The election of Donald Trump to the American presidency, a growing sense of American disengagement in Europe, Russian’s seeming readiness to challenge basic liberal institutions both internally and in Europe, the on-going Ukraine conflict, Brexit, the rise of extremism in European states, the migrant crisis, terrorist attacks in and outside Europe, and collapsing states in the Middle East and North Africa are just a few recent developments that have raised challenges to the post-war order in Europe. Europe, on the frontlines of both the Cold War and the multilateral system that governed the first decades of the post-war period, now faces the possibility that its transatlantic partner is no longer committed to the same international order at precisely the moment that the European Union and Europe faces serious internal and external challenges.
Order in post-war Europe was marked by two very different elements. On the one hand, being on the frontlines of the Cold War meant it was at the very heart of power politics, with their attendant fear and uncertainty over material capacity and intentions in relations between states. On the other hand, the American security commitment contributed decisively to create the political space for the development of a political and economic order based on different principles, those that stressed a thick institutional and normative international order and a social market economy. In this context, European integration created an institutional architecture and normative foundation that would reduce, if not eliminate, fear and uncertainty and make calculations of material capability marginal in relations among a wide range of actors (Belloni 2016).
The end of the Cold War was thought to diminish the role of power politics in Europe and clear the way for the further development of peaceful relations. Theoretically, two influential components of structural realism —which was predominant in the United States in the 1980s and involved confidence in bipolar stability and power transition theory with its prediction of a clash among the superpowers—were challenged by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the peaceful end of the Cold War. While, as Paul Van Hooft and Annette Freyberg-Inan (Chapter 4, this volume) argue, realism can persuasively account for the end of the Cold War, the transformation of the global order, and the lack of major power conflict, the international system seemed to be moving in a direction that appeared to undercut realism’s core tenets. This was no more the case than in Europe, as steps towards creating an ‘ever closer union’ with the European Union gave space to many new interpretative schemes that sought to understand an international order that seemed to be no longer driven by the dynamics of power politics and rational geopolitical calculations. Realists warned about the possibility that the end of bipolarity could result in increasing levels of instability (Mearsheimer 1990), but enthusiasm for European integration prevailed and reflected the hope that the second pillar of the post-war order—a thick normative and institutional architecture—would dominate and even extend beyond the expanding EU borders. It suggested that using “realism” as a cognitive map to understand the emerging European order, the behaviour of actors and the drivers of foreign policy was less useful than one that draws from liberal, or even interpretive and reflective, constructions of international relations.
As the euphoria over the end to Europe’s division faded, the current political challenges stemming from the instability of the international system have raised questions about whether it may have been premature to herald the end of realism in Europe. As Paul Viotti explains in Chapter 3, “a shift away from multilateralism to bilateralism or unilateralism driven by the political right in various countries undermined the embedded liberalism in the elaborate architecture of multilateral institutions ” that have been the bedrock of the international system since the end of World War II. With increasing levels of perceived insecurity and the lack of trust in the “civilizing” (Koskenniemi 2010) potential of international law and multilateralism, realism appeared once again as a promising tool to explain the return of forms of instability and uncertainty at the international level.
Not unlike previous historical moments when alternative paradigms—most notably institutional liberalism—seemed to take the upper hand, amended versions of realism claim to provide important insights to Europe’s present-day predicament (Orsi et al. 2018). Realists’ own self-reflexivity, as well as engagement with critics, have frequently contributed to the regeneration of this tradition of thought, rather than its marginalization (Guzzini 1998). Journalistic and popular accounts contribute to a persisting interest in realism, however defined. Realism maintains a certain attractiveness because of its apparently simple lexicon, including references to ‘security’, the ‘heartland’, and the dichotomy and dualism between ‘self’ and ‘other’—understood in the current European context as Russia , the immigrant, financial capital, and everything else supposedly menacing the ‘self’. In sum, even when both the theory and practice of realism appeared to be on the defensive, it may have gone underground rather than have disappeared.
Realism’s Many Faces
Any discussion of which conceptual map we might use to understand contemporary international relations, including Europe, requires sifting through the many ways in which the term “realism” can be and is used. There is no widely shared core of assumptions and claims that cover the entire spectrum of what is called realism: many claims made in the name of realism are not unique to it. Moreover, there is no immediate or clear answer to the question, “What is realism?”.
As a rough approximation, two main traditions can be identified (Donnelly 2000; Wohlforth 2008). Classical or biological realists emphasize the importance of human nature, understood in essentially pessimistic and negative terms, in causing social conflict among groups. By contrast, structural realists, often defined as neo-realists, stress the role played by international anarchy in creating the conditions for a perpetual struggle for power. Neo-realism is further divided into defensive and offensive realism on the basis of how much power states presumably require. Offensive realists, most notably John Mearsheimer (2001), argue that power predominance is the best safeguard for states’ survival and thus states should maximize their relative power and become hegemonic. By contrast, defensive realists, such as Waltz (2008), contend that the maximization of power is ultimately counter-productive since it will eventually trigger the formation of an opposing coalition that will challenge their predominance. Whatever the merit of each position, power, along with its material manifestation to counter fear and uncertainty , is central to any type of realist analysis.
Both classical and structural realists have neglected the impact of domestic political factors in either constraining or enabling the ability of the executive to respond to systemic pressures and strategic challenges. In response to this limitation, a third major realist approach has been taking shape. Neoclassical realism affirms the primary importance of the international structure, but also includes in its analysis ‘unit-level’ variables such as domestic strategic leadership and power relationships (Rose 1998; Lobell et al. 2009; Toje and Kunz 2012). In this way, neoclassical realism ‘brings the state back in’ to the debates concerning systemic pressures on states and in the formulation of states’ preferences and strategy. Several of the contributors to this volume draw from neoclassical realism to examine the foreign policy behaviour of states. In Chapter 4, Paul Van Hooft and Annette Freyberg-Inan explain recent security policy stances of states, such as France, as shaped primarily by domestic preoccupations and concerns, while being significantly moulded by their understanding of power relations in the international system, in particular in light of American relative decline over the last two decades or so. In Chapter 5, Alexander Reichwein adopts neoclassical realist lenses in order to elucidate dynamics of continuity and change in Germany’s post-Cold War foreign policy. Along similar lines, Benedikt Erforth in Chapter 6 and Fabrizio Coticchia in Chapter 7 argue that neoclassical realism is well-suited to explain foreign policy decisions, in particular France’s Operation Serval in Mali and Italy’s Operation Prima Parthica in Iraq. Analogous dynamics are at play in non EU-members as well. In Chapter 9 Ozgur Ozdamar and Balkan Devlen elucidate Turkey ’s assertive policy towards the Middle East in the aftermath of the 2011 Arab revolutions as a result of both the perception of domestic elites with regard to Turkey’s role in the region, and the lack of domestic constraints. This case is revealing of how domestic considerations shape foreign policy decisions but do not guarantee the adoption of the most rational or effective policy. In the case of Turkey, the assertive foreign policy caused a worsening of relationships with neighbours and eventually had to be reconsidered.
The different understandings of the realist tradition in international relations raise the question of whether it is possible to identify a set of essential realist principles. While disagreements on what to include are bound to persist, we understand these principles to consist of the following main concepts...