The third and final circumstance in which power variables are likely to trump the effects of ideological
distances on leaders’ foreign policies occurs when politicians tend not to recognize that other political forms are
plausible. If leaders currently confront no prominent rival to their own ideology, and if they believe that no such
belief systems are likely to arise in the foreseeable future, the incentives pushing decision makers to view one
another as participants in a transnational ideological community will likely attenuate. In short, without an
ideological outgroup, there can be no ideological ingroup, even if states' leaders objectively share many ideological
beliefs. This analysis helps explain why there was such a radical break in great power relations after the French
Revolution. Before this time, Europe's key decision makers gave little thought to the notion that the European
powers could be anything other than divine-right monarchies.
This lack of foresight limited the sense of
community among the great powers' leaders, despite their substantial, objective ideological similarities. By
demonstrating that the great powers could experience a change in regime type, the French Revolution was critical to
the creation of a powerful sense of ideological solidarity among the old regime states in the years following the
Napoleonic Wars, which then became critical to their perceptions of threat and consequent international choices.
Policy Implications
The preceding analysis generates important implications for the study of international politics. In the first
place, both politicians and academics must recognize that ideological differences play a critical role in the
generation of leaders’ threat assessments, subject to the caveats discussed in the last section. To deny or marginalize
this relationship is simply not looking at the facts as they are. This does not mean either that ideological enemies
cannot at times cooperate with one another (more about this below) or that so-called called “pragmatists” or
“realists”—i.e., leaders who claim that ideologies do not affect their threat perceptions or foreign policies—cannot
ascend to power in otherwise ideological enemies.
Policymakers and analysts, should not, however, count on this
last outcome to alleviate for long the threats that ideological rivals pose to one another. In order to minimize the
effects of ideologies on two states’ relations, pragmatists must govern in both at the same time. If “realists” dictate
policy in only one state of a pair of ideological enemies—while the other’s foreign policies are a product of their
ideological differences—the former will likely eventually feel compelled to reciprocate the other’s hostilities despite
their preference for more pragmatic relations. Thus, for example, at various times during the Cold War, leaders in
51
R. R. Palmer, The World of the French Revolution (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), 26.
52
Note that “realist” in this sense refers to neo- not classical-realist understandings of the importance of ideologies
to international relations.
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Convention