As such, Realpolitik has both successes and failures to its name, as Bew's comprehensive and even-handed overview displays.īew begins by charting the evolution of the idea through the work of important thinkers or statesmen from Machiavelli, Cardinal de Richelieu, and Thomas Hobbes up through Carl Schmitt, Kissinger, and Dennis Ross. Now most often associated with the conduct of foreign policy, Realpolitik has traditionally had pejorative connotations in the English-speaking world and sits uneasily alongside notions of 'enlightenment,' 'morality' and 'virtue.' But it has also had its defenders, admirers and exponents, who regard it as the best tool for the successful wielding of political power and the preservation of global order. In this concise book, John Bew aims to address this gap, offering a history of the concept of Realpolitik in the English-speaking world: its origins as an idea its practical application to statecraft in the recent past and its relevance to the foreign policy challenges facing the United States and its allies in the future. Despite the fact that Realpolitik has had something of a renaissance in recent years, however, it remains a surprisingly elusive notion, defying easy categorization.

Associated with great thinkers from Machiavelli to Kissinger, it is deeply rooted in the history of diplomacy yet also remains strikingly relevant to debates on contemporary foreign policy in the Obama administration today. Realpolitik is approaching its 160th birthday, though it has existed as a form of statecraft for centuries and is arguably as old as the conduct of foreign affairs itself. Oxford Research Encyclopedias: Global Public Health.The European Society of Cardiology Series.

Oxford Commentaries on International Law.

John bew realpolitik