Hom, Andrew. "Truth and Power, Uncertainty and Catastrophe: Ethics in IR Realism". In Routledge Handbook of Ethics and International Relations, edited by Brent Steele and Eric Heinze, 1-30. Abingdon, Oxfordshire: Routledge, 2018.

Hom, Andrew. "Truth and Power, Uncertainty and Catastrophe: Ethics in IR Realism". In Routledge Handbook of Ethics and International Relations, edited by Brent Steele and Eric Heinze, 1-30. Abingdon, Oxfordshire: Routledge, 2018.

• Realism is characterized by both its advocates and detractors as an amoral form of international relations which conceptualizes politics as primarily defined by struggles for power decided by military might. The adoption of this view by politicians, however, has served to justify blatantly immoral and illegal actions, as it justifies the removal of moral concerns from politics on the basis of 'rational' realism (1).
• This characterization, however, ignores another trend of ethics in the tradition of the realist school of IR. Classical realist were deeply concerned with morality and limited war despite a belief in the fundamentally avaricious and domineering nature of man. Neorealism did largely remove morality from its calculations, but reflexive realist in recent decades have returned it through the recognition that total amorality is suicidal in the nuclear age (2).
• The realist school of IR emerged from the failure of Interwar political order and the rise of fascism. The realist school blamed the failure of international law and the Interwar order on the idealist nature of the system, which had failed to account for power politics. Realism sought to separate analysis of politics from political and idealist aspirations (3).
• Importantly, realism never sought to take ethics out of IR, but instead demanded recognition that IR theory had to take immoral behavior into account, and that a failure to do so would result in catastrophe. They argued that a proper understanding of IR required the willingness to adopt an amoral outlook (3-4).
• The realist approach to politics is only amoral if one assumes, incorrectly, that there is always an absolute moral option in politics. Realism instead advocates an amoral analysis of potential political options, with ethics playing the key role in determining which option should be adopted (4).
• Many early scholars of realism sought to develop realist IR out of manifestly ethical concerns, believing that their despooked theory of IR would provide politicians with the proper analysis to avoid the terrible situations which can arise from power politics (6).
• "Realism in IR has never been a doctrine of ‘might makes right’. Classical and reflexive realists openly resist this formulation while acknowledging that, in international politics, right will often need might on its side" (24).
• The concept of 'national interest' was created by the realist school of IR to recognize that different nations will define their priorities, goals, and morality differently. The concept does not reduce all national interests to the pursuit of power, but highlights that different nations will pursue different goals without reference to objective morality (7).
• Contrary to common assumptions about realist theory, the national interest is not always power. Instead, power is always an immediate and instrumental goal, only important because of its utility in achieving actual national interests (8-9).
• Realism did become an entirely amoral theory following the 1950s, beginning with the scholarship of Kenneth Waltz, as the emergence of the school of neorealism turned the approach into a scientific field divorced from morality. Dr. Waltz was disgusted by the normative policy recommendations produced by realism and sought to transform the field into a pure science based on parsimonious theory (11-12).
• Neorealists broke with classical realism by rejecting any role of norms or ethics in international relations. National interests are now defined only in terms of power, not norms, and the role of IR is reduced from providing normative recommendations to theorizing about outcomes and state behavior (12).
• The idea of international anarchy was introduced to the realist school by the neorealists, who claimed that the fundamentally anarchic international order forced all state to behave on 'self-help' principles, thus making the accumulation of power the sole goal of states trying to survive (13-14). [Importantly, this means that neorealists do not make political decisions. They assume -- often incorrectly -- that all states will behave according to power politics, then give a 'scientific' prediction. There is no room for the ethical decisions made in classical realism].
• By the late 1970s and 1980s, neorealism was facing a major challenge from within its own field, however, as increased studies of nuclear weapons forced neorealist scholars to recognize that at least one normative goal, the prevention of nuclear armageddon, had to be considered (16).
• The intellectual realignment of Dr. Waltz is representative of the school of neorealism as a whole, as his recognition in 1979 that policy should aim to prevent nuclear war led him to argued that theory should advocate and propose strategies to reduce the likelihood of conflict between nuclear states. This also forced a recognition that another factor besides anarchy, human fear of nuclear holocaust, mediated international relations (17).
• Reflexive realism, which incorporates classical realist texts and ideas into social scientific theories, emerged around the turn of the 21st Century. They are distinguished from other scholars in the realist school because they recognize that scholarship is political, involves prioritizing some goals or values over others, and has an influence of foreign policy (18-19).
• Reflexive realism stresses the concept of 'prudence' found in classical realism, but also emphasizes the role of tragedy in encouraging prudence, calling for the concept to be implemented in foreign policy by reflecting on the disastrous consequences of attempting to exceed national limitations or ignoring power politics (19-20).
• This school also recognizes that often state actors are not rational, and that rationality in politics has to be actively constructed through prudence and reflection; states often fail to do this, resulting in irrational and disastrous foreign policy decisions (20).
• Reflexive realism questions the idea that international relations can be decisively theorized, asserting that politics is an active field in which anything can happen and events neither need to progress nor repeat themselves. This idea further complicates attempts to predict anything about international relations (22).
• The fact that the future is unknown, and could represent a radical break from the past, means that creating theories and ideas is even more important. How people think about politics affects what the politics of the future will be, meaning that the arguments being made are incredibly important because if we fuck up too much we could all die (23).