Does the Flaw Lie within Us? Classical Realism and Unrealistic Policy

Abstract

This paper argues that one of classical realism's most useful contributions may be to explain “unrealistic” behaviour of the sort that structural realists find vexingly contrary to their prescriptions. The paper engages in detail with the writing of two of the primary scholars of the classical realist school, Hans Morgenthau and Reinhold Niebuhr, to demonstrate that these theories do not posit simplistically that individuals or states always act “selfishly” in their own interests. Rather, states and statesmen are routinely burdened by what might be called “failures of insight”: an inability to conceive of their own interests and preferences objectively when held alongside those of others. As a result, powerful states are prone to conflating their own particular national interests with universal or systemic interests, hindering their capacity to anticipate or deal effectively with resistance on the part of other actors who insist on defining their own interests in contrary ways. Having established this conceptual framework, the paper provides two illustrations of this phenomenon in action in US foreign policy: President Woodrow Wilson's interventionism in Mexico and George W. Bush's policy of regime change in Iraq.