47 Rivals recognize one another’s life and property (sovereignty) and that recognition limits (but does not eliminate) war. This produces very different micro- and macro-patterns. • • • • • • •
Rivals compete with but do not seek to eliminate one another. They fight limited wars and follow just war rules. They often pursue absolute, not only relative, gains. They regularly engage in external balancing (alliances). The death rate of states is low. Balancing is driven not just by self-help but by mutual recognition of sovereignty. Nonalignment becomes a more viable option for at least some states.
Friends do not use violence in their relations and practice mutual aid. This obviously produces very different characteristic political patterns, which for reasons of space I will not review here. Wendt’s account of cultures of anarchy has a second principal dimension, namely, the form in which these identities are internalized. Why do actors see each other as enemies, rivals, or friends? Force, price, or legitimacy; coercion, calculations of self-interest, or a belief that it is right or appropriate. Each has a distinctive logic. For example, in Hobbes’s account, people and states are pretty much forced into a state of war – and thus are always looking for ways to escape it. Contrast this with warrior societies in which battle is the highest calling. Both what we believe about others and how or why we believe it are essential to politics – in anarchy as elsewhere. And when those beliefs are system-wide, they are of structural significance.
3. THE SO-CALLED EFFECTS OF ANARCHY Wendt uses simple rationalist models for a deeply constructivist purpose. We can make the same point through empirical examples. My current favorite is a particular type of simple hunter-gatherer band societies, called by anthropologists “foragers” or “immediate return societies.” The !Kung of Botswana, the Hadza of Tanzania, the Mbuti of the Congo, and the Penan of Indonesia are standard examples.