However, the history of the last decade has disapproved his opinion. Opposite to Fukuyama’s epistemological view of ideology’s influence, moral realism theory believes that no ideology can dominate the world forever because later generations will inevitably have different ideologies than that of previous generations. The progress of digital technology will strengthen the post-figurative culture; thus, the ideological generation gap will build up in shorter time and becomes wider than before. Although we cannot be sure about the combination of Chinese traditional values and American liberal values in the future, it is highly possible for the future Chinese and American leaders to offer a new kind of ideology for the world by the middle of the twenty-first century.

Although there have been many academic communications between Chinese and India scholars, it is rare to see any theoretical discussion about IR theories. For the sake of enriching modern IR theories, Chinese and Indian IR scholars should make some contribution by bringing our traditional epistemology or philosophy into IR theory. I hope my pen conversation with Rajagopalan can attract more Chinese and Indian scholars to join our theoretical discussion.