Table2. Strikingly, therefore, behavioral dispositions that enhanced success in the small-scale intergroup anarchy of humans evolutionary past may have endowed us with behaviors that also enhance success in the anarchy of the international system. Thus, humans may consider other variables, such as the possibility of future trade or cooperation, when assessing outgroups. The central issue raised by our theory is what causes states to behave as offensive realists predict. By making implicit assumptions about human behavior explicit, offensive realism may become a more powerful theory. "Mearsheimer's WorldOffensive Realism and the Struggle for Security: A Review Essay" International Security 27:1 (2002): 149-174; However, an overtone of this argument is that power or domination is distasteful for leadersthat they tolerate it only for the sake of their states security. By 2009, after 18 such killings, the rival group had been all but destroyed. Pomeroy, Caleb Reading the literature of offensive realism can be hauntingly analogous to reading ethnographies of warfare among preindustrial societies such as the Yanomamo in the Amazon, the Mae Enga in New Guinea, or the Shuar in the Andes. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings. Rather, we suggest it is an example of what biologists call evolutionary convergencesimilar traits arising in different settings because they are good solutions to a common problem. Evolutionary theory would expect that intergroup conflict contributes to fitness in certain circumstances if successful defense and offense against outgroups yield resources and reduce competition in an environment defined by finite resources.60,61 A resource is any material substance that has the potential to increase the individuals ability to survive or reproduce, such as food, shelter, territory, coalition allies, and members of the opposite sex.Reference Low, Zimmerman and Jacobson62, What an evolutionary perspective allows us to understand is that the origins of warfare and the functions of warfare are interconnected. To summarize, a species that lives communally could have two broad forms of social organization. Mearsheimer based his theory on five core assumptions: (1) the international system is anarchic (there is no authority that exists above the states to arbitrate their conflicts), (2) all states have some military capability (however limited), (3) states can never fully ascertain the intentions of other states, (4) states value survival above all else, and (5) states are rational actors that seek to promote their own interests. Clearly, when it comes to the many distinctive physiological and behavioral changes humans have undergone, ecology has been as or more important than phylogeny (hence, the field of evolutionary anthropology focuses on hunter-gatherer analogues, not nonhuman primate analogues). Combining the previous two considerations (leaders and sex) raises another problem: If leaders are especially egoistic and domineering, and if sex is a primary cause, does this not mean that we predict state leaders will undertake actions (consciously or subconsciously) that serve to maximize their own personal reproductive opportunitiesperhaps at the expense of state interests? 17 This is why he considers the US a regional hegemon, not a global one. The first assumption is that there is anarchy in the international system, which means that there is no hierarchically superior, coercive power that can guarantee limits on the behavior of states (Mearsheimer 2001, 30).
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