The Atlantic realists : empire and international political thought between Germany and the United States

In The Atlantic Realists , intellectual historian Matthew Specter offers a boldly revisionist interpretation of "realism," a prevalent stance in post-WWII US foreign policy and public discourse and the dominant international relations theory during the Cold War. Challenging the common view of realism as a set of universally binding truths about international affairs, Specter argues that its major features emerged from a century-long dialogue between American and German intellectuals beginning in the late nineteenth century. Specter uncovers an "Atlantic realist" tradition of reflection on the prerogatives of empire and the nature of power politics conditioned by fin de siècle imperial competition, two world wars, the Holocaust, and the Cold War. Focusing on key figures in the evolution of realist thought, including Carl Schmitt, Hans Morgenthau, and Wilhelm Grewe, this book traces the development of the realist worldview over a century, dismantling myths about the national interest, Realpolitik , and the "art" of statesmanship. "Historians of US foreign policy have noted the prominence of self-proclaimed "realists" among them: George Kennan, Kenneth Waltz, and Henry Kissinger, to name a few. But histories of what today we call realism in international relations theory have rarely sought to trace the origins of these schools of thought to the twentieth-century German political contexts that are primarily responsible for their emergence. Similarly, historians of German imperialism from the late nineteenth century through the Holocaust have often neglected the United States as a source of the ideas and practices of great power politics. This book offers a genealogy of realism in the work of lawyers, political scientists, international relations theorists, and diplomats from 1890 to 1960, exploring the transatlantic connections between the modern American and German empires. Reconstructing this transnational circulation of ideas between the US and Germany reveals the concordances between the American and German imperial experiences and their intellectual imaginaries. Matthew Specter discusses key figures in the evolution of the realist tradition, including the Nazi German jurist Carl Schmitt, American Hans Morgenthau, the émigré founder of international relations theory in the 1940s, and German diplomat Wilhelm Grewe. Specter challenges us to excavate the realist tradition for the racial and spatial dimensions of an Atlantic history that encompasses the Monroe Doctrine and the Spanish-American War, the Treaty of Versailles and the Holocaust, the division of Germany and the creation of global American empire"-- Provided by publisher In __The Atlantic Realists__, intellectual historian Matthew Specter offers a boldly revisionist interpretation of "realism," a prevalent stance in post-WWII US foreign policy and public discourse and the dominant international relations theory during the Cold War. Challenging the common view of realism as a set of universally binding truths about international affairs, Specter argues that its major features emerged from a century-long dialogue between American and German intellectuals beginning in the late nineteenth century. Specter uncovers an "Atlantic realist" tradition of reflection on the prerogatives of empire and the nature of power politics conditioned by fin de siècle imperial competition, two world wars, the Holocaust, and the Cold War. Focusing on key figures in the evolution of realist thought, including Carl Schmitt, Hans Morgenthau, and Wilhelm Grewe, this book traces the development of the realist worldview over a century, dismantling myths about the national interest, __Realpolitik__, and the "art" of statesmanship.