International Relations: Realist School

• Realism is a dominant intellectual construct in the study of international relations.
• Policymakers like Bismarck, Churchill, Stalin, and Kissinger have been associated with it.
• Realism is the dominant theory of International Relations, even with numerous challenges.
• All contrary theories must address the contributions made by realists.

Realist School

• Realism is not a unified single theory
• Numerous debates and theories exist within the realist school.
• Offensive realists focus on power maximization.
• Defensive realists focus on security and balance of power.
• Third-image realists are focused on the system itself.
• Second-image realists focus on national traits.
• Some realists are amoral, while others believe in moral considerations.
• The most basic division is between classical and structural realists.
• All realist theories adhere to core assumptions.

Classical vs Structural Realism

• Classical realism identifies multiple causes of conflict.
• Human nature, distribution of power, domestic politics, ideology, national traits, and leaders' personalities as causes of conflict.
• Structural realism focuses exclusively on systemic causes.
• Anarchy is a key systemic cause according to structural realism.

Defensive vs Offensive Realists

• Wars are preventable, according to Defensive Realists.
• State leaders understand that the costs and risks of military-driven expansions outweigh the benefits of gains, and war is rejected out of pragmatic calculations.
• Some actors choose to be rogue states and act aggressively against their neighbors, according to offensive realists.
• State leaders should not expect moderation from these aggressive states and force is a legitimate means to overwhelm the aggressors.

Logic of Realism

• Anarchy is the natural state of affairs among states in realism.
• Sovereign states act in self-interest to maximize their power to survive in anarchy.
• States balance each other, use diplomacy, and build alliances/coalitions to avoid conflict.
• States seek greater security for themselves.
• An international order emerges from states' self-interested actions.

Core Assumptions

• The state is the principal actor
• National security issues are the most important
• The view of the individual is of a selfish, antagonistic power seeker with a pessimistic view of human nature
• View of the state is of a unitary and rational power seeker that follows its national interest.
• The international system is anarchic.
• Stability is found in the balance-of-power system
• Change has low potential and structural change happens slowly
• Major theorists are Thucydides, Machiavelli, Hobbs, Morgenthau, and Waltz.

Thucydides (460-404 BC)

• A Greek historian, he wrote "The History of the Peloponnesian War".
• He identified the classic causes of war.
• War became inevitable because of the growth of Athenian power and the fear this caused in Sparta.
• The causes of war are fear engendered by another state's power, honor, and interest.

Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527)

• He was part of the Florence Italian city-state system
• He wrote "The Prince" and "The Discourses".

The Prince

• The bestiality of human nature requires order
• Political order is created by great men through violence and maintained through state mechanisms based on force
• "The Prince" is concerned with issues of national security
• The work discusses Realpolitik and how to gain, maintain, and expand power
• The work discusses the security of the State which is so important that it may justify certain acts by the prince that would be forbidden to other unburdened individuals
• The ends of national security justify any means
• The world is described as it is, not as it should be, and morality is relative to state interests.

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)

• Prior to society, man lives in a "state of nature" and would be in a condition of war of everyone against everyone.
• There would be "a continual fear and danger of death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."
• There must be some "coercive power to compel men equally to the performance of their covenants, by the breath of their covenant."
• Without order, civilization and all of its benefits are impossible.
• General inclination of all mankind is toward a perpetual and restless desire for power after power, which only ends in death.

Anarchy in International Relations

• In IR, we are in a state of nature
• There's no "Leviathan" or superordinate power to impose order
• A condition of anarchy exists

Anarchy

• It does not mean that war is constant and endemic in the international system.
• War is always possible with no common sovereign
• States must be vigilant and prepare for war
• No pair of states can count on enjoying peaceful relations indefinitely.
• "For as the nature of foul weather lieth not in a shower or two of rain; but in an inclination thereto of many days together: so the nature of war, consisteth not in actual fighting; but in the known disposition thereto, during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary."

Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751)

• British Foreign Secretary who negotiated the Treaty of Utrecht (1713).
• The Hobbesian state of nature was not the nature of man, but was due to the nature of society
• The state of war was not the cause but the result of the formation of society
• Nations seek their advantage, though seemingly unlike in dispositions and manners.
• Civil societies have acted towards one another from their primitive institution.
• The universal state of mankind has been little less than a state of perpetual anarchy.
• Establishing civil societies caused perpetual wars but are indispensable because their establishment and maintenance arises from the constitution of human nature.
• The great commonwealth of mankind cannot be reduced under one government, nor exist without any.

E.H. Carr (1892-1982)

• Wrote "Twenty Years Crisis"
• He wrote his book to counteract what he felt was an almost total neglect of the factor of power from 1919 to 1939 in English-speaking countries.
• Realism is the world as it is, not as it ought to be
• Realism emphasizes the irresistible strength of existing forces and the need to adapt to these tendencies Calls for international law or morality are made by either the very strong or the very weak.
• War is not inherently bad
• War did not seem convincing to those who had profited from it, such as Germans, Poles, or Frenchmen.

Hans Morgenthau (1904-1980)

• Wrote "Politics Among Nations" (first published 1948), which was the textbook of IR throughout the world during the 1950s and 1960s.
• Attempted to make realism a more scientific theory
• IR, like all politics, is a struggle for power
• International Relations is characterized by states pursuing their national interests defined in terms of power.
• Power is a psychological relationship between those who exercise it and those over whom it is exercised.
• Those who exercise power influence the decisions of those who have less power because the weaker individual, group, or state expects benefits, fears retribution, or respects the individuals and/or institutions exercising power.

Morgenthau - Foreign policy based Power

• Foreign policy is national interest defined by power.
• Any action or policy that maximized a state's power was in the national interest Actions or policies that did not maximize power were not in the national interest statesmanship requires them to either Maintain power, expand power, or demonstrate power.

An overview of realism in international relations, its core tenets, and key figures. It explores different strands within realism, such as offensive and defensive realism. It also discusses the division between classical and structural realism.