A Brief Reply to Critics

Abstract

I am grateful to the four colleagues who have reacted to my essay. I did not expect all readers to be persuaded by my case, but I did hope that my critique would initiate a dialogue, and that my suggestion for an agenda of research would be taken seriously. The four responses-even though I, in turn, do not agree with all the points made in them-are very encouraging. The kind of traditionalists to whom I belong have more in common with the radicals than the polemics displayed in this issue suggest. There is, in both groups, considerable dissatisfaction with the trends of interstate affairsthe cold war in a nuclear age: the traditionalists I was describing are neither complacent, nor obsessed by the need for an American victory over the evil Empire, or for a Western anti-Communist crusade (even though we often tend to be far more critical of the Soviet regime than some of the radicals). Moreover, we share with the latter a mix of skepticism and dismay, when we encounter attempts by theorists of international relations at explaining the foreign policies of governments in terms of rational choice theory (even when the hidden agenda of many such theorists is to show, with the help of game theory, the of cooperative rather than hostile behavior). There are just too many obstacles-too many miscalculations and misperceptions-even to a mere of means, and insofar as the ends are concerned, they are usually selected in ways that have not the faintest resemblance with a utilitarian calculus. When one looks at actual crises among nations, one sometimes discovers that the fog of ignorance about an adversary's intentions, or the misconception of his/her goals, can have beneficial effects, when they induce reactions of prudence and restraint; paradoxically enough, accurate information and assessments may incite far more risky responses. But what is clear is that the very nature of international relations, as Raymond Aron had pointed out, deprives rationality of meaning, or at last of chances, and separates drastically rationality from reason-