Moreover, Machiavelli promotes the use of alliances and various offensive and defensive strate-gies to protect the state.13
“ I say that the duke, finding himself now sufficiently powerful and partly secured from immediate dangers by having armed himself in his own way, and having in a great measure crushed those forces in his vicinity that could injure him if he wished to pro-ceed with his conquest, had next to consider France, for he knew that the king, who too late was aware of his mistake, would not support him. And from this time he be-gan to seek new alliances and to temporize with France in the expedition which she was making towards the kingdom of Naples against the Spaniards who were besieg-ing Gaeta. It was his intention to secure himself against them […].”14
1.4 Thomas Hobbes and Anarchy
Finally, the central tenet of realism, introduced by Thomas Hobbes (1588-1677) and accepted by almost all realist theorists, is that states exist in an anarchic international system. Hobbes argues that just as individuals in the state of nature have the responsibility and the right to pre-serve themselves, so too does each state in the international system.
“ And because the condition of man is a condition of war of every one against every one, in which case every one is governed by his own reason, and there is nothing he can make use of that may not be a help unto him in preserving his life against his en-emies; it followed that in such a condition every man has a right to every thing, even to one another's body. And therefore, as long as this natural right of every man to eve-ry thing endured, there can be no security to any man, how strong or wise so ever he be, of living out the time which nature ordinarily allowed men to live.”15
2. Hans Morgenthau and the Balance of Power
Comparatively Hans Morgenthau (1904-1980) does limit his analysis of international affairs to the search of single paradigms. To him, the task of a theory of international politics is to deter-mine and classify the historical patterns of human activity resulting from the struggle for power between states. Morgenthau argues that the fact such patterns exists, and can be discovered be-neath the contingent elements of historical practice, makes a theory, as opposed to a narrative history, possible. In other words, Morgenthau claims that the difference between theory and history is simply one of form rather than substance. The possibility of empirical theory thus pre-supposes the existence of some historical continuity in international politics.
13 Karen Mingst, Op. Cit., p.75.
14 Niccolo Machiavelli, Op. Cit., p. 11.
15 Tomas Hobbes, Leviathan, p. 49. [Access Online]
http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/thomas_hobbes/leviathan.html
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“ International politics embraces more than recent history and current events. The ob-server is surrounded by the contemporary scene with its ever shifting emphasis and changing perspectives. He cannot find solid ground on which to stand, or objective standards of evaluation, without getting down to fundamentals that are revealed only by the correlation of recent events with the more distant past and the perennial quali-ties of human nature under lying both.”16
2.1 Relations Between Individuals and Relations Among Nations
In Morgenthau’s view, relations between nations are not, essentially different from the relations between individuals. They are only relations between individuals on a wider scale.17 Conse-quently, to understand the behavior of states, it is necessary to begin with individual behaviors as an explanation.
“ […] Political realism believes that politics, like society in general, is governed by ob-jective laws that have their roots in human nature. In order to improve society it is first necessary to understand the laws by which society lives. The operation of these laws being impervious to our preferences, men will challenge them only at the risk of failure.”18
But, if domestic and international contexts of social and institutional “relations” are subordinate determinants of state behavior, on what basis can one justify a particular characterization of
“human nature” as good or evil?
To Hans Morgenthau, the importance to understand human nature is a precondition to analyze relations among and within states. First, Morgenthau believes that all politics is a struggle for power because the political man is by nature a selfish creature with an insatiable urge for power.
Like St. Augustine previously asserted, man is utterly evil. Second, Morgenthau justifies the previous assumption, both in revealing the intellectual poverty of the nineteenth-century liberal belief in progress, based on an optimistic view of man, and in providing the basis for a full-blown grand theory of international politics.
“ The nineteenth century was led to the depreciation of power politics by its domestic experience. The distinctive characteristic of this experience was the domination of the middle classes by the aristocracy. By identifying this domination with political domi-nation of any kind, the political philosophy of the nineteenth century came to identify the opposition to aristocratic politics with hostility to any kind of politics.”19
16 Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985 [6th Edition]), p. 19.
17 Martin Griffiths, Realism, Idealism and International Politics: A Reinterpretation (New York: Routledge, 1992), p. 37.
18 Hans J. Morgenthau, Op. Cit., p. 4.
19 Ibid., 41.
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Given these constraints, Morgenthau asserts that at the domestic level, his ideal state enjoys a legitimate monopoly of violence. The latent but ever-present threat of punishment backed up by law and a network of societal norms, provides a basis for domestic order and stability. At the international level, however, similar constraints on the use of force are much weaker. In this context, Morgenthau points out that morality and reason must be differentiated.
2.2 Autonomy of the Politics, Morality and Power
It is worth noting that Morgenthau considers “politics” as an autonomous sphere of social life in which success is ultimately dependent on the use of power to dominate others. Accordingly, morality and reason should be subordinate instruments in the international arenas.
“ Politics is a struggle for power over men, and whatever its ultimate aim may be, pow-er is its immediate goal of acquiring, maintaining and demonstrating it.”20
“ Intellectually, the political realist maintains the autonomy of the political sphere, as the economist, the lawyer, the moralist maintain theirs.”21
Political autonomy thus arises from man’s inevitable failure to reconcile ‘the rules of the politi-cal art’ with ethics and morality. In other words, politipoliti-cal autonomy denies men’s human will because although men can recognize their own sinfulness, they can never, as political actors, avoid it.22 Yet, if politics is an autonomous sphere of social life, does it mean that reason and morality are merely instruments for attaining power? Clearly, Morgenthau distinguishes be-tween a transcendent morality and a culturally specific set of ethical rules. Because international politics is a realm of perpetual conflict, in which my gain is your loss, there is an absolute con-tradiction between the ‘laws’ of politics and ethical norms.
“ Realism maintains that universal moral principles cannot be applied to the actions of states in their abstract universal formulation, but that they must be filtered through the concrete circumstances of time and place. The individual may say for himself: “Fiat justitia, pereat mundus’ (Let justice be done even if the world perish), but the state has no right to say so in the name of those who are in its care.”23
On the other hand, the concept of power, which establishes the autonomy of all politics, is ac-centuated by the structural context of action between states.
20 Hans J. Morgenthau, Scientific Man versus Power Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1946), p. 196.
21 Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations, Op. Cit., p. 13.
22 Martin Griffiths, Op. Cit., p. 41.
23 Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations, Op. Cit., p. 12.
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Power provides the springboard of action, whilst reason determines both the proximate goals for which states compete, as well as the means to achieve these goals. The function of reason is thus to guide the use and purpose of power in a prudent selection and pursuit of interests define in terms of power. In short, Morgenthau asserts that power is an end in itself, since it is the sole determinant of state behavior: “International politics, like all politics, is a struggle for power.
Whatever the ultimate aims of international politics, power is always the immediate aim.” 24 2.3 International Politics and the Balance of Power
Finally, although a theory of international politics is equally applicable to all states, it is only directly concerned with the behavior of the most powerful ones in generating propositions about the international system. This is simply because not all states have enough power to affect the functioning of the system, but because only the most powerful states determine the character of international politics at any time.
“ […] it is no exaggeration to say that the very structure of international relations […]
has tended to become a variance with, and in large measure irrelevant to, the reality of international politics. While the former assumes the ‘sovereign equality’ of all nations, the latter is dominated by an extreme inequality of nations, two of which are called superpowers because they hold in their hands the unprecedented power of total de-struction, and many of which are called ministates because their power is minuscule even compared with that of the traditional nation states.”25
Therefore, power is not merely a key to distinguish between politics and other modes of human interaction, but also to distinguish between various kinds of states and the activity they engage in internationally. Power is a policy tool.
In this respect, Morgenthau argues that all states seek to maximize their power. He further claims: “We assume that statesmen think and act in terms of interest defined as power, and the evidence of history bears that assumption out.”26 As a result, all foreign policies tend to conform to and reflect one of these three main patterns of activity: First, defending the status quo and maintaining an overall distribution of power; second, trying to change the status quo through imperialist strategies; or third, trying to impress other nations with the extent of one’s power and achieve some prestige. 27
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The outcome of this perpetual struggle for power, among states at the international level is thus called a ‘balance of power’ In other words; it is “an actual state of affairs in which power is dis-tributed among several nations with approximate equality.”28 Such outcome is nonetheless inev-itable when each state strives to maximize its power in a context of structural anarchy.
“ Two assumptions are at the foundation of all such equilibriums: First, that the ele-ments to be balanced are necessary for society or are entitled to exist and, second, that without a state of equilibrium among them one element will gain ascendancy over the others, encroach upon their interests and rights. […] Since the goal is stability plus the preservation of all the elements of the system, the equilibrium must aim at pre-venting any element from gaining ascendancy over the others.”29
Ergo, Morgenthau argues that the balance of power and policies aiming at its preservation are not only inevitable but are an essential stabilizing factor in a society of sovereign nations and that the instability of the international balance of power is due not to the faultiness of the princi-ple but to the particular conditions under which the principrinci-ple must operate in a society of sover-eign nations.
However, even though it is inevitable, Morgenthau still stresses that the stability of the system in a balance of power situation depends on the ability and willingness of statesmen to recognize and work with constraints that it imposes on their freedom of action. For instance Hans Morgen-thau claims that containment was a good example of balancing behavior. During the cold war, containment was achieved by balancing American power against the Soviet Union. During the 1970s, Henry Kissinger encouraged the classic realist balance of power by supporting weaker powers like China to exert leverage over the Soviets.