Realism (and Neorealism) 79ing to preserve what is in the national interest; and (3) because the international sys
tem is anarchic—no higher power exists to defeat the competition— the strug gle is
perpetual. Because of the imperative to ensure a state’s survival, leaders are driven by
a morality quite dif er ent from that of ordinary individuals. Morality, for realists, is to
be judged by the po liti cal consequences of a policy.^6
Morgenthau’s international relations textbook Politics among Nations became the
realist bible in the years following World War II. Policy implications flowed naturally
from the theory that the most efective technique for managing power is balance of
power. Both George Kennan (1904–2005), a writer and chair of the state department’s
policy planning staf in the late 1940s and later the U.S. ambassador to the Soviet
Union, and Henry Kissinger (b. 1923), a scholar, foreign policy adviser, and secretary
of state to presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, are known to have based their
policy recommendations on realist theory.
As we saw in Chapter 2, Kennan was one of the architects of the U.S. Cold War
policy of containment, an interpretation of the balance of power. The goal of contain
ment was to prevent Soviet power from extending into regions beyond that country’s
immediate, existing sphere of influence (Eastern Eu rope), thus balancing U.S. power
against Soviet power. Containment was an impor tant alternative to the competing
strategy of “rollback,” in which a combination of nuclear and conventional military
threats would be used to force the Soviet Union out of Eastern Eu rope and, in par tic
u lar, Germany. Kennan’s keen analy sis of Soviet intentions and his fear of uncontrolled
escalation to a third world war ultimately led to the adoption of containment as U.S.
foreign policy. During the 1970s, Kissinger encouraged the classic realist balance of
power by supporting weaker powers such as China and Pakistan to exert leverage over
the Soviet Union and to ofset India’s growing power, respectively. At the time, India
was an ally of the Soviets.
Whereas realism appears to ofer clear policy prescriptions, not all realists agree on
what an ideal realist foreign policy might look like. Defensive realists observe that few
if any major wars in the last century ended up benefiting the state or states that started
them. Threatened states, they argue, tend to balance against aggressors, invariably over
whelming and reversing what ever initial gains were made.
Saddam Hussein’s attempt to conquer and annex neighboring Kuwait in 1990 serves
as a classic example. In August 1990, Iraq’s armed forces quickly overwhelmed the pal
try defenses of Kuwait, and Saddam’s soldiers followed their victory with rape and
looting. Before the invasion, Kuwait had been a little known, oil rich Arab state in
which a repressive hereditary elite ruled over a population composed mainly of servants
hired from surrounding Arab countries (in par tic u lar, Palestinian Arabs). However,
although critics pointed out that Kuwait was itself a less than ideal candidate for res
cue, Saddam’s aggression provoked a power ful international reaction. In 1991, an inter
national co ali tion of armed forces, led by the United States, invaded Kuwait and