International Relations

Transcrição

International Relations
http://ire.sagepub.com
John H. Herz: Balancing Utopia and Reality
Christian Hacke and Jana Puglierin
International Relations 2007; 21; 367
DOI: 10.1177/0047117807080218
The online version of this article can be found at:
http://ire.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/21/3/367
Published by:
http://www.sagepublications.com
On behalf of:
David Davies Memorial Institute for International Studies
Additional services and information for International Relations can be found at:
Email Alerts: http://ire.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts
Subscriptions: http://ire.sagepub.com/subscriptions
Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav
Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav
Downloaded from http://ire.sagepub.com at Universitat der Bundeswehr Muenchen on October 15, 2007
© 2007 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
JOHN H. HERZ
367
John H. Herz: Balancing Utopia and Reality1
Christian Hacke and Jana Puglierin, Bonn University, Germany
John H. Herz’s model of the ‘security dilemma’ is regularly cited in textbooks and has
become common usage among students of international relations. In contrast, the full
range of his work on international politics has received little attention. Nevertheless, his
work deserves substantial reassessment, for three main reasons: first, Herz contributed
significantly to the emergence and development of realism in the 1950s, most notably
through his concept of ‘Realist Liberalism’. Second, the development of Herz’s ideas
paradigmatically reflects the ‘pilgrimage’ of a German-Jewish émigré to the US, who
witnessed and analysed almost all of the twentieth century, and a little beyond. Third,
Herz was a pioneer in understanding that the new global challenges could not be overcome
with classic realist instruments and in accepting the centrality of ‘non-realist’ insights.
Keywords: John H. Herz , German-Jewish émigrés, intellectual history, international
relations theory, Jewish intellectuals, security dilemma
John H. Herz contributed to the emergence and development of realism in the 1950s,
and, alongside E. H. Carr, Hans J. Morgenthau and Reinhold Niebuhr, is referred to
as one of the school’s founding fathers.2 Still, he is a comparatively unknown figure.
While his model of the ‘security dilemma’ is regularly cited in textbooks and has
become common usage among students of international relations, the full range of
his work on international politics has received little attention.3 Yet, upon re-reading
Herz’s writings, one is left to wonder whether the superficial label ‘realist’ does justice
to the complexity of his thinking. In fact, much of his work reveals considerable
reservations towards realist dogma.
Assessing his contribution to the theory of international relations is therefore, first
and foremost, a worthwhile endeavour in its own right. Second, the development of
Herz’s ideas paradigmatically reflects the ‘pilgrimage’ of an intellectual, witnessing
and analysing almost all of the twentieth century – and a little beyond.4 Born as
Hans Hermann Herz at the time of the German Kaiserreich on 23 September 1908
in Düsseldorf, he was the eldest son of assimilated well-to-do middle-class Jewish
parents. He was raised during the Weimar Republic, had to flee Hitler’s Germany
in 1935 and moved to Geneva before he finally settled in the United States in 1938.
He died on 26 December 2005 in Scarsdale, NY, at the age of 97.
Throughout his life, Herz engaged in the study of the characteristics of the
international system, trying to derive general concepts and theories from historical
experience. ‘Theoretical-minded by natural inclination’,5 he wanted to design a
logical and comprehensive framework that would encompass and explain the entire
world. Driven by an epistemological desire to understand ‘what, in its innermost,
holds together our world’,6 he asked how the international order emerged, how it had
International Relations Copyright © 2007 SAGE Publications
Los Angeles, London,
New Delhi and Singapore, Vol 21(3): 367–382
[DOI: 10.1177/0047117807080218]
368
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 21(3)
changed over time, and how it might be transcended. Herz was never to be discouraged
from his realist insights. He insisted on the obligation to improve the status quo but
remained critical of all forms of utopianism.7 Nevertheless, John Herz at times did
overestimate the capacity for change. Perhaps, this idealist desire for improvement
also stemmed from his omnipresent perception of the world as a fragile and dangerous place. As his analysis of the status quo grew increasingly pessimistic over time,
the solutions he proposed became ever more ambitious. He even, as some would
say, fell victim to wishful thinking. In reply, Herz would argue that the magnitude
of global threats called for radical responses.
Herz was a ‘traveller between two worlds’.8 His thought not only oscillated between realism and idealism but also between the shores of the Atlantic. Although
the United States became his intellectual and political home, his European origins
continued to affect his analysis: he strove to turn the ‘pain of banishment’9 into the
‘virtue of a European-American synthesis’.10 Unlike other Jewish refugees, Herz
remained closely attached to Germany and returned as a Visiting Professor to the
University of Marburg and Berlin’s Free University.11 Consequently, a third reason
to reflect on John H. Herz and his work is to detect and describe the lasting and formative influence that Herz, together with fellow émigrés such as Hans J. Morgenthau,
Henry Kissinger and Arnold Wolfers, had on the development of US international
relations. Herz’s work is an important chapter in the intriguing story of the interface of US and European ideas at the time of the great intellectual migrations of
the 1930s.12
From international law to international politics
Herz first came into contact with international politics through the study of its legal
aspects. From 1927 to 1931, he studied law at the universities of Freiburg, Heidelberg,
Berlin, Bonn and Cologne. His studies focused on legal and political philosophy,
as well as constitutional and international law. He was strongly influenced by
Hans Kelsen, who, in his Pure Theory of Law, strove to liberate legal theory from
all religious, scientific, ethical, sociological and political elements. Kelsen assumed
that the legislator was not bound by fundamental moral values or ethical principles.
Every law passed in accordance with set procedures was binding and needed no
further justification. According to Kelsen, the ‘is’ and the ‘ought’ were substantially
different ways of thinking, and accordingly were not to be confused with one another.
As a result of its normative character, law focused exclusively on the ‘ought’.13 The
intellectual rigour of Kelsen’s legal theory, culminating in the belief that every legal
system could be traced back to a basic norm (Grundnorm), certainly appealed to
Herz. In his autobiography, he recalled that Kelsen brought ‘clarity to the age-old
problem of the relationship between law and ethics’.14 Although Herz considered
himself a value-relativist in the Weberian sense and subscribed to the proposition that,
in principle, no ‘ought’ can be derived from an ‘is’,15 he retained a lifelong interest
in the normative dimension of the international order.
JOHN H. HERZ
369
Kelsen became the supervisor of Herz’s doctoral thesis ‘Die Identität des Staates’
(‘The Identity of the State’), which discussed the identity of the state in cases of
revolutions and territorial change and already combined aspects of international law
with those of political science.16 Contrary to Kelsen and the established views of the
‘Vienna School’, Herz did not equate the state with the legal order created under its
auspices. He conceived the state as a social phenomenon that was to be distinguished
from other groups such as nations or religions by its purpose to create and uphold
a legal order. Thus, at this relatively early stage, Herz’s interest began to shift from
‘pure’ legal analysis to the social and political foundations of law. After he received his
doctoral degree from the University of Cologne in 1931, and following his dismissal
from public service as Rechtsreferendar (articled clerk) because of his Jewish origins
in 1933, Herz was forced to emigrate.
He followed Kelsen to Geneva, Switzerland, where he took up postgraduate
studies in International Relations at the Geneva Graduate Institute of International
Studies (HEI). Geneva was his first encounter with a truly international environment.
His studies were influenced by the decisive test-case facing the collective security
system established through the League of Nations: Mussolini’s attack on Ethiopia.
In Herz’s assessment, if the Western powers had defeated the dictator instead of
falling into attitudes of blind appeasement, ‘[t]he League might . . . have proved
effective as a system of collective security, and even Hitler might thereafter have
hesitated to attack one of its members’.17 Herz never shared the utter scepticism of
classical realists regarding the potential of the League’s collective security system,
but believed that, depending on time and circumstance, such a system would have
had a chance of success.18
As Herz came to realise that war was becoming inevitable, interpreting international law in the Kelsian sense appeared increasingly absurd: ‘Study could no
longer be “pure” research; it had to become research committed to warn of the deadly
peril and show the way to the necessary action.’19 One need not be a psychologist to
understand that Herz’s sense of urgency – characteristic of his calls for change – is
rooted in his personal experiences in the 1930s. In Geneva, he wrote his first book
entitled Die Völkerrechtslehre des Nationalsozialismus (The National Socialist
Doctrine of International Law), which was published under a pseudonym (Eduard
Bristler) to protect his family back in Germany.20 It was a pioneering, blistering and
poignant critique of the concepts of world domination put forth and pursued by
National Socialism. Herz analysed the approach of Nazi ‘scholars’ to problems of
international law, organisation and foreign policy, and warned of the deception in
the theories that still painted Nazi policy in peaceful colours. Deeply worried about
the attitudes of appeasement of the Western powers and shocked by the ‘shameful
conformism on the part of most German scholars, including outstanding ones like
Carl Schmitt’,21 Herz called for resistance. Not to limit himself to the role of bystander
but to engage in the affairs of men and to strive for improvement became a lifelong
commitment continuously guiding his life and work.22 Looking back at his time in
Geneva he wrote: ‘I was determined at that time, becoming interested in politics at a
370
very early time of my life, to do all I could to add, if ever so little, to the improvement
of conditions in the world.’23
Mitigating the ‘security dilemma’
The failure of the League of Nations, the extreme expansionist nationalism of the
fascist countries, and Stalinist terror were the three great disappointments accompanying Herz on his passage to the United States:
I arrived in my new country with a rather confused image of the world. Despite
my faint belief in the possibility of a better international order to be installed
after the demise of the fascist dictatorships, my main impression of international
relations, created by Axis power politics and the then still prevailing appeasement
policies of the other major powers (as well as American isolationism), was one of
a basically anarchic system of units striving and competing for power.24
Herz was deeply sceptical of the flourishing ‘“legalism” and “moralism”, wishful
thinking which, in the 1920s and 1930s, and especially in the United States, had
passed for study of international relations’.25 The utopian, world-federation type of
ideal-ism advocated in large parts of American academia clearly neglected the driving
forces of international politics.
Herz was given an opportunity to study the anarchic modern state system at the
Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, where, from 1939 to 1941, he was Edward
M. Earle’s research assistant. His time at Princeton was a formative experience: he
came into contact with the American way of academic life,26 and, through members
of Earle’s seminar such as Albert Weinberg (Manifest Destiny), he became familiar
with the key historical ideas and trends in American foreign policy at the time.
Herz was put in charge of a historical analysis of the British balance-of-power
system. He came to appreciate the effectiveness of this system as an organising
principle but he concluded that it could not be applied to present conditions. In
‘Power Politics and World Organization’,27 he stressed that utopianism had too often
produced peace plans built on the quicksands of wishful thinking and therefore highly
likely to fail. In a post-war world that would still be one of sovereign nations not
subordinate to higher authority, national power and national interests had to be the
guiding principles of action:
For, should any single member of the system try to replace power politics quite
generally by politics based on humanitarian or similar power-ignorant ideals, it
would merely play into the hands of its competitors and thus weaken and eventually
destroy itself.28
However, Herz argued, a pre-League, unorganised balance-of-power system would
lead to more global wars, as no single power was independent enough to play the
role of global policeman, enforcing general security.
JOHN H. HERZ
371
He went on to propose an improved system of collective security – equidistant
from world government and pure anarchy – as the organising principle of the postwar world. This central improvement was not of an organisational or institutional
nature. Herz instead called for a renewed and reinforced commitment to the idea of
collective security. This commitment was not to be the result of a common (utopian)
ideal, but of a sober analysis of the participants’ national interests. The League of
Nations, in Herz’s assessment, had succumbed to the lack of such an interest-based
commitment.
Organised collective use of force, or the threat of its application, was the instrument
of choice to prevent and suppress unilateral recourse to force. In this sense, collective
security was not utopian but ‘would mean the adaptation of the balance-of-power
principle to modern conditions’.29 In a world where producers and consumers of
security could no longer be distinguished, and appeasing aggressors or isolating
oneself were no longer viable options, the adoption of a more rational scheme of
international relations seemed to be both imperative and realistic.30 A central feature
of Herz’s thinking became clear: he believed that it was in the interests of all states
and not a matter of choice to subject themselves to the rule of collective security.
Herz’s choice of words was intriguing and ambiguous at the same time. In invoking
the interests of member states, Herz used a realist’s vocabulary for a clearly idealist
construction.
After leaving Princeton, Herz was hired by Ralph Bunche at Howard University,
in Washington DC. He was among a number of Jewish refugee scholars who were
able to find teaching positions in black colleges and universities. In the aftermath of
Pearl Harbor, Herz decided to lay aside his theoretical endeavours in order to engage
in active politics. He followed Bunche, whom he greatly admired, to work in the
Central European Section of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Together with
other emigrants from Germany such as Herbert Marcuse, Franz Neumann and Otto
Kirchheimer, he participated in preparing the post-war reconstruction of defeated
Germany. During his time at the OSS, he was involved in the Nuremberg war-crimes
trials, joining the staff of Robert H. Jackson, the US chief prosecutor, and participating
in the trial of Wilhelm Frick.31 His service at the OSS is evidence of his enduring
attachment to the land of his birth. Nevertheless, Herz left the Department of State
in frustration, complaining that all attempts of denazification had been half-hearted
at best.32 He did not return to government service. Instead, in 1948, he went back to
Howard University, and from 1952 until his retirement in 1977 Herz was a Professor
at City College in New York City.
‘Power Politics and World Organization’ laid the ground for a subsequently more
stringent and coherent realist approach to international politics. Although his first
book in English, Political Realism and Political Idealism, was devised in his Princeton
years and had already been concluded by the end of World War II, it was published
only in 1951. In Political Realism and Political Idealism, Herz examined the role
of power in human affairs through a conjunction of political realism and political
idealism, two schools of thought that are often considered to be mutually exclusive.33
While paying special attention to foreign affairs, the book identified basic types of
372
political attitudes that, in principle, were applicable to all levels of political interaction.
Like Morgenthau and Carr, Herz emphasised the inevitable role of power and power
politics in the modern state system. But in contrast to Morgenthau, whose realism
was based on the innate human urge for power (‘animus dominandi’), and Reinhold
Niebuhr, whose realism relied on the original sin of human pride,34 Herz rejected both
an anthropological35 and a theological foundation. The ‘security dilemma’, the sociopolitical constellation Herz identified as the starting point of all theoretical inquiry,
was to become his most famous contribution to the study of international relations.
The concept of the ‘security dilemma’ is best explained in Herz’s own words:
Politically active groups and individuals are concerned about their security
from being attacked, subjected, or annihilated by other groups and individuals.
Because they strive to attain security from such attack, and yet can never feel
entirely secure in a world of competing units, they are driven toward acquiring
more and more power for themselves, in order to escape the impact of the superior
power of others.36
To ensure survival, competing political units, whether they like it or not, have to play
the power game. In the context of international anarchy, states thus cannot rely on
a higher authority for their protection and survival, but are necessarily thrown back
on their own devices. Striving for security, states always aim to enhance their power.
Rivals and opponents react with similar actions, thus igniting a vicious circle of
suspicion and counter-suspicion, power competition, arms races, and ultimately war.
Unlike Hans Morgenthau, Herz did not assume man to be inherently ‘evil’.37
The ‘security dilemma’ is a structural condition, even in the absence of aggression
or similar factors. Herz’s approach shifts the focus from the individual to the social
sphere. The decisive factor was not the composition of the single unit, but the social
pressure bearing on that unit.38 In focusing less on the individual unit and more on the
structure of the international system, Herz’s thinking seems to be closer to Kenneth
Waltz’s than Hans J. Morgenthau’s. While Morgenthau concentrates mainly on the
national interest, Herz and Waltz share the idea that, first and foremost, states require
security. Strikingly, although Herz and Waltz both emphasised the security aspect,
they came to radically different judgements about the impact of the bipolar world:
while Waltz stressed the stability of the system, Herz never tired of warning of its
particular fragility.39 The security dilemma forced groups, such as states, even if committed to the status quo and harbouring no hostile or aggressive intentions against
one another, to ‘prepare for the worst’.40 ‘In Herz’s conceptualization, therefore, the
security dilemma had a fatalistic inevitability about it.’41
Morgenthau and Herz, on the other hand, differed in their conclusions with regard
to the feasibility of international cooperation: while Morgenthau was inspired by the
friend–foe dichotomy of Carl Schmitt and emphasised the inevitability of conflict and
confrontation in international affairs, Herz argued that the ‘security dilemma’ could
be mitigated through the development of an improved collective security system42
that would create and enhance a feeling of security.
JOHN H. HERZ
373
The major achievement of the ‘security dilemma’ is its ability to explain the
phenomenon of recurring war, even in the absence of an apparent aim for conquest.
However, Herz’s analysis of the national interest was somewhat mono-dimensional,
assuming that all states share a common interest in maintaining their security. While
this may be true in the case of saturated status quo powers, Herz underestimated expansionist, hegemonic and nationalist tendencies as driving forces of international
politics.43
Interpreting Herz as an advocate of offensive realism as John Mearsheimer does
misrepresents Herz’s view of the ‘security dilemma’ and the policy recommendations
he drew from it.44 Whereas offensive realism strives to relentlessly maximise power,
Herz’s theory is an attempt to restrain, weaken and control (national) power. ‘Political
realism’ according to Herz ‘means insight into what the “security dilemma” implies
and awareness of the difficulties to avoid the constant conflict which this constellation creates’.45 But Herz did not stop here: ‘For, after all, is Political Realism . . . the
ultimate wisdom, der Weisheit letzter Schluss?’46 Herz’s answer was ‘no’. His goal
was to develop a ‘Realist Liberalism’ or idealist realism, equidistant from hard-core
realism and utopian idealism, seeking ways of equilibrium in foreign policy without
lapsing into utopian thinking. Recognising ‘realist’ facts and insights as the basis of
all political action, ‘the guiding star of all such action should be one that moves man
to try to push developments in a different direction’.47
‘Realist Liberalism’ clearly gave preference to liberal-individualist-humanitarian
ideals over value-free political realism, and therefore entailed an explicit choice in
favour of values.48 Recognising the role of power, scholars of international relations
had an obligation to search for improvement. In an attempt to discover a ‘third way’,
Herz combined realist principles with idealist goals. In so doing, he developed an
almost acrobatic art of holding on to the extreme poles of staunch realism and utopian
idealism while focusing on the realisable ideal.
The theoretical enterprise of reconciling realism and idealism entails serious
difficulties. Somewhat paradoxically, ‘Realist Liberalism’ puts forward ethical
demands while trying to accommodate facts and trends that run counter to the
achievement of the desired aims. The proposed solution is commonsensical, insofar
as it strives to realise the liberal idea to the extent present circumstances permit.
As laudable and heroic as this claim may be, Herz himself was sceptical about the
possibility of its implementation. He freely admitted: ‘In the present stage of history
[1951!], major trends seem to be hostile to such an endeavour, even beyond the more
general realist power factors which have traditionally hampered the liberal ideal.’49
Looking back on the last 55 years, this scepticism certainly seems justified.
Although Political Realism and Political Idealism was awarded the annual
Woodrow Wilson Prize of the American Political Science Association, it received little
attention and remained Herz’s ‘intellektuelles Schmerzenskind’.50 Like most of Herz’s
writing, the book is not an easy read. It is philosophical, abstract and analytical; one
could even describe it as a typical work of a German professor secluded in his private
study.51 Herz’s second book, International Politics in the Atomic Age, however, became
a bestseller by academic standards and earned him the highest academic accolades.52
374
Securing mankind’s survival: From realism to universalism
While Political Realism and Political Idealism was based on a traditional international system, Herz’s worldview was shaken by the invention of the nuclear bomb
and the emergence of a bipolar world. In his book International Politics in the Atomic
Age, which he published in 1959, Herz reflected on the impact of these developments.
He began with the assumption that beyond the ‘security dilemma’ a more existential
dilemma overshadowed the traditional problems of nation-states competing for power
and security: with the arrival of the nuclear age, the survival of the human race was
suddenly at stake.53 The potential of nuclear attack challenged the age-old definition
of the state as a protective unit, constructed to secure the lives of its citizens, and
surrounded by a ‘hard shell’54 of defensibility. Territoriality thus was no longer the
defining characteristic of a state that had lost its ability to provide security – and
not only in a military sense. These developments triggered a profound change in
the structure of the international system, a system that had become utterly fragile:
both superpowers were capable of ending their respective existence in a terminal
war. With the bipolar bloc system – creating absolute insecurity through absolute
exposure to destructive penetration – the ‘security dilemma’ seemed to have reached
a preliminary climax.55
Herz was among the first scholars to fully grasp the new permeability of the
nation-state’s hard shell and its consequences. Any analysis that interpreted the new
situation as another case of history repeating itself on a higher level and remained
ignorant of the newly emerged existential threat was thus doomed to fail. Whereas
Herz continued to believe in the indivisibility of peace, the underlying idea of his
collective security concept of the early 1940s, he realised that bipolarity and the
destructiveness of nuclear power had undermined the notion of collective security.
The United Nations were paralysed by the US–Soviet struggle for power and
influence in the Security Council. The equal division of power between the two blocs
rendered collective security impossible, as it excluded the application of force by an
overwhelming power against isolated aggressors.
Convinced that a new era of international politics had begun, Herz proposed a
‘universalist’56 approach. This assumed that, even in the absence of collective security,
conflicts could be reduced and the ‘security dilemma’ could be mitigated if both blocs
displayed a minimum of reason and followed the will to survive. He considered a
radical change in attitudes and policies the only way to save the world from disaster
in the long run. In the face of global nuclear annihilation, and influenced by Hans
Jonas’s Imperative of Responsibility and Günter Anders’ Antiquiertheit des Menschen
(Antiquated Man), Herz argued that it was short-sighted to focus on traditional
parochial concerns such as the nation and national interests when the survival of
mankind as a whole was in jeopardy. On this view, universalism, the focus on the
common interest to avoid global annihilation, was the only effective means to ensure
survival and a far cry from utopia:
Until recently . . . advocacy of policies based on internationalism instead of power
politics, on substituting the observance of universal interests for the prevalence of
JOHN H. HERZ
375
national interests, was considered utopian, and correctly so. In an age of absolute
interpenetrability of powers, on the other hand, the ‘ideal’ is bound to emerge as
a very compelling ‘interest’ itself.57
Herz’s thinking was not shaped by an attempt to achieve some preconceived ideal,
but by his nearly obsessive preoccupation with the life-and-death challenge confronting the world. One cannot escape the impression that Herz was trying to solve
a realist’s problem – the ‘nuclear security dilemma’ – with an idealist’s cure. As
idealistic and utopian as it may appear, to Herz this cure was the only chance of
securing survival and thus, even from a realist point of view, a path of action without
alternative.
Ultimately, he hoped that a genuinely supranational authority would be established
which would then possess nuclear weapons for the purpose of finally destroying
them.58 But Herz did not fail to understand that, in 1959, the time for such universalist
policies had not yet come.59 Therefore, he advocated an intermediate period that
would allow mankind to stop and reflect. Many years ahead of NATO’s posture of
‘deterrence’ and ‘détente’ in the Harmel Report of 1967, he thus called for a pause
to stop the arms race and reflect upon its implications. Détente, mutual restraint,
bilateral efforts such as arms control, demarcation of bloc spheres, avoidance of
nuclear proliferation, and reducing the role of the ideologies of communism and
anti-communism in East–West relations would lessen international tension.60 Since
détente could only be a holding operation, Herz hoped that, over time, his ‘universalist’
approach would gain broad-based support. He thus had in mind a two-step approach,
with the implementation of his universalist ideas following the successful completion
of a cooling-off period. Herz’s description of the ‘operational details’ of universalism
remained sketchy. This may be because he understood ‘universalism’ as a state of
mind that was to be adopted through a ‘process of enlightenment’. Once completed,
this process, Herz reckoned, could result in the adoption of policies conducive to the
achievement of global peace.
In International Politics in the Atomic Age Herz presented a visionary understanding of the impact of nuclear weapons on the international system. However, his
analysis did not remain limited to ‘hard’ issues of military security. He was a pioneer
in recognising the profound impact of the new global challenges that were consistently
overlooked by most political realists, and which he analysed with more precision and
earlier than his contemporaries. Beginning in the late 1960s, his scholarly attention
turned to the consequences of accelerated technological-scientific progress. He
believed that this phenomenon and the problems it entailed – each impossible to
confine to national borders – would strengthen the trend towards ‘universalism’. He
was among the first to be seriously alarmed by non-military threats to the very future
of mankind, such as the risk of extinction through overpopulation, the overuse and
destruction of vital resources, and large-scale environmental deterioration.61
As he got older, Herz increasingly worried about the future of the planet.
His assessment of the twentieth century, which he referred to as a century of ‘missed
opportunities’,62 was negative: three times, in 1919 with the establishment of the
376
League of Nations, in 1945 with the establishment of the United Nations after
World War II, and following the end of the Cold War in 1989, a ‘new world order’
had been within reach – yet history had always taken the wrong turn. What he saw
of the twenty-first century was no less disappointing to Herz. Major states were
unwilling to act in terms other than the traditional ones of enmities and alliances,
with conflict to be resolved through power and threats of force. Increased defence
budgets, a flourishing arms trade, the appearance of additional nuclear powers and
the helplessness of the United Nations, as well as the disregard for international law,
left him deeply frustrated.
Not surprisingly, Herz grew increasingly dissatisfied with US foreign policy.
Throughout his life he saw his role as a corrective in the enduring conflict between
realist and idealist features of US foreign policy, criticising its missionary streak while
also reminding the United States of its great ideals and responsibilities whenever
Washington was pursuing its narrow national interest too ruthlessly. Herz interpreted
the foreign policy of George W. Bush’s administration in the aftermath of the terrorist
attacks of 11 September 2001 as an indication of a highly regrettable revolutionary
change in US foreign policy, which he found dangerous and self-destructive:
For sure, since 9/11 everything is different, but not because of the terrorist attacks
in themselves, but rather because they were misused as an excuse to declare the
use of force by individuals and criminal groups an ‘act of war’ and to engage into
warfare on the basis of principles that starkly contradict all traditional notions of
international law.63
The Bush Doctrine implied the total obliteration of the fundamental principles of
traditional international relations: ‘Now one may declare a “global” anti-terrorist
war on the mere foundation of unproven suppositions, all the while the concept of
“terrorism” remains undefined.’64 Herz was particularly critical with regard to the Iraq
War, which he simply qualified as a catastrophe. Contrary to all preceding administrations, the Bush administration pursued an aggressive policy at odds with core
principles of international law and rejecting all forms of cooperation with any other
state. Such a hegemonic and unilateral policy, Herz was sure, would eventually lead
to the decline of mankind.65
However, Herz always refused to give up hope:
[I]f there remains the slightest prospect that things might be different, I believe that
it is worthwhile to explore the nature and conditions of the new and better. Let us
then do so, remembering throughout that it is not wishful thinking or utopianism
that leads us on, but an ever so faint ray of hope that that which is not entirely
impossible will emerge as real.66
Until the end of his life, he called for a great reversal – a radical change in attitudes
and policies regarding measures taken collectively by nations cooperating through
international institutions and organisations. His primary concern was to make the
JOHN H. HERZ
377
younger generation aware of the global challenges awaiting them. After his retirement he devoted time and much effort to encouraging a new interdisciplinary approach
that he suggested should be called ‘survival research’67 and that should cut across
both the social sciences and the applied sciences.
John H. Herz – a realist?
Realism as a school of thought has its origins in the ideas of European scholars
who, under the intellectual stewardship of Hans J. Morgenthau, called for a more
reality-based perspective on international relations. They wanted to provide a critical
answer to the utopianism and moralism that had until then been prevalent in the
United States, introducing a sense of tragedy emanating from European history into
US political science.68 They put forward a theory rooted in a sober analysis of international reality and recognising the importance of power in the pursuit of national
interests. One of those realists was John H. Herz, who in principle adhered to these
views throughout his life. Insofar as his early writings assigned priority to structures
and systems over motives and actions of statesmen,69 Herz may be placed among
the ‘structural realists’.70 Such an assessment, however, only partly does justice to
his thinking. Moreover, one should not underestimate the extent to which Herz, over
time, distanced himself from what nowadays is called American realism: ‘Insofar as
the latter lays claim to Herz as part of a long-standing and deep-rooted realist tradition, it may be missing Herz’s most perceptive insights.’71 Although Herz indeed was
a pioneering figure, as he identified the ‘security dilemma’ and helped shape the realist
image of the discipline, his approach went far beyond realism and took a normative
turn: ‘I consider myself a realist who comes sometimes to pessimistic conclusions,
but never gives up looking for solutions if ever so difficult ones.’72 Herz’s argument
on the centrality of power notwithstanding, he emphasised that international politics
was not only about the pursuit of power. Instead, he concurred in E.H. Carr’s assessment that ‘pure realism can offer nothing but a naked struggle for power’73 and ‘that
any sound political thought must be based on elements of both utopia and reality’.74
His ‘Realist Liberalism’ was the attempt to implement the realisable ideal in international politics.
Through his call for a ‘minimum ethic of survival’,75 Herz overcame the traditional
realist separation between ethics and power. He believed that the perils facing
humankind were so great that they would be forced to subordinate immediate private
interests to the overriding, long-term interests of all. Thus he never tired of calling for
a radical change in attitudes and policies that would shift attention away from individual and group concerns and create awareness of the demands of humankind’s
survival. At the end of his life, Herz asked: ‘Have I landed in an idealistic utopianism?’76
There are some indications that indeed he had. By Mearsheimer’s standards,77 Herz
would certainly qualify as an idealist: idealists believe in the imperative to change
the world and share a desire to make the planet one giant ‘security community’78
where states act ethically and respect international law as well as each other. Their
378
argument is that the point of reference of all political action should not be the state,
but the individual or humanity as a whole. Herz, however, insisted on the distinction
between realisable ideals and utopian wishful thinking: ‘I have always been fighting
utopian visions, but considered realisable agendas to be in conformity with political
realism. A realistic liberalism can promote progressive and humanitarian ideals as
well as survival aims.’79 He was not the only realist who came to idealist insights. It
was George F. Kennan himself, the realist icon, who wrote:
[O]ur world is at present faced with two unprecedented and supreme dangers. One
is the danger not just of nuclear war but of any war at all among great industrial
powers – an exercise that modern technology has now made suicidal all around.
The other is the devastating effect of modern industrialization and overpopulation
on the world’s natural environment . . . The need to give priority to the averting
of these two overriding dangers has a purely rational basis – a basis in national
interest – quite aside from morality.80
Herz’s intellectual pilgrimage is a chronicle of the realist liberal responding to
successive crises and thus creating a unique version of a European-American
perspective:
His path starts with his search for a logical system of norms, progresses to his
insights on the nature of states (their impermeability and currently their penetrability) and the complexities of nuclear foreign policies, and leads to his study
of the accelerating rush of mankind through a multitude of threats to survival.81
En route Herz liberalised and humanised power-maximising realism; he gave it the
warmth and self-critical reflectiveness that other writers sometimes lacked. Early
on he understood that the new global challenges could not be overcome with classic
realist instruments of balance-of-power and national interests alone and always
accepted the centrality of ‘non-realist’ insights. This is his greatest achievement, and
it brought him lasting recognition, particularly among those critics of realism who
appreciate that Herz’s academic work was always shot through with strong moral
impulses. Regretfully, due to poor eyesight in the last 20 years of his life, Herz was
unable to follow developments in the discipline of international relations. He would
certainly have been pleased by the number of different schools of thought which – for
the most part rather more implicitly than explicitly – drew upon and further developed
his theoretical approach.82 His 1959 thesis about the fragility of the hard-shell state
has been vindicated ever since and was reaffirmed on 11 September 2001.
Reflecting on the scholarship of John H. Herz, one cannot but admit that history
has borne out many of his pessimistic expectations. It is also true that Herz’s cure,
the universalist approach, has attracted few if any followers among decision-makers.
Some may take this as a sign that Herz fell victim to the sort of wishful thinking he
was often critical of. More appropriately, it should be taken as evidence that the world
remains in denial of some of the most fundamental problems it is currently facing.
JOHN H. HERZ
379
Notes
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
We would like to thank the Editor of International Relations, Ken Booth, and the anonymous reviewer
for their helpful suggestions. We are also indebted to Tom Karis, a long-time colleague and friend
of John H. Herz, for his thoughtful comments on the initial draft.
See e.g. Anette Freyberg-Inan, What Moves Man. The Realist Theory of International Relations
and its Judgement of Human Nature (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2004),
p. 67. Although Michael J. Smith does not include Herz in his portrait collection of famous realists, he
mentions in the preface of his book that ‘one could add John H. Herz’. See Michael J. Smith, Realist
Thought from Weber to Kissinger (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana University Press 1983), p. 2.
A laudable exception is the excellent article by Peter Stirk, ‘John H. Herz: Realism and the Fragility
of the International Order’, Review of International Studies, 31(2), 2005, pp. 285–306. Herz’s
scholarly interest was nearly equally divided between comparative politics and theory and analysis
of international politics.
See John H. Herz, The Nation State and the Crisis of World Politics. Essays on International Politics
in the Twentieth Century (New York: D. McKay, 1976), p. 3. For a short assessment of this pilgrimage,
See Christian Hacke, ‘Ein Rückblier ant John Herz. Assenpolitischer Realismus Mit idealistischen
Zügen’, Neue Zuricher Zeitung 14 February 2006, p. 5.
John H. Herz, ‘An Internationalist’s Journey through the Century’, in Joseph Kruzel and J. Rosenau
(eds), Journeys through World Politics. Reflections of Thirty-four Academic Travellers (Lexington,
MA: Lexington Books, 1989), p. 249.
This reference to Goethe’s Faust is Herz’s own: see John H. Herz, Vom Überleben. Wie ein Weltbild
entstand (Düsseldorf: Droste 1984), p. 48.
See Herz, Political Realism and Political Idealism. A Study in Theories and Realities (Chicago, IL:
University of Chicago Press, 1951), pp. 43–128. In Herz’s view, utopianism was the logical result of
a worldview that attributes all problems to a single cause, ignoring realist insights, i.e. the security
dilemma. In this vein, he rejected the early Bolshevik idea that the classless society would create a
world of peacefully coexisting nations. See also Herz, Vom Überleben, p. 162 et seq.
Herz, Vom Überleben, p. 9.
John H. Herz, Staatenwelt und Weltpolitik. Aufsätze zur internationalen Politik im Nuklearzeitalter
(Hamburg: Hoffmann and Campe, 1974), p. 9.
Herz, Staatenwelt und Weltpolitik.
Herz specialised in German government and politics. For example as co-author of a textbook:
Gwendolen M. Carter and John H. Herz, Major Foreign Powers. The Governments of Great Britain,
France, Germany, and the Soviet Union, 3rd edn (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1957).
See e.g. Alfons Söllner, ‘From Public Law to Political Science? The Emigration of German Scholars
after 1933 and their Influence on the Transformation of a Discipline’, in Mitchell G. Ash and Alfons
Söllner (eds), Forced Migration and Scientific Change. Émigré German-Speaking Scientists and
Scholars after 1933 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
See Hans Kelsen, Hauptprobleme der Staatsrechtslehre (Aalen: Scientia Verlag, 1960) and Reine
Rechtslehre, 2nd edn (Aalen: Scientia Verlag, 1994).
Herz, Vom Überleben, p. 96.
See John H. Herz, ‘Technology, Ethics, and International Relations’, Social Research, 43(1), 1976,
pp. 107–8. See also Herz, Vom Überleben, p. 80.
Hans Herz [John H. Herz], Die Identität des Staates (Düsseldorf: n.p., 1931).
Herz, Die Identität des Staates.
See Herz, Die Identität des Staates, pp. 6–7 (fn 7). For a classical realist’s view see Hans J.
Morgenthau, Proceedings, 68th Annual Meeting of the American Society of International Law
(Washington DC: n.p., 1975), p. 332.
Herz, The Nation State and the Crisis of World Politics, p. 6.
Eduard Bristler (John H. Herz), Die Völkerrechtslehre des Nationalsozialismus (Zürich: Europaverlag,
1938).
Herz, ‘An Internationalist’s Journey through the Century’, p. 248. For a late assessment of Schmitt by
Herz, see John H. Herz, ‘Looking at Carl Schmitt from the Vantage Point of the 1990s’, Interpretation,
19, 1992, p. 308.
See John H. Herz, ‘Ossip K. Flechtheim (1909–1998). Wissenschaftler und Aktivist’, in Kurt
Düwell et al. (eds), Vertreibung jüdischer Künstler und Wissenschaftler aus Düsseldorf 1933–1945
(Düsseldorf: Droste, 1998), p. 158.
380
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
John H. Herz, ‘Reflections on my Century’, in Ralph Bunche Institute on the United Nations (ed.),
Occasional Paper Series, Special Issue 1998, pp. 1–15, at p. 1.
Herz, ‘An Internationalist’s Journey through the Century’, p. 249.
John H. Herz, ‘Political Realism Revisited’, International Studies Quarterly, 25(2), 1981, p. 183.
As Herz points out in a letter of 27 February 2005 addressed to Professor Peter Goddard, Director
of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey (letter in author’s possession).
John H. Herz, ‘Power Politics and World Organization’, American Political Science Review, 36(6),
1942, pp. 1039–52.
Herz, ‘Power Politics and World Organization’, p. 1040.
Herz, ‘Power Politics and World Organization’, p. 1047.
See Herz, ‘Power Politics and World Organization’, p. 1049.
See Herz, Vom Überleben, pp. 140–2. Wilhelm Frick, a prominent Nazi politician and former Minister
of the Interior, whom Herz had questioned in court, was sentenced to death.
Herz, ‘Internationalist’s Journey’, p. 252. This frustration led to the publication of John H. Herz,
‘The Fiasco of Denazification’, Political Science Quarterly, 63(4), 1948, pp. 569–94.
Herz, Political Realism and Political Idealism.
Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations. The Struggle for Power and Peace (New York: Alfred
A. Knopf, 1948), and Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and
Politics (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1932).
‘It is a mistake to draw from the universal phenomenon of competition for power the conclusion that
there is actually such a thing as an innate “power instinct”.’ Herz, Political Realism and Political
Idealism, p. 4.
Herz, Political Realism and Political Idealism, p. 14.
See Herz, Political Realism and Political Idealism.
Herz, ‘Power Politics and World Organization’, p. 1040: ‘Any proposal for a reform of the system
has to start from a realization of the compulsion which the system exerts upon each member and
the inescapability which it implies as far as the policies of each single unit are concerned.’
See Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, MA: McGraw-Hill, 1979). References
to Herz’s judgement are given below.
See the forthcoming book by Ken Booth and Nicholas J. Wheeler, The Security Dilemma. Fear,
Cooperation and Trust in World Politics (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), p. 4 of the draft
version. The authors would like to express their gratitude for the opportunity to look at the draft.
Booth and Wheeler, The Security Dilemma, p. 5.
As to the precise nature of these improvements, see Booth and Wheeler, The Security Dilemma,
p. 6.
As Ken Booth and Nick Wheeler note in their forthcoming book on the security dilemma, by the end
of the 1950s Herz had expanded his explanation of the security dilemma to accommodate motives
such as expansion and ambition: ‘This move had far-reaching implications, taking the argument far
away from his . . . first intuitions about the security dilemma’; See Booth and Wheeler, The Security
Dilemma, p. 25.
See John J. Mearsheimer, Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001),
p. 36, and Glenn H. Snyder’s critique ‘Mearsheimer’s World. Offensive Realism and the Struggle
for Security: A Review Essay’, International Security, 27(1), 2002, p. 156. Mearsheimer recently
insisted again that there were no significant differences between him and Herz. See Ken Booth,
Nicholas J. Wheeler and Michael Williams, ‘Conversations in International Relations: Interview
with John J. Mearsheimer (Part I)’, International Relations, 20(1), 2006, p. 122.
Herz, The Nation State and the Crisis of World Politics, p. 10.
Herz, Political Realism and Political Idealism, p. 131.
Herz, Political Realism and Political Idealism.
See Herz, Political Realism and Political Idealism, pp. 146f.
Herz, Political Realism and Political Idealism, pp. 228f.
Herz, Vom Überleben, p. 168. The term ‘intellektuelles Schmerzenskind’, a typically German
construction of words, roughly translates into ‘intellectual problem child’, the problem being not
the intellectual concept at the heart of the book but the limited intellectual attention that the book
received.
A notable exception is his intellectual autobiography, Vom Überleben, written in his native German
and in an easily accessible, engaging and at times almost lyrical style.
The book owed its success at least in part to its much noticed preface, in which Herz distanced
himself from the dominant trend in American social science to quantify and conceptualise,
adamantly calling for a return to traditional scientific methods. Herz wrote:
JOHN H. HERZ
381
This is an old-fashioned kind of book. It is the result neither of teamwork nor of any similar
type of group study or collective research. It is not the product of a seminar, nor that of a study
conference for which the author served as reporter. It has not been issued from a lecture series,
and it is not based on a field trip or any wide travelling whatsoever. The author has not used a
single IBM facility in the book’s preparation, nor has he conducted any interviews for it, whether
in depth or otherwise. There has not been any polling, nor have questionnaires been distributed.
As a matter of fact, the book does not contain a single chart, graph, map, diagram, table, or
statistical figure. It is simply the product of the application to problems and subject matter at
hand of whatever intelligence was available.
John H. Herz, International Politics in the Atomic Age
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1959), p. v.
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
See John H. Herz, ‘Foreign Policy and Human Survival’, in George Schwab (ed.), United States
Foreign Policy at the Crossroads (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1982), p. 166.
Herz, International Politics in the Atomic Age, pp. 49–61.
See Herz, International Politics in the Atomic Age, pp. 231–43.
Herz, International Politics in the Atomic Age, p. 12.
Writing in 1984, Herz renewed his assessment that the time for truly universalist policies was yet
to come. In fact, looking back to the time of the publication of International Politics in the Atomic
Age (1959), Herz referred to himself, ‘the old pessimist’, as somewhat of an ‘optimist’. See Herz,
Vom Überleben, p. 184.
See Herz, International Politics in the Atomic Age, pp. 244–99.
Since the late 1940s he had always started his lectures on international politics with an introduction
into ‘the great revolutions of our times’ in which these matters were emphasised. See Herz, The
Nation State and the Crisis of World Politics, p. 4 (fn 3).
John H. Herz, ‘Reflections on my Century’, pp. 1–15.
As Herz points out in a letter on 2 January 2002 addressed to Christian Hacke (letter in author’s
possession).
Letter to Hacke, 2 January 2002.
See John H. Herz, ‘The Security Dilemma in International Relations: Background and Present
Problems’, International Relations, 17(4), 2003, pp. 414f.
John H. Herz, ‘On Human Survival. Reflections on Survival Research and Survival Policies’, in
Ervin Lazlo and Peter Seidel (eds), Global Survival. The Challenge and its Implications for Thinking
and Acting (New York: Select Books, 2006), p. 15.
As one reviewer rightly pointed out, this criticism was not an exclusively European affair. Indeed,
George F. Kennan, a US citizen, was particularly critical of these lines of thought. His policy of
containment was based upon realist assumptions.
Herz, International Politics in the Atomic Age, pp. 7–8.
So does Jack Donnelly, Realism and International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2000), p. 11 (although he also classifies Herz as a ‘hedged realist’, p. 12).
Stirk, ‘John H. Herz: Realism and the Fragility of the International Order’, p. 288.
John H. Herz, ‘Reflections on my Century’, p. 1.
E.H. Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis: An Introduction to the Study of International Relations, 2nd
edn (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), p. 87.
Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis.
Herz, ‘Technology, Ethics, and International Relations’, pp. 107f.
John H. Herz, ‘Letter to the Morgenthau Conference’, in Christian Hacke, Gottfried-Karl Kindermann
and Kai Schellhorn (eds), The Heritage, Challenge, and Future of Realism. In Memoriam Hans
Morgenthau (1904–1980) (Bonn: Bonn University Press, 2005), p. 27.
See John J. Mearsheimer, ‘E. H. Carr vs. Idealism: The Battle Rages On’, International Relations,
16(2), 2005, pp. 139–52.
See Karl W. Deutsch et al., Political Community and the North Atlantic Area: International
Organization in the Light of Historical Experience (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1957).
Herz, ‘On Human Survival’, p. 24. See also Christian Hacke, ‘John H. Herz, A Remembrance’,
American Foreign Policy Interests, 28(2), 2006, pp. 155–58.
382
80
81
82
George F. Kennan, ‘Morality and Foreign Policy’, Foreign Affairs, 64(2), 1985/6, p. 216.
Kenneth Thompson, Masters of International Thought (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University
Press, 1980), p. 112.
See especially Ken Booth, ‘Security in Anarchy: Utopian Realism in Theory and Practice’,
International Affairs, 67(3), 1991, pp. 527–45, and the forthcoming book by Booth and Wheeler,
The Security Dilemma.

International Relations

Transcrição

Documentos relacionados

Call for Papers

PDF

English

jessica alexis jolicoeur rich - Stone Center for Latin American Studies

pdf-fulltext - International Review of Information Ethics

BioScope: South Asian Screen Studies

Selected examples of good practices

A Lie for a Lie: MPLA Media Control in Ondjaki`s Luandan Novels

1 SUPPLEMENTARY APPENDIX. Surveyed Journals To build our

Creating buzz: The neural correlates of effective message propagation