Academic

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD ON THUCYDIDES AND FOREIGN-POLICY ?REALISM:? Thucydides Hates ?Realists.? Rea?

By Glenn Reynolds

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD ON THUCYDIDES AND FOREIGN-POLICY “REALISM:” Thucydides Hates “Realists.”

Reading Thucydides? history of the Peloponnesian War this semester I?ve been reminded rather forcefully that ?realist? is one of those words in common discourse without any consistent or secure definition attached to it. Thucydides is often invoked as the father of realism in foreign policy, but his approach to the way the world works has little to do with the way this term is frequently used by political scientists today. . . . For Thucydides, the internal politics of a state are crucial to understanding and anticipating the policies of that state. Sparta has a set of interests that are not dictated by the nature of the international system so much as by the structure of Spartan society. The need to keep the Spartan population on a constant military footing and the need to keep the armies close at home derive from the need to keep the Helots under control. Another kind of city standing where Sparta stood, and with exactly the same powers and great powers around it, might well have had a completely different set of interests and adopted a completely different set of policies. . . . Theoretical realism would strike Thucydides as barking nonsense ? the kind of idea that could only appeal to people with little experience of actual affairs. Thucydides was not a realist in this sense; he was something much smarter. He was realistic.

In the world Thucydides writes about, interests matter. State interests, personal ambition, family and clan interests, the perceived interests of piety and religion, party and factional interests, economic interests: they all matter. But Thucydides seems more agnostic about which of these matter most at any given time.

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Full post as published by Instapundit.com on February 25, 2011 (boomark / email).