Raison d’état is also a separate concept that originated in 17th century France to justify the conduct of foreign policy. Bew distinguishes it from other strains of realist thinking drawn from Thucydides, Niccolo Machiavelli, and Thomas Hobbes. Part of the challenge in understanding realpolitik lies in the term’s careless use as a synonym for political realism. Along the way, it acquired meanings that turned it into a label rather than a helpful guide for practical thinking. Realpolitik became a reference point for discussing international politics by the 20th century. His intellectual archeology cuts through mythology to explain an idea from a very particular context and to show how it took on a life of its own. In his new book, Realpolitik: A History, Bew provides a welcome service by exhuming realpolitik from its 19th century German origins and tracing how Anglophone societies in Britain and the United States received it. Neither of these meanings offer much beyond a rhetorical device. As “an unwelcome import from the dark heart of Mitteleuropa,” in John Bew’s telling phrase, realpolitik marks a disturbing counterpoint to Anglo-Saxon conceptions of fair play and liberty under law. More often, however, it conjures a very different image of cynically pursuing advantage by deploying power without moral restraint. Sometimes it signals a practical approach focused on the concrete particulars that shape international relations or an effort to cut through naivety and utopianism. The word provides a condensed symbol that expresses different meanings depending upon who employs it. Realpolitik is a term more often invoked within the English-speaking world than explained or understood.

John bew realpolitik