Classical Realism and

Security Studies
Professor Adrian Pop

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 What is realist about realism?
 Avoids the ‘hopeless utopianism’
of idealism
 Based on empirical analysis of
the human condition and the
way the world works
 Some aspects of behaviour are
universal and eternal.
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 Key classical realists

 Key classical realists thinkers include:

Sun Tzu, Thucydides, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Von
Clausewitz, Weber, Carr, Morgenthau
 They have been interested in questions of
order, justice and change across 2500 years
 They tend to:
- advocate holistic understanding of politics
- recognise the close relationship of the domestic
and international
- acknowledge the role of ethics and community
- regard history as cyclical
 Sun Tzu
 The Art of War (written
in the 6th century BC)
 One of the oldest and most

successful books on military

strategy in the world
 National interests should be

the top priority

 There is no place for ethics in

inter-state relations
 Statesmen who pay too much

attention to ethical principles

would do so at their peril 4
 Thucydides (471-400 B.C.)
 The first Western writer in the
realist tradition
 The Peloponnesian War
(between Athens and Sparta in
the fifth century B.C.)
 A study of the struggle for
military and political power.
 The cause of the War—fear, a
dominant characteristic and a
motivating factor for arms races
and war itself

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 Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527)
 The Prince
 Power, balance of power,
formation of alliances, and
causes of conflicts
 The end—security of the
state—is understood to
justify any means necessary
to achieve the end
 The world as it is, not the
world as it should be—ethics
and politics are separated 6
 Hobbes and his ideas
 The Leviathan (1651)
 Concerned with nature of political power,
basis of order, and origin of state
 ‘State of nature’ which was ‘nasty, brutish
and short’
 Mutual vulnerability and self-preservation
mean setting up of sovereign body
 But only in domestic context: an int’l
Leviathan is impossible

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 E.H. Carr and H.Morgenthau
 The first scholars to use the term “realism’’
and to elaborate its fundamental
assumptions by contrast with the
 allegedly idealistic study of international
relations
 Carr The Twenty Years’ Crisis (1939)
 Morgenthau Politics Among the Nations
(1948)
 Events of 1930s demonstrate
fragility of international institutions and the
underlying struggle for power
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 Main assumptions
 Sovereign states are key actors—
unitary and rational
 States are motivated by self-interest
(drive for power and survival)
 Main problem = anarchy (lack of
central sovereign authority to
regulate state relations)
 Therefore, conflict is an ever-present
reality of international relations
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 Therefore …
 The history of global relations is a
struggle for power: ‘every state for
itself’
 This means leaders have little freedom
to organise the world and solve its
problems
 Respect for law is only achieved if it is
reinforced by the threat of force.
 Conflict is inevitable, so must be
strong in face of aggression;
preparation for war is the main
concern of states 10
 Classical Realism
… is an attempt to understand the world
from the point of view of
statesman/diplomat forced to operate in
dangerous and uncertain world

… provides a guide to action based on

realpolitik (power and power politics
among states) in the interests of the
preservation of nation-states

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 Domestic and international
 Classical realists do not make a
strong distinction between domestic
politics and the anarchical realm of
world politics
 They see the cohesiveness of
community and shared norms as
central in maintenance of order and
restraint in international relations as
in domestic politics
 Domestic and international
 Within the territorial boundaries of the
formally sovereign state,
politics is an activity of potential moral
progress through the social
construction of constitutional government
 Beyond the exclusionary

borders of its sovereign presence, politics

is essentially the realm of
survival rather than progress
 Balance of Power and Order
 Classical realists appreciate the
importance of balance of power. However,
they do not see it as an effective deterrent
of war but rather as a potential cause of
conflict
 Order ultimately rests on the strength of
community for classical realists

For Morgenthau norms of int’l society

maintained the effectiveness of balance of
power in 18th and 19th centuries
 Balance of Power and Order
 A precarious form of order through the
balance of power, not cosmopolitan
justice, is the best we can hope for in
the international anarchy
 Politics is the realm of continual
struggles for power and security
among states
 Change and modernisation
 For classical realists, change is
associated with modernisation, which
brings about shifts in identities and
discourses, and hence conceptions of
security
 In restoring order both Thucydides
and Morgenthau looked for a
combination of old and new to
accommodate changes while limiting
their destructive potential
Clasical Realism vs. Neorealism

 Classical realism considers neorealism

a parody of science: it is overly
parsimonious, unfalsifiable and does
not adequately theorise key concepts
such as polarity and power
 The decline of neorealism since the
end of the Cold War has resulted in
renewed interest in classical realist
thinkers
 Interests and Justice

 Neorealists emphasise interests as

the priority of state goals. Classical
realists emphasise justice as the
foundation of community and order
 For classical realists justice is
important for two reasons:
1) Because it is the key to influence
2) Because it provides the basis on
which actors construct their interests
 Theory
Classical realists’ conception of theory
is distinct from structural realism:

Thucydides emphasised the context

dependence of foreign policy actions

Morgenthau also denied general laws

and predictions
 Classical Realism and the
Notion of Tragedy
 It captures the contradiction between
the ability of man and his propensity
to destroy with violence what has
been achieved
 Classical realists were pessimistic of
the ability of the powerful to exercise
self-restraint but a key theme of
classical realism is that it offers
prudence as an antidote to hubris
 Classical Realism: Criticisms
 Too simple
 Promotes a grim image of int’l politics
 Fails to properly allow for the possibility
of change
 Necessity, not freedom, is the starting-
point for understanding int’l relations
 Centrality of state
 No room for co-operation
 Rationality
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