CONFLICTING PERCEPTIONS

These two modes of perceiving world politics were never uniquely American in precept or
experience. Western political thought always recognized the tension between realist and
idealist views toward the actions of governments in both domestic and international
transactions. The stark realism of NiccolòMachiavelli stood in profound opposition to the
dominant Christian teachings that favored ethical constraints upon rulers. In the eighteenth
century, doctrines of raison d'état contended with Enlightenment doctrines propounded by
philosophers who objected to such practices of monarchical statecraft as mercantilism,
balance-of-power politics, and the pursuit of dynastic goals at the expense of peace and human
welfare.

While the American clash between realism and idealism owes an intellectual debt to
antecedent European thought, it was in the United States that both doctrines were fully
established, in theory and in practice. Whereas in continental Europe, utopian idealism
remained excluded from the realm of practice, in the United States it became a recurrent,
contrapuntal theme of statesmen and politicians, commentators and theorists. What underlay
the conflicting presumptions regarding the requirements and possibilities of external action was
the anarchical nature of the international environment. Whereas governmental structures
within established countries assured some degree of order and security, the absence of
international authority compelled individual countries to fend for themselves, relying on their
own capacities to coexist in what social contract theorists termed a state of nature. Realists and
idealists disagreed totally over the capacity of human society, and especially international
politics, to eliminate the vagaries of existence in an anarchic state system.

Realists, recognizing no genuine alternative to coexistence in an anarchical world of individual

sovereign nations, accepted the modern state system as a necessity. They would defend the
country's interests by following the rules of diplomacy and war as propounded by a host of
seventeenth-and eighteenth-century writers and statesmen. These rules of conduct were not
designed to prevent conflict and war, but rather to mitigate their effects and thereby assure the
survival of states. For realists, moreover, war was not an aberration, but a condition sometimes
unavoidable, a contingency for which to prepare, but also, when possible, to deter by force or
accommodation. Wars, they knew, were generally the only means available for changing
unwanted political or territorial conditions. Realists thus accepted power politics as a natural
phenomenon of international life, with the concomitant reliance on armies and navies, secret
diplomacy, and alliances. Asserting the primacy of national over individual interests, they
viewed the universal norms governing human rights as conditional when they threatened the
national welfare. Realists observed the essential truth that nations existed successfully amid the
world's anarchy. The evidence lay in the precedence of peace over war, as well as the
continued material advancement in human affairs.

Idealists viewed the international system, with its accoutrements of conflict and war, as not
only deeply flawed but also capable of melioration, if not total cure. For them, international
strife was the unnecessary and reprehensible product of outmoded forms of human
organization, both in the internal structuring of states and in their international practices.
Idealists saw in the trappings of power politics little but ambition, opportunism, deception, and
impositions. Whereas realist doctrine focused on national interests and security, idealist
concerns looked to individual welfare and the general interests of humanity. Idealists presumed
that the objective validity and authority of universal norms, laws, and principles could and
should apply to international as well as domestic affairs.

Realists and idealists disagreed fundamentally on the primary determinants of state behavior in
international politics. For realists, external factors defined the options available to policy-
makers. Those options were uncertain and elusive, requiring preparedness as well as
caution. Secretary of State Dean Acheson once remarked: "The future is unpredictable. Only
one thing—the unexpected—can be reasonably anticipated…. The part of wisdom is to be
prepared for what may happen, rather than to base our course upon faith in what should
happen." The German historian Leopold von Ranke formulated this view in terms congenial to
American realists. The dangers and uncertainties of international life, he wrote, not only
established the primacy of foreign affairs but also dictated the precedence of security interests
over domestic concerns. While cognizant of the historical vicissitudes in national fortunes,
realists nevertheless saw constancy in the essential traits and behavior of nations. Policies
might vary with regimes, but fundamental interests, once established, tended to remain
consistent.
Idealists, on the contrary, tended to view the sources of external state action as residing in
internal political processes, based largely on political structures, the distribution of political
power, and the ambitions of ruling elites. Involvements abroad reflected not external necessity,
but internal choice. To idealists, different forms of government led to different modes of
foreign policy. Autocratic states, some idealists presumed, too readily threatened the cause of
humanity by placing demands on individuals that were sharply at odds with private conscience.
By ordering men into mortal combat with other members of the human race, they shattered
the peace and defied the civilized norms of human conduct. Authentic republics did not wage
aggressive wars, nor did free peoples impose imperial control over others.

However apparent the wellsprings of aggressive national behavior, realists accepted limits on
both their intentions and their power to interfere. They recognized the barriers that national
sovereignty placed on meliorist efforts to alter the political structures and domestic decisions of
other countries. Idealists, as children of the Enlightenment, expected more of themselves and
society. For them, the world was not hopelessly corrupt, but could, through proper leadership
and motivation, advance morally and politically. This optimistic view of the world became
endemic to the idealists' presumptions of human progress and the concomitant conviction that
the United States, because of the superiority of its institutions, was ideally constituted to lead
the world toward an improving future. The belief that institutional and moral superiority
distinguished the United States from other countries found its central expression in the concept
of "exceptionalism." This assigned to American suppositions of exceptional virtue the
imperative of exceptional obligation to serve the peace and improve the human condition.