Realist Theory in International Relations

To begin with, before delving into the theories that aim to explain international relations, we must briefly address the central question that any researcher in international relations encounters: what does the theory of international relations mean? And what is the necessity that necessitated the theorization of international relations? To answer these questions, we can say that theory, in its simplest terms, refers to the selection of a specific set of phenomena and providing a general interpretation that satisfies or convinces anyone familiar with the characteristics of the phenomenon being studied. Although many researchers in social sciences have made considerable efforts to formulate theories akin to those in natural sciences, the term theory in international relations specifically and social sciences in general carries multiple meanings. Despite the diverse perspectives offered by researchers in social relations, there is consensus on the presence of several general characteristics shared by theories in general, especially those related to social relations. These characteristics include:

1. The theory should cover all aspects of social relations — comprehensiveness.
2. It should be expressed through clear, precise, and as few general hypotheses as possible.
3. Every part of the theory should be consistent with the other parts.
4. The theory should be structured within a framework that allows for its ongoing development and relevance to contemporary contexts.
5. The theory should reflect international reality — in the case of theories of international relations — and not merely reflect national viewpoints.
6. It should enable us to predict at least some aspects and empower us to make value judgments.

International relations, the field within which theories of international relations operate, has witnessed significant theoretical interest, particularly after World War II with the return of realist thought to the forefront, affected by the war’s outcomes, especially following the decline of idealistic thought which had flourished throughout the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, against the backdrop of the propositions presented by idealist philosophers such as Immanuel Kant, with his thesis of “perpetual peace” and the call for a global state. Nonetheless, after this trend collapsed, realism took over, providing explanations for international events based on power as a foundational element.

Realist Theory in International Relations:

The realist theory of international relations dates back to the fifth century BC, where the general foundations were laid by the philosopher Thucydides, rooted in his experiences from the Peloponnesian War. Thucydides argued that the main reason for the wars at the time was Athens’ power and the fear of Sparta.

The notion of the state originated during the Christian Roman Empire, where a type of civic unity existed in Europe between 1500 and 1800 AD. After Thucydides, Machiavelli’s ideas emerged, reinforcing Thucydides’ principles. These ideas derive from a perception of what is, rather than what ought to be. A ruler wishing to maintain power must recognize that they cannot be overly attached to virtue and must use their capacities as needed.

Realism in Diplomacy was presented through the policies of French minister Cardinal Richelieu, who led France into the Thirty Years’ War to counter the Habsburg control of Europe. This war concluded with the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, regarded as the first agreement for the establishment of the modern state. Since then, numerous writings have supported the idea of realism, including those by philosopher Thomas Hobbes and military theorist Carl von Clausewitz.

World War I posed a fundamental challenge to realist theory, especially in the United States, which experienced a different reality than Europe. U.S. President Woodrow Wilson articulated fourteen principles as a basis for the subsequent peace, which included the prohibition of secret agreements, freedom of navigation and trade, disarmament, self-determination, and the establishment of what became known as the League of Nations.

After World War II, Hans Morgenthau laid the foundations of classical realism in his book Politics Among Nations, which subsequently guided later writings on realism. The failure of idealism to assert and spread its values, coupled with its inability to manage events and predict outcomes — culminating in the outbreak of World War II due to the idealists’ neglect of the role of power — led to the rise of realism as a replacement for idealism. Contrary to idealism, realism, which prevailed in the post-World War II era, asserts that state behavior should stem from the assumption that anarchy is the fundamental governing principle of the international system. State behavior is seen as a response to the opportunities and constraints presented by the anarchic international order. Anarchy here refers to the absence of a centralized global authority capable of compelling sovereign states to abide by international law and resolve their issues per its principles and rules.

This condition of anarchy encourages competition and conflict between states, curbing collaborative desires even when common interests exist. Consequently, and in accordance with the characteristics of the anarchic system, states are responsible for ensuring their security. In such a strategic environment, threats are external phenomena related to the outside world, hence the first step in addressing these threats is to possess military capabilities. As it is challenging to discern other states’ intentions, it is easier to assess their military capacities instead of their intentions. In his essential work on international politics, Kenneth Waltz asserts that security is the primary and ultimate goal within an anarchic system. Thus, according to realists, the realistic solution is the concept of deterrence. Realists also argue that danger or threat arises when an aggressive power or state striving to alter the existing status quo deduces that the dominant forces are either weak or lack the resolve to resolve the conflict. This conclusion may provoke the state to challenge the status quo by raising a secondary issue.

Foundations of Realist Thought:

1. Politics cannot be defined by ethics as idealists claim; rather, the opposite is true. Accordingly, ethical principles cannot be applied to political action.
2. Political theory arises from political practice and from analyzing and understanding historical experiences and the study of history.
3. Fixed, unchangeable factors determine international behavior. Consequently, as idealists have done, it is erroneous to bet that knowledge and culture can easily alter human nature and public opinion.
4. The foundation of social reality is the group; individuals in a resource-scarce world confront each other not as persons but as members of an organized group that constitutes the state.
5. The state is the sole actor in international politics, thus focusing on states (rather than international organizations or multinational corporations) as the fundamental units of analysis aids in understanding the nature of interactions in the international society.
6. The analysis of international politics assumes that states act rationally in their interactions. Consequently, it is expected that states will rationally and pragmatically evaluate available alternatives and make decisions that serve their higher interests, which naturally aim to enhance state power. Some states may proceed despite lacking complete and clear information about all alternative options, thus potentially erring in their decision-making.
7. Viewing the state as a single unit. While decision-makers in a state’s foreign policy are indeed multiple individuals (the head of state, foreign minister, etc.), the state interacts with the external world as a cohesive unit. Based on this assumption, rationalist theories argue that internal policy reflections of a state do not decisively impact its external positions.
8. The international system is likened to a jungle due to the absence of a central authority that monopolizes power and can impose its will on all, as is the case within a state.
9. The security factor is the most important component of states’ foreign policies. States will exert utmost effort to maintain (and enhance) their security by all means, even if this necessitates seeking assistance from other (state) powers to safeguard this security.

Realism is viewed as the theory most connected to international reality and aptly expressed in its conditions, with prominent advocates such as Hans Morgenthau, the eminent professor of international relations. Morgenthau’s thought is based on the ideas of interest and power, where interest is defined within the context of power, which itself is determined by what Morgenthau refers to as influence or control. This theory emphasizes power, the relative control states exercise in their mutual relations, which cannot be limited to mere forms of violence, whether physical or military; rather, it extends far beyond that.

Ultimately, the interactions from a variety of material and immaterial variables and the interplay among these elements ultimately determine the state’s power level, through which its potential for political influence against other states is defined. Hence, realist theory views the international community and international relations as a continual struggle for state power and its exploitation according to its interests or strategies, regardless of the impacts on the interests of other states.

Contributions of the Realist School to Foreign Policy Analysis:

The contribution of the new realist school in international relations, particularly in foreign policy, represents an evolution of the propositions of the systems analysis school, especially focusing on the analysis process at the system level. The changes in the structure of the global system affect the foreign policy structure of its constituent units, differing from the system school’s propositions, which focus on analysis at the unit level, asserting that the system is merely a product of interactions among the various units constituting it, with states as the primary actors.

The use of power or the threat of it is an effective tool for enacting a state’s foreign policy in the issues it faces. Despite realism’s capacity to explain international relations phenomena during the Cold War, it faced severe criticism from the new liberal school, which drew on ideas of integration and mutual dependency that developed during the 1970s and 1980s. Despite the anarchic nature of the international system, international institutions can mitigate the negative effects of that anarchy by promoting cooperation and mutual interdependence among states within this system. Additionally, liberals argue that economic interdependence raises the costs of conflict, encouraging states to cooperate positively amongst each other. Thus, the foundational assumption among liberals is that trade creates an environment conducive to cooperation and increases the incentives for states to collaborate rather than engage in conflict.

In contrast to realists, who downplay the importance of peace and non-military domains as key security components, liberals assign particular significance to these elements. Similarly, dependency and new Marxist theories adopt a more radical approach to achieving security, embracing a multi-dimensional holistic concept of security that frames security, peace, and war within the context of exploitation and economic and social inequality between centers and peripheries. The Marxist and dependency schools have left significant impacts on studies of security and peace, starting from the premise that revolution against this inequality and escaping the class society is the sole path to ending exploitation and structural violence in the international system.

Social justice and the redistribution of power, wealth, and resources (which constitute the fundamental roots of violence) become vital requirements for achieving security and peace. Despite a degree of similarity between realism and new Marxism, a central difference between them pertains to the very concept of security. While the state is the primary concern for security within realism, new Marxists strive for security for all victims of unequal class relations against national or international capitalism. The end of the Cold War sparked a broad debate between two main currents: one advocating for an expanded definition of security to include non-military issues and dimensions, which can be termed expansionists, and the other advocating for a restricted definition of security, focusing only on military dimensions, referred to as the minimalist current.

This debate has centered around five main dimensions of the security concept, including the source of the threat, nature of the threat, nature of the response to the threat, who is responsible for ensuring security, and lastly, the primary values that constitute the threat. The minimalist current belongs to the realist school, while expansionists belong to different other schools striving to broaden the security concept to encompass non-military domains alongside military ones.

Critique Directed at Morgenthau’s Realism:

Morgenthau’s theory has faced several critiques that can be summarized as follows:

First: The theory fails to delineate various concepts of power, including power as a political outcome, power as mere instrumentality, and power as a driving motivation. Power, in terms of political outcome, relates to a state’s ability to change the behavior of others to align with its interests. Thus, analyzing power in a narrow sense as a driving force imposes significant constraints and reservations on realist theory and its analytical capacities.

Second: Morgenthau’s theory lacks in-depth analysis, treating the national interest as an easily defined objective (given that national interests can always be delineated within the framework of the summit and nothing else). While this may fit the circumstances of the 18th and 19th centuries, it certainly does not suffice for the 20th-century international relations. As Senat Hoffman stated, Morgenthau took these two centuries as the baseline for his realist analysis of power. Thus, Morgenthau confounds his concepts, biases, and perceptions as an observer of international relations with actual international phenomena, attempting to align these phenomena more closely with his biases and concepts, essentially portraying that he and the world view national interest through the lens of power.

Critics assert that national interest varies in its definition depending on the criteria employed for analysis. For instance, (a) national interest might be defined within the context of objectives widely agreed upon within the existing system of state; thus, it possesses a specific substance. (b) National interest may also be defined based on preferences expressed by some sectors of opinion within the state, such as interest groups or voters, thus bearing a different substance from the prior definition. (c) Finally, national interest can be defined through decisions made by official bodies responsible for setting specific values binding on society as a whole.

Third: Another critique of realist theory, according to some of its critics, is the static general formulation that characterizes this theory. Within Morgenthau’s analyses, the international political system is portrayed as an unchanging system since parties’ interests are continually shaped by a drive for power under any circumstance and regardless of nature, suggesting that this system will invariably and necessarily be governed by power struggles.

This static nature, they argue, blends with a sort of chaos between the power struggle phenomenon in international politics and the political forms of these struggles and the institutions that emerged within this context in recent centuries; that is, power struggles are one thing while the international relations that drive them, the influences they create, and the motivations of the parties engaged in them are another.

Fourth: Morgenthau’s analytical approach views the foreign policy process as a constantly rationalizing endeavor. This means that it is merely a simple adjustment process between available means and the parties that are fixed and generally recognized simultaneously. However, an in-depth analysis of the contemporary foreign policy-making process reveals a continuous and intense struggle among the various incentives that drive policymakers toward the objectives they set for their states. As long as goals differ, the means must likewise inherently differ.

Fifth: Power cannot serve as a tool for analyzing all the complex phenomena in international politics. Besides power, values and other realms influence states’ external political behavior, such as the desire for international cooperation, evident in many international organizations, such as those in Western Europe. These organizational collectives are built on ideas and values far removed from the aforementioned power politics theory.

Sixth: The generalizations of the realist school are not always applicable across different times and spaces. Selectivity in events has led to a partial and biased analysis. For example, the European experience serves as the primary reference point for realist analysis, which remains shackled to 19th-century European history. The realist perspective tends to be rigid and static, incapacitated by the past, thus neglecting emerging phenomena in international relations, such as integration and ideological factors.

Seventh: The international relationships according to the realist school are primarily seen as existing between states. Diplomats and soldiers primarily forge international relationships, and foreign policy has received the most attention in the works of realist writers, establishing the European state model as a symbol and reference for every state. Realists assert the necessity of separating foreign policy from domestic policy, as the former bases itself on national interest and disregards internal realities, which thus become secondary.

Eighth: The pragmatism advocated by this current is nothing but a denial of ethics as a foundation for international relations. Hans Morgenthau and other realist writers hold distorted views on what humanity ought ethically to demand in the realm of international relations. In the political domain, realism appears as the theoretical current upon which U.S. foreign policy has been founded since World War II, with the realist discourse serving as an ideological narrative.

References

• Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace” by Hans Morgenthau
• “Theory of International Politics” by Kenneth Waltz
• The Twenty Years’ Crisis: 1919–1939″ by E.H. Carr
• Realism and International Relations” by Jack Donnelly
• “Man, the State, and War” by Kenneth Waltz
• “The Realist Paradigm of International Relations: Power, Systems and Game Theories” by Amartya Mukhopadhyay