Misreading in IR theory and ideology critique: Morgenthau, Waltz and neo-realism

Abstract

This article is interested in the hegemony which neo-realism accomplished during the second half of the 20th century in both the academic field and policy making of I/international R/relations. Our examination posits the argument that neo-realism can be seen as an ideology rather than a theory of international politics. While this view can connect to individual voices from the 1960s as well as to an emerging body of critical literature since the 1990s, we propose an ideology critique to explore this argument. To unfold this approach we will elaborate some neo-realist misreadings which we think manipulate intellectual history (among others, the writings of Hans J. Morgenthau) and represent an ideological impact intrinsic in the development of IR. An ideology critical approach – which is inherent in Morgenthau's thoughts on international theory themselves and thus helps to reveal profound discrepancies at the heart of an ostensible ‘realist’-neo-realist ‘unity’ – has, firstly, to problematise those discrepancies and, secondly, to focus on hegemonic strategies applied to ideologise and mainstream the academic field. The first part of such an agenda is what we present here; the second part is what we outline methodologically and suggest for further studies in, and of, IR.

1. Introduction

The problematic

The contentious problematic of this article is related to some questionable interpretations produced by neo-realism about authors of the history of political thought as well as about contemporary scholars of international politics. Mainstream IR teaches us that, next to Thucydides and Niccolo Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau play a decisive role for a tradition of realist thought. Similarly, it teaches us that Hans J. Morgenthau plays a role as a precursor of neo-realism. These identifications are not only supposed to ensure the positions of neo-realism by referencing ‘authorities’ from the history of political thought, but the reference to ‘heroic figures’ of the discipline (in a wider sense) serves for the deduction and explanation of central neo-realist theorems. Looking into Kenneth Waltz as the founding figure of neo-realism (or ‘structural realism’) and his analyses in Man, the State and War, we will argue that he strongly misreads classical authors, foremost Rousseau, just as he, and the emerging neo-realist mainstream, misreads or even manipulates Morgenthau. ¹

This argument will be examined by a two-part ideology critique which both queries the assumption that ‘realism’ represents a universal theory and criticises the neo-realist proposition to embody and perfect such an enterprise.

First, our argument suggests that both schools, ‘realism’ and neo-realism alike, have to be understood as deeply rooted in the historical context of 20th century international politics. According to this understanding, the following perspective develops: ‘realism’ and neo-realism reflect a certain conception of international politics, both in practical and disciplinary terms, during a certain historical phase and are therefore transient modes of thinking. ² Thus, new critical approaches have to seek (re)interpretations and redefinitions of theory and cannot, affirmatively or critically, connect to a theory of ‘realism’ or neo-realism – or their mainstream receptions. In this article we will elaborate on two misperceptions (section 2 and 3):

1. 1. The neo-realist and IR mainstream understanding of Morgenthau's ‘realism’ as a grand theory of IR and precursor of neo-realism, and the erroneous assumption that he advocates anarchy as a universal pattern of international politics.

2. 2. Kenneth Waltz's questionable understanding of the state as a homogenously acting unit derived from an interpretation of Rousseau.

All three tenets of IR mainstream – that Morgenthau proposes and advocates international politics as anarchic; that his realism represents a grand theory of IR; and the Waltzian/neo-realist conceptualisation of the state as an acting unit – can be traced as dubitable interpretations and misreadings. Our critique of neo-realism as a transient mode of thought thereby applies in two ways: On the one hand, we notice an ideological reduction of Morgenthau's position, generalising his early views (mainly from Politics Among Nations) to universal statements. What we know from Morgenthau himself, however, is that he understood Politics among Nations as a temporary and historically caused counter-ideology to the ideologies of the 20th century. He did not at all understand it as a theory (as argued by neo-realists and the IR mainstream). On the other hand, Waltz and neo-realism are criticised for the attempt, based on Waltz's misreading of Rousseau, to form a foreign policy ideology for the US.

In the second part of our ideology critique (section 4) we ask why these misreadings have occurred. This question indicates the need for the examination into processes and conditions of knowledge production that have led to neo-realism's hegemony in IR. Two possible explanations might provide an answer: neo-realist authors were naïve in understanding and interpreting political theory, idiosyncratic in their use and application of political thought and hence unconsciously promoting those misreadings; or, alternatively, these misreadings are purposefully created ideological constructions ³ to provide concepts for and to legitimise US power politics during the Cold War. ⁴ While the first explanation is speculative, ⁵ the second will be considered in the second part of our ideology critique.

Conceptual remarks

We draw our conception of ideology from the classical tradition of ideology study which seeks to elaborate the concept of ideology as a false consciousness or misled Weltanschauung (world view), and which posits objective conditions and ‘realities’ in order to manipulate certain social and political situations. This understanding separates ideology from implications of material condition and/or class structure intrinsic to Marxist theories. Furthermore, it does not claim to represent another, ‘correct’ Weltanschauung against the one declared as ‘false’ or misleading, rather it seeks to pluralistically open up a field of possible interpretations arguing against confinements of such pluralism by reifications of certain worldviews or by internal contradictions and/or manipulations of their construction. Such Weltanschauungen or ideologies are then and for those reasons identified as ‘false’ and misleading.

Our discussion draws on the theory of ideology put forward by Karl Mannheim who speaks of ideology as both a product of a distorted Weltanschauung and the process of distortion itself. To Mannheim, ideology represents a process of epistemological enquiry and identity interpretation that leads to the eventual formation of more than just individual views of the world, but to the world view of an entire social group (totalising world view). Therefore, ideology in a Mannheimian sense is a dialectic process as it is constructed at individual levels but also reflects the worldview of a whole group. Accordingly, the process of ideology, intertwined with epistemology, becomes distorted as it shifts from a particular to a total conception. This dialectical cycle of knowledge and knowledge production, where particular ideas come to dominate an entire social group, might lead eventually to the replacement of formerly dominant epistemologies within society by a new epistemology. ⁶ The Mannheimian definition used here is that of a totalising worldview which is formed and perpetuated both consciously and unconsciously as part of a process of knowledge formation. This definition is crucial to our approach which consists of the two tasks of identifying elements of neo-realist thought that can be illustrated as an ideological worldview (which typologically corresponds to a pejorative ideology critique) ⁷and to consider hegemonic (ideological) processes that have led to the dominance of neo-realism during the Cold and post-Cold war era (which represents a morphological study of ideology or of ‘processes of distortion’). ⁸

Although the concept of ideology is widely and controversially debated, ⁹ we think that the Mannheimian notion is most suitable to our study for four reasons: first, it allows us to draw upon Morgenthau's arguments that the praxis of politics is a process of ideology and counter-ideology formation (as can most clearly be seen in his Politics Among Nations). Secondly, the use of the ‘classical’ definition of ideology locates our study within the context of an existing critical body of IR literature. Authors such as Justin Rosenberg also argue that neo-realism, as a ‘deterministic construction of political reality which entails a series of hidden propositions and symptomatic silences’, is an ideology. ¹⁰Thirdly, a Mannheimian understanding of ideology conceptually clarifies our argument that the formation of ‘paradigms’ in academia (as neo-realism in IR is widely understood) can be conceived as an ideological process. Thomas Kuhn coined the term ‘paradigm’ to refer to a process of meta-theoretical positivist refinements within academia similar to the process described by Mannheim as ideology. Ole Wæver, reflecting Kuhn's definition, writes that a ‘paradigm contains within it a fundamental view of the world, and its assumptions act as lenses through which that world is perceived […] paradigms are intrinsic to the social functioning of a scientific community’. ¹¹ Like Mannheim's ideology, paradigms are created out of conflicts between individuals with different epistemological beliefs, especially in times of crisis. This process sets up a cycle of knowledge production and protection. The particular elements of theory elaborated by individuals are eventually generalised, distorted, adopted and reified by an entire group (or the mainstream of a discipline) to form a totalising Weltanschauung. Similarly, as Wæver maintains in reference to ‘paradigm’, ‘participants can only be brought to accept such a framework by a process similar to conversion, not by rational argument’. ¹²Finally, the use of Mannheim's definition of ideology is complementary to a historicist tradition of political thought, which we deem necessary to the study of IR, especially since this tradition contests the positivistic methodology of IR mainstream that provides the intellectual framework for the misreadings analysed here. It is our contention that the historicist tradition, including many authors labelled ‘classical realists’ by neo-realism and IR mainstream (such as Morgenthau; but also EH Carr), represents a school of thought that considers world views to be a product of specific historical, social and political circumstances rather than putting forward structural and universalised postulates regarding an objective ‘reality’ of the world. Hence, a historicist tradition of international political theory is, in a Mannheimian sense, an ideology critique in itself.

2. Morgenthau and the Reception of ‘Realism’

With regard to Morgenthau, the ‘misreading’ interpretation is complex because his arguments relevant for our discussion are spread throughout his complete oeuvre. Furthermore, eventual contradictions, or at least debateable complexities, seem to exist in his thoughts which require careful interpretation and cross-referenced reading. Morgenthau appears as a problem-oriented author (whereas Kenneth Waltz, contrarily, tried to depict himself as a systematic and stringent thinker). ¹³ This problem-oriented way of Morgenthau's thinking and the resulting complexities of his writing might have contributed to the misreadings analysed here in that some of his statements provoke idiosyncratic interpretations of his ‘realism’ when not understood in light of the bigger picture of his theorising.

However, since this kind of contextualisation appears to be absent in IR mainstream, a canonised knowledge solidified in the discipline regarding the understanding of Morgenthau – which interestingly is not only accepted by those who call themselves realists (or neo-realists), but ironically also by most of those who oppose realism. While this canon emerged and became anchored in the discipline, crucial writings of Morgenthau were marginalised, ¹⁴ selective reading and quoting of his work became the academic standard, and his protests against being misunderstood were widely ignored. ¹⁵ Taking, however, Morgenthau's overall oeuvre into account, it seems very clear that he understood his own writings as historically contingent, a standpoint which does not allow any sort of canonisation of his thoughts. Additionally, he revised major parts of his early writings during the 1970s due to transformations in world politics – another example of his problem-oriented thinking – while his revisions of major arguments from Politics among Nations were again widely neglected in and by IR mainstream.

As the most prominent example of these misreadings it seems to have become a matter of course that anarchy would be a basic assumption of Morgenthau's ‘realist’ theory to characterise international politics. Robert Jervis may serve as just one example in the US-American IR debate; the most widely read and credited example in this regard might be, however, Robert O. Keohane. ¹⁶ Both authors associate the metaphor of anarchy unrestrictedly with Morgenthau. According to these common and powerful interpretations, anarchy seems to be a basic concept of Morgenthau's ‘realism’. Although this may be true for Waltz, it is not the case for Morgenthau. As far as we see, the term anarchy is mentioned in Politics among Nations only three times; and when Morgenthau refers to it, it is in a critical disassociation from Hobbes (from which such an outlook on international politics is most commonly derived). What is more, as we read in Politics among Nations:

If the motivations behind the struggle for power and the mechanisms through which it operates were all that needed to be known about international politics, the international scene would indeed resemble the state of nature described by Hobbes as a ‘war of every man against every man’ […] In such a world the weak would be at the mercy of the strong. ¹⁷

And:

Writers have put forward moral precepts that statesmen and diplomats ought to take to heart in order to make relations between nations more peaceful and less anarchic, such as the keeping of promises, trust in the other's word, fair dealing, respect for international law, protection of minorities, repudiation of war as an instrument of national policy […] If we ask ourselves what statesmen and diplomats are capable of doing to further the power objectives of their respective nations and what they actually do, we realize that they do less than they probably could and less than they actually did in other periods of history. ¹⁸

These statements indicate that international politics could be more pernicious than it actually is were it not for the moral restrictions and precepts that are at work (see especially Chapter 5 in the 1973 edition of Politics among Nations). Apart from that, the term anarchy is neither to be found as an empirical feature of international politics in Morgenthau nor as a theorem in his ‘Six principles of political realism’. Therefore, it is unclear why these misperceptions came into being and have been accepted as canonical narratives. However, there is no doubt that anarchy is the basic assumption of neo-realism. This becomes clear in Waltz's 1954 edition of Man, the State and War, where he interprets Rousseau and Hobbes; an interpretation for which he received heavy criticism by Morgenthau. ¹⁹ Furthermore, as Morgenthau noted, a ‘thorough misunderstanding of the nature of political theory and its relationship to empirical research’ would exist with regard to any anarchical interpretation of international politics referring to the history of political thought. ²⁰

Referring to the question how, if at all, the metaphor of anarchy features in his thinking, it should be recognised that he views morality and international law as regulatives of international politics, though both are less developed and weaker than he normatively supports. While it is not to be doubted that Morgenthau assumes that nation-states are power-oriented actors (‘power understood as interests’), he argues for the grounding of foreign policy and international politics in morality and international law. This indicates a clear rejection of anarchy (as a historical-empirical and/or conceptual metaphor); a rejection which is founded on historical studies and on normative grounds. Not only does Morgenthau demand that restraints of national politics through moral and international law are necessary for the conduct of any kind of cooperative, diplomatic and peaceable international and foreign policy, but he also argues against any kind of empirical positivism and deductive-nomological reasoning, contrary to the method advanced by Waltz. ²¹ Empirical positivism and deductive-nomological reasoning are insensitive to historical contextualisation and normative theory. ²² Indeed, Morgenthau supports a method of historico-political hermeneutics: We read:

I have argued […] against the analogy between the social and the natural sciences […] I […] must state […] dogmatically that the object of the social sciences is man, not as product of nature but as both the creature and the creator of history in and through which his individuality and freedom of choice manifest themselves. To make susceptibility to quantitative measurement the yardstick of the scientific character of the social sciences […] is to deprive these sciences of that very orientation which is adequate to the understanding of their subject matter. ²³

And some pages later in the same article, Morgenthau unmistakably argues for the normative formation and grounding of any (international) political theory: ‘It is only within […] a philosophical framework that an empirical framework of political inquiry can have meaning and that empirical inquiry can become fruitful’. ²⁴

But what, according to Morgenthau, characterises a theory of international politics based on a ‘philosophical framework’? He explains his theoretical outlook in an essay first published in 1959, ²⁵ in which he outlines a variety of topics of a theory of international politics. This essay is a much more appropriate source for his theoretical view on international politics than Politics among Nations. ²⁷ Morgenthau explains his view on what an international theory must provide, namely answers to concerns such as morality in international politics; the decentralisation of international law; the acceptance/non-acceptance of international organisations; democratic control of external politics; and the prospects of diplomacy. ²⁷

It would be an oversimplification to admit and accept, and for Morgenthau himself too positivistic and too superficial to profess, that morality is weak; that international law is simply not strong enough; that international organisations play a minor role; that foreign policy is just not democratically controlled; and that all this is because of the structural dominance of the nation-state and the real-political (realpolitische) pursuit of its interests. On the contrary, he incisively criticises national power politics and supports international law, exactly in order to overcome a world divided into nation-states. ²⁸ In the 1954 edition of Politics Among Nations, he emphasises the importance of the United Nations with a distinct normative tendency for a world-state model:

[t]he deterioration of international morality which has occurred in recent years with regard to the protection of life is only a special instance of a general and […] much more far reaching dissolution of an ethical system that in the past imposed its restraints upon the day-by-day operations of foreign policy but does so no longer. Two factors have brought about this dissolution: the substitution of democratic for aristocratic responsibility in foreign affairs and the substitution of nationalistic standards of action for universal ones. ²⁹

Morgenthau's second argument regarding these ‘two factors’ criticises the nation-state and perceives this mode of political order as an historical and geographical contingent and transient pattern that has emerged from European modernity as a distinct organisation of politics. In a world of nation-states, in which morality became particular and universal ethics was supplanted by national mores, an effective system of international ethics, he argues, would no longer be possible. Such national mores, he criticises, would paradoxically be accompanied by the claim of each nation-state, which is indeed nothing more than a particular historical entity, to represent universal values. Thus, ideological competition and warfare of these particular units about their moral standards (the ostensible universality of their moral standards) is inevitable – which would constitute a genuine conflict pattern of international politics in modernity. ³⁰ He writes that:

[i]nstead of the universality of an ethics to which all nations adhere, we end up with the particularity of national ethics which claims the right to […] universal recognition. There are then as many ethical codes claiming universality as there are politically dynamic nations […] The moral code of one nation flings the challenge of its universal claim into the face of another, which reciprocates in kind […]; for the mutual accommodation of conflicting claims, possible or legitimate within a common framework of moral standards, amounts to surrender when the moral standards themselves are the stakes of the conflict. Thus the stage is set for a contest among nations. ³¹

Morgenthau also suggests practical imperatives for national power politics. ³² This, in addition to previous arguments, raises the question of what constitutes Morgenthau's ‘realism’. To answer this question, we have to refer to his fundamental assessment of the status of theory:

The practical function of a theory of international relations […] has this in common with all political theory that it depends very much upon the political environment within which the theory operates. In other words, political thinking is […] standortgebunden, that is to say, it is tied to a particular social situation […] It is developed out of the concrete political problems of the day. ³³

If we apply this fundamental epistemological position of Morgenthau to his own oeuvre, there is only one possible conclusion, namely to understand Morgenthau's own writings as also standortgebunden, that is, politically and historically contingent. ³⁴ Consequently, there are no assumptions in Morgenthau about permanent, unchangeable structures or patterns of international politics, besides the only universal assumption that politics is a struggle for power. Apart from that, however, theory according to Morgenthau depends on historic-political conditions and practical orientations, ³⁵ and must be partly perceived as a concession to the current political and social circumstances in which the author writes. Applied to Morgenthau, this means that his theory and his practical postulates are concessions towards ‘his’ reality. His ‘realism’ is therefore to be considered as standortgebunden in the historical and political context of the 19th and 20th century world of nation-states, and not to be mistaken for his theoretical outlook on international politics per se. As such, the meaning of the term ‘realism’ in Morgenthau implies epistemologically nothing more than the theoretical acknowledgement of the socio-politically contingent character of history, and the practical recognition of a certain, if temporary, historical condition and subsequent way of acting under these conditions. ‘Realism’ and its practical imperatives are a concession towards the specific historic reality of a world made up by nation-states. Thus, claiming universal theoretical validity based on the assumption of some eternal, unchangeable structure of international politics is for Morgenthau not only an epistemological anathema, but furthermore would represent academic hubris and simplification. The only ‘realist’ element in Morgenthau is the recognition of certain historical realities that qualify theorems and practical imperatives as standortgebunden (and thus as incongruent with any kind of ‘dogma’), and that might eventually turn power politics into a necessary, if, temporary means of international politics (as fighting National Socialism and Stalinism and the necessity to develop respective counter-ideologies; see more on this below in section 4). ³⁶

We cannot agree, therefore, with the IR mainstream which might be exemplified by Robert Gilpin's categorisation of Morgenthau's theory as a ‘grand’ or ‘general’ theory of international politics. ³⁷ The mainstream narratives told about Morgenthau should therefore be identified as examples of the reification of Morgenthau's historically sensitive, hermeneutical and normative theorising. In his article, ‘Common Sense and Theories’, ³⁸ Morgenthau expresses his criticism of what he calls ‘new theories’, a criticism which can also be read as a disapproval of his reception by then mainstream IR. He writes:

The new theories, insofar as they are new in more than terminology, are in truth not so much theories as dogmas. They do not so much try to reflect reality as it actually is as to superimpose upon a recalcitrant reality a theoretical scheme that satisfies the desire for thorough rationalization [… ] This rational model is a utopia that reflects the desires of theoreticians but not the real physical world, dominated as that world is by the principle of indeterminacy, and predictable as it is […] only by way of statistical probability. ³⁹

In practical terms, Standortgebundenheit means that Morgenthau's historic view is directed towards the nation-state of the 18th and 19th century, the two World Wars of the 20th century – both caused by bellicose, imperialistic and hubristic nationalism – and the emergence of the Cold War. As he stated, ‘All political phenomena [of this period of history] can be reduced to one of the three basic types … either to keep power, to increase power, or to demonstrate power’. ⁴⁰ If one considers these historical disasters on the basis of his analysis and criticism of the nation-state and its conflict-enforcing endogenous dynamics, then this statement appears to be a ‘realist’ and real-political concession to the historically contingent conflict structures of 19th and 20th century international politics. Morgenthau notes:

[T]he contemporary connection between interest and the national state is a product of history, and is therefore bound to disappear in the course of history. The same observations apply to the concept of power. Its content and the manner of its use are determined by the political and cultural environment […] The realist is persuaded that this transformation can be achieved only through the workmanlike manipulation of the perennial forces that have shaped the past as they will the future. ⁴¹

Such a contingent and context-specific concession, however, is the core of Morgenthau's (understanding of) ‘realism’ – and the only reason, why it can be called ‘realist’ at all. What is more, the concession ‘requires indeed a sharp distinction between the desirable and the possible’. ⁴² The rationality of foreign policy is hence only to be found in a supplementary concession, namely to try everything possible ‘under contemporary conditions’ ⁴³ to acknowledge the opposing powers between nation-states and to conduct an international balance of power politics. In addition to his epistemological credo that political theory and theoretically derived imperatives for political agency are qualified by transient historical contexts, he abandons the concept of balance of power for the Cold War, given new historical circumstances of nuclear weapons and the possibility of an endless nuclear arms race. ⁴⁴ We learn that political, legal and ethical principles can and should prevail over power politics and are not at all, as neo-realists argue, marginal in international politics; although, these principles have to be ‘filtered through the concrete circumstances of time and place’. ⁴⁵

3. Waltzian and neo-realist misreadings of Rousseau and Hobbes

A principal Waltzian and neo-realist misinterpretation of Rousseau can be found in Man, the State and War. ⁴⁶ In that early work, Waltz discusses different authors of the history of political thought. It is noteworthy that Waltz understood himself as a ‘realist’ when he wrote Man, the State and War in the 1950s. However, analysing his (mis)interpretation of Rousseau reveals a coherent (and ideological) line of thought throughout his oeuvre which reaches from his earlier works into his Theory of International Politics (1979), or into structural realism more generally. Waltz might not have been fully conscious of this coherency, and writing in the 1950s he certainly did not arrange and coin his later arguments. Nevertheless, this thread exposes his (and neo-realism's) ideological style of thought in a twofold coherency: first, Waltz develops a notion of anarchy through interpreting Rousseau. This notion of anarchy becomes crucial for his ‘structural’ realism, but is a notion he can only find by misreading some classical authors since there is no explicit notion of an international anarchy in the history of international political thought. ⁴⁷ Interestingly, he never rethinks this notion and its theoretical (in)coherence, but rather protects and immunises it later on against any criticism by declaring it to be a value-neutral (social scientific and non-empirical) ‘assumption’. ⁴⁸ As such, it is not debatable: either you share it, or you do not. There is hence an ideological divide, and the latter option inevitably makes one belong to another camp. Secondly, there is an interrelated argumentative thread in Waltzian and neo-realist thinking starting with the notion of anarchy and resulting almost deductively, via the ideas of ‘self help’ and ‘national interest’, in concepts of, and claims for, international and national power politics in terms of both power/security maximisation in foreign and political homogenisation in domestic politics.

Discussing Rousseau, Waltz particularly emphasises the notion that under the conditions of advanced civilisation, a powerful state has to exist in order to govern the people since human beings were not able to live together peacefully on their own. Further to that understanding, two additional thoughts derived from Rousseau become crucial for the development of Waltz's (neo-)realist concept. First, he posits that it is not useful to examine domestic structures for the analysis of foreign policy since there were no causal relations between the domestic and the international. Secondly, and based on that idea of foreign politics as an autonomous segment of the state, Waltz argues that the nation-state has to be understood as an acting unit. Both thoughts are not self-evident and thus Waltz poses two questions in order to develop more clearly the idea of the state as an acting unit: ‘Just how is it [the rational will of everyone] tied up with everyone else's?’ ⁴⁹ And: ‘Clearly states recognize no common superior, but can they be described as acting units?’ ⁵⁰ How does Waltz address these questions?

In answering these questions, Waltz supposes a questionable distinction between an empirical and a normative state in Rousseau, arguing that the unity of the state would be achieved as soon as the terms and conditions were guaranteed under which a/the ‘general will’ ⁵¹ would manifest itself and amalgamate the empirical and the normative dimensions of the state. Thus for Waltz, the existence, and eventually the political implementation, of Rousseau's volonté général is the precondition of the unity of the state as an ‘acting unit’. However, the separation of Rousseau's concept of the state into in an empirical and a normative dimension is not convincing. To investigate this argument and to reveal the weakness of Waltz's discussion, Rousseau's construction of sovereignty must be taken into account. This reveals that, according to Rousseau, the normative and the empirical are ontologically identical, and can never be separate(d) as Waltz posits. Rousseau develops this concept of the political body in Chapter 7 – ‘The sovereign’ – of his Contract Social. There, Rousseau constructs the sovereign as the political body itself which is constituted by the entire population and only as such can be regarded as the body politics. It follows from this principle of identity (or sameness) between the sovereign and the entire population that the sovereign cannot be bound by, or subordinate to, anyone except for himself. Whenever the sovereign acts, it thus establishes and manifests, simultaneously and perpetually, the supreme power as well as the (entire) population's will. Resulting from this substantively identical construction between the governed and the government as indistinguishable, the seemingly paradoxical formulation arises that the ‘Sovereign, by the mere fact that it is, is always everything it ought to be’. ⁵² Rousseau's identification of the people as the political body, its empirical will (volonté de tous) and the highest power of the state (volonté general or the Sovereign) does not allow the separation of an empirical and normative concept of the state, as Waltz claims.

Because of this separation, however, Waltz erringly uses Rousseau to speculate for the empirical conditions to accomplish the/a unity of the state which it should have. This speculation, though, does not exist in Rousseau due to the absoluteness of the state, normatively and empirically. Rousseau's ‘state’ does comprise this unity always and a priori in itself. In the two empirical examples where Rousseau applies his theory of the Social Contract to concrete political and cultural circumstances, namely Poland and Corsica, he comes upon the unity of the people already as a pre-political (namely ethnic) condition on which the political body and political order could be based. At least in those cases where Rousseau applies his theory, it is seen that neither the theoretical nor the empirical questions of his normative understanding of state realisation manifest as serious matters of concern – ‘the state always is what it ought to be’. ⁵³ It appears that Waltz is not aware of this substantively identical construction in Rousseau. Since he separates a normative and empirical notion of the state, he finds himself in the position of having to develop a solution as to how this identity can be accomplished for the state to perform as an acting unit.

Nevertheless, how is this question then answered by Waltz? Ironically, he refers to Rousseau's comments on patriotism. This recourse is, however, also questionable since Waltz assigns patriotism the status of a situation or condition of the state which has yet to be accomplished and created, while Rousseau is very clear that patriotism exists a priori according to his concept of the state which fundamentally rests upon the unity of the people. More importantly, as seen above, Rousseau regards this unity as granted prior to the political through ethnic and now patriotic homogeneity. The problem actually existing in Rousseau is not the question of how to accomplish the unity of the people in the first place; rather the problem is how to preserve it under the conditions of daily political life, individual wills and fractions which would harm the initial unity of the political body. Waltz, nevertheless, bases his outlook on Rousseau's notion of patriotism as something which has to be fabricated. This represents not only a second misinterpretation of Rousseau by Waltz, but also a fundamental and far-reaching contradiction in Waltz's theory itself.

Waltz refers to Rousseau's Political Economy ⁵⁴ where Rousseau speaks about the education of children. Specifically, he refers to Rousseau's claim that children have to earn their living while they would deserve special treatment not because they long for it, but because they physically or mentally need it. He also speaks about the duty of children to be obedient. From these Rousseauean ideas on education, which Waltz perceives as an ideal grounding of a political organic whole, Waltz concludes:

In such a state, conflict is eliminated and unity is achieved because […] equality prevents the development of those partial interests so fatal to the unity of the state [and because] the inculcation of public feeling imparts to the citizen a spirit of devotion to the welfare of the whole. The will of the state is the general will; there is no problem of disunity and conflict’;

further, and immediately without additional consideration, he adds:

In studying international relations it is convenient to speak of states as acting units. ⁵⁵

In addition to Waltz's misinterpretation of patriotism as something which has to be created, his interpretation appears dubious in respect to Rousseau's use of the term ‘political economy’ in affiliation with the affairs of private administration (which is derived from the Greek term ‘oikos’ and notably disassociated with public and political affairs). Contrary to Rousseau's own explanations, Waltz understands Rousseau's writings on economy as incrementally political in nature. Interestingly, Rousseau writes, in passages just before the ones which Waltz quotes, that only the private is based on government, the public, by contrast, on agreement: ‘I invite my readers also clearly to distinguish public economy […] which I call government, from the supreme authority, which I call sovereignty’. ⁵⁶ Regardless of the fact that Waltz seemingly disregarded this plea, what is of further interest (and has significant political-ideological implication for Waltz's theory) is his reference to patriotism regarding the unity of the state to create this unity politically.

How exactly does Waltz understand ‘patriotism’? He writes in Man, the State and War, ‘The existence of group patriotism […] gets fused with the idea of nationality. There we have the immensely important fact of modern nationalism’. ⁵⁷ Due to an historical analogy of the church for which people would have sacrificed their lives, Waltz notices and demands a comparable devotion of the people for the state. Thereby, a shapeless mass would transform into a common political body: ‘The centripetal force of nationalism may itself explain why states can be thought of as units’. ⁵⁸ But Waltz proceeds, arguing even more contradictorily to Rousseau, that a state could also achieve such a unity through mere force and power rather than through socialisation or a sense of spiritual devotion among the people. Waltz concedes that this solution would not be ideal, but may be sufficient in order to establish a state which would speak with ‘one voice’ in external relations and would come to assert itself authoritatively in the domestic realm.

Under the circumstance that patriotism does not exist to a degree where the whole population would sacrifice itself for the sake of the state, Waltz's demand for patriotism reduces a people's political role to mere acquiescence with a government's decisions. Furthermore, it reduces the relation between the government and the people to stark authoritarianism. His commitment to, and his understanding of, democracy seems fundamentally at risk. Authoritarianism, he argues, might be necessary from time to time and acceptable to gain the consent and support of the entire population to go to war – a support whose demand seems to be the ideological intent and objective of his Rousseau-interpretation. ⁵⁹ Finally Waltz writes, ‘One state makes war on another state’. ⁶⁰ From this construction, the popular neo-realist paradigm of the primacy of foreign policy and its distinct rationality has been propagated. This paradigm is construed in neo-realism from the argument that there is no substantial relation between domestic and foreign policy, such as Waltz himself argues in the beginning of Man, the State and War. However, this paradigm should be strongly denied since it appears as a fundamental contradiction in Waltz, ⁶¹ who indeed conceptualises an incremental (and authoritarian) relation between both foreign policy and domestic affairs.

A second aspect of Waltz's and neo-realism's misreadings becomes obvious when investigating their receptions of the metaphor of anarchy in Rousseau and Hobbes. Interpreters of the international system as a state of anarchy on the grounds of Rousseau fail to recognise that Rousseau characterised even war as a form of social relationship. ⁶² Thus, even in war there is, Rousseau would argue, no anarchy. According to Rousseau, war is based on a minimum of mutual recognition between sovereign powers of their territorial integrity and rights, though these may be violated in particular cases. Consequently, he terms war as a specific form of ‘a relationship between one state and another’, in which ‘a just prince may well seize everything in the enemy's territory that belongs to the public, but he respects […] rights on which his own are founded’. ⁶³

Referring to Hobbes, a common view held in (neo-realist) IR mainstream is that the undiminished internal sovereignty of the Leviathan may not be broken, regulated or restricted through any external relations or external actor respectively. In the international sphere, Hobbes argues, ‘[T]here being no Court of Natural Justice, but […] Conscience only; where not Man, but God reigneth’. ⁶⁴ The individual pursuit of, and struggle for, security in the state of nature seems to be transferred to the interstate level. Based on this notion, Waltz supposes that in the international context – or as Hobbes would call it, in the law of nations (ius gentium) – there is no contract of sovereignty and subjugation. Consequently, a Hobbesian outlook on international relations seems to suggest that there are neither political regulations nor political rationales in international relations, but instead equal rights of the sovereigns to wield absolute power within their territory and to claim the integrity of territorial sovereignty against external actors. At first sight, this condition resembles an international ‘war of all against all’, comparable to the state of nature due to the absence of any superior authority.

However, this perception is based on an incomplete interpretation of Hobbes, while a deeper investigation suggests that the metaphor of interstate anarchy appears to be oversimplified. What seems to be relevant in Hobbes for the regulation of states' interaction is the sovereign's domestic legitimisation and its restraining function for external action. ⁶⁵ As the purpose of the social contract in Hobbes is the assurance of security by the sovereign, the sovereign loses its domestically provided legitimisation if it is unable to guarantee the security of its subjects, as in the case of war. In this case, the society falls back into the state of nature in which every individual pursues and satisfies his or her individual security needs. As also Stanley Hoffmann argues, ⁶⁶ this utilitarian theory of international law and international relations demands a rationality of external politics from each sovereign. This rationality may act in a peaceful as well as in a belligerent way, nevertheless one has to acknowledge that there is a foreign policy rationale in Hobbes and, as such, it seems too short-sighted to make the straightforward assumption of anarchy in his international outlook in analogy to the individuals' state of nature. ⁶⁷

Hence, in Hobbes, the domestic legitimatisation of foreign policy performs as a regulator in and of international politics. ⁶⁸ This discord between Hobbes and the IR canon, established and promoted by Waltz, neo-realist mainstream, and the English School, points to some clear misperceptions in the discipline. ⁶⁹

4. An ideology critique

The results from our analysis can be summarised and further developed as follows: We recognise that Morgenthau's theory cannot be understood as a general theory; also, the assumption of international anarchy cannot be traced back to Morgenthau. Furthermore, it remains a currently open question why both neo-realists and their critics hold this association with Morgenthau. Finally, we argue that classical ‘realism’ has to be understood as a historically contingent way of thinking which intends to provide answers to distinct historical circumstances of world politics. The time of Morgenthau was a time of ideologies and of hubristic and apocalyptic national power politics. Reacting to these challenges creates,and perpetuates, his support of power politics. Apart from that, however, Morgenthau's normative demands aim at the creation of international law and organisations as well at the strengthening of supranational ethics. Thus, according to Morgenthau any conduct of international politics is and has to be ‘realist’ (only) insofar as it acknowledges contingent historical circumstances and develops respective practical imperatives.

Morgenthau explicitly expressed this political ambition in the editions of Politics Among Nations published after 1948. Considering the notion of ideology, he writes:

The nation that dispensed with ideologies and frankly stated that it wanted power and would, therefore, oppose similar aspirations of other nations, would at once find itself at a great, perhaps decisive, disadvantage in the struggle for power. That frank admission would, on the other hand, unite the other nations in fierce resistance to a foreign policy so unequivocally stated and would thereby compel the nation pursuing it to employ more power than would otherwise be necessary. ⁷⁰

Ideology or counter-ideology is therefore necessary and justified against the horrors of totalitarianism and fascism and, in his view, the naïve policies of appeasement.

This book was indeed, and could be nothing else but, a frontal attack […] [Morgenthau addresses here the appeasement policy towards Hitler and the idealistic ‘democratic-peace’- vision of Woodrow Wilson as well as the Fascist and Stalinist ideologies; the authors]. It had to be as radical on the side of its philosophy as had been the errors on the other side. With that battle largely won, the polemical purpose can give way to the consolidation of a position that no longer needs to be attained, but only to be defended and adapted to new experiences. ⁷¹

But the battle continued, and the neo-realist production of ideologies relied upon misunderstood ‘realist’ assumptions in order to conceptualise, promote and strengthen national power politics, now with new targets and against a new enemy (the Soviet Union and communism). The graveness and idiosyncrasy of the above analysed misreadings, including the biased selectivity of their readings, seems only comprehensible as an attempt to formulate and justify a new political ideology, namely that of US foreign policy during the Cold War. This effort is accompanied by an ideologisation of political thought, which seems to have become so influential and manifest in a disciplinary canon that – with a few exceptions – even the critics of neo-realism have not revealed these misreadings, but instead have perpetuated them. This is probably the reason why some of those misreadings have found their way in most of our up-to-date textbooks and introductions. ⁷²

Indeed, a plethora of neo-realists became cooks in the ‘kitchen of power’. ⁷³ The initial ‘realist’ idea of a temporary political counter-ideology against the apocalypses of nationalism and fascist and Stalinist ideology has developed into a self-contained ideology of ‘national interest’ which has separated the theorems of (Morgenthau's) ‘realism’ from its original understanding of historical contingency. In an emerging epoch of scientism when political science in general and International Relations in particular have borrowed their epistemologies from positivistic natural sciences and economy (Waltz is an outstanding example of this), ‘realist’ (though falsely) and neo-realist theorems have become perceived as scientific laws in order to deduce axioms for political conduct as well as strategic predictions of future developments. Waltz's perception of patriotism complements this observation: The rationality of the state, which domestically acts in case of doubt as an authoritarian power state and homogenises political differences, dictates to oppress opinions, movements and individuals opposing the national interest. Foreign policy elites have come to define political rationality in their interest and to protect those interests as some objective raison d'état. The domestic production of political homogeneity occurs through instruments of the power state, like media control. A poignant example can be seen in the historical defence of national interests in maintaining the Cold War rationale or the run up to a specific war. ⁷⁴ This rationality of foreign policy has little, if no, relation with democratic practice: neither in decision-making, its legitimisation, nor in its policy implementation.

This background is described and criticised by Miles Kahler when he argues that since the Cold War neo-realism had the tendency to take the ideological colouration of its political (American) environment. According to Kahler, there was a veritable infrastructural explosion of International Relations under the paradigm of realism in the 1930s, '50s and '60s as well as of neo-realism during the Cold War, especially in the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s. Governments announced an increased demand for foreign and security policy concepts. Kahler additionally observes the tendency that ‘realist’ and neo-realist approaches gained (and continue to gain) importance during times of international crises and the perception of instabilities. He calls these ‘events-driven’ and ‘demands-driven periods’ ⁷⁵ which have influenced the development of the discipline in the United States to a great extent. ⁷⁶ This explanation not only applies to the Cold War, but also to the US foreign policy under the Bush (Jr.) administration which brought about a massive return of neo-realist ideological features, especially after some 12 years of internationalist and institutionalist new world-order policies under the Bush (Sr.) and Clinton presidencies. This revival of neo-realism explicitly focuses on the interrelations between the conduct of foreign policy and domestic politics in the above discussed Waltzian sense (apart from foreign policies strictly defined in ‘the’ national interest, such as pre-emption and prevention and increased unilateralism) and helps us to understand the increase of authoritarianism in US (domestic) politics during the last years. ⁷⁷

The institutional, political and departmental links between the development of IR and ‘demands’ and ‘events driven’ factors of that development could be further examined from the perspective of an ideology critique by scrutinising processes of knowledge production and protection. It is not the place here to accomplish such a study; ⁷⁸ we will, however, briefly sketch out the methodology of such a study.

According to Mannheim (and Morgenthau), each theory/ideology is characterised and influenced by the political, historical and cultural context of its author. A proper understanding of each theory can only be accomplished when elaborating its Standortgebundenheit by investigating its historic and cultural location. Mannheim further argues that such an elaboration has to be a critical historiographic study of political thoughts affecting the author as well as an historical analysis of the author's structural context, that is, his/her institutional (including professional bodies, universities and publishers) and biographical circumstances. A historiographic study of political thought related to neo-realism and IR mainstream was (at least partly) presented here in section 2 and 3; an additional analysis can be connected hereto. This analysis would explore the structural contexts of ‘realism’ and neo-realism and emphasise the ‘systematic centres’ ⁷⁹ of these schools of thought and their research agendas. Mannheim writes: ‘Assuming a dynamic conception of truth, a sociology of knowledge focuses on the ontological and epistemological modes of thought and knowledge typical for a certain era and emphasises on their genealogical and transient character’. ⁸⁰

How might such an analysis be constructed? Mannheim argues that the intellectual ‘locations’ of theories/ideologies have to be related to the authors' socio-political ‘locations’ in order to understand and to disclose not only different antagonistic interests, but even entire political world views and their normative implications (totalising Weltanschauungen, also: Weltwollungen). Such an analysis would elaborate:

‘the original and systematic centres of thoughts, including their emergence and the way they have been excavated, used and eventually newly contextualised by posterity. Thus, only when a history of thought is substituted by an historical analysis of the dynamics and transience of the socio-political and epistemological structures in which certain modes of knowledge and thought are embedded, a critical analysis and survey of political world views can be accomplished’. ⁸¹

In our case, such an approach would involve biographical studies on the intellectual and socio-political environment of representatives of ‘realism’ and neo-realism as well as their disciples. This would include uncovering their peer relations within universities as well as cross-relations to funding bodies, governments and publishers (or, as Mannheim notes, ‘to mutually related world views and their ontological and epistemological underpinnings with the socio-political environment of their representatives’). ⁸² Such an analysis would also address the question ‘What is the origin of the neo-realist misreading?’ by revealing reasons for their purposeful character and thus investigate the development of IR into an ideology during the ‘Second Debate’ and in the course of its dogmatic promotion as a positivist ‘science’.

Finally, allow us to offer some cursory remarks. If one skims, for example, through the various editions of Politics Among Nations in university libraries (and this applies according to our experience to the US, the UK and Germany), one will always find the same passages highlighted (which are more or less identical with textbook quotes) which refer only to approximately one fifth of the entire book. This cursory examination might represent habits of very selective readings and abridged understanding to reflect independently on the contents of highly standardised and canonised teaching curricula. The original writings – which include in the context of our argument authors from the history of political thought as well as Morgenthau's oeuvre – seem to fall into oblivion and hence misreadings go unnoticed. Instead of thorough individual reading and scrutinising, mainstream IR (not only its scholarly proponents, but also thousands and thousands of students) seems to rely on lore, oral traditions, and works of ideologues. Further cursory examples which reflect this tendency is the fact that Morgenthau's Politics in the 20th Century as well as his lectures on Aristotle ⁸³ (checked by us, so not necessarily a representative sample) have a very poor loan record in most university libraries. This is not terribly surprising since these writings are not part of the compulsory and standardised readings lists of most departments and schools. However, Morgenthau's first volume of Politics in the 20th Century, ‘The Decline of Democratic Politics’, as well as his Aristotle lectures, which are another valuable source for learning about his normative and constructivist thinking, paints Morgenthau in a completely different light compared to the mainstream narratives. Since ideologies not only aspire to produce, but also to protect, canonise and standardise knowledge, this oversight fully coheres with their logic.

But paradigms (or ideologies as we suggest they should be termed), as sophistically emphasised and criticised by Gabriel A. Almond, are supposed to free the individual scholar from the obligation to construct new, or to (re)consider and to reflect upon one's own, approaches. ⁸⁴ However, as Almond also stressed, paradigms – or ideologies, as argued by Mannheim – should be critically re-evaluated and eventually overthrown from time to time, if ‘only’ for the sake of ideology critique. For International Relations, the time seems more than ripe to do so and on the top of the theoretical agenda should be the strengthening of the ideology-critical momentum towards epistemological reflexivity within the discipline. In approximately the last 10 to 15 years, a critical body of literature, to which it is the aim of this article to contribute, has emerged with such a theoretical agenda. ⁸⁵ This new development should pay increased attention to the justification of theory in terms of critical clarification and classification of ontological and epistemological assumptions as well as to the individual openness to critically put individual conceptualisations into question. We agree here with Friedrich Nietzsche that it is not the possession of an opinion which is a virtue, but its query. ⁸⁶ We also think Francois Lyotard has to be taken seriously when he warns of the production of new narratives while deconstructing old ones. ⁸⁷ Following these appeals, an historiographical and sociological approach to the study of knowledge in IR does not claim a/one ‘new’ reality of the discipline. Instead it is about deconstructing and clearing away questionable narratives in order to open the field for new approaches and research agendas.

5. Conclusion

We conclude that a critical historiography of International Relations has to throw light on the intellectual, conceptual and political trends of its theories, ‘paradigms’ and ‘ideologies’. Such an endeavour is increasingly necessary since the discipline's mainstream – which still seems to be overwhelmingly neo-realist ⁸⁸ – deals partly naïvely, partly uniformly, partly unconsciously with its own traditions, yet nevertheless ideologically ‘rewrites history’. ⁸⁹ Further to the arguments discussed so far, an ideology-critique should also seek to establish the connections and interrelations between international political theory and the developments within the history of political thought and philosophy. It appears that such a deeper approach leads to the conclusion that theories of international relations have to be understood in an integral perspective as part – and a temporary result – of a comprehensive history of political thought and theory. In such a perspective, it seems as if the differentiation of the discipline of ‘International Relations’ from neighbour disciplines in the humanities and social sciences in the first half of the last century was itself an ideological undertaking which relates to 19th century imperialism and the genesis of the modern nation-state as a powerful concept of political order which holds its ground martially. Contrary to that impact of the nation-state and nationalism on IR, external relations of political entities stretching from antiquity through to the end of the 18th century were thought of in the context of a comprehensive understanding of political order, justifying (or condemning) foreign politics on ethical grounds and in the context of universal legal and political principles.⁹⁰ Interestingly, this is an outlook also shared by Morgenthau, but one which seems lost under the auspices of the neo-realist mainstream.