From Realpolitik to realism: the American reception of a German conception of politics (original) (raw)
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Diplomacy & Statecraft, 2024
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Hans Morgenthau, realism, and the scientific study of international politics
Social Researcher, 1994
BY ROBERT JERVIS X OLiTiCAL science is a very trendy discipline. Few books or articles are cited a decade, let alone a generation, after they are written. When scholars die, their ideas often die with them, although they may be reinvented later and trumpeted as new. Hans Morgenthau is a rare, if partial, exception to this generalization. Students still read his work, especially but not exclusively Politics Among Nations which to a large degree made the field; scholars still cite his work, even if they have not read it recently or carefully and even if their main objective is to attack it; and, perhaps more importantly, there is much to be gained by re-reading his books and thinking about what he has to say. Morgenthau wrote too much for me to even attempt a summary, and, like any subtle and supple thinker, he voiced too many contradictions to permit ready distillations. As both a detached scholar and a passionate observer of world politics, Morgenthau sought to have his general philosophy guide his views on specific issues and yet to remain open enough to allow his observations of the wisdom and folly-usually the latter-around him alter some of his most deeply-held beliefs. In a world in which scholarship and public policy are increasingly separate, in which highest academic prestige goes to those who construct the most abstract and apparently
"Second Nature": Realism's Transatlantic Origins, 1880-1910
Beginning in the 1890s as US political elites began to think of the US as a "world power" or "great power"-a status that was considered distinct from a merely continental or hemispheric one. There is evidence for this in the writings of academic intellectuals such as the political scientist Paul Reinsch, the geographer Ellen Churchill Semple, and the historian and publicist Alfred Mahan, as well in the political rhetoric employed by politicians such as Henry Cabot Lodge and Theodore Roosevelt. This semantic and ideological shift in the self-image of the United States has its parallel in similar processes at work in Germany in the 1890s. At that time, German imperialism, long focused on the continent, began to develop a navally-oriented Weltpolitik around which intellectuals elaborated a discourse on the requirements of national greatness and "world empire." This essay argues that the roots of the American foreign policy realism of the 1930s and 40s can be traced to this transatlantic moment.
Jens Steffek/Leonie Holthaus: Prussians, Nazis and Peaceniks. Changing Images of Germany in International Relations, 2020
In this chapter we show how Germany’s fight against the Versailles peace settlement was intertwined with the rise of realism in the US. That early International Relations (IR) realism in North America had a notable German connection is undisputed in the literature. The historiography of IR so far located this connection in the personal history of Jewish émigré scholars, such as Hans J. Morgenthau, John (Hans-Hermann) Herz and Arnold Wolfers. These academics witnessed the collapse of the Weimar Republic and Hitler’s rise to power, which instilled in them great scepticism towards all narratives of linear progress and civilisation. Together with the refugees, German ideas travelled across the Atlantic that were congenial to realist attitudes, prominently Max Weber’s sociology of domination and Carl Schmitt’s agonistic conception of politics. These biographical and intellectual pathways were important, but we contend that they represent just one side of realism’s German connection. In this chapter we reveal a somewhat darker legacy. We show how reactionary Americans and German revisionists, in particular law scholars, jointly deployed realist arguments to discredit the League of Nations, the Kellogg-Briand Pact and the Versailles peace settlement. Our discussion focusses on the American isolationist lawyer Edwin M. Borchard (1884–1951) who already in the early 1930s propagated ‘realism’ as an approach to the study of IR, semantically opposed to the ‘evangelism’ of the Wilsonian internationalists. In the 1920s and 1930s, a sizeable portion of the German international law community sought to develop theoretical positions that could bolster the country’s revisionist claims and undermine the legitimacy of the Versailles settlement. As we will show in this chapter, the testimony of an American colleague questioning the validity and durability of the Versailles order while calling for more political ‘realism’ came in handy. To substantiate this claim, we cite the writings of Fritz Berber and Carl Bilfinger, two eminent German international lawyers who collaborated with the Nazis. We also scrutinise Borchard’s relationship with the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für ausländisches öffentliches Recht und Völkerrecht (KWI) and its long-term director, Viktor Bruns.
Abschiedsvorlesung: Realism and Reality Congruence: Sociology and International Relations
Human Figurations: Long-term Perspectives on the Human Condition, 2012
This paper was written for a double purpose: . to serve as an Abshiedsvorlesung – a "farewell lecture" marking my retirement from my chair at UCD, although that tradition does not exist in British or Irish universities; and as the concluding address at thee nd of the conference on "Globalisation and Civilisation in International Relations: Towards New Models of Human Interdependence", 9–10 April 2010, held at the Royal Irish Academy and UCD. (In the event, because of the indisposition of the planned opening speaker, it became the opening address.) The epigraph chosen for the conference was a remark by Norbert Elias: "It is less possible than ever before to separate what goes on inside a state, and especially the distribution of power within a state, from what takes place between states, in particular their power relationships. Wherever one looks, one comes across the interdependence of intra-state and inter-state processes." The paper discusses this with particular reference to the foreign policy of the United States, drawing on but extending some of the arguments advanced in The American Civilizing Process (Mennell, 2007: 2–7). Walter Russell Mead identified no fewer than four traditions in the history of American foreign policy: the Jeffersonian principle that America avoid all ‘entangling alliances’, and not only refuse to rule over other nations, but refrain from meddling in their affairs altogether; the Hamiltonian tradition of maintaining an international system and preserving a balance of power, acknowledging equals in the world rather than seeking hegemonic domination; the Jacksonian, which defined America’s interests narrowly and avoided intervention unless there was a very direct and immediate threat to them; and the Wilsonian, which attempted to spread American-style democracy across the globe, through international organisations (2001: xvii). Arguably, since 2001, American policy has breached all four traditions. The important point, however, is that all four traditions were formed in and had relevance to a world characterised by a much lower level of interdependence among humanity as a whole. And since the Second World War American foreign policy has generally been regarded as being directed by one or other form of "realism". That has tended to involve an aggressive pursuit of what was perceived to be the "national interest". This paper appears even more relevant in the age of Trump and Brexit than it was in 2010.