Realism

A Distinctively 20th Century European Tradition

Alexander Reichwein, Felix Rösch, Alexander Reichwein, Felix Rösch

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9783030584542
• eBook ISBN:
  9783030584559
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: European Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book examines how IR's European realist tradition evolved in Europe and, due to emigration, in the United States in the 20th century. It includes an introduction and eight chapters, focusing on historical classical and contemporary structural branches of realist IR theorizing in historical and political contexts in which realist thinking did develop. It reminds us of realist key figures, such as Edward H. Carr, John H. Herz or Hans J. Morgenthau, but also of almost forgotten realists such as Raymond Aron, Stanley Hoffmann or Nicholas J. Spykman. Given IR mainstream textbooks introducing realism as a conservative American Cold War theory, this selection aims to reintroduce realism as a primarily and distinctively European, liberal, normative and critical tradition. A tradition that is almost always misunderstood as a guide for practitioners how to maximize or at least preserve power in the name of the national interest no matter the cost, but thatis in fact an argument against reckless and crude power politics, ideology and totalitarianism. This book is an invaluable resource for scholars, practitioners and students interested in the realist tradition in IR.

    

© The Author(s) 2021

A. Reichwein, F. Rösch (eds.)RealismTrends in European IR Theoryhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58455-9_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction: Realism—A Primarily European Tradition Emigrating to the U.S.

Alexander Reichwein¹

(1)

Department of Political Science, Justus-Liebig-University, Giessen, Germany

Alexander Reichwein

Email: [email protected]

Abstract

‘Realism’ is the most simplified, shortened and misunderstood intellectual tradition in IR. It is almost always caricatured as an American Cold War theory and foreign policy guide, and it is often equated with nationalism, conservatism, and power politics no matter the cost. Quite the contrary, the realist tradition has a long and rich history, and a liberal and normative core. European twentieth century first generation classical realists became U.S. citizens due to forced emigration in the 1930s. This explains why post-war realism made career outside Europe, and why many intellectual portraits of realists focus on the United States. Hence, these realists are best characterised as ‘travellers between two worlds’. The present volume’s core message is that there would be no American realism without European émigré realism. The chapters aim at recapture and reintroduce realism as a primarily and distinctively European tradition.

Keywords

EuropeHistoryRealismForced emigrationTravellers between two worlds

End Abstract

Composing a book on realism in International Relations with a comprehensive European scope is a challenging but necessary and worthwhile endeavour. Realism roots in a long and intellectual rich and inspiring European history (Knutsen 2012; Tellis 1996). Realist key figures such as Hannah Arendt or Raymond Aron became public intellectuals and well-known inside and outside the IR discipline. Most important, realism goes beyond American structural or neo-realism.

Would the European Realists Please Stand Up?

Nevertheless, European realism did not receive the attention in Europe during and after the end of the Cold War it should deserve, and it did not receive attention as a European tradition in the U.S. academic community, where ‘Realism’ is represented by Kenneth N. Waltz, Stephen M. Walt, Robert Gilpin or John Mearsheimer who did capture realist thought and made neo-realist theories out of it (Keohane 1986; Mearsheimer 2005; Waltz 1990).

In a recent article on Realist Theories in Search of Realists, Knud Erik Jørgensen and Asli Ergul Jorgensen (2020) state that there are neither realists in contemporary European scholarship nor has a clear European realist theoretical thinking been advanced. According to both authors, realism faces a problem of reality and representation. Jørgensen and Jorgensen argue, first, that there was never an important or strong European realist tradition in IR in the “Fifty Years Crisis” from 1939 to 1989, and after. Second, that there are only a few European IR scholars who do not know (or collaborate with) each other. Finally, that these fragmented group of lonesome scholars do either meta-studies on realism (without any empirical relevance), or work on the (self-fulfilling) rediscovery of the history of (classical historical) realism for praise, or advocate and suggest Realpolitik by misusing realism as a tool for reckless nationalist foreign policy and geopolitics. According to both authors, realists do so without contributing to theoretical innovation of realism and without dealing with current problems and issues in international politics by adjusting the realist research agenda, and without offering empirical rich studies on conflicts.

An argument against a lacking European realist community and collaboration these days is the volume Neoclassical Realism in European Politics: Bringing Power Back In (Toje and Kunz 2012) aim at bringing realism back in to the European IR debates. An argument against a lacking realist engagement with Europe and international politics is the volume Fear and Uncertainty in Europe: The Return to Realism? (Belloni et al. 2019) dealing with the consequences of Russia’s counter-hegemony and interventionism in Eurasia, the Brexit, instability in the Middle East and Africa, or Germany’s growing power for a crisis-ridden (EU)rope from various realist perspectives. An argument against a lacking theoretical innovation is the Forum Rethinking Neoclassical Realism at Theory’s End published in International Studies Review (Meibauer et al. 2020), bringing European neoclassical realists together and introducing a European strand of neoclassical realism (see Reichwein 2020). Another critical appraisal of realism, as this volume on hand offers, is not just academic amusement. The realist is a tradition worth to be recaptured and reintroduced as a distinctively European one.

Facing Intellectual Ignorance

‘Realism’ is the most simplified, shortened and misinterpreted intellectual tradition in IR. In his book The Realist Case for Global Reform, William E. Scheuerman summarises all these widespread misunderstandings in mainstream textbooks and articles by means of the stylistic device of an exam student Ernie has written in Professor Conventional Wisdom’s IR theories seminar (Scheuerman 2011b). One, to pick just a few misinterpretations out, is that realism is an American Cold War theory and a guide for US foreign policy of containment (see Greenberg 2014: 5–11; Myers 1997, 1999). That realists are war-mongering Neanderthals (see Edelstein 2010). That realism is an affirmative theory about how to maximize or at least preserve power no matter the cost, starting from the presumption that conflict is the engine and insuperable law of history and mankind. Another false portrait is that realism and nationalism are just two sides of the same coin, trying to prove a realist fixation on the nation-state and the raison d’état, power competition, and the national interest as guidelines for any state’s external behaviour in line with the so-called Machiavellian or Bismarck’s and Kissinger’s lessons in reckless, crude, amoral Realpolitik (Smith 1986; Wrightson 1995), or in line with a Schmittian friend-foe distinction. A further and often reproduced misunderstanding is that realism lacks any sense of democratic principles, ethics and morality (Kaufman 2006; Meyer 2001), the rule of law and norms, or pluralism and cosmopolitanism. In sum, realists are said to be conservative, backwards-oriented, elitist and technocratic companions. They are accused of being advocates of pure power politics. And they are blamed of being nostalgic about an European eighteenth and nineteenth century balance of power order (Brown 2007) and a Cold War stability (Mearsheimer 1990) until today.

However, reading Arendt, Aron, or John H. Herz, Stanley Hoffmann, Friedrich Meinecke, Hans J. Morgenthau, Reinhold Niebuhr or Nicholas J. Spykman, it seems that intellectual ignorance is at work. As Michael C. Williams asserts in his The Realist Tradition and the Limits of International Relations (2005), “Morgenthau was more often cited than read” (Williams 2005: 82). Hence, despite its richness (Gilpin 1984; see also Frankel 1996a, b), the realist tradition was, and still is, reduced by its critics to a caricature of the antipode of liberalism and internationalism.

Twentieth Century European Realists: ‘Travellers Between Two Worlds’

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Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction: Realism—A Primarily European Tradition Emigrating to the U.S.
• 2. Between Kratos and Ethos: Thinking Through the Ritual in the Work of Friedrich Meinecke
• 3. Edward H. Carr and Carl Schmitt: Interwar Realism’s Not so Strange Bedfellows
• 4. Weimar in America: Central European Émigrés, Classical Realism, or How to Prevent History from Repeating Itself
• 5. John Herz and the Purposes of Realism
• 6. Nicholas Spykman’s Interactional Realism: Irony, Social Theory, Political Geography
• 7. The Christian Realist Pendulum: Between Pacifism and Interventionism
• 8. The Germans and the Frenchmen: Hoffmann’s and Aron’s Critiques of Morgenthau
• 9. When Martians Go to Venus: Structural Realism in Europe
• Back Matter