Discuss the realist and neo-realist approaches to the study of International relations. (2008, 60 Marks)
Realism has been the discipline’s dominant approach since 1945 because it explains what other theories treat as an aberration: the recurrence of war and rivalry. Neo-realism keeps that focus but moves the explanation from human beings to the structure of the international system.
The realist approach
- Lineage. Thucydides traced the Peloponnesian War to Athenian growth and the fear it caused in Sparta. Kautilya‘s Arthashastra called the absence of rule matsya nyaya, the law of the fish, and mapped neighbours as natural rivals in the mandala. Niccolò Machiavelli separated political necessity from private morality. Thomas Hobbes pictured sovereigns “in the state and posture of gladiators”.
- E. H. Carr‘s The Twenty Years’ Crisis (1939) exposed the interwar harmony of interests as the ideology of satisfied powers.
- Hans J. Morgenthau‘s Politics Among Nations (1948; the principles were added in the 1954 edition) set out six principles: objective laws rooted in human nature, interest defined as power, a changing content of interest, prudence over abstract morality, no nation’s morality as universal law, and the autonomy of politics.
- Instruments of order: the balance of power, diplomacy (which Morgenthau ranked highest among the elements of national power) and deterrence, rather than law or international organisation.
- Contribution: a working vocabulary of statecraft that practitioners still use.
The neo-realist approach
- Kenneth N. Waltz‘s Theory of International Politics (1979) answered the charge that human nature is unscientific: a constant cannot explain variation.
- Structure has three elements: anarchy, functionally alike states, and the distribution of capabilities, which sets polarity.
- From these follow self-help, the security dilemma first named by John H. Herz, recurrent balancing, concern for relative gains (Joseph M. Grieco) and the greater stability of bipolarity.
- Variants: John J. Mearsheimer‘s offensive realism has states maximise power towards regional hegemony; defensive realists such as Robert Jervis show that restraint usually pays.
- Contribution: parsimony and a systemic explanation of why states as different as democracies and dictatorships behave alike under similar pressures.
Points of difference
Realism works at the level of the unit and treats power as an end shaped by statesmanship. Neo-realism works at the level of the system and treats power as a means to security, with little role for the statesman.
Critical perspectives
- Liberals (Robert O. Keohane, Joseph S. Nye) point to institutions, interdependence and the democratic peace.
- Constructivists: Alexander Wendt‘s “anarchy is what states make of it” makes self-help a practice, not a law.
- Marxists see the inter-state contest as the surface of world capitalism. Feminists such as J. Ann Tickner read realist objectivity as a masculine standpoint.
- Neither strand predicted the peaceful end of the Cold War.
The Indian application
- India’s credible minimum deterrence and no-first-use are defensive-realist self-help.
- After the Pahalgam attack of 22 April 2025, India placed the Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance (23 April), where it still stood a year later, and launched Operation Sindoor on 7 May: mutual escalation of the kind the security dilemma predicts.
- The Quad without an alliance shows hedging, the prudence a classical realist would recommend. C. Raja Mohan‘s Crossing the Rubicon (2003) read India’s post-1991 diplomacy as a turn from idealism to realist pragmatism.
Conclusion
Realism explains the choices of statesmen; neo-realism explains the constraints on them. Together they remain the indispensable baseline of IR, even though neither can explain cooperation and change unaided.