explain, model, and prescribe political relations. It takes as its
assumption that power is (or ought to be) the primary end of political
action, whether in the domestic or international arena. In the
domestic arena, the theory asserts that politicians do, or should,
strive to maximize their power, whilst on the international stage,
nation states are seen as the primary agents that maximize, or ought
to maximize, their power. The theory is therefore to be examined as
either a prescription of what ought to be the case, that is, nations
and politicians ought to pursue power or their own interests, or as a
description of the ruling state of affairs-that nations and
politicians only pursue (and perhaps only can pursue) power or
self-interest.
Political realism in essence reduces to the political-ethical
principle that might is right. The theory has a long history, being
evident in Thucydides' Pelopennesian War. It was expanded on by
Machiavelli in The Prince, and others such as Thomas Hobbes, Spinoza,
and Jean-Jacques Rousseau followed (the theory was given great
dramatical portrayed in Shakespeare's Richard III). In the late
nineteenth century it underwent a new incarnation in the form of
social darwinism, whose adherents explained social and hence political
growth in terms of a struggle in which only the fittest (strongest)
cultures or polities would survive. Political realism assumes that
interests are to be maintained through the exercise of power, and that
the world is characterised by competing power bases. In international
politics, most political theorists emphasise the nation state as the
relevant agent, whereas Marxists focus on classes. Prior to the French
Revolution in which nationalism as a political doctrine truly entered
the world's stage, political realism involved the political
jurisdictions of ruling dynasties, whilst in the nineteenth century,
nationalist sentiments focused realists' attentions on the development
of the nation-state, a policy that was later extended to include
imperialist ambitions on the part of the major Western powers-Britain
and France, and even Belgium, Germany and the United States were
influenced by imperialism. Nationalist political realism later
extended into geo-political theories, which perceive the world to be
divided into supra-national cultures, such as East and West, North and
South, Old World and New World, or focusing on the pan-national
continental aspirations of Africa, Asia, etc. Whilst the social
darwinist branch of political realism may claim that some nations are
born to rule over others (being 'fitter' for the purpose, and echoing
Aristotle's ruminations on slavery in Book 1 of the The Politics),
generally political realists focus on the need or ethic of ensuring
that the relevant agent (politician, nation, culture) must ensure its
own survival by securing its own needs and interests before it looks
to the needs of others.
To explore the various shades and implications of the theory, its
application to international affairs is examined.
Descriptive political realism commonly holds that the international
community is characterized by anarchy, since there is no overriding
world government that enforces a common code of rules. Whilst this
anarchy need not be chaotic, for various member states of the
international community may engage in treaties or in trading patterns
that generate an order of sorts, most theorists conclude that law or
morality does not apply beyond the nation's boundaries. Arguably
political realism supports Hobbes's view of the state of nature,
namely that the relations between self-seeking political entities are
necessarily a-moral. Hobbes asserts that without a presiding
government to legislate codes of conduct, no morality or justice can
exist: "Where there is no common Power, there is no Law: where no Law,
no Injustice¼ if there be no Power erected, or not great enough for
our security; every man will and may lawfully rely on his own strength
and art, for caution against all other men." (Hobbes, Leviathan, Part
I, Ch.13 'Of Man', and Part II, Ch.17, 'Of Commonwealth') Accordingly,
without a supreme international power or tribunal, states view each
other with fear and hostility, and conflict, or the threat thereof, is
endemic to the system.
Another proposition is that a nation can only advance its interests
against the interests of other nations; this implies that the
international environment is inherently unstable. Whatever order may
exists breaks down when nations compete for the same resources, for
example, and war may follow. In such an environment, the realists
argue, a nation has only itself to depend on.
Either descriptive political realism is true or it is false. If it is
true, it does not follow, however, that morality ought not to be
applied to international affairs: what ought to be does not always
follow from what is. A strong form of descriptive political realism
maintains that nations are necessarily self-seeking, that they can
only form foreign policy in terms of what the nation can gain, and
cannot, by their very nature, cast aside their own interests. However,
if descriptive realism is held, it is as a closed theory, which means
that it can refute all counter-factual evidence on its own terms (for
example, evidence of a nation offering support to a neighbour as an
ostensible act of altruism, is refuted by pointing to some
self-serving motive the giving nation presumably has–it would increase
trade, it would gain an important ally, it would feel guilty if it
didn't, and so on), then any attempt to introduce morality into
international affairs would prove futile. Examining the soundness of
descriptive political realism depends on the possibility of knowing
political motives, which in turn means knowing the motives of the
various officers of the state and diplomats. The complexity of the
relationship between officers' actions, their motives, subterfuge, and
actual foreign policy makes this a difficult if not impossible task,
one for historians rather than philosophers. Logically, the closed
nature of descriptive realism implies that a contrary proposition that
nations serve no interests at all, or can only serve the interests of
others, could be just as valid. The logical validity of the three
resulting theories suggests that preferring one position to another is
an arbitrary decision-i.e., an assumption to be held, or not. This
negates the soundness of descriptive realism; it is not a true or
false description of international relations but is reduced to an
arbitrary assumption. Assumptions can be tested against the evidence,
but in themselves cannot be proved true or false. Finally, what is the
case need not be, nor need it ought to be.
That the present international arena of states is characterized by the
lack of an overarching power is an acceptable description.
Evidentially, war has been common enough to give support to political
realism-there have been over 200 wars and conflicts since the signing
of the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. The seemingly anarchic state of
affairs has led some thinkers to make comparisons with domestic
anarchy, when a government does not exist to rule or control a nation.
Without a world power, they may reason, war, conflict, tension, and
insecurity have been the regular state of affairs; they may then
conclude that just as a domestic government removes internal strife
and punishes local crime, so too ought a world government control the
activities of individual states-overseeing the legality of their
affairs and punishing those nations that break the laws, and thereby
calming the insecure atmosphere nations find themselves in. However,
the 'domestic analogy' makes the presumption that relations between
individuals and relations between states are the same. Christian
Wolff, for example, holds that "since states are regarded as
individual free persons living in a state of nature, nations must also
be regarded in relation to each other as individual free persons
living in a state of nature." (Jus Gentium Methodo Scientifica
Pertractatum Trans. Joseph Drake. Clarendon Press: Oxford, 1934, §2,
p.9). Such an argument involves the collectivization of individuals
and/or the personification of states: realism may describe nations as
individuals acting upon the world stage to further their own
interests, but behind the concept of 'France' or 'South Africa' exist
millions of unique individuals, who may or may not agree with the
claims for improving the national interest. Some (e.g., Gordon Graham,
Ethics and International Relations, 1997) claim that the relationships
between states and their civilians are much more different than those
between nation states, since individuals can hold beliefs and can
suffer whereas states cannot. If the domestic analogy does not hold,
arguably a different theory must be proposed to explain the state of
international affairs, which either means revising political realism
to take into account the more complex relationship between a
collective and individual entities, or moving to a alternative theory
of international relations.
Beyond the descriptive propositions of political realism, prescriptive
political realism argues that whatever the actual state of
international affairs, nations should pursue their own interests. This
theory resolves into various shades depending on what the standard of
the national interest is claimed to be and the moral permissibility of
employing various means to desired ends. Several definitions may be
offered as to what ought to comprise the national interest: more often
than not the claims invoke the need to be economically and politically
self-sufficient, thereby reducing dependency on untrustworthy nations.
The argument in supporting the primacy of self-sufficiency as forming
the national interest has a long history: Plato and Aristotle both
argued in favour of economic self-sufficiency on grounds of securing a
nation's power-nations, they both reasoned, should only import
non-necessary commodities. The power of this economic doctrine has
been often been used to support political realism: in the eighteenth
century especially, political theorists and mercantilists maintained
that political power could only be sustained and increased through
reducing a nation's imports and increasing its exports. The common
denominator between the two positions is the proposition that a nation
can only grow rich at the expense of others. If England's wealth
increases, France's must concomitantly decrease. This influential tier
supporting political realism is, however, unsound. Trade is not
necessarily exclusively beneficial to one party: it is often mutually
beneficial. The economists Adam Smith and David Ricardo explained the
advantages to be gained by both parties from free, unfettered trade.
Nonetheless, the realist may admit this and retort that despite the
gains from trade, nations should not rely on others for their
sustenance, or that free trade ought not to be supported since it
often implies undesired cultural changes. In that respect, the
nation's interests are defined as lying over and above any material
benefits to be gained from international collaboration and
co-operation. The right to a separate cultural identity is a separate
Political realists are often characterised as a-moralists, that any
means should be used to uphold the national interest, but a poignant
criticism is that the definition of morality is being twisted to
assume that acting in one's own or one's nation's interests is immoral
or amoral at best. This is an unfair claim against serving one's
national interest, just as claiming that any self-serving action is
necessarily immoral on the personal level. The discussion invokes the
ethics of impartiality; those who believe in a universal code of
ethics argue that a self-serving action that cannot be universalized
is immoral. However, universalism is not the only standard of ethical
actions. Partiality, it can be claimed, should play a role in ethical
decisions; partialists deem it absurd that state officials should not
give their own nation greater moral weight over other nations, just as
it would be absurd for parents to give equal consideration to their
children and others' children. But if morality is employed in the
sense of being altruistic, or at least universalistic, then political
realists would rightly admit that attempting to be moral will be
detrimental to the national interest or for the world as a whole, and
therefore morality ought to be ignored. But, if morality accepts the
validity of at least some self-serving actions, then ipso facto
political realism may be a moral political doctrine.
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