THE EMINENT SCHOLAR Pratap Bhanu Mehta in a recent column in Indian Express launched a scathing attack on the recent turn of political events. In the passionate article, the bone of contention was the realist approach to international politics. By citing Czesław Miłosz’s ‘The Captive Mind’, Mehta went on to criticise ‘realism’, associating it with conformity and obedience.
The ‘realist’ approach to international relations, usually associated with the pursuit of national interest on the international stage, receives a serious epistemic backlash from Pratap Bhanu Mehta. He lists the following characteristics of the realist school:
It is antagonistic to morality.
It allows one to adapt to the new imperial realities of the world.
It is a ‘manlier’ approach to politics.
It makes citizens conformists in the name of practicality.
It portrays power as truth.
It facilitates imperialism and authoritarianism.
It follows a “ suck up, kick down” philosophy.
Yet, despite its passion, Mehta's work suffers from certain conceptual errors. An attempt, therefore, shall be made to analyse and clarify the content of the realist philosophy in international relations. To start with, the piece will resort to Post- Structuralism that argues in favour of the multiplicity of meaning, and Wittgenstein’s ideas in ‘Philosophical Investigations’, which argues that language is context-driven.
The term ‘realism’ has various avatars. In philosophy, ‘realism’ and ‘idealism’ are two competing schools vying to capture the nature of human cognition. Brilliantly summing up the contrast between the two, Jadunath Sinha interprets ‘idealism’ as the school of thought that objects cannot exist independently of human cognition. In contrast, ‘realism’ recognises the independent existence of objects and argues that external objects are not merely objects of perception but the very cause of human cognition.
Another variant of ‘realism’ is found in legal philosophy in the form of American Legal Realism and Scandinavian Realism. American Legal Realism was the legal offspring of a societal-cultural movement called Progressivism, which began in the US in the 1890s and lasted until the advent of the First World War. The movement was a reaction against laissez-faire economics and was instrumental in the cultivation of Pragmatism, which was, in turn, a pluralist view of the world that rejected any dogmatic view of life and focused on the ‘practical-cash value’ of all the concepts, including truth and God.
Recently, Professor Prashant Shukla called ‘pragmatism’ an ‘exit from philosophy’. Urban life required a pluralistic approach to meaning, and the world's ancient truths were no longer infallible. American Legal Realism, in turn, rejected the formalist-logical nature of law and criticised the capitalist-friendly interpretations of property as handed out by the Supreme Court of the U.S., particularly in the Lochner v. New York (1905) decision. The ‘realities’ of law could not be divorced from the societal and economic quotients. What the school proposed was legal indeterminacy, an idea that attacked the very notion of fact establishment and strict adherence to the stare decisis formula.
Scandinavian Legal Realism, on the other hand, was the handiwork of a Swedish philosopher, Axel Hagerstrom, who sought to exorcise Swedish academia of the ghost of Kantian metaphysics, thereby spearheading a logical and positivist understanding of law.
Is ‘realism’ the blind pursuit of national interest at the cost of morality and international law?
After clarifying the ontology of ‘realism’, we must turn to the elephant in the room: political realism in international relations. It is argued that political realism, as interpreted by Pratap Bhanu Mehta, is not an apologist approach for imperialism and the mighty. It is argued that the Presidency of Donald Trump and the acquiescence of the Indian Foreign Ministry have given political realism a bad reputation. Political Realism, they say, has been misunderstood.
At the centre of the debate is Hans Morgenthau, often considered the main exponent of political realism in the 20th century, and the architect of America’s realist foreign policy, having worked closely with George Keenan during the turbulent Cold War years. The ‘realist turn’ in American foreign policy is usually interpreted as a blind pursuit of national interest at the cost of morality and international law, an interpretation recently championed by Mehta. This popular take, however, is incorrect.
A close analysis of Morgenthau’s work shows a different picture of political realism. To put things in a better context, Morgenthau’s ideas were primarily a reaction to the quantifying, data-driven techniques of American Legal Realism, a movement he derided at the University of Chicago. Though primarily known for his magnum opus, Politics Among Nations (1960), Morgenthau argued in another notable work, Scientific Man v. Power Politics, published in 1947, that foreign policy needed a ‘common sense’ approach rather than an overtly data-driven one. His realist approach was a reaction against Hans Kelsen’s legalist approach towards international relations.
Kelsen had argued in his works that in contentious international issues, the voice of international law reigned supreme. The state, being a legal person, and the creation of law, were subservient to international law. All political issues in international relations ought to give primacy to the mechanisms for settling disputes envisioned in treaties and international organisations. In fact, Kelsen sketched his own international organisation in Peace Through Law (1944), which envisioned a strong international court with the power to impose sanctions and compulsory jurisdiction.
Morgenthau interpreted efforts such as these as an exercise in idealism that almost bordered on dogmatism. The actors of foreign policy usually do not behave in a legalist way. Morgenthau had been criticising such legalist-idealist (here, idealism means a school of thought nurtured by the Kantian philosophy of reason and universal morality) approaches that had reached their zenith in the Presidency of Woodrow Wilson. The Wilsonian approach tried to solve international problems through legalist methods such as collective security and the Covenant of the League of Nations. Collective Security was seen as a conceptual alternative to European Realpolitik, the balance of power.
It is in this context that Morgenthau’s ‘common sense’ approach used national interest as the guiding compass for the statesman. But his thoughts were misinterpreted in the USA, and this popular misinterpretation has been passed down to the students of international politics and international law. A closer look at Morgenthau’s works shows that his realist method was not a blind pursuit of national interest, nor was it completely devoid of morality.
In his work In Defence of the National Interest (1982), Morgenthau consciously distanced himself from the amoral ideas of Thomas Hobbes, stating that moral values such as justice and equality were indeed the guides of political action. provided they were related to a contemporary political situation. He also argued that moral principles were not divorced from political interests but derived from them. In Another ‘Great Debate’: The National Interest of the United States (1952), Morgenthau did recognise the importance of morality. Here, he interpreted national interest in moral terms. In the same work, he recognised the plural nature of American societal structure, which had the potential to be exported internationally (a proposition that might sound controversial today), and he termed it ‘political morality’. Further, he argued that political actions were an attempt to realise moral values.
The biggest revelation about Morgenthau’s realism, however, came from Louis B. Zimmer in his book The Vietnam War Debate (2011). Faithfully referring to Morgenthau’s interviews, lectures, and correspondence, Zimmer showed that Morgenthau was firmly against the Vietnam War., and even proposed the ‘enclave strategy’ that included an immediate stoppage to the bombing of North Vietnam and halting the search and destroy missions in South Vietnam. His involvement in Vietnam was contrary to his ‘common-sense’ approach.
The feminist realist
Another correct interpretation of the realist approach comes from an obscure feminist scholar of international relations, Merze Tate. Tate, an African-American scholar and a graduate of Oxford and Harvard, was a leading voice on ‘anti-racist geopolitics’. She wrote extensively on the history of arms reduction and the Hague Peace processes of the late 19th and early 20th century. Tate was critical of the idea of arbitration, sanctions, disarmament, and collective security.
For Tate, her mistrust of the legalist techniques allowed her to be a sceptic of the universalist moralist principles. Her scepticism-driven realism allowed her to view armament as a fundamental necessity. She even termed pacifist movements inchoate. In Tate’s assessment, peace agreements worked only if they guaranteed the political status quo. Since arms were an essential part of imperialism, the vision of disarmament was a distant reality. In her seminal work, Disarmament Illusion: The Movement for a Limitation of Armaments to 1907, she observed: “The limitations of armaments are not a matter of mathematics nor of morals but of politics…”
Is Trump’s presidency truly ‘realist’ policy?
A perusal of Morgenthau and Tate's ideas shows that the alignment of realism with national interest and national glory is merely a caricature. Realism in international relations definitely gives primacy to national interest, but through the lens of prudence, common sense, and political morality. The realist approach is primarily sceptical in nature, and does not accept any dogmatic or a priori legal solutions to political issues.
Recently, Paul Poast of the University of Chicago, who has emerged as the leading voice in political realism asserted that realism is an aspect of theodicy, meaning that, just like pain and suffering, war is an unavoidable part of human life. It will always ‘be there’ as there will always be a desire for power. It is a very human thing to do.
His arguments echo Hegel’s criticism of Kant’s Perpetual Peace Model. Is the Presidency of Trump in adherence to realist policy? It is difficult to answer in the affirmative. His policies can be interpreted better through the lens of Carl Schmitt, who had diagnosed the imperialist tendencies of the USA in his concept Grobraumordnung. It is subliminal that we are to assess the powers of the American President through the lens of a Nazi apologist.
Considering the turbulent times we are witnessing , it is more than appropriate to quote Morgenthau’s prudent and now prophetic advice to President Lyndon Johnson :
“ You, Mr. President will have to decide whether the present policy- morally dubious , militarily hopeless and risky, politically aimless and counterproductive shall be continued or whether a better policy shall take its place. You aspire to be a great President. Whether you remain the prisoner of past mistakes or have the courage to correct them will be the test of your greatness…”
“ We are being humiliated every day as long as this war continues. We are humiliated in the eyes of the world. What is worse and grave is that we humiliate ourselves in our own eyes because we betray that moral principles, the ideals on which this country was founded…”
