Abstract

Those who urge “realism” in foreign policy making tend to see the American habit of looking at foreign policy in moral terms as a sign of national immaturity or youthful idealism: a good insofar as this trait gives the United States its peculiar vigor, but dangerous and irresponsible insofar as it distorts perception and in the end amounts to “wishful thinking.” This is not to say, of course, that realists believe that the United States has always acted in accordance with what it judged to be morally correct or even that most policy makers have shown such moral concern, but that, by and large, questions of morals and “ideals” arise frequently and are taken seriously in American foreign policy. Henry Kissinger finds men such as Castlereagh and Metternich admirable and imitable just because of their “realism,” their refusal to operate on the basis of “faith” in universal values, and their “coldblooded,” unsentimental submission to the facts. Statesmen and national leaders must attempt to “harmonize the just with the possible,” which in practice turns out not to mean “be as just as possible” ; rather, it means that nations are to choose their ends, or determine what is in their interest, according to their own ideals of justice, and then pursue them by whatever means are possible. This is the point of view Kissinger and other realists recommend. It is the attitude which they believe has prevailed in the diplomacy of other nations at certain times in history and which they judge to be necessary for a mature American foreign policy.