Lecture notes from Foreign Policy Analysis, taught at department of International Department, Ataturk Alatoo Univerisy. Realism and Foreign Policy

1. Realism and Foreign Policy
Dr. Ibrahim Koncak
International Ataturk Alatoo
University

2. Key Questions
• What is realism?
• How is it applied to the analysis and practice
of foreign policy?
• What are the main pitfalls in applying realist
theories to FPA?
• What is a useful set of guidelines for avoiding
these pitfalls and using realist insights to
sharpen the analysis of foreign policy?

3. What is Realism?
• Three Core Assumptions about how the world works:
– Groupism
Group solidarity- potential conflict with other groups
The most important human groups are nation states; the
most important source of in-group cohesion is nationalism.
Nature of the polity is NOT important for realism.
– Egoism
Self-interest ultimately drives political behavior. Egoism is
rooted in human nature. Certain conditions can facilitate
altruistic behavior –ultimate trade-offs between collective
and self-interest must be confronted , egoism tends to
trump altruism.

4. What is Realism?
Power-centrism: Power is the fundamental feature of
politics. Senses of power:
Social influence or control: Some groups or individuals
always have an outsized influence on politics.
Resources: Some groups or people are always
disproportionately endowed with the material
wherewithal to get what they want.
Kenneth Waltz:’ The web of social and political life is
spun out of inclinations and incentives, deterrent
threads and punishments. Eliminate the latter two,
and the ordering of society depends entirely on the
former- a utopian thought impractical this side of
Eden’ (Waltz 1

5. What is Realism?
• The most powerful groups (the most resource
rich and influential) today-major powers like USA,
China
• Realist checklist for FPA: look for where the
power is, what the group interests are, and the
role power relationships play in reconciling
clashing interests. Look beyond rhetoric.
• Realists: Thucydides, Machiavelli, Weber, Carr,
Morgenthau and Waltz.

6. What is Realism?
• Even though the thinkers associated with realism
are a highly diverse lot, and even though their
ideas contradict each other, the threads of those
three core assumptions tie them all together into
a coherent intellectual school.
• Question: How scholars transform the basic
assumptions about the world into theories?
• Theory: School of thought
• Sub-schools within realism: neo-realism, the
balance of power, the security dilemma or
offence-defense balance

7. The Development of Realist Theories
• If human affairs are characterized by groupism,
egoism, and power-centrism, then politics is likely
to be conflictual unless there is some central
authority to enforce order. When no authority – a
condition theorists call anarchy- any state can
resort to force to get what it wants.
• Three steps: a knowledge of theoretical schools
within realism, familiarity with specific realist
theories, clarity how theories, assumptions, and
conditions are related.

8. Theoretical schools within realism
• Defensive realism
• Offensive realism
• Neoclassical realism

9. Theories within realism
• Balance of threat theory
– Three key variables: Aggregate capabilities, Geography,
Perceptions of aggressive intentions Example: USA policy
after the Cold War (USA-USSR)
• Hegemonic stability theory
– Fostering some degree of hierarchy
– Comprising rules, norms, institutions
• Power transition theory
– Dominant states will prefer to retain leadership
– Distribution of power
– Prediction: When two sites come to parity war or a cold
war will occur.

10. Assumptions, conditions and theories
• Question: How do we know whether one of
these theoretical subschools or specific
theories applies to specific foreign policy
issue?
– Be clear about how the various part of any
theories fit together.
The assumptions of groupism, egoism, power
centrism+ Scope condition (anarchy)= general
theory; politics in anarchy is conflictual.

11. Two Errors
• The first error is to confuse assumptions with
scope conditions.
• Anarchy is variable; great powers seek to
enforce order among nearby small states, for
those states anarchy is attenuated.
• Examples:
» the USA in Central America
» The EU in the Balkans
» Russia in Central Asia (?)

12. • Then second error is to confuse assumptions
with predictions.
– States are nice to each other= realism does not
apply
Realist theories explain not only war but also peace.
(is it really so?)
Realist theories can be powerful tools in FPA, but
applying them is harder than it might seem.

13. ‘States are main actors’ Current manifestation of the groupism
assumption
‘Universal moral principles do not apply to
states’
Predictions/arguments derived from three
assumptions
States calculate interest in terms of power
‘Skepticism toward international law and
institutions’
‘International politics is essentially
conflictual’
‘Humankind cannot transcend conflict
through the progressive power of reason’
‘Primacy of balance of power politics’
International system is anarchic
Scope conditionsUncertainty
The utility of force
Propositions commonly seen as
definitive ‘assumptions of realism’
Actual relation to three assumptions

14. ‘Politics not a function of
ethics; reason of state trump
ethics’
Implication of egoism
‘State interest is survival’ Implication of groupism
‘Realist assume tendency to
evil’
Mis-stated implication of
egoism

15. Practitioners’ foreign policy
approaches
• The report of Prince Kuropatkin, the Russian
Minister of War, to Tsar Alexander 2, in 1900.
Russia was a satisfied power.
Any expansion would only frighten other states.
Other states would build up their own forces or ally against
St. Petersburg.
It was Russia’s interest to reduce tensions with other major
powers.
Kuropatkin’s analysis built on all the core realist assumptions.
In today’s terms the report relies on balance of threat and
the general assessment of the security dilemma found in
defensive realism.

16. Sir Eyre Crowe’s memorandum
• Sir Eyre Crowe, a British diplomat, wrote a
memorandum for the government.
– The need reorientation of Britain’s foreign policy
– Britain’s power position and the fundamental
challenges presented by the rise of Germany.
– Crowe used balance of power theory to contain
Germany
– Detailed examination of German domestic
policies, statecraft, and intentions.

17. George Kennan’s long telegram
• George Kennan, the US Ambassador to the Soviet
Union, drafted the most famous memoranda of
modern times in 1946.
– Soviet Union in position to threaten the global
balance of power
– The country was disposed to continue expansion if not
met with a powerful counterweight.
– Features: analysis of Soviet, US, and British
capabilities, and world’s key power centers.
– Focus on narrow group interest, potential for conflict,
balance of power, an in-depth and insightful analysis
of domestic Soviet politics.

18. Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger
• President Richard Nixon and secretary of state Henry
Kissinger engineered reorientation of US FP in 1970s.
– Relative decline in US power against the allies in Europe
and Asia and the main rival the Soviet Union many other
regional states.
– Need to get allies and partners to shoulder the burden of
containing the Soviet Power
– Reduce the number of potential enemies by reaching out
to China,
– Attenuate the rivalry with the Soviet Union with détente
– Features: the security dilemma. Balance of threat theory+
familiarity with the history, culture and collective
mindsets. Neoclassical Realism?

19. E.H. Carr flip-flop
• Morality is the product of power.
• In 1999, NATO bombed Serbia.
• Russia protested strongly; violation of sovereignty,
illegal because it was neither for self-defense nor
authorized by UN security council. NATO: Humanitarian
crisis, a threat to regional security.
• Russia invaded its neighbor Georgia nine years later.
• NATO: violation of sovereignty, illegal because it was
not for self-defense.
• Russia: Humanitarian crisis, a threat to regional
security.

20. Scholars’ realist foreign policy
approaches
• Mikhail Gorbachev’s diplomatic strategy ‘new political
thinking’
• Stephan Sestanovich’s article ‘Gorbachev’s foreign policy:
diplomacy of decline?’
– Group interest and power not the global vision of new thinking
are the key to politics.
– Underlying power position of the Soviet Union
– It was response to power shift
– States tend to generate ideas to transcending conflict when they
lack the power to carry on the struggle.
– Declining states do have options
– But also declining power can use force to try to rescue its
position
– General theory + detailed knowledge of Cold War

21. Pitfalls
• Never-ending Cold War-Kenneth Waltz-1988
– ‘Cold War was firmly rooted in the structure of postwar
international politics and will last as long as that structure
endures’
– Theory-a case without detail- scope conditions are
present?
Major power war in 1990s Europe
John J. Mearsheimer- end of the cold war-more war-prone
Europe
Anti-US counterbalancing in the 1990s
multipolar balance of power- other major powers- US
NATO expansion
Balance of power theory BUT no scope of conditions

22. How to avoid the pitfalls?
• To know the specifics of foreign policy case at
hand
• Pay close attention to the scope conditions
that may connect it to realist precepts.
• Know the details of a given foreign policy issue
• ‘The fox knows many things, but the
hedgehog knows one big thing.’ Greek Poet
Archilochus

23. Key points
• Realism is a foundational approach to IR theory, and
other approaches are mainly responses to it, so who
wish to use IR theory in FPA must be knowledgeable
about realism.
• Realism is diverse intellectual approach that combines
a general school of thought about IR, with schools like
neorealism, and specific theories like the security
dilemma or the balance of power.
• All these diversity can be understood as derived from
three basic assumptions: groupism, egoism, and power
centrism.