Book Review: Perception and Misperception in International Politics

Recently, I read “Perception and Misperception in International Politics” by Robert Jervis, written in 1976, and it is an excellent and fascinating read. One flaw in a lot of political and economic literature is the idea that human leaders and countries are rational, and it is often thought that they have perfect information. The theory I often dislike the most is called “realism”, which is funny because it makes assumptions, so I have never found this idea realistic. In realism, each country is treated like it is its own person and it behaves in a rational way given its interests. Realism has no room for the psychology of individual leaders and their views. Jervis takes the opposite view, he thinks that leaders, their psychology, their biases and their access to information all can affect international politics.

Jervis borrows ideas from the well-known philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn. Kuhn took the psychological approach to science, looking at how scientists can be as biased as any human and that often newer scientific theories, even good ones, will need to fight to get recognized. Jervis uses the same position for international politics. He talks about how political leaders will often start with assumptions about a political situation and that they will only change their opinions slowly if they change their opinions at all. It reminded me of a quote from the former US secretary of Defense Robert McNamara from the documentary Fog of War: “In the case of Vietnam, we didn't know them well enough to empathize and there was total misunderstanding as a result. They believed that we had simply replaced the French as a colonial power, and we were seeking to subject South and North Vietnam to our colonial interests, which was absolutely absurd. And we, we saw Vietnam as an element of the Cold War. Not what they saw it as; a civil war.” During the Vietnam War, the Americans and the Vietnamese didn’t understand each other and if they had understood the other side better, the war could have been prevented.

Further, Jervis states that a lot of leaders are bad at communicating their intentions towards other countries or even can be a little blind to how their actions will be seen. For example, a leader who considers themselves peaceful will guess that every other leader also sees them as peaceful. They might decide for some normal reason to move some warships from one city to another. However, they don’t think about how this movement of warships may be seen by leaders in other countries. When they move the ships, the other leaders might see the move as preparations for war or other dangerous things. They see themselves as peaceful, so they cannot imagine that others might not see them this way. This is also seen in McNamara’s quote, just because McNamara did not consider the US a colonial power, that didn’t mean the Vietnamese government saw the situation the same way.

I think that in international relations, often other countries are simplified into easy-to-understand simple ideas, which often do not show the real difficulty of situations. I wish a lot more people would look at international politics in a way similar to Jervis.

Nathaniel

Vocabulary

flaw (noun) – ​ a mistake in something that means that it is not correct or does not work correctly

rational (adjective) – based on reason rather than emotions

assumption (noun) – a belief or feeling that something is true or that something will happen, although there is no proof

psychology (noun) – ​  the scientific study of the mind and how it influences behavior

bias (noun) – a strong feeling in favour of or against one group of people, or one side in an argument, often not based on fair judgement

empathize (verb) – ​to understand another person’s feelings and experiences