Refining Structural Realism: Restoring Parsimony to the Logic of Aggression
Refining Structural Realism: Restoring Parsimony to the Logic of Aggression

Summary/Abstract: Structural Realism has long struggled with two critical explanatory deficits: the puzzle of “unnecessary wars” waged by Great Powers that seemingly contradict rational security calculations, and the theory’s inability to systematically account for aggression initiated by Secondary Units without resorting to unit-level variables. The dominant scholarly response, Neoclassical Realism, attempts to bridge these gaps by incorporating domestic factors, yet this comes at the cost of sacrificing the theory’s defining virtue: parsimony. This article argues that Structural Realism can resolve the aggression puzzle without abandoning parsimony by elevating the level of analysis from the systemic to the Global Level. It introduces Global-Level Realism (GLR), a framework that replaces the rational actor assumption with an “Irrational Actor” driven by the physical imperatives of a systemic “Natural Substrate”. GLR posits that states struggle not merely for security, but for “Peace” (Pax)—defined as the imposition of order. Aggression occurs when the “Latent Hierarchy” of the system weakens, allowing actors to cross the “Capability Threshold.” By redefining the structural conditions of action, this framework offers a unified, parsimonious explanation for both the imperial overreach of Great Powers and the opportunistic aggression of regional powers during systemic transitions.

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