*Originally published in 2024 and preserved as part of our archive project.Get E-International Relations delivered to your inbox, free of charge. As you sign up, consider becoming a paid subscriber to support our work.

This article is part of the Buddhism and International Relations article series, edited by Raghav Dua.

The parable of the blind men and the elephant is one of the oldest in the Buddhist canon. In the story, a king has taken an elephant to his palace and requested the city’s blind men examine and describe the animal. One man, whose hand had landed on the trunk declares the elephant is like a thick snake, others, who felt the sides or legs describe it as a wall or a tree. Despite the partial “truth” captured by their subjective perceptions, they nonetheless misconstrue the elephant’s actual nature. So too, Western political realists, in describing a seemingly conflictual world of atomistic, materially real, self-interested states in anarchy, misunderstand the world as it actually exists. This fundamental failure to distinguish between their perception and reality, between the world as it appears versus the world as it exists—realism’s half-truth, if you will—is, ultimately, a delusion that helps perpetuate a world of conflict, war, and exclusion.

This article provides a Buddhist critique of Western political realism that maintains that the true nature of our existence—be it as individuals or states—is not as atomistic, independent entities. Instead, Buddhism claims our reality (including “ourselves”) is radically interdependent and impermanent. Further, when we realize this basic truth, our natural underlying social disposition is equanimity and altruism, not selfishness. Together, Buddhist ontology and understanding of human nature offer a different starting point for thinking about ourselves and the world we live in, one it characterizes as deeply interdependent and one where the prospects for political cooperation are far-reaching. A Buddhist critique of political realism counsels that the failure to appreciate the full extent of interdependence and our root nature is the ultimate source of all conflicts, up to and including interstate war, whereas an understanding of our radical interdependence and human potential is the key to imagining a different vision for politics.

The article begins by briefly recapping the well-known theoretical assertions of political realism and its meta-theoretical foundation. It then contrasts this understanding of reality with a Buddhist perspective on basic ontology, human nature, politics, and international relations. It concludes with a summary of essential features of a Buddhist approach to thinking about the world, our role in it, and the type of political environments conducive to our higher nature. I argue that Buddhist principles for good government and statecraft provide principles for developing adaptable solutions to contemporary problems.

Western Political Realism

In the 1940s, Western “Realist” international relations (IR) asserted that the eternal verities and “objective laws” of international relations were the will to dominance; the inherent violence of human nature; and the natural competition and warfare among autonomous, sovereign states in anarchy (Morgenthau 1948, 4). These observations about human nature and state behavior were presented as immutable truths and are still held as such by many. The theory was based on Western European experience since the seventeenth century when the establishment of sovereign, independent units (states) became the cornerstone of Western IR theory. Sovereignty meant that state actors had the right to rule over a territory and the people within in it and were legally equal to all other states in terms of their autonomy and authority. Dominant Western “Realist” IR theory emphasized these independent, not interdependent, states as actors operating in an anarchic environment, that is, one where there is no central authority to protect states from each other or to guarantee their security. It underscored the enduring propensity for conflict among these autonomous, self-interested states seeking security through self-help. Realists argued that, given these systemic conditions, international cooperation will be rare, fleeting, and tenuous—limited by enforcement problems in anarchy and each state’s preference for larger relative gains in any potential bargain because of the state’s systemic vulnerability. War, therefore, was perfectly normal, ethical, and well, “diplomacy by other means” (von Clausewitz, 1989).

In terms of meta-theoretical underpinnings, political realism conformed with the Enlightenment’s classical scientific tenets regarding the physical world: material realism, objectivism, and localized causation. Ontologically, political realists adopted the Cartesian separation of subject from object, self from other, and mind from matter; epistemologically they endorsed the positivist assumption of the possibility of discovering law-like generalizations about social behavior divorced from ethics, much like scientists seeking to establish facts about the natural world; and, methodologically, they favored third-party, replicable empiricism. The predominant political conclusions flowing from this classical scientific foundation is that insecurity and conflict naturally arise in groups of inherently real, independent, and self-interested actors. Thus, the benefits of society are unlikely without a fear-based social contract domestically and by extension, the pursuit of a balance of power among self-interested states acting in an anarchic environment internationally.

The trump card of political realism has always been that, however harsh its depiction of political life and however dispiriting its predictions, it is “telling it like it is,” and thus saving us from the greater harm that comes from embracing alternative, less realistic, perspectives. Machiavelli, for example warns us that “the manner in which men live is so different than the way in which they ought to live, that he who leaves the common course for that which he ought to follow will find that it leads him to ruin rather than to safety” (Machiavelli 1965, 76).  Or, E. H. Carr who explained that “Realism tends to emphasize the irresistible strength of existing forces and the inevitable character of exiting tendencies, and to insist that the highest wisdom lies in accepting, and adapting oneself to these forces and tendencies” (Carr 1964, 10). Or Hans Morgenthau who tells us his theory appeals to historic precedent rather than to abstract principles, and aims at the realization of the lesser evil rather than of the absolute good.

Ironically, realism’s alleged strength, that is, its unflinching observation of “reality,” is, from a Buddhist perspective, its greatest defect. In truth, Buddhism argues, political realism is based on appearances, not reality, and appearances can be deceiving.

Buddhism asserts that every functioning thing we perceive arises (and ceases) in dependence on its causes and conditions, its parts, and the minds that perceive it; like a rainbow that appears to our senses when heat, light, and moisture come together in a certain manner and dissolves when those conditions change. This principle is known as the doctrine of dependent origination expressed poetically in the verse:

When this is, that isThis arising, that arisesWhen this is not, that is notThis ceasing, that ceases. (SN.12:61).

When this is, that is

This arising, that arises

When this is not, that is not

This ceasing, that ceases. (SN.12:61).

The doctrine asserts that all phenomena (including our “self”) lack or are empty of a fixed, inherent, or essential nature and, on analysis, can be decomposed into other, simpler elements or parts, and that all things are impermanent, the product of ever-changing causes and conditions. All phenomena are dependent on other phenomena and on an apprehending consciousness. Although we naturally believe the things we perceive exist inherently, the way things appear to our senses are deceptive and contradictory to the way in which they exist.

In Buddhist thought, ultimately the self and all other phenomena lack a fixed, inherent nature, although one may choose to refer to selves or objects in keeping with worldly conventions. The conventional, nominal reference to the self and other objects, up to and including nation-states, is meaningful if properly understood as mere name, however, because it can serve practical, functional purposes and because it can eventually lead one to understanding the ultimate nature of things through sustained analysis. For example, a tea kettle functions conventionally to make tea but it does not exist in an ultimate sense separate from its parts (handle, spout, etc.) or our mental designation of these parts as a “tea kettle.”

Buddhism’s doctrine of radical interdependence maintains, therefore, that the alleged separation between self and others and between enduringly real subjects and objects, which is the Archimedean starting point (ontologically) for realist, liberal, and even some constructivist and critical approaches to politics in the West, is ultimately incorrect, a misconception. According to Buddhism, the alleged separation is a “delusion” or “ignorance” (of the nature of reality). Instead, a Buddhist social paradigm necessarily begins with the fundamental truth of the essential interdependence and impermanence of all reality, including ourselves (the no-self doctrine). It asserts a radical interdependence between individuals and between humans and their social and natural environments.

Misunderstanding the deeper, radically interdependent nature of reality has grave consequences, according to Buddhism. It leads to problematic actions (karma) that result in continued suffering. Grasping and cherishing a false sense of independence and a desire for permanence keeps us locked in pervasive suffering (samsara). In short, all our problems, including complex political problems, and all the unwanted consequences of our actions flow from a basic misunderstanding of the radical interdependence of reality.

This fundamental........

© E-International