Prasenjit Duara
Until recently, linear history was identified with the nation-state in a process of mutual formation: naturalizing the nation-state as the skin that contains the experience of the past has made history the major means of national identity formation. History has a special role in teaching: it teaches the moral value of the national community. Duara believes we should balance the identity-formation function of the teaching of history with a critical understanding of how that past is formed: historical education is about the production of our moral and knowing selves.
National histories focus on progress and a nation moving through time where traditional histories focus on mythic pasts and transcendent ideals. Why has the nation dominated the framing of modern historiography? History becomes a principal means of claiming sovereignty in the emerging system of nation-states: a discourse of rights involving a three-way relationship between a people, a territory, and a history. Written histories represented the ideal of a single people occupying since conception their right to a given land. Colonizing nation had to see their colonies as non-nations and those anti-colonialists had to reconstitute themselves as nations and enter history to join the narrative of progress and modernity.
Challenging Historical Boundaries:
Challenge the modes of making historical sense: periodization, causation, and the historical postulate of space. These practices, Duara contends, are techniques of binding the self to a national time-space. For instance, a scientific examination of causality that worked to prop up the logic of the nation-state is now contested by views that historical narratives are based on contemporary needs and how national narratives respond to contemporary national imperatives. Periodizaton leads to defintions of times moving back and forth is also a product of nationalist necessity in the twentieth century: it is one of the most fundamental means of symbolizing historical time and conferring meaning on individual identity and when this knowledge penetrates public historical consciousness, the consequences for individual identity and stae sovereignty can be quite meaningful. Think of eras as a hegemonic principles. Boundedness is as socially constructed as domination and subcject formation. Why is this paradigm shift occuring now?
The lessening importance of the state in Europe has undermined its claim to have an evolving primoridal essense: other developments have inclined thinkers to look at the movement of peoples, resources, and signs rather than stable entities. Ideally, according to Druary, we should have an ever-opening history that reveals how the object of our stust has been bounded and framed both subjectively and by objective powers that are also themselves partially produced by these framings.
Spaces of History:
Borsder zones represent relatively weak linkes in the ideological hegenomy of nationalism and are often highly militarized. Forces can create kinds of space they require: abstract, exchangable, and often deterritorialized that can serve as a factor of production as well as a commodity. National histories often represent transnational and global developments as national processes. Nation-states frequently puruse common goals of scientific modernity or adopt similar or related models to achieve these goals and encounter many of the same problems or solutions, but their histories are not the same as different histories emerge from the encounter between global models and preexisting and contingent formations. An event that is often portrayed as a natioanl encounter is really a dialogue between local and global groups.
A nation seeking progress must also possess a core of timeless authenticity, that is, the character, qualities, and values that an entity seeks to secure while pursuing the goal of modernization which provides identity in a world of change. Authenticity locates the source of authortiy in society and endows those who can speak for it with a power of cultural inviolability. Those who control it have the power to subordinate the individual to the collective in the name of that authenticity and externally provide an authoritative shield against charges made by other states or nations. The task of the historian, for Drura, more and more resemblses that of a literary critic: one must deconstruct the dominant ideological representations of poltical powers which have frequently marginalized, suppressed, and transformed histories. Modern territorial boundaries are illusionary means of keeping histories apart: a political space associated with the dominant discourse of time authorizes and naturalizes a social order foudned upon the erasure of the memory and representation of older spatial relationships.
Showing posts with label IH Week 2. Show all posts
Showing posts with label IH Week 2. Show all posts
Monday, October 6, 2008
American Historical Review Conversation on Transnational History
By J
by C.A. Bayly, Sven Beckert, Matthew Connelly, Isabel Hofmeyr, Wendy Kozol, and Patricia Seed
Transnational History is no longer new, but it is the latest incarnation of an approach that has been characterized as comparative, international, world, and global history. All want to break out of the nation-state or singular states as a category of analysis and eschew the ethnocentrism that characterizes the writing of history. It is the product of the time, as world history a reaction against ethnocentrism and global history seems to give purpose and process to globalization, just as transnational history for Europeans seems much more meaning to a sense of movement and interpretation for diaspora studies and what not.
Transnational history implies a comparison between the contemporary movement of groups, goods, technology, or people across national borders and the transit of similar or related objects in another time. It allows for examinations of migratory patterns under a common rubric. The key claim to any transnational approach is its central concern with movements, flows, and circulation, not simply as a theme or motif, but as an analytic set of methods which defines the endeavor itself. Historical movements are not only made in different places, but they are constructed in the movement between places, sites, and regions.
Transnational history part of a larger critique of the West and its culture. For the feminist, transnationalism allows one to examine how processes and institutions such as colonization, modernization, and feminist movements have sustained critical divisions that have differently privileged or harmed groups through gender, racial, or sexual frameworks. What constitutes the object of historical inquiry once you challenge the stability of the border to define the nation?
Many histories are projects aiming to reconstruct aspects of the human past that transcend any one nation-state, empire, or other politically defined territory. It can be global in scope, but also particular regional histories. How do historians keep an audience if they move away from national histories and why are so many pages devoted to finding a need for the methodology of transnational history in lieu of empirical research. It should avoid the post-colonial self-referentialism to the point of irrelevance. Transnationalism means little or nothing for most of world history, yet it is becoming indispensible to describe crucial trends in more recent times.
One must remember that nations are not to be transcended in the forces under discussion: they are the products, often the rather late products, of those processes. How does one model change over time for a readership of any level of sophistication? Diachronic concerns of historians are not so easily swept aside by privileging one cause over another, whether it the economy, state, or ideology.
On the one hand these comments illuminate the high aspirations of transnational history and reveal a sophisticated awareness of what is at stake, both practically and theoretically. There is also an implicit critique of teaching methdology, political engagement, and presentism that reveal a frustration with the recent preoccupations with theory and esoteric style of discourse among acacdemia.
It is difficult to track the movement of objects, people, ideas, and texts using the sources available. There is a grand narrative of domination and resistance in transnational history: imperialist reciveving a much more nuanced treatment than victim. Too often globalization and transnationalism are seen in a binary models where globalization as a powerful and oppressive force that compels marginalized groups to sustain cultures of resistence. The most effective transnational historical studies are those that examine how cultural practices and ideologies shape, constrain, or enable the economic, social, and political conditions in which people and goods circulate within local, regional, and global locales.
Cultrual studies sometimes have an effect of reifying culture or cultures in such a way as to makr them seem authentic and real as against the inauthenticity of Western rationalism. Economy transforms culture. For all the contributions of subaltern studies and cultural anthropolgy, it is still too easy to slip back into the habit of imagining global forces as transcending nations and not creating them. Working across conventinoal categories will make it more tempting to be satisfied with exploring representation and idenity, rather than actually explaining why wealth and war occur. Transnational studies with cultural fields need a firmer empircal and comparative background. Studying investment patterns, elite networks and institutions will make transnational history more vibrant than a narrow focus on ideology and ideas.
How does a transnational approach differ from other approaches like modernization theory, Marxism, dependency theory, socio-historical treatments of state-making, and the like: should transnationalism yield a new narrative on development or have something specific to tell us about the issue of modernity?
The process of colonialization should show interacting agents from both backgrounds. Ideas of modernization, development, and now globalization have provoked historians to provide better ways to explain how we got to where we are today: a world in which people continue to struggle over the meaning of modernity, development can take many different routes and the institution of state sovereignty is more contested and assertive. Old development models focus too closely on how the state caused all the change: it increases the number of external transnational actoes and multiplies the nature of the internal groups tied to transnational formations. Transnational forces also show how modernity is more than a Western process of progress and enlightenment and reveal modernity to be a multifaceted process whereby political, economic, and cultural exchanges appear in varied and often unpredictable ways. Dependency narrative at its core is about how the relations of various parts of the world to each other: the global spread of capitalism is important to Marxism, modernization theory postulates the possibility of the global spread of modernity as the product of interaction of various states with one another.
A new narrative seems to focus on now at the end of the nineteenth century away from how Europeans felt change but on the movement of capital, goods, people, and ideas. Writing a narrative forces us to explain change and identify who is driving it. The interconnectedness of history is a starting point, but pays attention to networks, processes, beleifs, and instituions that trranscend politically defined spaces. Transnationalism must focus on building an idea on why the world became more eocnomically, socially, poltically, and culturally connected in the past 500 years. Capitalism and state formation remain the two master processes of the modern era.
Directions in transnational history:
Diasporas are a worthwhile way of approaching transnational history, provided these studies grappple closely with the reception and domestication of such people and modes of life in the host society. Look at how Western ideas were transformed rather than deepened or generalized in the third world. A transnational lens will yield insights on many issues. Continuities and changes in communication technology.
by C.A. Bayly, Sven Beckert, Matthew Connelly, Isabel Hofmeyr, Wendy Kozol, and Patricia Seed
Transnational History is no longer new, but it is the latest incarnation of an approach that has been characterized as comparative, international, world, and global history. All want to break out of the nation-state or singular states as a category of analysis and eschew the ethnocentrism that characterizes the writing of history. It is the product of the time, as world history a reaction against ethnocentrism and global history seems to give purpose and process to globalization, just as transnational history for Europeans seems much more meaning to a sense of movement and interpretation for diaspora studies and what not.
Transnational history implies a comparison between the contemporary movement of groups, goods, technology, or people across national borders and the transit of similar or related objects in another time. It allows for examinations of migratory patterns under a common rubric. The key claim to any transnational approach is its central concern with movements, flows, and circulation, not simply as a theme or motif, but as an analytic set of methods which defines the endeavor itself. Historical movements are not only made in different places, but they are constructed in the movement between places, sites, and regions.
Transnational history part of a larger critique of the West and its culture. For the feminist, transnationalism allows one to examine how processes and institutions such as colonization, modernization, and feminist movements have sustained critical divisions that have differently privileged or harmed groups through gender, racial, or sexual frameworks. What constitutes the object of historical inquiry once you challenge the stability of the border to define the nation?
Many histories are projects aiming to reconstruct aspects of the human past that transcend any one nation-state, empire, or other politically defined territory. It can be global in scope, but also particular regional histories. How do historians keep an audience if they move away from national histories and why are so many pages devoted to finding a need for the methodology of transnational history in lieu of empirical research. It should avoid the post-colonial self-referentialism to the point of irrelevance. Transnationalism means little or nothing for most of world history, yet it is becoming indispensible to describe crucial trends in more recent times.
One must remember that nations are not to be transcended in the forces under discussion: they are the products, often the rather late products, of those processes. How does one model change over time for a readership of any level of sophistication? Diachronic concerns of historians are not so easily swept aside by privileging one cause over another, whether it the economy, state, or ideology.
On the one hand these comments illuminate the high aspirations of transnational history and reveal a sophisticated awareness of what is at stake, both practically and theoretically. There is also an implicit critique of teaching methdology, political engagement, and presentism that reveal a frustration with the recent preoccupations with theory and esoteric style of discourse among acacdemia.
It is difficult to track the movement of objects, people, ideas, and texts using the sources available. There is a grand narrative of domination and resistance in transnational history: imperialist reciveving a much more nuanced treatment than victim. Too often globalization and transnationalism are seen in a binary models where globalization as a powerful and oppressive force that compels marginalized groups to sustain cultures of resistence. The most effective transnational historical studies are those that examine how cultural practices and ideologies shape, constrain, or enable the economic, social, and political conditions in which people and goods circulate within local, regional, and global locales.
Cultrual studies sometimes have an effect of reifying culture or cultures in such a way as to makr them seem authentic and real as against the inauthenticity of Western rationalism. Economy transforms culture. For all the contributions of subaltern studies and cultural anthropolgy, it is still too easy to slip back into the habit of imagining global forces as transcending nations and not creating them. Working across conventinoal categories will make it more tempting to be satisfied with exploring representation and idenity, rather than actually explaining why wealth and war occur. Transnational studies with cultural fields need a firmer empircal and comparative background. Studying investment patterns, elite networks and institutions will make transnational history more vibrant than a narrow focus on ideology and ideas.
How does a transnational approach differ from other approaches like modernization theory, Marxism, dependency theory, socio-historical treatments of state-making, and the like: should transnationalism yield a new narrative on development or have something specific to tell us about the issue of modernity?
The process of colonialization should show interacting agents from both backgrounds. Ideas of modernization, development, and now globalization have provoked historians to provide better ways to explain how we got to where we are today: a world in which people continue to struggle over the meaning of modernity, development can take many different routes and the institution of state sovereignty is more contested and assertive. Old development models focus too closely on how the state caused all the change: it increases the number of external transnational actoes and multiplies the nature of the internal groups tied to transnational formations. Transnational forces also show how modernity is more than a Western process of progress and enlightenment and reveal modernity to be a multifaceted process whereby political, economic, and cultural exchanges appear in varied and often unpredictable ways. Dependency narrative at its core is about how the relations of various parts of the world to each other: the global spread of capitalism is important to Marxism, modernization theory postulates the possibility of the global spread of modernity as the product of interaction of various states with one another.
A new narrative seems to focus on now at the end of the nineteenth century away from how Europeans felt change but on the movement of capital, goods, people, and ideas. Writing a narrative forces us to explain change and identify who is driving it. The interconnectedness of history is a starting point, but pays attention to networks, processes, beleifs, and instituions that trranscend politically defined spaces. Transnationalism must focus on building an idea on why the world became more eocnomically, socially, poltically, and culturally connected in the past 500 years. Capitalism and state formation remain the two master processes of the modern era.
Directions in transnational history:
Diasporas are a worthwhile way of approaching transnational history, provided these studies grappple closely with the reception and domestication of such people and modes of life in the host society. Look at how Western ideas were transformed rather than deepened or generalized in the third world. A transnational lens will yield insights on many issues. Continuities and changes in communication technology.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Politics Among Nations: The Science of International Politics
Hans Morgenthau
UNDERSTANDING INTERNATIONAL POLITICS:
Morgenthau wants to detect and understand the forces that determine political relations among nations and to comprehend the ways in which those forces act upon each other and upon international political relations and institutions.
International politics, for Morgenthau, must be defined distinctly from recent history and current events, international law, and political reform. With the shifting emphases and changing perspectives, an observer can only gain an objective standard of evaluation of the present through the correlation of recent events with a more distant past and the perennial qualities of human nature underlying both.
LIMITATIONS TO UNDERSTANDING:
The most formidable difficulty facing a theoretical inquiry into the nature and ways of international politics is the ambiguity of the material with which the observer has to deal. The events he must understand are unique occurrences. They happened one way and will never occur again. They are also similar manifestations of social forces that are products of human nature in action: under similar conditions they will manifest themselves in a similar manner.
Dealing with different political situations, we should ask ourselves: how does a situation differ from a preceding one and how is it similar? If one wants to understand international politics, gras the meaning of contemporary events, and foresee the future, he must be able to perform the dual intellectual trask implicit in distinguishing between the similarities and differences in two political situations. Thr complexities of international affairs make simple solutions and trustworthy prophecies impossible: knowledge of the forces that determine politics among nations and of the ways which their politcal relations would unfold, reveals the ambiguity of the facts of international politics. In every political situation contradictory tendencies are at play. All we can do make educated guesses on why one tendency might prevail over another.
UNDERSTANDING THE PROBLEM OF INTERNATIONAL PEACE:
The United States is impacted by international politics in a way it had never been before. Promotion of the American national interest remains the primary aim of foreign policy, the avoidance of a nuclear holocaust, aka the preservation of peace, is the prime concern of all nations. In a world whose moving force is the aspiration of sovreign nations for power, peace can be maintained only by two devices: the self-regulatory mechanism of social forces manifested in the struggle for power on the international scene: aka, the balance of power. The other is the normative limitations on that struggle as shown in international institutions.
UNDERSTANDING INTERNATIONAL POLITICS:
Morgenthau wants to detect and understand the forces that determine political relations among nations and to comprehend the ways in which those forces act upon each other and upon international political relations and institutions.
International politics, for Morgenthau, must be defined distinctly from recent history and current events, international law, and political reform. With the shifting emphases and changing perspectives, an observer can only gain an objective standard of evaluation of the present through the correlation of recent events with a more distant past and the perennial qualities of human nature underlying both.
LIMITATIONS TO UNDERSTANDING:
The most formidable difficulty facing a theoretical inquiry into the nature and ways of international politics is the ambiguity of the material with which the observer has to deal. The events he must understand are unique occurrences. They happened one way and will never occur again. They are also similar manifestations of social forces that are products of human nature in action: under similar conditions they will manifest themselves in a similar manner.
Dealing with different political situations, we should ask ourselves: how does a situation differ from a preceding one and how is it similar? If one wants to understand international politics, gras the meaning of contemporary events, and foresee the future, he must be able to perform the dual intellectual trask implicit in distinguishing between the similarities and differences in two political situations. Thr complexities of international affairs make simple solutions and trustworthy prophecies impossible: knowledge of the forces that determine politics among nations and of the ways which their politcal relations would unfold, reveals the ambiguity of the facts of international politics. In every political situation contradictory tendencies are at play. All we can do make educated guesses on why one tendency might prevail over another.
UNDERSTANDING THE PROBLEM OF INTERNATIONAL PEACE:
The United States is impacted by international politics in a way it had never been before. Promotion of the American national interest remains the primary aim of foreign policy, the avoidance of a nuclear holocaust, aka the preservation of peace, is the prime concern of all nations. In a world whose moving force is the aspiration of sovreign nations for power, peace can be maintained only by two devices: the self-regulatory mechanism of social forces manifested in the struggle for power on the international scene: aka, the balance of power. The other is the normative limitations on that struggle as shown in international institutions.
Politics Among Nations
Hans Morgenthau
A Realist Theory of International Politics:
Morgenthau seeks to "detect and understand" the forces which determine political relations among nations and to comprehend the ways in which those forces act upon each other and upon international political relations and institutions. There are two competing schools: one believes a rational and moral political order derived from universally valid abstract principles can be attained due to the essential goodness and infinite malleability of human nature and blames failures of social orders to measure up to rational standards on a lack of knowledge and understanding, outdated institutions, and the depravity of certain individuals and groups. Liberalism trusts education and reform, coupled with the sporadic use of force, to remedy these defects.
Realists see a different world. Though imperfect in a rational sense, the world is the result of forces inherant in human nature. To improve the world one must work with these forces, not against them. The world is inherantly one of opposing interests and conflict where moral principles can never be realized and must be best approximated through the ever temporary balancing of interests and the ever precarious settlement of conflicts. Checks and balances are a universal principle for all pluralist socieites. Historical precedent rather than abstract principles and aims to improve lesser evils than secure absolute goods.
Six Principles of Political Realism:
1. Political realims believes politics, like society, is governed by objective laws that have their roots in human nature. One must understand society to improve it. Human nature never changes according to this school, and novelty is not a vice nor innovation a virtue. Realism is testing rational hypotheses against actual facts that gives theoretical meaning to politics.
2. The concept of interest defined through the balance of power pervades realist thinking. Only a balance of power allows a measure of systemic order to be brought to the political sphere. Statesmen think and act in terms of interest defined as power. This imposes intellectual discipline on the observer and infuses rational order into the subject matter of politics. A realist is unconcerned with motives and ideological preferences. It is impossible to know the real motives of statesmen due to the allusive nature of psychological data and the distortion in data by actor and observer alike.
Many statesmen animated by a desire to change the world for the better end up making it worse. One should judge by outcomes the moral and political qualities of foreign policies. Good motives give assurances against deliberately bad policies, but they do not guarantee moral goodness and political success. To understand foreign policy, one must be aware of the intellectual ability of a statesman and his capacity to turn his understanding into successful action: political qualities of intellect, will, and action.
One cannot deduce the foreign policies of a statesman from his philosophic or political sympathies. Statesmen will distinguish between their official duty and their sympathetic wishes. Personality, prejudice, and subjective preference, as well as weakness of intellect and will are bound to defect foreign policies from rational courses. A theroy of foreign policy founded on rationality afforded by experience is also aware of the defects in men and their judgments by experience.
American politics suffers from mistaken attitudes. When the human mind approaches reality for the purpose of taking action, it can be led astray by four things: residues of formerly adequete modes of thinking rendered obsolete by changing social phenomena, demonological interpretations of reality which substitute evil people for intractable issues, refusing to acknowledge a troubling state of affairs, and reliance upon the infinite malleability of reality.
The structure of international relations reflected in political institutions, diplomatic procedures, and legal arrangements is often at variance with the reality of international politics. While the fomer assume the sovreign equality of all nations, the latter is dominated by extreme inequality. Anarchy exists because the institutions designed to control mankind do not represent the realities of it. Conflict between states will be resolved when certain persons we have control over reduce the problem intellectually and pragmatically.
A demonological approach to foreign policy exacerbates problems, not solves them. This leads us not to acknowledge or cope with reality. Problems lack easy solutions. Rational elements make reality intelligitible for theory. History does not provide us many examples of completely rational foreign policies, theory can. A rational policy minimizes risks and maximizes benefits and complies both with the moral precept of prudence and the political requirement of success. Foreign policy ought to be rational in view of its moral precepts and practical purposes.
3. Realism assumes that its key concept of interest defined as power is an objective category which is universally valid, but not fixed. Power comprises anything that establishes and maintains the control of man over man. Power covers all social relationships which serve that end, from physical violence to psychological ties. A world transformed will occur through the workman like manipulation of the perrenial forces that have shaped the past, not confronting realitiy with abstract ideals indifferent to laws.
4. There is an inherant tension between moral commands and successful political action. Universal moral principles cannot be applied to the actions of states in their abstract universal formulation, but must be filtered through time and place. A state cannot let itself perish in the name of those who are in its care. Individuals may sacrifice themselves to liberty, the state has no right to allow concerns of liberty get in the way of successful political action. There can be no political morality absent prudence, that is, without consideration of the political consequences of a seemingly moral action. The weighing of consequences of alternative political actions to be the supreme virtue in politics.
5. Political realism refuses to identigy moral aspirations of a particular nation with the moral laws that ogovern the universe. The concept of interest defined as power that saves us from moral excess and political folly. A realist asks "How does this policy affect the power of the nation?
A Realist Theory of International Politics:
Morgenthau seeks to "detect and understand" the forces which determine political relations among nations and to comprehend the ways in which those forces act upon each other and upon international political relations and institutions. There are two competing schools: one believes a rational and moral political order derived from universally valid abstract principles can be attained due to the essential goodness and infinite malleability of human nature and blames failures of social orders to measure up to rational standards on a lack of knowledge and understanding, outdated institutions, and the depravity of certain individuals and groups. Liberalism trusts education and reform, coupled with the sporadic use of force, to remedy these defects.
Realists see a different world. Though imperfect in a rational sense, the world is the result of forces inherant in human nature. To improve the world one must work with these forces, not against them. The world is inherantly one of opposing interests and conflict where moral principles can never be realized and must be best approximated through the ever temporary balancing of interests and the ever precarious settlement of conflicts. Checks and balances are a universal principle for all pluralist socieites. Historical precedent rather than abstract principles and aims to improve lesser evils than secure absolute goods.
Six Principles of Political Realism:
1. Political realims believes politics, like society, is governed by objective laws that have their roots in human nature. One must understand society to improve it. Human nature never changes according to this school, and novelty is not a vice nor innovation a virtue. Realism is testing rational hypotheses against actual facts that gives theoretical meaning to politics.
2. The concept of interest defined through the balance of power pervades realist thinking. Only a balance of power allows a measure of systemic order to be brought to the political sphere. Statesmen think and act in terms of interest defined as power. This imposes intellectual discipline on the observer and infuses rational order into the subject matter of politics. A realist is unconcerned with motives and ideological preferences. It is impossible to know the real motives of statesmen due to the allusive nature of psychological data and the distortion in data by actor and observer alike.
Many statesmen animated by a desire to change the world for the better end up making it worse. One should judge by outcomes the moral and political qualities of foreign policies. Good motives give assurances against deliberately bad policies, but they do not guarantee moral goodness and political success. To understand foreign policy, one must be aware of the intellectual ability of a statesman and his capacity to turn his understanding into successful action: political qualities of intellect, will, and action.
One cannot deduce the foreign policies of a statesman from his philosophic or political sympathies. Statesmen will distinguish between their official duty and their sympathetic wishes. Personality, prejudice, and subjective preference, as well as weakness of intellect and will are bound to defect foreign policies from rational courses. A theroy of foreign policy founded on rationality afforded by experience is also aware of the defects in men and their judgments by experience.
American politics suffers from mistaken attitudes. When the human mind approaches reality for the purpose of taking action, it can be led astray by four things: residues of formerly adequete modes of thinking rendered obsolete by changing social phenomena, demonological interpretations of reality which substitute evil people for intractable issues, refusing to acknowledge a troubling state of affairs, and reliance upon the infinite malleability of reality.
The structure of international relations reflected in political institutions, diplomatic procedures, and legal arrangements is often at variance with the reality of international politics. While the fomer assume the sovreign equality of all nations, the latter is dominated by extreme inequality. Anarchy exists because the institutions designed to control mankind do not represent the realities of it. Conflict between states will be resolved when certain persons we have control over reduce the problem intellectually and pragmatically.
A demonological approach to foreign policy exacerbates problems, not solves them. This leads us not to acknowledge or cope with reality. Problems lack easy solutions. Rational elements make reality intelligitible for theory. History does not provide us many examples of completely rational foreign policies, theory can. A rational policy minimizes risks and maximizes benefits and complies both with the moral precept of prudence and the political requirement of success. Foreign policy ought to be rational in view of its moral precepts and practical purposes.
3. Realism assumes that its key concept of interest defined as power is an objective category which is universally valid, but not fixed. Power comprises anything that establishes and maintains the control of man over man. Power covers all social relationships which serve that end, from physical violence to psychological ties. A world transformed will occur through the workman like manipulation of the perrenial forces that have shaped the past, not confronting realitiy with abstract ideals indifferent to laws.
4. There is an inherant tension between moral commands and successful political action. Universal moral principles cannot be applied to the actions of states in their abstract universal formulation, but must be filtered through time and place. A state cannot let itself perish in the name of those who are in its care. Individuals may sacrifice themselves to liberty, the state has no right to allow concerns of liberty get in the way of successful political action. There can be no political morality absent prudence, that is, without consideration of the political consequences of a seemingly moral action. The weighing of consequences of alternative political actions to be the supreme virtue in politics.
5. Political realism refuses to identigy moral aspirations of a particular nation with the moral laws that ogovern the universe. The concept of interest defined as power that saves us from moral excess and political folly. A realist asks "How does this policy affect the power of the nation?
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