Classical realists are not averse to structuralist arguments, while structural realists
depend for their theory on certain assumptions about so-called ‘human nature’
(Crawford discusses this). Differences between the two main branches of realism
have sometimes been overdrawn as a result of the stereotyping of the key figures in
each – who have been boxed and labelled to suit the convenience of textbook
writers. As a result, how often has one heard ‘Morgenthau’ (a mythic creature, not
the actual work of the actual scholar) summarily dismissed as a world thinker by
students with no life experience beyond attending school, and no knowledge of
Politics among Nations beyond Chapter 28 (if that)?^20
Clearly, such illustrations suggest that realism is a body of ideas with some family
resemblances rather than a coherent research project. And the more complex the
story of realism becomes, the less clear it is that Waltz’s work marked a decisive
break. But if the break was not as much as the neologism ‘neorealism’ implies, the
differences are significant. Compare, for example, Waltz’s ‘defensive realist’ pre-
scriptions, infused by some optimism, with the ‘utopian realist’ visions of the likes
of Carr, Morgenthau and Herz, infused by some Weltschmerz, about remaking a
world they believed to be both dangerous and obsolete. The world crisis was so
serious in the minds of these leading realist thinkers that they thought realism’s
unthinkables – world community, world government and universal perspectives. In
contrast, the leading realist theorist, Waltz, has proved more loyal to the tradition in
terms of his prescriptions; he elaborated a theory of realism accompanied by realist
practices (self-help, and order based on fear) for a state system he believes can be
rescued.
To argue that structural realism offers a powerful picture of international politics,
and that all serious students must engage with it, is certainly not the same as
endorsing it; it is, rather, to argue that we must know why its ideas are powerful,
take its agenda seriously, and assess its ‘explanatory and predictive’ usefulness in
relation to our time.^21. We must, in other words, pay our dues to the constitutive
and constraining power of structural realism: ‘In the history of international relations
.. .’ Waltz writes, ‘results achieved seldom correspond to the intentions of actors.’^22
By better understanding this, we will appreciate why the utopian realist projects
advocated by leading IR classical realists were so premature – never mind the
prescriptions of the discipline’s so-called ‘idealists’. According to the leading IR
classical realists in the mid-twentieth century, realism practised by statist and
nationalist means would be a recipe for global disaster; for Waltz such post-realist
solutions were beyond the mental horizons of the actually existing agents of the self-
help state system. Waltzian realism throws up a similar warning to those of us who
offer post-realist, utopian realist, and emancipatory realist responses to the devel-
oping world-historical crisis of the present century.
We need to know a good deal more than realism
From its beginnings, academic interest in international relations has always been
more than a scholarly exercise. When David Davies, a Member of Parliament and
Realism redux 9