Wanted: A system that runs by itself

When humans first started trying to explain the universe, they ascribed supernatural intent to all manner of natural phenomena. The sun moved across the sky because Helios took his chariot for a drive. The seas raged because Neptune was angry. Flooding revealed Yahweh’s dismay at human misbehavior.

An early step toward demystification wasn't much help. Aristotle said heavy things fell because it was in their nature to fall. In some ways this was a step backward because it implied that heavier things fall faster than lighter things. This is generally not true.

Newton made a leap forward by identifying a single law that governs the motions of all material bodies in the universe. He didn't have a better explanation than Aristotle: gravity just was. But Newton's one law was cleaner and more powerful than the many explanations of the ancients. And it didn't require the attention of any supernatural being. Once started, Newton's universe ran on its own.

Laplace took the Newtonian approach further. The Frenchman's mathematics posited that if full knowledge were available about every particle in the universe, the whole future would be revealed.

Napoleon was intrigued but puzzled. “You have written this huge book on the system of the world without once mentioning the author of the universe,” the emperor said. Laplace responded: “Sire, I had no need of that hypothesis.”

While the natural scientists of the Enlightenment were putting God out of work, some social scientists were doing the same thing. Adam Smith proposed a model of economics that required no help from God or anyone else. Indeed, outside intervention would simply mess things up. Individuals seeking their own self-interest would produce a result that maximized the collective interest.

The term “invisible hand" was often applied to Smith 's free market system. The label was misleading. There was no hand at all, invisible or otherwise. The system ran on its own.

Systems that run on their own have great appeal. They don't require tending. And because they don't, they needn't get mixed up in politics and other arenas of dispute. Today, no serious student of natural science believes that gods power the world. If they differ with Laplace, it's more about his premise—regarding knowledge of initial conditions—than his conclusions. Few economists are willing to go all in on Smith's free markets. They recognize that every market has imperfections. But most economists land closer to Smith than to Marx, at the other end of the scale of conscious meddling.

There's one important area of human endeavor that has largely defied attempts to find a system that runs by itself. International relations might as well be back in the days of Helios and Neptune.

It's not that there aren’t any theories of international relations. One of the oldest and most robust is realist theory, pioneered by political scientist Hans Morgenthau. Morgenthau's IR theory parallels Smith’s economic theory in that it ascribes self-interest to each actor—each nation, in Morgenthau’s case—in the system. But where Smith's theory predicts a self-correcting equilibrium with maximum collective welfare, Morgenthau's predicts endless war and destruction.

It would be nice if some stable, self-adjusting system of international relations could be devised. The alternative is our current pre-Newtonian scheme requiring constant inputs of resources to prevent its spinning out of control. America has played the world cop for the eight decades since Pearl Harbor. Absent some new arrangement, it will have to remain world cop forever, or see some other country assume the role, or suffer the world’s descent into anarchy.

Certainly some surrender of autonomy would be required. If nations are outlaws to one another, as they essentially are at present, then war will be the ultimate arbiter. Here the Smith model instructs. Smith's laissez faire approach applied to the economic realm, not the realm of law. It didn't exempt butchers and bakers from national laws against theft, extortion and collusive behavior. Free markets work if there is an overarching authority that keeps the markets free and open.

There’s no such overarching authority in international relations. Every scheme that has been tried has been frustrated by the unwillingness of the most powerful countries to bind themselves to decisions of the system. The current incarnation, the United Nations, allows a veto to each of the five permanent members of the security council. The big countries can order smaller countries around but not vice versa. When push comes to shove, the world of IR remains Morgenthavian.

Maybe this is inevitable. And on second thought, maybe the Morgenthavians aren't so different from the Smithians. Free markets eat their weak. Joseph Schumpeter, an Austrian economist, called it “creative destruction.”

Here another self-adjusting system is instructive. In the world of nature, predators and prey keep each other in check. If prey become too numerous, more predators survive and eat more prey. If predators eat too many, the next generation of predators goes hungry and its population declines. The balance is restored. The process isn't pretty. Bones of prey and carcasses of predators recurrently litter the landscape.

Comparable checks occur in the realist world of international relations. A country that becomes too dominant causes other countries to ally against it. Likely a war ensues, and a new equilibrium is achieved. Think Napoleon and the coalition that gathered against him. Consider how Hitler accomplished the feat of getting democratic America, imperialist Britain and communist Russia to suspend their differences long enough to destroy him.

The system does work. How it works is what we don’t like. So we’ll keep looking for something better.