fundamentally at odds with the prevailing narrow state-centric (‘billiard ball’)
conceptions of realism that dominated Western IR thinking during the Cold War.
At the forefront of this radical ‘utopian realism’^19 were: E.H. Carr, who concluded
that the nation-state was dead, and looked forward to the expansion of community,
economic planning, and the spread of functional coordination through international
organisations; Hans J. Morgenthau, who also thought the nation-state was obso-
lete, developed ideas about the growth of world community as the basis for world
government, and who promoted nuclear disarmament, functionalism and human
rights; and John H. Herz, who not only analysed the obsolescence of the territorial
state under modern conditions and looked towards universalist solutions, but who
also warned of new global threats – future environmental and demographic changes
- which demanded that humanity urgently engage in ‘survival research’. This group
of radical realists, together with a handful of others, practised what they preached,
and attempted to rethink international politics. Yet, for many years, their realist
readers took from their work only those ideas that confirmed statist dogma about
the timeless practices of statecraft.
In the period since the world crises of the mid-twentieth century, differences
within realism developed not only between its thinkers and its theorists, its radicals
and its dogmatists, and its human nature or structural advocates; there have also been
splits over ‘practice’, the activity on which realists through their very name have always
prided themselves. It is expecting too much to think that political theories can
deliver neat recipe books for political action, but surely we have the right to expect
more from self-professed realiststhan any other group? While there have been areas
of consensus (hostility to liberal interventionism for example) there have also been
areas of significant difference. There have been differences within structural realism
(note Mearsheimer’s ‘offensive’ realist critique below of Waltz’s general position on
war – though they were united in opposing the US-led invasion of Iraq) as well as
differences between structural and classical realists. Among the latter, the gulf
between Waltz and Morgenthau on nuclear weapons could hardly have been wider.
Morgenthau advocated nuclear disarmament, despite defining ‘interest as power’,
whereas Waltz explored the peace-enhancing properties of nuclear proliferation,
despite the implication that technology trumped anarchy (see the chapters by
Deudney and Wheeler). Even as a guide to action, therefore, realism has not been
dogmatic – or at least some of its leading proponents have not been.
Various factors explain why classical realism has attracted more attention in recent
years than the ‘structural’ approach spearheaded by Waltz: perhaps there has been a
sense that structural realism had held centre stage for two decades and that its
contestations were exhausted; certainly, the hot peace after the end of the Cold War
(Rwanda, Iraq, the Congo, Afghanistan, nuclear proliferation, and so on) quickly
destroyed hopes for a new world order, with the reappearance of ‘tragedy’
demanding new respect for the theorists of tragedy; and the prioritising of agents
rather than structures fitted the mood of the discipline’s constructivist turn.
But we should be wary about overdrawing the differences between the classical
and structural branches of realism (Brown’s chapter warns against it, for example).
8 Realism redux