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In the right contexts, helping others can help oneself. This match, in turn, should be no surprise because human behavior evolved under conditions of anarchy, which pervaded throughout our evolution as well as in international politics today. Many criticisms of international relations theories focus on these unsubstantiated or contested assumptions about underlying human nature. More important, however, is that we both evolved in conditions of free-for-all competitionof anarchywithout any Leviathan to administer life-and-death struggles with rival groups, a situation well recognized in the study of international relations among states. Cooperation among unrelated individuals is possible but only as the result of interactions that help genes replicate in the long run, through mechanisms such as reciprocal altruism, indirect reciprocity, and signaling.Reference Nowak92 Even cooperation and helping behavior, therefore, are strategies that increase an individuals Darwinian fitnessindeed, that is precisely why they evolved.Reference West, El Mouden and Gardner93 In nature, genetic egoism is the basis of natural selection. Therefore, even the strongest advocates of group selection, such as David Sloan Wilson, argue that, in any given case, it remains an empirical question as to whether or not the selection pressures acting at the level of individuals are outweighed by selection pressures potentially acting at the level of the group (so called multi-level selection). Reckless States and Realism John J. Mearsheimer Abstract Kenneth Waltz opted to reject the rational actor assumption in developing his theory of international politics. Mearsheimer's main innovation is his theory of 'offensive realism' that seeks to re-formulate Kenneth Waltz's structural realist theory to explain from a structural point of departure the sheer . In short, on the basis of the family tree, there is little reason to assume that humans should be more or less like bonobos or chimpanzees. First, offensive realism fails to explain why costly wars sometimes occur against the interests of the states that initiate them. 2022. The impact of these biological factors on social and political behavior will vary depending on context.