REALISM

INTERNASIONAL RELATIONS THEORY

CLASSCICAL REALIST

• Morgenthau (1965), men and women are by nature political animals: they areborn to
pursue power and to enjoy the fruits of power.
• must act in full knowledge thatthe mobilization and exercise of political power in foreign
affairs inevitably involves moraldilemmas, and sometimes evil actions.
• stateleaders and their international decisions and actions are at the centre of attention.
 BASIC VALUES OF THREE CLASSICAL REALIST

Thucydides Machiavelli Hobbes

Political fate Political agility Political Will

Necessity and securiity Opportunity and Security Security dilemma

Political survival Political survival Political survival

Safety Civic virtue Peace and felicity

STRATEGIC REALISM

• focuses centrally on foreign policy decision making. When state leadersconfront basic

diplomatic and military issues, they are obliged to think strategically—i.e.,instrumentally
—if they hope to be successful.
• diplomacy and foreign policy, especially of thegreat powers and particularly the United
States, as a rational–instrumental activity that canbe more deeply understood by the
application of a form of logical analysis called ‘game theory’.
• operates with a notion of situated choice: therational choice for the situation or
circumstances in which leaders find themselves
NEOREALISM

• a basic feature of international relations is the decentralized structure of anarchy between states.
• the structure of the system that is external to the actors, in particular therelative distribution of
power, is the central analytical focus. 
• Leaders are relatively unimportant because structures compel them to act in certain ways
•  the structure of a systemchanges with changes in the distribution of capabilities across the
system’s units’ (Waltz1979: 97)
• ‘With only two great powers,both can be expected to act to maintain the system’ (Waltz 1979:
204)
NEOCLASSICAL REALISM

• state leadership oper-ates and foreign policy is carried on within the overall constraints or
‘broad parameters’ of theanarchical structure of international relations (Rose 1998: 144)
• that ‘anarchy gives states considerable latitude in defining theirsecurity interests, and the
relative distribution of power merely sets parameters for grandstrategy’ (Lobell et al.
2009: 7)
• ‘leaders who consistently fail to respond to systemic incentives put their state’s very
survivalat risk’ (Lobell et al. 2009: 7).
 Classical NeoRealism Neoclassicla

Anarchy

State Power

Leadership

Statecraft Ethics

Domestic Society

Social Science