The Atlantic Realists

Empire and International Political Thought Between Germany and the United States

Matthew Specter

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781503629967, 9781503603127
• eBook ISBN: 9781503629974
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 20th Century History
• Index: History

In The Atlantic Realists, intellectual historian Matthew Specter offers a boldly revisionist interpretation of "realism," a prevalent stance in post-WWII US foreign policy and public discourse and the dominant international relations theory during the Cold War. Challenging the common view of realism as a set of universally binding truths about international affairs, Specter argues that its major features emerged from a century-long dialogue between American and German intellectuals beginning in the late nineteenth century. Specter uncovers an "Atlantic realist" tradition of reflection on the prerogatives of empire and the nature of power politics conditioned by fin de siècle imperial competition, two world wars, the Holocaust, and the Cold War. Focusing on key figures in the evolution of realist thought, including Carl Schmitt, Hans Morgenthau, and Wilhelm Grewe, this book traces the development of the realist worldview over a century, dismantling myths about the national interest, Realpolitik, and the "art" of statesmanship.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction: The Bildungsroman of Empire
• 1. Seeing like a World Power: The German-American Synthesis
• 2. Realism before “Realism”: Geopolitics in the Interwar Atlantic
• 3. Carl Schmitt’s Practice of Imperial Comparison in the 1930s and 1940s
• 4. The Making of a Realist: Wilhelm Grewe in the Third Reich
• 5. Geopolitics: Death and Rebirth of an Atlantic Tradition during World War II
• 6. An American Power Politics: Hans Morgenthau and the Making of a Realist Orthodoxy, 1940–1960
• 7. Realism’s Crisis and Restoration: West Germany, 1954–1985
• Conclusion
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index