Realpolitik and World Peace

Intro­duc­tion to Decem­ber 2009 IJWP

Realpoli­tik is a term derived from Ger­man. It refers to a pol­i­tics based on prac­ti­cal and mate­r­ial fac­tors rather than on the­o­ret­i­cal or eth­i­cal objec­tives (Merriam-Webster dic­tio­nary). His­tor­i­cally, many polit­i­cal plat­forms have been based on the­o­ret­i­cal, reli­gious, ide­o­log­i­cal, or moral arguments.

Most visions of ideal soci­eties, as dis­parate as Plato, Con­fu­cius, Jesus, and Marx, all rely on chang­ing basic human behav­ior. If we can only learn to love one another, to share with one another, to accept a Chris­t­ian, Mus­lim, or social­ist the­ory of jus­tice, or change our self­ish and exploita­tive behav­ior in some way, then we can cre­ate an ideal world. As we recently learned from the efforts of the Soviet Union to cre­ate a “new man,” one that is ratio­nal and sci­en­tific, the laws of nature are not eas­ily trumped. Instead of get­ting a “new man” who gives accord­ing to his abil­i­ties and receives accord­ing to his needs, the Soviet Union got the Nomen­klatura, the“old man” in a new bureau­cratic class, who used posi­tion and power in the Soviet polit­i­cal sys­tem for per­sonal and self­ish desires.

Realpoli­tik assumes that every­one is out to max­i­mize their own inter­est, and that states are out to max­i­mize their inter­ests as well. Post-World War II polit­i­cal philoso­pher Hans Mor­gen­thau wrote his Pol­i­tics Among Nations: The Strug­gle for Power and Peace to pro­mote polit­i­cal real­ism in inter­na­tional pol­i­tics. After all, the ideals of the League of Nations and inter­na­tional law had failed to stop Mus­solini from invad­ing Ethiopia or Hitler from invad­ing neigh­bor­ing coun­tries in Europe. The United Nations was cre­ated with the idea that the Secu­rity Coun­cil had to have over­whelm­ing force avail­able to stop such aggres­sion; no social ideals or pious plat­i­tudes would stop it. Even Gandhi’s the­o­ries of non-violence would only work with men of con­science, not with men like Hitler or Stalin.

The prob­lem with polit­i­cal real­ism and neo-realism is that it dis­counted the value of social ideals alto­gether, treat­ing them as insignif­i­cant and as wish­ful think­ing. Hence they urged and assumed a Nietzschean-type of quest for power as the norm or stan­dard of inter­na­tional behav­ior. The result was a the­ory of inter­na­tional anar­chy that required a bal­ance of power, whether bi-polar as dur­ing the Cold War, or as multi-polar after the emer­gence of the Euro­pean Union, the rise of China and India, and the reduced influ­ence of Rus­sia and the United States.

While it is cor­rect to assume that many peo­ple and states will attempt to max­i­mize their own self-interest at the expense of oth­ers, it is wrong to advo­cate this as a goal. The goal should be to live for the well-being of oth­ers and the whole of soci­ety. How­ever, we can­not be so naïve as to assume that every­one in a posi­tion of power will become immune to the temp­ta­tions of that power through moral injunctions.

Rein­hold Niebuhr explained the rela­tion­ship of love, power, and jus­tice quite well before Mor­gen­thau ever wrote his Pol­i­tics Among Nations. Niebuhr argued that the ideals of jus­tice can never be real­ized by norms of jus­tice alone; we will always fall short of jus­tice because human beings will always fall short of per­fec­tion. Rather, love com­pletes jus­tice. When you have more peo­ple sac­ri­fic­ing for the sake of oth­ers than you have peo­ple sac­ri­fic­ing oth­ers for them­selves, then the norm of love can make the goal of jus­tice pos­si­ble in his­tory. How­ever, the goal of real­iz­ing the norm of love uni­ver­sally in his­tory is not pos­si­ble because some peo­ple will always fall short. And, there is no higher norm than love which could com­plete the amount love falls short, whereas love can make up for the jus­tice that falls short.

Unfor­tu­nately, while indi­vid­u­als are capa­ble of love, insti­tu­tions are not able to man­i­fest this trait. You can find many indi­vid­u­als con­tribut­ing large amounts of aid to vic­tims of nat­ural dis­as­ters, but it is much harder to find social insti­tu­tions or nations capa­ble of human­i­tar­ian aid. This poses a great prob­lem because, in our con­tem­po­rary soci­ety, we fre­quently look to nations, the United Nations, or other social insti­tu­tions to reflect com­pas­sion and solve prob­lems of injus­tice. How­ever, we gen­er­ally find instead that where power is con­cen­trated it is more likely used to exploit and oppress oth­ers rather than serve them.

It would be use­ful for the read­ers of this issue of Inter­na­tional Jour­nal on World Peace to keep in mind the rela­tion­ship of love, power, and jus­tice as they read the arti­cles in this issue. The first arti­cle on“Islamic Realpoli­tik” in Iran argues that despite the moral ideals of Islam, when push comes to shove, Iran­ian polit­i­cal lead­ers can be assumed to behave accord­ing to self-interest more than from moral norms. It is use­ful to note that imme­di­ately after the reli­gious rev­o­lu­tion in Iran, Iraq saw the polit­i­cal weak­ness of reli­gious lead­ers as some­thing to exploit, and Sad­dam Hus­sein attacked Iran.

Despite the fact that moral val­ues and altru­ism are required for a just peace to be real­ized, inter­na­tional polit­i­cal insti­tu­tions must be able to check the accu­mu­la­tion and mis­use of power. This can only be done with con­cen­tra­tions of power that are rooted in higher prin­ci­ples. This was the phi­los­o­phy of the orig­i­nal US Con­sti­tu­tion. “Diplo­macy” is valu­able, but, by itself, can­not cre­ate the con­di­tions of peace. Good­will towards other nations is a pos­i­tive value that must be backed by some form of force that is not based on national self-interest, but rather that is com­mit­ted to “self-evident truths” that tran­scend human existence.

Our next arti­cle, “Last Resort: Bridg­ing Pro­tec­tion and Pre­ven­tion,” exam­ines the prob­lems caused by mak­ing a sys­tem of sov­er­eign, and self-interested, nation-states a norm in the UN Char­ter. Dave Ben­jamin notes that the vio­la­tion of human rights and con­tests between within-state groups over the insti­tu­tions of polit­i­cal power have caused severe harm. There is a naïve assump­tion in Arti­cle 2(4)(7) that lead­ers of states will be gen­uinely con­cerned with the wel­fare of their peo­ple, or that they are capa­ble of con­trol­ling gangs and eth­nic groups within their jurisdiction.

Before the estab­lish­ment of the United Nations, state lead­er­ship required legit­i­macy in the eyes of the ruled. After the cre­ation of the new world order of sov­er­eign states, legit­i­macy on the inter­na­tional stage became more impor­tant to lead­ers than legit­i­macy at home. This is because lead­ers of many poor coun­tries had more oppor­tu­nity to gain wealth through inter­na­tional aid and loans pro­vided in the name of devel­op­ment, than through tax­a­tion of their own people.

Over the years, the Gen­eral Assem­bly has come to rep­re­sent the defense of state sov­er­eignty, because rep­re­sen­ta­tives are mem­bers of the rul­ing élite. The Secu­rity Coun­cil, on the other hand, has usu­ally been the body to inter­vene in state sov­er­eignty because of its role in pre­vent­ing war. Ben­jamin argues that gov­ern­ment has a pri­mary duty to pro­tect cit­i­zens and that too often this duty takes a back seat to other polit­i­cal pressures.

Finally, we have an arti­cle by Solomon Hailu on the attempt in Africa to replace one failed secu­rity sys­tem, the Orga­ni­za­tion of African Unity (OAU) with a new sys­tem called the African Union (AU). After a very fine expla­na­tion of the goals of the African Union and the need for it, Hailu nev­er­the­less sees no way of get­ting the African Union estab­lished with­out the help of the United Nations or West­ern coun­tries. This is a tacit affir­ma­tion of Niebuhr’s the­sis that the norms of jus­tice can­not be achieved with­out some extra input based on altru­is­tic sup­port that goes beyond justice.

How­ever, is it naïve to expect that the United Nations and the West­ern coun­tries will really act for the ben­e­fit of African coun­tries, or will they be more likely to attach strings to their aid in some form of neo­colo­nial­ism? Realpoli­tik would argue that it is unlikely aid from inter­na­tional finan­cial insti­tu­tions, states, or the United Nations will pro­vide the extra sup­port to make African nations self-reliant. Rather, altru­is­tic indi­vid­u­als, whether they be wealthy phil­an­thropists, Peace Corps work­ers, reli­gious mis­sion­ar­ies, school teach­ers, or doc­tors are more likely to pro­vide the extra input that can enable African coun­tries to stand on their own, and pro­vide their own secu­rity and development.

Hegel’s ideal of the state as the embod­i­ment of the absolute in his­tory has about run its course. Reliance on a state to pro­vide human wel­fare and hap­pi­ness has been one of the grand­est illu­sions of the mod­ern period. The power of the state can be used to secure ordered lib­erty within which peo­ple can pur­sue hap­pi­ness, but it can­not pro­duce the peo­ple it needs to imple­ment that order. It can redis­trib­ute goods to the poor through taxes, but it can­not pro­duce those goods. A state is only as good as the peo­ple in it. For any state to func­tion, more need to sac­ri­fice for it than those who take from it.

When every­one looks to some exter­nal insti­tu­tion like the state as their sav­ior, they may as well be look­ing for the Lone Ranger to come and pro­vide them an ideal. Such hope­ful wishes reflect a denial of per­sonal respon­si­bil­ity, and the end result will be like that real­ized by Vladimir and Estragon in Samuel Beckett’s Wait­ing for Godot.