realism

Hans Morgenthau’s Politics Among Nations, originally published in 1948, is the bible of the realist school of international relations. A less well-known work, Truth and Power, is a collection of essays that he wrote during the 1960s which includes a 1968 piece entitled “The Far East,” wherein Morgenthau applied his realist approach to the balance of power in Asia and envisioned a world where China is the most powerful nation on earth.

Professors Tom Nichols and John Schindler have responded to my critique of their contention that Russia is now a “peer” to the United States when it comes to influence in the Middle East, and that, indeed, Washington has “outsourced” the management of regional security to Moscow. The dispute is in part over empirical factors, but more broadly it represents a distinct set of normative assumptions and policy prescriptions regarding America’s role in a changing Middle East.