Is Realist Approach the best method to understand International Relations? Examine this in the context of Classical Realism. (2017, 20 Marks)
Classical realism, running from Thucydides and Niccolò Machiavelli to E. H. Carr (The Twenty Years’ Crisis, 1939), Reinhold Niebuhr and Hans J. Morgenthau (Politics Among Nations, 1948), roots international conflict in human nature. Because people seek power and no authority stands above sovereign states, politics among nations becomes a struggle for power. Whether this makes it the best method depends on what we ask it to explain.
The classical realist method
- Objective laws rooted in human nature. Morgenthau’s animus dominandi, the lust for domination, makes states run by human beings power-seeking.
- Interest defined as power. Survival is the irreducible national interest; power is always the immediate aim, whatever the ultimate one.
- Morality filtered through circumstance. Prudence, the weighing of consequences, is the supreme political virtue, and a nation’s moral aspirations are not the moral law of the universe (the six principles of the 1954 edition).
- Autonomy of the political. The realist asks how a policy affects power, not whether it is lawful or profitable.
- History and judgement rather than models: statecraft and diplomacy decide outcomes.
Why it remains indispensable
- It explains what states do rather than what they profess. The US invasion of Iraq (2003) was justified in universal terms but driven by interest; the 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal was a cold recalculation of cost. France, having fought Germany for liberty, fought from 1946 to 1954 to regain Indochina.
- Carr exposed the harmony of interests as the ideology of satisfied powers.
- The 2020s vindicate it. The invasion of Ukraine, US–China rivalry, the expiry of New START on 5 February 2026 and world military spending of $2,887 billion in 2025 (SIPRI) return conquest, deterrence and self-help to the centre.
- India has its own tradition: Kautilya’s matsya nyaya and mandala anticipate anarchy and positional alliances.
Why it is not the best method on its own
- Kenneth N. Waltz (Man, the State and War, 1959): human nature is constant, and a constant cannot explain why war occurs in some periods and not others.
- Stanley Hoffmann (“International Relations: The Long Road to Theory”, 1959) faulted the search for a single key: if power is both means and end, any behaviour fits, so the theory cannot be falsified.
- Liberals point to institutions, interdependence and the European Union; Alexander Wendt shows that anarchy has no fixed logic; J. Ann Tickner (1988) reads Morgenthau’s principles as a masculine standpoint posing as objectivity; Marxists hold classes and the world economy prior to states.
- Counter-evidence of principle. India criticised the American bombing of North Vietnam despite dependence on US food aid, led post-colonial solidarity, and was the first country to sever trade with apartheid South Africa (1946).
- Weak post-colonial states face their gravest threats from within: Brian L. Job’s insecurity dilemma (1992) and Mohammed Ayoob’s subaltern realism show that categories built from European great powers travel poorly.
- By naturalising selfishness, realism can shield the powerful from moral scrutiny. Carr himself warned that the realist’s characteristic vice is sterility.
A balanced assessment
Classical realism is more supple than its critics allow. Morgenthau defended diplomacy and opposed the Vietnam War on realist grounds. Yet it tells us what is better than what could be: it explains conflict well, but cooperation, norms and change poorly. Kanti Bajpai’s reading of Indian strategic culture (2002) into Nehruvian, neoliberal and hyperrealist streams shows that real policy draws on several at once.
Conclusion
Classical realism is the best starting point, not the best method. It is the indispensable first lens on power, interest and war, but only when supplemented by liberal, constructivist and critical perspectives does it yield a full understanding of international relations.