The Operational Code of Defensive Realism

Abstract

The preceding chapters clarify several critical areas of confusion that have come to obscure our understanding of the critical differences between defensive realism and offensive realism, redefine the security dilemma as the linchpin concept of defensive realism more rigorously, and resolve the critical question of security dilemma and war. With these clarifications, we can now better understand the differences between defensive realism and offensive realism in the two principal issue areas in international politics: war and peace, conflict and cooperation. By understanding the important differences (and commonalities) between the two realisms, we can now advance an operational code of defensive realism.¹ Such an explicitly articulated operational code should greatly facilitate testing some of the theoretical claims of defensive realism versus other grand theories. More importantly, this general “operational code” should guide states’ security strategies today, because the international system has firmly evolved into a defensive realism world (Tang 2009b).