Holmes Chapter 2: Political Realism

1. Holmes Chapter 2: Political Realism Is realism an accurate depictions of what occurs within international relations and foreign policy? Does it tell us how to think about foreign policy?

2. Realism’s Image • Realpolitik (power politics): “the only creed appropriate to foreign relations…” • US must play the game of power politics efficiently or lose the game to someone else. • Men who “won the West…made America great…unburdened by sentimentality…” (p. 51) • What is the image here? Is it accurate? What role does it play/what use might it be to policymakers?

3. The role of morality • On one realist view, morality is “unobtrusive, almost feminine, function of the gentle civilizer of national self-interest…” (p. 51) • Political realists of the 20th Century: Reinhold Nieburh, George Kennan, Hans Morgenthau, Robert Osgood, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Henry Kissinger. • According to Holmes, much of American foreign policy since WWII has conformed to realist prescriptions: There is no room for morality.

4. The philosophical problem • There are various aspects of the international circumstances that lend themselves to a realist perspective • (1) It seems permitted for states to do everything individuals are not permitted to do—(e.g., lie, kill, steal…) • Woodrow Wilson (1917) “we are at the beginning of an age in which it will be insisted that the same standards of conduct and responsibility for wrong done shall be observed among nations…as among individuals.” • Is such a thing possible?

5. Thucydides in the Peloponnesian War • Athenians say that the weak have always been subject to the strong. Claims of injustice are not plausible. Athenians claim that you [the Lacedaemonians] thought our power was fine until there was a threat to you. The claim of justice “no one ever yet brought forward to hinder his ambition when he had a chance of gaining anything by might…” (52)

6. Relationship Between Morality and Self-Interest • [A realist need not be a conventionalist or relativist about morality] However, two positions like this: • (1) Hobbes: Sovereign states have no authority over them and morality requires such authority. [The sovereign determines right and wrong.] So nations are in a state of nature and there is no justice in the state of nature.

7. Morality/Self-Interest • Callicles: The weak are subject to the strong. There is a ‘natural justice’ in which the strong rule over the weak.’ • (Callicles assumes the strong should rule.) • Laws and conventions hamper the strong and keep the strong from ruling appropriately. The (false) ideal of equality ties the hands of the strong. Two moralities result: The natural dominance of the strong and the conventional morality which protects the weak.

8. Machpolitik • Thrasymachus (in Book 2 of the Republic –Callicles is in Book 1) also thinks the strong should prevail. • Social Darwinism asserts that view as well. So another distinction is between public and private morality. Private: Governs the conduct of individuals in their personal relations. Public: Governs the conduct of individuals in their role in government, business or public life.

9. Machiavelli’s ‘The Prince’ • According to Machiavelli, the prince “cannot possibly exercise all those virtues for which men are called ‘good’” because he must do what is necessary for the preservation of the state. The prince must jettison private morality for the greater good.

10. Collective Morality • Is collective morality fundamentally different than private morality? • Von Treitschke: the State is to be judged by standards “which are set for it by its own nature and ultimate aims…” This is a “higher morality…” • The collective morality of the state has priority. Private morality can be permissibly violated.

11. Fundamental of realism • Most realists view the collective morality of the state as inferior (morally speaking) to person/individual morality. But they don’t think personal morality can govern foreign affairs. • Political realism is also used to imply something that rejects emotions and idealism.

12. Positivistic realism • Positivists argued that, for something to be a statement, it has to be capable of being verified (shown true or false). [Religion was thought not to be made up of such statements and emotivists thought moral claims were more like saying ‘boo’ or ‘hooray’ rather than true or false. • Holmes calls positivistic realism the claim that morality has not application whatever to international relations. • Right and wrong only apply to the actions of individuals.

13. Normative realism • A normative claim is a claim about what should be the case. • Normative realism “allows that one can make moral judgments about international affairs but …one ought not to do so in conducting foreign policy…” (p. 57)One can make sense of the idea that Nation X did something wrong but we should referain from making such judgments. • Machiavelli: The prince should exhibit virtue when he can…The soft realist: The state should be moral when it can…

14. A higher order justification for realism • The state promotes and maintains values. [Plato, Augustine, Treitschke, Hegel, John Jay, Mussolini] • GE Moore: Society is necessary for the highest goods. • The modern version of raison d’ etat is the idea of national interest. • Other claims • (1) Nations always act from self interest • (2) System of international relations requires acting from self interest [Hobbes/Clauswitz] • (3) The nature of the human condition precludes reliance on morality in international affairs [Niebuhr/Augustine] • (4) Acting on moral considerations has worse consequences (Kennan, Schlesshinger)

15. Recent justifications of realism: Isolationism v. Idealism • Historical events US seized the Philippines from Spain but realized this was a mistake and backed off and became isolationist. Lincoln: All the armies of Europe…”could not by force take a drink from the Ohio…” US geographically isolated. Wilson: America’s moral superiority should keep it out of war. (But we were drawn into WWI) Osgood: “If…Wilson erred…” it was not by leading the US into war but by failing “to prepare the people to see their entrance into a foreign war as an act consistent with national ideals…” (p. 60)

16. National security • Wilson’s idealist mistake was to fail to realize that he couldn’t use ‘moral suasion’ and had to be prepared to use power. • Kennan: The failure to maintain the balance of power sowed the seeds for WWII. • Thus idealism led to WWII.

17. Niebuhrian realism • (Obama has said that Niebuhr has an influence on his foreign policy.) • Niebuhr argues that “group relations express collective egoism and “can never be as ethical as those which characterize individual relations’.” • We cannot respond morally in collective situations. (So it is not normative realism.) • People subordinate their personal interests and moral compass to the service of the state.

18. Nieburh: Why can’t we be moral in collectives • It’s a psychological claim. • (1) There is a ‘stubbornness of sin’ in all humans. This is part of the human condition and can’t be corrected. • [Is there a secular version of this claim?] • We should not be romantic and overestimate our ability to be good. • It’s part of our ‘tragic nature’. • (2) We lose ourselves in collectively egoistic projects (like nationalism?) • P. 66 “Loyalty to the nation is a high form of altruism when compared with lesser loyalties…unselfishness of individuals makes for the selfishness of nations…” • Holmes: These two accounts conflict with each other but there is a psychological truth within it.

19. Neorealism • The balance of power approach. • Churchill: Balance of power “is a law of public policy…” • Holmes: A major problem is knowing when the power is balanced. In Vietnam, the morale of the Vietnamese was stronger than the Americans and so the estimates of the balance of power were mistaken. • The balance of power cannot maintain peace because it assumes leaders are rational in a way they often arne’t.

20. What has been the motivation of American leaders since WWII?