Realism (international relations)

Intellectual roots of realism

Several authors are regarded as references of political realism:

Thucydide, with its description of the Peloponnesian War, proposed the first analysis which arrived to us where a conflict is described in a neutral way.
Thomas Hobbes for his vision of the state of nature, which is used to describe the interetatic relations (anarchy in the absence of Léviathan).
Machiavel, to have separated the policy from morals and the religion (the Prince, Speech over the first decade of Tite-Live).

Postulates of realism

The Postulat S founders are the following:

the State is the single important actor of the International relations, considered as Unitaire (internal decision-making processes, the political regime are not taken into account to analyze its action international) and Rationnel (it acts according to a cost-benefit logic and seeks to maximize his interest).
the international system is by anarchistic definition: in the absence of government higher than the States, those are autonomous and independent.
the main objective continued by a State is the research of the power. The authors neorealists will bring the research of survival, and thus its own security.

The realistic ones thus consider that:

the International organizations and the transnational Acteurs have a weak influence, even null, on the international relations.
the States are rational actors acting in their only national interests, for their survival. The durable co-operation between States is thus difficult, since it is more rational to be being wary towards the other States.
the best and principal means for a State of ensuring its survival is to maximize its own power.

The principal thinkers of realism are:

Hans Morgenthau
Edward Hallett Carr
Raymond Aron (with many references to Clausewitz) is usually classified among the realist authors, however its writings are much more moderate than those of the American authors of its time.

Critics of realism

Realism and the neorealism were shown by the critical authors, feminist and post-modern, to propagate a paranoiac vision international relations, which would act like a “prophecy car-director”: the practice of the official decision makers being guided by the principles of political realism, reality would come to conform to the realistic theory, considered as the most pessimistic vision of the reports/ratios interetatic.

The accused authors answer in general that their detractors are idealistic unable to see the world such as it is, and that the historical experiment gives them reason.

Criticisms carried to realism can be total or partial.

the critics total declare a rupture total the realistic theory. Holding of these criticisms reproach realistic “for not producing any verifiable and transmissible scientific knowledge”. It also reproach them for individualizing the center of décison within a government whereas this last is composed of several organizations (pursuing divergent goals which more is). Moreover, the realistic theory made of the power its central concept with the detriment of other variables. By concentrate on the East-West conflict (during the cold war), the realistic theory remained blind in front of the crises of the South. This theory is sometimes considered to be cynical and pessimistic. It is also reproached to him for refusing the inclusion of other parameters in their analyzes like the economic factor and the co-operation.

criticisms partial attack some concepts of realism. Dissociation between foreign politics and internal policy is regarded as artificial. They also reproach the “national interest” be a fuzzy concept since no State will act against its interest, and that the national interest differs from one leader to another. The balance of the power was criticized him also puic it would thus have other modes of reorganization of the international scene a political unit or a group of units constitutes an example of this structuring. Moreover the history showed that “the periods of balance would be only exceptional weathers”.

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