Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T17:50:45.674Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Hans Morgenthau's Realism and American Foreign Policy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2012

Robert J. Myers
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

As the father of the realist theory of international relations, Hans Morgenthau consistently argued that international politics is governed by the competitive and conflictual nature of humankind. Myers discusses the history of U.S. foreign policy and the ongoing debate over the continued relevance of realist thought in the post-Cold War era. He argues that despite vast changes in the international system, realism remains relevant as an accurate description of human nature and hence of the interactions among nations. Analyzing Morgenthau's Politics Among Nations, Myers provides a point-by-point discussion of his theory. He concludes by stating that the relevance of realism will be seen particularly in the search for a new balance of power in the post-Cold War world.

Type
Articles
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 11 , March 1997 , pp. 253 - 270
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 1997

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Letters and Papers of George Washington (New York: Sun Dial Classics, 1909), 400Google Scholar.

2 For a recent treatment of this historic theme, see Lipset, Seymour Martin, American Exceptionalism (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1996Google Scholar).

3 The role of power in the American Revolutionary War, however, has been recently explored by Draper, Theodore, A Struggle for Power: The American Revolution (New York: Times Books/Random House, 1996Google Scholar).

4 Rodman, Peter, More Precious Than Peace: The Cold War and the Struggle for the Third World (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1994)Google Scholar. For a full treatment of the Wilsonian quest for a new world order, see Knock, Thomas J., To End All Wars: Woodrow Wilson and the Quest for a New World Order (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992)Google Scholar.

5 See Carr, E. H., The Twenty Years Crisis, 1919–1939: An Introduction to the Study of International Relations (London: Macmillan, 1942)Google Scholar.

6 Kissinger, Henry, Diplomacy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), 18Google Scholar.

7 See Fukuyama, Francis, “Social Capital and the Global Economy,” Foreign Affairs 74 (1995), 161Google Scholar.

8 See Thompson, Kenneth W., Understanding World Politics (South Bend: University of Notre Dame Press, 1985)Google Scholar.

9 See Thompson, Kenneth W. and Myers, Robert J., Truth & Tragedy: A Tribute to Hans J. Morgenthau (New Brunswick: Transaction Press, 1979)Google Scholar.

10 See, for example, Keohane, Robert O., Neorealism and Its Critics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986)Google Scholar.

11 Morgenthau, Hans J., Truth and Power (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1970), 242–43Google Scholar. For a potent critique of rational choice in political science, see Green, David P. and Shapiro, Ian, Pathologies of Rational Choice Theory (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1994)Google Scholar. For a more felicitous outcome for rational choice partisans, see Hardin, Russell, One for All: The Logic of Group Conflict (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995Google Scholar).

12 Kapstein, Ethan, “Is Realism Dead? The Domestic Source of International Politics,” International Organization 49 (Autumn 1995), 758CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also see Kegley, Charles W. Jr., Controversies in International Relations Theory (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995)Google Scholar.

13 Commentary 101 (April 1996), 30Google Scholar.

14 Kant, Immanuel, Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone VIII 21 (New York: Harper Torch—books, 1960)Google Scholar. One can speculate that Kant's view of human nature contributed to his hope for the cure of institutional change as a way out of this dilemma.

15 Kim, Kyung Won, Revolution and International System (New York: New York University Press, 1970), iiGoogle Scholar.

16 Thompson, , Understanding International Politics, 180Google Scholar.

17 See Neufeld, Mark, The Restructuring of International Relations Theory (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), chap. 2CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 See Parent, , “The Genesis of War,” Introduction to Carl Von Clausewitz, On War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), ed. and trans. Howard, Michael and Parent, Peter, 578Google Scholar.

19 Morgenthau, , Politics Among Nations, 1st ed. (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1948), 8.Google Scholar

20 They will be referred to as appropriateGoogle Scholar.

21 See, for example, Stanley Hoffmann's review of the sixth edition of Politics Among Nations, revised by Kenneth W. Thompson (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985) in the Atlantic Monthly, November 1985, 131–36; Rosenthal, Joel H., Righteous Realists: Political Realism, Responsible Power, and American Culture in the Nuclear Age (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1991)Google Scholar; and Smith, Michael Joseph, Realist Thought from Weber to Kissinger (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1986Google Scholar).

22 Morgenthau, , Politics Among Nations, 1st ed., 6Google Scholar.

23 See, for example, Klinkenborg, Verlyn, “We Are Still Only Human,” New York Times Magazine (September 29, 1996)Google Scholar. For better and worse, human nature remains constant.

24 A valuable, but curious, article on “The Moral Politics of Hans Morgenthau,” by A. J. H. Murray, claims an overlooked discovery of morality in Morgenthau's ethics, based on that of St. Augustine. See Review of Politics 58 (Winter 1996), 81–107Google Scholar.

25 Morgenthau, , Scientific Man vs. Power Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1946)Google Scholar.

26 See a refutation of this point by the author in the introduction to Ethics & International Affairs 1 (1987)Google Scholar.

27 See Beitz, Charles, A Theory of International Relations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979)Google Scholar; Waltz, Kenneth, Man, State and War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959)Google Scholar; and Wight, Martin, International Theory: The Three Traditions (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1992)Google Scholar. Wight divides international relations theorists into three groups: realists, who concentrate on the problem of international anarchy; rationalists, who prefer functions, law, and institution building; and revolutionaries, who would turn the system of sovereign national states into some variety of world government. Another valuable book in this category is Rothstein, Robert L., ed., The Evolution of Theory in International Relations (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1991)Google Scholar.

28 Morgenthau, , Politics Among Nations, 3rd ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1962), 3Google Scholar.

31 Morgenthau, , Politics Among Nations, 3rd ed., 4Google Scholar.

32 See, for example, Russell, Bertrand, Power: A New Social Analysis (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1938)Google Scholar: “To be visible, power must relate to something, either people or dead matter: the chief cause of change in the modern world is the increased power over matter that we owe to science.”

33 See Hardin, , One for All, 136Google Scholar.

34 Ibid., 9Google Scholar.

35 Morgenthau, , Politics Among Nations, 3rd ed., 9.Google Scholar

36 Ibid, 10Google Scholar.

37 Morgenthau, , Scientific Man vs. Power Politics, 178–79Google Scholar.

38 See Myers, , “Notes on the Just War Theory: Whose Justice? Which Wars?” Ethics & International Affairs 10(1996), 115–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39 Morgenthau, , Politics Among Nations, 3rd ed., 11Google Scholar.

40 Morgenthau, , Scientific Man vs. Power Politics, 14Google Scholar, emphasis added.

41 See Thompson, Kenneth W., Community, Diversity and the New World Order (Lanham: University Press of America, 1994), 269Google Scholar.

42 See Myers, “Notes on the Just War Theory” on just war arguments on interventionGoogle Scholar.

43 For a contrary view, see Ned Lebow, Richard and Risse-Kappen, Thomas, International Relations Theory and the End of the Cold War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995)Google Scholar. Also, on the failure of international relations theory as exhibited by its failure to prophesy the end of the Cold War, see Katzenstein, Peter J., “Alternate Perceptions on National Security,” Items 49 (December 1995)Google Scholar (Social Science Research Council).