At a glittering global summit, world leaders pose for photos behind banners of blue and green. Speeches promise a “turning point” for the planet as cameras click, yet outside the window, financiers count profits in fossil fuels and factories chug on. It is a pageant of virtue-signalling, a carefully staged act of contrition and commitment, while the realpolitik of carbon continues unabated. The ritualistic choreography of COP summits has become as predictable as it is hollow. Yet this ceremony tells us a story: we live in a world where performance trumps transformation, and where prestige masks self-interest.
Classical realists like Hans Morgenthau would watch this charade with a wry smile. To Morgenthau, international politics is forever “a struggle for power,” where every state puts its survival and status above all. The United States, China, India, and others attend summits not out of altruistic globalism but to negotiate advantages. Each promise of emissions cuts is calibrated to national interest; each pledge is hedged by escape hatches. As an E-International Relations summary puts it, realists see the system as competitive and pessimistic: “the relationship between nation-states is characterised by power politics” and “in an anarchic system, it is simply impossible to completely trust another state”. Climate conferences may offer grand collective language, but the real script is written in margins and loopholes: states will do just enough to look good, and no more. In power’s cold calculus, a green promise is worth precisely what it gains in prestige or bargaining chips.
Constructivist theory, by contrast, illuminates the form of these gatherings. Alexander Wendt famously noted that “anarchy is what states make of it”, meaning the world’s meaning is socially constructed. From this perspective, COP summits are less about concrete policy than about shared narratives and identities. The jargon of net-zero targets and 1.5°C thresholds has become a kind of global liturgy. It reinforces an identity of “good actor” status for each country. Constructivists note that states derive identities through interaction, signalling who they are and what they want. In this sense, uttering support for climate norms is a performance that earns symbolic capital. Reality is “always under construction,” they remind us, with meanings that “can change over time” depending on beliefs and discourse. True to this view, every COP meeting reaffirms the norm that countries should care about climate change, even if their actions lag. The spectacle shows that everyone talks the talk, binding them in a ritual community of concern, at least for a photo-op.
Yet realists would retort that these norms are surface foam. As Joseph Grieco observed in a neorealist critique, international anarchy “fosters competition and conflict” and makes states wary of cooperation. For realists, what lies beneath the spectacle is self-interest. Rich countries apportion blame, poor countries demand compensation, but all shield core economic interests. Morgenthau’s era-thinking tells us they will never sacrifice national interests for global ones except under the harshest compulsion. Whether it’s granting coal-fired plants in developing countries or subsidising oil in industrial economies, the business of growth usually trumps the rhetoric of sacrifice.
History bears this out. Take the Kyoto Protocol of 1997, which set modest targets, but key players like the U.S. backed out, and enforcement was weak. A decade later, the Copenhagen summit (COP15) collapsed into voluntary pledges without binding commitments. Legions of negotiators flew home, patting themselves on the back for averting collapse, but with nothing more than a page of commitments that no one was bound to honour. It was exactly the sort of ritual failure realists expect: everyone attended to claim their share of moral leadership, but no one felt obliged to bear the cost of deep change. Paris, too, then, built a shared norm but left real action voluntary and unenforced
Even COP28 in Dubai, housed by an oil-rich regime, felt more like a media production than a policy breakthrough. Negotiators agreed at the last minute on language about “transitioning away from fossil fuels” , a historic first, on paper. But the wording was hedged and vague, lacking specific obligations or timelines. Meanwhile, fossil fuel corporations had a presence at the table and lavish parties to greenwash. The final communiqué read like a diplomatic platitude, deferring hard action to some future summit. And as always, leaders returned home to face still-rising emissions and flash floods. Elite environmental NGOs and celebrity activists inject moral drama into the spectacle, but rarely translate it into sustained pressure on governments
Put simply, a regime of strategic hypocrisy has taken shape. The world’s governments have collectively staged a grand play about saving the planet, while the script stubbornly remains the same. Every four years, a fresh cast of ministers exchanges vows of green fidelity on TV. But those vows come with escape clauses: loopholes in counting emissions, market-based offsets, technology transfers, and emissions trading schemes. They serve international prestige more than planetary limits. In Morgenthau’s terms, they serve national interest masquerading as a global good. The stage spectacle masks the fact that most rulers have no intention of sacrificing their economic agendas.
Over time, the narrative of climate danger becomes part of states’ identity. Refusing to attend COP meetings now feels like a breach of diplomatic decorum. The ceremonies reaffirm commitments and peer shame: “You said you would do this, do you still stand by it?” In Wendt’s view, these are performative norms, they shape actors’ self-image without altering their core strategy. The EU can deride China for coal, Sweden can scold India on deforestation, yet all behave within a common language of climate ethics. Those norms constrain, but not decisively. Realists counter that only blunt tools can break the spell. If states will not willingly curb emissions, then they must be compelled by force or penalty. The incentives to cheat or underperform remain immense until doing so hurts more than it gains. Shaming has some impact (no leader wants to be #1 in carbon while slamming reporters), but it is often overshadowed by short-term gains in growth.
So far, measures have been half-hearted. The emerging idea of a carbon border tax (like the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism) hints at what pressure would look like, but it’s the exception rather than the rule. Without a credible threat to profit margins, most states default to the safest play: minimal compliance. Realists grimly observe that if the climate crisis were an easy moral cause, it wouldn’t need endless summits. The reason ten thousand elites keep flying to exotic destinations to announce lists of intended actions are that concrete progress remains elusive without external compulsion. The COP spectacle continues not because the leaders are fools or the people blind, but because it suits the powerful to keep it on stage. Constructivism tells us why they bother: these norms and ceremonies lend an air of consensus and good faith, legitimising the whole enterprise. Realism tells us how they truly think: without direct threats to profits or prestige, commitments remain pretence. The Atlantic can cover these summits in sober detail and hope. But as Morgenthau might say, “Hope is not a policy.” If not coerced by hard consequences, the great drama of climate cooperation will roll on in endless seasons, with the same familiar lines and the same doubtful ending.
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