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Summary Theories of International Relations
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Summary Theories of International RelationsWeek 2 Classical Realism
Morgenthau Politics among nations: the struggle for power and peace
Six principles of political realism:
1) that politics is governed by objective laws with their roots in unchanging human nature;
2) that realism perceives the world through the concept of ‘interest understood in terms of
power’;
3) that, while interest is to be universally defined as power, the meaning and content of
interests may shift and change;
4) that realism was a perspective aware of the moral significance of political action;
5) that moral aspirations of a single community or a state may not be universally valid or
shared;
6) and that realism as a tradition of thought was distinct in its focus on the autonomy of the
political realm and decisions made within it.
Principle 1
Political realism believes that politics, like society in general, is governed by objective laws that have
their roots in human nature. In order to improve society it is first necessary to understand the laws
by which society lives.
Political realism believes in the objectivity of the laws of politics. It also believes in the distinction
between truth and opinion: what is true objectively and rationally, supported by evidence and
illuminated by reason, and what is only a subjective judgment, divorced from the facts as they are
and informed by prejudice and wishful thinking.
The laws have their roots in human nature. A theory of politics must be subjected to the dual test of
reason and experience. To dismiss such a theory because it had its flowering in centuries past is to
present not a rational argument but a modernistic prejudice that takes for granted the superiority of
the present over the past. To dispose of the revival of such a theory as a "fashion" or "fad" is
tantamount to assuming that in matters political we can have opinions but no truths.
For realism, theory consists in ascertaining facts and giving them meaning through reason. It assumes
that the character of a foreign policy can be ascertained only through the examination of the political
acts performed and of the foreseeable consequences of these acts.
To give meaning to the factual raw material of foreign policy, we must approach political reality with
a kind of rational outline: what rational alternative will the politician choose?
It is the testing of this rational hypothesis against the actual facts and their consequences that gives
theoretical meaning to the facts of international politics.
1
,Principle 2
We assume that statesmen think and act in terms of interest defined as power. That assumption
allows us to retrace and anticipate, as it were, the steps a statesman--past, present, or future--has
taken or will take on the political scene.
Politics is an autonomous sphere of action and understanding apart from other spheres such as
economics.
A realist theory of international politics, then, will guard against two popular fallacies:
- The concern with motives
o To search for the cue to foreign policy exclusively in the motives of statesmen is both
futile and deceptive
o It is futile because motives are the most illusive of psychological data, distorted as
they are, frequently beyond recognition, by the interests and emotions of actor and
observer alike. Do we really know what our own motives are?
o It is true that the knowledge of the statesman's motives may give us one among
many clues as to what the direction of his foreign policy might be. It cannot give us,
however, the one clue by which to predict his foreign policies.
o If we want to know the moral and political qualities of his actions, we must know
them, not his motives.
o Good motives give assurance against deliberately bad policies; they do not guarantee
the moral goodness and political success of the policies they inspire. What is
important to know, if one wants to understand foreign policy, is not primarily the
motives of a statesman, but his intellectual ability to comprehend the essentials of
foreign policy, as well as his political ability to translate what he has comprehended
into successful political action.
- The concern with ideological preferences
o Equating the foreign policies of a statesman with his philosophic or political
sympathies, and of deducing the former from the latter
o Sharp distinction between the desirable and the possible: between what is desirable
everywhere and at all times and what is possible under the concrete circumstances
of time and place.
Deviations from rationality which are not the result of the personal whim or the personal
psychopathology of the policy maker may appear contingent only from the vantage point of
rationality, but may themselves be elements in a coherent system of irrationality.
o the replacement of experience with superstition
o the refusal to correct this picture of the world in the light of experience
o the persistence in a foreign policy derived from the misperception of reality and
the use of intelligence for the purpose not of adapting policy to reality but of
reinterpreting reality to fit policy
o the egotism of the policy makers widening the gap between perception and
policy, on the one hand, and reality, on the other
o the urge to close the gap at least subjectively by action, any kind of action, that
creates the illusion of mastery over a recalcitrant reality
2
,Political realism contains not only a theoretical but also a normative element. Political realism knows
that political reality is replete with contingencies and systemic irrationalities and points to the typical
influences they exert upon foreign policy. Yet it shares with all social theory the need, for the sake of
theoretical understanding, to stress the rational elements of political reality; for it is these rational
elements that make reality intelligible for theory. So political realism presents the theoretical
construct of a rational foreign policy which experience can never completely achieve.
At the same time political realism considers a rational foreign policy to be a good foreign policy: for
only a rational foreign policy minimizes risks and maximizes benefits and, hence, complies both with
the moral precept of prudence and the political requirement of success.
Hence, it is no argument against the theory here presented that actual foreign policy does not or
cannot live up to it. Political realism wants the photographic picture of the political world to
resemble as much as possible its painted portrait.
Principle 3
Realism assumes that its key concept of interest defined as power is an objective category which is
universally valid, but it does not endow that concept with a meaning that is fixed once and for all.
The idea of interest is indeed of the essence of politics and is unaffected by the circumstances of time
and place. A small knowledge of human nature will convince us, that, with far the greatest part of
mankind, interest is the governing principle; and that almost every man is more or less, under its
influence.
Interests (material and ideal), not ideas, dominate directly the actions of men. Yet the "images of the
world" created by these ideas have very often served as switches determining the tracks on which
the dynamism of interests kept actions moving. Yet the kind of interest determining political action
in a particular period of history depends upon the political and cultural context within which foreign
policy is formulated.
The same observations apply to the concept of power. Concept of power: its content and the manner
of its use are determined by the political and cultural environment. Power may comprise anything
that establishes and maintains the control of man over man.
The contemporary connection between interest and the nation state is a product of history, and is
therefore bound to disappear in the course of history.
The realist parts company with other schools of thought before the all-important question of how
the contemporary world is to be transformed. The realist is persuaded that this transformation can
be achieved only through the workmanlike manipulation of the perennial forces that have shaped
the past as they will the future.
Principle 4
Political realism is aware of the moral significance of political action. It is also aware of the
ineluctable tension between the moral command and the requirements of successful political action.
3
, Realism maintains that universal moral principles cannot be applied to the actions of states in their
abstract universal formulation, but that they must be filtered through the concrete circumstances of
time and place.
Both individual and state must judge political action by universal moral principles, such as that of
liberty. Yet while the individual has a moral right to sacrifice himself in defense of such a moral
principle, the state has no right to let its moral disapprobation of the infringement of liberty get in
the way of successful political action, itself inspired by the moral principle of national survival.
Realism, then, considers prudence (=the weighing of the consequences of alternative political
actions) to be the supreme virtue in politics.
Principle 5
Political realism refuses to identify the moral aspirations of a particular nation with the moral laws
that govern the universe.
To know that nations are subject to the moral law is one thing, while to pretend to know with
certainty what is good and evil in the relations among nations is quite another.
There is a world of difference between the belief that all nations stand under the judgement of God,
and the blasphemous conviction that God is always on one’s side and that what one wills oneself
cannot fail to be willed by God also.
On the other hand, it is exactly the concept of interest defined in terms of power that saves us from
both that moral excess and that political folly. For if we look at all nations, our own included, as
political entities pursuing their respective interests defined in terms of power, we are able to do
justice to all of them. And we are able to do justice to all of them in a dual sense: We are able to
judge other nations as we judge our own and, having judged them in this fashion, we are then
capable of pursuing policies that respect the interests of other nations, while protecting and
promoting those of our own.
Principle 6
The difference between political realism and other schools of thought is real, and it is profound.
Intellectually, the political realist maintains the autonomy of the political sphere, as the economist,
the lawyer, the moralist maintain theirs.
Political realism takes issue with the "legalistic-moralistic approach" to international politics
(=allowed the answer to the legal question, legitimate within its sphere, to determine their political
actions + answering the political question in terms of the moral issue).
This realist defense of the autonomy of the political sphere against its subversion by other modes of
thought does not imply disregard for the existence and importance of these other modes of thought.
It rather implies that each should be assigned its proper sphere and function.
4
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