Realism

Question 1

Core assumptions of the Realist tradition:

Answer 1

1. Assumes war or threat of war as a permanent characteristic of international politics
2. Assumes a specific notion of human nature (competitive, conflict-prone)
3. The idea that international relations are governed by anarchy (understood not as disorder but as lack of central government, absence of absolute authority)

Question 2

Edward H. Carr (1892-1982)

Answer 2

His The Twenty Years’ Crisis (1939) one of the founding texts of modern realism
•Historical context: 1939 (war or appeasement?)
•Attacks interwar liberals as utopians
•Rejects the principle of a ‘natural harmony of interests’
•Yet ‘pure realism’ (thorough-going scepticism) psychologically unsustainable - both realism and utopianism needed
•Prescribes ‘true realism’ (Carr’s own) as a form of pragmatism (calls it ‘sound political thought’)

Question 3

Hans J. Morgenthau (1904-1980)

Answer 3

Born in Germany, emigrated to the U.S. in 1937.

•Major books:
–Scientific Man vs. Power Politics (1946)
–Politics Among Nations (1948; 2nd edition 1954)

•Other major books:
–In Defence of the National Interest (1951)
–The Purpose of American Politics (1960)
–Truth and Power (1970)

Question 4

Morgenthau’s Six Principles

Answer 4

1. Political realism believes that politics, like society in general, is governed by objective laws that have their
2. ‘The main signpost that helps political realism to find its way through the landscape of international politics is the concept of interest defined in terms of power.’
3. ‘Power and interest are variable in content across space and time.’
4. ‘Realism maintains that universal moral principles cannot be applied to the actions of states’.
5. ‘Political realism refuses to identify the moral aspirations of a particular nation with the moral laws that govern the universe.’
6. ‘The political realist maintains the autonomy of the political sphere’.

Question 5

Morgenthau’s Political Ethics

Answer 5

Two of the famous ‘six principles’ explicitly consider the moral dimension of politics and warn against the abuse of morality in international politics

•In answer to the question ‘how must moral man act in the political sphere?’ Morgenthau expresses the core of his ethical approach: ‘[T]he best he can do is to minimize the intrinsic immorality of the political act. He must choose from among the political actions at his disposal the one which is likely to do the least violence to the commands of Christian ethics. The moral strategy of politics is, then, to try to choose the lesser evil.’ (‘The Demands of Prudence’, Politics in the Twentieth Century).

Question 6

Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971)

Answer 6

‘The father of us all’ (George Kennan)

•Christian realist: reconciling the demands of faith with the realities of power

•Major works:
–Moral Man and Immoral Society (1932)
–The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness (1944)
–The Nature and Destiny of Man, Vols. 1 and 2 (1941, 1943)
–The Irony of American History

Question 7

Niebuhr’s political Augustinianism

Answer 7

‘Man’ is both finite and free (stranded between sin and redemption)

•We have a responsibility to make distinctions between good and evil, moral and immoral actions (e.g. fight Fascism, oppose Vietnam War)

•But also acknowledge that every human endeavour is stained by sin and falls short of God’s ultimate judgment (e.g. both Soviets and Americans are driven by the animus dominandi)

Question 8

From ‘classical’ to ‘scientific’ Realism

Answer 8

1950s-1970s: IR in the U.S. remodelled as a ‘positive science’ according to philosophy of science standards

•IR theorists seek to emulate the success of Economics as a social science (rigorous and parsimonious)

•Realism adopts the rationalist agenda and becomes a theory with scientific credentials

•Paradigm: a set of basic assumptions/axioms that allow the formation of theories from which testable hypotheses can be derived

Question 9

Realism as a paradigm

Answer 9

Three fundamental assumptions:
–State-centrism
–States are rational actors
–Power as the rational goal of states
R. Keohane, ‘Theory of World Politics’, pp. 164-5

(1)that nation-states or their decision makers are the most important actors for understanding IR;
(2)that there is a sharp distinction between domestic and international politics;
(3)that IR is a struggle for power and peace
J. Vasquez, The Power of Power Politics, p. 37

Question 10

Kenneth Walt’s (1924-2013)

Answer 10

From Man, State and War (1959) to Theory of International Politics (1979)
•Two kinds of political order: hierarchical (where actors are differentiated functionally) and anarchical (where actors are functionally similar but differentiated in terms of capabilities)

•Anarchy: actors’ attributes are irrelevant, states assumed to be rational egoists (like firms in micro-economics) giving rise to a self-help system where states seek to survive-maximise security

Question 11

John Mearsheimer (1947- )

Answer 11

The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001)

•Mearsheimer builds on insights previously introduced by Robert Gilpin’s War and Change in World Politics (1981)

•‘Great powers are always searching for opportunities to gain power over their rivals, with hegemony as their final goal’

•‘Offensive realists’ assume that states will be driven by the desire not simply for survival but at least for regional hegemony, if not global domination

Question 12

Common criticisms of Realism after the Cold War

Answer 12

•Realism failed to predict the end of the Cold War (John Lewis Gaddis).

•Realism failed to explain the end of the Cold War (Richard Ned Lebow).

•Realism outmoded as the world shifted from nation-state to other forms of organisation, e.g. globalisation.

•Realism’s logic unsuited to a complex interdependent (post-’70s) and unipolar world (’90s).

Question 13

Realism and the Ukraine War

Answer 13

Realism (in the media) represented primarily by neorealist insights

•J. Mearsheimer in the spotlight, he has become the bete noir of liberal criticism attacked for being pro-Putin, morally callous, analytically confused

•Neorealist vision too narrow, incoherent and perhaps unsuitable to account for the complexity of the conflict

•Neglected early realist insights could have fared better (emphasis on diplomacy, restraint, moderation, prudence, ethics of lesser evil, moral psychology of leaders)

•Recent historiographical turn to early realists prompted by neorealism’s repeated failure to account for unipolarity, 9/11, War on Terror, Ukraine War etc