Thucydides endorses Sanders: "Foreign Policy Realist of 2016"

[Mike__M]

English: "Bernie Sanders, the Foreign-Policy Realist of 2016"

at The Nation

Senator Bernie Sanders is the candidate for a stronger America of enhanced global influence. He is a sober, clear-eyed, foreign-policy realist. Yet few recognize this, mainly because of his impassioned focus on broad domestic reforms. Most view Sanders as anything but a realist—more like a utopian idealist—and concede the foreign-policy advantage to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton or any of the tough-talking Republican candidates. But they are wrong, and the liberal Sanders is paradoxically the only foreign-policy realist in the presidential field.

This comes as a surprise because realism in the popular mind has grown synonymous with overweening might and unilateral assertion of US objectives; think “shock and awe” and “regime change.” Sanders is none of those, and most equate him instead with foreign-policy idealism: allergic to the use of force, and naively trusting in multilateral diplomacy. But these are not Sanders either. Moreover, such simplistic definitions have diverged very far from their original, nuanced meanings, which it behooves us to recall at this most troubled time in international affairs.

Realism as a foreign-policy concept is at least as old as the great-power rivalries detailed in The History of the Peloponnesian War, by the Greek historian Thucydides. The term came into widespread use with E.H. Carr’s The Twenty Years’ Crisis, where he contrasted realism with the utopianism that failed to understand—much less manage—shifts in the interwar balance of power. The balance of power was also a central concern of Hans Morgenthau’s Politics Among Nations, the classic of postwar realism.

Mre at link: http://www.thenation.com/article/bernie-sanders-the-foreign-policy-realist-of-2016/

[Lifelong Protester]

1. I do like the article.

I thought the post was going to be some age-ist snark.

[Mike__M]

2. Right; I edited the heading

to make it a little less silly.