Realism and Idealism
Lsn 3
Paradigms
• Paradigm
– An intellectual framework that structures one’s
thinking about a set of phenomena
– A “cognitive map” that helps to organize reality and to
make sense out of a multitude of events
– Different paradigms offer different models of reality or
views of the world
– Different paradigms have the effect of focusing
attention toward some things and away from others
International Relations Paradigms
•
•
•
•
•
Idealist
Realist
Identity
Marxist
Globalist
Idealist
• As early as the 14th
Century the Italian poet
Dante wrote of the
“universality of man” and
envisioned a unified
world state
• Immanuel Kant argued
that doing good was an
end unto itself rather
than a means to some
other end
Idealist
• Hope to minimize conflict and maximize
cooperation among nations
• Focus attention on legal-formal aspects of
international relations, such as
international law and international
organizations
• Also focus on moral concerns such as
human rights
Case Study: Woodrow Wilson
and the Fourteen Points
Paris Peace Conference
• The victorious powers
met in Paris in 1919 to
determine the postwar
settlement after WWI
• Representatives from the
Central Powers were not
invited to attend
• The Russians were not
invited to attend
• The French, British, and
Americans dominated the
conference
Georges Clemenceau (France),
Lloyd George (Britain), and
Woodrow Wilson (US) at
Versailles
Woodrow Wilson
• US President Woodrow Wilson had formative
experiences that influenced his idealist world
view
– He was born in Virginia in 1856 and had seen the
destruction of the Civil War
– He was the son of a Presbyterian minister and was
devoutly religious
– He was an intellectual, graduating from Princeton
(then the College of New Jersey) and the University
of Virginia Law School and then earning a doctorate
at Johns Hopkins University
– He had an academic career as a professor of political
science and president of Princeton
Woodrow Wilson
• As president, Wilson championed socially
conscious legislation that lowered tariffs,
graduated the Federal income tax, created
a more elastic money supply, prohibited
unfair business practices, prohibited child
labor, and limited railroad workers to an
eight-hour day
• He won reelection with the slogan “he kept
us out of war”
Fourteen Points
• Wilson had announced his
“Fourteen Points” as a
proposed basis for the
armistice a year before the
Paris Peace Conference
opened
• Represented a school of
thought that a new world order
had to be constructed based
on a respect for law, the
acceptance of shared universal
values, and the development of
international organizations
Fourteen Points
• Wilson envisioned:
– Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at,
– Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas in peace
and in war,
– The removal of all economic barriers and the
establishment of an equality of trade conditions among
all nations,
– Adequate guarantees for a reduction in national
armaments,
– Adjustments of colonial disputes to give equal weight
to the interests of the controlling government and the
colonial population, and
– A call for “a general association of nations”
Fourteen Points
• Many perceived Wilson’s Fourteen Points as
excessively idealistic
• For the Allies, they conflicted with the secret
wartime agreements they had made to
distribute among themselves territories and
possessions of the defeated nations
• For the defeated powers, the harsh treaties
that would be latter imposed upon them
certainly seemed to violate the spirit of the
Fourteen Points
Treaty of Versailles (1919)
• In contrast to Wilson’s focus on international
cooperation and peace, the French
especially wanted harsh terms imposed on
the Germans
– Wanted to destroy or permanently
weaken Germany as a threat
• Certainly some of difference between the
American and British/French views can be
traced to their wartime experiences
Treaty of Versailles (1919)
• America had entered
the war relatively late
and did not suffer
nearly the casualties
the French and
British did
• The US also had the
Atlantic and Pacific
Oceans between
itself and any
potential enemies
Treaty of Versailles (1919)
• In the end, the French and British viewpoint
prevailed
• The resulting Treaty of Versailles was very
punitive and sought to keep peace not by
cooperation but by weakening Germany
– Denied the Germans a navy and air force and limited
the size of their army to 100,000 troops
– Prevented Germany and Austria from entering any sort
of political union
– Required the payment of war reparations
League of Nations
• What did survive from
Wilson’s Fourteen Points
was his call for “a
general association of
nations”
• Resulted in the Covenant
of the League of Nations
with 42 original members
• The US never joined the
League because the
Senate rejected it
• By 1940 the League had
dismantled
1919 British cartoon criticizing
the failure of the United States
to join the League of Nations
League of Nations
• The League of Nations was ineffective because
of two flaws:
– Though designed to solve international disputes
through arbitration, it had no power to enforce its
decisions
– Its basic premise of collective security never
materialized because at any given time one or more
of the great powers did not belong to the League
• Nonetheless it established the pattern for and
served as a model for the United Nations
Woodrow Wilson
• An idealist to the end, when Wilson was
questioned about the practicality of the
League of Nations, he declared, “If it won’t
work, it must be made to work.”
• Idealists tend to be more interested in how
the world ought to be rather than how it
actually is
• They consider the reality of the moment to
not be the only possible reality
Failure of the Treaty of Versailles
• German protest against the Treaty of
Versailles ultimately led to Hitler’s rise to
power and World War II
• Idealists argued that their ideas had not
been fully implemented and therefore not
fully tested; still their failure to anticipate
and prevent WWII gave rise to a new
paradigm after 1945
Realist
• While realists are just as interested as idealists
in conflict management, realists are less
optimistic about the effectiveness of international
law and organization and about the extent of
international cooperation that is possible
• Realists view international relations almost
exclusively as a “struggle for power” among
competing nation-states
– States, like human beings, have an innate desire to
dominate others
Realist
• The ultimate goal of all countries is
security in a hostile, anarchic environment
• Realist policies are determined by power
calculations in pursuit of national security
– Countries satisfied with their situation tend to
pursue the status quo
– Countries that are dissatisfied tend to be
expansionist
– Alliances are made and broken based on the
requirements of “realpolitik”
Realist
• Realists focus on military strategy, the
elements of national power, and the nature
of national interests more so than
international law and organization
• From WWII they learned that the way to
prevent future wars was a “balance of
power” capable of deterring would-be
aggressors or on a “concert of powers”
willing to police the world
Realist
• In the 16th Century Machiavelli
had argued in The Prince that:
– “it is far better to be feared than
loved”
– “he ought not to quit good courses if
he can help it, but should know how
to follow evil courses if he must”
– “he will prosper most whose mode of
acting best adapts itself to the
character of the times; and
conversely that he will be
unprosperous, with whose mode of
acting the times do not accord”
Realist
• Hans Morgenthau is
considered the father of
realism
– Wrote Politics Among
Nations in 1948
– Stressed the virtues of the
classical, multipolar, balance
of power system and saw the
bipolar rivalry between the
US and the USSR as
especially dangerous
Morgenthau’s Six Principles
• Politics is governed by objective laws that
have their roots in human nature.
– It is possible to develop a theory that reflects
these laws and to differentiate between truth
and opinion.
– Therefore, we can predict what a state should
rationally do.
Morgenthau’s Six Principles
• Interest is defined in terms of power.
• Interest defined as power is an objective
category which is universally valid, but whose
meaning can change.
• Universal moral principles cannot be applied to
the actions of states in the abstract; the
circumstances of time and place must be
considered.
– The state must place its survival above all other moral
goods.
Morgenthau’s Six Principles
• The moral laws that govern the universe are
distinct from the morals of any one nation.
• Politics is an autonomous sphere that needs to
be analyzed as an entity, without being
subordinated to outside values.
– Different facts of human nature exist, but the “political
man” – the part of man interested only in power – is
the appropriate facet for the study of politics.
– Other standards are appropriate to other spheres, but
not to politics.
Realist
• The realist paradigm
was very popular during
the Cold War
– The US and the USSR
competed in everything
•
•
•
•
•
Military
Economics
Space race
Olympics
Alliances
Bob Matthias, US competitor in the 1952
Olympics, said, the Russian athletes “were in
a real sense the enemy. You just loved to
beat them. You just had to beat them. It
wasn’t like competing against some guys
from a friendly country like Australia.”
Case Study: Peloponnesian
War and the Melian Dialogue
Persian Wars
• Colonization
brought the Greek
city states in conflict
with the Persian
Empire
• Result was the
Persian Wars (500479 B.C.)
• In 479 the Persians
were defeated at
Plataea and forced
back to Anatolia
Delian League
• After the Persian threat subsided, the
Greek poleis formed an alliance called the
Delian League
– Athens supplied most of the military force
thanks to its superior naval fleet and the other
poleis provided financial support
• Sparta, who was originally offered
leadership of the league but declined,
became the hegemon of the land-based
Peloponnesian League
Delian League
• In the absence of the Persian threat, Athens transformed
the Delian League into an Athenian Empire
• Eventually the other poleis came to resent financing
Athens’s bureaucracy and construction projects
• Sparta and many other Greek states came to fear
Athens’s growing power
– When Athens attempted to gain control of supplies of grain,
timber, and precious metals at their source, Sparta declared war
• The result was the Peloponnesian War (431-404) in
which the poleis divided up into two sides led by Athens
and Sparta
– Representative of the realist emphasis on the balance of power
Melian Dialogue
• Melos
– Small, relatively sparsely
populated island in the
Cretan Sea
– Surrounded by several other
smaller islands which were
members of the Athenian
Empire
– Officially, Melos was allied
with the Spartans
(Lacadaemons) in the
Peloponnesian War, because
Melos was originally a
Lacedaemonian colony
Melian Dialogue
• The Melians, however, remained neutral and did
not send arms, men, or boats to the
Lacedaemons
• The Athenians sent a delegation to Melos to
demand that the Melians become a tribute state
of the Athenian Empire, but the Melians asked to
remain neutral
• In the ensuing Dialogue, the Athenians present a
decidedly realist argument to support their case
Melian Dialogue
• 86. The Melian representatives answered: “The
quiet interchange of explanations is a
reasonable thing, and we do not object to that.
But your warlike movements, which are present
not only to our fears but to our eyes, seem to
belie your words. We see that, although you
may reason with us, you mean to be our
judges; and that at the end of the discussion, if
the Justice of our cause prevail and we therefore
refuse to yield, we may expect war; if we are
convinced by you, slavery.”
Melian Dialogue
• 89. Athenians: Well, then, we Athenians
will use no flue words; we will not go out of
our way to prove at length that we have a
right to rule, because we overthrew the
Persians; or that we attack you now
because we are suffering any injury at
your hands…. the powerful exact what
they can, and the weak grant what they
must.
Melian Dialogue
• 90. Melians: Well,
then, since you set
aside justice and
invite us to speak of
expediency…
Thucydides, author of History
of the Peloponnesian War
Melian Dialogue
• 91. Athenians: … we have come in the
interests of our empire, and that in what
we are about to say we are only seeking
the preservation of your city. For we want
to make you ours with the least trouble
to ourselves, and it is for the interests of
us both that you should not be
destroyed.
Melian Dialogue
• 93. Athenians: To you the gain will be that
by submission you will avert the worst;
and we shall be all the richer for your
preservation.
• 95. Athenians: No, your enmity is not half
so mischievous to us as your friendship;
for the one is in the eyes of our
subjects an argument of our power, the
other of our weakness.
Melian Dialogue
• 97. Athenians: So that
your subjection will
give us an increase of
security, as well as an
extension of empire.
For we are masters of
the sea and you who
are islanders, and
insignificant
islanders too, must not
be allowed to escape
us.
Athenian military power
was built around the navy
Melian Dialogue
• 101. Athenians: Not so, if you calmly
reflect: for you are not fighting against
equals to whom you cannot yield without
disgrace, but you are taking counsel
whether or no you shall resist an
overwhelming force. The question is not
one of honor but of prudence.
Melian Dialogue
• 105. Athenians: Of the gods we believe,
and of men we know, that by a law of
their nature wherever they can rule they
will, This law was not made by us, and we
are not the first who have acted upon it;
we did but inherit it, and shall bequeath it
to all time, and we know that you and all
mankind, if you were as strong as we are,
would do as we do.
Melian Dialogue
• 109. Athenians: Yes, but what
encourages men who are invited to join in
a conflict is clearly not the good-will of
those who summon them to their side, but
a decided superiority in real power.
Melian Dialogue
• 111. Athenians: Help may come from
Lacedaemon to you….Your strongest
grounds are hopes deferred, and what
power you have is not to be compared
with that which is already arrayed
against you.
Melian Dialogue
• 113. Such was the answer of the Melians;
the Athenians, as they quitted the
conference, spoke as follows, “Well, we
must say, judging from the decision at
which you have arrived, that you are the
only men who deem the future to be
more certain than the present, and
regard things unseen as already realized
in your fond anticipation…”
Melian Dialogue
• After ending the dialogue the Athenian
envoys returned to the army and
commenced hostilities
• In the end, the Melians were compelled to
surrender
– The Athenians then killed all the military-aged
men and made slaves of the women and
children
– They colonized the island and sent 500 of
their own settlers there
Next Lesson
• Alternative Paradigms