Author
Jason Ralph
University of Leeds
Realism is a rich tradition, but it confuses U.S. foreign policy discourse. American pragmatism offers an alternative vocabulary.
We are told realism is a rich tradition because it has so many versions: classical and neoclassical; offensive and defensive; Christian; progressive; ethical; and now, following the recent U.S. National Security Strategy, “flexible” realism. It is so rich that it occupies a “mansion of many rooms.” As an academic I can happily spend a lifetime in this mansion. But as someone interested in coherent foreign policy, I sometimes walk its corridors lost and confused. My sense is the American public would be better served by a change of normative vocabulary.
Many adjectives accompany realism because theories are always for someone and for some purpose. This is illustrated by UC Berkeley’s Matthew Specter. His work demonstrates how the objective-sounding realist language of “national interest” emerged from and remained entwined with the Western imperial pursuit of great power status. The egoistic desire to define oneself as a “great power” with “a sphere of influence” that subjugates “inferior powers” is normalized because realism allows it to “trade on the aura of the real.” In other words, realism can lull us into accepting social hierarchies because it tells us—in the words of Bruce Hornsby—”that’s the way it is. Some things will never change.”
Realism presently aligns with a radical conservative ideology that enables great powers to compete in a plurality of essentialized “civilizations.” The U.S. mission in this world is to restore “Europe’s civilizational self-confidence and Western identity“ by defending it against its enemies, which includes liberals who do not recognize concrete differences between nations, religions, races, and genders. It aims to “correct” the mistakes of liberal globalism, but it is “old wine in new bottles.” It is a realism for “national greatness,” social hierarchy, and 19th century imperialism.
Those residing elsewhere in the realist mansion protest at their alignment with radical conservatism. The Trump administration, they argue, is gaslighting us. University of Chicago’s Paul Poast, for instance, argues that Trump’s foreign policy is not at all realist. He contrasts the “Christian militarism” of the administration with the “Christian realism” of Reinhold Niebuhr. Where the former mixes coercive force with civilizational pride, the latter is critical of such vanity. American realism is, from this perspective, much more “tempered” when it comes to using military power.
Likewise, in a recent article for Carnegie Council, Kevin Maloney, the organization’s chief public affairs officer, rescues the work of Hans Morgenthau from the “willful manipulation” of the Trump administration. The emphasis in this part of the realist mansion is on a Weberian “ethic of responsibility“ based on the consequences of one’s actions. An imprudent use of power will lead to perverse outcomes. The hubris of U.S. interventionism (in Vietnam, Iraq, and now Iran) underestimates the power of other people’s nationalism and the U.S. ends up in situations that harm its national interest.
It is likely that Poast (channeling Niebuhr), Maloney (channeling Morgenthau), and the Trump administration will simply talk over each other. This is because they are arguing about something that can only be understood when it is paired with a particular image of the nation; and in fact, it is the ends given by national identity that is being contested not the “correct” definition of realism. The non-imperial ends of Maloney and Poast point toward restraining U.S. power, whereas the imperial ends of the Trump presidency point toward unrestrained power. Both would qualify as realism because they match means to ends, but their difference about ends requires a very different normative vocabulary.
This might suggest realism gives us nothing of value. That is not my conclusion. I find an ethical realist critique of dogmatic idealism to be compelling. The moralist’s claim that state leaders should “do the right thing” regardless of the consequences is just as selfish (and ethically problematic) as the amoralist’s claim that “the other” can be abused to further the national interest.
However, I do prefer to follow John Dewey and call this focus on practical consequences pragmatism rather than realism. When we connect consequentialist ethics with pragmatism, we avoid associating the virtues of prudential judgment and deliberative reasoning with those parts of realist theory that claim to have objectively identified an essentialized or fixed “reality.”
Those foreign policy thinkers who associate Dewey with interwar idealism, including his involvement in the “outlawry of war” movement, will reject any attempt to link pragmatism to political prudence. But deep within philosophical pragmatism is a relentless focus on the practical consequences of ideas, and a compelling criticism of cultural habits and moral certainties that protect dogmatic behaviors. Realists and pragmatists rightly subject liberalism to this interrogation, but pragmatists subject realism to it as well. Pragmatists are just as critical of the habits and certainties associated with realist thinking, especially the predisposition to see enmity and tragedy when conscientious reflection may reveal something different.
It is through pragmatism moreover that we also find clarity on what the U.S. is and should be. Dewey’s 1930s writings told us that the U.S. worked as a political association because its citizens shared a “common faith“ in the “give-and-take“ of constitutional democracy, which meant diverse communities were—slowly and not without conflict—pragmatically adapting to each other to create a new nation. Contrary to contemporaneous events in the Weimar Republic, where the political realism of the German volk put a fixed notion of self ahead of the national and international laws that protected diversity, the American Republic was surviving because it was able to nurture practices that were better adapted to the pluralist reality of the 20th century.
In contrast to the ambiguity of realism then, American pragmatism is clear on what the state should be. It rejects the idea that particular communities or civilizations can invoke “the political“ (or friend-enemy distinctions) to transgress the constitutional norms of a wider association; and on that it admittedly aligns with some expressions of American realism. Hans Morgenthau, for instance “held an unalloyed admiration for the founders of the American Republic.” My point, however, is that the radical conservative image of particular communities acting without legal restraint to restore civilizational “self-confidence” does draw from other versions of realism. It finds no such support in pragmatist thought, however.
This week started with the president working to restore Western “civilizational self-confidence“ by threatening to destroy the Iranian “civilization.” There is a version of realism—the one that says liberal laws and norms should not restrain states as they prosecute a “clash of civilizations”—that would have condoned such action, just as it condones the existing levels of violence. Pragmatists oppose the war against Iran not just because this violence backfires on Western interests and self-confidence. Pragmatists oppose Trump’s war because they reject the premise that “reality” consists of a world where civilizational “blocks“ are represented by “great powers” competing for “spheres of influence.” That world is for some people, but we should not believe it is the only world available. Things do change, and just as pragmatists have faith in the democratic way of life to mediate pluralism within the West, they act on faith (without being blind) that an inter-civilizational dialogue can create the conditions for a better post-liberal, post-Trump world order.
Jason Ralph is professor of international relations and former head of the School of Politics and International Studies at the University of Leeds. He is author of On Global Learning (CUP 2023).
Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs is an independent and nonpartisan nonprofit. The views expressed within this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Carnegie Council.
