Realists Against the Nation-State

• Author: William E. Scheuerman
• Position: Professor of Political Science and West European Studies, Indiana University (Bloomington).
• Pages: 67-105

Realists Against the Nation-State

William E. Scheuerman*

I. INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................... 67

II. WHAT IS THE NATION-STATE GOOD FOR? ................................................ 71

III. THE NATION-STATE AND SOCIAL INTEGRATION ...................................... 73

IV. THE STAYING POWER OF NATIONAL IDENTITY ........................................ 79

V. HOW NATION-STATES DESTROY MORALITY .............................................. 82

VI. ECONOMIC GLOBALIZATION VS. THE NATIO N-STATE ............................... 89

VII. THE POLITICAL AND MILITARY DECAY OF THE NATION-STATE ............. 97

VIII. CONCLUSION ....................................................................................... 103

I. INTRODUCTION

British political theorist David Held recently restated the commonplace

view that, for Realist International Theory, “the modern system of nation-

states is a ‘limiting factor’ which will always thwart any attempt to conduct

international relations in a manner which transcends the politics of the

sovereign state.”1 According to the dominant interpretation, Realists

stubbornly refuse to acknowledge the nation-state’s increasingly obsolescent

character.2 Their dogmatic fidelity to an anarchical international system in

which nation-states remain the dominant political organization makes

Realists congenitally hostile to global reform.3 Rather than treating nation-

states as “limiting factors” militating against reform, Held asserts, we must

*Professor of Political Science and West European Studies, Indiana University (Bloomington).

1 DAVID HELD, DEMOCRACY AND THE GLOBAL ORDER: FROM THE MODERN STATE TO

COSMOPOLITAN GOVERNANCE 74–75 (1995). For useful surveys of Realist international thought,

see POLITICAL THOUGHT AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: VARIATIONS ON A REALIST THEME

(Duncan Bell ed., 2009); CAMPBELL CRAIG, GLIMMER OF A NEW LEVIATHAN: TOTAL WAR IN THE

REALISM OF NIEBUHR, MORGENTHAU, AND WALTZ (2003); JACK DONNELLY, REALISM AND

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS (2000); JONATHAN HASLAM, NO VIRTUE LIKE NECESSITY: REALIST

THOUGHT IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SINCE MACHIAVELLI (2002); RICHARD NED LEBOW, THE

TRAGIC VISION O F POLITICS: ETHICS, INTERESTS, AND ORDERS (2003); ALASTAIR J. H. MURRAY,

RECONSTRUCTING REALISM: BETWEEN POWER POLITICS AND COSMOPOLITAN ETHICS (1997);

VIBEKE SCHOU TJALVE, NIEBUHR, MORGENTHAU, AND THE POLITICS OF PATRIOTIC DISSENT:

REALIST STRATEGIES OF REPUBLICAN PEACE (2008); MICHAEL C. WILLIAMS, THE REALIST

TRADITION AND THE LIMITS OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS (2005); REALISM RECONSIDERED: THE

LEGACY OF HANS J. MORGENTHAU IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS (Michael C. Williams ed., 2007).

2 JÜRGEN HABERMAS, THE DIVIDED WEST 166–93 (2006).

3 Id.

68 TRANSNATIONAL LAW & CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS [Vol. 20:67

see the nation-state for what it is: a contingent product of specific historical

circumstances, and thus necessarily subject to far-reaching changes.4 Like

the city-states of Classical Antiquity and Renaissance Europe, the modern

nation-state is increasingly ill-adapted to the tasks of governance in the

context of intense globalization. From the perspective of Held and many

others, Realism suffers from institutional conservatism: given international

anarchy, states in the Realist view are supposed to do little more than pursue

a narrow interpretation of their “national interest.”5 Even if Realists admit

that achieving world government might prove morally desirable, the basic

dynamics of an international system in which rival units compete

unceasingly for power and security render any attempt to establish it

utopian. This is why Realists, we are repeatedly told, remain committed to

maintaining the institutional primacy of the nation-state, despite massive

evidence that the ongoing process of globalization undermines both its

efficacy and legitimacy. Not surprisingly, Held opts to join forces with an

increasingly vocal group of defenders of global or “cosmopolitan” law and

democracy, who seek to replace interstate anarchy with robust forms of

democracy and the rule of law, first at the regional (e.g., European) and then

eventually at the global level.

At first glance, Held’s critical comments about Realism seem

uncontroversial and perhaps even commonsensical. After all, they are widely

shared by reform-minded Cosmopolitan political and legal thinkers.6

Prominent recent political figures (e.g., Henry Kissinger and Condoleeza

Rice)7 and scholars (e.g., Kenneth Waltz and Danilo Zolo),8 who accept the

“Realist” label, are indisputably hostile to far-reaching global reform, let

alone anything approaching Held’s vision of a global law-based democracy.

Today, self-described Realists rarely even bother to take international law or

international human rights seriously. On the rare occasion that they do, their

analysis seems hostile and dismissive of both international law and human

rights’ accomplishments and normative potential.9

4 HELD, supra note 1, at 74–75.

5 For the origins of this view, see HANS J. MORGENTHAU, IN DEFENSE OF THE NATIONAL INTEREST

33–39 (1951).

6 See DANIELE ARCHIBUGI, THE GLOBAL COMMONWEALTH OF CITIZENS: TOWARD COSMOPOLITAN

DEMOCRACY 126–31 (2008); CHARLES BEITZ, POLITICAL THEORY AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

11–50 (1979); SIMON CANEY, JUSTICE BEYOND BORDERS: A GLOBAL POLITICAL THEORY (2005);

MICHAEL W. DOYLE, WAYS OF WAR AND PEACE 106 (1997); HABERMAS, supra note 2, at 166–68;

CHARLES JONES, GLOBAL JUSTICE: DEFENDING COSMOPOLITANISM 114–15 (1999).

7 MICHAEL JOSEPH SMI TH, REALIST THOUGHT FROM WEBER TO KISSINGER 192–217 (1986)

(discussing Kissinger’s Realism); ANTONIA FELIX, CONDI: THE CONDOLEEZZA RICE STORY 93–94

(2002) (discussing Rice’s intellectual debts to Morgenthau).

8 See KENNETH N. WALTZ, THEORY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS (1979); DANILO ZOLO,

COSMOPOLIS: PROSPECTS FOR WORLD GOVERNMENT (1997).

9 For an example of Realist theoretical indifference to international law, see JOHN

MEARSHEIMER, THE TRAGEDY OF GREAT POWER POLITICS (2001). For an example of Realist

Spring 2011] REALISTS AGAINST THE NATION-STATE 69

In light of the ubiquitous assessment of Realism as both institutionally

conservative and normatively numb, should Barack Obama’s apparent

intellectual affinity for Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971), probably the most

important U.S. theoretician of Realism, worry those of us who hope to

strengthen international law and ultimately advance far-reaching global

reform?10 Should we expect little more from President Obama than a “soft” or

simply more genteel version of the rather uninspiring foreign policies of self-

described Realists like Kissinger and Rice?

Perhaps not. Fortunately, Realist International Theory—especially as

represented by its most notable mid-20th Century theoretical representatives

(e.g., Niebuhr, E.H. Carr (1892–1982), John Herz (1908–2006), Hans J.

Morgenthau (1904–1980), Frederick Schuman (1904–1981), and Georg

Schwarzenberger (1908–1991))—is intellectually richer and more politically

multifaceted than critics typically acknowledge.11 To be sure, mid-Century

Realism, like any significant theoretical current, was always a complex and

unwieldy intellectual creature. Realism was largely influential in the United

States from the late 1930s well into the 1960s; its ranks included theologians

(like Niebuhr), active as well as former international lawyers (such as Herz,

Morgenthau, and Schwarzenberger), and historically conscious political

analysts of a radical political bent (e.g., Carr, Schuman). The theoretical

influences on them were no less wide-ranging. Niebuhr, for example, was

intellectually and politically linked to the socialist German émigré theologian

Paul Tillich,12 as he struggled in the 1930s and 1940s to synthesize a

fundamentally Augustinian Christian system of ethics with radical currents

in social thought. Carr was a great admirer of the work of Karl Mannheim.13

Morgenthau drew on a diverse collection of voices, including his Realist ally

Niebuhr, Hans Kelsen, Carl Schmitt, Max Weber, and especially the left-wing

Weimar legal sociologist and labor lawyer, Hugo Sinzheimer.14 Herz was a

doctoral student of Kelsen’s and initially a devotee of his teacher’s “pure

theory of law,” while Schwarzenberger worked with Gustav Radbruch before,

enmity to international law, see DANILO ZOLO, VICTOR’S JUSTICE: FROM NUREMBERG TO

BAGHDAD (2010).

10 In 2007, during a widely reported interview with conservative New York Times columni st

David Brooks, then-Senator Obama report edly told him that Niebuhr was his “favorite

philosopher.” A recent reissue by the University of Chicago Press of Niebuhr’s Irony of American

History includes an appreciative cover blurb from the President. See Obama’s Theologian: David

Brooks and E.J. D ionne on Reinhold Niebuhr, Speaking of Faith with Krista Tippett, NAT’L

PUBLIC RADIO (Fe b. 19, 2009), http://being.publicradio.org/programs/2009/obamas-theologian/

[hereinafter Obama’s Theologian].

11 DONNELLY supra note 1; HASLAM supra note 1; SMITH supra note 7.

12 PAUL MERKLEY, REINHOLD NIEBUHR: A POLITICAL ACCOUNT 77–85 (1975) (discussing the

nexus between Tillich and Niebuhr).

13 CHARLES JONES, E.H. CARR: A DUTY TO LIE 121–43 (1998) (discussing Carr and Mannheim).

14 WILLIAM E. SCHEUERMAN, MORGENTHAU: REALISM AND BEYOND 11–39 (2009) [hereinafter

SCHEUERMAN, MORGENTHAU: REALISM AND BEYOND] (discussing Morgenthau and Weimar

thought).