Realism & Idealism
The state and sovereignty. Another conceptual piece of the picture that has a very heightened emphasis for political realists in the modern era is the state. States are considered both sovereign and the main actors on the world stage. We today are so accustomed to the idea and functions of the state that it is assumed that the state as we know it has been around for millennia. The state as we know it, however, as based on the concept of sovereignty, loosely defined as “supreme authority within a territory,” had its beginnings in fifteenth and sixteenth century Europe.
“Sovereignty,” writes William Cavanaugh in an insightful piece about the modern state, “is a departure from earlier forms of governance in which people’s political loyalties were based not necessarily on territoriality, but on feudal ties, kinship, religious, or tribal affiliation. If a stranger committed a crime on someone else’s land, it would be necessary to find out whom he or she owed loyalty in order to know what law applied.” What Cavanaugh wants us to recognize is that although political governance of some sort has been natural and ancient, it would be misleading to assume that “the sovereign state” (the state as we know it) is natural and ancient. Only in the sixteenth century, he writes, “does there arise the concept of the abstract ‘state’ that is independent of both ruler and ruled.” (Cavanaugh, “Killing for the Telephone Company: Why the Nation-State Is Not the Keeper of the Common Good,” in In Search of the Common Good, Miller and MaCann, eds., 2005, pp. 303, 304.)
The state and state sovereignty are seen today in an almost absolute sense by realists
The Italian philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527) is usually cited as the transitional figure responsible for ushering in “an abstract apparatus {the state} above both prince an people.” (Ibid., p. 304.) Having understood the radical nature of the shift in political governance that was taking place in Europe, with its increasing accumulation of power and authority over the peoples of a territory, the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) wrote Leviathan, which was his metaphor for the absolute control that the state was gaining through its institutionalization by state-building elites.
And “the invention of sovereignty” as a concept in tandem with the state, Cavanaugh writes, made this possible. “The doctrine of sovereignty asserts the incontestable right of the central power to make and enforce laws for people who will fall within recognized territorial borders.” (Ibid., p. 310.)The state and state sovereignty are seen today in an almost absolute sense by realists, who in turn see the security of the state as the primary and non-negotiable objective of heads of state.
National interest. Since a state must look first and last to itself for its security when arranging its relations with other states, this gives primacy of importance to a state’s national interests; the interests of other nations, or of international institutions, such as the UN, or of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) with transnational interests, become secondary or tertiary. National interests are central to realist theory and usually rooted in whatever a state considers necessary for maintaining its survival. A state is thought to act according to the logic of its national interests, and especially in defense of them when its survival is at stake.
Hans Morgenthau, the European philosophical father of twentieth-century political realism, saw “interests defined in terms of power.” Morgenthau, whose Politics Among Nations is considered the definitive text of political realism in the twentieth century, went so far as to say that “[w]ithout such a concept a theory of politics … would be altogether impossible.” (Morganthau, Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, 1993, p. 5.) For realists, then, a state’s “goals have to be trimmed to fit within the possibilities created by the configuration of power.” (Jervis, “Realism,” in Exploration, p. 346.)
When it comes to actually listing such goals, however, Pentagon analyst Tom Barnett isn’t very charitable. National interest, he writes, “is one of those great phrases constantly used in the Pentagon, even though nobody really knows what it means. The Pentagon just knows that it needs to protect American interests, promote them when possible, and never step beyond their logical boundaries – whatever those are. There is no list of ‘national interests’ to be found anywhere throughout the U.S. government, much less the Pentagon. You either know them or you don’t. Raising your hand during a Pentagon brief to ask exactly what these interests are is considered impolitic in the extreme.” (Barnett, The Pentagon’s New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-First Century, 2004) pp. 81-82.)
Further complications arise because nations have differing interests, and interests change over time due to changing domestic or international circumstances. And because a realist sees the state as the primary actor in international relations, are often accused of using international institutions as yet another arena for acting out state power. From a constructivist point of view, however, for instance, although the state remains a key actor, international institutions can act as important restraining agencies on a state’s power, particularly on its foreign policy, perhaps, in order to seek joint gains for the common international good, rather than just for the good of the one state. (One significant practical consequence of such a difference might be that a realist might feel less guilty about breaking an international treaty than would an IR constructivist.)
Balance of power. Another non-negotiable principle of political realism is balance of power, which has been the most relied on arrangement for ordering relations between states to put the brakes on forms of anarchy. Typically, two or more states or groups of states will act in concert (politically, economically, or militarily) to try to hold in check a powerful state or a group of states from gaining predominance and dictating to the others. The idea is to create a form of international stability through balance of power arrangements, which arise and change through shifting alliances, partnerships, friendships, or even secret diplomacy and adversarial relations. Morgenthau insists that balance of power politics must not be thought of as merely one kind of foreign policy among many, but the only kind possible. The “balance of power and policies aiming at its preservation,” he wrote, “are not only inevitable but are an essential stabilizing factor in a society of sovereign nations; and the instability of the international balance of power is not due to the faultiness of the principle but to the particular conditions under which the principle must operate in a society of sovereign nations.” (Morganthau, Politics, see chapters 11-13.)
as with all other conceptual models of international relations, diplomacy is crucial.
War is the agency through which balance of power arrangements often change dramatically in the aftermath. Political analysts have argued, for instance, that the ousting of Saddam Hussein’s army from Kuwait in 1991 was needed to restore the balance of power in the Middle East. Conversely, the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 disrupted and changed the balance of power in the Middle East – though it did not have the desired outcome expected by the George W. Bush administration. Also, benefits accrue to nations in alliance, such as through the sharing of assets and resources. The classic modern example was during the long Cold War era, when Western bloc nations benefitted amongst themselves from their concert of power against the Soviet communist block nations.
Diplomacy. Within political realism, as with all other conceptual models of international relations, diplomacy is crucial. For the realist, diplomacy is controlled by the aforementioned concepts (the anarchical state of nature; the sovereign state; balance of power; national interests). In practice, this usually means that a realist-oriented president or prime minister (Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, for example) would rely on their ambassadors and diplomats to advance only the nation’s interests when they are engaging with their counterparts in other nations. Diplomacy so directed generally work satisfactorily enough among states functioning as a concert of power. Realist leaders, however, are not prevented from seeking relations with ideological adversaries when it is in the interest of the state to do so, although relations of this sort will be stressed, as they were between the United States and Russia during the Cold War.
Morganthau called diplomacy “The brains of national power,” meaning that realist diplomacy “is the art of bringing the different elements of the national power to bear with maximum effect upon those points in the international situation which concern national interest most directly.” (Ibid., p.155.) But the art can be rude and crude even among friends and allies and undercut a nation’s standing or hurt its interests. Seasoned Middle East envoy and adviser Dennis Ross argues in Statecraft that the George W. Bush administration’s failure to use diplomacy wisely during its first term cost the U.S. dearly internationally. When speaking of the Bush administration’s first term, Ross writes that “if one wants to know both what has been missing in our foreign policy in the last years and what is necessary to fix it, the answer is statecraft.” (Ross, Statecraft: And How to Restore America’s Standing in the World, 2007), p. xi.)
A classic realist foreign policy
The foregoing short descriptions of several prominent conceptual pieces of international relations and foreign policy as they are understood by realists do not even begin to address the complexity of their political ideology, but hopefully it should be enough for non-specialists to get a feel for it. For in-depth treatments, interested readers will want to peruse the bibliography, where they will find many of the best titles on the subject from various points of view. What follows, here, is a short note about a well-know modern realist approach to international relations that was implemented in the doctrine of containment, a U.S.-led post-World War 2 effort of Western nations to limit the spread of Soviet Communism. First endorsed by President Harry Truman, containment was adopted in varying ways by succeeded presidents of both parties.
Historians and political theorists consider statesman and premier realist thinker George Kennan, who was a Truman Democrat, as the father of containment doctrine. Kennan spoke Russian and several European languages and was an expert on Soviet ideology. In the 1930s and 1940s he held various positions in the U.S. embassy in Moscow. Known for his intellect and clear-headed analysis, Kennan by 1946 had become despondent in Moscow over what he considered Washington’s rudderless position concerning the emerging Soviet threat. Threatening to resign and return to private life, he instead fired off an unprecedented 5,500 word analysis meant to enlighten the State Department about changing U.S.-Soviet relations and the direction that U.S. policy should go. It answered pressing questions about the Kremlin’s domestic and foreign policy psychology and its expansionist ambitions. It became known as The Long Telegram, shook up official Washington, and became the basis for the containment doctrine.
In a follow-up article to The Long Telegram, Kennan made the prescient observation that “Soviet society may well contain the deficiencies which will eventually weaken its own total potential. This would of itself warrant the United States entering with reasonable confidence upon a policy of firm containment, designed to confront the Russians with unalterable counter-force at every point where they show signs of encroaching upon the interests of a peaceable and stable world.” But U.S. policy toward the Soviets, he also wrote, “should be put forward in such a manner as to leave the way open for a compliance not too detrimental to Russian prestige.” In this, Kennan seems wisely to have been suggesting that U.S. relations with the Soviets should be ordered around a bare minimum of conditions necessary for co-existence without resorting to war between the two superpowers. Showing U.S. military strength, if not superiority, nevertheless remained essential. (Kennan, American Diplomacy, 1984, p. 126.], p. 119)
It is instructive that this realist foreign policy was bipartisan. Truman drew in liberal visionaries and hard-nosed anti-communists alike, as well as others on the political spectrum, who, while seeking to check the spread of Soviet control, sought to avoid war with Russia. Authors Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas provide a fascinating personal look into how this bipartisan approach arose and became fundamental to U.S. relations with the Soviet Union in their book that explores the biographies of the leading “wise men” (Kennan among them) within the Truman and Eisenhower administrations. The authors write that these high-level foreign policy advisors “were tacitly willing to cede to the Soviets some sphere of interest, but in return they saw no reason for Moscow to crush all freedoms in that realm. This outlook involved, of course, an implicit assumption that the rest of the world naturally desired the system of democratic capitalism, liberal values, and economic trade enjoyed by the West.” These wise men, the authors write, “viewed the Soviets in the way a businessman might regard a competitor: concessions and appeasement would not serve to buy good-will, but it was possible to achieve a realistic modus vivendi that included cooperation on mutual interests.” (Isaacson and Thomas, The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made, 1986, p. 33. The book is also instructive in showing, if you read between the lines, how national interests were never far from the economic and political interests of the advisers.)
