Realism, reckless states, and natural selection

Why is daredevil aggression like Russia’s war on Ukraine such an important factor in world politics? Neither offensive nor defensive realists give a fully satisfactory answer. This paper maintains that the problem lies their shared assumption states pursue security. Tracing neorealism’s roots evolutionary economics, and hence indirectly biological theories of natural selection, I argue many policies are compatible with state survival. What hard surviving as great power. States rise to rank, remain there, behave if they sought maximize influence, not Darwinian competition selects favor expansionist institutions ideologies. Failing recognize this phenomenon risks conferring spurious legitimacy imperialism. At same time, neorealists have also committed fallacy familiar biologists: assuming traits enhancing group fitness selected even when diminish intragroup competition. Whereas interstate powers for promote influence-maximization, spread democracy, intrastate increasingly security-seeking. Yet former process sometimes still dominates latter, above all authoritarian powers.