"Writings on international politics"

Hans Morgenthau

Preliminary study:
Political realist:
This author's realist model is intended, ultimately, to reformulate American
foreign policy.
Morgenthau's empirical analysis is presented as an alternative to the idealist
interpretation of international relations, dominant in the interwar period and common
among the ideologues of North American foreign policy. In this sense, the author rejects
the ideal principle to use the real fact as an object of knowledge and, based on it,
establish laws: "The examination of the facts is not enough to give meaning to the
factual knowledge of foreign policy since "We must analyze political reality with a kind
of rational scheme." That rational scheme, or those laws, that Morgenthau advocates are
based on the invariability of human nature, whose actions are governed by interest.
"States think and act in terms of interests defined as power"
Morgenthau identifies with the father of modern realism, Machiavelli, for his
anthropological pessimism (the invariable character of human nature, which tends to act
in terms of interest), which constitutes the basic premise of his thought. The
international system resembles the state of nature; Furthermore, for Morgenthau, the
international system formed by sovereign States is a historical phenomenon and, as
such, susceptible to disappearing.
In summary, power politics (of an objective and non-historical nature) is rooted
in human nature, and when it develops in the international framework it is favored by
the conditions of anarchy existing in the system, which create unbeatable conditions for
its expansion. .
The empirical character of Morgenthau's political realism is completed with the
normative dimension of his theory, which gives rise to the formulation of an ideal
model of political behavior with finalist pretensions: rational foreign policy. The author
thus goes from being to what should be, from real to rational foreign policy.
Its normative model is based on two premises: the field of foreign policy
development is reserved for an elite and the elite acts in accordance with the logic
inherent to political man (the struggle for power).
What is important to know, if one wants to understand foreign policy, is not the
statesman's motives for acting, but his intellectual capacity to grasp the essential
principles of foreign policy, as well as his political skill to transform them into sound
political actions. Political theory must judge the political qualities of intellect, will and
action.
Thus, morality in political action is directly linked to the success of the action
undertaken.
Morgenthau only sees the possibility of permanent peace within a World State.
"Diplomacy is the best method of preserving peace that a society of sovereign states can
offer, but in the current conditions of world politics and war it is not enough. Only when
nations have ceded to a higher authority the means of destruction that modern
technology has placed in their hands (when they have renounced their sovereignty) will
international peace be as secure as national peace.

Power Theorist:
 "The aspiration for power is the differentiating element of international politics,
as well as of general politics." In this way, the author gives the concept a first meaning.
It makes it the foundation and condition of politics.
According to Weber, power means the probability of imposing one's will, within
a social relationship, even against all resistance and whatever the basis of that
possibility. This vision of power-relationship is shared by Morgenthau: "Power includes
everything that establishes and maintains man's control over man. Thus, power covers
all relationships that serve that end, from physical violence to the most subtle
psychological ties by which one mind can control another."
Morgenthau also assumes the conception of power as power-possession or
capacity of the State to achieve ends based on its resources. What is political power? A
means to achieve the ends of the nation. However, the instrumental meaning of power
goes beyond Hobbes' definition of power-possession, since together with the material
resources or factors, the author takes into consideration the elements that allow the
resources or basis of power to be mobilized (mobilization potential: The forces usable
by each political unit in its rivalry with the others are proportional not to the potential,
but to the potential of mobilization. This, in turn, depends on multiple circumstances
that can be reduced to two abstract terms: capacity and will).
Morgenthau focuses on the qualitative aspects of the human factor-component of
national power: national character and morality, quality of government and, above all,
diplomacy.
The resources (potential capacity) duly mobilized constitute that national power
that determines the power of a State.
Power properly mobilized gives rise to a phenomenon of control or domination.
However, Morgenthau distinguishes in this case between domination derived from
political power and that derived from force.
In short, the term power covers various realities in Morgenthau's theory: the
basic phenomenon of the relationship that constitutes power, the means and the
mobilization of the means that allow us to speak of national power in the sense of power
and, finally, the effects derived from such power, not equivalent to the use of force,
which give rise to a phenomenon of domination.

National Interest:
The national interest is a component of the spirit of the founding fathers and,
therefore, a guiding concept of the foreign policy of the United States since the
founding of the republic.
The concept of national interest contains two elements, one that is logical and
necessary, and the other that is variable and determined by social circumstances.
Regarding the necessary element, the analysis of Morgenthau's work allows us to affirm
that it is equivalent to national security. In such a way that the necessary national
interest translates into the physical, political and cultural survival of the nation.

Balance of power:
Morgenthau presents the balance of power as a necessary consequence of the
struggle for power in an international political environment (formed by sovereign
States), as a particular manifestation of a general social principle (the balance of power
is only a particular manifestation of a social principle). general to which all societies
composed of a certain number of autonomous units owe the autonomy of their
members) and as a generator of stability (the balance of power and the policies aimed at
its conservation are essential stabilizing factors in a society of sovereign States) The
balance Power is characterized by being necessary and inevitable, by producing stability
and by maintaining the autonomy of all the units that make it up.
The author points out various meanings of the concept: 1)- a policy that pursues
a specific situation; 2).- a given situation; 3)- an approximately equal distribution of
power; 4)- any distribution of power.

2)- The rejection of politics:

It was towards the end of the Napoleonic Wars when important sectors of public
opinion called for the application of liberal principles to international affairs. And it was
necessary to wait until the end of the century for the Hague Peace Conferences to carry
out the first systematic attempt to establish the dominance of liberalism in the
international arena. And only with the end of the First World War came, in the form of
the League of Nations, the triumph of liberalism on the international scene.
This development has been possible thanks to two schools of thought. One
originated in the rationalist philosophy of the 17th and 18th centuries and established
the principles of this philosophy in relation to international problems. The other current
of thought is represented by the political experience of liberalism at the internal level.
Only when rationalist philosophy, in its liberal manifestation, had successfully
passed the internal test, was the general idea of extending those same principles to the
international field transformed into a concrete political program that could be tested in
practice. Currently, the promoters of liberal foreign policy find in philosophers like
Grotius and reformers like the Abbot of Saint Pierre a theoretical configuration and
practical support for their objectives.

Policies without politics:

Modern thought not only denies the moral value of political power (which
proves nothing compared to the rational values of truth and justice) but denies, although
not the existence of power politics as a reality, but its organic and inevitable connection
with the life of man.
Relations between nations are not substantially different from relations between
individuals; They are just relationships between individuals on a large scale. And since
relations between individuals are essentially peaceful, orderly and rational, there is no
reason why they should not be this way between nations.
The emphasis on domestic politics to the detriment of international affairs has an
old and unfortunate tradition. They acted as if the political element did not exist or, at
most, as if it were not an accidental attribute of international relations, condemned to
disappear in the near future. Today, opposition to active foreign policy is determined by
the urgency of domestic problems.
Liberalism adopted this attitude because of internal experience. Liberalism had
come to identify the aspiration for power over men, which is the essence of politics,
with the particular manifestation of that desire for dominance, which was part of its
historical experience; that is, the domination of the middle classes by the aristocracy.
Consequently, he identified opposition to aristocratic politics with hostility against any
kind of politics. For their part, the middle classes developed a system of indirect rule
that replaced the military method of open violence with the invisible chains of economic
dependence and hid the very existence of power relations behind a network of
apparently egalitarian legal norms. Liberalism was unable to grasp the political nature
of those intellectualized relations that seemed to be essentially different from what
existed, until then, under the name of politics and, thus, identified aristocratic politics,
that is, its open and violent form, with the politics as such. Then, the struggle for
political power (both domestically and internationally) was just a historical accident,
coinciding with autocratic government and destined to disappear along with the latter.
The attempts, on the domestic front, to reduce political functions to technical functions
and the international policy of non-intervention, as conceived and practiced by some of
the early liberals and many of the latter, are two manifestations of the same aspiration:
reduction of the traditional political sphere to a minimum and, ultimately, to its
disappearance. The foreign policy of non-intervention was the application to the
international scene of the liberal principle of laisser faire; and the optimistic confidence
in the harmonizing power of the course of events, of natural development and of the
laws of nature was the justification of both inertia, the internal and the international.

The pacifist liberal:

Liberalism is essentially pacifist and hostile to war as a prominent and consistent
manifestation of the desire for power in the international framework. Liberalism is not
only horrified by the spectacle of war and condemns it as a moral outrage, but,
fundamentally, it argues against war, as against something irrational, an aristocratic
pastime or a totalitarian atavism that makes no sense in reality. a rational world. War is
a thing of the past. It belongs to the era of militarism and desire; It becomes obsolete in
industrial civilization in which man can appease his greedy instincts through the
productive investment of capital.
At the base of this conception is once again the internal experience of liberalism.
Liberal philosophy, ignorant of the limited nature of this experience, gives it a universal
meaning and transfers it to the international scene. Opposing the use of force, the basis
of all tyrannies, constitutes the essence of liberalism.
The middle classes have an innate aversion to violent action. For them,
organizational violence is the feared enemy. The occupation of the middle classes is
primarily commercial or professional in nature while their historical enemy, the
aristocracy, has been educated in the tradition of the use of weapons.
Peace is a necessary condition for the functioning of the philosophical, social
and economic systems developed by the middle classes, and for the realization of their
objective, which is the domination of nature by human reason.
There is no place for violence in a rational system of society. It is, therefore, a
vital concern for the middle classes to avoid any outside interference, especially violent
interference, with the delicate mechanism of the economic and social system that
symbolizes the rationality of the world in a broad sense.
Liberalism is safe when it opposes violence on the internal terrain; since there
rule through violence has been largely replaced by a system of indirect rule, which the
middle classes have generated because of their specific needs and because it offered
them advantages in their struggle for political power. However, international politics
has never surpassed the "pre-liberal" stage.
Liberals are not aware of the fundamental difference between domestic politics
and international politics in the liberal era. They confuse the increasing accuracy in
distinguishing between war and peace with a general process towards peace and away
from war. Confused by the apparent similarity between domestic peace and
international peace during this period and transferring domestic experience to the
international framework, liberals equate the distinction between war and peace with the
distinction between autocratic violence and liberal rationality. Thus, liberalism separates
the specific techniques that it has developed as an instrument of internal domination
(legal guarantees, judicial machinery and economic transactions) from its political
substrate and transfers them as self-sufficient entities, lacking their original political
functions, to the sphere international.
Liberals came to see violence as absolute evil, and thus their moral convictions
prevented them from using violence, while the use of violence is part of the rules of the
game. They fought their international battles with weapons that had been effective
against the internal enemy under domestic political conditions. Removed from their
political context and transported to the international scene, where violence reigns, these
weapons became wooden swords.
However, the liberal condemnation of war is absolutely only in the ethical
sphere and in the political sphere and with respect to ultimate political objectives. In the
case of immediate political applications, this condemnation is softened and is only
issued when the wars in question are opposed to or irrelevant from the point of view of
liberal objectives. Thus, wars of national unification and wars against despotic
governments are legitimate wars for liberalism. Its legitimacy comes directly from the
rationalist premises of liberal political philosophy.
When all nations are united under their own governments and all governments
are subject to democratic control, war will have lost its rational justification. Reason
will rule wars impossible. For the reign of reason in international affairs will make
impossible those fundamental conflicts for the solution of which it would be reasonable
to engage in war, and reason will provide instruments through which to peacefully
resolve conflicts. The war for national unification and to save the world for democracy
is the "final and climactic war for human freedom," the "last war," the "war to end war."
Liberalism hopes for the disappearance of war through the uniformity of
governments based on the model of democratic nationalism (world revolution as a final
struggle to end all struggles).

Democratic nationalism:
Logical deductions of an abstract rational type replace pragmatic political
decisions in the liberal era, in accordance with the expected increase or decrease in
political power. Political weapons are transformed into absolute truths. Thus on the
domestic front, the idea of democracy by which the rising middle classes justify the
search for political power loses its concrete political function and survives as an abstract
political philosophy reduced to demanding equal opportunities for everyone, both strong
and weak. , and more especially to postulate the universal right to vote and to be
elected.
It was the confusion between political objective and rational truth that prevented
liberals from opposing political objectives in the international field when these were
justified by liberal principles and from supporting aspirations not based on national and
democratic principles.
Everywhere there was the same lack of understanding of international politics
and the same principles of association according to the affinities of the internal policies
of the institutions and not on the basis of a community of political interests.
Everywhere, a foreign policy based on an apolitical principle of association had
disastrous results for its protagonists.

War:
Nationalism and liberalism have been closely associated since the French middle
classes destroyed the feudal state in the name of the French nation, and since the
Napoleonic Wars carried across Europe the idea of national sovereignty and solidarity
in opposition to feudal oppression. National freedom became a prerequisite as well as a
collective manifestation of individual freedom.
Political and legal principles, originally formulated to support and guarantee the
freedom of the individual, were applied to the nation. The nation began to be seen as a
type of collective personality with peculiar characteristics and its own and inalienable
rights; and the typically liberal antithesis between individual freedom and feudal
oppression was transferred to the nation.
The liberal justification of war for democracy and against despotism comes directly
from the internal experience of liberalism.
Foreign policy is a phase of internal policy, an inseparable phase, and it is the
latter that determines the first. The foreign policy of a nation is a function of its internal
policy; and war and peace depend on the latter.
Democracy is peace, autocracy is war; peaceful peoples against warlike
governments: these are the slogans in which the liberal attitude towards war is reflected
and in which the political program is found.
Since autocratic governments tyrannize domestically and wage war on the
international stage, all that is needed is a change in the form of government to end
tyranny and end war. Public opinion should exercise its pacifying influence and the
instruments of autocratic governments in international politics, secret diplomacy and
secret treaties, should be replaced by democratic control of foreign policy. The
democratization of international relations is one of the great liberal objectives.
The eschatological hopes that inspired the liberal wars for national unification
and democratic liberation failed.
Liberalism believes that a country's foreign policy is the simple reflection of its
internal situation; So, by transforming the last one you can change the first one.
However, a country's foreign policy is determined by different factors; of which the
form of government and internal policies are two, but not the most decisive. The
fundamental foreign policies of the great powers have survived changes in their
governance and domestic policies.
Continuity in foreign policy is not a matter of choice, but of necessity, since it
derives from geography, national character, tradition and the real distribution of power;
factors that no government is capable of controlling, but that it cannot forget without
fear of failure.
Consequently, the question of war and peace is decided on the basis of these
permanent factors, regardless of the form of government under which the nation lives
and the internal policies it adopts at a given moment in its history. Trying to establish
monarchy or democracy in the world is not the path that leads to peace.
Victories in liberal wars, far from satisfying liberal hopes, created the evils they
were supposed to ward off. Instead of being the last wars, they became precursors and
pioneers of wars more destructive and intense than the previous ones. National
unification and democratic liberation, instead of ending the causes of the war,
intensified international antagonisms and involved broad masses of the population in
them. Unified nations, rather than lacking incentives for war, had sufficient cohesion
and the necessary moral impetus to initiate policies of conquest, colonial or otherwise.
International disputes, which had largely been princely rivalries and aristocratic
pastime, became controversies between nations in which the interests of the same
peoples appeared mixed and in which the same peoples had the opportunity to play a
determining role. The triumph of nationalism and democracy, achieved thanks to the
liberal wars, immensely strengthened the sovereignty of the State and, with it, the
anarchic tendencies in international society. The particularism of democratic
nationalism thus became the first obstacle to the realization of other objectives, such as
free trade or international organization, through which liberalism tried to guarantee
international peace. Liberalism was going to be destroyed in the international arena by
the same forces that it had promoted to dominate the Western world.

Decadent liberalism:
Faced with the dangers that the full fulfillment of liberal aspirations had created,
liberalism finally abandoned exceptions to its pacifist attitude.
The systematic doubts and hesitations of liberal governments, faced with
decisions that could involve war, are due to these inherent features of liberal
philosophy.
During the period of liberal decline the original position of liberalism was
reversed. While the rising liberalism would have intervened and even engaged in battle
for the promotion and protection of liberal positions in other countries, the decadent
liberalism of the 1930s was no longer willing to go to war for any cause. War was
considered an absolute perversity, not only in the ethical and political sphere, but also in
the framework of political action.
Any action of liberalism on the international scene was made with the
reservation that it would not lead to war, even if this meant the failure of the action
taken.
Decadent liberalism was still convinced that democracy is peace and that
autocracy, resurgent in the form of fascism, is ultimately potential war. But while
classical liberalism has understood this opposition in the sense of predominant
tendencies, of a non-exclusive character, decadent liberalism gives this opposition an
absolute and non-political meaning. Thus, fascism and militarism, on the one hand, and
democracy and the love of peace on the other, become synonymous; and democracy
could not engage in battle against fascism without betraying its principles. What's more,
liberalism's ideological war became an absurd defeat. Liberalism was saved from this
suicidal contradiction thanks to a new foreign policy that, at least in practice, adopted
the principles of political judgment more than those of liberal philosophy.

Ideology versus politics:

The liberal resistance to waging wars for reasons other than liberal ones not only
reveals the pacifism of practical liberalism in its heroic period, but is also indicative of
the liberal misconception of international relations as essentially rational, where politics
plays a central role. the role of a disease that must be cured through reason. However,
since the rationalist conception of international relations does not fit with the political
reality where power opposes power for survival and supremacy, the liberal approach to
international problems necessarily has an ideological background.
Liberalism introduces lofty philosophical ideas instead of political principles
into the practical things of life. The abstract objective replaces the concrete solution,
and the standard of eternal truth replaces the consideration of political interests.
Liberal concepts such as "collective security", "democracy", "national self-
determination", "justice" and "peace" are abstract generalities that can be applied to any
political situation but are not peculiarities of one in particular.
Liberal ideologies survive because of their abstract generality and claims to
absolute validity, their political usefulness, and are undermined by the realities of
international politics which, by their nature, are concrete, specific, and dependent on
time and place. Collective security, universal democracy, and permanent and just peace
are ultimately ideal goals that could inspire men's actions and offer criteria for
philosophical and ethical judgment, but they are not capable of complete and immediate
realizations through of political action. However, liberals believe in the possibility of
immediate realization here and now.
The recognition that political objectives are not within the reach of immediate
political realization brought with it distrust of any political ideology. None of them were
able to understand the real problem: the influence on national interests, expressed in
terms of power politics, of violent changes in the territorial status of those countries.

3)- Six principles of political realism:

1)- Political realism maintains that politics, like society in general, is governed
by objective laws that find their roots in human nature.
Since realism maintains the objectivity of the laws of politics, it must also
defend the possibility of developing a rational theory that reflects, even if imperfectly
and unilaterally, those objective laws. He believes it is possible, therefore, to distinguish
in politics between truth and opinion.
Human nature, in which the laws of politics are rooted, has not changed since
the classical philosophizing of China, India and Greece that attempted to discover these
laws. Hence, in political theory, novelty is not necessarily a virtue nor antiquity a defect.
For realism, theory consists of verifying facts and giving them meaning through
reason; It assumes that the character of a foreign policy can be determined exclusively
through the examination of the political acts carried out and the foreseeable
consequences of said acts.

2)- The main indicator that helps political realism find its way through the
landscape of international politics is the concept of interest defined in terms of power.
The concept of interest defined as power imposes intellectual discipline on the
observer, instills rational order in the matter of politics and, in this way, makes possible
the theoretical understanding of politics. As for the actor, it provides him with rational
discipline for action and creates that surprising continuity in foreign policy that makes
American, British and Russian foreign policies appear as a rational, intelligible and
consistent continuum with itself as a whole, apart from of the motives, differences and
intellectual and moral values of successive statesmen. A realistic theory of international
politics will thus free us from two common fallacies: the consideration of motivations
and the consideration of ideological preferences.
When you want to understand foreign policy, what is important to know is not so
much the motivations of the statesman as his intellectual capacity to grasp the essentials
of foreign policy, as well as his political capacity to transform what he has grasped into
effective political action.
Political realism neither demands nor excuses indifference to political ideals and
moral principles, but it requires faith in making a clear distinction between what is
desirable and what is possible, between what is desirable at any place and time and what
is possible at any time. specific circumstances of place and time.
A theory of foreign policy that claims to be rational must, so to speak, abstract
from these irrational elements and attempt to paint a picture of foreign policy that
presents the rational essence locatable in experience, without the contingent deviations
from rationality that also exist. we find in experience.
Political realism contains not only a theoretical element, but also a normative
one. He knows that political reality is full of contingencies and systemic irrationalities
and points out the characteristic influences they exert on foreign policy. However, it
shares with any social theory the need to accentuate the rational elements of political
reality, since it is these rational elements that make reality intelligible for the theory.
Political realism considers that a rational foreign policy is a good policy, because
only a rational foreign policy minimizes risks and maximizes benefits and,
consequently, meets both the moral precept of prudence and the political requirement of
success.

3)-Realism considers that its key concept of interest defined as power is an

objective category with universal validity, but does not provide it with an established
meaning once and for all. The idea of interest is in fact the essence of politics and is not
affected by the circumstances of time and place.
The type of interest that determines political action in a specific period of history
depends on the political and cultural context in which foreign policy is developed.
The same considerations can be made regarding the concept of power. Its
content and use are determined by the cultural and political environment. Power can
include anything that establishes and maintains man's control over man. Thus, power
integrates all the social relationships that lead to this end, from physical violence to the
most subtle psychological ties through which one mind controls another. Power
includes the domination of man by man, both through constitutional safeguards, as in
Western democracies, and when it comes to that barbaric and savage force that does not
obey any law other than its own force and whose only justification is its
aggrandizement.

4)- Political realism is aware of the moral significance of political action. He is

also aware of the inevitable tension between the moral imperative and the demands of
sound political action.
Realism maintains that universal moral principles cannot be applied to the
actions of States in their abstract universal formulation, but must be filtered through
concrete circumstances of time and place.
Both the individual and the State must judge political action with universal
moral principles, such as freedom. But, while the individual has the moral right to
sacrifice himself in defense of such a moral principle, the State cannot let its moral
disapproval of the violation of freedom stand in the way of sound political action, itself
inspired by the principle. morality of national survival. There can be no political
morality without prudence; that is, without consideration of the political consequences
of an apparently moral action. Thus, realism thinks that prudence (weighing the
consequences of alternative political actions) is the supreme virtue in politics. Ethics in
the abstract judges action by its agreement with the moral law; Political ethics judges
action by its political consequences.

5)- political realism refuses to identify the moral aspirations of a specific nation
with moral laws that govern the universe (it distinguishes between truth and idolatry).
It is exactly the concept of interest defined in terms of power that saves us from
both moral excesses and political madness.
Intellectually, political realism defends the autonomy of the political sphere, just
as the economist, the moralist and the jurist defend theirs. Think in terms of interest
defined as power (the political realist asks: How does this policy influence the power of
the nation? ).
 The political realist is not unaware of the existence and importance of forms of
thought outside politics. But as a political realist he can only subordinate these other
forms to politics. And it separates itself from other schools when they impose forms of
thought typical of other spheres in the political sphere. This is where political realism
opposes the legalist-moralist approach to international politics.
Political realism is based on a pluralistic conception of human nature. The real
man is a composite of "economic man", "political man", "moral man", "religious man",
etc. A man who was nothing more than a political man would be a beast because he
would be completely devoid of moral limitations. A man who was nothing more than a
moral man would be a madman, because he would be completely lacking in prudence.
A man who was nothing more than a religious man would be a saint, because he would
be completely devoid of earthly desires.
Political realism, by recognizing that these different facets of human nature
exist, also recognizes that to understand one of them you must deal with it on its own
terms.