Realism

States pursue power and survival in an international system with no authority above them.

Realism begins from the observation that there is no government above governments. In this anarchy no state can call on a higher authority to enforce an agreement or come to its rescue, so each must provide for its own security. Power, and military power above all, is the currency that decides outcomes, and interests are understood in terms of it.

Classical realists locate the source of this competition in statecraft and in human nature itself. Thucydides has the Athenians tell the Melians that the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. Machiavelli writes for a prince who must know how not to be good. Writing after the failure of the interwar settlement, E. H. Carr attacked what he called utopianism, and Hans Morgenthau set out politics as a struggle for power in which prudence, not moral aspiration, is the supreme virtue of the statesman.

Realism expects balances of power to form, alliances to shift with circumstance rather than sentiment, and declarations of principle to follow interest rather than lead it. It is least comfortable explaining durable cooperation, the force of law and norms, and change that cannot be reduced to a change in capabilities.

Key thinkers

Thucydides, Niccolo Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes, E. H. Carr, Hans Morgenthau, Reinhold Niebuhr.

Core concepts

anarchy, balance of power, national interest, security dilemma, raison d'etat, power politics.

Realism applied to 45 historical events

Every event on Theoria is read through all six theories. These are the readings Realism gives, moment by moment. Open one to compare it against the other five, or explore them on the interactive map.

The other theories