To reduce misunderstandings, empirical realism can be clarified by contrasting it with political realism, which has spawned the familiar beliefs that have long guided national security policy in the United States and the other great powers.
Because political realists, regardless of nationality, reify the state and the existing state system, they do not acknowledge the need to change the interstate system, even though it has failed to save our environment and vulnerable people from major catastrophes; to eliminate the horrific danger of nuclear war; to protect countries from military aggression and large-scale destruction (e.g., Ukraine in 2022); to stop the horizontal and vertical proliferation of weapons threatening mass destruction; to shield people from genocidal killings in Rwanda and elsewhere; and to help hundreds of millions of people overcome chronic poverty and denial of their human rights.
In contrast, being sensitive to more facts, empirical realists weigh seriously both the interstate system’s failures and its unrealized potential. To the extent that it is working, that part can be retained; at the same time, a large part can be changed gradually and safely to reduce international anarchy, a change that human and national survival now require.
Extensive peacebuilding evidence, not merely counterfactual speculation, drawn from a synthesis of peace research and security studies and reinforced by evolutionary history, shows that a global grand strategy for human security, with US national security folded into it, is likely to produce more security for the United States than a national security grand strategy pursued as an end in itself. More security benefits are likely to result from maximizing the “causes” or correlates of peace, favored by empirical realists, than from maximizing US military power, which US political realists unrelentingly pursue.
Empiricism shows that peace thrives with these six correlates: all states’ security fears are addressed; people can meet basic human needs; nations honor reciprocal rights and duties; they implement equity; their lives become more predictable when the international system can be stabilized by the rule of law; and they participate in major decisions that affect their lives through representation in democratic global governing processes. This approach harmonizes national security with human security.
Empirical realists do not believe, as Snyder suggests, that one nation’s fears of another’s intentions can be easily overcome. On the contrary, one pillar of peacebuilding strategy is to deal directly with all nations’ security fears, not merely with one’s own. It is political realists who seldom care about adversaries’ fears because they prioritize maximizing their own military power, knowing that it will produce insecurities in their adversaries. This security dilemma arose when US political realists favored expanding NATO eastward after the collapse of the Soviet Union, aroused Russian nationalism, unintentionally helped Putin rise to power, and stimulated Russian nationalists’ willingness to attack Ukraine. At that time, in contrast, empirically guided realists warned against doing what the United States subsequently did, and predicted the tragedy that has occurred.
Empirical realists also do not gloss over the difference between “is” and “ought.” Their empirical analysis shows that sometimes humans have moved away from certain cases of “is” (e.g., feudal fiefdoms, monarchies, and slavery) toward something that was known previously only as an “ought” (inclusive nation-states, democratic rule of law, and human rights). In addition, empirical realists favor establishing a standing cosmopolitan police enforcement capability and representative global deliberative institutions implementing one person, one vote—perhaps a less “ramshackle order” than exists today.
Empirical realism crafts a cosmopolitan framework to render narrow nationalism less dangerous and to remodel the militarized balance-of-power system into a more complex global governance system that empowers transnational political, legal, economic, environmental, religious, and other influences to help move all states’ conduct reliably toward serving the common good.
