No political theory in the world is less real than the so called “realism”. Why? Because it ignores the domestic politics. “Realism” explains literally every big political decision with the foreign policy concerns. Powers compete for hegemony, and their rivalry triggers international conflicts. Why did Russia, or China, or the United States did this or that? Because of their relation to another state. Obsessed with the foreign policy, “realism” looks at this world exclusively through the lenses of the
This makes me wonder if "realism" as a theory originated in studying periods like Middle Ages Germany, when "home" was a flyspeck country the size of a small city -- really, the work necessary to keep the burghers of Bremen happy was not a lot of work -- and gaining political power meant gaining *additional territory*.
If you're the Prince of Lippe, sure, domestic politics in Lippe are *important*, but your relations with other cities, states, and countries are going to dominate your time and energy (even from a domestic economics point of view -- your domestic economy is *dominated* by foreign trade).
The larger your country is, the less relevance foreign policy has to your power and the more relevance domestic policy has. So you'd expect foreign policy to matter very much in Andorra and hardly at all in China.
I knew there was a EU4 player in there!
Great post, and “it’s not a map painting game” is exactly the right lens.
This makes me wonder if "realism" as a theory originated in studying periods like Middle Ages Germany, when "home" was a flyspeck country the size of a small city -- really, the work necessary to keep the burghers of Bremen happy was not a lot of work -- and gaining political power meant gaining *additional territory*.
If you're the Prince of Lippe, sure, domestic politics in Lippe are *important*, but your relations with other cities, states, and countries are going to dominate your time and energy (even from a domestic economics point of view -- your domestic economy is *dominated* by foreign trade).
The larger your country is, the less relevance foreign policy has to your power and the more relevance domestic policy has. So you'd expect foreign policy to matter very much in Andorra and hardly at all in China.