Huxley’s characterization of Western international relations (IR) has led many to question if there might be a different set of axiomatic assumptions that could lead to more charitable possibilities for interstate relations. Some scholars have wondered if an alternative perspective such as a non-Western theory of international politics² founded on different premises, be it from Asia or from the “Global South,” could release IR from the grip of a Western, “Westphalian” model in which self-interest (and opposition to the other) and system anarchy treat conflict, violence, and greed as natural and ethical behaviors among states. This monograph contributes to a growing literature in IR that has taken up that challenge and suggests that a Buddhist approach to international relations could provide a meaningful alternative.

Huxley pinpointed what is fundamentally amiss with mainstream Western IR in the first place: it tolerates (some would say perpetuates) and fails to remediate a world of existential dangers in terms of warfare and environmental threats and one of gross inequality and exclusion. To extricate ourselves from incessant conflict and violence—both physical and structural—requires a perspective based on a unique and different understanding of reality, human nature, and the possibilities for political behavior. A Buddhist theory of IR offers an alternative vision, a means for transcending the Westphalian predicament. This book presents a Buddhist theory of international relations: its philosophical foundations; its ideas about politics, economics, and statecraft; and its historical and contemporary expressions.

Many believe that the problem with mainstream IR lies in its Eurocentrism, which reduces the scope and utility of its theorizing. By relying on a limited range of ideas, cultures, politics, histories, and experiences, mainstream IR ignores or misrepresents the ideas, culture, politics, history, and experiences of most of the world thereby diminishing its efficacy in addressing global challenges and undermining its claims of universalism (Acharya2014). In practical terms, the world is headed for a more pluralistic, less Western-dominated future and traditional IR theory must expand its conceptual repertoire to better understand the distribution of power, wealth, and influence in the twenty-first century (Acharya and Buzan2019).

In response to these shortcomings, recent IR scholarship has generated several new approaches designed to broaden and improve our understanding and practice of international relations. Below, I briefly review both traditional and emergent IR theories and begin to situate a Buddhist approach within this theoretical landscape.

Unfortunately, Huxley’s lament would go unanswered for several decades. About the time of Huxley’s writing in the 1940s, Western “Realist” 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 (Morgenthau1948 at p. 4). These observations about human nature and state behavior were presented as immutable truths and are still held as such by some. In reality, however, this view was only one possible depiction of the world reflecting a distinctive history, geography, and consciousness. It was founded 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 theseindependent, 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 Clausewitz1989).

The major alternative theoretical school, “Liberalism,” working in the same milieu and under the same meta-theoretical assumptions as Realism, identified ways to mitigate the worst conflictual tendencies of IR through commercial exchange, shared norms, laws, and institutions. It relaxed some realist assumptions and introduced³ the concept ofinterdependence—reciprocal meaningful connections among states that could shape characteristically self-interested interactions and facilitate greater cooperation.⁴ Interdependence, according to some liberals, is always a matter of degree and kind, but when the density of relations and range of shared interests are significant, states may construct institutions, norms, and regimes that act as intervening variables that reduce transaction costs and raise the cost of cheating for states, thus facilitating international cooperative arrangements. By including a role for internationally shared norms and institutions in its constructs, Liberalism makes a little room for the causal power of ideas and interactions, not just a state’s material power and individual interests, as explanatory factors in IR theory.

Despite these differences, modern versions of Realism and Liberalism both adopt a rationalist, and philosophically “realist,” approach to explaining individual and state choice of action.⁵ That is, they maintain that individuals, and by extension states, are (1) atomistic, (2) materially real, and (3) self-interested actors. Buddhist IR, as we will see in the next chapter, rests on first principles diametrically opposed to all three assertions.

Mainstream IR also asserts that these independent, inherently real, and self-interested actors are “strategic” in that they pursue their principally self-determined goals in the international political environment, much like rational economic actors make choices in a marketplace (Smit2005). The distinction between the two theories turns largely on whether “rational” behavior means pursuing relative or absolute gains in exchange relations with other states, that is, whether the international political system is best conceived as a zero-sum or a variable-sum game. Buddhism, as discussed in the following chapter, would instead characterized most individual and state actions as misdirected (unskillful) and based on misperception (delusions), but capable of achieving greater clarity and wisdom.

Beginning in the 1980s, IR theory began to offer important alternatives to these traditional approaches that would challenge some of the underlying philosophical assumptions of Realist and Liberal IR theory and broaden the scope of theory beyond the experiences and voices of the West. The most widely accepted alternative was Constructivism, which took the idea of interdependence among social actors to a new level. It maintained that actors and their ideas co-create (“mutually constitute”) themselves and their social worlds, which makes possible the conceptualization of a wider range of possible behaviors among states or other actors.⁶ Constructivism emphasized the role of ideational, nonmaterial factors both as explanatory variablesand as the source of actors’ identities and interests, in contrast to realist and liberal theories that focus fundamentally on the distribution of material capabilities across states in the international system or institutional structures to explain states’ interests and actions. Constructivism also challenged the rationalist assumptions of modern realism and liberalism. For constructivists, actors are not atomistic egoists whose interests are largely determinedbefore their strategic interactions with others. Rather, actors exist in an intersubjective or “social” reality that shapes their identities (who they are) and interests (what they want) and, hence, their actions (what they will do). This social, ideational, interactive accounting for the creation of state identities, interests, and actions extends the concept of “interdependence” in constructivist IR theory. This open-ended approach to IR both offered a different way of thinking about the world and would serve as a bridge to other novel approaches, including some non-Western theories. Constructivism’s emphasis on interdependence and the power of mental constructs, for example, trends in the direction of Buddhist thought.

About this time, a wide range of “Critical” IR theories emerged to challenge what it viewed as the pernicious effects on individuals and groups of the current state system and world economy. Rather than seeking to maintain the existing order or marginally improve cooperation among states, Critical IR theory contained an explicit normative, even teleological, element: IR theory should contribute to the emancipation of people from repressive social practices (pre-existing knowledge or gender structures, for example), and institutions (structures of production, for instance) and improve social justice within and among societies defined as greater economic equality and political recognition and agency for those previously disenfranchised (Ashley1981; Cox1996; Linklater2007).

This vast literature, which includes Poststructural, Postmodern, and many Feminist writings, cannot be engaged in this short volume, but I would note several points where Critical theories share common purpose with Buddhist social thought that the reader will encounter in the chapters that follow. First, Buddhist understandings of politics and economics, like Critical theories, sees politics as part of a larger whole, not a separate and discreet area of human activity nor one that should be studied divorced from ethical considerations. Second, Buddhist IR, like Critical IR, contains both a normative and teleological component, it too sees as its larger goal as contributing to human liberation. The Buddhist concept of liberation from suffering differs from what Critical theorist mean by emancipation and freedom from repression, and the source of liberation in Buddhism comes necessarily and primarily from within the individual rather being found principally and originally in the external worlds of politics and economics. Nonetheless, the end point in both Buddhist and Critical theory is far more ambitious than mainstream IR. Third, and related to the second commonality, is a basic humanism and belief in human equality shared by Critical and Buddhist approaches that displaces the fixation on states as the sole legitimate agents in the international system and power predominance as actors primary motivation. Finally, Critical and Buddhist theories challenge the positivistic epistemology of mainstream IR and the notion of theory leading to the discover of objective facts about politics. Critical and Buddhist approaches assert that knowledge about the social world is not neutral but depends on the observer as much as the observed.

Western scholars generated the vast majority of Critical IR theory and its reasoning was grounded in, or in reaction to, Western philosophical principles and social theory. Enlightenment, Marxian, and Kantian ideas figure prominently in Critical theories, for example. Significantly, neither mainstream IR nor Critical and reflexive theories that oppose it “fundamentally question the materiality or identity of the self” (Grovogui2006 at p. 4). Buddhism, in contrast, offers a different ontological starting point for the self and social theory that will be discussed in Chapter2.

One exception to this Western-centric dialogue emerging at about the same time was Postcolonial scholarship, which gave voice to the experience of international relations by people and societies formerly colonized and marginalized by the Western world (Krishna2009; Hobson2012; Sabaratnam2017). Like Critical theory, it was especially concerned about disparities in global power and wealth, contained a normative aspiration for international relations, and did not accede to mainstream theory’s claims of offering universal or unbiased truths. More so than Critical theory, however, it focused on the enduring impact of the history of Western imperialism, colonialism, and racism in shaping the current international system, which it sees as more hierarchical than anarchical. From a Postcolonial perspective, the hierarchical international system was and remains the product of practices and discourses constructed in the West that treated non-Western people as “the other,” different from and lesser than the citizens of the imperial later “major” or “core” powers, and thus justifiably excluded from voice, power, and prosperity. Postcolonial literature argues these unequal practices and conceptual biases remain embedded in the contemporary international system and must be shed or transformed to create a more just world. Although distinct from Buddhist IR in many respects, Postcolonial theory shares with Buddhist philosophy a common belief that holding to a self and other as distinct and unequal entities is the root of social inequities and conflict and that knowledge claims about politics are provisional.

Postcolonial theory aside, it has long been recognized that the discipline of international relations traditionally was, and to a lesser extent still is, anything but international in terms of the individuals composing its essential theoretical literature. Many have called for greater diversity and pluralism that includes non-Western voices and ideas previously excluded as a source of IR theory (Hoffman1977; Waever1998; Grovogui2006; Jones2006; Acharya and Buzan2007,2010 and2017; Kayaoglu2010; Acharya2011; Zhang and Buzan2012; Buzan2016; Capan2017).

Scholars offering perspectives from the regions of Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, and particularly Asia and national approaches to IR theorizing, particularly Chinese, have answered this call for a non-Western IR and have recently become a significant part of IR theorizing (Acharya2011,2017). Each of these regions has its own distinctive narrative and contains significant variation within them.

Illustrative of this regional and national diversification in IR literature is the emergence of a so-called “Chinese School of IR,” which reflects China’s self-conscious rise as a great power and its prodigious history, culture, and philosophies (Kang2010; Qin2007,2016,2018; Yan2011; Zhang2012; Zhao2009; Wang2013). Characteristic of Chinese IR is the blending of Western and Eastern concepts to create an alternative to mainstream IR. One important example of this work is Qin Yaqing’s marriage of Confucian notions of harmony and social or emotional processes occurring between actors (rather than a focus on rationalistic, autonomous individual actors) with Western constructivism and relational theory (Qin2016).⁷ Qin writes it is “relationality that determines human actors’ existence and meaning; we can exist only as ‘actors-in-relations’” (Qin2016 at p. 38). States, therefore, also should be understood as existing in relationships—hierarchical, equitable, and everything in between—not as independent entities. Similarly, the writings of Yan Xuetong fuse ancient Chinese virtue ethics, including concepts such as Kingly righteousness, with concepts akin to classical political Realism in explaining the rise of great powers in international relations (Yan2011).⁸ Perhaps best known is Zhao Tingyang’s application of the conceptTianxing (all-under-heaven) as the basis for an idealistic world order that is fair, impartial to all, harmonious, and cooperative. Zhao contrasts this “world-building” project to the state-building and conflictual relations associated with Westphalian IR (Zhao2006,2018). Some have critiqued this literature as parochial and nationalistic (Callahan2008), that is, too Chinese, others as “derivative,” that is, too Western-influenced (Shih and Yu2015). Buddhist ideas are curiously absent from this literature, but as will be seen in the next chapter, Buddhist theory parallels Qin’s writings and others as it is also based on a relational understanding of reality.

Moving beyond the binary of Western and non-Western IR is the recent call for a “Global IR,” first articulated by Amitav Acharya in 2014, which seeks to transcend the distinction between West and non-West (the “Rest”) in a way that encourages diversity and improved understanding (Acharya2014). Acharya outlined what he hoped would be the defining features of Global IR to include its:

•foundation on “pluralistic universalism,” meaning that IR theory that does not necessarily apply to all but recognizes and respects the diversity of humankind as it searches for common ground between foundational approaches;

•grounding in world history, not just Western history;

•inclusion, not exclusion, of existing IR theories and methods, including the relevance of both ideational and material factors in theorizing;

•integration of the study of regions;

•rejection of theory based on cultural or state exceptionalism;

•recognition of multiple forms of agency beyond the state and material power; and

•responsiveness to the increasing globalization of the world including the diffusion of wealth, power, and cultural authority and growing interdependence and shared fates.

The discussion of a Buddhist approach to IR in following chapters meets many of these aspirations.

In discussing the various founts for theoretically rich Global IR, Acharya and Buzan note that one critical source will be classical religious and philosophical traditions. Here too, this invitation has not gone unanswered. In recent publications scholars have generated novel IR theories that draw on sources as diverse as the application of Japanese thought (Rösch and Watanabe2018), Sufism (Shahi2018,2020), Daoism (Ling2014), Islam (Sheikh2016), Ubuntu (Mandrup and Smith2014), and Indian philosophy (Malhotra2011; Shahi and Ascione2015; Shahi2019). Notably, this incipient work has largely ignored Buddhist ideas in the study of international relations despite the recognition that Buddhism could be a promising foundation for an alternative approach to IR (Acharya and Buzan2019 at p. 311; but see, Chan, et al.2001; Moore2016; Chavez-Segura2012). This book is an attempt to fill that gap.

In discussing the promise of a Buddhist IR, Acharya expressed a reservation about our ability to bridge the “strict separation between this and other-worldliness, and between the material and spiritual” raised by the great religious traditions. He asks specifically whether Buddhist ideas like dependent origination (introduced in the next chapter) are “too unscientific or other-worldly to deserve a place in IR?” (Acharya2011 at p. 636). While this short study cannot lay this question to rest, in the concluding chapter I will briefly address how a Buddhist approach to social theory is surprisingly consistent with our best scientific understandings of the physical and biological world coming from post-Newtonian quantum physics and emerging findings in neuroscience.

Much like Global IR, the premise of this work is that there is great value in a dialogue between non-Western IR theory and Western political philosophy and theory. In the case of Buddhism, I would argue that such a dialogue can be a particularly fruitful conversation because these systems of thought are “sufficiently proximate to each other [to be] mutually intelligible, but sufficiently distant from one another that each has something to learn from the other” (Garfield2015 at p. xi). This manuscript hopes to catalyze that dialogue with those who study international relations.

Beginning in Chapter2, this study asserts that a Buddhist perspective provides asystematic andgenuine alternative to Western models of IR not so much because it arose in Asia, but because it is founded on distinctive first-order philosophical principles or substructures that differ from those that dominate in the West. The book introduces this fundamentally different worldview through the concept of “radical interdependence”—the basic Buddhist “truth” about the nature of our existence and ourselves that departs from most Western understandings of reality and interdependence. Buddhism’s unique ontology asserts that we are not atomistic, independent entities and that, when we fully realize this basic truth, our natural underlying social disposition is equanimity and altruism, not selfishness. Together, these Buddhist philosophical claims offer a different starting point for thinking about ourselves and the world we live in, one it characterizes as deeply interdependent. Moreover, Buddhism maintains that the failure to appreciate the full extent of interdependence is the ultimate source of all conflicts, up to and including interstate war, whereas an understanding the truth of radical interdependence is the key to imagining a different vision for politics, economics, and IR.

Having explained the distinctive philosophical foundations of Buddhist thought in Chapter2, the monograph then outlines doctrinal Buddhist political and economic theory⁹ in Chapter3, including its notions about interstate relations, which are based on its unique understanding of the nature of reality. Although largely unknown, a Buddhist approach to politics, economics, and international relations is not a mere extrapolation of Buddhist philosophical principles but can be found throughout the Buddhist canon.

Some readers may be surprised to hear that there exists a theory of politics, economics, and statecraft in Buddha’s teachings.¹⁰ But in fact, Buddha spoke extensively about politics, economics, and society, contrary to the claim of Max Weber who famously asserted that Buddhism was “a specifically a-political and anti-political status religion” (Weber1958 at p. 206). Although the overriding goal of Buddha’s teachings is the liberation of individuals from pervasive suffering, Buddha considered politics and economics as important, not so much for their intrinsic value, but because they create an external environment that can facilitate or impede an individual’s pursuit of happiness, defined as spiritual advancement and achievement of wisdom about the true nature of oneself and the world. Although best understood as an extension of his teachings on human liberation, Buddha was also an innovative social thinker and a significant political and economic philosopher (Iliah2000). Buddha’s original social and political teachings include: rejecting the prevailing hierarchical social order of his day and asserting individual equality; appealing to human reason and pragmatism in solving real-world problems; offering a contractual theory of the state 2000 years before Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau; creating a model for an egalitarian, institutionalized democracy in his order of monks and nuns a century before the origins of Western democracy; calling for a federation of like-minded states to keep the peace internationally two millennia before Kant’s famous essay on perpetual peace; and arguing for sustainable economic growth ages before that idea occurred in the West. Chapter3 outlines Buddha’s political and economic theory, including his thoughts about statecraft and the possibilities for international order.

It should be noted that, in general, one can discuss the relationship between Buddhism and politics in two ways that are often conflated or confused. On the one hand, we can study what Buddha himself said about politics, that is, his words as recorded in thesūtras (fundamental teachings) and thevinaya (instructions for the ordained community). I call this doctrinal approach “Buddhaon Politics,” and that will be the method adopted in Chapter3. I rely on mining this expansive literature because it is the most essential and unfettered source for understanding Buddhist politics in this meaning of the phrase. Looking at subsequent interpretations of Buddha’s social teachings are, by definition, secondary and derivative and sometimes distorted for contemporary exigencies (think twentieth-century Japanese Fascism, for example), and will not be engaged here in this concise publication format.

On the other hand, one can approach the question of Buddhist politics by examining how, in practice, Buddhism and politics interact in a particular setting or settings either historically or presently, as Buddhism has shaped many societies throughout Asia, and there is a literature that considers the numerous examples of the relationship between Buddhism and the state (See, e.g., Harris1999). I call this type of investigation “Buddhismand Politics,” and in Chapters4 and5, I consider Buddhism and politics in the ancient Aśokan empire and in contemporary Bhutan.

These two case studies serve as empirical referents for a Buddhist approach to politics, economics, and statecraft and as “proofs of concept” for the possibility of applying Buddhist ideas in practice. Why these two cases and not others? I chose these two cases because they most vividly and authentically illustrate a Buddhist approach to statecraft. Other ancient or medieval empires after Aśoka’s either were not definitively Buddhist in character or left insufficient documentary evidence of their governing principles and policies.¹¹ As for modern countries, I would argue that Bhutan is uniquelypolitically Buddhist, and that other countries, such as Thailand, Sri Lanka, or Myanmar, do not present comparable cases for understanding modern Buddhist statecraft. Because of its Himalayan location, its centuries of closure to the outside world, and the good fortune of having avoided conquest by invading Tibetans, Mongols, and Brits, when Bhutan emerged as an independent state on the world stage in the second half of the twentieth century, it did so with its 1300-year-old Buddhist belief and value systemfully intact. The ideas of the European Enlightenment, capitalism, or later ideologies, such as Marxism or fascism, never penetrated Bhutan. The foundation for its political identity is unique: it is the only country in the world rootedconstitutionally and culturally in Mahayana Buddhist principles and ethics.¹² Other countries in the world have a predominantly Buddhist population to be sure, but because they have been colonized (except Thailand), and influenced by Western political thought and integrated into the global marketplace for centuries, little is left of their political and economic systems that is distinctively and conclusively Buddhist. They are culturally Buddhist, not politically and economically Buddhist nations. Thus, if we are looking to succinctly compare a Buddhist approach to statecraft relative to dominant Western approaches, which is the point of empirical chapters of the book, Bhutan provides the most powerful and pristine exemplar in the modern world (Long2019).

Chapter6 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, economics, and statecraft provide general guidelines for developing adaptable solutions to contemporary political, economic, and international problems. The chapter also engages the question of the scientific quality of a Buddhist approach to IR.¹³

Notes

1. 1.

   Aldous Huxley,The Perennial Philosophy, New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classic,2004, p. 94.

2. 2.

   I adopt an ecumenical approach to defining IR theory recommended by Acharya and Buzan as including: (1) positivist, rationalist, materialist, and quantitative approaches; (2) reflectivist, social, constructivist, and post-modern approaches; and (3) normative or emancipatory approaches that strive not so much to explain or understand international relations as to set out ideas about how and why it might be improved (Acharya and Buzan2010 at p. 3).

3. 3.

   The concept was not, of course, wholly new. Its origins can be found it the writings of Grotius and, in the twentieth century, in the works of Hedley Bull and others who emphasize the existence of an international society of states, not just an international system (Bull1977).

4. 4.

   Interdependence refers to two qualities of interconnectedness that are important: sensitivity and vulnerability. The former refers to the shared impact of interactions and the latter to the significance of an interruption in interstate relations (Keohane1984).

5. 5.

   In metaphysics, realism about a given object is the view that the object exists independently of our conceptual scheme, perceptions, linguistic practices, beliefs etc.

6. 6.

   Alexander Wendt, for example, argues that a constructivist approach to international relations allows for at least three kinds of possible system structure. These three structures are the Hobbesian, Lockean, and Kantian. They are, respectively, characterized by relations of enmity, rivalry, and friendship among states (Wendt1999).

7. 7.

   Unlike the atomistic ontology of Western theorizing, relationality begins by assuming interconnectedness existing prior to the defining of individual entities. This approach, like a Buddhist one, unites observer and observed and argues no things exist in isolation. A relational approach to IR was formally described by Jackson and Nexon (1999) in the West and has been adopted in the East as a way of conceptualizing traditional Asian explanation for politics.

8. 8.

   Emilian Kavalski combines the notion ofguanxi (the establishing and maintaining of a functioning network of reciprocal obligation among actors) and relational theory in a novel East–West explanation of international affairs (Kavalski2018).

9. 9.

   For a contemporary, non-Western view of Buddha’s political writings see Ilaiah, 2000.

10. 10.

    The word “Buddha” is not a proper name, but a descriptor meaning the “awakened one.” The Buddha’s name was Siddhārtha Gautama Sākyamuni (great one of the Sākya tribe). Although the designator “Buddha” is not limited to this one individual, for convenience sake and given common convention, the text will refer to “Buddha” rather than “the Buddha,” which is more grammatically correct.

11. 11.

    The closest possibilities were the empire of the first Japanese Buddhist ruler, Prince Shotoku (c. 574–622), and the twelfth-century Khmer emperor, Jayavarman VII. Prince Shotoku was schooled in Buddhism and built temples throughout the country. Unfortunately, his supposed seminal political work, theSeventeen-article Constitution, which contains provisions of both a Buddhist and Confucian nature, is most likely not the work of Prince Shotoku (that is a national myth) and was actually composed a century later by unknown authors who attributed it to Shotoku to give it legitimacy. So, there is no reliable record of Prince Shotoku’s political thought that compares with Ashoka’s edicts. Emperor Jayavarman VII, although clearly establishing a Mahayana Buddhist empire of size and duration, left no documentary historical record and is known by the prolific art and architecture produced during his reign. This physical record has been mined for occasional political extrapolations or inferences by art historians, but, after reviewing this literature, I concluded that it does not create a workable record for social scientists.

12. 12.

    The 2008 Constitution of Bhutan provides: Buddhism is the spiritual heritage of Bhutan, which promotes the principles and values of peace, non-violence, compassion, and tolerance. … The State shall strive to create conditions that will enable the true and sustainable development of a good and compassionate society rooted in Buddhist ethics and universal human values” (Constitution of the Kingdom of Bhutan, 2008, Art. 3.1; Art. 9.20). Nowhere is the influence of Buddhism on the state as total as it is in Bhutan.

13. 13.

    “Science,” here, refers to both Newtonian physical science and post-Newtonian quantum physics as well as the biological sciences.