Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dk4vv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T18:04:18.116Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

American Realism and the New Global Realities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2012

Abstract

The three books reviewed in this essay, Morality Among Nations: An Evolutionary View (Mary Maxwell), Righteous Realists: Political Realism, Responsible Power, and American Culture in the Nuclear Age (Joel H. Rosenthal), and Securing Europe (Richard H. Ullman), in some sense represent a reaction to Reagan's ideological policies. Maxwell's book appeals to the sociobiological nature of international morality. Rosenthal's book invites the reader to consider the valid view of the realist model as a venue toward integration of morals with decision making in international relations. Ullman's main premise is that the disintegration of the Soviet empire and reunification of Germany gave a strong impetus for the European states to seek a common ground in all areas through cooperation, particularly on security issues.

Type
Review Essay
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 1992

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 See Gellman, Barton, Contending With Kennan (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1984Google Scholar); Stephanson, Anders, Kennan and the Art of Foreign Policy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988Google Scholar); Mayers, David, George Kennan and the Dilemmas of US. Foreign Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989Google Scholar); Russell, Greg, Hans J. Morgenthau and the Ethics of American Statecraft (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990Google Scholar); Fox, Richard, Reinhold Niebuhr: A Biography (New York: Pantheon Books, 1985Google Scholar); Brown, Robert M., ed., The Essential Reinhold Niebuhr (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986)Google Scholar; Isaacson, Walter and Thomas, Evan, The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made: Acheson, Bohlen, Harriman, Kennan, Lovett, McCloy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986).Google Scholar Also see Smith, Michael Joseph, Realist Thought from Weber to Kissinger (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1986Google Scholar).

2 Osgood, Robert, Ideals and Self-interest in America's Foreign Relations (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1950Google Scholar); Niebuhr, Reinhold, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness (1944; New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1960), p. 41Google Scholar.

3 Hunt, Michael, Ideology and US. Foreign Policy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986Google Scholar).

4 Kristol, Irving, “Toward a Moral Foreign Policy,” Wall Street Journal, November 15, 1983, p. 8.Google Scholar

5 Waltz, Kenneth W., Theory of International Politics (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1979).Google Scholar

6 For further discussion of this point see Donnelly, Jack, “Twentieth Century Realism,” in Nardin, Terry and Mapel, David, eds., Traditions of International Ethics (Cambridge, UK: Oxford University Press, 1992).Google Scholar

7 Mearsheimer, John J., “Back to the Future: Instability in Europe After the Cold War,” International Security (Summer 1990), p. 21; Ullman, pp. 142–43.Google Scholar

8 Morgenthau, Hans J., Truth and Power: Essays of a Decade, 1960–70 (New York: Praeger, 1970). p. 9Google Scholar; Niebuhr, , Children of Light, p. 41Google Scholar.