REALISM PROVIDES THE BEST SYNTHESIS - wcdebate.com · Web viewStephen M. Walt, Robert and Renee Belfer Professor of International Relations Harvard University, 2009, "Realism, really?"

West Coast Publishing 1Realism Good/Bad

Realism Good/Bad

Realism Good – Peace..............................................................................................................................................2Realism Good – Perm Solves....................................................................................................................................3Realism Good – State-Focus Solves..........................................................................................................................4Realism Good – Survival Outweighs.........................................................................................................................5Realism Good – Perm Solves....................................................................................................................................6Realism Good – Relativism Bad................................................................................................................................7Realism Good – Inevitable.......................................................................................................................................8Realism Good – Inevitable.......................................................................................................................................9Realism Good – Deter China..................................................................................................................................10Realism Good – Accurate.......................................................................................................................................11Realism Good – Criticism Fails................................................................................................................................12Realism Good – Self-Correcting..............................................................................................................................13Realism Good – Key to Ethics.................................................................................................................................14Realism Good – Alternative Fails............................................................................................................................15Realism Good – Perm Solves..................................................................................................................................16Realism Good – Key to Foreign Policy....................................................................................................................17Realism Good – Accurate.......................................................................................................................................18Realism Good – Accurate – A2: Outdated..............................................................................................................19Realism Good – Morality Bad.................................................................................................................................20Realism Good – Morality Bad.................................................................................................................................21Realism Good – Moral............................................................................................................................................22Realism Good – Cooperation.................................................................................................................................23Realism Good – Synthesizes Criticism....................................................................................................................24Realism Good – Solves Criticism.............................................................................................................................25Realism Good – Genocide......................................................................................................................................26

Realism Bad – Genocide/War................................................................................................................................27Realism Bad – Morality Good.................................................................................................................................28Realism Bad – Feminism........................................................................................................................................29Realism Bad – Inaccurate.......................................................................................................................................30Realism Bad – Must Reject.....................................................................................................................................31Realism Bad – Alternative – Criticism.....................................................................................................................32


Realism Good – Peace

Realism Embraces Long-Term PeaceStephen M. Walt, Robert and Renee Belfer Professor of International Relations Harvard University, 2009, "Realism, really?" Foreign Policy, vol. 175, p. 10

Contrary to Wolfowitz's claims, there is no "debate" between realists and idealists over the desirability of democratic government and human rights. I know of no realists who oppose the peaceful encouragement of these values, and Wolfowitz offers no examples of any. The real issue, as the Iraq debate revealed, is whether the United States and its democratic allies should be trying to spread these ideals at the point of a gun or sacrificing other important interests in order to advance them.


Realism Good – Perm Solves

1. THE CRITIQUE IS COUNTERPRODUCTIVE. REALISM SYNTHESIZES CRITICAL THEORIES IN ORDER TO PROVIDE FOR THE POSSIBILITY OF TRANSITION. Alastair J.H. Murray, professor of politics at the University of Wales Swansea, RECONSTRUCTING REALISM, 1997, p. 178-179.

In Wendt’s constructivism, the argument appears in its most basic version, presenting an analysis of realist assumptions which associate it with a conservative account of human nature. In Linklater's critical theory it moves a stage further, presenting an analysis of realist theory which locates it within a conservative discourse of state-centrism. In Ashley's post-structuralism it reaches its highest form, presenting an analysis of realist strategy which locates it not merely within a conservative statist order, but, moreover, within an active conspiracy of silence to reproduce it. Finally, in Tickner's feminism, realism becomes all three simultaneously and more besides, a vital player in a greater, overarehing, masculine conspiracy against femininity. Realism thus appears, first, as a doctrine providing the grounds for a relentless pessimism, second, as a theory which provides an active justification for such pessimism, and, third, as a strategy which proactively seeks to enforce this pessimism, before it becomes the vital foundation underlying all such pessimism in international theory. Yet, an examination of the arguments put forward from each of these perspectives suggests not only that the effort to locate realism within a conservative, rationalist camp is untenable, but, beyond this, that realism is able to provide reformist strategies which are superior to those that they can generate themselves. The progressive purpose which motivates the critique of realism in these perspectives ultimately generates a bias which undermines their own ability to generate effective strategies of transition. In constructivism, this bias appears in its most limited version, producing strategies so divorced from the obstacles presented by the current structure of international politics that they threaten to become counter-productive. In critical theory it moves a stage further, producing strategies so abstract that one is at a loss to determine what they actually imply in terms of the current structure of international politics. And, in post-modernism, it reaches its highest form, producing an absence of such strategies altogether, until we reach the point at which we are left with nothing but critique. Against this failure, realism contains the potential to act as the basis of a more constructive approach to international relations, incorporating many of the strengths of reflectivism and yet avoiding its weaknesses. It appears, in the final analysis, as an opening within which some synthesis of rationalism and reflectivism, of conservatism and progressivism, might be built.

2. SIMULTANEOUS ACTION AND QUESTIONING AVOIDS THE DANGERS OF GEOPOLITICS BESTDavid Campbell, professor of international politics at the University of Newcastle, MORAL SPACES: RETHINKING ETHICS AND WORLD POLITICS, 1999, p. 47-48.

Moreover, these paradoxes and dilemmas are understandable in terms of a "double injunction": on the one hand, European cultural identity cannot be dispersed (and when I say "cannot," this should also be taken as "must not"—and this double state of affairs is at the heart of the difficulty). It cannot and must not be dispersed into a myriad of provinces, into a multiplicity of self-enclosed idioms or petty little nationalisms, each one jealous and untranslatable. It cannot and must not renounce places of great circulation or heavy traffic, the great avenues or thoroughfares of translation and communication, and thus, of mediatization. But, on the other hand, it cannot and must not accept the capital of a centralizing authority that, by means of trans-European cultural mechanisms...be they state-run or not, would control and standardize. "Neither monopoly nor dispersion," that is the condition for European identity Derrida identifies as the consequence of the double injunction. With neither of the two available options being desirable, one confronts an aporia, an undecidable and ungrounded political space, where no path is "clear and given" where no "certain knowledge opens up the way in advance," where no "decision is already made."


Realism Good – State-Focus Solves

1. SPEAKING IN TERMS OF THE STATE PREVENTS WORSE STATISMNoam Chomsky, Chair of Modern Language and Linguistics at MIT, CANADIAN DIMENSION, May 15, 1997

By visions, I mean the conception of a future society that animates what we actually do, a society in which a decent human being might want to live. By goals, I mean the choices and tasks that are within reach, that we will pursue one way or another guided by a vision that may be distant and hazy. On all such matters, our knowledge and understanding are shallow; as in virtually every area of human life, we proceed on the basis of intuition and experience, hopes and fears. Goals involve hard choices with very serious human consequences. Goals and visions can appear to be in conflict, and often are. There's no contradiction in that, as I think we all know from ordinary experience. Let me take my own case, to illustrate what I have in mind. My personal visions are fairly traditional anarchist ones. According to this anarchist vision, any structure of hierarchy and authority carries a heavy burden of justification, whether it involves personal relations or a larger social order. If it cannot bear the burden - sometimes it can - then it is illegitimate and should be dismantled. I share that vision, though it runs directly counter to my goals. My short-term goals are to defend and even strengthen elements of state authority which, though illegitimate in fundamental ways, are critically necessary right now to impede the dedicated efforts to 'roll back' the progress that has been achieved in extending democracy and human rights. State authority is now under severe attack in the more democratic societies, but not because it conflicts with the libertarian vision. Rather the opposite: because if offers (weak) protection to some aspects of that vision. In today's world, I think, the goals of a committed anarchist should be to defend some state institutions from the attack against them, while trying at the same time to pry them open to more meaningful public participation - and ultimately, to dismantle them in a much more free society; if the appropriate circumstances can be achieved.

2. THE STATE IS ESSENTIAL TO BREAK DOWN THE HISTORY OF DOMINATIONMichael Shapiro, professor of political science at the University of Hawaii, MORAL SPACES: RETHINKING ETHICS AND WORLD POLITICS, 1999, p. 76-77.

Most pertinent for the discussion here is the ethical sensibility that Derrida derives from this aporia in the midst of the European identity. He asserts that the lack of a clear "path" in the encounter with alterity (within and without) is precisely what opens the way to an ethics and politics: "[W]hen the path is clear, when a certain knowledge opens the way in advance. . . one simply applies or implements a program." Whereas, "ethics, politics, and responsibility, if there are any, will only ever have begun with the experience and experiment of the aporia." Derrida goes on to elaborate the senses in which the dominant European self-understanding has led to a failure in ethical discernment precipitated by its moral geography. Having taken itself "to be a promontory, an advance—the avant-garde of geography and history," it has (and "will have") "never ceased to make advances on the other.

3. STATE ACTION ESTABLISHES JUSTICE AMONG MANY THIRD PARTIESDavid Campbell, professor of international politics at the University of Newcastle, MORAL SPACES: RETHINKING ETHICS AND WORLD POLITICS, 1999, p. 38.

In these terms, proximity could also signify the closeness of culture, the priority of time over space. But on other occasions the spatial dimension is there, notably when the third party enters. "In proximity a subject is implicated in a way not reducible to the spatial sense which proximity takes on when the third party troubles it by demanding justice.” Indeed, the major problem with the entry of the third party is that the disturbance of responsibility in the one-to-one relationship it creates requires justice. As Levinas argues, "[I]f there were only two people in the world, there would be no need for law courts because I would always be responsible for and before, the other." The justice required is, according to Levinas, a justice of laws, and courts, and institutions, which means that as soon as the third party enters, "the ethical relationship with the other becomes political and enters into a totalizing discourse of ontology." Moreover, the spatial dimension foregrounded by the third party's disturbance and the resultant need for justice is associated with the state. "Who is closest to me? Who is the Other?.. . We must investigate carefully. Legal justice is required. There is need for a state." Equally, in Otherwise Than Being, Levinas writes that "a problem is posited by proximity itself, which, as the immediate itself, is without problems. The


extraordinary commitment of the other to the third party calls for control, a search for justice, society and the State.” Indeed, Levinas has an approving view of the state, regarding it as "the highest achievement in the lives of western peoples,” something perhaps attributable to his contestable interpretation of the legitimacy of the state of Israel.


Realism Good – Survival Outweighs

1. SURVIVAL TRUMPS THEORETICAL CRITIQUE. REALISM MAY NOT BE PERFECT, BUT SHUNNING IT LEAVES NO ALTERNATIVE AT ALL Alastair J.H. Murray, professor of politics at the University of Wales Swansea, RECONSTRUCTING REALISM, 1997, p. 195-196.

Perhaps the most famous realist refrain is that all politics are power politics. It is the all that is important here. Realism lays claim to a relevance across systems, and because it relies on a conception of human nature, rather than a historically specific structure of world politics, it can make good on this claim. If its observations about human nature are even remotely accurate, the problems that it addresses will transcend contingent formulations of the problem of political order. Even in a genuine cosmopolis, conflict might become technical, but it would not be eliminated altogether.67 The primary manifestations of power might become more economic or institutional rather than (para)military but, where disagreements occur and power exists, the employment of the one to ensure the satisfactory resolution of the other is inevitable short of a wholesale transformation of human behaviour. Power is ultimately of the essence of politics; it is not something which can be banished, only tamed and restrained. As a result, realism achieves a universal relevance to the problem of political action which allows it to relate the reformist zeal of critical theory, without which advance would be impossible, with the problem-solver's sensible caution that, before reform is attempted, whatever measure of security is possible under contemporary conditions must first be ensured.

2. THE AFFIRMATIVE CLAIMS ARE DESCRIPTIVE, NOT NORMATIVE. EVEN IF REALISM IS PROBLEMATIC, THE PLAN IS STILL A GOOD IDEAStefano Guzzini, assistant professor at Central European University, REALISM IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL ECONOMY, 1998, p. 227.

The main line of critique can be summarized as follows: realism does not take its central concepts seriously enough. To start with, its critiques claim that realism is a sceptical practice which however, stops short of problematizing the inherent theory of the state. It is, second, a practice which informs an international community. Third, international politics is not power politics because it resembles realist precepts, but because the international community which holds a realist world-view acts in such a way as to produce power politics: it is a social construction. Realist expectations might hold, not because they objectively correspond to something out there, but because agents make them the maxims that guide their actions. Finally, this can have very significant policy effects: even at the end of the Cold War which might have shattered realist world-views, realist practices could mobilize old codes, such as to belittle the potential historical break of the post-Berlin wall system. Realism still underlies major re-conceptualization of the present international system, from Huntington's geocultural reification to ‘neomedievalism’ - and justifies the foreign policies which can be derived from them.



1. “REALISM VS. IDEALISM” IS A FALSE DICHOTOMY: WE CAN DO BOTHStrobe Talbott, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State, FOREIGN POLICY, Spring 2000, p. 118.

In the decades since, many scholars, statesmen, and pundits have depicted U.S. foreign policy in this century as a seesaw contest between idealism -- or "Wilsonianism" -- on the one hand and realism on the other; between high principle and raw power; between a bighearted, starry-eyed America and a two-fisted, hardheaded one. Wilson in his long coat and top hat has become the cartoon personification of the squishy-soft half of this stereotype. U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, in his Rough Rider gear, is Wilson's supposed antipode. This false dichotomy misses one of the most important, distinctive, and salutary aspects of American foreign policy: the United States' persistent effort to combine realism and idealism in the role it plays in the world. In public opinion polls and elections alike, the American people have made clear that they demand something nobler and more altruistic from their government and armed forces than the coldblooded calculus of raison d'etat of realpolitik in which European statecraft has often taken pride. Particularly in this century, the United States has explicitly and persistently sought to champion both its national interests and its national values, without seeing the two goals to be in contradiction.

2. COMBINING THE INSIGHTS OF ALL SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT WORKS BESTRobert Jervis, American Political Science Association, “International Organization”, Autumn 1998, p. 971.

If the discipline is functioning well, each school of though enriches others as powerful research of one kind strengthens, not weakens, the alternatives. No one approach consistently maintains a leading position: each of them catches important elements of international politics, and many of our arguments are about the relative importance of and the interrelationships among various factors. Thus, in their article in this issue, Katzenstein, Keohane, and Krasner usefully point to the dialectical nature of social science. Popular approaches inevitably are taken too far and call up opposing lines of arguments; and if any important approach is ignored for too long, scholars will return to it as the picture of international politics becomes excessively imbalanced.

3. ASSUMING A SEPARATION BETWEEN IDEALS AND INTERESTS FAILSPaul Wolfowitz, Dean and professor of International Relations, Johns Hopkins University School of Strategic and International Studies, "Asian Democracy and American Interests," HERITAGE LECTURE No. 685, September 29, 2000, http://www.heritage.org/library/lecture/hl685.html

I remember an obscure but extremely important argument that took place in the early months of the Reagan Administration, when some of the so-called realists in our Administration wanted to do away with the Bureau of Human Rights in the State Department. They viewed it as a troublesome creation of the Carter Administration that did nothing but harass America’s friends while ignoring much greater human rights abuses by the Communists and other left-wing dictatorships. I say so-called realists because it seems to me, and it seemed at the time, that abandoning the cause of human rights in foreign policy would have been a supremely unrealistic thing to do. A policy that pursues only America’s so-called interests, as opposed to American ideals—indeed, a policy which assumes that there’s a sharp separation between ideals and interests—would have sacrificed an enormous base of domestic support. Even more important, it would have abandoned what was perhaps the most potent instrument the United States possessed for weakening and eventually unraveling the Soviet empire, an instrument more powerful even than our formidable ability to compete militarily.

4. HISTORICALLY, AMERICA HAS COMBINED REALISM AND IDEALISMStrobe Talbott, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State, FOREIGN POLICY, Spring 2000, p. 118.

While Wilson gave that principle a voice and put it into action, so did Roosevelt. In fact, Roosevelt preached the gospel of hardheaded idealism before Wilson did. In 1914, when Kaiser Wilhelm's army was brutalizing Belgium, it was Roosevelt, then in opposition, who cried out against a "breach of international morality" and who called upon his own country to come to the rescue. "We ought not," he said, "solely to consider our own interests." He also called for "a great world agreement among all the civilized military powers to back righteousness by force." That was a full two years before Wilson endorsed the idea of a League of


Nations. If Roosevelt were around today, he would be mightily offended to hear himself depicted as a sort of Yankee Richelieu or Metternich.


Realism Good – Relativism Bad

1. CLAIMS OF CULTURAL IMPERIALISM ARE MERELY AN ATTEMPT TO COVER UP HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONSRein Mullerson, professor and Chair of International Law at King’s College (London), HUMAN RIGHTS DIPLOMACY, 1997, p. 84-85.

Another aspect of the arguments of cultural relativists is the suggestion that, since human rights stem from, are inherently linked with and are virtually an extension of, individualism, they are not applicable in societies with different, that is to say, communitarian, traditions. However, it seems that references to communal or collectivist traditions to justify human rights violations also often miss the point. In addition, such references can be, and sometimes are, simply used to mask systematic violations of human rights in the interests of ruling elites. Donnelly has noted that 'communitarian rhetoric too often cloaks the depredations of corrupt and often Westernized or deracinated elites'." After the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the collapse of communism, it has become clear for practically everybody, even in the former socialist countries, that references to the supreme interests of the collective, be it a state, society or party, were simply used to keep in power the communist elite - or the new class, as Milovan Djilas called it. Such a policy in the USSR, though probably helping to mobilize the population for the initial industrialization (an industrialization which coincidentally was achieved at quite inhumane costs), eventually led to the stagnation of society and the collapse of the whole economic, political and social system. Collectivist ideas were manipulated by the leaders in order to subordinate everybody to the interests of the Communist party.

2. CULTURAL RELATIVISM ABANDONS MORAL DISCOURSE Jack Donnelly, Andrew Mellon Professor at the Graduate School of International Studies at the University of Denver, INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, Spring 1998, p. 20.

Although appeals to universal values suggest that one is acting on more than narrow, selfish interests, allegedly universal norms often reflect instead the particular values or interests of a given time, place or group. Contemporary international human rights norms, no less than the classic standard of civilization, are European in origin. But genealogy is no substitute for moral argument. Unless we deny all distinctions between social constructions--and thus abandon moral discourse or reduce it to unarguable, emotive expressions of personal or cultural preferences--we must ask whether there are good reasons to support or oppose particular practices.

3. CULTURAL RELATIVISM SILENCES MARGINALIZED VOICES FROM WITHIN EACH CULTUREL. Amede Obiora, researcher, CASE WESTERN LAW REVIEW, Winter 1997, p. 282.

One may appreciate the value of attending to cultural specificities without discounting the problems that arise from essentializing culture. To the extent that culture is socially constituted, it tends to be structured by disparate power configurations, shot through with vested interests, and experienced differently by members of the same community. Social stratification means that culture is seldom neutral. Consequently, prioritizing or espousing the inviolability of culture runs the risk of foisting contested claims as universal and consensual, the risk of occluding real social inequities and tensions, the risk of perpetuating the voicelessness and powerlessness of persons who do not have an equitable input in the constitution of the culture in question precisely because their marginalization had rendered them voiceless and powerless.


Realism Good – Inevitable

1. REALISM IS TOO EMBEDDED WITHIN DAILY PRACTICE TO BE REMOVEDStefano Guzzini, Assistant Professor at Central European University, 1998. REALISM IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL ECONOMY. p. 212.

For this reason, forgetting realism is also questionable. Of course, academic observers should not bow to the whims of daily politics. But staying at distance, or being critical, does not mean that they should lose the capacity to understand the languages of those who make significant decisions, not only in government, but also in firms, NGOs, and other institutions. To the contrary, this understanding, as increasingly varied as it may be, is a prerequisite for their very profession. More particularly, it is a prerequisite for opposing the more irresponsible claims made in the name, although not always necessarily in the spirit, of realism.

2. REALISM COULD NOT BE SIMPLY REMOVEDStefano Guzzini, Assistant Professor at Central European University, 1998. REALISM IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL ECONOMY. p. 212.

Therefore, in a third step, this chapter also claims that it is impossible just to heap realism onto the dustbin of history and start anew. This is a non-option. Although realism as a strictly causal theory has been a disappointment, various realist assumptions are well alive in the minds of many practitioners and observers of international affairs. Although it does not correspond to a theory which helps us to understand a real world with objective laws, it is a world-view which suggests thoughts about it, and which permeates our daily language for making sense of it.

3. REALIST ASSUMPTIONS ARE TOO ALIVE TO BE STOPPEDStefano Guzzini, Assistant Professor at Central European University, 1998. REALISM IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL ECONOMY. p. 235.

Third, this last chapter has argued that although the evolution of realism has been mainly a disappointment as a general causal theory, we have to deal with it. On the one hand, realist assumptions and insights are used and merged in nearly all frameworks of analysis offered in International Relations or International Political Economy.

4. REALISM OFFERS INSIGHTS INTO POLITICAL RELATIONSHIPSStefano Guzzini, Assistant Professor at Central European University, 1998. REALISM IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL ECONOMY. p. 235.

Realist theories have a persisting power for constructing our understanding of the present. Their assumptions, both as theoretical constructs, and as particular lessons of the past translated from one generation of decision-makers to another, help mobilizing certain understandings and dispositions to action. They also provide them with legitimacy. Despite realism's several deaths as a general causal theory, it can still powerfully enframe action. It exists in the minds, and is hence reflected in the actions, of many practitioners. Whether or not the world realism depicts is out there, realism is. Realism is not a causal theory that explains International Relations, but, as long as realism continues to be a powerful mind-set, we need to understand realism to make sense of International Relations. In other words, realism is a still necessary hermeneutical bridge to the understanding of world politics

5. ATTEMPTS TO GET RID OF REALISM WILL BE FUTILEStefano Guzzini, Assistant Professor at Central European University, 1998. REALISM IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL ECONOMY. p. 235.

. Getting rid of realism without having a deep understanding of it, not only risks unwarranted dismissal of some valuable theoretical insights that I have tried to gather in this book; it would also be futile. Indeed, it might be the best way to tacitly and uncritically reproduce it.


Realism Good – Inevitable

1. REALISM IS USED BY EVERY MAJOR STATE IN EXISTENCEJohn Mearsheimer, Professor at University of Chicago, 2001.THE TRAGEDY OF GREAT POWER POLITICS, Accessed June 7, 2004. http://www.wwnorton.com/catalog/fall01/002025excerpt.htm

The optimists' claim that security competition and war among the great powers has been burned out of the system is wrong. In fact, all of the major states around the globe still care deeply about the balance of power and are destined to compete for power among themselves for the foreseeable future. Consequently, realism will offer the most powerful explanations of international politics over the next century, and this will be true even if the debates among academic and policy elites are dominated by non-realist theories. In short, the real world remains a realist world.

2. REALISM CANNOT BE WISHED AWAY POWERFUL STATES RELY ON REALISMJohn Mearsheimer, Professor at University of Chicago, 2001.THE TRAGEDY OF GREAT POWER POLITICS, Accessed June 7, 2004. http://www.wwnorton.com/catalog/fall01/002025excerpt.htm

States still fear each other and seek to gain power at each other's expense, because international anarchy—the driving force behind great-power behavior—did not change with the end of the Cold War, and there are few signs that such change is likely any time soon. States remain the principal actors in world politics and there is still no night watchman standing above them. For sure, the collapse of the Soviet Union caused a major shift in the global distribution of power. But it did not give rise to a change in the anarchic structure of the system, and without that kind of profound change, there is no reason to expect the great powers to behave much differently in the new century than they did in previous centuries. Indeed, considerable evidence from the 1990s indicates that power politics has not disappeared from Europe and Northeast Asia, the regions in which there are two or more great powers, as well as possible great powers such as Germany and Japan.

3. THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY ACTS IN A REALIST MANNERStefano Guzzini, Assistant Professor at Central European University, 1998. REALISM IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL ECONOMY. p. 227.

Third, international politics is not power politics because it resembles realist precepts, but because the international community which holds a realist world-view acts in such a way as to produce power politics: it is a social construction. Realist expectations might hold, not because they objectively correspond to something out there, but because agents make them the maxims that guide their actions. Finally, this can have very significant policy effects: even at the end of the Cold War which might have shattered realist world-views, realist practices could mobilize old codes, such as to belittle the potential historical break of the post-Berlin wall system. Realism still underlies major re-conceptualization of the present international system, from Huntington's geocultural reification to `neomedievalism' - and justifies the foreign policies which can be derived from them.


Realism Good – Deter China

1. CHINA RELIES ON REALISM WITHOUT IT THEY WILL BECOME HEGEMONJohn Mearsheimer, Professor at University of Chicago, 2001.THE TRAGEDY OF GREAT POWER POLITICS, Accessed June 7, 2004. http://www.wwnorton.com/catalog/fall01/002025excerpt.htm

This U.S. policy on China is misguided. A wealthy China would not be a status quo power but an aggressive state determined to achieve regional hegemony. This is not because a rich China would have wicked motives, but because the best way for any state to maximize its prospects for survival is to be the hegemon in its region of the world. Although it is certainly in China's interest to be the hegemon in Northeast Asia, it is clearly not in America's interest to have that happen. China is still far away from the point where it has enough latent power to make a run at regional hegemony.

2. US REALISM IS KEY TO CURBING CHINESE AGGRESSIONJohn Mearsheimer, Professor at University of Chicago, 2001.THE TRAGEDY OF GREAT POWER POLITICS, Accessed June 7, 2004. http://www.wwnorton.com/catalog/fall01/002025excerpt.htm

So it is not too late for the United States to reverse course and do what it can to slow the rise of China. In fact, the structural imperatives of the international system, which are powerful, will probably force the United States to abandon its policy of constructive engagement in the near future. Indeed, there are signs that the new Bush administration has taken the first steps in this direction. Of course, states occasionally ignore the anarchic world in which they operate, choosing instead to pursue strategies that contradict balance-of-power logic. The United States is a good candidate for behaving in that way, because American political culture is deeply liberal and correspondingly hostile to realist ideas. It would be a grave mistake, however, for the United States to turn its back on the realist principles that have served it well since its founding.


Realism Good – Accurate

1. REALISM REMINDS US PEOPLE ARE VIOLENTStefano Guzzini, Assistant Professor at Central European University, December 2001.COPENHAGEN PEACE RESEARCH INSTITUTE WEB PAGE. Accessed June 7, 2004. http://www.ciaonet.org/wps/gus02/gus02.pdf

According to this self-understanding, realists are there to remind us about the fearful, the cruel side of world politics which lurks behind. This distinct face of international politics inevitably shows when the masquerade is over. In the Venetian carnival of international diplomacy, only the experienced will be prepared when the curtain falls and world history picks up its circular course. By trying to occupy a vantage point of (superior) historical experience, science came then as an offer, IR realism could not refuse.

2. REALISM POINTS TO THE ENDEMIC VIOLENCE IN THE WORLDStefano Guzzini, Assistant Professor at Central European University, December 2001.COPENHAGEN PEACE RESEARCH INSTITUTE WEB PAGE. Accessed June 7, 2004. http://www.ciaonet.org/wps/gus02/gus02.pdf

Realism needed to point to a reality which cannot be eventually overcome by politics, to an attitude which would similarly rebuff the embrace by any other intellectual tradition. The “first debate” is usually presented as the place in which this “negative” attitude has been played out, indeed mythically enshrined. It is to this metaphorical foundation to which many self-identified realists return. Yet, I think that the “first debate” is a place where the thoughts not only of so-called idealist scholars, but also of self-stylised realists look unduly impoverished exactly because it is couched in terms of an opposition. When scholars more carefully study the type of opposition, however, they quickly find out that many so-called realist scholars have been not only critical of utopian thought and social engineering, but also of Realpolitik.

3. POWER POLITICS DOES NOT CLAIM ABSOLUTE TRUTH-IT GETS MOST OF THE PICTUREAlexander Wendt, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, 1992.INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION, v. 46 n. 2, p. np.

Anarchy has this meaning only in virtue of collective, insecurity-producing practices, but if those practices are relatively stable, they do constitute a system that may resist change. The fact that worlds of power politics are socially constructed, in other words, does not guarantee they are malleable, for at least two reasons. The first reason is that once constituted, any social system confronts each of its members as an objective social fact that reinforces certain behaviors and discourages others. Self-help systems, for example, tend to reward competition and punish altruism. The possibility of change depends on whether the exigencies of such competition leave room for actions that deviate from the prescribed script.

4. REALISM ACCURATELY DESCRIBES SOME OF THE WORLDS PATTERNSAlexander Wendt, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, 1992.INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION, v. 46 n. 2, p. np.

For both systemic and “psychological” reasons, then, intersubjective understandings and expectations may have a self-perpetuating quality, constituting path-dependencies that new ideas about self and other must transcend. This does not change the fact that through practice agents are continuously producing and reproducing identities and interests, continuously “choosing now the preferences [they] will have later.” But it does mean that choices may not be experienced with meaningful degrees of freedom. This could be a constructivist justification for the realist position that only simple learning is possible in self-help systems. The realist might concede that such systems are socially constructed and still argue that after the corresponding identities and in have become institutionalized, they are almost impossible to transform.


Realism Good – Criticism Fails

1. THEY MISCHARACTERIZE REALISM IT IS ANTI STATUS QUO POLITICSStefano Guzzini, Assistant Professor at Central European University, December 2001.COPENHAGEN PEACE RESEARCH INSTITUTE WEB PAGE. Accessed June 7, 2004. http://www.ciaonet.org/wps/gus02/gus02.pdf

For this double heritage of political realism is full of tensions. Realism as anti-idealism is status-quo oriented. It relies on the entire panoply of arguments so beautifully summarised by Alfred Hirschman. According to the futility thesis, any attempt at change is condemned to be without any real effect. The perversity thesis would argue that far from changing for the better, such policies only add new problems to the already existing ones. And the central jeopardy thesis says that purposeful attempts at social change will only undermine the already achieved. The best is the enemy of the good, and so on.

2. THEIR CRITICISM AMOUNTS TO CONSPIRACY THEORY AND IS TOO IDEALISTICStefano Guzzini, Assistant Professor at Central European University, December 2001.COPENHAGEN PEACE RESEARCH INSTITUTE WEB PAGE. Accessed June 7, 2004. http://www.ciaonet.org/wps/gus02/gus02.pdf

Anti-apparent realism, however, is an attitude more akin to the political theories of suspicion. It looks at what is hidden behind the smokescreen of current ideologies, putting the allegedly self-evident into the limelight of criticism. With the other form of realism , it shares a reluctance to treat beautiful ideas as what they claim to be. But it is much more sensible to their ideological use, revolutionary as well as conservative. Whereas anti-ideal realism defends the status quo, anti-apparent realism questions it. It wants to unmask existing power relations.

3. THE ALTERNATIVE HAS FAILED IT HASN’T CHANGED STATE BASED POLITICSLee Hansen, PhD. Candidate at the Institute of Political Science at the University of Copnhagen, 1997.THE FUTURE OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: MASTERS IN THE MAKING, p. 5.

Having deconstructed the principle of state sovereignty and exposed the dichotomous thinking behind the principle one might assume that it would be fairly easy to come up with alternatives to the sovereign state. This is not the case. Walker says that sovereignty is losing its capability as a convincing answer, but there is no alternative at hand because the spatio-temporal resolution, which is the core dimension of the principle of state sovereignty, is almost as firmly rooted in the radical critique of state sovereignty as it is in the conservative defence of the principle (Walker 1993a: 17). The radical critique much too often argues in favour of world government and a global universalism following then in the footsteps of idealism, simply replacing the international with a global state.


Realism Good – Self-Correcting

1. STUDYING REALISM ENDS WARFrank Harvey, Associate Professor of Political Science, Dalhouse University, 1997.THE FUTURE’S BACK: NUCLEAR RIVALRY, DETERRENCE THEORY, AND CRISIS STABILITY AFTER THE COLD WAR, p. 139.

Finally, the lack of purity and precision, another consequence of linguistic relativism, does not necessarily imply irrelevance of purpose or approach. The study of international relations may not be exact, given limitations noted by Wittgenstein and others, but precision is a practical research problem, not an insurmountable barrier to progress. In fact, most observers who point to the context-dependent nature of language are critical not so much of the social sciences but of the incorrect application of scientific techniques to derive overly precise measurement of weakly developed concepts. Clearly, our understanding of the causes of international conflict—and most notably war—has improved considerably as a consequence of applying sound scientific methods and valid operationalizations. The alternative approach, implicit in much of the postmodern literature, is to fully accept the inadequacy of positivism, throw one’s hands up in failure, given the complexity of the subject, and repudiate the entire enterprise. The most relevant question is whether we would know more or less about international relations if we pursued that strategy.

2. DISCUSSING POWER IS KEY TO DECONSTRUCTING ITStefano Guzzini, Assistant Professor at Central European University, December 2001.COPENHAGEN PEACE RESEARCH INSTITUTE WEB PAGE. Accessed June 7, 2004. http://www.ciaonet.org/wps/gus02/gus02.pdf

A second avenue would be an opening to more philosophical debates in IR in which some of the tenets of political realism might have been taken more seriously by others than IR realists themselves. Many so-called post-structuralists (another of these slippery categories for enemy-image use) have shown no particular fear to reflect on the fathers of political realism – from Max Weber to Carl Schmitt – as well as on their Nietzschean lineage. Arguably, Foucault is inspired b y, although not reducible to, such a political realism. Indeed, the conceptual discussion of a concept like power, central to realism, has been pursued largely outside of IR realism.

3. UNDERSTANDING REALISM IS KEY TO COMBINING THEORY AND PRAXISRobert Keohane, Professor of Government at Harvard, 1986.REALISM, NEOREALISM AND THE STUDY OF WORLD POLITICS, p. 4.

The inescapabiity of theory in studying world politics suggests a second reason for exploring what are labeled here political realism and neorealism. Whatever one’s conclusion about the value of contemporary neorealism for the analysis of world politics in our time, it is important to understand realism and neorealism because of their widespread acceptance in contemporary scholarship and in policy circles. Political realism is deeply embedded in Western thought. Without understanding it, we can neither understand nor criticize our own tradition of thinking about international relations. Nor could we hope to change either our thinking or our practice. All people who are interested in having a sustained professional impact on world affairs should study international relations theory at some time, if only to examine prevailing assumptions and evaluate the basic propositions that they might otherwise take for granted. The danger that one will become the prisoner of unstated assumptions - is rendered particularly acute by the value-laden nature of international relations theory. This does not mean that observers simply see what they want to see: on the contrary, virtually all serious students of world politics view it as a highly imperfect realm of action in which wrongdoing is common and unimaginable evil is threatened.


Realism Good – Key to Ethics

1. REALISM IS NECESSARY PREREQUISITE TO ETHICSD.S.L. Jarvis, Lecturer in IR at the University of Sydney, 2000.INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND THE CHALLENGES OF POSTMODERNISM, p. 130-131.

While the relevance of Ashley’s poststructuralist theory is cause for concern, more disconcerting is its implicit nihilism. Not unexpectedly, Ashley rejects this, insisting that his discourse is not nihilistic but antifoundationalist. Upon closer inspection, however, this position proves both unsustainable and self-defeating. By rejecting foundationalism and all truth claims derived through the application of reason, Ashley unwittingly abandons theory, knowledge, and human practices to the ether of relativism and subjectivism. And by insisting that there “is no extratextual referent that can be used as a basis for adjudicating theoretical disputes,” Ashley depreciates thought, theory, and knowledge to the particular outcomes of certain linguistic, interpretivist, and textual techniques. Ashley is thus forced to conclude that truth, purpose, and meaning can only be textually inferred and never universally or eternally proclaimed. One theory becomes as good as any another theory and a particular truth claim no better or worse than other truth claims. Objective evaluation becomes impossible and, with it, any claim to a science of international politics. All that ‘we might hope for is a subjective interpretivism, where, amid a vacuous intersection of texts, we each reach our own conclusions. This position is both alarming and perplexing: alarming in that it moves us closer to the abyss of ethical relativism and perplexing since it undermines the intelligibility, legitimacy, and logic of Ashley’s own writings. As Chris Brown notes, postmodern approaches end up destroying themselves. Demolishing the thought of modernity by rejecting foundationalism is a self subverting theoretical stance since it prevents “any new thought taking the place from which the old categories have been ejected.” Tony Porter is even more adamant, noting that the poststructural rejection of foundationalism inevitably reduces concepts like truth and reality to subjective intertextual interpretations. Intellectual thought, let alone the possibility of an intersubjective consensus on issues like purpose, meaning, ethics, or truth, becomes impossible. Rather than create new thought categories or knowledge systems, poststructuralists simply devolve knowledge into a series of infinitesimal individual interpretations. Yet the issue is at best a mute one. Refuting the notion of truth is nonsensical. As William Connolly observes, “Do you not presuppose truth (reason, subjectivity, a transcendent-al ethic, and so on) in repudiating it? If so, must you not endorse the standard unequivocally once your own presupposition is revealed to you?” Obviously, notes Connolly, the answer is a resounding “yes, yes, yes, yes.”

2. SYSTEMIC THOUGHT IS KEY TO REFLECTIOND.S.L. Jarvis, Lecturer in IR at the University of Sydney, 2000.INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND THE CHALLENGES OF POSTMODERNISM, p. 7.

Without purpose, International Relations would be a vacuous activity, facile and devoid of meaning. Scholarship would be conducted, but with no aim in mind. Facts would be gathered but for no purpose other than satisfying bibliophiles fond of reading facts. And of themselves, these facts would reveal no knowledge or understanding, but testify only to their own appearance. As Kenneth Waltz notes, “If we gather more and more data and establish more and more associations.. . we will not finally find that we know something. We will simply end up having more and more data and larger sets of correlations. The point, Waltz urges, is to “get beyond the facts of observation,” and look deeper toward the aetiological basis of facts if we wish an understanding and explanation of them. Implicitly, Waltz is suggesting that facts are meaningless other than in the context of epistemological constructs, and that in order to approach an understanding of them, and ascribe meaning to them, it is not facts that need to be understood but the epistemological and ontological orientations that underlie their interpretation. Put another way, we need recognize that while we gather facts, we do so only in the context of reflective purpose. “Purpose,” notes Carr, “whether we are conscious of it or not, is a condition of thought.” We cannot study even stars or rocks or atoms . . . without being somehow determined, in our modes of systematisation, in the prominence given to one or another part of our subject, in the form of the questions we ask and attempt to answer, by direct and human interests.


Realism Good – Alternative Fails

1. THE CRITIQUE MAKES IT IMPOSSIBLE TO CREATE IDENTITY AND DOOMS ITSELFAlastair Murray, Professor of Politics at University of Wales Swansea, 1997.RECONSTRUCTION REALISM, p. 181-182.

Everything, in his account, is up for grabs: there is no core of recalcitrance to human conduct which cannot be reformed, unlearnt, disposed of. This generates a stance that so privileges the possibility of a systemic transformation that it simply puts aside the difficulties which it recognises to be inherent in its achievement. Thus, even though Wendt acknowledges that the intersubjective basis of the self-help system makes its reform difficult, this does not dissuade him. He simply demands that states adopt a strategy of `altercasting', a strategy which `tries to induce alter to take on a new identity (and thereby enlist alter in ego's effort to change itself) by treating alter as if it already had that identity'. Wendt's position effectively culminates in a demand that the state undertake nothing less than a giant leap of faith. The fact that its opponent might not take its overtures seriously, might not be interested in reformulating its own construction of the world, or might simply see such an opening as a weakness to be exploited, are completely discounted.

2. THE ALTERNATIVE IS TOO VAGUE TO JUSTIFY A NEGATIVE BALLOTAlastair Murray, Professor of Politics at University of Wales Swansea, 1997.RECONSTRUCTION REALISM, p. 188-189.

And the assertion that indeterminate numbers of potentially less exclusionary orders exist carries little weight unless we can specify exactly what these alternatives are and just how they might be achieved. As such, realists would seem to be justified in regarding such potentialities as currently unrealisable ideals and in seeking a more proximate good in the fostering of mutual understanding and, in particular, of a stable balance of power. Despite the adverse side-effects that such a balance of power implies, it at least offers us something tangible rather than ephemeral promises lacking a shred of support.

3. THERE IS NO ALTERNATIVE STRATEGY TO REALISMAlastair Murray, Professor of Politics at University of Wales Swansea, 1997.RECONSTRUCTION REALISM, p. 189.

It offers nothing by way of alternative - no strategies, no proximate goals, indeed, little by way of goals at all. If, in constructivism, the progressive purpose leads to strategies divorced from an awareness of the problems confronting transformatory efforts, and, in critical theoretical perspectives, it produces strategies divorced from international politics in their entirety, in post-structuralism it generates a complete absence of strategies altogether. Critique serves to fill the void, yet this critique ultimately proves unsustainable. With its defeat, post-structuralism is left with nothing. Once one peels away the layers of misconstruction, it simply fades away. If realism is, as Ashley puts it, 'a tradition forever immersed in the expectation of political tragedy', it at least offers us a concrete vision of objectives and ways in which to achieve them which his own position, forever immersed in the expectation of deliverance, is manifestly unable to provide."

4. ANY REAL WORLD STRATEGY THEY COME UP WITH WON’T WORKAlastair Murray, Professor of Politics at University of Wales Swansea, 1997.RECONSTRUCTION REALISM, p. 188.

In `Political realism and human interests', for instance, realism's practical strategy ultimately appears illegitimate to Ashley only because his own agenda is emancipatory in nature. His disagreement with realism depends on a highly contestable claim - based on Herz's argument that, with the development of global threats, the conditions which might produce some universal consensus have arisen - that its `impossibility theorem' is empirically problematic, that a universal consensus is achievable, and that its practical strategy is obstructing its realisation. In much the same way, in ‘The poverty of neorealism’, realism's practical strategy is illegitimate only because Ashley's agenda is inclusionary



1. REALISM CAN COMBINE TO CREATE BETTER RESOLUTIONAlastair Murray, Professor of Politics at University of Wales Swansea, 1997.RECONSTRUCTION REALISM, p. 193.

For realism, man remains, in the final analysis, limited by himself. As such, it emphasises caution, and focuses not merely upon the achievement of long-term objectives, but also upon the resolution of more immediate difficulties. Given that, in the absence of a resolution of such difficulties, longer-term objectives are liable to be unachievable, realism would seem to offer a more effective strategy of transition than reflectivism itself.

2. REALISMS GRADUAL REFORMISM LENDS ITSELF TO THE PERMUTATIONAlastair Murray, Professor of Politics at University of Wales Swansea, 1997.RECONSTRUCTION REALISM, p. 195.

Realism's gradualist reformism, the careful tending of what it regards as an essentially organic process, ultimately suggests the basis for a more sustainable strategy for reform than reflectivist perspectives, however dramatic, can offer. For the realist, then, if rationalist theories prove so conservative as to make their adoption problematic, critical theories prove so progressive as to make their adoption unattractive. If the former can justifiably be criticised for seeking to make a far from ideal order work more efficiently, thus perpetuating its existence and legitimating its errors, reflectivist theory can equally be criticised for searching for a tomorrow which may never exist, thereby endangering the possibility of establishing any form of stable order in the here and now.

3. BEING BOTH METHODICAL AND PRACTICAL IS THE BEST COMBINATIONAlastair Murray, Professor of Politics at University of Wales Swansea, 1997.RECONSTRUCTION REALISM, p. 196.

Unifying technical and a practical stance, it combines aspects of the positivist methodology employed by problem-solving theory with the interpretative stance adopted by critical theory, avoiding the monism of perspective which leads to the self-destructive conflict between the two. Ultimately, it can simultaneously acknowledge the possibility of change in the structure of the international system and the need to probe the limits of the possible, and yet also question the proximity of any international transformation, emphasise the persistence of problems after such a transformation, and serve as a reminder of the need to grasp whatever semblance of order can be obtained in the mean time.

4. THE CRITIQUE IS USEFUL BUT REALISM IS NECESSARY TO STOP SHORT TERM THREATSAlastair Murray, Professor of Politics at University of Wales Swansea, 1997.RECONSTRUCTION REALISM, p. 194.

Even in a genuine cosmopolis, conflict might become technical, but it would not be eliminated altogether.67 The primary manifestations of power might become more economic or institutional rather than (para)military but, where disagreements occur and power exists, the employment of the one to ensure the satisfactory resolution of the other is inevitable short of a wholesale transformation of human behaviour. Power is ultimately of the essence of politics; it is not something which can be banished, only tamed and restrained. As a result, realism achieves a universal relevance to the problem of political action which allows it to relate the reformist zeal of critical theory, without which advance would be impossible, with the problem-solver's sensible caution that, before reform is attempted, whatever measure of security is possible under contemporary conditions must first be ensured.


Realism Good – Key to Foreign Policy

1. REALISM IS THE MEANS TO AN ACTIVE FOREIGN POLICY: ALL OTHER ALTERNATIVES ARE NO FOREIGN POLICY AT ALLHans Morgenthau, former professor of government, law, history, and political science at Brooklyn College, the University of Kansas at Kansas City, and the University of Chicago, "Realism in International Politics," NAVAL WAR COLLEGE REVIEW, Winter 1998, http://www.nwc.navy.mil/press/Review/1998/winter/art2-w98.htm, Accessed April 16, 2001.

What we call isolationism in this country--the reflection of the historic fact of America's actual isolation in the nineteenth century--has very much to do with the problem we are discussing. For there is again in twentieth-century isolationism a very strong tendency to believe that a great nation has a choice between an active foreign policy, involving it of necessity in all the risks and disabilities and liabilities which are concomitant with foreign policy, and abstention from foreign policy. In the same way in which Woodrow Wilson and Cordell Hull believed that the United States had a choice between power politics and a United Nations or League of Nations politics, so the isolationist believes that America has a choice between an active foreign policy, pursued with traditional means for traditional ends, and no foreign policy at all. So you see that this somewhat abstract and philosophic discussion with which I started has very practical ramifications.

2. BALANCE OF POWER PROBLEMS ARE INEVITABLE - REALISM SEES THIS AND HELPS US ADAPTHans Morgenthau, former professor of government, law, history, and political science at Brooklyn College, the University of Kansas at Kansas City, and the University of Chicago, "Realism in International Politics," NAVAL WAR COLLEGE REVIEW, Winter 1998, http://www.nwc.navy.mil/press/Review/1998/winter/art2-w98.htm, Accessed April 16, 2001.

I am not at all blind to the shortcomings of the balance of power, but this is beside the point. The real question is: What else have you got to put in place of the balance of power? You have nothing, as long as you have a multiplicity of autonomous nations competing with each other for power. I am reminded of the story which is told about the earthquake of Lisbon in 1756, when somebody walked around in the devastated streets of Lisbon hawking anti-earthquake pills. He was asked what good they would do. His answer was: "What else would you put in their place?" I am not saying that the balance of power is as useless as are anti-earthquake pills, but I would identify myself with the reply of the hawker by asking: What else have you to put in its place? In other words, to criticize the balance of power for its shortcomings leads nowhere as long as you have no viable alternative with which to replace it.

3. EVEN IF REALISM DOES NOT WORK IN ALL SITUATIONS, IT IS STILL THE BEST OPTIONRobert Jervis, president of the American Political Science Association, INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION, Autumn 1998, p. 971.

Realism has many versions, but assumptions that can be considered the main actors and that they focus in the first instance on their own security are central to most. They are, of course, descriptively inaccurate. But, as almost all social scientists agree, this is not the point. Rather, we ask whether these assumptions yield a wider array of better confirmed propositions than do alternative approaches. Without claiming that realism is appropriate for all questions, I would like to advance the weaker but still not trivial argument that these assumptions are of great utility and that it is unlikely that we will see highly productive theories that abandon all of them or that start from their opposites.


Realism Good – Accurate

1. REALISTS ARE RIGHT: THE WORLD WAR II EXPERIENCE PROVED ITRobert Gilpin, professor emeritus of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, “The Richness of the Tradition of Political Realism,” INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION, Spring 1984, p. 292.

In his superb Scientific Man versus Power Politics, [Hans] Morgenthau clearly does fit Ashley’s very narrow conception of the realist tradition. The book is brilliant in its exposition of the realist’s pessimistic view of the human condition, a judgment that Morgenthau saw confirmed as he observed the failure of the liberal democracies to understand the role of power in the world and to stand together against Hitler before it was too late.

2. REALISM IS BETTER FOR UNDERSTANDING THAN LIBERALISM OR MARXISMRobert Gilpin, professor emeritus of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, “The Richness of the Tradition of Political Realism,” INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION, Spring 1984, p. 294-295.

Realist writers tend to believe that their general perspective on the relationship between economics and politics provides a much better explanation of what has transpired over the past decade or so, and of the reasons for the crisis of the world economy, than do those of their liberal and Marxist ideological rivals. The essential argument of most realists with respect to the nature and functioning of the international economy, I would venture to say, is that the international political system provides the necessary framework for economic activities. The international economy is not regarded as an autonomous sphere, as liberals argue, nor is it itself the driving force behind politics, as the Marxists would have us believe. Although economic forces are real and have a profound effect on the distribution of wealth and power in the world, they always work in the context of the political struggle among groups and nations. When the distribution of power and international political relations change, corresponding changes may be expected to take place in global economic relations.

3. THE REALIST PERSPECTIVE IS A POWERFUL TOOL OF UNDERSTANDINGStephen W. Walt, Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago, “The Progressive Power of Realism,” THE AMERICAN POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEW, December 1997, p. 932.

Realists begin with some general assumptions (such as states are the key actors, the international system is anarchic, power is central to political life). Some realists might add the assumption that states are more or less rational actors, although several prominent realists (including the present author) also examine how domestic politics can affect the ‘rational’ assessment of strategic interests. The realist perspective offers a simple and powerful way to understand relations among political groups (including states).

4. OTHER APPROACHES FAIL, BUT REALISM CAN SUPPLEMENT AND INFORM THEMRobert Jervis, president of the American Political Science Association, INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION, Autumn 1998, p. 971.

The popularity of alternative approaches to international politics cannot be explained entirely by their scholarly virtues. Among the other factors at work are fashions and normative and political preferences. This in part explains the increasing role of rationalism and constructivism. Important as they are, these approaches are necessarily less complete than liberalism, Marxism and realism. Indeed, they fit better with the latter than is often realized. Realism, then, continues to play a major role in IR scholarship. It can elucidate the conditions and strategies that are conducive to cooperation and can account for significant international change, including a greatly decreased tolerance for force among developed countries, which appears to be currently the case.


Realism Good – Accurate – A2: Outdated

1. REALISM IS STILL FRESH AND RELEVANT TO TODAY’S WORLDRobert Jervis, president of the American Political Science Association, INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION, Autumn 1998, p. 971.

Related to my doubts about the centrality of constructivism and rationalism in my belief that realism is not likely to disappear. Neorealism may become less important not only because many people are becoming tired of it, but also because its concern with the differences between bipolar and multipolar systems, especially in terms of stability, appears less interesting with the declining fear of major war and the end of bipolarity. As Waltz notes, realism, in contrast to neorealism, is more of an approach than a theory – it points to a set of actors that are important, makes claims about the considerations that decision makers weigh, and describes a set of outcomes that can result from particular combinations of national policies. Although it does not readily yield specific propositions, it has continually generated new questions, insights, and arguments.

2. CHANGES IN ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL CONDITIONS DO N0T CHALLENGE REALISM: THEY ACTUALLY PROVE ITS EFFICACYRobert Gilpin, professor emeritus of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, “The Richness of the Tradition of Political Realism,” INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION, Spring 1984, p. 295-6.

It was on the basis of this conceptualization of the relationship between international economics and politics that I and a number of other ‘neo-realists’ were highly skeptical of the argument of the more extreme exponents of interdependence theory. Their projections into the indefinite future of an increasingly interdependent world, in which the nation-states and tribal loyalties (read nationalism) would cease to exist, seemed to us to be a misreading of history and social evolution. Such theorizing assumed the preeminence and autonomy of economic and technological forces over all others in effecting political and social change. Thus, it neglected the political base on which this interdependent world economy rested and, more importantly, the political forces that were eroding these political foundations. For many realists, therefore, the crisis of the world economy of which Ashley writes was at least in part a consequence of the erosion of these political foundations: the relative decline of American hegemony, the increasing strains within the anti-Soviet alliance, and the waning of the commitment to liberal ideology. Contrary to Ashley’s view that the crisis of the world economy somehow represents a challenge to realism, it is precisely the traditional insights of realism that help us explain the crisis and the ongoing retreat from an interdependent world economy (p.295-296).

3. EVEN IF STATES ARE WANING IN IMPORTANCE, REALISM IS STILL RELEVANTRobert Jervis, president of the American Political Science Association, INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION, Autumn 1998, p. 971.

The state has proven remarkably resilient in the face of multiple social forces and the insistence of scholars that its importance is rapidly waning. Assertions to the contrary by realists are less important than the actions by national leaders to reassert their control, often supported by nongovernmental actors who see great value in central authority. Of course the fact that previous obituaries of the state were premature does not mean they are not warranted now. In the 1960s, the state was indeed obstinate rather than obsolete, as Stanley Hoffman argued, but the European union may yet supplant its members – in which case it would form a state of its own, and though the process by which it formed may violate some realist assumptions, many of its constraints and incentives it would face will be familiar. The claims that globalization has hollowed out states may be similarly overstated in part because they overestimate the implications of economic flows and in part because they fail to appreciate the way in which new forces call up new incentives and instruments for state action.


Realism Good – Morality Bad

1. CLEAR-CUT MORAL POSITIONS IN FOREIGN POLICY IGNORE THE LESSONS OF REALISMHans Morgenthau, former professor of government, law, history, and political science at Brooklyn College and the University of Chicago, "Realism in International Politics," NAVAL WAR COLLEGE REVIEW, Winter 1998, http://www.nwc.navy.mil/press/Review/1998/winter/art2-w98.htm, Accessed April 16, 2001.

Let me say, in conclusion, a word about another manifestation of this basic philosophic problem, which concerns again the nature of foreign policy and of the way it is to be conducted. There is a very strong tendency-especially in democracies-to identify the positions of the different antagonistic nations with simple, clear-cut moral positions. Especially in Anglo-Saxon democracies there is a strong tendency to look at the international scene as if it were a struggle between good and evil, between virtue and vice, and there is never any doubt where virtue and good are located and where evil and vice are to be found. Underlying this simple "black and white" conception of foreign policy there is always the assumption that the triumph of virtue and good is somehow assured by the very nature of the historic process.

2. MORALITY STOPS A REALISTIC FOREIGN POLICYHans Morgenthau, former professor of government, law, history, and political science at Brooklyn College and the University of Chicago, "Realism in International Politics," NAVAL WAR COLLEGE REVIEW, Winter 1998, http://www.nwc.navy.mil/press/Review/1998/winter/art2-w98.htm, Accessed April 16, 2001.

Here, again, you see the intimate relationship between this moralistic approach to foreign policy and the general utopian conception of foreign policy-something which a nation has a choice of either embracing or doing away with. For if the foreign policy of a nation is tantamount to a crusade and the only objective of foreign policy is the unconditional surrender of the enemy, who is identified with all that is evil in the world, diplomacy then becomes really an instrument of war, preceding the actual armed conflict. Any retreat, however tactical, and any concession, however temporary or however outbalanced by a concession from the other side, becomes a betrayal of the very principles for which the nation is supposed to stand.

3. THE LINK IS ESPECIALLY STRONG WHEN THE PRESIDENT ACTS BASED ON MORALITYAlan Tonelson, U.S. Business and Industry Council Educational Foundation, “The Pitfalls of Foreign-Policy Morality,” INTELLECTUAL CAPITAL, April 8, 1999, http://www.speakout.com/Content/ICArticle/3747/

President Clinton and his congressional allies have described the bombing of Serbian military targets as a strategic necessity -- with arguments much like those used to support sending U.S. troops to Haiti and Bosnia, and keeping them in Somalia to nation-build. But their repeated appeals to the nation's conscience demonstrates that they realize that American self-interest by itself cannot justify these policies. The resulting inconsistency deserves a bright spotlight. For more than a year, Clinton and most of these same politicians have insisted that a president's personal sense of right and wrong matters far less than the results his policies achieve for the nation. Today, they are claiming that a president can send the nation into war whenever that personal sense of right and wrong is offended. More important than this inconsistency, however, are the questions raised by this crystallizing doctrine about some philosophical fundamentals of U.S. foreign policymaking -- especially about when and why American leaders can legitimately risk the nation's blood and treasure. So far, the answers suggested by recent interventions sound dangerous and divisive for the country, and profoundly undemocratic.

4. MORALISTIC FOREIGN POLICY ERODES DEMOCRACY, HURTS THE NATIONAL INTERESTAlan Tonelson, research fellow at the U.S. Business and Industry Council Educational Foundation, “The Pitfalls of Foreign-Policy Morality,” INTELLECTUAL CAPITAL, April 8, 1999,

The problems start with the president and congressional interventionists getting it exactly wrong on when and where in a democracy a president's personal character alone gives him a mandate to act, and on when moral considerations should significantly influence decision-making. Americans obviously expect presidents to deliver the goods in domestic policy. But the United States is more than a group of investors. It is a genuine political community, and as such, its citizens are bound by some sense of shared values and mutual obligations.


Realism Good – Morality Bad

1. FOREIGN POLICY MORALITY DESTROYS NATIONAL CONSENSUS ON ACTIONAlan Tonelson, U.S. Business and Industry Council Educational Foundation, “The Pitfalls of Foreign-Policy Morality,” INTELLECTUAL CAPITAL, April 8, 1999, http://www.speakout.com/Content/ICArticle/3747/

Finally, leaders of a big, diverse country like the United States should recognize that foreign policies based largely on morality make consensus hard to create or maintain. Morality may not be relative, but it does tend to be highly subjective. Because moral positions also are often strongly held, and everyone is entitled to consider themselves experts, finding common ground -- let alone striking compromises -- can be daunting. Foreign-policy decisions based largely on selfish national interests can entail controversial judgment calls, too. But at least some of the factors from which they flow can be assessed objectively and presumably agreed on if enough reason and good will are present. For example, certain foreign forces either can or cannot threaten national security. Certain foreign resources either are or are not economically critical. Further, certain leaders and experts rightly can claim to be unusually knowledgeable about these subjects. Their deserved authority can, in principle, nurture agreement as well.

2. POLICIES BASED ON NATIONAL INTERESTS BETTER BUILD CONSENSUSAlan Tonelson, U.S. Business and Industry Council Educational Foundation, “The Pitfalls of Foreign-Policy Morality,” INTELLECTUAL CAPITAL, April 8, 1999, http://www.speakout.com/Content/ICArticle/3747/

In addition, genuine interest-based policies are more conducive to consensus because they are by definition designed to benefit the entire nation, or at least a critical mass of the public. What makes them self-interested are attempts by their proponents to discern which actions will help or hurt the country as a whole. And when these policies are designed properly, the public's common stake in their success should be widely apparent. Policies grounded mainly in morality usually are not even conceived with their concrete impact on Americans in mind. After all, that would be self-interested. It is, therefore, that much more difficult for moralists to push or pull their countrymen on board - at least democratically.

3. SEEKING MORALITY IN FOREIGN POLICY STOPS REALISTIC POLICY OPTIONSHans Morgenthau, former professor of government, law, history, and political science at Brooklyn College and the University of Chicago, "Realism in International Politics," NAVAL WAR COLLEGE REVIEW, Winter 1998, http://www.nwc.navy.mil/press/Review/1998/winter/art2-w98.htm, Accessed April 16, 2001.

This oversimplified approach is not limited to Anglo-Saxon democracies, even though it has appeared there in the nineteenth century in a particularly strong form. Marxism has developed a similarly oversimplified and distorted view of the nature of international politics, only with the locations of virtue and vice and good and evil being reversed. Under the impact of this interpretation of international conflict as being essentially a moral conflict, foreign policy is bound to transform itself into a crusade, serving the inevitable triumph of virtue over vice. In such a crusade, there is no place for the traditional methods of foreign policy. For if the purpose of foreign policy is the triumph of virtue over vice, then diplomatic negotiations, of necessity aiming at accommodation, compromise, and the give-and-take of bargaining, have no place in foreign policy. One can even go farther and say that those diplomatic methods of compromise and accommodation are then tantamount to a betrayal of the moral principles for which the nation is supposed to stand.

4. MORAL IMPERATIVES IN FOREIGN POLICY ARE FLAWED AND WILL ALWAYS FAIL Alan Tonelson, U.S. Business and Industry Council Educational Foundation, “The Pitfalls of Foreign-Policy Morality,” INTELLECTUAL CAPITAL, April 8, 1999, http://www.speakout.com/Content/ICArticle/3747/

American leaders have long searched for reliable ways to reconcile strategic and moral foreign-policy imperatives. But all-purpose formulas simply do not exist. In our democracy, American foreign policy ultimately can only be as moral as a majority of Americans wish it to be. And for this, our leaders should be profoundly grateful. After all, as an increasingly complex world continues to make clear, promoting and defending our purely selfish interests is usually difficult enough.


Realism Good – Moral

1. CONTRARY TO SOME CRITICISMS, REALISM HAS A MORAL BASIS Robert Gilpin, professor emeritus of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, “The Richness of the Tradition of Political Realism,” INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION, Spring 1984, p. 287.

Many, especially among the younger generation of international scholars, abhor realism because it is believed to be an immoral doctrine at best and a license to kill, make war, and commit wanton acts of rapine at worst…For this reason, a brief defense of realism as a politically moral doctrine seems called for. In fact, I would argue that a moral commitment lies at the heart of realism, as least as I interpret it.

2. IMMORAL REALISM IS NOT THE TYPE OF REALISM THE CRITIQUE ADVOCATESRobert Gilpin, professor emeritus of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, “The Richness of the Tradition of Political Realism,” INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION, Spring 1984, p. 287.

Since Machiavelli, if not before, two perspectives on international morality have attached themselves to the realist position. The first moral perspective associated with realism is what Gordon Craig and Alexander George characterize as vulgar realism. It is the amoralism, or if you prefer, the immoralism, of Thucydides’ ‘Melain Dialogue’: in order to discourage further rebellions against their empire, the Athenians put the men of Melos to the sword and enslaved the women and children…This amoral version of realism, which holds that the state is supreme and unbound by any ethical principles, is not my own version of realism.

3. SAYING REALISTS ARE IMMORAL IS BASELESS AND UNFAIRRobert Gilpin, professor emeritus of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, “The Richness of the Tradition of Political Realism,” INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION, Spring 1984, p. 304.

The new realists thus continue a tradition that political theorists call ‘advice to princes.’ For example, some have studied and advocated improvements in international regimes. Others have written on the problem of peaceful change. Still others have dealt with the dangers of nuclear war. This advice may not be very useful and, being realists, we know that it is seldom if ever given serious attention. But to say, as Ashley does, that the new realists as a group are guilty of ‘moral neutrality’ is as baseless as it is unfair (p.302-304).

4. MORAL PRINCIPLES AND NATIONAL INTERESTS WORK TOGETHER IN REALISMSir Percy Cradock, former foreign policy advisor to the British Prime Minister, Johnian Society Lecturer at St John's College, THE EAGLE, 1999, p. 8.

All this means that a foreign policy of a purely amoral, Machiavellian variety, the kind of policy the press in their more imaginative moments love to attribute to governments, would not be practicable even if there were ministers and officials sufficiently irresponsible to try to apply it. In practice there will always be factors of realism and morality at work. Realism will remain the predominant element. Moral sentiments do not in practice prevail over what a state sees as its vital interests. Loyalty to a world community is not yet powerful enough to override patriotic national concerns.

5. REALIST SELF-INTEREST LEADS TO TRULY MORAL FOREIGN POLICYSir Percy Cradock, former foreign policy advisor to the British Prime Minister, Johnian Society Lecturer at St John's College, THE EAGLE, 1999, p. 8.

We see this illustrated if we turn from the general to the particular and look more closely at the British case. If we think of British ministers we may charitably assume that, of whatever political colour, they and their advisers are men of moderate virtue, who pursue British interests but also seek a better world. They want peace rather than war, stability rather than instability, democracy rather than tyranny, international prosperity rather than poverty, free trade rather than protectionism. They want these things, not necessarily because they are virtuous men, but because anything else would be contrary to Britain's national interests as a small, densely populated island crucially dependent on free international commerce. In other words, they seek a broadly moral foreign policy for the most enduring of reasons, enlightened self-interest.


Realism Good – Cooperation

1. REALISM FOSTERS TRUE INTERNATIONAL COOPERATIONRobert Jervis, president of the American Political Science Association, INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION, Autumn 1998, p. 971.

Realism can also speak to the conditions under which states are most likely to cooperate and the strategies that actors can employ to foster cooperation. This line of theorizing is sometimes associated with neoliberalism, but the two are hard to distinguish in this area. Making a distinction would be easy if realism believed that conflict was zero-sum, that actors were always on the Pareto frontier. This conclusion perhaps flows from the view of neoclassical economics that all arrangements have evolved to be maximally efficient, but realists see that politics is often tragic in the sense of actors being unable to realize their common interests. Although “offensive realists” who see aggression and expansionism as omnipresent (or who believe that security requires expansion) stress the prevalence of extreme conflict of interest, “defensive realists” believe that much of international politics is a Prisoners’ dilemma or a more complex security dilemma. The desire to gain mixes with the need for protection; much of statecraft consists of structuring situations so that states can maximize their common interests. The ever-present fear that others will take advantage of the state – and the knowledge that others have reciprocal worries – leads diplomats to seek arrangements that will reduce if not neutralize these concerns. Even if international politics must remain a Prisoners’ Dilemma, it can often be made into one that is more benign by altering the pay-offs to encourage cooperation, for example, by enhancing each state’s ability to protect itself should the other seek to exploit it and increasing the transparency that allows each to see what the other side is doing and understand why it is doing it. The knowledge that even if others are benign today, they may become hostile in the future due to changes of mind, circumstances, and regimes can similarly lead decision makers to create arrangements that bind others – and themselves, as previously noted.

2. REALISM ENHANCES THE NATIONAL INTEREST, FREE TRADE, DEMOCRACY AND SAFETYWill Marshall, president of the Progressive Policy Institute, “Democratic Realism: The Third Way,” BLUEPRINT, Winter 2000, http://www.ndol.org/blueprint/winter2000/marshall.html, Accessed March 27, 2001.

Democratic Realism seeks a new balance of American ideals and interests. It builds on the time-honored principles of liberal internationalism: At the core of the post-Cold War world is a growing zone of democracies committed to relatively open markets and free trade, political relations based on agreed-upon rules and norms of behavior, and institutions to cooperatively manage and enforce those standards. Protecting and extending that democratic community serves our security and economic interests while also expressing Americans' ingrained belief in our country's historic mission. Deftly executed, policies based on Democratic Realism can not only underpin America's vital interests and continued global success, but help ensure a safer, more prosperous, and more democratic world.

3. REALISM ENHANCES DIPLOMATIC EFFORTSRobert Jervis, president of the American Political Science Association, INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION, Autumn 1998, p. 971.

Just as understanding the limits of the state’s power can reduce conflict, so in protecting what is most important to them states must avoid the destructive disputes that will result from failing to respect the vital interests of others. Realists have long argued that diplomacy and empathy are vital tools of statecraft: conceptions of the national interest that leave no room for the aspirations and values of others will bring ruin to the state as well as to its neighbors.


Realism Good – Synthesizes Criticism

1. STUDYING REALISM ENDS WARFrank Harvey, Associate Professor of Political Science, Dalhouse University, 1997. THE FUTURE’S BACK: NUCLEAR RIVALRY, DETERRENCE THEORY, AND CRISIS STABILITY AFTER THE COLD WAR, p. 139.

Finally, the lack of purity and precision, another consequence of linguistic relativism, does not necessarily imply irrelevance of purpose or approach. The study of international relations may not be exact, given limitations noted by Wittgenstein and others, but precision is a practical research problem, not an insurmountable barrier to progress. In fact, most observers who point to the context-dependent nature of language are critical not so much of the social sciences but of the incorrect application of scientific techniques to derive overly precise measurement of weakly developed concepts. Clearly, our understanding of the causes of international conflict—and most notably war—has improved considerably as a consequence of applying sound scientific methods and valid operationalizations. The alternative approach, implicit in much of the postmodern literature, is to fully accept the inadequacy of positivism, throw one’s hands up in failure, given the complexity of the subject, and repudiate the entire enterprise. The most relevant question is whether we would know more or less about international relations if we pursued that strategy.

2. DISCUSSING POWER IS KEY TO DECONSTRUCTING ITStefano Guzzini, Assistant Professor at Central European University, December 2001. COPENHAGEN PEACE RESEARCH INSTITUTE WEB PAGE. Accessed June 7, 2004. http://www.ciaonet.org/wps/gus02/gus02.pdf

A second avenue would be an opening to more philosophical debates in IR in which some of the tenets of political realism might have been taken more seriously by others than IR realists themselves. Many so-called post-structuralists (another of these slippery categories for enemy-image use) have shown no particular fear to reflect on the fathers of political realism – from Max Weber to Carl Schmitt – as well as on their Nietzschean lineage. Arguably, Foucault is inspired b y, although not reducible to, such a political realism. Indeed, the conceptual discussion of a concept like power, central to realism, has been pursued largely outside of IR realism.

3. UNDERSTANDING REALISM IS KEY TO COMBINING THEORY AND PRAXISRobert Keohane, Professor of Government at Harvard, 1986. REALISM, NEOREALISM AND THE STUDY OF WORLD POLITICS, p. 4.

The inescapabiity of theory in studying world politics suggests a second reason for exploring what are labeled here political realism and neorealism. Whatever one’s conclusion about the value of contemporary neorealism for the analysis of world politics in our time, it is important to understand realism and neorealism because of their widespread acceptance in contemporary scholarship and in policy circles. Political realism is deeply embedded in Western thought. Without understanding it, we can neither understand nor criticize our own tradition of thinking about international relations. Nor could we hope to change either our thinking or our practice. All people who are interested in having a sustained professional impact on world affairs should study international relations theory at some time, if only to examine prevailing assumptions and evaluate the basic propositions that they might otherwise take for granted. The danger that one will become the prisoner of unstated assumptions - is rendered particularly acute by the value-laden nature of international relations theory. This does not mean that observers simply see what they want to see: on the contrary, virtually all serious students of world politics view it as a highly imperfect realm of action in which wrongdoing is common and unimaginable evil is threatened.

4. WE CANNOT UNDERSTAND ECONOMICS WITHOUT EMBRACING REALISMRobert Jervis, president of the American Political Science Association, INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION, Autumn 1998, p. 971.

It will be hard to construct powerful theories of the international economy without keeping in mind the political relationships among countries, the ways economic ties can ameliorate conflict or create exploitable vulnerabilities, the actors’ expectations about what alliances are likely to form and how long they are likely


to last, and their beliefs about which technologies will be most useful if armed conflict occurs. In other words, the study of IPE must remain political, and international politics has always taken place in the shadow of war.


Realism Good – Solves Criticism

1. REALISM IS NECESSARY PREREQUISITE TO ETHICSD.S.L. Jarvis, Lecturer in IR at the University of Sydney, 2000.INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND THE CHALLENGES OF POSTMODERNISM, p. 130-131.

While the relevance of Ashley’s poststructuralist theory is cause for concern, more disconcerting is its implicit nihilism. Not unexpectedly, Ashley rejects this, insisting that his discourse is not nihilistic but antifoundationalist. Upon closer inspection, however, this position proves both unsustainable and self-defeating. By rejecting foundationalism and all truth claims derived through the application of reason, Ashley unwittingly abandons theory, knowledge, and human practices to the ether of relativism and subjectivism. And by insisting that there “is no extratextual referent that can be used as a basis for adjudicating theoretical disputes,” Ashley depreciates thought, theory, and knowledge to the particular outcomes of certain linguistic, interpretivist, and textual techniques. Ashley is thus forced to conclude that truth, purpose, and meaning can only be textually inferred and never universally or eternally proclaimed. One theory becomes as good as any another theory and a particular truth claim no better or worse than other truth claims. Objective evaluation becomes impossible and, with it, any claim to a science of international politics. All that ‘we might hope for is a subjective interpretivism, where, amid a vacuous intersection of texts, we each reach our own conclusions. This position is both alarming and perplexing: alarming in that it moves us closer to the abyss of ethical relativism and perplexing since it undermines the intelligibility, legitimacy, and logic of Ashley’s own writings. As Chris Brown notes, postmodern approaches end up destroying themselves. Demolishing the thought of modernity by rejecting foundationalism is a self subverting theoretical stance since it prevents “any new thought taking the place from which the old categories have been ejected.” Tony Porter is even more adamant, noting that the poststructural rejection of foundationalism inevitably reduces concepts like truth and reality to subjective intertextual interpretations. Intellectual thought, let alone the possibility of an intersubjective consensus on issues like purpose, meaning, ethics, or truth, becomes impossible. Rather than create new thought categories or knowledge systems, poststructuralists simply devolve knowledge into a series of infinitesimal individual interpretations. Yet the issue is at best a mute one. Refuting the notion of truth is nonsensical. As William Connolly observes, “Do you not presuppose truth (reason, subjectivity, a transcendent-al ethic, and so on) in repudiating it? If so, must you not endorse the standard unequivocally once your own presupposition is revealed to you?” Obviously, notes Connolly, the answer is a resounding “yes, yes, yes, yes.”

2. SYSTEMIC THOUGHT IS KEY TO REFLECTIOND.S.L. Jarvis, Lecturer in IR at the University of Sydney, 2000.INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND THE CHALLENGES OF POSTMODERNISM, p. 7.

Without purpose, International Relations would be a vacuous activity, facile and devoid of meaning. Scholarship would be conducted, but with no aim in mind. Facts would be gathered but for no purpose other than satisfying bibliophiles fond of reading facts. And of themselves, these facts would reveal no knowledge or understanding, but testify only to their own appearance. As Kenneth Waltz notes, “If we gather more and more data and establish more and more associations.. . we will not finally find that we know something. We will simply end up having more and more data and larger sets of correlations. The point, Waltz urges, is to “get beyond the facts of observation,” and look deeper toward the aetiological basis of facts if we wish an understanding and explanation of them. Implicitly, Waltz is suggesting that facts are meaningless other than in the context of epistemological constructs, and that in order to approach an understanding of them, and ascribe meaning to them, it is not facts that need to be understood but the epistemological and ontological orientations that underlie their interpretation. Put another way, we need recognize that while we gather facts, we do so only in the context of reflective purpose. “Purpose,” notes Carr, “whether we are conscious of it or not, is a condition of thought.” We cannot study even stars or rocks or atoms . . . without being somehow determined, in our modes of systematisation, in the prominence given to one or another part of our subject, in the form of the questions we ask and attempt to answer, by direct and human interests.


Realism Good – Genocide

The alternative to realism is an idealism that results in morally grounded intervention- this inevitably leads to genocide and instabilityAndrew J. Bacevich, professor of international relations at Boston University, 11-6-2005, “The Realist Persuasion,” http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2005/11/06/the_realist_persuasion/?page=1

In fact, when it comes to moral issues, realism has gotten a bum rap. As the events of the post-Cold War era have reminded us, idealism-whether the left liberal variant that emphasizes humanitarian interventionism or the neoconservative version that urges using American power to promote American values-provides no escape from the moral pitfalls of statecraft. If anything, it exacerbates them. Good intentions detached from prudential considerations can easily lead to enormous mischief, both practical and moral. In Somalia, efforts to feed the starving culminated with besieged US forces gunning down women and children. In Kosovo, protecting ethnic Albanians meant collaborating with terrorists and bombing downtown Belgrade. In Iraq, a high-minded crusade to eradicate evil and spread freedom everywhere has yielded torture and prisoner abuse, thousands of noncombatant casualties, and something akin to chaos. Given this do-gooder record of achievement, realism just might deserve a second look.

Realism best preserves hegemony, solves overstretch, and avoids conflict – it avoids war except as a last resortAndrew J. Bacevich, professor of international relations at Boston University, 11-6-2005, “The Realist Persuasion,” http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2005/11/06/the_realist_persuasion/?page=1

Realists in the American tradition are similarly circumspect when it comes to power. On the one hand, they prize it. On the other hand, they view it is a fragile commodity. The prudent statesman deploys power with great care. These realists appreciate that ''greatness'' is transitory. The history of Europe from 1914 to 1945 testifies to the ease with which a few arrogant and short-sighted statesmen can fritter away advantages accumulated over centuries, with horrific consequences. Determined to husband power, realists cultivate a lively awareness of what power-especially military power-can and cannot do. They agree with Kennan, principal architect of the Cold War strategy of containment, who wrote in his book ''American Diplomacy'' (1950), that ''there is no more dangerous delusion...than the concept of total victory.'' At times, war becomes unavoidable. But realists advocate using force as a last resort-hence, the dismay with which they view the Bush doctrine of preventive war. To the extent war can be purposeful, realists see its utility as almost entirely negative. War is death and destruction. Politically, it can reduce, quell, eliminate, or intimidate. But to wage war in order to spread democracy, as President Bush says the United States is doing in Iraq, makes about as much sense as starting a forest fire to build a village: It only gets you so far, and the costs tend to be exorbitant. Costs matter because resources are finite.

Responding to threats is necessary – the alternative is isolationist pacifismRandall Schhweller, Professor of Political Science @ The OSU, 2004, “Unanswered threats: political constraints on the balance of power,” pg. np

Developing such a consensus is difficult, however, because balancing, unlike expansion, is not a behavior motivated by the search for gains and profit. It is instead a strategy that entails significant costs in human and material resources that could be directed toward domestic programs and investment rather than national defense. In addition, when alliances are formed, the state must sacrifice some measure of its autonomy in foreign and military policy to its allies. In the absence of a clear majority of elites in favor of a balancing strategy, therefore, an alternative policy, and not necessarily a coherent one, will prevail. This is because a weak grand strategy can be supported for many different reasons (e.g., pacifism, isolationism, pro-enemy sympathies, collective security, a belief in conciliation, etc.). Consequently, appeasement and other forms of underbalancing will tend to triumph in the absence of a determined and broad political consensus to balance simply because these policies represent the path of least domestic resistance and can appeal to a broad range of interests along the political spectrum. Thus, underreacting


to threats, unlike an effective balancing strategy, does not require overwhelming, united, and coherent support from elites and masses; it is a default strategy.


Realism Bad – Genocide/War

1. REALIST ASSUMPTIONS ALLOWED NAZISM AND RISKS ANOTHER WORLD WAR TODAYOwen Harries, editor, THE NATIONAL INTEREST, Winter 1997/1998, p. 3.

In foreign policy terms, was it pointless to have exerted great effort to bring down the Nazi and Soviet regimes? For most people, merely to ask these questions would seem to answer them. But not so long ago such prominent realists as E.H. Carr and A.J.P. Taylor were prepared to argue an essential foreign policy continuity between the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany. Indeed, and more seriously, it was the assumption of such a continuity-that Hitler was an ordinary compromising politician in the same mold as the Germans of the 1920s-that led Chamberlain fatally astray with his policy of appeasement. Already in this century, then, Western statesmen created a terrible crisis and allowed an unnecessary world war to happen because they falsely assumed that the foreign policy of a totalitarian regime would be no different from that of the struggling democracy it replaced. It would be inexcusable-and, almost certainly, again disastrous-if at the end of the century we made the same error in reverse, this time by proceeding on the assumption that the behavior of another struggling democracy will be no different from that of the totalitarian regime that preceded it.

2. REALISM FAILS TO ACCOUNT FOR THE MORAL POWER OF STATES, WHICH ALLOWS GENOCIDEKenneth J. Campbell, GENOCIDE AND THE PROPER USE OF FORCE, Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies Occasional Paper, October 2000, http://www.migs.org/Data/papers/ken%20Campbell.htm, Accessed March 22, 2001.

These mistakes – incorrectly assigning genocide too low a strategic priority, and misreading the public’s willingness to use American ground troops to stop genocide – flow from the policymaker’s realist conceptions of the structure of contemporary international relations, a conception that distorts the actual contemporary global reality. Realism fails to account for the moral power of states and non-state actors in the present system, nor does it account for the rapidly increasing interdependence of these actors.

3. REALISM IS VILE, COLONIALIST AND DELUDED: IT CAUSES UNBOUNDED WARTom Athanasiou, environmentalist and author of DIVIDED PLANET, ELEMENTS OF A NEW REALISM, presented at the Conference for Alternative Security Systems in the Asia-Pacific Region, March 27-30, 1997, http://www.focusweb.org/focus/pd/sec/Athanasiou.html, Accessed March 23, 2001.

Let me quote, for you, as a historical footnote, the father of realism as usual, George Kennan, the American State Department anti-Communist "wise man" whose policy of "containment" virtually defined the Cold War. It's a long quote, but it's relevant. The date, incidentally, was 1948, and Kennan, of course, was talking to Americans... “We have about 50% of the world's wealth, but only 6.3% of its population. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction... We should cease to talk about vague and... unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal with straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.” The reason I quote this bit is that, in it, Kennan reveals the deeper underpinnings of "classical" realism. And because it gives me a chance to make my own central point. To wit -- if we would reject Kennan's realism in favor of some new variety, it must not be solely because his is vile, colonialist, and sodden with the logic of domination. We must also reject it because, 50 years on, we can see that it is deluded. Because we can see that the logic of classical realism is the logic of unbounded war.


Realism Bad – Morality Good

1. ATTEMPTING TO EXCLUDE MORALITY FROM CONSIDERATION IS NOT REALIST AT ALLDonald Kagan, Hillhouse professor of history and classics at Yale, COMMENTARY, April 1997, p. 42.

In the late 1970's, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan helped to galvanize the sentiments of millions of Americans who had long regarded detente not merely as mistaken but as a dishonorable retreat, and to sweep into office a new administration committed to restoring American strength and honor. To the confusion of the realists, Ronald Reagan's determined effort to build up American defenses and consign the "evil empire" to dust was followed neither by American economic implosion nor by suicidal war but by the collapse of the Soviet Union, the discrediting of Communist dictatorship, and the vindication of freedom and democracy. That happy outcome could never have been achieved merely by the pursuit of what experts considered to be our practical national interests, any more than the persistent and costly policy of global engagement in the early decades after World War II could have been maintained without the commitment of Americans at large to values deeper and more humanly compelling than concern over economic and geopolitical advantage. Realists are quite right to point to the centrality of the contest for power in international relations, and also to the dangers of imprudence and immoderation that can arise from the pursuit of intangible goals like honor. But dangers of a no lesser seriousness attend the competition for power itself, however rationally calculated. Moreover, power is never pursued for itself, but always for the sake of some value or values. In modern democratic states, those values tend to be moral in nature, and to involve a peculiarly democratic conception of honor. To attempt to exclude them from consideration is the height of fantasy, and the opposite of realism.

2. NATIONAL FOREIGN POLICY DECISIONS INEVITABLY AND PROPERLY MUST USE MORALITYAlan Tonelson, research fellow at the U.S. Business and Industry Council Educational Foundation, “The Pitfalls of Foreign-Policy Morality,” INTELLECTUAL CAPITAL, April 8, 1999 , http://www.speakout.com/Content/ICArticle/3747/, Accessed March 22, 2001.

National decisions about identifying the common good and acceptable ways to achieve it inevitably and properly have a prominent ethical dimension, and the individual moral compasses of citizens and leaders inevitably and properly loom large in any policy calculus. In domestic affairs, as a result, the president cannot in the end avoid significant responsibility for the nation's moral health, and not even the most cynical electorate can long divorce his character from his mandate. From time to time, Americans also expect presidents to emphasize moral concerns in foreign policy.

3. MORALITY DISCOURSE IS NEEDED IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONSB.S. Chimni, professor of international law at the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, former Visiting Scholar at the Harvard Law School, Harvard University, and the Centre for Refugee Studies, York University, "The Law and Politics of Regional Solution of the Refugee Problem: The Case of South Asia," REGIONAL CENTER FOR STRATEGIC STUDIES POLICY PAPER No. 4, July 1998, p. 1.

The possibility of a critique of the particular features identified by political realists eventually rests on the understanding that the regional identity is ‘socially constructed’. It is an ‘imagined community’ in which some features are stressed over others in order to either promote visions of conflict or that of solidarity. The forging of a regional identity devoid of suspicion and mistrust thus calls for a redefinition of the different ‘national’ perceptions of the region in a spirit of internationalism. In this regard, the language of morality needs to be injected into the discourse of regional politics.

http://www.speakout.com/Content/ICArticle/3747/,


Realism Bad – Feminism

1. REALISTS USE GENDER STEREOTYPING TO DISPARAGE IDEALISTSJ. Ann Tickner, professor of International Relations at the University of Southern California, HARVARD INTERNATIONAL REVIEW, Fall 1999, p. 44.

In its formative years, the discipline of international relations was concerned with the prevention of war through the development of international institutions. Woodrow Wilson's belief in democracy as a model for the conduct of diplomacy was epitomized in his Fourteen Points put forward near the end of World War 1. However, in 1939, the hopes for the restraining influence of international law and democracy were shattered by another more terrible war. Kantian internationalists were replaced by self-named realists who, like Machiavelli's Prince, advised that only through power projection, military preparedness, and self-help could state survival be assured. Realists labeled their predecessors, idealists in their view, misguided individuals who believed in the possibility of human improvement and law-governed behavior in the international system. It is interesting to note that one can map gender distinctions onto this realist-idealist debate of the 1940s and 19-50s, with realists attributing stereotypical characteristics of women, such as "unrealistic" and "naive," to the idealists.

2. REALIST CONCEPTIONS OF MORALITY IN FOREIGN POLICY ARE SEXISTJ. Ann Tickner, professor of International Relations at the University of Southern California, HARVARD INTERNATIONAL REVIEW, Fall 1999, p. 44.

When feminists began their gender-based analyses of the discipline in the late 1980s, they asserted that the field of international relations was highly gendered rather than gender neutral. Its theories were based on foundational stories by androcentric authors, such as Machiavelli and Hobbes. From the very beginning, political science and international relations have been inhospitable to gender studies. The first reason, though obvious, is also the most intractable. Diplomatic practices and the art of war are the business of princes; princesses belong on pedestals in private spaces, guardians of a of morality that is unsuitable and even dangerous in the world of realpolitik. In spite of the visibility of Madeleine Albright, there are still relatively few women in the top ranks of the foreign service. In academic international relations, there are few women in the subfield of national security. As Donald Regan, President Ronald Reagan's National Security Adviser, proclaimed in 1985, "Women are not going to understand missile throw-weights or what is happening in Afghanistan ... most women would rather read the human interest stuff."

3. THE REALIST ASSUMPTION OF STATE POWER IS ITSELF SEXISTJ. Ann Tickner, professor of IR at USC, HARVARD INTERNATIONAL REVIEW, Fall 1999, p. 44.

At least we can agree with Regan that the "human interest stuff' has not been the business of international relations scholarship. In neo-realism--a more parsimonious and "scientific" devolution from classical realism--human beings have disappeared altogether. This point leads to the second reason why the discipline is inhospitable terrain for feminist perspectives. In their search for mechanistic laws, international relations theorists have typically preferred explanatory theories that favor a structurally determined level of analysis; the international system is a world in which, as political theorist Jean Elshtain observes, "No children are ever born, and nobody ever dies ... There are states, and they are what is." Rational choice theory, modeled on the behavior of firms in the marketplace, has further reinforced this depersonalization of state behavior. Explanations that focus on social relations, a space where gender relations could be analyzed, are considered reductionist and, therefore, unable to shed much light on the behavior of states in the international system.

4. ASSUMPTION OF STATE PRIMACY EXCLUDES AND DEHUMANIZES WOMENJ. Ann Tickner, professor of International Relations at the University of Southern California, HARVARD INTERNATIONAL REVIEW, Fall 1999, p. 44.

My third reason for the inhospitality of international relations to feminist perspectives has to do with what Martin Wight called the intellectual and moral poverty of its theories. Given that all individuals must be citizens of sovereign states, the state remains the consummation of political experience according to Wight; outside the state lies only the realm of necessity where progress is impossible and theory can only be what


international theorist Andrew Linklater, has called a theory of estrangement. Given that women's historical relationship to the state has been marginal in most societies, feminist perspectives do not fit comfortably within these state boundaries in which political life has been situated. Largely excluded from the realm of policy making, women's "foreign relations" have generally taken place across the borders of civil society.


Realism Bad – Inaccurate

1. REALISM CANNOT ACCOUNT FOR FACTORS LIKE NATIONAL HONORDonald Kagan, Hillhouse professor of history and classics at Yale, COMMENTARY, April 1997, p. 42.

For the last 2,500 years, at least, states have conducted their affairs and often gone to war moved by considerations that would not pass the test of "vital national interests." On countless occasions they have acted to foster or to defend a collection of beliefs and feelings that have run, or appeared to run, counter to their secular practical needs, persisting in this course even when the danger has been evident and the cost high. Modern politicians and students of politics commonly call such motives irrational. But the notion that the only thing rational or real in the conduct of nations is the search for economic benefits or physical security is itself a prejudice of our time, a product of the attempt to treat the world of human events as though it were an inanimate, motiveless physical universe. Such an approach is no more adequate to explain behavior today than it ever was. Honor is the name of one category of concerns and motives that has dominated relations among peoples and states since antiquity. Honor includes such elements as the search for fame and glory; the desire to escape shame, disgrace, and embarrassment; the wish to avenge a wrong and thereby to restore one's reputation; the determination to behave in accordance with certain moral ideals. Although concepts of what is honorable and dishonorable can vary over time and place, sometimes superficially and sometimes deeply, and although other people's ideas of honor, especially those of an earlier time, can seem silly or outmoded, such surface variations often conceal a fundamental similarity or even identity. To say that the pursuit of honor can run counter to a "realist" view of the national interest, of course, is not to say that it has no place in the competition for power or tangible advantage.

2. REALISM IGNORES IDEOLOGY, WHICH IS CRUCIALOwen Harries, editor, THE NATIONAL INTEREST, Winter 1997/1998, p. 3.

In arguing in this way, these commentators are being very true to their realist position. But they are also drawing attention to what is one of the most serious intellectual weaknesses of that position-namely, that in its stress on the structure of the international system and on how states are placed within that system, realism attaches little or no importance to what is going on inside particular states: what kind of regimes are in power, what kind of ideologies prevail, what kind of leadership is provided. For these realists, Russia is Russia is Russia, regardless of whether it is under czarist, communist, or nascent democratic rule. That approach is enormously counterintuitive, and its weaknesses have been particularly evident in this most ideological of centuries. Has it really made no significant difference to Russian foreign policy whether it is in the hands of a Stolypin, a Stalin, or a Yeltsin? Or to German policy whether Stresemann, Hitler, or Adenauer was in power in that country?

3. REALISM IS INEFFECTIVE IN EXPLAINING INTERNATIONAL RELATIONSWalter A. McDougall, staff writer, NEW YORK TIMES, May 3, 1998, p. B1.

Why, he asks, do nations expand? Clearly they cannot do so unless and until they acquire the requisite material power vis-a-vis their victims or rivals. But mere measures of strength cannot account for the motives or timing of a nation's expansion. That is the weakness of the school of classical realism, which holds that nations define their interests more broadly as their power expands, and that increases in power predictably yield assertive policies. An alternative explanation is that nations expand their interests when they feel less secure, when they perceive threats that demand a response. But perceptions cannot be measured exactly, while aggressive governments invariably invoke ''national security'' whether or not it is endangered. That is the weakness of the school of defensive realism, which holds that interests come first, and that power is mobilized when interests are threatened. That is to say, classical realism cannot explain the ''imperial understretch'' of the United States between 1865 and 1890 despite its having become one of the world's mightiest nations. Defensive realism, on the other hand, cannot explain why the United States projected its power with zeal after 1890 despite the relative absence of serious threats.


Realism Bad – Must Reject

1. REALISM CANNOT LEAD TO HUMANE POLICIESB.S. Chimni, professor of international law at the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, former Visiting Scholar at the Harvard Law School, Harvard University, and the Centre for Refugee Studies, York University, "The Law and Politics of Regional Solution of the Refugee Problem: The Case of South Asia," REGIONAL CENTER FOR STRATEGIC STUDIES POLICY PAPER No. 4, July 1998, p. 1.

Apart from identifying some issues which call for investigation, I suggest that the politics of the region is undertheorized with few texts exploring alternative visions of its future. The literature is dominated by the language of political realism which cannot come to terms with the humanitarian dimension of problems. It needs to be displaced by an approach which even as it respects the concerns of States carves out space for humane solutions.

2. THE LANGUAGE OF REALISM PREVENTS ANY SOLVENCY FOR HUMANITARIAN CONCERNSB.S. Chimni, professor of international law at the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, former Visiting Scholar at the Harvard Law School, Harvard University, and the Centre for Refugee Studies, York University, "The Law and Politics of Regional Solution of the Refugee Problem: The Case of South Asia," REGIONAL CENTER FOR STRATEGIC STUDIES POLICY PAPER No. 4, July 1998, p. 1.

The language of political realism, it hardly needs to be added, is not peculiar to South Asia. For example, the international refugee regime has from the very beginning been hostage to foreign policy interests; it was an integral part of Cold War politics. The vocabulary of political realism has been internalized by the ruling elites in the diverse regions of the world, even corroding long held traditions of solidarity and internationalism. This framework is entirely unsuited to the resolution of humanitarian issues but is unlikely to be displaced by a new paradigm which does not take cognizance of certain objective realities or the history of mutual suspicions and acrimony between States in the region engendered by the realist vision.

3. LANGUAGE IS KEY TO WHETHER REALISM IS ACCEPTEDFrancis A. Beer, professor, Department of Political Science, University of Colorado, Robert Harriman, Professor, Department of Rhetoric and Communications Studies, Drake University, "Rhetorical Realism: Deconstructing Waltz," INTERNATIONAL STUDIES NOTES, Fall 1998, p. 7.

Contemporary realist research and writing continues a major scientific program representing central dimensions of world politics. At the same time, it is necessary to recognize that realism is more than positive theory. Our own earlier work on post-realism and the rhetorical turn in international relations suggests that realism is also persuasive discourse relying on argumentative techniques. Together with truth value, these devices help determine the acceptance of a theory (Beer and Hariman 1996). Realism is part of the science of power: It is also itself a powerful discursive practice.

4. MUST DISPLACE THE LANGUAGE OF REALISM FOR ANY CHANCE AT INTERNATIONALISMB.S. Chimni, professor of international law at the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, former Visiting Scholar at the Harvard Law School, Harvard University, and the Centre for Refugee Studies, York University, "The Law and Politics of Regional Solution of the Refugee Problem: The Case of South Asia," REGIONAL CENTER FOR STRATEGIC STUDIES POLICY PAPER No. 4, July 1998, p. 1.

On the other hand, unless the language of realism is displaced there is little hope for establishing a refugee regime in the region based on the spirit of solidarity and internationalism. I would like to advance in this context the concept of relative autonomy where humanitarian issues are concerned. That is to say, the displacement of the language of realism does not mean that the special existential, ideological, and security concerns of individual States of the region are not to be taken into account. It merely implies that these concerns are to be given weight within a framework which recognises the distinctive essence of humanitarian problems. It, among other things, calls for eschewing an omnibus language of national security to address humanitarian issues.


Realism Bad – Alternative – Criticism

1. OUR CRITICISM CAN BE A VEHICLE TO RECONSTRUCT INTERNATIONAL RELATIONSDavid Mutimer, assistant professor in International Relations at York University, CONTEMPORARY SECURITY AND STRATEGY, 1999, p. 95.

There are a number of important implications of this approach to the study of security, but I will focus on two. The first is that if all of the ‘social facts’ relevant to the study of security are constructed, it means that they can be reconstructed. In other words, change is possible; just because security is understood and practiced in a particular way today, this does not mean that it has always been so nor that it must always be so in the future. History, therefore, is not a laboratory in which we conduct tests of theories, but rather a creative process in which we live the individual and collective lives that are informed by theories (the double hermeneutic). The implication of this observation is that part of the function of security studies is to shape the future.

2. ARTICULATING ALTERNATIVES TO STATE-CENTERED SECURITY IS NECESSARY TO TAKE POWER FROM THE STATEDavid Mutimer, assistant professor in International Relations at York University, CONTEMPORARY SECURITY AND STRATEGY, 1999, p. 97.

Ole Waever’s concept of ‘securitization’ is drawing attention to the same point: by securitizing an issue you make a case for the use of extraordinary measures to maintain that security, and you make a claim for the social resources necessary to secure it. It is for this reason that I would reject Waever’s conclusion that we should seek to desecuritise social life, because I fear that such a decision would abandon the entire field of security to the military and reinforce the power the military wields in our societies, and the claim it has on our resources. I would suggest, instead, that we articulate alternatives to the state as the object of security and the military as the means of providing security – that we aim to securitise important issues – in order to lay a claim to those resources and, perhaps more importantly, to question the claims that the military makes.

Documents

REALISM PROVIDES THE BEST SYNTHESIS - wcdebate.com · Web viewStephen M. Walt, Robert and Renee Belfer Professor of International Relations Harvard University, 2009, "Realism, really?"