Thread by @ProfPaulPoast

Was Henry Kissinger a Realist?

Not really.

[THREAD]

This 🧵 is not about Kissinger as a foreign policy adviser.

It is instead focused on Kissinger's academic work (as he was a Harvard professor long before joining the Nixon administration).

news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/…

It is not uncommon to see his key book, "A World Restored", placed in the category of "Realists texts". Robert Kaplan did so in this 1999 article for @TheAtlantic.

theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…

So did Francis Fukuyama, who wrote a review for @ForeignAffairs where he directly compared the work to Hans Morgenthau's "Politics Among Nations"

foreignaffairs.com/reviews/capsul…

But is that correct? Is "A World Restored" putting forward a Realist perspective of world politics?

I'm not so sure.

The book, which was his 1954 doctoral dissertation and then published in 1957, is largely a history of the lead up to the 1815 Congress of Vienna, the Congress itself, and it's legacy (i.e. the Concert of Europe).

amazon.com/World-Restored…

In that sense, the book fits with realist work like Merze Tate's "The Disarmament Illusion", which was also a history (as she focused on the negotiations leading to the 1907 Hague conventions).

archive.org/details/disarm…

The key point of Tate's work -- as well captured in the title -- is that efforts at preventing war through disarmament are, well, an illusion. I quote her key passage in my 2022 @ForeignAffairs piece on Realism.

foreignaffairs.com/articles/ukrai…

Specifically, Tate writes

“Dissatisfied powers may not actually want war...but in spite of this, they will not voluntarily shut off all possibility of obtaining a state of things which will be to them more acceptable than the present.”

Key for Tate is that you can not avoid this outcome. There will always be dissatisfied states and you can't escape the violent consequences of their dissatisfaction.

Such a claim is also core to Morgenthau's work. As I explained in this recent 🧵 that discusses his book "Scientific Man and Political Reality", Morgenthau put forward Realism as (what I call) "the school of no hope"

https://twitter.com/ProfPaulPoast/status/1723326131607118036

That includes efforts at "Collective Security", which he sees as futile. More precisely, he used the term "debacle" in "Politics Among Nations" (as I discuss in this 🧵).

https://twitter.com/ProfPaulPoast/status/1393901664227061761

Such views are NOT found in A World Restored.

The key insight from his historical exploration is that it is possible for the major powers to cooperate and create a system seen as legitimate and capable of preserving peace and stability.

This was achieved thanks to the work of Metternich of Austria and Castlereagh of Britain working within the constraints of their domestic and geopolitical positions.

The end result was to create a lasting "Long Peace" that made major war inconceivable, thereby actually fooling a future generation into not understanding that this cooperative system was key to preserving the peace.

That last point is key. Kissinger is sensitive to the work needed to preserve a stabilizing order. And this is where diplomacy is key. As he wrote in the book's conclusion:

Kissinger is in no way an idealist. But his emphasis on the power of diplomacy and the ability of major powers to set aside differences to create institutions to achieve and sustain peace is not realist.

In a way, A World Restored might be intellectually closer to John Ikenberry's "After Victory" (who is often contrasted with realists as being a liberal institutionalist): diplomats can create institutional arrangements that constrain power politics.

amazon.com/After-Victory-…

Hence, I agree with what @nfergus wrote in Foreign Affairs back in 2015: that a closer reading of Kissinger leads one to question the Realism in his work.

foreignaffairs.com/articles/unite…

Again, none of the above covers Kissinger's actual views (and advice) on foreign policy (I'll cover that later).

But on the basis of his early career scholarship, it's hard to label Kissinger a Realist.

[END]