Why I am Not a Realist

In the midst of the surprisingly popular support for Ukraine's struggle against Putin's invasion, there has been a minority opinion expressed that NATO has brought this upon Ukraine because it foolishly expanded to include a great many of the old Warsaw pact nations. This point of view is espoused by a group of foreign policy analysts who are generally described as "realists". I thought that this moment in world history might be a good time to talk about this tendency, which extends beyond foreign policy and also includes a school of political theory and which I often hear applied to a great many other issues---including the Climate Emergency. 

The best example of this debate that I could quickly find on line was a panel discussion on TVO which pitted two realists against two (for want of a better term) "idealists". 

 

The above discussion, while interesting, is quite long. So I've edited out what seemed to me to be the best concise definition the realist position that I've seen.

I tried to get a copy of the article that Steve Paikin is quoting, but Foreign Policy has a significant paywall and the article is too new for it to be up on SciHub or any of the other "work arounds" that journalists without deep pockets use to access academic writing. But the title is worth quoting, because it is evocative of the realist position: Liberal Illusions Caused the Ukraine Crisis.

Another classic way of describing the realist viewpoint is through the saying to the effect that "Countries do not have friends or enemies, they only have interests". The idea with regard to Ukraine is that no matter how much we like its citizens, we shouldn't help them unless we get something important out of the deal or at least risk nothing in the process. Unfortunately, we foolishly helped countries like Poland, Romania, Hungary, the Baltic States, etc, join NATO and as a result have goaded Russia into invading Ukraine. Obviously, we were fools to do this because the cost we are now paying is nowhere near the "benefits" we have received.

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I wouldn't be interested in this except for the fact that "realism" also exists outside of the foreign policy sphere. There are also environmental "realists". These are the people who oppose any move towards reducing our dependency on the automobile by saying "get real---people are always going to be driving cars". They also pop up in debates about dealing the Climate Emergency---"get real---we are always going to have to use oil".

I have also come across it in politics. When I was organizing the Greens in Guelph I was repeatedly approached by people who asked "why bother starting something new? you can just join the Liberals and work from the inside". The idea in both cases is that there is absolutely no sense at all trying to change anything substantially, because it simply won't ever work. 

Leo Strauss, Hertog Foundation

There's also another type of "realism" that I came across in one of the few Political Science courses I took at university. I won't mention the professor who taught the course (if you can't say anything good about someone---), but if memory serves the text was written by a fellow named Leo Strauss. Whomever it was, he was certainly a "realist" in terms of politics. 

What I remember from this book was the author's attempts to convince the reader that there was absolutely no room at all for ethics in politics. In fact, he argued that whenever necessary politicians should lie to voters because the average citizen is simply too ill-informed and stupid to realize their own best interests. Moreover, he believed that politicians shouldn't be drawn from ordinary citizens but rather from an elite with specialized knowledge about the complexities of government.   

This guy was a successful professor at an elite American university---Chicago---and I seem to recall that several of the students that studied directly under him as graduates ended up being the brains trust behind George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq. Those guys certainly seemed to have thought that they were members of a self-styled "elite" and had no qualms at all about lying to the public about why they invaded Iraq. 

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The above examples have several things in common. 

First of all, the arguments in favour of "realism" aren't arguments at all, they are just assertions. A moment's reflection should be enough for most reasonable people to understand just how flimsy all these "realist" positions really are.

Consider the "people will always use cars" argument. It's probably true that there will always be a small number of personal use transportation devices. But that's not a response to the issues raised by transportation activists and environmentalists. Those people don't generally want all cars banned, they want cities to stop building everything around cars and instead build pedestrian and transit-friendly communities. So the best you can say about this assertion is that it has an implied straw man argument---which is also fallacious reasoning. 

The "we'll always need oil" can be seen the same way. We may need to continue to use oil as feed stock for things like making a small amount of products like plastic and drugs. But that's not the same thing as saying we need to continue to use it for things like making electricity, powering transportation, heating our homes, etc. So there is the same implied straw man as before. 

Moreover, the "realist" position in both cases also totally misses the point that there are catastrophic opportunity costs (ie: runaway climate change and unlivable cities) that come from refusing to get society off its over-dependence on fossil fuels and automobiles. Calling this position "realistic" is totally absurd.

Now let's look at the notion that there's no sense starting a new political party because it won't ever accomplish anything. First, it's important to realize that all political parties tend to start out as not much more than a "gleam in the eye" of their first supporters. This means that the sort of people who start important political movements often cannot be anything else but idealists. Take for example the following example from Canadian history. Do either Balwin or Lafontaine sound like "realists"? If they were, they'd have wormed their way into the "Family Compact" or "Chateau Clique" instead of attempting to drag a British colony into becoming a true democracy.

 

My experience in politics tells me that "realists" only start sniffing around after the "idealists" have done all the heavy lifting of educating the public about doing things a different way and teaching party members how to start amassing power through elections. That's because "political realists" aren't interested in grassroots education or community organizing---they just want to coast in on the work of others.

Much as it pains me to say it, there's generally no problem with some "realists" moving in and taking over once the idealists have created the machine that will get them elected. It's something like the difference between entrepreneurs versus institutional managers. But there is a real problem when people with a managerial mindset start thinking that there's no reason to have entrepreneurs at all. 

At that point the party starts to lose touch with issues that are on the horizon but not immediately obvious to everyone. It also starts losing any real connection with the volunteers it needs to knock on doors and organize campaigns. And when it stops seeing new problems and solutions, and no longer listens to ordinary people, things stagnate. This was the situation with regard to the environment when it was still a huge problem off in the distance. None of the world's major parties were taking it seriously---so idealists started up the Green Parties. The point wasn't to immediately take over government or provide positions in government for "important people"---it was to nudge both society and the other parties into taking the issue more seriously sooner than they would have otherwise.

Political realists like Leo Strauss are another sort of beast. They don't particularly like democracy because they believe ordinary voters are too stupid to know their own best interests. So these thinkers suggest that an elite should lie to them in order to take over the country. In the case of the Iraq invasion, the Straussians lied about Saddam Hussein having "weapons of mass destruction" and suggested that he was responsible for the attacks on New York and Washington on 9/11. They did this because they sought a war that would "shock and awe" the world with US military might and destabilize the Middle East in order to gain more influence over it. 

Unfortunately for them, their worldview was flawed, which is why what they actually did was lower US prestige by getting involved in two asymmetrical "forever wars" that actually diminished US influence or prestige. Moreover, these conflicts destabilized the Middle East to the point where militant, fundamentalist Islam is arguably even stronger than it was before.

On the domestic front the Bush administration's adventures resulted in yet more decline in the value of the US government in the eyes of voters. Citizens became even more cynical about whether or not anything any politician says can be trusted. And when you totally destroy all faith a voter has in the political class, they either stop voting at all or stop expecting anyone to tell the truth---or even make sense. At that point, they become perfectly willing to vote for cartoon villains---hence Donald Trump. (Perhaps he's also a member of Strauss's "elite").

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I think that we should also consider the actual case of the invasion of Ukraine. The realist argument is that NATO should have ignored the pleas of the new democracies of the old Warsaw Pact nations and refused them entry into both the European Union and the NATO alliance. That's because no matter who is in charge in Russia, these should always be considered something like "client states" that need to be either allied with Russia or at least neutral. That's because the country---Russia---wants it like this AND THEY HAVE ATOMIC WEAPONS. 

There are several problems with this reasoning. First of all, isn't this point of view somewhat akin to deciding that Ukrainian, Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Estonians, etc, are not really human beings with rights and aspirations? Secondly, isn't this also a great big message to these countries that they should move heaven-and-earth to get THEIR OWN ATOMIC WEAPONS? (Don't forget that when the Soviet Union split up, Ukraine did have its own atomic weapons---which they gave up in exchange for a promise from Russia that it would never threaten, let alone invade the country.)

I get that the idea that realists don't really care about what happens to the citizens of Eastern European---because they are realists and don't really care about what happens to anyone except the members of the self-appointed elites (ie: the Strauss' grad students) who run the country. But if that's the case, how are they any different from Putin and his Oligarchs?

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There's the problem with the realist position---it's inherently authoritarian and anti-democratic. I for one think that that's good enough reason to not support it. But the historical facts would suggest that the even on it's own terms, the realist framework doesn't work. 

If you bully and lie to your population enough you can make them pliable, but it doesn't make them patriotic. And the great lesson that comes out of the Napoleonic wars is that patriotic armies tend to kick the butts of conscript armies made up of cannon fodder. The Ukrainians have fought long and hard for a really democratic form of government, and now that they've recently achieved it, they are fighting like tigers to keep it. Similarly, the other ex-Warsaw pact nations are also willing to fight to keep their versions of it too. And that's why they all wanted to join NATO and the European Union. 

In contrast, it seems that few Russians really believe in or want the same vision as Putin. That's why the leadership of his army is filled with opportunists who looted its budget. That's also why so many conscripts are deserting and surrendering. It's why the tires on their trucks fail so often. And it's why their entire strategic plan seems to have been written on a cocktail napkin by some amateur who's had too much to drink. 

It's also why the Russian economy is pretty much a fraction of what it should be given the size of the country, population, and, the enormous natural resources it is blessed/cursed with. Consider the fact that it's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is less than both Italy and Canada's---even though it has a much, much larger population, which is reflected in the per capita numbers.

• Italy, $1.94 trillion, per capita $32,000
• Canada, $1.67 trillion, per capita $44,800
• Russia, $1.58 trillion, per capita $10,800

If the European Union is considered a country, it has a GDP of $18,3 trillion and per capita of $46,100. It also HAS NUCLEAR WEAPONS, which means that if it wanted to, it could totally out-compete Russia both militarily and economically. Moreover, I have very little doubt that the level of technical sophistication, patriotism, and, professionalism in the European armed forces would result in a complete debacle for Russia if they were ever to fight a conventional war.    

Could someone please tell me why Europe and NATO are supposed to be "realistic" about this situation, instead of Putin? Why does he get a "free card" that allows him to not be a "realist"?

I suppose I'll run afoul of Godwin's law, but I'm reminded about some of my historical reading. The Fascists thinkers in the Axis powers in WWII believed that they could win against the democracies because they believed that their elites could hold out longer in bitter struggles than politicians who had to bend to the will of the "fickle" voters. They were wrong, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt explained why in his third inaugural address: 

Democracy is not dying.   
We know it because we have seen it revive—and grow.
We know it cannot die—because it is built on the unhampered initiative of individual men and women joined together in a common enterprise—an enterprise undertaken and carried through by the free expression of a free majority.
We know it because democracy alone, of all forms of government, enlists the full force of men's enlightened will.

Let me repeat the last line, "democracy alone, of all forms of government, enlists the full force of men's enlightened will". That's why the little army of Ukraine has been able to stop the Russian juggernaut. It has the full force of the entire people of the Ukraine behind it. In contrast, the Russians only have the will of Putin---diffused by a government of crooks and an army of incompetents and cannon fodder. 

FDR was certainly not a "realist", and neither should you!

 

When you follow the "realist" position---you hollow out and weaken your society. And that's why I am not a "realist". 

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Furthermore I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!