Evolutionary Psychology and International Relations, with Jeremy Garlick
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Welcome to the Seneca Podcast, a weekly discussion of current affairs in China. In this program, we'll look at books, ideas, new research, intellectual currents, and cultural trends that can help us better understand what's happening in China's politics, foreign relations, economics, and society. Join me each week for in-depth conversations that shed more light and bring less heat to how we think and talk about China. I'm Kaiser Guo coming to you from my home in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

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In 1959, C.P. Snow delivered his famous two cultures lecture lamenting the divide between the sciences and the humanities, arguing that their mutual incomprehension – well, really, it was in one direction more than the other – was an obstacle to solving the world's most pressing problems.

That argument resonated deeply with me when I first encountered it, and it has lingered in the background of my own intellectual journey and kept alive a very acute sense of inadequacy as somebody who isn't as fluent in the natural sciences as I really ought to be, perhaps as a way of assuaging that guilt. I've always been drawn to works that attempt to bridge these disciplinary gulfs.

most notably Consilience by E.O. Wilson, Edward O. Wilson, which makes a really compelling case for the unity of knowledge and the integration of natural sciences with the social sciences and humanities. I've also spent time exploring evolutionary psychology and sociobiology, reading many of the better known books in those genres and recognizing in them frameworks that can really help illuminate fundamental aspects of human behavior. And yes,

recognizing also some of their potential for abuse, especially by men who want to rationalize their behavior or their deeply sexist attitudes.

And yet, when it comes to international relations, the study of how states interact, how power is distributed, how conflicts arise, I have been hesitant to look beyond traditional methodologies, even as I've sought to get down to first principles and trying to understand, you know, among other things, the U.S.-China relationship and its broader geopolitical landscape.

Increasingly, though, I have found myself drawn towards psychology as a useful lens. You know, concepts like cognitive empathy have proved invaluable in understanding the deeper drivers of political and diplomatic behavior for me. And yet, as much as I have championed multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary approaches to China and

bringing, you know, history, sociology, systems thinking into the conversation, I had never quite crossed the boundary into the natural sciences. Perhaps this was out of a misplaced sense that such an approach would be too deterministic or too reductive or too removed from the textured complexity of human history.

Or perhaps it was because IR itself as a field has just over time flattened and dehistoricized, especially with the ascent of realism and neoliberalism, which I think treats states as billiard balls operating in an anarchic system divorced from the human beings who actually run these systems.

Enter Jeremy Garlick's new book, Evolution in International Relations, which takes precisely the step I have been hesitant to take, bringing the insights of evolutionary psychology, neuroscience, and even archaeogenetics into the study of global politics.

Jeremy Garlick is the director of the Jan Maastricht Center for International Studies at Prague University, and he is a scholar of China's international relations. He was the author of the book, Advantage China, Agent of Change in an Era of Global Disruption. For a fantastic interview with Jeremy about that book, make sure to check out his star turn on the wonderful China Global South podcast, which of course is a part of the Seneca Network. But today we are talking about evolution in international relations,

Jeremy argues that IR has neglected the biological and psychological foundations of human behavior and that by integrating these disciplines, evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology, and neuroscience, we can better understand intergroup competition, cooperation, and conflict. Today, we're going to discuss this fascinating and ambitious but very short work, starting with the intellectual leap it takes to attempt such synthesis, the methodological hurdles of bridging these two cultures together.

And whether this approach offers a corrective to some of the conceptual limitations of mainstream IR, we'll then dive into the substantive claims of the book, examine its implications, I hope, for China and US-China relations, and ask how these ideas might help us interpret the world as it stands today, including in the light of the conversations, if you could generously call them that, at the recent Munich Security Conference.

Jeremy Garlick, welcome at long last to Seneca. Yeah, thank you for inviting me on. I'm very happy to be here. I mean, I've known of you since I was in China in 2008, 2009 back then. So, you know. It's good to finally meet, if not in person, at least, you know, on video. Yeah. Yeah.

So, Jeremy, let me just say at the outset there that I probably can't even get to half of the questions that just lit up in my head as I read this. I mean, these are – this is just a great book. I cannot recommend it more highly. It's super accessible. There are all these fantastic asides. You did this little exploration of metaphors in IR and

And metaphor and the development of human language, you know, very George Lakoff stuff. I'm going to explore that in more detail, maybe hopefully in another conversation with you down the line. But today, we're going to try and stick to the main axis and not go down too many of the alleys, however picturesque they might be. I guess I just used a metaphor. Yeah.

Let me start with this, though. What gave you the confidence to attempt something as ambitious, some might even say as audacious, as integrating evolutionary science with international relations? I mean, was there a particular moment, something that you read or something that you observed that convinced you that IR needed an evolutionary framework?

This is a very good question, and I'm going to give you a very, very long answer because it's been quite a long process. I mean, I guess I started studying international relations, I came to it late, around about 2006, 2007.

And, I don't know, when we were introduced to international relations theories, I remember being, you know, very puzzled by, they asked us to read this paper, Anarchy is What States Make of It, right? And I was just really puzzled by this title. So it's like, how can you make anything out of anarchy? You know, how can you, you know, anarchy isn't a thing, it's just like a void, right? So how do you make something out of anarchy? Obviously, that's obviously metaphorical immediately, right? So...

So, you know, and we, as we went into these theories, particularly as you mentioned, like, particularly I think neorealism, you know, with his focus on, you know, anarchy is the driver of relations between states that because there's an anarchy in this sense means, you know, there's no world government, there's no, there's

There's nothing stopping states from fighting with each other. It's like a jungle, you know, dog eat dog, right? Right. Yeah. But I mean, immediately at that point, I thought, well, you know, anarchy is the driver and that explains everything. It doesn't explain anything to me because like, where does the anarchy come from? I mean, where are the human beings in that, right? I mean, anarchy somehow in the world somehow drives everything. How does that make any sense? And then what about hierarchies? What about status? What about other factors?

So I was immediately kind of dissatisfied with this as an idea. And then I think where I came to evolution is I have to give a lot of credit to Professor Tang Sheping. I don't know if you know him from Fudan University. Yeah.

Yeah. So his book, he wrote that book, I forget exactly what, Cambridge University Press, I forget exactly what the title is, something again with evolution in international relations, something like that. And I just, I picked that up and I thought, wow, this is amazing because he goes back through, you know, 10,000 years of human history and says, you know, we used to live in an offensive realism world where countries, nations attacked each other and tried to wipe each other out. And now we've evolved into this disorganized,

this defensive realism world where the risks of attacking other nations are too great with nuclear weapons and so on. So there's been an evolution in relations. And I was just thinking, wow, this is amazing. So I think this is where the sort of first germ of it came from, that I was sort of inspired by that book. And so...

After a while, you know, and I have to say the other thing that's interesting about this is my focus was entirely on China All the stuff I did was China Chuck China stuff. I didn't do anything like this My background's not in natural sciences at all. I think professor professor Tang his background is in natural sciences He's got a natural sciences social sciences. It's kind of a natural step for him But for me is like well, you know if I'm gonna look at this I have to go and read up a lot of stuff and

So I sort of thought about it and I thought, okay, I'm interested in this. It's a kind of risky direction for me. I'm not sure if I know what I'm doing. So I thought I'll just write a short paper for this platform, academia.edu. You know, if you know that platform, they ask for shorter papers.

I'm on that. So I thought they were asking for short papers at one point for this academia letter. So I thought, okay, I'll write a three, whatever it was, three or 4,000 word piece, see if there's any interest, right? So I put it on there, put it up on there. And to my surprise, it was like a huge amount of views on that. I literally got more views on that paper than any of my other stuff on there. So

And I started thinking, well, this, you know, I should take this further. Somebody was writing to me saying you should publish something longer about this. But I wasn't getting around to it. And I was doing my China stuff. And then I'd have to say the credit for this actually goes to Professor David Bjorklund of Florida, I think Florida University. I mean, he just he found the paper, the short paper, and he approached me and said, would you like to do

a Cambridge element. Would you like to do a short book about this for our series? It's basically a cutting-edge series in the evolutionary sciences. Would you like to do a short book? As you say, how did I get the nerve to do it? I didn't. At the beginning, I said, I don't think I can do this. I said, no. Then I thought about it for a couple of weeks, and I thought,

well, but I really want to do this. So maybe I should say yes. I went back to him and said, can I change my mind and say yes? And he said, yes, I'd really like you to do this. So the credit goes to him for sort of asking me to do it. And yeah, I have to say, you know, it was a lot of work. It was a lot of reading. I was not all the time sure that I was going to manage to get my head around all the ideas. I had to be pretty careful to make sure I was really understanding these ideas.

which I'm not sure. I'm still, you know, I would say there's still like areas, deeper areas of evolution that I don't understand well, you know, but I kind of understood enough of it. I just need to understand enough of it to get it into, you know, what's necessary for international relations. I mean, Professor Tang goes into some really technical stuff that I'm not, you know, it's too deep for me, right? But I just thought...

You know, there's enough. I think I got enough to get to grips with it, what was needed for IR. Jeremy, did you catch that wave that began in the mid-90s of interest in sociobiology and evolutionary psychology? I mean, I remember, it's in your bibliography, I'm pretty sure, but the first book that I encountered by it was by Robert Wright.

And I've gone on to read pretty much all the major works in, in, in the popular ones anyway, in, in that genre. Uh, most recently something called, uh, the ape who understood the universe, which I think is, was an excellent one. But, um,

Did you catch that wave or was this something that you... No, not really. I was doing other things in the 90s. I mean, I wasn't in IR. I didn't get into IR, as I said, until later. I was teaching English. I used to be an English teacher, so I taught English in the Czech Republic and then I was in Korea and then ended up in China. But I always wanted to switch to IR. I have to say, I wasn't reading that kind of stuff in the 90s. I wasn't into that. Okay.

But surely there was something in some of your earlier work, some intellectual predisposition, a cognitive style that you have maybe that signaled or would have signaled to a careful observer that you were the kind of guy who would be interested in something like this.

Well, yeah, I was interested before in complexity theory. I mean, I think I've put it into the book. It connects to it. In my first book, which is called The Impact of China's Belt and Road Initiative, I used a complexity theory framework. You know, all these things like feedback loops and so on. You know, I put into that, you know, trying to explain...

China's, the larger picture of China's interaction with especially global South countries. I mean, I suppose you say intellectual predisposition. I mean, what I would say about myself that I notice in comparison probably to most political scientists or IR people, particularly probably American political scientists, they're very

there's this i think maybe it's changing a bit but there's been this obsession with this sort of linear causality you know that you've got to have the dependent and independent variable you've got to identify one causal line and i just always felt that was wrong i mean to me it's always felt like if there's multiple factors going into eating into anything and you've got

you know, it's just a, you know, the world is like a complex system to me. It's like, I guess I see things more, perhaps more holistically, which is not really, you know, fashionable. It's more fashionable to break things down into analytic categories. And I tend to just see everything in a kind of,

bigger picture, which I guess is not standard for political scientists, for the most part, right? Well, don't worry. You are in very, very systems-thinking-friendly territory here on Seneca. We love that stuff here.

Yeah. So if it's these heuristics that are the problem, the kind of, like you say, this linear thinking, this linear causality model that stands in the way, do you think that there are other reasons why it is that evolutionary science hasn't really been integrated into international relations? I mean,

Do social scientists and political scientists especially lack the kind of systematic empirical reasoning that evolutionary biologists apply? Or do you think that maybe it's just a simple matter of opportunity cost? I mean, you specialize in one field, you become proficient in one discipline, and all its methods, all its language almost…

That precludes the ability to gain fluency in the other. I mean, what is the problem for you? Yeah, I think what you just mentioned, that there's several problems. One of them is definitely that. I mean, everybody's trained in a certain approach, in a certain methodological approach. And it doesn't include... I mean, we're trained to do discourse analysis or...

looking at quantitative data about investments or opinion polls or doing interviews or something like this, but we're not, you know, there's nothing's mentioned about biology or hard sciences, but I think it goes beyond just the training issue. I think it's towards an idea that the social side, a lot of social scientists, I think, feel that they're

social sciences are just something different from the natural sciences and the natural science should not be brought into it right that it's right it's even kind of dangerous to bring it in there because you're you're and and i have to go to here i'll go to something which i go through in the book and the reason why i go through it in the book is because while i was on the just writing this book i met i met a i was at a conference and i met a

Polish political scientist and I said I'm writing a book about evolution. He said and he said to me Oh, you need to write about social Darwinism You really and I said I'm not including that he said you you have to put in the discussion of social Darwinism It's really important. Well, you did you've sure I did well That's why I put it in there because I realized that the political scientists and IR people are

This idea of social Darwinism, what happened in the early 20th century with eugenics and Nazism and so on, Darwinism and evolution is, I think, connected in the minds of some people. I'm not saying everybody, but some political scientists, it's connected in their minds with risks of Nazism, Hitler, and all this kind of stuff that we're talking about.

one race being better than another race or evolution, meaning survival of the fittest, that some, the ones who, the ones who evolve more are going to wipe out the ones below and somebody's better than some, you know, going back to that whole kind of, you know, British colonialism with the, you know, white man's burden and the inferior races and all. So I think there's a lot of fear of that, you know, which is, I think a big reason why

People don't want to bring it in, which I think is a valid reason. It is definitely a valid reason for not bringing it in. But what I wanted to emphasize in the book is that I think where the research has got to, where the science has got to now is way beyond this. I mean, they're all emphasizing this. It's way beyond this. It's about...

predispositions in us and it's you know it's nothing to do with one race being superior to another race or about evolution making you know master races that are better than other or something like this the evidence is that across the whole of homo sapiens we're all remarkably similar and we've got remarkably similar predispositions and i tried to emphasize this in the book that it's

We all have the same very, very similar genetic, we're not exactly the same, but very, very remarkably similar genetic makeups. And it's got nothing to do with

anything about social Darwinism at all. We'll get into that. I mean, ironically though, of course, some of the assumptions that come from social Darwinism just happen to overlap with some of the underpinnings of the existing traditions in our theory, you know, classical realism and so forth. That Hobbesian sort of, you know, war of all against all, that is redolent to me of social Darwinism. But ironically, it's out of a fear of that that I think a lot of people do shy away from it. And like, as you said, it's sort of a healthy fear.

So, I mean, I guess that leads me to want to ask you, how do you see what you're introducing here as sitting with these existing traditions in IR theory, you know, the forms of realism or liberalism or constructivism? Do you see yourself as fundamentally challenging the field or simply refining it with more…

complete evidentiary basis or what do you see your project as? What you said, the second point, the latter point you said, I would say refining it. I mean, I'm not here to necessarily demolish all those theories. I mean, I respect where they come from. I just think it

For me, most of the theories don't really have a good evidential basis. They seem to be mainly conceptually based. I mean, they try to bring in case studies and evidence, but it's all kind of

It's more like arguments than it is like, you know, hard data. I think we need a better evidential basis for the theories. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I have to say the one that I probably am trying to demolish, but I think a lot of people have tried to demolish it, is neorealism. It's the Kenneth Waltz, you know, theory of international politics with this

This idea that human beings are rational actors, which goes back to, you know, homo economicus, the economic theories of the 60s and 70s, which by now, even in economics, nobody, you know, the field's moved on from that. And people are recognizing that it's not the case anymore. And Kenneth Waltz used, he directly used that kind of rational actor economic theory as the basis for his idea that

Nations, as you said, are like billiard balls battering against each other. And the decision makers in each country are making the absolute optimal, rational decision about how to survive against the other nations. And there's no overriding power telling them what to do. So they're all battering away at each other. But with this idea of rationality in the background, I think this is just completely...

For me, this is completely wrong and this is the one that needs to be

removed and it has to some extent been removed but it's still there in the background it's still floating around all the time in and and as you say economics has moved on i mean you know behavioral economics is completely i mean it it has absorbed a lot of lessons from psychology and and yeah it understands emotion it understands the irrational nature of a lot of economic decision making so yeah it's it's it's ironic that it's so predicated on these old ideas and

somehow it hasn't gotten the new update, right? It hasn't. Anyway, so let's go back to this. You raised this, the warning of social Darwinism. So, you know, we know evolutionary biology has been weaponized in the past for various political ends. How do you ensure that your work doesn't get misappropriated in similar ways? I mean, you know, this is the conundrum that

evolutionary psychologists have run up against constantly. I mentioned this earlier, you know, the way, for instance, that men will often invoke this stuff to defend their philandering, you know, that, you know, it's the mating strategy that's determined by the fact that, you know, I could theoretically double the population of the world in one shot. And, you know, you woman need to be super selective about your mate because you can only reproduce, you know, once every 10, 11 months at the most. Right.

Anyway, I mean, this perpetuates stereotypes about women, all these things. It's, you know, poorly understood, evolutionary psychology. The stakes, though, I think when it comes to international relations might even be higher. One tentative conclusion I'm afraid others might seize upon reminds me very much of what's happened in the U.S. with respect to China. So one of the big themes that threads through your book

And you address this very forcefully at the end, but I'll read just a quote that you use in your book, not from you, but from another author. We cooperate to compete and our intergroup competition became ever more elaborate, direct, and continuous until it became nearly ubiquitous in modern times.

My sense is that without knowing it, we Americans have somehow intuited that this lack of in-group cohesion that we're seeing right now, we know how polarized America is, that in-group cohesion has so frayed and so fractured that we could bolster it with the presence of an out-group threat. And that, of course, is conveniently China. And from that, we've

seen a lot of threat inflation, even quite conscious use of China as kind of a boogeyman who could bring the Democrats and Republicans together into this great bipartisan unity. And of course, this comes with this othering of China. This othering is something that you talk about quite a bit in your book.

That is an example of just the sort of simplistic lesson that I can easily imagine some people taking away and even enjoining other people to try to learn the kind of misapplication that you address in the book. Can you talk about this potential for abuse?

Well, yeah, it's something that worried me as well. I mean, this is why I put in so many kind of qualifications about social Darwinism. I mean, this is why I took it. The guy that said that to me, I mean, I was annoyed, right? My initial reaction was annoyance. But then I thought about it and I thought, no, this is a valid point and I need to address this. So I did put in a lot of

qualifications about this. And it does worry me because anybody's... But, I mean, there's nothing you can do. I mean, anybody's work can be taken out of context and can be misused and abused. I mean, we know this from history. Everybody's books get misused. I mean, once the book is out there, it's not under your control anymore, right? It's just there, right? So the only thing I would say that I've tried very, very hard there to make it as...

as objective and kind of value neutral as possible, just trying to bring out the science, trying to bring out the idea that we're, I mean, we're going back to what you just said about intergroup competition. I mean, that's not just something that applies to the US. What my point would be that that applies to every single group of humans. Every single group of humans is driven by intergroup competition. It's part of what evolution has built into us.

that we cooperate in the group. We generate tighter bonds within the group as a reaction to outside groups, right? So I think I have at one point an example where, you know, and some people have mentioned this, you know, where when the intergroup competition lapses and the group becomes too strong and it doesn't have any rivals, that's where you start seeing the inner bonds, the inner, you know,

connectivity breaking down. So the famous example is the Roman Empire. Yeah, the Roman Empire. There are other examples, but that's the famous one where there's no serious rivals around them. So what do they do? They start bickering among themselves. They start infighting. And the cohesion of the group starts breaking down because there's a lack of... So the idea is that the competition between groups is what drives...

in-group cohesion, which is really necessary for us to survive. You know, and the other part of this is, you know, going back in time, going back to the origins of human beings, you know, when we came down out of the trees, there's no way an individual could survive on their own, right? I mean, they would just be eaten by lions or whatever. Human beings need the group in order to survive. It's a survival mechanism. And in order to

you know, bind, bond the group together. You need some kind of, you need not only competition, you need to not only something that you're fighting against, but you need some kind of cement to bond the group together, you know, things like religions and customs and languages and things like this. And it's just built into us. We started from small groups and we got into more larger, larger groups until today we're in these very complex, uh,

societies of millions of people, but you still need this bonding together. And part of it is

I think it's intergroup competition with other groups is just built into our psychology and there's no overcoming it. And it's not just a question. The US is an example of it, but it's, it's every group, every group needs this. Right. And, but you know, in your book, I think you don't make the case that this is so hard and fast that it's irresistible and we must simply conform to this pattern of nature. It just, you present it more as, Hey, look, there's pretty strong inertial force in this evolutionary tendency. And that, you know,

It's not an easy, trivial matter to just simply override that.

But you also argue that human evolution predisposes us to both cooperation and conflict. We can see this kind of spectrum in primates. You do a lot of work on primates. Sociobiology, evolutionary psychology is very much predicated on primate studies. So you've got the spectrum from the warlike and pretty murderous chimpanzees to the more cooperative bonobos, humans, animals.

one species though. It's not like we have bonobos and chimpanzees among us. So we start introducing ideas of cultures evolving and I get a little nervous. I mean, it almost feels like we're moving toward civilization

saying it's possible to describe one cultural group as lying to one side of the other or of another one along the spectrum. So, I mean, how do you handle this? I mean, surely you wouldn't make this kind of teleological argument that certain cultures or political systems are more evolutionarily fit than others in the current international system that maybe instead

fitness idea is very situational, right? Either way, you have some pointers I hope you could offer us on how we can avoid the trap of seeing evolution as goal-directed, as teleological, because it's not. As if some societies are further along some predetermined path, which they're not.

No, there's no predetermined. That's one of the important things about evolution. There's no predetermined path. There's no teleology of it. It's just about adapting to circumstances. It's adapting to whatever nature throws at you or whatever the situations are that you're in. And sometimes the adaptations are even accidental. Things happen accidentally. So I have in the book, for example, one of the big examples of where

societies diverged from other societies and it's not to say, again let's repeat, it's not to say that European societies are better

better or something like that. They just diverged, right? Catholicism, right. Yeah, Catholicism. They diverged due to Catholicism. And Catholicism, because the Catholic Church basically in Europe wanted to control all the wealth, right? They wanted to get more of the money, basically. And in traditional societies, and this was the same in Europe, same everywhere,

People used to have very strong kin ties and it's still doing a lot of cultures in the world. In Europe, they used to have very strong kin ties, including marriages between cousins, you know,

third cousins, second cousins, maybe even first cousins, to ensure basically that the wealth was passed along in the family and the wealth didn't leave the family. So what the Catholic Church cunningly did was to ban cousin marriage, breaking down these close kin ties so that it would inherit more of the money. And the side effect of this was to, over centuries, it's not a rapid thing, over centuries and centuries, as kin ties gradually got looser and people became

more individualistic. You then create a more individualistic type of society than existed elsewhere in the world where kin ties were still very strong. So basically you have a kind of cultural evolution there in Europe that boosted individualism, boosted, let's say, entrepreneurship and

living in cities among strangers, you know, and this kind of thing. Again, not happening quickly, happening over, let's say, about a thousand years, right? A long-term shift, but a kind of definite shift in Europeans that gave them

the ability to create a different type of society. And again, not a better one, just a different one, and perhaps one that was just adapted to the circumstances in a different way to the way that other societies, which had no reason to change, right? Like, let's say you're living out in the

You're Aborigines living in the Australian outback. You don't have a need to do this. You're better off sticking with your kin group because it promotes your survival in that situation. In Europe, there was a completely different situation that emerged where

You know, people are moving into cities, people are moving off the land and landowners are putting sheep out and all this kind of stuff, driving villages off the land and all this kind of thing. You have a different type of situation that drove a different, you know, a different mentality. And this just changed people's, you know, mindsets in identifiable ways, right? Yeah.

I should hasten to add on your behalf that you don't identify this as a sole reason, you know, the dominance of the Catholic Church is not the only. Obviously, this is just one example. No, it's not the only. It's just one example. This is just one example. Right, right. And it's, you know, it's also past dependency, right? I mean, you know, these circumstances to which we then adapt are in many ways determined by what we did before, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, yeah, that's great. But let me raise this really interesting topic that you bring up, which is this idea of self-domestication. Maybe you could explain that briefly. And, you know, you suggest, for example, that there's been a decline in violence over the years. And I guess I'm curious whether you think that

Self-domestication, as you'll describe it, applies more to intragroup rather than intergroup behavior. I mean, because many IR theories assume that states act as you suggested on this rational self-interest. But from an evolutionary perspective, from mammal and especially primate studies, there's a whole bunch of different factors driving this, right? Status-seeking, hierarchy, prestige. How should we rethink power competition if we take all these different

evolutionary drivers into account? Well, going into self-domestication is a very interesting idea here, which I think there's a lot of evidence for. And if we start with animals, we're all familiar with domesticated animal, dogs,

cats, cows, chickens, and so on. You know, and what happened with those is that we domesticated them. We humans domesticated them. You know, there's even a famous experiment, foxes in Russia, where they, you know, we don't even think of foxes as domesticated, but they

They domesticated some foxes and within a few generations, the foxes not only became tamer, but their physical characteristics started changing. Floppy ears. Floppy ears and white patches and things like this, right? Which is really, really strange. And I don't know if we even know the full explanation of why this happens. Actually, I've heard. I've heard what it is. It's that they basically started selecting for this maturation, this sort of delayed maturation gene.

essentially that all of those aggressive years yeah and then that that's why it was reflected sort of infantilization exactly no stiff cartilage in the ears and stuff like that that was a fascinating study that was i think in the 50s and yeah there's some poor russian biologist who had been like sent to a silver fox farm in siberia and he had nothing better to do than start experimenting with foxes anyway that yeah yeah yeah

Well, and so the idea with humans, the idea of self-domestication, which seems like very odd, right? It seems strange that you would domesticate yourself. But again, it's not a conscious process. It's a sort of accidental process happening over... You've got to imagine over tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of years. You know, for example...

our ancestors had larger jaws, right? They had larger teeth. They had longer colons, right? Because they had to eat raw meat, right? So with the advent of cooking, which is actually a cultural invention, you know, what happens with cooking, once you cook food, it becomes softer, it becomes easier to eat. You don't need such large teeth. You don't need such a powerful jaw. I mean, humans have remarkably weak jaws even in comparison to chimpanzees. Chimpanzees have phenomenally strong jaws, right? Which is

well known you know the bite of people's hands and things like this right we have much weaker jaws we have we have shorter colons we can so this is an example of self-domestication and another another example would be you know it seems kind of strange to think about it but that men have become over over the millennia have become more feminized they become less aggressive on the whole right if you go back if you went back in a time machine 100 000 years you would find much more

aggressive males because they had to survive in nature. They had to track down prey and run around in the trees and they had to be strong. With this urbanization and

you know, settlement or agricultural, you know, settlement and so on. We, men have become, you know, they, they've actually done studies where the, the features of men and women have come together and it's the men that are becoming somewhat more, I mean, not completely feminized, but more feminized, right. Than, than in the past. Yeah. So this is self-domestication. And a part of this is, uh, you know, an interesting idea. Part of this is that,

how were the sort of most wild, aggressive males removed from the gene pool? The idea is that they were, because they were antisocial, because they created problems in societies, particularly would be the case when you had societies

People lived in villages or small groups of 100, 200, 300 individuals. If you had troublesome individuals who were, you know, murdering people or stealing people's chickens, I mean, this would be a problem. So basically they were removed from the gene pool by being executed, right? Yeah.

Especially with eggs as expensive as they are right now. Yeah. So, you know, the fact that they did, those individuals didn't reproduce and the ones who were more calmer and more domesticated did reproduce, then over time leads to a gene pool which is

not as violent or not as criminal as it used to be. It doesn't mean to say that there aren't any violent criminal people in society, but just that the proportion of them is steadily smaller and smaller and we are more, you know,

So the evolutionary advantage of this is that we are better able to cooperate with each other. I mean, what you need in your group, if you're going to have a strong group and a group that out-competes other groups, you need cooperative individuals who can work together. You need people who can get along with each other and boost group cohesion. You don't want wild, crazy loners because they're going to just mess up the social fabric. Right.

We've talked just now a little bit about how morality has an evolutionary basis and how that challenges a lot of conventional wisdom in IR. If moral frameworks are ultimately these kind of group-binding mechanisms, what does that do to concepts like human rights? Do they become just a product of Western cultural evolution rather than universal principles of

uh, have you wrestled with that? And, and maybe you could talk a little bit about how, well, let's, let's start with that. I have wrestled with that. I've wrestled with that a lot because obviously, uh, studying China and teaching about China, um,

I mean, I teach a course on China's international politics and diplomacy, and that's been a topic that was really difficult for me to teach at the beginning because obviously, you know, in Europe, students or people generally tend to come in with the viewpoint that, you know, Western human, Western, basically the Western view of human rights, what we call universal human rights or what has been

put into the United Nations Charter as the view of human rights which comes from the West is the correct one or is the only natural one. And if you talk about a Chinese view of human rights, you must be crazy. You know, you must be like, well, they're obviously wrong. They're obviously, you know, abusing human rights and it doesn't make any sense to talk for them to talk about any Chinese view of human rights, right? So I have wrestled with that and the

The only conclusion, I mean, the conclusion I would come to is maybe it's too radical for many people, but I would just say that human rights and morality, it depends. It's just, as you said, it's a binding mechanism. It depends on the culture and codes of the group that's created it. I mean...

There are certain similarities between every society. I mean, every society would have a part of their code would be murder is wrong. I don't think you would find a human society that would say murder is correct. I mean, maybe there'd be one or two aberrations down the centuries that we could find, but basically murder is wrong. You know, a, a,

abuse is generally wrong. I mean, everybody agrees on these things, right? Physical abuse, sexual abuse, it's generally not seen. I mean, there are exceptions where there have been societies which have said it's okay and things like this, but there are general tendencies that run through every society's moral code, but there are crucial differences that emerge from the history and the culture of that society. So

For me, I think, you know, I lean towards this kind of relativist idea of human rights where it depends on the context. It doesn't, and again, it doesn't mean that one is right or one is wrong. I just don't see it as right or wrong. It's just different, different views, different moral systems, different heritages.

that have emerged which served that group, which served that group well, which bind that group together and make that group successful.

I'll send you an essay that I wrote about this idea I hatched called priority pluralism. This idea that while, as you just noted, there are these nearly universal moral ideas about murder and cruelty and sexual abuse and that sort of thing and theft, different societies prioritize things differently. China may prioritize civil and political rights lower than it does economic rights and that

Yeah, exactly. I mean, that's exactly what I do in my class. And I have to say, you know, when I do this with students, they all look stunned. Like they've never seen this before. Especially where you are. I mean, my experience giving a lecture in Prague at Charles University, it was very much like that.

Yeah. I mean, what I do is I come in and I say, well, what do you, you know, I just, before I even start talking about it, I say, well, what is your view? What do you think are the most important human rights, right? What do you think they are? And they tend to always just say, oh, freedom of speech, you know, freedom of employment, this kind of stuff. And I say, well,

How about, you know, the right to live or how about the right to an education or the right to free health care? And he said, oh, we never thought about that, you know, because they just take it for granted. It's not even on the agenda. So that's not even, but that's also human rights, right? And this is where the Chinese would say that's what we're focusing on. You know, we're focusing on raising people out of poverty, giving them

access to education, giving them access to healthcare, giving them access to other housing and so on. And

You know, again, it comes back, it's a cliche, but it comes back to that Maslow's hierarchy with the pyramid. I mean, you can't get to the higher levels of the freedom of speech. I mean, you go to a guy who's starving in Africa and say, you know, don't you want freedom of speech? And he's obviously going to say, well, I'd rather just have something to eat. Thank you very much. I'll think about the freedom of speech later. I don't really care at this point because I'm starving, right? So you're not going to focus on those things.

kind of, let's say, first world rights if you haven't got the developing world rights.

Maybe you could talk a little bit about how emotional decisions affect diplomacy. I mean, this is a theme that threads through your book about, you know, it's an attack on this sort of rational actor theory. And in its place, you know, you play up the importance of emotions. I think this is something that in cognitive science, in neuro, I mean, in all these fields that we're talking about, this has really come to the fore.

We've seen this borne out empirically, you know, that emotions matter an awful lot in decision making. So are international negotiations ultimately more about managing emotions than actually striking interest-based deals?

Well, the short answer is almost yes, right? I think there's a lot of emotion that comes into it. I mean, we all like to think of ourselves as rational decision makers, and we're just doing something because it's the correct thing. But I mean, if I go back to the, you know, there's a groundbreaking study by Antonio de Macio from the 1990s, you know, he's got the

something about Descartes, right, where he's criticizing the Cartesian dualism between body and mind and things like that. But the scientific evidence is that if you have an individual who has a damaged emotional center in their brain,

that individual is not capable of making good decisions. They literally had this famous case of this guy from the 19th century who got a spike through his brain, went through his eye and went through his brain, and he survived and everybody thought he's okay, but he started doing really weird things. He started doing really wild things. He wasn't able to manage his

decision making at all and they found out eventually after he died and analyzed his brain there was a certain region of the brain which is the emotional center that was completely destroyed and he was not able to make decisions so the point of this is people have this idea that

to make good decisions, you need to strip the emotions out. In fact, the evidence is that you cannot make good decisions without the emotions, right? The emotions are driving your decision making, right? And, you know,

I would go to another example. If you're intensely afraid or you're intensely panicking, which has happened to me, when you get that feeling of intense fear, intense panic, there's no rational part there at all. That's a completely unconscious mechanism that's going on. I remember me and my wife remember this case where we were in Romania and we came around a corner and there's this wild dog

staring at us and we we both said afterwards we we fled without even there was no rational process in the running away whatsoever it was a completely unconscious mechanism luckily the dog was on a chain so it was okay but uh you know so basically there's a lot of you know a lot emotions

come into decision-making fundamentally. It's not like, it's not like they come into some decision-making, they come into all decision-making. You're getting, you're getting a good feeling, you're getting dopamine or something when you're making a, when you're making a decision, there's something guiding you towards making that decision. If you're getting negative emotions, you tend to steer away from that decision. You tend to steer towards the one that's giving you positive emotions. It may not be, you know, the best thing for you. Sometimes we have to, you know,

reverse that and take a different course but emotions are coming in autumn the third anniversary of the full scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia and so what comes to mind of course is the emotion that seems very much to be compelling Donald Trump's ideas you know petty emotions like well like the desire for revenge and just it's yeah it's truly awful um

I want to also talk about... Go ahead, please. Yeah, well, I mean, you know, I don't want to go into specific... I'm trying not to go into specific figures too much, but I think, you know...

With Trump, I mean, I've thought about Trump's psychology. I think his decision-making, a lot of it is about seeing himself as this dealmaker, right? I think it's been well understood now. He sees himself as the dealmaker. And so obviously that's his bag. That's his emotional charge. He's like, he wants to be seen...

as the guy that makes good deals, that he gets status out of being the deal maker, right? That's right. Because I think Putin on the other hand, his thing is more about Russia, mother Russia, the national pride of the country, restoring national pride, Russia is great, that kind of stuff. But it's all connected to emotional aspects rather than just what you could possibly describe as reality.

rational decision making. I mean, was it rational to invade Ukraine? I mean, it was kind of a strange decision that took everybody by surprise. But I guess from his viewpoint, from his perspective, it made sense, right? Right, right.

So, Jeremy, your book challenges this idea, as we've said, that anarchy is the defining condition of international politics. This idea is, you know, it's rooted in the idea of the Westphalian nation state and it's present in, I guess you could say, pretty much all Western IR theory.

You instead suggest that hierarchy and status seeking are really more fundamental. And one of the things you cite is David Kong's work on hierarchical international systems in East Asia as a counterexample, right? Can you unpack that argument a little bit from the evolutionary perspective about hierarchy and status seeking?

Yeah, well, I mean, you know, the idea of anarchy, I think, you know, again, it comes out of Western IR, right? And it's coming out of this Hobbesian view of international relations, Hobbesian view that war of all against all, right? It's very, again, very much used by Kenneth Waltz. I mean, this idea that

Anarchy drives everything. I think, to be honest, if I can interpret it, I would say it's something that suits the US, right? It's coming from US IR to a great extent. I think it's something that suits the US because you have a system, you have a global system where supposedly every state is a billiard ball banging against every other billiard ball. It makes it sound like everybody's equal. It makes it sound like

you know, everybody's the same size, right? So, you know, if America then becomes the top dog in this, it just means America's done better at it or is doing something better and deserves to be there and everybody has the same chance and we're all on the same level and

So I think it's something that suits American IR to say that we're not being unjust, we're being fair, we're giving everybody a fair crack of the whip and everybody's got the same chance and we just happen to come out on top like this, right? Going to the hierarchy thing, I mean hierarchy and status, I think there's a lot of evidence to show that

hierarchies and status are very important in group cohesion, in intra-group cohesion, cohesion within the group. You need a hierarchy, you need a leader, you need, oh, it's just something that eights have in their groups, it's something that we've inherited from them. You're not going to have a functional group without a hierarchy, without status-seeking in the group. It's kind of built into us that we're seeking to

rise up the ladder to get higher status or if we've got lower status maybe you know lower status individuals don't necessarily feel as happy about it but they can settle for it as long as they feel like maybe there's somebody below them right and in amongst nations there's there's a lot of again evidence to to demonstrate that status seeking and hierarchies are part of part of the international package i mean the famous example i use in the book is

Germany and Britain. Britain was the predominant power in the late 19th century and Germany was rising up. And Germany...

was not necessarily seeking to overthrow Britain. In fact, they quite admired the British. But what they were looking for was recognition from the British of their status. They were looking for recognition as an equal or as an actor on stage. And when they didn't get that from Britain, when Britain continued basically to look down the nose at Germany...

That's what really rankled with the Germans. And that's sort of the idea is that not the entire cause, but part of the cause of the First World War, maybe the Second World War, is this feeling among the Germans that they were not being treated with the respect that they deserved, right? Gosh, that has no relevance whatsoever to today's situation. No, no, no. None. So, yeah, I mean, this just runs through...

If you look at international relations generally, I mean, I'm trying to avoid current examples because it's pushing people's buttons. Oh, push away, push away. Push away. But a lot of it is about status. A lot of it is status seeking and trying. But the idea here is that

You know, they tried to sell us, IR theorists, IR scholars tried to sell us on this idea that everything is anarchic, that everybody's on the same level. I mean, you can't, you look at a country like Andorra or Liechtenstein, and you look at a country like Russia, you can't possibly put them on the same level. I mean, they may both have one vote in the UN, theoretically, but are they equal in any other sense? I mean, they're completely different sizes, they have completely different powers, economies.

natural resources and so on there's no way that they're you know the idea of the anarchy is that everybody's on the same level and everybody has the one vote in the un and we're all we're all we're all able to compete with each other it's clearly clearly not the case right so so going to the the other part of it you mentioned about east east asia and the idea is that international relations in east asia over the you know previous few centuries over the previous millennium were not

anarchic but were hierarchical right that some countries particularly china saw itself as the center of a regional hierarchy at the top of the regional hierarchy and other ones were further down i mean this is debated this is uh some people dispute this right to what extent this was really the case but i i think it's for me it's a better representation of

not just East Asian international relations, but global international relations at all eras, that some countries simply are further up a hierarchy, have higher status than others. Others have lower status. I mean, I'm here in the Czech Republic and

it's very noticeable, the Czechs, that they feel like they don't have as much status as they should have. I mean, for obvious reasons, you know, they've been invaded by the Germans, part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, they've been invaded by the Russians, and it just rankles with them that they're not given the respect that they feel they should have. And I mean, it's just one example. I think that every country is looking for respect, is looking for status, is looking to

pick its way up the hierarchy, right? Let's try to come up with some examples of this evolutionary framework in action and maybe turn to a couple of phenomena. Let's talk about alliances. What does evolutionary psychology tell us about alliances? Are they just temporary survival strategies or are they reflective of deeper social instincts?

And maybe another one we could go to after that is deterrence theory, particularly nuclear deterrence. How does that hold up in the light of evolutionary theory? Okay, so the first, okay, about alliances, right? Yeah, I mean, obviously, there are obviously alliances in international politics. I mean, nations will try to ally with other nations that give them advantage. I mean, I think it's still...

It's still about intergroup competition, but it's when you get into situations where it's complex, where there's a large number of groups. If you're just talking about one group against another group,

you're probably not going to see a lot. If it's Rome against Carthage, then it's dog-eat-dog, zero-sum game. There's just two actors in it. One's trying to wipe the other one out. Yeah, exactly. And if you get into these situations like when the world came up through the First World War, where you see there's a large number of actors. There's actors of different sizes. They're facing off against each other. You

Yeah, you see alliances occurring where countries feel like they're not strong enough to stand up against the other, so they need to cooperate with somebody in order to survive. It's still the same survival mechanisms, but it's like you're bringing somebody in that's going to assist you in your survival, right? So I think it still fits in with

evolutionary theory that you're you feel weak on your own and you need a society of states you need a society of partners to collaborate with and those but those partnership those alliances will probably be shifting as we see over time you know you're you're you're you're

It serves your interest to ally with this one and X, Y, and Z. And then one year and then 10 years later, you're bringing in somebody else. You know, it's all shifting patterns. What about deterrence? Well, nuclear deterrence. I mean, nuclear deterrence is a kind of a different animal in a way, I would say, because it's like, I don't know where that fits in with evolution because that's really a sort of a...

And it really wasn't an analog, right? Yeah, it's really like such a powerful weapon that's just a scientific innovation that's changed the balance of weaponry and how nations can annihilate each other. So obviously if you have them, I mean, you're clearly more to be feared than somebody who doesn't have them. So you're clearly higher up the status pecking order, right, if you've got them than if you haven't got them. So countries that, you know, this is where we see

We've seen in the past countries that don't have them want them or countries that feel threatened want to get them, like Iran. Iran feels threatened by the U.S., so it's obvious it wants to get hold of.

nuclear weapons to defend itself. Before August of 1945, we still had strategic balancing as a concept. We still understood. I mean, this goes all the way back. I mean, you could go back to 1814 or even before that and look at ways that

This has entered into the vocabulary of diplomacy, this idea of strategic balancing. The theory being that parity in arms is a way to prevent the outbreak of war. Is there a parallel to that in nature that we see? Parity in arms? No.

I don't know if there's an equivalent in nature. I think this is something that's unique to human beings because in nature, it would be more about just numbers, right? I mean, it would just be about sheer numbers. The one group of chimps has more. You know, when they see a nice, you know, when there's a group of six or eight male chimps going around and they see one isolated individual from the other group, I mean, they're going to just kill it, right? So it's safety in numbers. It's about that. But they don't have technologies, you know, that would boost them

boost or change the situation, right? So I think it is something that's unique to human beings in this sense. Let's talk about in-group cohesion and cooperation. You describe that in your book. These are evolutionary strategies that allowed human societies to function on increasingly larger and larger scales. This is often compared to what's called eusocial behavior, the kind that we see in ants, bees,

naked mole rats, you know, individuals act in ways that benefit the collective behavior that appears to be altruistic. While humans obviously aren't fully eusocial, we do see similar behaviors, particularly in hierarchical societies where people have specialized roles. What about eusocial behavior toward outgroups?

I mean, in the wake of the Trump administration's dismantling of USAID and other foreign assistance programs, we've seen a lot of debates emerge about the role of altruism in international relations. Some obviously have defended foreign aid pragmatically. It's necessary to win influence in the global south in competition with China or to cultivate future markets for American firms.

But others have actually defended it in more moral terms. You know, we have a duty to help those who are in need. You may not directly address this in the book. I can't quite remember. But how would this fit into your framework? I mean, do primate studies tell us anything about the conditions under which altruism extends beyond an in-group framework?

I think where I would stop with this is I guess I'm quite pessimistic about this. I would say altruism

is more prevalent within the group. I mean, where, you know, obviously you would expect, you know, in terms of evolution, in terms of genetics, you would expect close family members to help each other. But we do also see evidence of in-group members that are not related helping each other, right? Because it's better for the survival of the group. So it's in-group only, not really an in-group and out-group thing. Altruism is always going to be veiled self-interest. Yeah.

I mean, it exists, but I'm pretty pessimistic about that. I think it's veiled self-interest. I think you will find, if you look carefully at it, there's very few examples of groups helping other groups where it's just where there's no kind of...

self-interest involved in it. I mean, there's always a self-interest aspect. I mean, it occurs, but there's always some kind of self-interest aspect to it, is what I would say. I mean, people might disagree with me, but I'm quite pessimistic about the possibility of a nation

genuinely, you know, sacrificing itself to, let's say, save another nation. I mean, I think that you're not going to find many examples of this, right? I wonder, I mean, you think, for example, NATO arming Ukraine had no element of altruism in it. You think that it was entirely just out of concern for not letting Russia get

too powerful and not letting... We don't need to get into that. Yeah, I mean, I do, to be honest. I mean, do we see... I mean, you know, so we see NATO arming Ukraine, but do we see NATO arming Palestinians? We don't, right? No, no, indeed. Or do we see, you know, I don't know, NATO arming people in Myanmar that are fighting the regime there? No, we don't see that either, right? So it's something...

Because it's in the European sphere of influence. I mean, the other aspect of this would be, and I've heard this said here, you know, oh, the Ukrainians, well, they're like us, you know, they're Europeans, you know, I mean, so, you know, we should help them, you know. I mean, I don't want to get too much into that, but it's definitely a sort of feeling that they're more like us. They're not so different from us, so, you know, it can...

bend over more for them right we can extend extend that but a lot of it's to do with just this this idea of russia's at our borders russia's you know threatening to to we need to stop them there because if they get ukraine then the next thing they're on the border with poland and you know so yeah

So Jeremy, if we fully accept this framework, does it suggest that rivalries like the US-China competition are in some sense inevitable? Or is there an alternative evolutionary pathway, maybe one that involves norms or institutions or other stabilizing mechanisms that could allow great powers to actually coexist peacefully?

Very good question. It's a very difficult question. I mean, you know, we're coming here into this idea of the Thucydides trap, you know, where, you know, the great power and the challenge are inevitably going to come.

collide with each other and inevitably go to war with each other. Well, I've had occasion to revisit that actual passage in Thucydides. And, you know, what he says is it's the fear. He introduces the emotional element. He says it's not just a cold logic, right? Thucydides himself says it was Spartan fear of Athenian rise, not, you know, something that was just... I thought that was interesting that he actually does introduce that, that made war in some sense inevitable. Yeah.

Yeah, well, I mean, I suppose my short answer to this is competition. Yes, competition is inevitable. I can't see any way to overcome that. It's built into us. I mean, obviously, the US is the top dog. China is the rising nation. I mean, again, this goes back to the idea of status, goes back to hierarchy. If the US is on the top,

It doesn't want to be suddenly in second place, you know, it doesn't want to be pushed off its perch, right? So it's obviously going to, Americans are obviously going to, you know, mistrust this country that is challenging them, particularly if it's a country they don't understand and they see as alien and they see as a bit strange and it's got a system that they don't like and it's got

customs that they don't understand well. I mean, obviously, all these things factor into it. I mean, if it was a country that was more familiar, it might be a slightly different story. I mean, it still would be the same. It still would be a challenge. But the fact that China is so different and so alien-seeming, it just makes, I think, intensifies the mistrust and intensifies the competition, if that answers your question.

Jeremy, writing a book like this, I mean, one that crosses disciplines and challenges all these entrenched assumptions, I mean, it can't have been easy. You've talked a little bit about how much work it required. What, for you, is the most intellectually difficult part of this project? Was there an idea that took longer than expected to fully conceptualize or to synthesize? Were there parts of evolutionary theory that you had real trouble getting your head around?

Yeah, there's parts that I still, I mean, I guess the one part, I didn't put it in very much. I only mentioned in one place, but this, I think now I started to understand it more, but like Darwinism and Lamarckianism, right? I mean, that was quite a challenge for me to understand that because I read Professor Tang's book and I really just couldn't get hold of that part. And I think what brought, what actually brought

it for me and what made it understandable was actually going back to IR theory, you know, where you're saying, you know, Darwinism is like realists, you know, dog eat dog. And then Lamarckianism is more like the constructivists where it's saying, oh, you can change the future. You do have some agency, right? Just for people who aren't familiar, Lamarck, uh,

had this idea that acquired traits, traits that were acquired in the lifetime of an organism could actually somehow be passed on genetically. And this was actually something that the Soviet Russians embraced for a very long time. They believed in this because it was consistent with the sort of Marxian perfectibility of man. And so, yeah, for a very long time, Russian science was hobbled by it. But now there are...

uh claims now i mean i i don't know this is still a hotly contested idea yes it is yes it is but but there are but there's evidence now that there are some some you know ways in which during the lifetime yeah it's i mean that's the thing that darwin was taken as gospel you know for for a long time and lamarck was ridiculed lamarck people said lamarck it's wrong there's no nobody i think can be inherited during the lifetime but now they found you know

epigenetics that you can, traits can be passed on directly within one generation. I mean, you know, there's even studies that traumas, people who are traumatized can pass that trauma on to their own children. You know, like it's possible for it to be passed on epigenetically within one generation or perhaps changes can occur even within the body, within the lifetime, right? So this...

Yeah, I mean, this was quite... I mean, I always found this quite challenging to understand. I guess the other one, the self-domestication I also found... You know, I understand if people don't understand that because it is quite difficult to grasp. I mean, how do we... Why would we domesticate ourselves or how does that occur? But again, it's, you know, the whole... The process of evolution are not intentional, right? It's stuff that happens...

through adaptation and adaptation happens because of changing circumstances, right? I think your cooking example is a very good one. And I mean, culture, gene, co-evolution is something I think that's fairly well understood now.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm really glad to hear this getting out there. So, I mean, if you had to, if you had a couple of years now free to workshop this book, to, you know, add more to it, what would you do? What would you focus on? What are some of the things that you would, you would change or develop further?

Well, I think what I would develop further is probably exactly what you've been asking me about. I mean, when you asked me these questions, you know, a couple of weeks ago before we did the podcast about connecting it up to U.S.-China relations, which I didn't really do in the book. I mean, I think that's where I would go with it. I would look at, I would take the same body that I've got there of the theory, but just start applying it to some case studies, you know, like look at,

case study, let's say US-China relations, how does this apply to that? Or look at some historical case studies like that. I mean, the Britain-Germany one has been done by somebody else, but finding some examples and ways in which this can be applied, because I mean, I think what I haven't done in the book or I didn't have space to do is to apply it, right, to cases. So I think that's where I would probably go with it. Jeremy, if you could imagine

a discipline of IR that were to have fully integrated evolutionary science, what are some of the biggest changes that you think would follow from that? What would a truly evolutionary theory of international relations start to look like? Well, like, I mean, my feeling, if I can go into this, my feeling about international relations is, for me, the majority of what people are calling international relations is

is really just people, scholars looking at international politics from the perspective of their own country, right? A lot of it is like that, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You look at Indian international relations. I mean, they'll even tell you this. They'll say, oh, it's about Indian foreign policy. It's about how we... Which is a different discipline. It should be a different, yeah. It's a different discipline. And I think international relations should be about trying to understand why nations...

relate to each other in the ways that they do? Why standing outside all these national ties and national interests and looking at why do nations conflict in the way they do? I mean, and the core of international relations going back 100 years is, you know, and we all want this, right, is how do we create conditions for peace, right? How do we stop wars and create conditions of peace? This is the original question of the field, right? So if you can understand why nations conflict with each other, why we have these impulses to

bond with our group and compete with other nations, you theoretically, I mean, you can't overcome your evolutionary heritage, right? But you can at least ameliorate it or understand why it's happening and perhaps make adaptations to it. So this is why I suggest in the book that, and I think evolutionarily this is happening,

I suggest that we should find ways to find different outlets for our evolutionary urges. So if we evolved instinctively to compete with other groups, then find other ways to compete through sports, through competitions, through business interests, something like this, which I think...

There's a lot of evidence that exactly that has been happening in the last 200 years where we see, you know, you go back two, 300 years, there were no international sports competitions and there were no, you know, professional leagues didn't exist or they were very rudimentary. And we see a proliferation of sports leagues. And this is obviously an outlet for people's...

I totally agree. I love that idea in your book. I mean, it just reminds me all the time. I mean, I've talked about this. I can't remember where, in what context recently, but, you know, in 5th, 6th century Byzantium, the politics were entirely shaped by which chariot team you backed, you know, whether you were into the greens or into the blues. And, you know, I mean, it's arbitrary, right? And those sorts of fandoms. Yeah.

That I think is, is it has a lot of lessons for us. And if we could just like take it back to chariot teams, you know, reverse the process, not going from chariot teams to, to politics, to political parties, but from, you know, from political entities back to mere sports. I'm all into that.

Yeah, I mean, something comes to mind to me is like the Eurovision. I don't know if you know the Eurovision song. Absolutely, yeah. It's terrible, but I watch it. I know it's terrible. I don't like it, but it's a really good example of what I'm talking about, which is, you know, if you go back to Eurovision, I mean, the whole thing of it is nations competing against nations. Who's got the best song or whatever? Who's got the best group? But it...

It's interesting to me, it's become steadily more and more politicized, right? I mean, you didn't used to get this voting in blocks, you know, that the Eastern Europeans will tend to vote for other Eastern Europeans, and nobody votes for Britain, right? Because everybody hates Britain. You know, it's become very politicized, and people say that's a bad thing, but in a way, why not? It's a harmless outlet if people want to, you know...

express their political feelings through this meaningless song contest, then why not just go for it? It's like an outlet. It's better than going to war with each other, right? Amen. And on that happy note, let's move on now to recommendations. And

Let me first thank you for taking so much time out of your day to talk with me about this marvelous book. Once again, the book is called Evolution in International Relations. It's a Cambridge element, so it's very short, very easily digestible. You can get through it in two or three hours, and it's very much worth your time. I was just...

So many ideas popped up in my head as I read it that it took me more time just sort of exploring those little ideas on my own than it actually had to read the book itself. But this is just such a pleasure to speak with you about. Let's move on. Paying it forward. Jeremy, do you have a young scholar or somebody whose work you admire who you want to just sort of name check here?

Yeah, I mean, I would name Czech here. My colleague in the Czech Republic, his name is Richard Chorchany. He's not an extremely young scholar, but he's quite a fairly young scholar. And he's done a lot of very good work on Czech-China relations and China's relations with Central and Eastern Europe. And he's also done a lot of opinion surveys across a lot of different countries, how they perceive China. I think he's done a lot of very interesting work. And

up-and-coming scholar oh fantastic um can you quickly spell his name for me i'll yeah okay he's got a very he's he's he's he's actually a slovak but his name is hungarian so he's got it's spelled t-u-r-c-s-a-n-y-i i think oh yeah okay got it yeah yeah excellent excellent so

Oh, that's fantastic. All right. Before we move to recommendations, let me just quickly thank the University of Wisconsin-Madison, their Center for East Asian Studies, which is a national resource center for the study of East Asia. And thank them for their generous support of the Cynical podcast again this year. All right. Recommendations. What do you have for us?

Well, I guess I'm going to cheat and have two recommendations. Oh, that's fine. I love that. The first one is this. This was the book that really inspired me the most while I was writing mine. The Weirdest People in the World. It's got a really interesting title. The Weirdest People in the World, How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous. It's by Joseph Henrich. Great book. I mean, weird stands for Western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic, right? Yeah.

Yeah, and so his idea is that, you know, the West literally evolved in a different direction to the rest of the world, and that's what's

given it a peculiarity and given it, but given it also the, the, the opportunity to, to sort of dominate the world and colonize the world. And, you know, and not, not again, not to say that the West is better or something like this, but it just became more rapidly adapted to changing circumstances, which the rest of the world is now catching up with. And probably, uh,

probably let's say overtaking the west i mean that would be an extrapolation from it if we go 100 years forward perhaps the rest of the world will evolve further and start overtaking the west you know taking these these changes a fascinating book really fascinating yeah yeah great great book all right what's your second one uh the second one i'm a bit of a science fiction uh aficionado so i i recently read the expanse novels there's nine novels in their series and

I mean, I know it's probably familiar by James S.A. Corey, who is actually not one person, but it's two people who wrote that. And before you ask me, I haven't seen the TV. You haven't? No, I deliberately didn't. It's quite good. Yeah, it's good. I have to watch it later. I just wanted to read through all the books before I watch any of the TV shows, so I just get the books. The show has been recommended before on this podcast, and I would certainly endorse that. It's...

I mean, my brother, a huge sci-fi nerd, he read it. Of course, he has all sorts of, it doesn't do this, it doesn't do that. But, you know, it's a TV show, right? And the first season's a little weak, but it gets really, really good.

The first book is the best, actually. The first book is terrifically good. The first book is amazing. It does all the world building, right? Yeah. And the interesting thing about it to me is, I mean, I got it as a recommendation. Is there any sci-fi with IR elements? It's absolutely an IR element. It has IR elements. I mean, there's even one of the characters is a senior diplomat in the UN. That's right. And the UN has become this kind of solar system-wide organization trying to hold everything together. And

There's a lot of kind of diplomatic and IR elements. And what we've been talking about today, the authors have clearly read into evolutionary science because they often drop in little hints of like, well, you know, it's inevitable for groups to compete with each other. And this is a sort of theme running through the whole thing. Right. You know, as soon as you sort out the one set of conflicts, another group appears which wants its rights and wants to overtake and stuff. So there's this whole kind of idea into group competitions. Yeah.

I've had a lot of conversations about who the Martians are supposed to represent. Are they China? You know, this sort of highly militarized, highly technological society. You know, the Belters, of course, there's lots of people who will say these are, you know, it's the global South, right? It's the, there's all sorts of really interesting takes on that.

I am going, that's great recommendation. I'm going to recommend, first of all, a novel that was already recommended just a few weeks ago, not on this show, but on the Asian society of Switzerland's podcast. When I was a guest on that a couple of weeks ago, my good friend, Nico Luke Singer made the recommendation. The novel is by Richard Powers. Who's one of my favorite writers. It's called playground, which like all of his work is written kind of at the intersection of cutting edge science and, and culture. And,

uh, you know, humanities with, with really high stakes for humanities future that are also, you know, a big feature in his more recent works like, you know, the Pulitzer prize winning, um,

Overstory, which I think a lot of people have read. But Playground is not about trees. It's about oceans. It's about global warming. It's very much about artificial intelligence, which is something that Powers has written about before. Way back in the early or mid-90s, he wrote a book called Galatea 2.0, which was about AI. So it picks up on a lot of those same themes. It's about social media. It's about galloping.

games, art, friendship, loss, all sorts of great stuff, everything you should have in a novel. He's not always a subtle writer. I mean, he can be pretty didactic, and he doesn't really hold back in this one on that count either. Just like in the Overstory, there's a very kind of heavy moral object lessons in this, but his prose is just great, and I've read like a dozen of his books, so I'm really used to his voice and the sorts of, you know,

Not always believably brainy, brainy, brainy characters that he creates. This is definitely going to make some lists, but I don't think he's going to win the Pulitzer like he did for the Overstory. Still, highly recommended. If anyone has read it and wants to email me to talk about their interpretation of the ending of, I won't spoil anything about it, but just definitely reach out to me at Cinecopod at gmail.com. I would love to talk about that.

Jeremy Garlick, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me about your fantastic book. Once again, Evolution in International Relations. Please go out, grab a copy. I guess it's no longer free, right? No longer free to download? Literally, the day we're recording this is the last day of it being free. Sorry, guys. You missed it. Worth the money spent, I promise you.

It's not too expensive. And there's going to be some physical copies coming eventually. I think it's not going to be too, it's not too crazily expensive. Jeremy, I look forward to having you back on the show again to talk about other things because there is so much in your oeuvre that is Seneca appropriate. Great. Okay. I'm glad to hear it. I'm so glad you invited me on. I'm really happy about it. Wonderful. Wonderful. Well, we'll talk to you soon. Thank you. Yeah. Talk to you again soon.

You've been listening to the Seneca podcast. The show is produced, recorded, engineered, edited, and mastered by me, Kaiser Guo. Support the show through Substack at www.senecapodcast.com, where there is a growing offering of terrific original China-related writing and audio.

Email me at cinegapod at gmail.com if you've got ideas on how you can help out or just say hi. Don't forget to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Enormous gratitude to the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for East Asian Studies for supporting the show this year. Huge thanks to my guest, Jeremy Garling. Thank you for listening and we'll see you next week. Take care. ♪♪♪