德意志帝國與現代中國 – 理性或不理性的行為者? 以守勢現實主義角度的外交政策分析

Abstract

This paper examines the rationality of Imperial Germany’s and post-Tiananmen China’s foreign policy from a defensive realist perspective, since defensive realism is a prescription for rational behavior, while offensive realism isn’t; other international relations theories might well be prescriptions for rational behavior, however, they fail to face the world as it is because of their bias towards idealism. A comparison between Imperial Germany and contemporary China matters because, comparing China to an actor – Wilhelmine Germany – which is commonly referred to as the paragon of an irrational actor, is not only unjust towards China, but also wrong, since Wilhelmine Germany wasn’t an irrational actor in the sense that it is widely conceived as. I argue that Imperial Germany was not an irrational before 1905-1907, years after first bringing up the indicative term depicting Germany as an irrational actor: “Weltpolitik”, an empty phrase which was not indicative of aggressive (enough) behavior because it wasn’t Weltpolitik which caused the formation of the Franco-Russian, Anglo-French, and Anglo-Russian alliances. Taking the number one premise of realism – state security / chances of survival – as the decisive factor to indicate rational state behavior, I argue that Germany became an irrational actor because it failed to adapt to the redistribution of capabilities in the system, first after 1904, but surely after 1907. On China’s part, we can say that it was an irrational actor from the early to mid-1990s. Starting in the late nineties, it followed a decade of representing a rational actor, resembling Bismarckian Germany so to say, only to go back to being an irrational actor again after 2008. Nationalism (rather nationalist ideology) played a role in interfering both on Germany’s and on China’s part with their Realpolitik approaches to their foreign policy.