What is Political Realism?
Political realism is a tradition of thought, mainly in international relations, that sees world politics as a competition among states for security and power. Because there is no world government to enforce rules, realists argue, each state must ultimately rely on itself. They are skeptical of plans to transform international politics through law, institutions or moral ideals, and they urge leaders to judge policies by their consequences for national security. Realism is less a political party program than a way of analyzing politics, and realists can be found across the political spectrum. A related school in political philosophy, also called realism, stresses that political theory should start from how politics actually works.
Core beliefs
- States are the main actors in international politics.
- The international system lacks a central authority, so states must provide for their own security.
- Power, especially military and economic power, shapes outcomes between states.
- Leaders should pursue the national interest with prudence rather than moral crusades.
- A balance of power among states helps prevent domination by any single power.
- Ideals and institutions matter less than their supporters claim.
History
Realists often trace their tradition to the Greek historian Thucydides, whose account of the Peloponnesian War includes the Melian Dialogue, in which Athenian envoys argue that the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. Niccolò Machiavelli's The Prince and Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan (1651) are also seen as foundational. The idea of reason of state guided European statecraft, and the German term Realpolitik became associated with Otto von Bismarck. As an academic school, realism took shape around the Second World War. E. H. Carr's The Twenty Years' Crisis (1939) criticized interwar idealism, and Hans Morgenthau's Politics Among Nations (1948) became a standard text. George Kennan applied realist thinking to the policy of containing the Soviet Union. In 1979 Kenneth Waltz's Theory of International Politics founded neorealism, which explains state behavior through the structure of the international system.
Variants
Classical realists, such as Morgenthau and the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, linked power politics to human nature. Neorealists, or structural realists, focus on the anarchic structure of the international system. Defensive realists argue that states seek security and that excessive expansion is self-defeating, while offensive realists argue that great powers try to maximize their power. Neoclassical realists add domestic politics and leaders' perceptions. In political philosophy, writers such as Bernard Williams developed a separate realist critique of idealized moral theories of politics.
Criticisms
Liberal internationalists argue that realism underestimates cooperation, trade, international institutions and the spread of democracy. Constructivist scholars argue that the interests and identities of states are shaped by ideas and norms, not fixed by power. Moral critics argue that realism can excuse injustice and the neglect of human rights. Others note that realism did not predict the peaceful end of the Cold War, though realists dispute how damaging this is to the theory.
In practice
Realist ideas shaped Cold War containment, the détente policy of the 1970s associated with Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, and the opening to China. Hans Morgenthau publicly opposed the Vietnam War on realist grounds, and in 2002 a group of realist scholars published a newspaper advertisement opposing the coming war in Iraq. Today realist arguments are common in debates about great power rivalry, alliance commitments and military intervention.