Hans Morgenthau

Hans J.
Morgenthau
and the
American
Experience
Edited by
Cornelia Navari
Hans J. Morgenthau and the American Experience
Cornelia Navari
Editor
Hans J. Morgenthau
and the American
Experience
Editor
Cornelia Navari
University of Buckingham
Buckingham, UK
ISBN 978-3-319-67497-1 ISBN 978-3-319-67498-8 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67498-8
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Preface
Hans J. Morgenthau is generally considered a political realist and the

transmitter of continental Realpolitik into American letters. But he has
also been claimed as an idealist, as a constructivist, and as an ethicist. Some
of these claims make sense if we understand that Morgenthau was trained
as a lawyer in the German historical tradition during the time that German
legal realism was struggling to contain the challenges to the Weimar
Republic’s constitutional structure and the crises that confronted it.
Others can be made sense of if we understand that—self-consciously a
“European”—he was continuously adapting his ideas to an American
audience and, in the process, being socialized into an American experi-
ence. This volume illustrates the “Americanization” of Morgenthau.
The project was inspired by the English translation of Morgenthau’s
1933 La Notion du ‘Politique’ (The Concept of the ‘Political’), undertaken
and edited by Hartmut Behr and Felix Rösch, which appeared in 2012.
That text, somewhat obscure to the Anglo-Saxon reader, requiring exten-
sive editorial annotations and with a truncated concept of the political,
stands in sharp contrast to the bold, articulate, and crystalline presentation
of politics as the quest for power that appeared fifteen years later in Politics
Among Nations. At that point, Morgenthau had been ten years in America,
the most recent four years at the University of Chicago, in the department
dominated by the behavioral approach of Charles Merriam, doyen of
American political science and advisor to presidents. During the same
period, America had thrown off the shackles of isolationism and had com-
mitted itself and its formidable power to the defeat of Nazism and to the
reconstruction of world order. It is difficult to imagine that Morgenthau’s
v
vi PREFACE
experience of these different (but not unrelated) Americas did not affect
his thinking about politics, his theoretical ambitions, and his conceptual
framework.
The effort to explore the relationship between Morgenthau’s America
and his theory of politics was initiated at the 2014 International Studies
Association conference in San Francisco, for which a panel on “Morgenthau
in America” was organized, each presenter addressing one of Morgenthau’s
major works, from Scientific Man to his Viet Nam writings. The initial
findings made it clear that a process of evolution had occurred in
Morgenthau’s thinking and that the major stages had to do with his ambi-
tions as a public intellectual determined to bring the political wisdom of
Europe to an America enthralled (he trusted not permanently) with scien-
tific rationalism. It was also clear, however, that in the process he himself
was forced to take on some American attitudes, not least in order to make
his ideas palatable in a gradually less alien political culture. Those papers,
collected together into a roundtable on “Morgenthau in America” for the
journal Ethics and International Affairs (2013, 30:1), have been revised
and extended here, and a chapter added on Morgenthau’s legacy.
The reader will recognize the method as “ideas in context”. It eschews
influences over long time spans, including intellectual influences, in favor
of close attention to text, intent, and immediate context—in Morgenthau’s
case, political and institutional. Of intellectual influences, there can be no
doubt: Reinhold Niebuhr, Kenneth Thompson, Carl Schmidt, and E. H.
Carr appear, often in their own words, and the presence of others
(Treitschke, Meinecke and Weber; George Kennan and William T. R. Fox)
can be detected in the formulations themselves. Morgenthau’s influences
are evident in the texts, appearing and disappearing as appropriate to the
argument of the time. The method does not elicit an essential Morgenthau
but rather a theorist grappling with a variety of problematics at different
times who returns to the same intellectual roots but from different per-
spectives and with different purposes. The chapters highlight the major
stages in the evolution of Morgenthau’s political ethics and his political
science.
Buckingham, UK Cornelia Navari

Contents
orgenthau in Europe: Searching for the Political 1

M
Felix Rösch
cientific Man and the New Science of Politics 27

S
Hartmut Behr and Hans-Jörg Sigwart
olitics Among Nations: A Book for America 55

P
Christoph Frei
he National Interest and the ‘Great Debate’ 75

T
Cornelia Navari
he Purpose of American Politics 95

T
Richard Ned Lebow
ietnam Writings and the National Security State 115

V
Douglas B. Klusmeyer
vii
viii CONTENTS
orgenthau in America: The Legacy 143

M
Greg Russell
Index 169
List of Contributors
Hartmut Behr is Professor of International Politics at Newcastle University

(UK). His work includes studies in political theory, International Relations Theory
and sociology of knowledge of the discipline, difference and “otherness”, and
Critical European Studies. His most recent books include: A History of
International Political Theory (2010), Hans J. Morgenthau, The Concept of the
Political (2012, together with Felix Rösch), and Politics of Difference (2014). He
is Principal Investigator of the Leverhulme-funded research network on “Critical
Theory Meets Classical Realism”.
Christoph Frei is Associate Professor of Political Science and Academic Director
of the International Affairs and Governance Program at the University of St.
Gallen. His professional experience includes multi-year stints in France, Hungary,
and the United States. His research interests focus on political culture (France)
and the history of political thought (Rousseau, Jasay). In the context of
International Relations, Frei is the author of Hans J. Morgenthau: An Intellectual
Biography (2001).
Douglas B. Klusmeyer is an associate professor in the Department of Justice,
Law and Criminology and an affiliate faculty member of the History Department
of American University, Washington, DC. His research interests include immigra-
tion and citizenship policy, international political theory, and legal history. His
most recent book (with Demetrios Papademetriou) is: Immigration Policy of the
Federal Republic of Germany (2013).
Richard Ned Lebow is Professor of International Political Theory in the War
Studies Department of King’s College London, Bye-Fellow of Pembroke College,
University of Cambridge, and the James O. Freedman Presidential Professor
(Emeritus) of Government at Dartmouth College. Among his recent publications
ix
x LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
are Forbidden Fruit: Counterfactuals and International Relations (2010); Why

Nations Fight: The Past and Future of War (2010); and The Politics and Ethics of
Identity (2012), winner of the Alexander L. George Award for the best book of
the year by the International Society of Political Psychology.
Cornelia Navari is Visiting Professor of International Affairs at the University of
Buckingham and Honorary Senior Lecturer at the University of Birmingham
(UK). With reference to the history of thought, she has written Internationalism
and the State in the 20th Century (2000), Public Intellectuals and International
Affairs (2013), and “Europe’s Public Intellectuals” in the Handbook on European
Foreign Policy (Sage, 2015). She has edited Ethical Reasoning in International
Affairs (2013) and, with Daniel Green, Guide to the English School of International
Relations (Wiley, 2014).
Felix Rösch is Senior Lecturer in International Relations at Coventry University.
He works on encounters of difference in transcultural and intercultural contexts at
the intersection of classical realism and critical theories. He has published amongst
others with the Review of International Studies, Politics, European Journal of
International Relations, and International Studies Perspectives. His most recent
books include The Concept of the Political (2012), Émigré Scholars and the Genesis
of International Relations (2014), and Power, Knowledge, and Dissent in
Morgenthau’s Worldview (2015).
Greg Russell holds a PhD (1987) in Political Science from Louisiana State
University and is Professor of Political Science at the University of Oklahoma. He
has published numerous articles and books on the American diplomatic tradition,
including Hans J. Morgenthau and the Ethics of American Statecraft, John Quincy
Adams and the Public Virtues of Diplomacy, and The Statecraft of Theodore Roosevelt:
The Duties of Nations and World Order. He is working on a manuscript entitled
Elihu Root, International Law, and the World Court.
Hans-Jörg Sigwart is a senior lecturer (Akademischer Oberrat) at the Political
Science Institute of Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg,
Germany. His research focuses on political theory, its relation to social theory, and
the history of political ideas. His publications include The Wandering Thought of
Hannah Arendt (2016), “The Logic of Legitimacy: Ethics in Political Realism”,
in The Review of Politics 75 (2013), Politische Hermeneutik. Verstehen, Politik und
Kritik bei John Dewey und Hannah Arendt (Königshausen & Neumann, 2012),
and Das Politische und die Wissenschaft. Intellektuell-biographische Studien zum
Frühwerk Eric Voegelins (Königshausen & Neumann, 2005).
Morgenthau in Europe: Searching
for the Political
Felix Rösch
In 1929, Hans Morgenthau passed his doctorate with a thesis titled Die
internationale Rechtspflege, ihr Wesen und ihre Grenzen (International
Jurisdiction: Its Nature and Limits) at the law faculty of the University of
Frankfurt and began pursuing a Habilitation with the aim of becoming a
law professor at a German university. At that moment, little indicated that
Morgenthau would become one of the most well-known and controversial
political scientists of the twentieth century, but it was then that Morgenthau
laid the foundation for his future career. In the early 1930s, Morgenthau
began what turned out to be his most decisive intellectual reorientation:
transcending the legal positivism that he predominantly encountered in
international law, he began focusing on political science. By the time he
arrived in the United States, this reorientation was thoroughly accom-
plished in his mind, as he stressed in a letter to the British-American aca-
demic and reporter Ronald Hilton from October 1937 that ‘my chief
scientific interests … lie in sociology and political science’.1
During these last years in Europe, Morgenthau wrote extensively, much
of which remained unpublished. Two works from this time stand out. The
first one is a small book of less than 90 pages that Morgenthau (1933) had
typed after finishing his doctoral thesis: La notion du “politique” et la
F. Rösch (*)
Coventry University, Coventry, UK
© The Author(s) 2018 1

C. Navari (ed.), Hans J. Morgenthau and the American Experience,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67498-8_1
2 F. RÖSCH
théorie des différends internationaux (The Concept of the Political and the
Theory of International Differences). The second one is a lengthy manu-
script from 1934 entitled Über den Sinn der Wissenschaft in dieser Zeit und
über die Bestimmung des Menschen (On the Purpose of Science in These Times
and on Human Destiny). Underappreciated and little known in the ever-
growing literature on Morgenthau and classical realism at large, this man-
uscript and the small book on the concept of the political, only recently
translated (Morgenthau 2012)2 provided the foundation for a series of
publications throughout his life in which he ferociously and even polemi-
cally defended a normative role for ‘science’ (Wissenschaft3) in modern
societies against the backdrop of the rise of positivism (Morgenthau 1938,
1947, 1972). Most famous among them is Morgenthau’s first book in the
United States, Scientific Man vs. Power Politics (Behr 2016). Indeed, 40
years later, he based the first part of Science: Servant or Master on it
(Morgenthau 1972: xxi), indicating that he ‘never went much beyond
what he had basically said and formulated’ during his time in Europe
(John Herz 2005: 25).4
Morgenthau wrote these works during a time of great personal turmoil.
In Frankfurt, the legal philosopher and former Weimar Republic Minister
of Justice Gustav Radbruch was not impressed by Morgenthau’s efforts, as
he indicated in a letter to his colleague Karl Strupp from 25 June 1929.
The rising anti-Semitism in German academia further hampered
Morgenthau’s academic ambitions and he eventually had to transfer to the
Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva in 1932 (Frei 2001:
42–43). But the situation in Geneva was not much better. His Habilitation
was only deemed satisfactory by the university after a positive intervention
by the jurist Hans Kelsen; and his income had dwindled as anti-Semitic
German students refused to attend his lectures (Morgenthau 1984:
353–354). Since the situation in Geneva had become unbearable, he
sought employment in the United States but neither the Academic
Assistance Council nor the Rockefeller Foundation, to which he appealed,
offered help. His fiancée, Irma Thormann, even wrote a desperate letter to
her former professor in Berlin, Carl Landauer, asking him to help
Morgenthau in securing a position in the United States. At the beginning
of 1935, when Thormann wrote the letter, Landauer was lecturing at
Berkeley. His discouraging reply reached her two months later (Landauer
1935), when Morgenthau was on his way to take up a position at the
recently established Instituto de Estudios Internacionales y Económicos in
Madrid. Shortly thereafter, however, the outbreak of the Spanish Civil
MORGENTHAU IN EUROPE: SEARCHING FOR THE POLITICAL 3
War also vitiated this option, forcing the Morgenthaus into an odyssey
through Europe before finally immigrating to the United States in 1937.
Morgenthau’s restless life in Europe presaged the larger developments
that were about to shatter the entire world. As he wrote shortly after the
Nazis gained power in Germany, ‘the air, in which we dance has changed
and the ground is shaking. What used to be accepted by everyone turns
into a matter of dispute and therefore into a matter of scholarly concern’
(Morgenthau 1934: ii).5 The rise of fascism throughout Europe
Morgenthau understood as the tangible political effect of fundamental
metaphysical deficiencies, and made him question the role and scope of
science.
These two concerns of Morgenthau, the crisis of modern societies and
the purpose of science, would bring him to formulate an ethics of respon-
sibility in later years and to support a reflective, democratic dimension in
foreign policymaking. They remained the core concerns of his work, and
the political events that led to them formed the backdrop of his worldview.
Morgenthau, like many other émigré scholars, was a ‘traveler between all
worlds’ (Puglierin 2008: 419)6 meaning that Morgenthau in America can-
not be understood without having knowledge about Morgenthau in
Europe.
The Crisis of Modernity and the Loss of Values

Classical realism, as we find it in early-twentieth-century political thinkers
like Herz, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Hannah Arendt, developed in conjunc-
tion with critical thinkers like Herbert Marcuse and Eric Voegelin as a
critique of modernity (Rösch 2013a, 2017; Sigwart 2016; Behr and
Williams 2017). Perhaps modernity’s most outspoken critic among this
group of often European émigré scholars, however, was Morgenthau. In
the 1940s, when he was appointed to an assistant professorship at the
University of Kansas City, he began publishing a series of texts (cf.
Morgenthau 1940, 1944, 1947, 1949, 1955, 1960, 1972, 1973; for
more, see Behr 2016) in which he did not promote a conservative, bel-
ligerent worldview, but, as Vibeke Schou Tjalve (2008, 2009; Tjalve and
Williams 2015)7 has so eloquently detailed, expressed concern that moder-
nity turned liberalism into an idealistic ideology or ‘Wilsonianism’, as he
preferred to call it, that endangered democracies through silencing dis-
senting voices (Morgenthau 1951: 4, 1952a: 2).8 The personal experience
of the downfall of the Weimar Republic, the rise of anti-Semitism, and,
4 F. RÖSCH
later, the Shoah (Klusmeyer 2009; Rösch 2013b) made Morgenthau and
his fellow émigrés sensitive to even subtle ‘temptations of unfreedom’
(Versuchungen der Unfreiheit), to use Ralf Dahrendorf’s (2008) term. An
episode from 1935 that was for Morgenthau (1984: 363–364) so impor-
tant that he even recalled it decades later is illustrative. At a soirée in Karl
Neumeyer’s9 house in Munich, guests remained largely indifferent to the
news of a Jewish lawyer being murdered, although most of them consid-
ered themselves to be against Nazi rule.
At the heart of his critique of modernity was Morgenthau’s discomfort
with scientism and the rising ‘scientification’ (Behr 2010: 197–209) of
everyday life, which he would experience on both sides of the Atlantic.
This was evident already in his sojourns through Germany, Switzerland,
and Spain. Morgenthau (1932, 1934, 1936), then still the international
lawyer and not yet the political scientist, repeatedly disputed the possibility
of a ‘pure theory of law’. Morgenthau disagreed with legal positivists like
Kelsen who tried to distill the ‘basic norm’ (Grundnorm) by separating
legal systems from the sociopolitical life-worlds in which they were created
(see Jϋtersonke 2010: 83). For Morgenthau, a legal system had to be ‘real-
istic’ by taking ‘sociological aspects of law’ into account, as he noted in a
letter to the Spanish jurist Rafael Altamira.10 Although the pure theory of
law was a necessary theoretical exercise, a realistic legal theory had to tran-
scend Kelsen’s legal positivism, or else it could contribute nothing to the
solution of contemporary political problems, of which the most important
were the increasing nationalism and fascism in Europe (Morgenthau
1932).
In America, Morgenthau would face a different intellectual environ-
ment, but one in which the belief in the scientific prospects of positivism
was even stronger. After its entry into the First World War, the United
States was in need of analytical frameworks to support its efforts ‘to make
the world safe for democracy’, as Woodrow Wilson put it. Until the war,
the United States had pursued a largely isolationist foreign policy which
meant that it had little experience in dealing with conflicts that European
states faced regularly. Hence, ‘[w]ithout a tradition of international
involvement, the Americans were forced to rely on the Enlightenment
ideology of reason and its 19th century successor, positivistic science, as
the key to effective, rational practice in international relations’ (Molloy
2003: 72; see also Tickner 2011). Consequently and in contrast to
Continental European humanities, American social sciences in general and
political science in particular were designed to endorse change (Jackson
2014: 274–276). This development would culminate during the 1950s

and 1960s, when behavioralism reigned supreme. (It is therefore not
without irony that Morgenthau spent most of his career in Chicago, at the
very center of this behavioral turn, and he was probably right to assume
that the ‘Merriam fraction’ (Morgenthau 1984: 370–371) would not have
been in favor of his tenure had he published Scientific Man vs. Power
Politics before receiving it.)
Morgenthau understood scientism in terms of a loss of values both in
the scholarly world and society at large. As Hans-Jörg Sigwart (2016: 75)
would argue in relation to American behavioralism, scientism allows polit-
ical scientists to pursue a value-free so-called liberal science of democracy,
freeing them of having to provide a theoretical framework for their nor-
mative world views. In other words, ‘when you take your ethics for granted
… all problems emerge as problems of technique’ (Hartz 1955: 10).
Morgenthau never fully explained what values he was specifically speaking
of (one chapter in his manuscript Der Selbstmord mit gutem Gewissen
(Suicide with a Good Conscience) (1930c: 41–52) promised to elaborate
them). Christoph Frei (2001: 167) argues that Morgenthau envisioned
values similar to the ones that the German sociologist Helmuth Plessner
proposed, among them empathy, peace, tolerance, democracy, and liberty;
and it seems probable that Morgenthau had these in mind (cf. Rösch
2015b; Reichwein 2015). But already evident in The Purpose of Science
(1934: 37, 51), was his conviction that a lack of values endangers the
political, as they are the necessary prerequisites for humans to be able to
act. In a later publication, Morgenthau (1963: 421) explained this con-
nection as follows: ‘Our knowledge of what justice demands is predicated
upon our knowledge of what the world is like and what it is for, of a hier-
archy of values reflecting the objective order of the world.’ Since values
have disappeared in modern societies, people can only decide what is ‘con-
venient and what is not, but [they can no longer judge] between good and
bad’ (Morgenthau 1934: 30). In other words, the inability to judge ren-
ders people incapable of acting, and thereby deprives them of the ability to
contribute to the construction of their life-worlds.
To avoid depoliticization in modern societies, values have to be reestab-
lished. In 1934, Morgenthau postulated that this could be achieved only
through individual contemplation (Morgenthau 1934: 79). Yet, people
lack the will and the strength to endure the solitariness of contemplation.
Attempting to rejuvenate the human ability to act through contemplation
is for most humans a daunting task because they fear that through
6 F. RÖSCH
self-reflection their commonly held assumptions might be shattered

(Erschütterung der Seele) (Morgenthau 1934: 74). It is this aspect that
Morgenthau considered to be the basis of human tragedy. Since Richard
Ned Lebow’s study on The Tragic Vision of Politics (2003), the tragic ele-
ment in Morgenthau’s thought has repeatedly attracted scholarly interest
(cf. Gismondi 2004; Rengger 2005; Klusmeyer 2009; Chou 2011;
Kostagiannis 2014), but the contemplative aspect of it has received only
limited attention (Rösch 2016).
In On the Purpose of Science and other writings, Morgenthau laid out a
complex set of reasons for the human limitation. Since people are created
in the ‘image of God’, they have a ‘vision of perfection and try to attain it’
(Morgenthau n.d.: 2). However, humans are tied to a specific time and
space, and can never accumulate absolute knowledge—hence, perfection
is impossible (Morgenthau 1934: 64). Realizing the futility of their ambi-
tions and out of fear of being incapable of bearing the vacuity of their
existence, people renounce their quest. Instead, they imagine a reality in
collectivity that soothes their fears. As Hugo Sinzheimer (1932), a
well-known labor lawyer during the Weimar Republic, noted in a letter to
his former clerk Morgenthau shortly before the Nazis gained power in
Germany: ‘The political metaphysics and the belief in miracles, i.e., the
absolute fear of reality, blurs the mind of Germans’.
Drawing on the work of the sociologist Karl Mannheim, Morgenthau
(1934: 54–55) saw in the fear of facing a meaningless life the cause for the
rise of ideologies throughout Europe. As Sigwart (2013: 413) has recently
argued:
The main objection of the realist critiques against the liberal zeitgeist is that
it is based on particular forms of ‘wishful thinking’ and on (mostly pseudo-
religious) moral and political ‘illusions’ that systematically eclipse the actual
realities of social and political, and also of intellectual, life.
However, ideologies are not deliberate attempts to create an illusion of

reality and to purposefully disorient people. Rather, they are the product
of frenzied, collective processes in order to provide ontological security. In
the course of these processes, the full scope of human meaninglessness is
concealed. As Morgenthau (n.d.: 2) put it in a later unpublished manu-
script: ‘Being imperfect and striving toward perfection, man ought not to
be alone. For while the companionship of others cannot make him perfect,
it can supplement his imperfection and give him the illusion of being
perfect’.
The Limitations of the Nation-State

Toward the end of his life, Morgenthau delivered the first Council on
Religion and International Affairs lecture on Morality and Foreign Affairs.
During the following discussion, he postulated that ‘we are living in a
dream world’ (Morgenthau 1979: 42). Although the nation-state is still
the dominant form of human association globally, it is ‘no longer [a] via-
ble economic, political, or military unit’ (Morgenthau 1979: 34). Earlier,
the ostensible vindicator of the national interest had also characterized the
nation-state as a ‘blind and potent monster’ that ultimately had to be
replaced by a world state (1962a: 61).
In part, these concerns related to specific developments in the postwar
period.11 But it was not a new idea. He had already argued in Suicide with
a Good Conscience (1930c) that the nation-state was politically unsuited to
counter the loss of values in modern societies. Instead of providing the
ground for a value reorientation, the Westphalian system of nation-states
promoted a belligerent world view, and was actually discouraging political
debate. As a consequence, nationalism was emerging to fill the value gap.
The basis for his analysis of nationalism derived from his ‘toying with
Freud’ as he records in his memoirs (see also Schuett 2010). In a short
paper from 1930 on ‘The Origin of Politics in the Nature of Man’
(Morgenthau 1930a), he laid out two human drives—the drive for self-
preservation (Selbsterhaltungstrieb; hunger) and the drive to prove oneself
(Bewährungstrieb; love), and nationalism satisfied both. The former drive
is more fundamental because the preservation of one’s life is the central
concern for humans. It focuses on human survival and is manifested, for
example, in the pursuit of food and shelter. The latter drive is intended to
gain awareness of one’s strengths and capabilities: ‘everywhere where the
human being strives to show what he [and she] can do’ is the drive to
prove oneself’ (Morgenthau 1930a: 6). Particularly challenging situations
satisfy this drive: they require overcoming obstacles by mastering nonrou-
tine situations, evoking the appraisal of others. In doing so, one’s identity
is assured (Morgenthau 1930a: 26–27, 31–32). Pursuing the latter drive
in international politics thereby increases the possibility of international
conflict. (Politics among Nations, arguably Morgenthau’s most famous
contribution, might be read not as a promotion of this belligerent system
of nation-states, but as its critique.12)
Morgenthau had already encountered this impenetrability of the state
in Kelsen’s writings (Jütersonke 2010) and used it to stress that under the
8 F. RÖSCH
current system only one organization can claim sovereignty within a given
territory. To transcend the shortcomings of the nation-state, Morgenthau
would eventually argue for the creation of a world state (see Scheuerman
2011). However, to be able to create a world state, a world ‘community’
had to be first realized. If citizens were not willing to give their loyalty to
a world state and preferred to remain emotionally attached to their nation-
state, no attempt at establishing institutions for a world state could be
successful (Morgenthau 1948:344; also Speer 1968: 215; Fromkin 1993:
84). To transcend national sovereignty, a world community has to be
established, first through traditional forms of diplomacy.
Eventually, Morgenthau hoped that a compromise-enabling commu-
nity might be established, based on common understanding, trust, and
loyalty among people, a position he would argue in the introduction to
the reprint of David Mitrany’s A Working Peace System:
[A]n international community must grow from the satisfaction of common

needs shared by members of different nations. International agencies, serv-
ing all peoples all over the world regardless of national boundaries, could
create by the very fact of their existence and performance a community of
interests, valuations, and actions. Ultimately, if such international agencies
were numerous enough … the loyalties to these institutions and to the
international community of which they would be the agencies would super-
sede the loyalties to the separate national societies. (Morgenthau 1966a: 11)
Initially skeptical of international organizations like the United Nations

and forerunners of the European Union, the achievements of the late UN
Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld (Morgenthau 1970b) and the
insights of Mitrany’s functionalist approach (see Ashworth 2014:
221–225) would make Morgenthau more open to international organiza-
tions as means to provide the grounds for shifting loyalties to a world state
(Morgenthau 1962a: 75–76). International fora would allow the repre-
sentatives of different countries to recognize commonalities, while being
sensitive enough to accept those conditions and experiences which sepa-
rate each culture.
In Search of the Political
Developing these fora required for Morgenthau the reestablishment and
support of the political realm, as this realm is central for the formation of
any liberal and peaceful association. From the time of the preparation of
his doctoral thesis at the University of Frankfurt (Morgenthau 1929) he

devoted much of his intellectual life to the elaboration of the political.
His conceptualization of the political came from a variety of disci-
plines—sociology, anthropology, Staatslehre, and macro-economics
(Nationalökonomie) (Gangl 2009a: 14); and many well-known scholars
like Kelsen, Plessner, Hermann Heller, and Rudolf Smend had contrib-
uted to this debate. However, it was particularly Carl Schmitt’s contribu-
tion that dominated the debate in Germany during the late 1920s and
early 1930s, and that was to deeply influence Morgenthau. Schmitt’s
Concept of the Political first appeared in the Archiv für Sozialwissenschaften
und Sozialpolitik in 1927 and later as a book in 1932 in which he most
clearly elaborated the problem of sovereignty that the decline of the
nation-state had brought about (Gangl 2009b: 39; also Morgenthau
1948).
Schmitt’s intention was to strengthen the position of the state against
the backdrop of a modernity that had shaken sociopolitical cohesion and
atomized people in their search for identity. These which Schmitt (1932:
66) identified as ‘neutralizations and depolitizations’ caused by a ‘plurality
of loyalties’ (Schmitt, in Gangl 2009b: 37) resulted in role conflicts that
hindered people in developing clear responses in times of crisis. By identi-
fying, however, ‘[t]he specific political distinction to which political actions
and motives [as] that between friend and enemy’, Schmitt (1996: 26)
made it clear that conflicts are inherent to human nature, and that peaceful
relations between people could at best exist only temporarily. As Udi
Greenberg (2014: 216–217) notes, ‘[t]he ultimate objective of the state
was [therefore] to mobilize the nation for victory in potential conflicts …
Any institution that sought to eliminate or even regulate political tensions,
such as the League of Nations, was fighting human nature’. Introducing
the political as a matter of intensity, Schmitt aimed to help people transcend
their role conflicts, (re)focus their loyalty on the state, and provide guid-
ance in times of crisis. Even though he did not conceive of the political as
intentionally belligerent (Gangl 2009b: 44), Schmitt (1930: 42) estab-
lished the political as a ‘move of capture’ (Bigo and Walker 2007: 735) by
stressing people’s ‘duty to the state’ (Pflicht zum Staat). In doing so,
Schmitt hoped to provide voting masses with a common identity (Gangl
2009b: 42–43).
As an early career researcher at universities in Frankfurt and Geneva,
Morgenthau took inspiration from this conceptualization of the political
(cf. Pichler 1998; Koskenniemi 2000; Brown 2007; Scheuerman 2007;
10 F. RÖSCH
Rösch 2013c; Greenberg 2014). However, Morgenthau not only criti-

cized Schmitt personally for his sympathies for National Socialism, he also
took a very different stance on the political. Contributing to the debate on
legal positivism through the perspective of international law, Morgenthau
(2012: 86) identified two different types of conflicts which he labeled
disputes and tensions (‘legal and political disputes’; Streitigkeiten and
Spannungen). While the former can be resolved legally in the international
realm through such institutions like the League of Nations and later the
United Nations, the latter cannot. Tensions of a political nature are those
that Morgenthau saw as evoking intense emotional responses. They may
express themselves indirectly in the form of legal disputes (Morgenthau
2012: 128), but seeking for rational solutions through a legal contract
would not settle the underlying tensions. Indeed, as Morgenthau (2012:
134–135; italics in the original) summed it up in the conclusion of The
Concept of the Political,
parties are not in a position to submit political disputes … to the decision of

an international legal body, even though these disputes could in themselves
be susceptible to a legal solution. For the international legal body would
then have to adjudicate, in addition to the dispute, the tension which is at
the base of the dispute, and the body does not possess norms susceptible to
general application with which to make such a decision.
Understanding these two types of conflicts, Morgenthau agreed with

Schmitt’s basic assumption that the establishment of (inter)national insti-
tutions could not settle tensions on the international level and that the
political is a spatio-temporal precondition for these institutions. However,
he disagreed with Schmitt’s attempt to find solace in a reaffirmation of the
nation-state. For him, the political could not be separated from other
societal realms through the development of simple binaries, as Schmitt
had attempted. This is because the political is ‘a quality, a tone, which can
be peculiar to certain objects, but which does not by necessity attach itself
to any of them’ (Morgenthau 2012: 101; italics in the original). In his dis-
sertation, Morgenthau (1929: 67) had defined ‘[t]he concept of the polit-
ical [as having] no once and for all fixed substance. It is rather a feature, a
quality, a coloring which can be attributed to any substance … A question
which is of political nature today can have no political meaning tomor-
row’. Hence, any part of life can be absorbed in the political by turning
into a source of tension on which people, states, or any other form of com-
munity may disagree.
Certainly, when people temporarily come together to pursue their

interests these tensions can lead to violence, but Morgenthau hoped that
such violent outbreaks could be avoided if the resulting antagonism of
interests can take place freely in what Galston (2010: 391) would later
characterize as ‘arena[s] of contestation’. The resulting ‘discussions’, the
term Morgenthau (2012: 126) used in The Concept of the Political, he
intended to be understood as something like speech-act processes intended
to gradually align human interests toward a common good. Of course this
does not avoid violence per se, which is why Morgenthau (2012: 123)
conceived of ‘discussions’ as elastic. Morgenthau believed that expressing
their interests while considering the positions of others supports people in
peacefully aligning their interests.
At the same time Morgenthau, like other scholars in the ‘political
studies enlightenment group’ as Ira Katznelson (2003: 132) called a
group of American intellectuals most of whom had arrived as émigrés
in the United States during the 1930s and 1940s, had an almost para-
doxical concern about mass democracy. Having experienced the down-
fall of the Weimar Republic, Morgenthau was cautious about the
capacity of communities to avoid the descent into violence when com-
promise is unavailing. Encountering ‘apoietic situation[s]’, to use
Reinhart Koselleck’s (in Friedländer 1993: 57) term, in which people
face ‘the necessity of making comparisons as well as the need to leave
these comparisons behind’, Morgenthau (1966b: 79) gave scholars a
vital social role:
The intellectual in general, and the political scientist in particular, to be true

to their mission, must be committed in a dual way. They must be committed
to the objective truth, and they must be committed to the great political
issues of the contemporary world. They must descend into the political
arena not on behalf of government or any other political interest but on
behalf of the objective truth as they see it.
Being committed to truth, however, did not imply that scholars possessed
absolute knowledge that only had to be passed on to other people. This is
because for Morgenthau the limits of one’s own perspective cannot be
transcended.13 As Morgenthau’s thinking partner Arendt (1990: 103) put
it in a series of lectures given at the University of Notre Dame during
February 1954:
12 F. RÖSCH
Philosophy, political philosophy like all its other branches, will never be able
to deny its origin in thaumadzein, in the wonder at that which is as it is. If
philosophers, despite their necessary estrangement from the everyday life of
human affairs, were ever to arrive at a true political philosophy they would
have to make the plurality of man, out of which arises the whole realm of
human affairs … the object of their thaumadzein.
In order to avoid these pitfalls, scholars have to act in the political realm
through what can be best described as a Socratic maieutics, or dialogue.
People and communities at large should be assisted in formulating their
interests by encouraging the establishment of dialogues among them. In
this process, scholars have to act as facilitators of the political by asking
people questions about themselves, their life-worlds, and their relations
with(in) these life-worlds. Through reflecting on these questions people
gain awareness about their interests, helping them to become critical citi-
zens. Eventually, a forum is created in which the political can re-evolve,
rather than telling people ‘the truth’.
The Stranger in America: Immanent

and Transcendent Science
Like Francis Lieber’s The Stranger in America (1835), Morgenthau was a

German émigré jurist who would establish an outstanding career as a
political scientist in his new home country. Still, he bitterly complained in
private correspondence that he was often misunderstood by his American
colleagues. Gottfried-Karl Kindermann (2015: 21), one of Morgenthau’s
doctoral students in Chicago, noted that ‘throughout his life Morgenthau
suffered from the misjudgment of being an apologist of power politics’.
The text of On the Purpose of Science can help us understand why.
In the manuscript, Morgenthau laid out two ways for science to deal
with the lack of values and the subsequent depoliticization in modern
societies: it could pursue either an ‘immanent’ or a ‘transcendent’ strategy
(Morgenthau 1934: 2). However, Morgenthau concludes that the first
strategy—immanent science—is not a viable option to deal with the crisis
of modernity because values do not play a role in this kind of science.
Immanent scientists only engage in empirical, policy-oriented studies that
do not question the sociopolitical and cultural life-worlds they are operat-
ing in. As a consequence, immanent science sustains the sociopolitical sta-
tus quo; instead of offering a critical corrective, ‘science [turns] into an
ideological doctrine of justification’ (Morgenthau 1934: 55). For

Morgenthau (1934: 12–13), a value-free science was positively dangerous
to politics because science would lose its societal function of supporting
people in their quests to make decisions and engage with their peers. The
extensive criticism of behavioral sciences that Morgenthau offered in this
manuscript anticipates the more substantial, often polemically presented
concerns that he would repeatedly voice in the United States (cf.
Morgenthau 1938, 1959, 1964, 1966b).
In all of these texts, Morgenthau grappled with the political idealism
that he would encounter in the United States, an idealism that ‘promised
to replace the quest for knowledge with knowledge proper. It claimed to
have superseded Socrates …with a system of knowing which made igno-
rance … a mere quantitative shortcoming’ (Gellman 1988: 248). While
Morgenthau might initially have hoped to be able to transcend the sci-
entism in American political science and thereby stem liberalism’s descent
into idealism, personal correspondence in the Library of Congress sug-
gests that he increasingly became disillusioned. Certainly, the anti-
communist persecution of intellectuals during the McCarthy era of the
1950s contributed to Morgenthau’s doubts.14
To achieve a truly lasting contribution to American political science,
Morgenthau would remain dedicated to the second strategy that he had
elaborated in 1934. Indeed, transcendent science was the only viable
option for Morgenthau. Science had to aspire to a metaphysics, but not in
the sense of Mannheim’s world postulate (Weltwollung)—a fixed, norma-
tive set of ontological assumptions. For Morgenthau, as he would expound
in one of his first publications in the United States (1944), this would lead
to attempts to reify assumptions through social planning. Rather, science
as metaphysics meant for Morgenthau (1934: 69) that it had to act as ‘an
interpreter of the imaginable’ (Deuter des nur zu Ahnenden)—making
people aware of the myriad sociopolitical and cultural constellations that
inform their specific life-worlds at a given time. In other words, sociopo-
litical reality is not given, but ‘constructed’ as Behr and Williams would
postulate (2017: 10). As Morgenthau put it:
Facts have no social meaning in themselves. It is the significance we attribute

to certain facts of our sensual experience, in terms of our hopes and fears,
our memories, intentions, and expectations, that create them as social facts.
The social world itself, then, is but an artefact of man’s mind as the reflec-
tion of his thoughts and the creation of his actions’. (1962b: 110)
14 F. RÖSCH
For Morgenthau, most people seek ways to conceal their imperfection, so

transcendent science has to be prepared to be marginalized in public. As
Morgenthau (1955: 446–447) would put it in the mid-1950s:
Political science which is true to its moral commitment ought … to be an

unpopular undertaking … it cannot help being a subversive and revolution-
ary force with regard to certain vested interests – intellectual, political, eco-
nomic, social in general. For it must sit in continuous judgment upon
political man and political society, measuring their truth … By doing so, it is
not only an embarrassment to society intellectually, but it becomes also a
political threat to the defenders or the opponents of the status quo or to
both; for the social conventions about power, which political science cannot
help subjecting to a critical – and often destructive – examination, are one of
the main sources from which the claims to power, and hence power itself,
derive.
As they become aware of the intellectual and physical limits of human

existence, Morgenthau argued, people should not give in to them, but
should engage with these limits, learning to accept human fallibility.
This willful engagement with reality, to allude to Michael Williams’s
(2005) term, rested on Morgenthau’s reading of Mannheim’s seminal
Ideology and Utopia, where Mannheim had laid out the spatio-temporal
conditionality of knowledge. Mannheim’s concepts allowed Morgenthau
to argue that, although absolute knowledge and consequently a universal
objectivity are inconceivable, science does not have to concede to relativ-
ism. Objectivity is still possible, albeit tied to the specific sociopolitical and
cultural constellations that inform individual perspectives (Morgenthau
1934: 20). Embracing this form of objectivity as an academic standard,
however, requires from its bearers (self)reflexivity and intellectual modesty
toward other viewpoints. This means that transcendent scientists have to
be willing to constantly review their own perspectives in light of constantly
changing sociopolitical and cultural constellations. This does not mean
that scholars should not take a stand in favor of what they perceive to be
the truth, as Morgenthau (1952b: 38) stressed in lectures on the
Philosophy of International Relations during the early 1950s: ‘What you
[Morgenthau’s students] are really saying – I regard this as a compliment –
is that I have destroyed some of the illusions with which you came. This is
the purpose of teaching – to confront people with the truth’.15 However,
taking a stand does not imply that the intellectual contributions of others
are dismissed. Rather, they have to be carefully assessed and accepted as
legitimate attempts to provide meaning to life-worlds. Through these

arduous, long-term processes, scientists can fulfill their societal role by
reestablishing values through which society at large regains its capacity to
act (Morgenthau 1934: 79–80). In other words, for Morgenthau, while
immanent science faces the danger of providing the intellectual justifica-
tion to enforce ideological constraints, transcendent science can reinstill in
people the capacity to act, through which the political can be reestablished
and sustained.
With On the Purpose of Science, Morgenthau (1934: 77) was promoting
an elitist understanding of science and conceding a key societal role to an
elite—a position in which we can clearly detect the influence of Friedrich
Nietzsche. Without scientists, people would be incapable of regaining
their ability to act, for it is only scientists who have the qualities to face
human meaninglessness and transcend it. It was only after his relocation to
New York in the late 1960s, taking up a position at the City College of
New York in 1968, when he became acquainted with Arendt’s democratic
scholarship, that he modified this view. Scientists became no longer the
sole guardians of the political in modern societies, but rather a part of a
concerted effort by everyone to retain responsibility for their own life-
worlds (Rösch 2013b). In this new scenario, scientists would take on a
supportive role, helping people to formulate their interests and to develop
empathy toward other potentially diverging viewpoints in public discourse
(Klusmeyer 2016).
Conclusion
Before embarking to America, Morgenthau had produced the outline of a
political ethics that asked for a shift in policymaking and even a reconsid-
eration of its purpose in the direction of what Hannah Arendt would
describe as ‘discourse ethic’.16 As she put it, ‘what is important is not so
much what public discourse is about as the way in which public discourse
takes place’ (Arendt in Benhabib 1993: 105). This ethic does not draw on
‘ontological blueprints’ (Ross 2013: 277) to create social laws in order to
consolidate the current sociopolitical status quo (see Morgenthau 1934:
77). It criticizes policymaking that turns questions of politics into issues of
administration and that seeks solutions to practical dilemmas in the estab-
lishment of extensive bureaucracies, rather than to engage with their con-
tested nature.
16 F. RÖSCH
Like many other of his manuscripts, Über den Sinn der Wissenschaft in
dieser Zeit und über die Bestimmung des Menschen remained unpublished
and The Concept of the Political soon fell into oblivion. Even when scholars
engaged with the early European works of Morgenthau (cf. Link 1965;
Amstrup 1978), these contributions remained largely unappreciated in the
wider discipline until the English translation of Frei’s biography was
published in 2001. Morgenthau, however, picked up themes from these
early interventions for later works such as Scientific Man vs. Power Politics
and Science: Servant or Master? With regard to his ethics of responsibility,
the ideas developed in the manuscript anticipated a ‘politics as applied eth-
ics’, similar to that in the writings of Raymond Geuss (2008: 9). Accordingly,
dissenting positions need to be able to be voiced during decision-making
processes. Furthermore, their development must be actively encouraged
and sustained in the political realm.
In this way, policymaking becomes a process that requires politicians
and the public to face dissent and eventually to seek compromises (Sigwart
2013: 431–432). It also implies that politicians have to take personal
responsibility, for which Morgenthau (1930b) had found an early role
model in Gustav Stresemann, a long-standing Weimar Republic Minister
of Foreign Affairs and co-laureate of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1926.
Outcomes of policymaking processes can no longer be disguised as
scientific-technological preconditions, but must be acknowledged as com-
promises that have arisen out of complex, collective negotiations, in which
politicians play an important role, as it is their task to collate the various
interests in society. They also have to ponder these interests and then pur-
sue policy decisions that benefit people the most.
To achieve this ethics of responsibility, science not only has to be tran-
scendent, it must also have an educational mission (Bildungsauftrag) for
society at large. In this, universities have a key role to play. Morgenthau
criticized the bureaucratization of universities, which turns students into
consumers of academic degrees (Morgenthau 1934).17 Their educational
mission, he asserted, is rather to provide continuous support for people to
seize opportunities to embrace their responsibilities. This means that the
educational mission of science lies in contributing to establishing political
forums that provide the space for people to engage in discussions through
which societal change can be initiated. It is for this reason that Morgenthau
supported, for example, the Keneseth Israel Beth Shalom Congregation in
Kansas City and the Adult Education Council of Greater Chicago, and
participated in teach-ins during the Vietnam War (Klusmeyer 2016).
Notes
1. Letter to Ronald Hilton, 2 October 1937. Morgenthau Papers, Library of
Congress, Washington, D.C., Box 26.
2. Throughout the chapter, I will refer to this English translation.
3. Wissenschaft (to create knowledge) comprises any form of systematic
knowledge creation and thus also comprises humanities. Wissenschaft is not
confined to empirically verifiable knowledge, as we find it in the natural
sciences. It is in this sense that Morgenthau used the term ‘science’, and it
is in this sense that it is used in this chapter.
4. Golo Mann, one of Thomas Mann’s sons, came to a similar conclusion: ‘of
course, Morgenthau is now a hyper-American (Hyper-Amerikaner), but I
would consider his thought to be very German’ (in Reichwein 2015: 95).
5. All translations are by the author.
6. Given Morgenthau’s odyssey through Europe, Walter Lacqueur’s (2016:
59) self-characterization as a ‘wanderer between several worlds’ might
even be more appropriate.
7. In this context, recent contributions by Duncan Bell (2009), Cornelia
Navari (2016), and Richard Ned Lebow (2016) are also noteworthy, but
note Ian Hall’s (2011) dissenting view.
8. It is partly in this sense that realism can be understood as an ‘intellectual
moment of resistance’ (Mark Philip in Bell 2017: 3).
9. Neumeyer was a law professor specializing in international private law at
the University of Munich and from 1931 the dean of the faculty of law.
Threatened by deportation into a concentration camp, he and his wife
committed suicide in 1941.
10. Letter to Rafael Altamira, 22 November 1939. Morgenthau Papers, Box 3.
11. Most immediately, in 1979, the United States and many other countries
faced an economic downturn due to the second oil crisis. The decreased oil
production in the wake of the Iranian Revolution irretrievably destroyed
the myth of a consistent economic rise to which numerous states under the
Bretton Woods System had subscribed since the late 1940s. States could
no longer control all the interrelationships of an increasingly globalized
economy. Beyond the immediate economic crisis lay the development of
nuclear weapons, which would profoundly affect Morgenthau’s ideas. Like
that of many of his coevals, including Herz, Karl Jaspers, and Bertrand
Russell (for more, see van Munster and Sylvest 2016), he experienced a
‘[m]odern technology [that] … had spun out of control and a technologi-
cal juggernaut threatened humanity with the historically novel possibility
of mass suicide’ (Morgenthau 1970b; Scheuerman 2009: 567). Nation-
states had lost the ability to secure their territorial integrity and to guaran-
tee the safety of their citizens. Borders became obsolete. In Morgenthau’s
(1966a: 9, 1970a: 61–62) sense, a border is reduced to an artificial line on
18 F. RÖSCH
a map and the traditional concept of sovereignty that yielded exclusive

rights to nation-states on the international level is rendered obsolete.
12. Hartmut Behr (2010: 211; Behr and Kirke 2014) has argued that Politics
Among Nations was conceived as a counter-ideology not only to fascism
and communism, but also to nationalism, pointing to the later chapters of
the first edition. They are all reflections on the possibility of minimalizing
international conflict by seeking out the potential of global cooperation
(see also Rösch 2015a; Frei 2016).
13. To his students, Morgenthau (2004: 137) explained this as follows: ‘I
haven’t come down from heaven to this chair and started to teach. I mean,
obviously my mind has been formed by certain experiences. And naturally
those experiences are part of my intellectual composition’.
14. Participating in the Rockefeller Foundation-funded conference on interna-
tional relations theory in 1954 can therefore be interpreted to have been a
‘gambit’ in Guilhot’s terms (2008, 2011) from Morgenthau’s side and
from the side of other like-minded émigré scholars. It was their ambition
to oppose the scientism of the behavioral revolution and argue against it
from a hermeneutic position (critical Rohde 2016: 115). But the ‘osmosis’
that Gerald Stourzh (1965: 61) spotted remained underdeveloped and
their impact was less substantial than some of the vitas of these scholars
would suggest (Greenberg 1992: 76).
15. Furthermore, in a letter to Arendt he reasoned that ‘we are intellectual
streetfighters … So if we don’t make clear on which side of the barricades
we stand we have failed’ (in Rohde 2005: 50). Similarly in a letter to Paul
Nitze dated 12 February 1955, Morgenthau wrote that ‘we cannot assume
to be able to look at the world scene form a vantage point which, as it were,
lies outside this world. We stand on a particular spot within that world,
physically, morally, and intellectually’.
16. For more on Morgenthau’s ethic, see, for example, contributions by
Molloy (2009), Klusmeyer (2009), Behr and Rösch (2013), and Sigwart
(2013).
17. Morgenthau (1930d, 1938) also repeatedly engaged journalistically in this
debate and his argument anticipates current discourses in the discipline as
we find it, for example, in Sabaratnam (2015) as well as Berg and Seeber
(2016).
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Scientific Man and the New Science
of Politics
Hartmut Behr and Hans-Jörg Sigwart
In 1946, there appeared Hans Morgenthau’s Scientific Man vs Power

Politics and, in 1952, Eric Voegelin’s The New Science of Politics, two clas-
sical representative texts of émigré scholarship in the USA. Many of the
major questions and problems in Morgenthau’s oeuvre also figure promi-
nently in Voegelin’s writings. The two thinkers seem to share a general
“parallel theoretical interest”, as Morgenthau himself noticed in a letter to
Voegelin in 1953.1 Although this casual remark apparently did not lead to
a deeper conversation between them or even to a substantial mutual con-
sideration of their major writings, it nonetheless deserves closer scrutiny.
While there are obvious differences between Morgenthau and Voegelin in
the breadth of their philosophical scope and historical framework, they do
share a number of major concerns. Both thinkers were convinced, to begin
with, that political science and theory, in order to be able to properly
understand its subject matter and to live up to its political and intellectual
H. Behr (*)
Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
H.-J. Sigwart
Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg,
Erlangen, Germany

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67498-8_2
28 H. BEHR AND H.-J. SIGWART
responsibilities, must assume an uncompromisingly realist perspective.2 In

line with this realist accent, both strongly argued, furthermore, for a his-
torical and anthropological foundation of political science.3 And both
shared a distinctly critical perspective on the positivist epistemological and
methodological foundations and the “scientistic” underpinnings of mod-
ern social sciences. Besides these common topics and concerns, it is also
the similar “transatlantic” socio-cultural context in which both reflected
on their theoretical questions when writing their major studies in the
1940s and the following decades which makes their comparison particu-
larly interesting. Written by two émigré scholars who were trying to locate
themselves within, and to make sense of, the cultural environment of post-
War American society and academia, both authors’ writings reflect their
peculiar situation inhabiting two sometimes crucially different semantic
and cultural contexts.
In the following we argue that a parallel consideration of some of the
common topics both authors dealt with and of their common intellectual
background can help to shed light on their intentions, styles of theorizing,
and self-perceptions as political thinkers. When read in comparison as two
critical, sometimes deliberately polemical, but also genuinely self-reflective
oeuvres, Morgenthau’s and Voegelin’s writings turn out to represent two
partly similar, partly different understandings of realist social critique and,
in more personal terms, of the social and intellectual role of the émigré as
a scholar and a social critic in a time of intellectual and political crisis. To
bring out the similarities and differences between their positions, the
problem of modern scientism can serve as an exemplary topic, because
both authors’ reflections on this subject matter are closely connected with
their self-perceptions as critical thinkers and more or less explicitly related
to their personal background as émigré scholars. Before we focus on these
questions in the second and third sections below, we first discuss this back-
ground itself.
The Émigré Experience

Morgenthau’s Scientific Man vs Power Politics was developed from a lec-
ture on “Liberalism and Foreign Policy” that he gave in 1940 at the New
School of Social Research in New York as part of a lecture series on
Liberalism Today and appeared in 1946, one year after he received tenure
at the University of Chicago. The monograph demarcates the beginning
of Morgenthau’s career in the United States, to which he had emigrated
SCIENTIFIC MAN AND THE NEW SCIENCE OF POLITICS 29
nine years earlier. The text also reflects Morgenthau’s place between two
academic cultures: his language in Scientific Man partly stems from, but
also tries to leave behind, his European academic socialization and to
adjust to the American cultural environment—a task which was obviously
not accomplished easily and posed some difficulties. Although essential
parts of the text were written already in Germany before Morgenthau’s
emigration, the book clearly reflects his bewilderment about American
political and academic culture and, as he perceived it, its cheerful and
naïve optimism about the betterment and progress of politics, society,
and humanity in general. Due to this background, Scientific Man is in
large parts written in the style of a pamphlet; it is an attempt to hammer
home certain philosophical positions—positions that were largely unpop-
ular in the US social sciences in the 1940s (and later). More explicitly
than his later and more influential books, Scientific Man articulates essen-
tial aspects of Morgenthau’s intellectual self-perception, his understand-
ing of his own role not only as a philosophically inspired political scientist,
but also as a public critic of his time and “his” societies, both in Europe
and America.
Voegelin’s The New Science of Politics ([1952] 2000) goes back to a
series of lectures held at the University of Chicago, hence at Morgenthau’s
home university, in the summer 1951. It appeared a year later in the pres-
tigious Walgreen Foundation Lecture series, the same series in which Leo
Strauss’ Natural Right and History, Robert Dahl’s A Preface to Democratic
Theory, and Hannah Arendt’s The Human Condition were originally pub-
lished. In the book Voegelin unfolds a neo-classical and genuinely realist
theory of representation which focuses on the crucial role of certain specu-
lative anthropo-ontological cultural narratives and symbolizations within
the political self-interpretations of societies and on a determined critique of
the peculiar forms which such narratives assume in modern societies.4 On
the basis of a broad analysis of the Western history of ideas from antiquity
to the present, the study for the first time presents Voegelin’s renowned
thesis that the essence of modernity consists of an immanentist ideology of
worldly self-salvation in which a “gnostic” undercurrent pervading Western
history eventually attains social dominance and fully unfolds its politically
destructive potentials.5 The book established Voegelin’s reputation as a
genuine intellectual voice in political philosophy and as a determined critic
of modern progressivism. Similarly to Scientific Man, the New Science in
large parts uses the pointed language and style of a polemical pam-
phlet to bring across its uncompromisingly critical m essage. And also the
ew Science, like Scientific Man, conceptually and empirically reflects its

N
author’s two-sided Central European and American background.
In terms of the disciplinary history of political science, both books are
part of the phenomenon of European émigré scholarship in the United
States in the mid-twentieth century. This peculiar discourse not only sub-
stantially shaped the American and international theory debates of the time
(see Söllner 1996; Gunnell 1993), but in turn arguably also influenced the
perspectives of those scholars participating in it. The position of the émigré
posed unusual challenges, pragmatic as well as intellectual ones. It required
some kind of intellectual self-localization within the new social and political
environment and an idea of how to actively relate to this environment as a
scholar, in terms of conceptual language, criteria of relevance, and theoreti-
cal self-understanding. What kind of intellectual role was there to play for
a European émigré within US society and academia? What kind of theoreti-
cal questions did the “American experience” raise, perceived from the per-
spective of the European émigré? Which contributions, both to the
dominant scientific discussions in the US academic community at the time
as well as to the major problems occupying the American public in general,
could be derived from the émigrés’ European academic background and
from their immediate experiences with totalitarian movements and regimes?
The problem of how to reflect upon and answer these questions per-
vades the discursive field of émigré scholarship. Its margins may be marked
out, as John Gunnell suggests, by the opposite exemplary cases of Paul
Lazarsfeld on the one hand who, understanding himself as a positivist,
‘had found himself uneasy’ in a European atmosphere ‘dominated by
philosophical and speculative minds’ and for whom, as a consequence,
“assimilation” to the American social sciences ‘was in many respects rela-
tively easy’, and Theodor W. Adorno on the other hand, whose Marxist
theoretical orientation and emphasis on a fundamental “critique of cul-
ture” proved to be barely compatible with American society and social
science (Gunnell 1993: 183 f.). As Gunnell’s characterization indicates,
the attitude toward the academic field in the US, particularly toward the
theoretical and methodological foundations of the scientific mainstream
within the social sciences, and especially within American political science
at the time, is a decisive factor in the process of the émigrés’ intellectual
self-localization. And while the émigrés ‘were hardly monolithic, there still
is a striking uniformity across a broad spectrum of the émigré experience
and perspective that was in sharp conflict with the values of American
social science’ (Gunnell 1993: 185).
Where can Morgenthau and Voegelin be placed within this field? To

which extend did their attempts of intellectual self-localization within émi-
gré scholarship influence their realist perspective in Scientific Man and the
New Science? In the case of Morgenthau’s book, this influence is quite
obvious. It is discernible, for instance, in the study’s peculiar style of argu-
mentation. While Scientific Man addresses many significant themes, such
as political ethics and questions of reason, rationality, and science, the
book is not a profound philosophical discussion of them. This is puzzling,
especially for an author whose preceding writings had addressed similar
questions in much greater depth and who, in these writings, devoted
much time to conceptual and terminological differentiations.6 This raises
questions about the purpose of the work and Morgenthau’s intention and
self-localization.
Morgenthau was fully aware of the explosive nature of many of his
arguments, critical as they were of positivist scholarship in International
Relations (IR) that was dominant at the time in the USA and especially at
the Political Science department at Chicago that was a positivist hub of the
discipline. As he wrote in a letter in 1946, he was relieved that the book
appeared after he got tenure because he assumed that he would never have
obtained tenure after its publication (Morgenthau 1984). To understand
the book, one should remember that at the time of its writing Morgenthau
was experiencing a deep cultural shock from his move from Europe to the
United States and was still haunted by the trauma of his European experi-
ences.7 In America, moreover, he found himself caught between the epis-
temologies of European humanities and their geistesgeschichtliche traditions
and American positivism. This was the same kind of positivist political
thinking and scholarship that Morgenthau had already experienced in
Vienna and that he had heavily criticized in his Habilitation (1934) with
regard to Hans Kelsen’s “pure theory of law”8 and German Staatsrecht in
the Weimar Republic that he was familiar with from his studies at the uni-
versities of Munich, Frankfurt, and Geneva. Now he was encountering it
again, but on a much larger scale—in a nation that had just emerged vic-
torious from World War II and was at the height of its political and
military power.
Further, there are a comprehensive studies of Morgenthau’s intellec-
tual influences9; what can be learned from these is the major influence of
European intellectual thought on his work, particularly the writings of
Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Sigmund
Freud. His stark opposition to Carl Schmitt and Hegelianism is also well
documented. More immediately, there was Reinhold Niebuhr, whom he

met in Chicago in 1944 and with whom he formed a lifelong friendship.
These, as well as the lack of influence of Max Weber (there is almost no
mention of Weber in his entire oeuvre and none in Scientific Man), can be
inferred from his published and unpublished writings, his references, and
his private notes and correspondence.10 And having witnessed the fall of
Weimar Germany, Morgenthau was convinced that positivism could not
deal with, much less negotiate, political questions for which he regarded
the individual human being as the ultimate ontological reference. It was
exactly this “human factor” (as he called it some years later in his Six
Principles of Political Realism (see Behr and Rösch 2012: 38–42)) that
positivism ignored and, much worse, deliberately deleted from political sci-
ence. Ultimately, Morgenthau believed, this would lead to depoliticization
and political apathy of the sort deeply implicated in the fall of the Weimar
Republic and the rise of National Socialism.11 And now he observed simi-
lar tendencies in the country that would be responsible for securing a
postwar settlement—a prospect that disquieted him profoundly,12 espe-
cially as he was personally relieved to have found a new home in the USA
after fleeing the Holocaust.
One can compare, then, the disruption and inner conflict evident in
Scientific Man with the unsettling experience of critical theorists coming
from Frankfurt to Los Angeles and encountering American consumerism
(of which Marcuse’s 1964 book One-Dimensional Man may be the stark-
est expression).13 Similar to the Frankfurt theorists, Morgenthau argued
against the political naïveté of idealism and liberalism14 in that both theo-
ries ignored or downplayed the influence of interests and power in politics
and were blindly optimistic about the progressive betterment of political
society and human beings. There are several other works by Morgenthau
that make these arguments and that are more reflective and profound than
Scientific Man.15 However, Scientific Man most clearly, explicitly, and
fiercely communicates his various fears about these issues.
Voegelin not only shared many of Morgenthau’s early scholarly interests,
for instance, a marked interest in the philosophical and epistemological tra-
dition of German “Geisteswissenschaft” and a distinctly critical interest in
the German and Austrian discourse on the foundations of “Staatslehre” in
general and in the work of his teacher in Vienna, Hans Kelsen, in particu-
lar.16 He also shared Morgenthau’s critique of the idealistic traits particularly
dominating the Anglo-American liberal discourse at the time. His account
of the post-War situation was strongly influenced by his personal experience
with European totalitarianism, especially National Socialism.17 As a conse-

quence of this experience, Voegelin had attained an astute awareness of the
dangers and aggressiveness of totalitarian ideologies and a resolute readiness
to fight any kind of ideological worldview, no matter whether right- or lef-
twing. This anti-ideological attitude on the one hand resulted at times in
oversensitive exaggerations and a lack of differentiation in Voegelin’s assess-
ments of current developments. On the other hand, it enabled him to
sharply identify the problematic tendencies of the zeitgeist, especially those
latent affinities between the totalitarian mass ideologies and some distorted
variants of radical progressivism which prevailed in many Western societies.
To be sure, Voegelin’s perspective on the Anglo-American democratic
societies and their political cultures in general was clearly positive. Contrary
to Morgenthau and to most other émigré scholars, Voegelin was already
well acquainted with the American society’s political and academic culture
when arriving in the USA in 1939, due to two years he had spent at
American universities as a Rockefeller fellow in the 1920s.18 This early
American experience, and particularly the experience of the profound dif-
ferences between the American and the European (especially the German
and Austrian) societies and cultural self-perceptions, was not only a source
of irritation, but also and above all a source of intellectual inspiration for
Voegelin. In retrospect, he considered this early American experience and
the insight ‘that there was a world in which (the) world in which I had
grown up was intellectually, morally, and spiritually irrelevant’, to be of the
utmost importance for his scholarly career. ‘That there should be such a
plurality of worlds had a devastating effect on me. The experience broke
for good (at least I hope it did) my Central European or generally
European provincialism without letting me fall into an American provin-
cialism’ (Voegelin 1989: 32). Consequentially, the American tradition of
thought, especially authors like William James, John Dewey, George
Santayana, and John R. Commons, although Voegelin’s account of them
was often critical, became important sources of inspiration which he
already in the 1920s merged with his reading of European social and polit-
ical philosophy and which he incorporated into the development of his
own understanding of political theory.
The New Science, written some 20 years later and demarcating an impor-
tant step within this intellectual development, is written in the same
European-American spirit. At the same time, the book also reflects the social
and scientific situation at the time of its publication and Voegelin’s specific
position within it, which was different from that of his early first encounter
with American culture. Similar to Morgenthau’s Scientific Man, the New

Science, being Voegelin’s first major monograph written in English and pub-
lished in the USA, can be seen as the real beginning of his scholarly career in
the United States and the beginning of his “growing reputation” as an inter-
nationally recognized author (Hollweck 2007: 3 f.). The book is the result
of a rather long working process the beginning of which can at least be dated
back to the late 1930s when Voegelin, right after having arrived in the USA,
started writing a History of Political Ideas. The aim of this project, which
occupied Voegelin for more than a decade, was to write a comprehensive
introductory textbook with the potential to compete with George Sabine’s
standard History of Political Theory (1937)19 and to serve as an entry ticket
to US academia. Instead of accomplishing this aim, the project resulted in a
vast, highly original, but overall loosely composed and fragmentary manu-
script of some thousand pages. Due to various substantial shifts of Voegelin’s
philosophical perspective, the manuscript remained unpublished.20
The New Science draws from this material, summarizes the theoretical
position which Voegelin had reached by 1950, and pointedly articulates its
critical implications. Instead of rendering the originally intended introduc-
tory textbook which would meet the demands of the US academic and col-
lege market, however, Voegelin’s efforts with the New Science had resulted
into something quite different. Rather than a textbook, the study is an intel-
lectually engaged, highly critical, and often deliberately polemical pamphlet
which, much like Morgenthau’s Scientific Man, was primarily intended as a
calculated intellectual provocation of the US academic discourse at the time,
despite the fact that it still carried the subtitle “An Introduction”.
As such, however, the study did receive broad attention, and not only
in the professional political science discourse, but even in the general pub-
lic. According to an influential review in Time Magazine in March 1953,
the book, by offering ‘a fascinating explanation of the modern intellectual
crisis’ and a ‘quest through the history of Western thought for the culprits
responsible for contemporary confusion’, was immediately applicable for
an engaged journalistic critique of “current events”, such as the current
state of the Cold War, the erroneous US foreign policy in Korea or toward
the USSR in general, the problem of McCarthyism, and the overall failure
of the USA ‘in explaining itself to the world’, due to its propagandists’
inclination ‘to talk about automobiles, bathtubs and pop music’ instead of
‘the great truths of Western culture’ and ‘the institutions of freedom that
reflect those truths’.21
In reading the New Science as an immediate intervention in the US

political debates of the day, while clearly giving it a conservative political
spin, the quoted Time review set the tone that dominated large parts of
the general reception of the book and its author, both in the USA and
internationally. Such a deliberately “loose, truncated”,22 and synoptic
reading is undoubtedly oversimplifying and misrepresents the complexi-
ties of the New Science’s more substantial philosophical arguments. That it
nonetheless quite accurately catches important implications of the book is
suggested by the fact that Voegelin himself was surely surprised by, but
also approved of this immediately practical perception of his study. In his
letter to Time Magazine responding to the review, Voegelin notes:
I would not have thought that my New Science of Politics would attract your
attention. It is a severely theoretical work, and it makes no concessions to
popularity. That a magazine which is meant for the general readers should
try to mediate problems of such complication is indeed extraordinary. And
I can only compliment you on your courage. Moreover, your attempt has
been splendidly successful. You have seen what probably not too many will
see, that the theoretical propositions are applicable to the concrete ques-
tions of our time … I am sure your article will help even professionals in the
field of political science to understand the pragmatic value of my analysis.
(Voegelin 1953: 8)
This comment quite accurately reflects Voegelin’s multi-layered motiva-

tion, especially regarding his critical intentions. As to the general public,
the New Science may be more accessible than Voegelin’s comment is ready
to concede, although his surprise about the public attention it received
was surely sincere. Still, the study offers itself not only for a “popular”, but
also for a “partisan” reading, its broad historical perspective and philo-
sophically demanding language and argumentation notwithstanding. The
New Science is undoubtedly written in the style of a pamphlet and meant
as a public intervention aiming at imminent developments and social phe-
nomena which Voegelin held to be of crucial importance for the present
situation.23 With its combination of an uncompromising critique of mod-
ern progressivism, idealism, and scientism with an equally u ncompromising
plea for a theoretical revival of the classical tradition of political philoso-
phy, the New Science turned out to be perfectly applicable especially for
promoting conservative causes in the heated American public debates and
controversies of the early 1950s.
The study is much less accessible, on the other hand, in terms of its
genuinely scientific integrability or academic accessibility, as it were. In
this respect, Voegelin had apparently more or less completely abandoned
his original intention. Regarding his relation to the US academic dis-
course, by 1950 he had obviously decided, as the New Science clearly indi-
cates, to interpret and play the role of the émigré scholar in terms of
polemical confrontation and intellectual provocation rather than in terms
of disciplinary integration and constructive critical dialogue. The reference
to the “professionals in the field of political science” quoted above is more
telling and actually more equivocal than it might appear at first sight. It
singles out a group of readers from whom Voegelin surely expected reso-
lute rejection rather than immediate approval. For Voegelin, the epochal
intellectual crisis he diagnosed in the New Science was not confined to
Central Europe, but affected also the Western democracies. For Voegelin,
the academic field, particularly the professional social and political science
discourse of the 1950s, displayed the symptoms of this crisis most clearly,
also in the USA.
Among the major targets of his criticism were, similar to Morgenthau’s,
the new variants of scientism allegedly dominating US political science at
the time. Although it is not as elaborately addressed in the New Science as
in Scientific Man, the critique of modern scientism also for Voegelin served
as a major theoretical battlefield on which the role of the émigré scholar
and the critical confrontation with the scientific mainstream in US aca-
demia it implied was to be enacted. In both cases, a closer examination of
this field can therefore help to further clarify the way in which both think-
ers understood this role. Above all, it can clarify to which extent and in
which sense this understanding in both cases is interwoven with substan-
tial theoretical reflections of fundamental philosophical questions. Finally,
it suggests that Morgenthau’s critique, when compared with Voegelin’s,
tends to neglect certain political implications of the problem of scientism
and is therefore not fully aware of the power dimensions of and within the
scientistic movement itself.
The Critique of Scientism

It is safe to say that while Scientific Man is a polemic writing of mainly
assertive and insisting character, other early writings of Morgenthau are
more informative on the theoretical foundations of his critique of scientism
as we find in those writings more elaboration of this position.24 These are
in line with his main propositions in Scientific Man and hence we can for-
mulate that his critique of scientism emerges from and culminates in a
European understanding of political science as Erfahrungswissenschaft.
From this position he then criticizes—in a quite undifferentiated way, as
most of the reviewers of Scientific Man have, too, stressed25—all philo-
sophical positions that would build their ontological, epistemological, and
methodological apparatuses on a priori positions that are neither grounded
in historical studies or human experience and the interpretation of both,
respectively. This relates to three philosophical commitments which
Morgenthau dismisses as they were underpinned by scientific assumptions
about universality and objectivity of knowledge and political agency.26
First, he is critical of rationalist approaches a la Descartes’s “Cogito ergo
sum” that aim to overcome the limitations of human knowledge through
the construction of knowledge of the external world out of ostensibly
indubitable principles possessed inherently by the mind itself. This kind of
rationalist knowledge would claim invulnerability to any kind of skepti-
cism and is supposed to represent the basis of all further knowledge about
the world. Morgenthau promotes a position that is critical with this epis-
temological paradigm and its a priori, experience-independent claims and
assumptions about the world. Political realism in Morgenthau is hence an
anti-Cartesian position which recognizes the mind-independent existence
of an empirical world and human agency within this world.
Second, Morgenthau is also averse to an empiricism which would base
knowledge and beliefs about the (political) world on merely sensually con-
ceived impressions and which would rely, in its assertions about the exis-
tence, constitution, and character of the world, on (ostensibly)
mind-independent, data bruta—that is, methodologically on quantifica-
tion and measurement of social and political phenomena—built on the
hope that through inductive logic there may be some kind of spill-over
from data collection to knowledge and meaning.
And third, Morgenthau’s epistemology, because it recognizes the mind-
independent, however spatio-temporally qualified status of things real,
‘strips mind of its pretensions, but not of its value or greatness … Realism
dethrones the mind, [and at the same time] recognizes mind as chief in the
world’ (Alexander 1960: 186). We here further recognize an anti-idealist
position against the belief in a ‘world in which there exist only minds …
According to [this theory] … the world of objects capable of existing inde-
pendently of a knower … is … rejected’ (Holt et al. 1960: 154–5).
Politically speaking, and in sharp contrast to Morgenthau’s position,
idealism would presume the fabricability and plasticity of the world and
the calculation and plannability of political strategies therein without, as he
argues, taking into account to a sufficiently high degree the concepts of
power, interest, and morality, and the “factual”, but empirically divergent
political constellations which these concepts make cognizable.
In his dismissal of all three positions, Morgenthau is quite uncompro-
mising as he fiercely argues that all attempts that do not operate on an
erfahrungswissenschaftliche foundation would depoliticize, dehumanize,
and degenerate politics and the study of politics through abstract and
technocratic formula.27 Finally, he regards scientism as destroying the
foundations of humanity and promoting the illusion of progress through
social engineering, according to Morgenthau characteristic for US social
sciences and positivism of his time and for Western modernity more gener-
ally.28 Erfahrungswissenschaft, on the opposite, recognizes perennial forces
that penetrate political reality, but require for their understanding context-
specific explanations and hermeneutic methods. This becomes most obvi-
ous in a discussion of power, interest, and morality that Morgenthau
pursues throughout his oeuvre, that is, however, most prominently con-
ducted in his “Six Principles of Realism” (second edition and onwards in
Politics Among Nations).
He here argues, and this nicely summarizes the meaning of erfah-
rungswissenschaftlich as a historiographic and interpretivist approach to
political science, that power, interest, and morality would be the most
helpful and appropriate concepts to study politics, but that their meaning
would run the whole remit of human societies historically and culturally.
Thus, the concepts are epistemologically universal, but ontologically they
take on very different meanings across human history and cultures.
These are the major aspects which together form the more substantial
theoretical background of Morgenthau’s critique of scientism as articu-
lated in Scientific Man. They show that this background mainly consists of
epistemological reflections on the peculiar form of knowledge and insight
which according to Morgenthau is constitutive for a truly realist political
science but widely neglected, misunderstood, or twisted in progressivism
and scientism.
In order to fully understand Morgenthau’s perspective, however, it is
necessary to bring out more clearly the significance of one of the concep-
tual emphases of Morgenthau’s argument that were just mentioned,
namely the conception of power underlying his critique of scientism.
A closer consideration of this aspect renders the surprising insight that
Morgenthau, although he stresses the significance of power as a social and
political factor, does not really focus on power as an analytical concept of

his critique, that is, on the power of knowledge itself. Moreover, the con-
cept of power he applies in Scientific Man turns out to be a grossly simpli-
fied, reduced version of the more differentiated conception he puts forth
in some of his earlier German and French writings (see more below). As a
consequence, Morgenthau particularly fails to bring out the immediately
political implications of the epistemological emphases of his critique of
scientism and their inherent connection with phenomena of power and
domination. This analytical gap of his critique clearly comes to the fore
when we juxtapose his account of scientism with Voegelin’s analysis.
In Voegelin’s interpretation, scientism ‘has remained to this day one of the
strongest gnostic movements in Western society’ (Voegelin [1952] 2000b:
192). In an article on The Origins of Scientism published in 1948 in Social
Research, one of the major journals publishing émigré scholarship at the time
(see Gunnell 1993: 180), Voegelin most pointedly articulates his critique of
this movement. The article deals with the formation of physics as a modern
scientific discipline as it unfolded historically in the discourse among Isaac
Newton, some of his followers and some of his philosophical critics. According
to Voegelin, Newton’s theory of physics, or more precisely, a peculiar inter-
pretation of it is one of the disciplinary places of origin of scientism. His
analysis of this process anticipates a number of aspects of the conceptual
framework of Thomas Kuhn’s ([1962] 2012) classical study on the history of
modern epistemology and applies them in terms of a radical critique of sci-
entism. Voegelin argues that during the discursive formation of physics as a
discipline, certain theological underpinnings of Newton’s perspective were
transformed into the constitutive dogmas and functional theoretical taboos
of the new science. On the basis of this theologico-scientific transformation,
some of Newton’s scientific conceptions successively attained the function of
unquestioned core premises of the new “paradigm” of physics as a “normal”
science (to use the Kuhnian terms). Above all, Newton’s concept of “abso-
lute space”, which at first had served as a philosophically rather weak and
merely heuristically justified assumption, was turned into the core assump-
tion of physics as a scientific discipline (Voegelin 1948: 467 ff.). Voegelin
stresses that this Newtonian concept of space, although it was philosophically
untenable already at the time of its original formulation, served as the
unquenstioned premise of the modern scientific discourse until the early
twentieth century when it was finally corrected by Einstein.
What Voegelin’s genealogy primarily tries to bring to fore, however, are
not merely these epistemological fallacies and unquestioned dogmas,
which add some interesting aspects to Morgenthau’s identification of the
epistemological characteristics of scientism. More importantly, Voegelin

exceeds this analysis of scientism’s problematic epistemology by examin-
ing its immediately social and political implications, or more precisely by
examining the contra-intuitive manner in which the epistemological
aspects of the story are intimately related to ‘the social relevance of sci-
entism as an intellectual attitude’ (Voegelin 1948: 464). According to
Voegelin, the process and constellation of early physics as an emerging
modern scientific discipline must be understood as a social and political
phenomenon, as entailing a practical logic which cannot be contained to
the disciplinary field of physics or any other kind of scientific discipline,
not even to the academic field in general. The scientistic logic is an inher-
ently expansive logic which unfolds dynamics that effect society as a whole.
It is this “social relevance” of the diagnosed Newtonian epistemological
fallacies which turns scientism into a highly dynamic movement with far-
reaching political consequences, and which makes ‘the advance of science
after 1700 (…) the most important single factor in changing the structure
of power and wealth on the global scene’ (Voegelin 1948: 485). Since this
“advance of science” is not merely a scientific, but also a social and politi-
cal development, its consequences are highly ambiguous. It is accompa-
nied by the general victory of “utilitarian rationality” as the socially
dominant form of reasoning and eventually by the “cancerous growth” of
this utilitarian rationality in society in which ‘the rational-utilitarian seg-
ment is expanding so strongly in our civilization that the social realization
of other values is noticeably weakened’ (Voegelin 1948: 486).
But why did ‘what Newton had to say in his definitions of space’ have
such an ‘immeasurable effect on the formation of political ideas’ (Voegelin
1948: 493) and so ‘profoundly affected the political and economic struc-
ture of the western world’ (Voegelin 1948: 484)? According to Voegelin,
it is precisely the epistemological and philosophical weakness of certain
scientistic assumptions which are the ‘sources from which the movement
draws its strength’. During the transformation of Newton’s physics into
Newtonian scientism, ‘a process which we may call the transfer of pathos
from a special pursuit to the existence of man’ (Voegelin 1948: 490), the
epistemological fallacies, so Voegelin argues, reveal their genuinely politi-
cal functionality; they turn out to be necessary fallacies, because they serve
as the crucial political “sources of scientistic effectiveness” (Voegelin 1948:
464). In other words: The scientistic world view’s lack of philosophical
plausibility is but a symptom of its prioritizing of popular effectiveness and
its discursive power.
Insofar as the scientistic world view claims to be of “paradigmatic”

value not only in science, but in society at large, it reveals itself as a politi-
cal rather than a scientific or philosophical movement. The ‘prototypical
result of a theoretical victory for the philosopher and a social victory for
the scientist’ (Voegelin 1948: 464) which the debate between the early
Newtonians and their critics had sheds light for Voegelin not only on a
surprising outcome of a theoretical debate, but, more importantly, on the
general ‘relations between power and the advance of science’ (Voegelin
1948: 484) and hence on the socially and politically repressive undercur-
rent of scientistic progressivism. It reveals an immediately practical logic of
power and domination and the idea of an ever closer interconnection
between knowledge and power as the core principle of scientistic episte-
mologies. Seen from this perspective, the “scientific revolution” of sci-
entism turns out to be a social and political phenomenon from the start, a
quest for power and domination rather than for truth and knowledge:
‘The advancement of science and the rationality of politics are interwoven
in a social process that, in the perspective of a more distant future, will
probably appear as the greatest power orgy in the history of mankind’
(Voegelin 1948: 486; see also 488).
When seen against the background of this pointed thesis of a power-
oriented epistemology and a practical logic of domination through knowl-
edge and discourse as the core principles of scientism, it is fair to say that
Morgenthau’s critique of the same intellectual movements neglects impor-
tant aspects of the problem. His work does deliver an analysis of power in
politics, but does not link power to knowledge and/or knowledge move-
ments, that is, concretely to the movements he so vehemently criticized.
As a consequence, he does not point explicitly to the political and aca-
demic power games of and within these movements. He occasionally
alludes to these problems or at least touches upon the question of the
reasons for the “social effectiveness” of scientism,29 but without elaborat-
ing these questions. While Morgenthau’s plea for a power-oriented politi-
cal theory was aimed against the unrealistic naïvety of the various idealistic
and progressivist movements he criticized, he himself seems to have over-
seen the close connection between the epistemological emphases of his
critique with certain power phenomena, and therefore also the latent but
crucial role of power within these very movements (a role which was only
concealed by their allegedly naïve, optimistic rhetoric).
This neglect may be no mere coincidence, but rather the result of a
surprisingly narrow and simplified conceptualization of power itself which
Morgenthau applied in Scientific Man—a simplification, by the way, which

was to become the conceptual model for his further works. As noted
above, Scientific Man’s origins go back to a talk Morgenthau gave in 1940,
just seven years after publication of his French book, La Notion du
“Politique”.30 Why is this important? Because, simply and bafflingly, in
Scientific Man and in all further English writings, published and unpub-
lished, Morgenthau ignores the important distinction that he meticulously
made in La Notion du “Politique” between “pouvoir” and “puissance”—
that is, between an analytical, empirical concept of power as domination
and a normative concept of power as the capability to act and to enact
something politically.31 What were two cautiously distinguished concepts
just a few years earlier became conflated into one term, the English
“power”, and this despite the possibility of expressing this distinction in
English (as the word “puissance” exists in the English language). Even if
not commonly used, the word was available to Morgenthau, especially
since he wrote using an English dictionary in the first years after his arrival
in the United States.32 Still, in his English writings Morgenthau omits and
ignores this terminologically and philosophically important distinction
that he learned primarily through his reading of Nietzsche, who distin-
guished between Macht and Kraft.
We suspect that a continuation of this differentiation (which resembles
the more recent conceptual distinction between power over and power to)
would have enabled Morgenthau to link his sociology of political power to
a sociology of (the power of) knowledge and hence to include those
aspects into his perspective which were emphasized by Voegelin. Instead,
the conceptual collapse of “pouvoir” and “puissance” into merely “power”
was read, however wrongly, as an only realpolitik-dimension in his think-
ing, and such he was wrongly received by the majority of US political sci-
ence. This leads us back to the personal background of Morgenthau’s as
well as Voegelin’s critique.
Self-localizations
It is quite obvious that Morgenthau’s reception in the USA was particu-
larly colored by his language of power. Usually, the IR narrative holds
that, as a “Realist”, he would have conceptualized power as a bellicose,
aggressive, and, if need be, canny domination (here, a certain reading of
Machiavelli’s Prince is often mistakenly associated with Morgenthau33).
The reception and influence of his work in general and of Scientific Man
in particular might have been quite different had he continued to
c onceptually contrast the two types of power outlined above. And one can
easily imagine very different trajectories in IR theory in general, and in the
scholarship on Morgenthau’s political thought more specifically, had he
made this distinction—one which he admits in private correspondence he
should have made.34
As to his self-perception and self-localization as a scholar, it almost
seems as if his conceptual neglect of the connection between power and
knowledge is reflected in his personal relation to the academic field and in
the course which the reception of his work took. Regarding the latter,
Morgenthau was made the founder of a paradigm in IR theory which in
its further development left behind most of those conceptual and
theoretical questions which he had emphasized as crucial aspects of his
understanding of political realism. It would surely be going too far to
interpret his complaints about certain misreadings of his texts during this
process as naïvety about academia as a power field. But there is not much
published evidence that Morgenthau perceived his role as an émigré
scholar, too, in terms of academic power games among schools and camps
of thought, competing over influence and resources, trying to establish
themselves against others, and at times also promoting peculiar political
interests and worldviews.35
Voegelin, in contrast, seems to have been fully aware of the fact that his
critical analysis of the power-oriented epistemologies of scientistic move-
ments had immediately practical implications for his role as an academic in
general and as an émigré scholar in particular. He seems to have con-
sciously decided to simply reject to seriously participate in what he per-
ceived as academic power games and as the kind of politicization of
scholarship which his analysis indicated as a major symptom of the modern
intellectual crisis. Instead, he chose to enact the role of the critic in terms
of self-distancing and provocation, at times thereby approaching the atti-
tude if not of a general “cultural”, then at least of some kind of a “scien-
tific pessimism”. His historical analysis from 1948 outlined above, for
instance, ends with a deeply pessimistic diagnosis of the current situation.
He stresses that scientism’s ‘destructive effects defy repair in any visible
future’ (Voegelin 1948: 490) and concludes:
That in the end, through Einstein, the foundations of physics were revised
(…) is an important event in the history of science, but it has, for the
moment at least, no visible social or political importance. The damage of
scientism is done. As a philosophical friend aptly phrased it, the insane have
succeeded in locking the sane in the asylum. From this asylum no physical
escape is possible; as a consequence of the interlocking of science and social
power, the political tentacles of scientistic civilization reach into every nook
and corner of an industrialized society; and with increasing effectiveness
they stretch over the whole globe. There exist only differences, though very
important ones, in the various regions of the global asylum with regard to
the possibility of personal escape into the freedom of the spirit. What is left
is hope – but hope should not obscure the realistic insight that we who are
living today shall never experience freedom of the spirit in society. (Voegelin
1948: 494)
This radically pessimistic diagnosis—which, by the way, shares astounding

conceptual parallels not only with Kuhn’s later historical epistemology,
but also with Michel Foucault’s analyses of the relation between power
and knowledge in modernity36—articulates the results of a theoretical
analysis of broad tendencies within long historical developments and pro-
cesses. But it can surely also be read in more personal terms, as articulating
Voegelin’s perception of his time and personal environment and of his
position within it. It undoubtedly reflects traits of his genuine interpreta-
tion of the émigré scholar’s position from which the New Science as a
public intervention is written. From this interpretation’s perspective,
American society and academia might have been primarily perceived by
Voegelin as a region within the global asylum which provided, in contrast
to most other regions, most favorable possibilities of “personal escape into
the freedom of the spirit”—a difference of the utmost importance from
Voegelin’s point of view, and surely one of the most valuable traits for him
of the émigré existence.
In terms of active practical self-localization, this peculiar kind of free-
dom may be reflected, for instance, in a certain serenity Voegelin demon-
strated especially in his relation to the academic community surrounding
him, an attitude which often resulted in an ironic, sometimes almost a
philosophical caricaturist’s perspective.37 This ironic, somewhat
equanimous attitude did not suggest complete “inner emigration” as the
logical consequence of the émigré’s position. To the contrary, it did imply
specific obligations regarding the social role of the critical political
thinker.38 Realistically perceived, however, among these obligations,
according to Voegelin, the integration of his work into the mainstream of
the academic discourse could not have the highest priority. They rather
entailed the duty to seize the freedom of the émigré’s position for critical
intellectual provocations, to think and write, maybe for a more or less

“distant future” or, as his motto to the New Science puts it, to let posterity
‘know we have not loosely through silence permitted things to pass away
as in a dream’ (Voegelin [1952] 2000b: 76), and to otherwise contribute
to the potential revival of a “science of substance” (Voegelin 1948: 463)
which Voegelin, despite his pessimism, considered to have a real chance in
some “regions” of the contemporary scientific discourse.39
In the case of Morgenthau, these commitments show a lifelong conti-
nuity and coherence and indeed one may speculate whether he—very
much opposite to Voegelin who was certainly the more serious and pro-
found thinker—has given up to communicate his philosophical positions
to US academia and public, even if in the form of polemical provocations,
especially after mainly negative reviews of Scientific Man in the first years
after its publication,40 and rather focused his work from the 1950s onwards
mostly on commentaries on US foreign and domestic and international
politics. At least we do not observe new philosophical findings and
positions in his work after his theoretically most productive period in the
1940s and 1950s.
We can thus observe that Scientific Man, despite all its ambivalences, is
significant as a review and critique of the political-philosophical landscape
of the mid-twentieth century, as well as of the discipline of International
Relations during this time. Classical realism—of which Morgenthau’s was
the most prominent voice—was arguably opposed to what became main-
stream IR theory.41 Moreover, Morgenthau both anticipated and ante-
dated many important commitments that became popular and that would
be emphasized many years later in “poststructuralist” IR.42 Third, vital
impulses for the foundation of American IR came about more in terms of
how Morgenthau was perceived and (mis)read, rather than from what he
actually said and wrote.43
Regarding their concrete practical consequences, both Morgenthau’s
and Voegelin’s ways of personal interpretation and enactment of the role
of the émigré scholar had ambiguous results. Obviously, neither
Morgenthau’s nor Voegelin’s intellectual interventions successfully nego-
tiated or built bridges between a European geistesgeschichtliche orientation
and US social sciences. Their uncompromising and polemical reactions to
the behaviorist and positivist currents in US academia themselves contrib-
uted to defeating the purpose of a constructive synthesis, if it ever was on
their mind and objectively possible. In the end, it was not them who
decided about the peculiar way in which their thought was integrated into
the broader academic discourses. Both works were often instrumentalized

to foster intellectual ends and projects which surely did not completely
correspond to their own major concerns, interests, and theoretical priori-
ties. Voegelin’s attempts to avoid being made an icon of a rather narrow
political conservatism were only partly successful, and often had the result
of a certain marginalization of his oeuvre, despite its general recognition
as an eminent, classical contribution to twentieth-century political phi-
losophy. Morgenthau was made a classic in IR theory “for the wrong rea-
sons” and as such often reduced to a quotable academic figure. Both did
not decide to be read this way. But it is fair to say that both, in their
peculiar modes of intellectual self-localization, in a way unwillingly helped
to prepare the ground for just these kinds of intellectual co-options. This,
of course, does not hinder a fresh reading of their works or a reconsidera-
tion of the most substantial of their theoretical contributions.
Notes
1. Morgenthau, Hans J. (1953), “Letter to Eric Voegelin”, 10th June
(Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, Container
60); see also Rösch (2014a: 6).
2. This is not to ignore that there are, of course, important differences
between Morgenthau’s “classical” and Voegelin’s “spiritual realism”. On
the latter see Gebhardt (1981).
3. On the anthropological foundations of Voegelin’s political theory see
Braach (2003); on the significance of anthropological arguments in
Morgenthau see Morgenthau himself (1930); also Williams (2004).
4. See Eccel and Godefroy (2016) and Sigwart (2016).
5. On Voegelin’s Gnosticism thesis see Opitz (1999), Hollweck (1999), and
Vondung (2016); for a distinctly critical interpretation of Voegelin’s thesis
see Versluis (2006: 69–84).
6. Published and unpublished, in German, French, and English. This termi-
nological and conceptual thoroughness is most explicit in his doctoral and
post-doctoral (“Habilitation”) thesis and two unpublished manuscripts
written in German; see Morgenthau (1929, 1930, 1934a, b).
7. See hereto also the paper by Felix Roesch in this volume, his analysis of
Morgenthau’s “Erschütterung der Seele” as well as Morgenthau’s odyssey
through Europe to flee the anti-Semitism and the Holocaust in Europe.
8. Morgenthau (1934a), Jütersonke (2010).
9. Amstrup (1978), Barkawi (1998), Brown (2007), Cesa (2009), Frei (2001),
Koskenniemi (2000), Lang (2004), Mollov (2002), Molloy (2009), Rice
(2008), Scheuerman (2007b), Schuett (2010), Tjalve (2008), Wong (2000).
10. Morgenthau was sometimes ignorant of bibliographical precision in his

references as well as sloppy when it came to historical details—a painful
experience that I and my co-editor Felix Roesch had to undergo when
editing his 1933 book “La notion du politique” and preparing the first
English edition (as The Concept of the Political). On the other hand,
Morgenthau was a “paper saver” (Frei 2001: 4), and a shell that had hit
Morgenthau’s apartment in Madrid in 1936 did not destroy his papers,
which he only got back after years to his great relief as he confessed to
Rafael Altamira on March 5, 1945 (HJM-Archive 3). His private notes and
correspondence are a valuable source to reconstruct his political thought;
we also find here no significant reference to Max Weber. This observation
stands in stark contrast to Turner and Mazur’s argument of Morgenthau as
a Weberian methodologist; see Turner and Mazur (2009).
11. See Morgenthau’s Concept of the Political where this is strongest; also to
Fritz Ringer and the problem of the Weimar Mandarins (Ringer 1969);
also this anti-positivist argument is similar to, but much earlier than, how-
ever, completely ignored by post-structuralist authors, see, for example,
Edkins (1999).
12. See here most explicitly in Scientific Man, Chapter One, “The Challenge of
Fascism”, p.6 onwards.
13. Morgenthau’s later oeuvre follows Marcuse with regard to consumerism,
modernity, nuclear weapons (the “political-industrial-military complex”
more widely), and mass society (see, for example, Morgenthau 1973,
1977).
14. Morgenthau is politically committed to the idea of liberal society and lib-
eralism (see Hall 2011), but criticized liberal idealism as an epistemological
position. More on this, see Behr (2013) and Behr and Roesch (2012).
15. Like “Positivism, Functionalism, and International Law”, 1940; “The
Limitations of Science and the Problem of Social Planning”, 1944; “The
Scientific Solution of Social Conflicts”, 1945; “Reflections on the State of
Political Science”, 1955; “Modern Science and Political Power”, 1964.
16. See Voegelin (1925, 1927, 1932).
17. See more elaborately Sigwart (2005: 187 ff).
18. On Voegelin’s early intellectual biography see Sandoz (2000), Cooper
(2009), and Sigwart (2005).
19. See Voegelin’s juxtaposition of his hermeneutic methodological principles
with those applied by Sabine in Voegelin ([1944]2000): 162 ff.
20. It is published now in the volumes 19–26 of the Collected Works of Eric
Voegelin.
21. The quotations are from the Article “Journalism and Joachim’s Children”
in Time, March 9, 1953: 57 and 60.
22. Ibid.
23. See especially the final chapter of the New Science (Voegelin [1952] 2000:
220 ff.).
24. See above footnote 6; also Morgenthau (1940, 1944, 1945).
25. Scientific Man received wide reviews in important history, law, philoso-
phy, economy, and political science journals, some of which were devas-
tating (such as Nagel 1947) and even those who were in agreement with
Morgenthau’s main arguments (such as Frank 1948) dismissed his
polemic style, overgeneralizations, and radicalness; see also Graubard
(1948), Anderson (1947), Simon (1947), Fainsod (1947), de Visme
Williamson (1947), Briggs (1947), Bryson (1947), Desch (1947), and
Gooch (1947).
26. See for further discussions also Behr (2013), Holt et al. (1960), Lebow
(2003), and Scheuerman (2007).
27. See especially chapters V and VI in Scientific Man; also Morgenthau On the
State of Political Science (1955).
28. See hereto more specific Morgenthau (1944).
29. See, for example, Morgenthau (1946: 19 f., 29, 35 f., 53 ff). Likewise, we
find an important reference to the sociology of knowledge of Karl
Mannheim and an argument in Morgenthau (in 1955) for a culturally situ-
ated form of knowledge analysis and knowledge production; from both it
would have been a possible step to conclude the power of knowledge and
to a sociology of the power of knowledge.
30. English as The Concept of the Political (2012).
31. Morgenthau utilizes the distinction in his German writings, foremost
his PhD thesis, where he writes about “Macht” (in the meaning of
“pouvoir”) and “Kraft” (as “puissance”). For an excellent discussion of
both concepts of “power”, see Rösch (2014b); also Morgenthau, “Love
and Power” (1962).
32. Correspondence between the author and Morgenthau’s daughter, Susanna,
and son, Mathew, in 2010 and 2011 during the preparation of The Concept
of the Political.
33. Morgenthau’s reading of Machiavelli can indeed be seen in “The
Machiavellian Utopia”, Ethics 55, no. 2 (1945), pp. 145–47; on Machiavelli,
see, among others, Behr, A History of International Political Theory, ch.
II.2.1.
34. Letter to Michael Oakeshott, May 22, 1948 (Washington, DC: Library of
Congress, Manuscript Division, Container 33).
35. We do have, however, some utterances by him in private correspondence
that indicate critical awareness of respective institutional dynamics as in the
above referenced letter to Michael Oakshott, but also to Karl Gottfried
Kindermann, then professor on international relations at the University of
Munich.
36. These parallels regard not only the astute focus on the conceptual implica-
tions of the modern understanding of “space” (see Foucault 1984) and the
close relation between knowledge and power especially in modern science
(see, for a summary of Foucault’s perspective on this relation, Rouse
2003), but also the pointed critique of the “scientistic-utilitarian dream” of
a prison- or asylum-like organization of modern society which Voegelin,
like Foucault, finds most clearly articulated in the work of Jeremy Bentham
(Voegelin 1948: 494, Fn 48).
37. The most expressive articulation of this attitude can be found in a letter
Voegelin wrote in 1976 to the organizer of a behaviorist conference at the
University of Southern California on “the ethics of behavior control” to
which he had also invited Voegelin, who at the time was fellow at Stanford
University. According to the invitation letter the conference focused ‘on
voluntary, reversible, non-addictive methods of producing “artificial” hap-
piness, goodness, and increased human capacity through chemical and
electrical stimulation of the brain, biofeedback, sleep and memory enhance-
ment, operant conditioning etc.’ and on the attempt to ‘produce genuinely
new insights and ideas regarding the technologies of experience and behav-
ior control and their legitimate use by individuals in a democratic society’.
Voegelin’s response a few months later expresses his gratitude for the
opportunity to witness “behaviorists in action” and contains a highly
ironic, partly even sarcastic eight-page experience report. The report
sketches quite the same constellation as his historical analysis of the
“Origins of scientism” three decades earlier, including the diagnoses of a
fundamental “reductionist fallacy” as the constitutive premise of the scien-
tistic worldview, of the merging of knowledge and power as its epistemo-
logical core principle, its protection against critique by discursive ‘tactics of
prohibiting the use of philosophical language’, and the inevitable outcome
of a ‘more or less abject submission of the representatives of Western intel-
lectual and spiritual culture to the demands of the ideologists’ (Henry
Clark to Eric Voegelin, December 3, 1975, in: Voegelin Papers, Hoover
Archive at Stanford University, Box 9, Folder 17.). Eric Voegelin to Henry
Clark, February 21, 1976 (ibid.).
38. See also Gebhardt (1997).
39. On these regions and Voegelin’s understanding of “substantive science”
see Voegelin (2007: 142 ff. and 193 ff).
40. See above footnote 26.
41. Here it appears that Morgenthau got celebrated (as well as critiqued) by
many for the wrong reasons; see Behr and Roesch (2012: 29, 30).
42. See Ashley (1981), Behr and Roesch (2012), and Levine (2013).
43. With regard to this, see his letter to Michael Oakshott from May 22, 1948,
Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, Container
33) as well as Behr (2009, 2010).
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Politics Among Nations: A Book for America
Christoph Frei
Introduction: A Book for America

On 11 December 1941, under the impact of the Japanese attack on Pearl
Harbor, Hans Morgenthau wrote a friend: “The events of this week have
made me feel more intensely than ever before, on the one hand, the futility
of my present occupation [at the University of Kansas City—CF], and, on
the other, the duty to put whatever faculties I may have at the disposal of
the community.”1 Eager to do his share, he tried to enlist in the army but
was rejected on physical grounds. He was also turned down by state and
federal government agencies, though he had become a naturalized
American citizen and even though he had passed the bar examination in
Missouri for the very purpose of increasing his chances. But he was not
sorry, on the contrary. He had always hoped to be able to avoid a change
of profession and to make a useful contribution to his original field of
expertise. “I should be glad to do research which would contribute some-
thing worthwhile to the solution of the problems with which this country
is at present confronted.”2 Desperately seeking an academic position at the
time, Morgenthau wrote letters to over a hundred universities in the coun-
try. It was not until August of 1943, however, and with an appointment at
the University of Chicago, that he was able to start making good on his
C. Frei (*)
University of St. Gallen, St. Gallen, Switzerland

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67498-8_3
56 C. FREI
pledge—and to do so as a scholar. From just 1946 to 1951 alone, he pub-

lished six books and thirty-four articles, in addition to numerous com-
mentaries and reviews.3
When introducing Politics Among Nations to his readers in the fall of
1948, he was explicit about the volume’s ultimate purpose. His book was
neither “disinterested” nor did it mean to offer “knowledge for its own
sake.” Even though the war was over, the author meant to render both a
real and practical service to his fellow countrymen. A series of factors had
“completely reversed” the geopolitical status of the United States. It now
held a position of predominant power in the world, and hence of foremost
responsibility. Therefore, “the understanding of the forces that mold
international politics and of the factors that determine its course has
become more than an interesting intellectual occupation. It has become a
vital necessity” (Morgenthau 1948: 7–8).
Much like the earlier Scientific Man vs. Power Politics (1946) and the
later In Defense of the National Interest (1951), Politics Among Nations
(1948) was written specifically for an American audience—one that was
meant to include students of international politics as well as practitioners
in the foreign policy community. As the author saw it, the United States
was ill-prepared for the challenges that lay ahead. Historically prone to
over-optimism, Americans were likely to get the answers wrong on funda-
mental questions. They suffered from a peculiar disease that had its origins
in mistaken philosophical assumptions and thus extended to all realms of
thought and life. Typical symptoms such as legalism, moralism, and per-
fectionism were easy to detect, and in each of these “isms” Morgenthau
recognized an intellectual fallacy, which he set out to correct.
In those years, he thought of himself not only as an analyst but also as
a doctor who could cure that peculiar disease by having recourse to the full
spectrum of therapeutic options. While Scientific Man had been the result
of an intense confrontation with modes of thinking that were diametrically
opposed to his own, and whereas In Defense of the National Interest would
focus on foreign policy and practical applications, Politics Among Nations
offered the core concepts and central theses of Morgenthau’s mature
international relations theory. Upon publication in September 1948, the
treatise was promptly adopted as a textbook for foreign policy and inter-
national relations courses at Columbia, Harvard, Princeton, and Yale.
Ninety colleges throughout the United States would follow suit within
seven months. By 1955, 40,000 copies had been sold in the United States
alone, and by 1968 sales would reach 160,000.
POLITICS AMONG NATIONS: A BOOK FOR AMERICA 57
Clearly, then, Politics Among Nations did reach its intended American
audience. But is it an American book—and if so, to what extent? The evi-
dence is mixed. On the one hand, this comprehensive inquiry best illus-
trates the consistent way in which Morgenthau made use of conceptual
components that he had himself developed or adopted into his work prior
to his arrival in the United States. Based on the evidence, it is, in fact, fair
to say that the basic structure of the book as well as its broad line of argu-
ment was ready by 1938. On the other hand, communicating legal and
political theory as developed in Europe to an American audience required
both adaptation and the inclusion of examples and sets of experience that
were familiar to it. While there is little ground for imagining that
Morgenthau (in his mid-forties by 1948) would reinvent himself in the
process, it is equally implausible to assume that the process would have no
impact on the author and his work. In what follows, I will first address the
distinctly European origins of Politics Among Nations and substantiate the
claim that the basic structure of the book was ready ten years prior to its
publication. In a second step, I will shed light on how concepts and com-
ponents adopted in Europe were gradually enlarged and amended at the
University of Chicago. Moving on from context to text, I will then recall
the book’s main line of argument and conclude by complementing the
contextual picture, including Morgenthau’s assessment of his own
contribution.
Twenty Years in the Making

Morgenthau’s early academic endeavors developed out of an active rebel-
lion against the sort of scientific work he encountered at German universi-
ties, and particularly in the law faculties, first as a student, then as a doctoral
candidate, and finally as a young scholar in his own right (Amstrup 1978;
Frei 2001; Gangl 2009; Jütersonke 2010; Rösch 2015b; Frei 2016). While
the proponents of the dominant positivist school of jurisprudence were
determined to keep it clear of all political or sociological entanglement, a
growing number of scholars held that political and social aspects should be
incorporated. Among them were established scholars such as Rudolf Smend,
Carl Schmitt, and Hermann Heller. Several alternative approaches surfaced,
all of them aiming to unshackle German Staatslehre (conceived at the time
as an inclusive blend of public and international law) from the narrow cage
of legal reasoning. This great debate provided the backdrop for Morgenthau’s
early work. The self-imposed challenge before him was to develop nothing
58 C. FREI
less than his own theory of the state, one “grounded in experience,” as he
put it in his inaugural academic lecture, held in spring 1932 before the law
faculty of the University of Geneva (Morgenthau 1932a: 28).
The text of that lecture, polemical in tone and programmatic in con-
tent, not only outlines where the young scholar stood at the time, but also
what he intended to accomplish in his chosen field, that is, a theory
“grounded in experience” to grasp the reality of the state as well as the
reality of relations among states. Morgenthau was eager to do better than
old-fashioned positivists who had withdrawn from reality; to do better also
than those rival innovators who had “stopped midway.” Driven by such
ambitions, he set out to explore new territory, “to introduce new ele-
ments,” “to place theory on a new foundation.” All of these terms appear
in a “work plan” written a few months after the inaugural lecture offered
at Geneva (Morgenthau 1932c).
There is no need to dig any deeper into Morgenthau’s early books and
manuscripts in the present context. Suffice it to say that the energy the
young legal scholar invested in incorporating extra-legal elements
increased over time. By the mid-1930s, his conceptual framework—a the-
ory grounded in experience—was beginning to take shape, even though
its components were still scattered about in various papers. Compared
with both his doctoral dissertation (1929) and his Habilitation (1934),
heuristic priorities were conspicuously changed. In the “political” con-
ceived as an innate human impulse, and in “politics” conceived as a strug-
gle for power, Morgenthau had by now found “the linchpin of all endeavors
in this world,” “the raw material of the social world.”4 For the purpose of
understanding the social arena both within and among states, the analysis
of politics henceforth had to precede the analysis of legal and other nor-
mative constraints. Politics was the primary natural and ubiquitous social
phenomenon, whereas endeavors to contain and restrain politics were
bound to remain contingent and precarious.
Seeking power, but also seeking peace: the dyadic architecture of
Morgenthau’s 1948 theory of international relations first shimmers
through here. Note the European context, however. In fact, from every
published and unpublished manuscript that the young scholar wrote
between 1929 and 1937, straight lines lead to attempts at either analyzing
the struggle for power (politics in its sources and manifestations) or under-
standing normative systems and social mechanisms to keep that struggle
within tolerable bounds.5 Two permanent features of humanity’s collective
drama had thus captured this young scholar’s full attention. And yes, both
of them would return many years later in the subtitle of Politics Among
Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace.
We are well advised to remember that for Morgenthau, understanding
these issues went beyond an intellectual exercise. They touched upon the
core of his personal existence. By the end of 1934, he was homeless, job-
less, and without financial resources. On the strength of his experience and
observations, he was convinced that the worst still lay ahead. All expecta-
tions that international law in general and the League of Nations in par-
ticular might play a more positive role were being shattered with brutal
consistency. By the spring of 1936, Morgenthau (then in Madrid), saw
with frightening clarity the prospect of politics unleashed, freed once again
from effective normative constraints. What lay ahead was another war at
worst, a precarious balance of power at best: “The very existence of inter-
national law today depends exclusively on this equilibrium” (Morgenthau
1935a: 827). In light of such prospects, there was a dire need for accom-
modation in the short run (read “diplomacy”) and for structural transfor-
mation in the long run (read “world state” conceived as a rational
desideratum). Any reader familiar with Politics Among Nations will recog-
nize these postulates. Back in 1934 and 1935, however, the various com-
ponents of Morgenthau’s framework were still without formal connection,
just loosely tied together, in his words, as a théorie réaliste (1936: 20).
But how eager he was at the time to interlock the various components
of his framework so as to bring them all into play! “The project occupies
myself since the beginning of my scientific activities,” Morgenthau wrote
upon arriving in the United States in 1937 (Frei 2001: 208). In fact, he
had promised a comprehensive synopsis as early as 1933, and kept reiterat-
ing this promise in subsequent years—“malgré la misère de l’époque”
(Morgenthau 1933a: 9, 1934a: 141). The self-proclaimed character of the
project as a summa, drawing on a broad range of earlier contributions, is
conspicuous throughout. To offer just one example: “The project I hope
to realize with the aid of a fellowship I have been working on since 1927
[i.e., the beginning of the dissertation project—CF], and all my preceding
publications touch upon one or another of the problems with which this
project deals” (Morgenthau 1938b). Thus the synopsis in question was to
be neither a theory of international law nor a theory of politics. Rather, it
was meant to be a comprehensive, interdisciplinary theory, one grasping
the workings and mutual dependencies of politics; of moral, social, legal
norms; and of ideology in the context of an anarchic system of nation
states (thus already 1933a: 9).
60 C. FREI
An outline dating from summer 1938 and written in broken English

unmistakably contains the basic features of what was to become Politics
Among Nations. Ten years prior to publication, the author had an approxi-
mate—not a detailed—architecture of his great synopsis in mind, and this
architecture did include a main, broad line of argument as well as a num-
ber of essential building blocks (Morgenthau 1938a: “Plan for Work”). By
then, many of these key components already had a history of their own.
Based on Morgenthau’s early writings, it is possible to trace them one by
one. They include the concept of the political and politics in general
(1929a, 1930a, 1930b, 1932b, 1933a); the notorious triad of maintain-
ing, increasing, and demonstrating power (1933a); the policies of status
quo, imperialism, and prestige (1933a); the function of ideology (1929a,
1930b, 1932b, 1933a); political limitations of power: the balance of
power (1933a, 1934a, 1935a); normative limitations of power: ethics,
mores, and law (1934a, 1935a); the effectiveness of international law and
international morality and world public opinion (1934a, 1935b, 1935c,
1937); the limits of the judicial function in international relations (1929a,
1933a); sovereignty and anarchy (1934a, 1935a, 1937); the limited
potential of international organization (1929a, 1933a, 1933b); peace
through transformation, the world state (1934a); and peace through
accommodation, diplomacy (1929a, 1929b, 1934a).
As seen from the 1938 outline: whereas they were dispersed in
Morgenthau’s previous German, French, and Spanish writings, all of these
components would come together in Politics Among Nations. The founda-
tions of Morgenthau’s “théorie réaliste” (1936: 20) had been laid out and
gradually developed in Frankfurt, Geneva, Madrid, Bolzano, and Paris.
Beyond his doctoral dissertation on Internationale Rechtspflege (1929a),
the more important analytical works include: Über die Herkunft des
Politischen aus dem Wesen des Menschen (Manuscript, 1930b), Der
Kampf der deutschen Staatslehre um die Wirklichkeit des Staates
(Manuscript, 1932a), La notion du politique et la théorie des différends inter-
nationaux (1933a), Die Wirklichkeit des Völkerbundes (1933b), La réalité
des normes (1934a), and Théorie des sanctions internationales (1935a).
From Theory to Textbook: Finalizing the Manuscript

“I expect to complete the project in one year,” the expatriate refugee had
written in his 1938 “Plan for Work.” Why, then, did he take so long to
finish unfinished business after arriving in the United States? A first reason
relates to difficult personal circumstances. From 1937 up until 1943,

Morgenthau and his wife were struggling to survive one day at a time, first
in New York City (1937–39), then in Kansas City (1939–43), where a
huge teaching load turned Morgenthau into a slave of sorts. Only in
Chicago did he find at last what he had been denied in years of involuntary
wanderings, that is, an orderly existence built on permanence. In the ensu-
ing period, a favorable environment and his renewed capacity to focus
combined to set off a productivity that stood in sharp contrast to the plod-
ding drudgery of the preceding years.
A second reason for taking more time relates to his great project itself,
to the manner it evolved in the new context. For years, Morgenthau had
deemed his comprehensive synopsis to be a follow-up to his earlier contri-
butions. As such, it was meant to be a sophisticated theory, an interdisci-
plinary social science avant la lettre, so to speak, addressed to an academic
community of cognoscenti. But in the United States, the European scholar
was confronted with a target audience whose intellectual and experiential
horizon differed sharply from his own. His publisher Alfred A. Knopf
immediately conceived the projected volume as a textbook for students
and held that it was to be formatted and marketed as such. Independent
reviewers, too, recommended adapting the material to the structure and
style of a textbook (Rösch 2015a: 177; Rohde 2004: 203).
At first, Morgenthau held out against the idea, but came around once
he learned more about the target market (or, in academic terminology, the
theoretical environment). Other authors had undoubtedly made substan-
tial contributions: Frederick Schuman with International Politics (third
edition, 1941); Nicholas Spykman with America’s Strategy in World
Politics (1942); and, most recently, Edward H. Carr with The Twenty
Years’ Crisis (second edition, 1946). In terms of scope, of substance and
systematic reach, however, none of these contributions came even close to
what Morgenthau had in mind. “There is indeed an urgent need for a
textbook in the field which does not try to comment on current events
(…), but which endeavors to lay down the basic principles which control
the relations of nations with each other,” he wrote in February 1945.6 The
further he advanced with his own project, the more confident Morgenthau
became in light of the sheer scope of his own theory. “This book will differ
from the traditional textbooks in the field as an automobile differs from a
horse and buggy,” he wrote to his editor Roger Shugg over at Alfred
A. Knopf’s. “I am sure that the book will receive the audience which both
of us want it to have.”7
62 C. FREI
It is worth noting both the authors and “the field” mentioned by

Morgenthau when discussing the quality of scholarly contributions pre-
ceding his own. In this crucial respect, his new academic environment had
an undeniable impact on Morgenthau. Back in Germany he had started
out as a jurist. Over the ensuing years he would gradually turn into a
Wirklichkeitswissenschaftler, a passionate searcher of reality keen on
grounding theory in experience. At the University of Chicago, Morgenthau
found and adopted not only a new institutional home but also a suitable
professional identity, that of the political scientist.8 In terms of the German
jurist’s academic acculturation, his identification with political science
rather than jurisprudence is more than a minor detail. Its early origins
notwithstanding, Politics Among Nations was meant as a contribution not
to legal scholarship, but to what we call international relations theory
today.
Prior to publication, much work remained to be done both in sub-
stance and form. To be sure, much substance was ready. Politics Among
Nations includes countless passages that are merely modified passages as
translated from earlier works. Morgenthau’s well-known narrative around
“politics as a struggle for power” is but one example that goes to show
how the author was able to make use of ready-made components in put-
ting the manuscript together. The respective passage offering a typology
of political action in Politics Among Nations (1948: 53) is really an English
translation of the corresponding passage in the original version
(Morgenthau 1933a: 61). Other examples are legion.
In most instances, however, preparing the manuscript went beyond
mere reformulation, as it entailed expansion and the inclusion of genu-
inely new material. Relevant post-1938 developments had to be incorpo-
rated. In this regard, notable examples include the United Nations (latest
attempts at “international government”), UNESCO (attempts at building
“world community”), or the more recent evolution of the global balance
of power (toward bipolarity). Step by step, the conceptual framework that
the European scholar had brought along was thus updated, amended,
and, above all, illustrated everywhere with elements from diplomatic his-
tory, but also from military, social, and economic history. Adapting
demanding, abstract material to college students required the inclusion of
examples that were accessible, if not familiar to them. Finding and fine-
tuning such examples, in turn, required time-consuming research. In the
initial stages, valuable help was provided by Alfred Hotz. “The main bur-
den of assistance,” however, fell upon Kenneth W. Thompson “who
brought to his task an extraordinary measure of ability and devotion,” as

Morgenthau put it in the foreword of Politics Among Nations (1948:
Foreword, vii). Wherever possible, references were made to Anglo-Saxon
and American authors. While it is worth mentioning that this “process of
Americanization” (Jütersonke 2010: 183, Shilliam 2009: 194) entailed
anglicizing German sources, it should also be recognized that not all (!)
components of Morgenthau’s “théorie réaliste” as developed in Europe
were of specific German origin in the first place. Think of legal theory, for
example, where Morgenthau’s authorities had always included French and
British scholars, from Adhémar Esmain down to Hersch Lauterpacht.
At Chicago, the draft manuscript developed through a peculiar kind of
assemblage. The assembly line reached from various libraries to
Morgenthau’s office, thence to the classrooms of the Chicago campus and
back to the office. “Miss Mary Jane Beneditz made a stenographic tran-
script of the lecture given in the Winter Quarter of 1946 as well as of the
class discussions. Her intelligent and painstaking labor made available the
only written record of those lectures” (1948: Foreword, vii). Without that
written record, Morgenthau acknowledged, the task could never have
been completed in such a short period. Less than two years after the pub-
lication of Scientific Man vs. Power Politics, the heavy new manuscript was
submitted to the publisher. The book’s main title, Politics Among Nations,
was adopted upon suggestion of political scientist and Chicago colleague
Charles M. Hardin, whereas the subtitle was the author’s own, well-
considered choice: The Struggle for Power and Peace.
Text I: Power—or What You Would Expect

Morgenthau’s magnum opus has gone into eight editions and remains in
print some seven decades later.9 Its publishing success notwithstanding, the
book received a remarkably one-sided reception within the field of interna-
tional relations. Whereas Morgenthau himself had fused empirical and nor-
mative concerns (and thereby refused “to divorce knowledge from action,”
1948: 7), his real or alleged Realist disciples would soon follow Kenneth
Waltz’s lead in systematically eliminating normative issues from the proper
confines of inquiry. Normative political theorists, in turn, tended to either
accept a seriously truncated reading of Politics Among Nations or ignore it
altogether. As a result, Morgenthau became the “unhappy founding father
of an influential but normatively numb Realist research paradigm”
(Scheuerman 2009: 102). And for many in the field, he still stands tall as a
64 C. FREI
commanding but somewhat forlorn figure, cast in one piece and distin-
guished by a single-minded commitment to power as the essence of inter-
national politics—power backed by, and backing up, interest.
At first sight, that status may seem well deserved. The very structure of
Politics Among Nations conveys a strong first message, in that heuristic
priority goes to what Morgenthau calls the “raw material of the social
world” (1948: 50). Against the false hopes of an excessive historical opti-
mism, against the simplifications of a naïve legalism, he upholds the per-
manence of political forces and the autonomy of politics. While the innate
human aspiration for power is the constitutive source of the political realm
of life, the struggle for power is its most distinctive feature in a broader
social arena that comprises families as well as nations. Throughout the
entire book, Morgenthau moves back and forth between domestic and
international levels so as to hammer home a central message: political
forces are equally at work on all levels of social interaction. What (usually)
sets intra-national relations apart from international relations is the extent
and effectiveness of various constraints acting upon politics.
A full first third of Politics Among Nations is devoted to mapping “poli-
tics” both within and among states. The author sets out to search for typi-
cal patterns of individual and collective behavior in the political realm,
including that ubiquitous inclination to disguise aspirations for power by
means of ideology. To account for insurmountable difficulties in quantify-
ing power, Morgenthau puts emphasis on its psychological dimension.
One by one, he takes up both material and immaterial components of
national power. He goes on to demonstrate that balances of power are
both natural and stabilizing side effects of political action on all social lev-
els. And all the while, Morgenthau argues against false hopes that the
unpleasant reality of power can ever be done away with. As the political
impulse is anchored in the human condition, politics is truly everywhere.
Across twelve chapters and 160 pages, Morgenthau thus confronts the
reader with “power” in all its facets and colorations. More than once, his
statements take on the hectoring tone of dogmatic positions. “It is suffi-
cient to state that the struggle for power is universal in time and space and
is an undeniable fact of experience” (1948: 17). That is how it is—period;
skip nuances and subtle distinctions. The same author who as late as 1930
devoted a one hundred-page manuscript to the psychological roots of the
drive for power clearly no longer feels compelled to provide elaborate
proof for what he now regards as obvious. To those readers who are put
off by such language and disposed to disregard the rest of the book, the
case may thus indeed be clear: here is a theorist who takes his stand on the
darker side of the social drama and leaves it to others to side overtly with
the angels.
It may be fair to presume that, confronted with such an overdose of
“power,” generations of American readers have put the book aside without
taking the trouble to give it a comprehensive reading. What a pity, one is
tempted to say, as a truncated reading misses out on conceptual extensions
that open up a power-centered framework of analysis and render it into a
broad, nuanced perspective. Morgenthau’s notorious introduction to the
political realm of life is, in fact, followed by an extensive effort at putting
things into proportion. While human beings are intrinsically selfish, they
also yearn for love and community. The very threat of a world where
power reigns supreme “engenders that revolt against power, which is as
universal as the aspiration for power itself” (1948: 169). Socialization in
general encourages moderation. The normative source of such modera-
tion is to be found in conventions and rules as evolved over time. “From
the Bible to the ethics and constitutional arrangements of modern democ-
racy, the main function of these normative systems has been to keep aspira-
tions for power within socially tolerable bounds” (ibid.).
How effective are normative systems in constraining and pacifying
international politics in the middle of the twentieth century? Throughout
one hundred pages (167–263), Morgenthau addresses this question with
remarkable diligence and makes the most of his European writings in the
process. The title of his Habilitation in Geneva actually sets the tone for
this entire section: La réalité des normes (1934a). Searching for the actual
social impact of norms, Morgenthau does not concentrate on the content
of specific prescriptions, but on the requirements for their psychological
and social effectiveness. Effectiveness, he finds, hinges less on the content
of norms than on the expected consequences of non-compliance. The real
force of the law thus depends on the regular presence of sanctions, which
in turn require the presence of superior power. In contrast to legal and
institutional arrangements within states, Morgenthau concludes that
international law is by necessity a weak form of law, as the decentralized
structure of the international system prevents regular recourse to orga-
nized superior power (1948: 228 et passim).
Can morality and mores accomplish what is structurally beyond the
scope of international law? Are there ethical precepts that have a reach
beyond national borders, does there exist a public opinion with a global
reach and impact? Morgenthau finds traces in the realm of human rights.
66 C. FREI
However, he views these traces not so much as promising starting points,

but as mere left-overs of a European world with distinctive Christian and
aristocratic ideals. That world is gone; its overarching moral unity has been
lost. Instead of shared convictions, we are “today” faced with a multitude
of mutually incompatible value system, as “the nationalistic u niversalism of
our age claims for one nation and one state the right to impose its own
valuations upon all other nations” (1948: 269).
At this stage, Morgenthau draws up a first, tentative balance sheet. In a
time when the development of nuclear weapons lends new meaning to the
notion of “total war,” international politics lack effective restraints such as
are commonly available within Western states. What remains is “a simplified
balance of power, operating between two inflexible blocs” (1948: 305).
Text II: Morgenthau’s Struggle for Peace

What can be done? In the last section of his inquiry, the author turns to
“the problem of peace” (1948: 307–445) and offers a tour d’horizon that
is as rich in material as it is timeless in substance. His discussion can plau-
sibly be summarized along the lines of three specific questions.
First, what has been tried so far? The author begins by examining a series
of conventional practices and scrutinizes them one by one on the basis of
a functional criterion: to what extent can the respective technique keep
destructive tendencies of international politics at bay? While disarmament
may help reduce tensions and build confidence, it is powerless vis-à-vis the
fundamental underlying problem: Men do not fight because they have
arms, but they have arms because they deem it necessary to fight (327).
Collective security is bound to fail, as great powers will hardly ever be will-
ing to subordinate their national interests to the requirements of joint
action. The judicial settlement of disputes cannot routinely prevent wars
since the disputes that are most likely to lead to war cannot be settled by
judicial means in the first place. No court, domestic or international, is
equipped to remove tensions created by competing aspirations for either
maintaining or overcoming a given status quo. Finally, techniques of inter-
national government (from the Holy Alliance down to the United Nations)
will always be limited by the extent to which interests converge among the
influential member states. Morgenthau’s interim conclusion is that while
all these techniques have something useful to offer, “no attempt” to solve
the problem of international peace could have succeeded under the mod-
ern system of sovereign states (391).
Second, what would be the best solution in theory? Rather than throwing
up his hands at this juncture, the author stubbornly continues his quest,
and finally gets to the bottom of his argument. In comparing intra- and
interstate levels once again, Morgenthau raises the following question:
What factor making for peace and order exists within national societies but
is lacking on the international scene? It is, the author goes on, the state
itself. Sovereign state power allows for continuity in time and space; it
affords a home to citizens; it guarantees the effectiveness of the law; it thus
provides a space in which social, economic, and political change can occur
without recourse to violence. The same cannot be said about change on
the international level. If world peace is to rest on a secure (a logically
sound) foundation, there is no substitute for the world state: no lasting
peace without a monopoly of legitimate force. Even a global Leviathan,
however, will not do: “Such is the great omission of Hobbes’s philoso-
phy” (397). Even on the lower plane, the power of the sovereign state is
not sufficient to keep peace, as domestic peace is built on cohesive (moral,
social) requirements that the state cannot bring forth on its own. On the
higher plane, the same requirements apply. Hierarchies and force will
never suffice. A global state can only develop on the basis of a community
willing and able to support it. Yet, how to bring forth such a community
where it does not exist?
In the absence of a quick fix, a complex secular process of building both
community and statehood on a global level is Morgenthau’s best hope. It
speaks volumes about the man’s intellectual openness and deep commit-
ment to his quest that, once again, he goes out of his way in search of
observable tendencies in international affairs that would at least enhance
the possibility of new forms of political organization and agency. To offer
just one example: Several years before the European Coal and Steel
Community would see the light of day, Morgenthau explores—and
warmly endorses—David Mitrany’s functional approach “to create a com-
munity where none exists” (413). If new forms of political order are to be
developed, Western Europe is the place to start.
Third, what is to be done? As international peace cannot be permanent
without a world state, and neither a world state nor a world community
can be established “under the present moral, social, and political condi-
tions” (402), we must lower expectations, buy time, and work toward
conditions under which it will at least not be impossible from the outset to
build community and more effective institutions beyond sovereign states.
For Morgenthau, that task translates into the mitigation of those political
68 C. FREI
conflicts that evoke the specter of war. Thus, Politics Among Nations ends
with a passionate plea for “peace through accommodation”—to wit the
restoration of diplomacy, and with it of the techniques that have con-
trolled the mutual relations of states since time immemorial.
It is here that Morgenthau turns from theory to practice, from the best
solution in the abstract to what can be accomplished in the concrete if
pursued with prudence. It is here also that Morgenthau’s help and advice
for the United States takes a more specific form, moving on as he does
from explicating the fundamentals of international relations to preparing
the ground for “an intelligent and peaceful foreign policy” (420). Thus
the author comes full circle to an opening remark: “To reflect on interna-
tional politics in the United States […] is to reflect on the problems which
confront American foreign policy in our time” (1948: 8). Making good
on his self-imposed pledge to help, and, more fundamentally, living up to
his self-ascribed mission as a scholar (see Rösch’s contribution to this vol-
ume), Morgenthau ends up offering advice to a peace-loving nation: “two
instruments,” “three qualities,” “four tasks,” “eight rules” of diplomacy.
Rather than focusing on concrete foreign policy decisions, he hopes to
influence the reasoning underlying such decisions. Against America’s incli-
nation to engage in moral crusades, Morgenthau advocates level-
headedness above all, to wit, extrication of political thinking from
moralizing; alignment on the basis of mutual interests; a principled will-
ingness to compromise even with presumed evil (the Soviets, too, have
interests); and empathy perceived as a real, comprehensive effort at under-
standing the other side, so as to enhance the likelihood of compromise.
In his sober conclusion, Morgenthau readily admits that “there is noth-
ing spectacular, fascinating, or inspiring in the business of diplomacy”
(444). Still, prudent diplomacy is “the best means of preserving peace” in
a society of sovereign nations. At the same time, “it is not good enough”
under the conditions of modern war (445). Even the best diplomacy can-
not itself give rise to the necessary structural changes that are required to
counteract the destructive potential of modern technology.
Complementing the Picture
Morgenthau never once claimed to have discovered or charted new territory
in Politics Among Nations. He did, however, take pride in the sheer scope of
a systematic analysis that would (precisely) not content itself with a focus on
power. While that entire first part of the book, suffused as it was with a
s pecific strand of German political thinking (Nietzsche, Weber, Schmitt on

theory; from Ranke to Meinecke on the practice of Realpolitik), was perhaps
the most vital counterweight to liberal naïveté, it was also the least original
one.10 Yet, as long as his readers would go on reading; as long as they would
not “judge by a few hours’ reading of the labor of twenty years,” as long as
they would “approve or condemn the book entire, and not a few particular
phrases,” Morgenthau felt that he was safe11—and in this assumption, he
was probably not off the mark. “Knowing some of his earlier work and his
reputation (sic), I did not expect to like Morgenthau,” the noted economist
and peace activist Kenneth E. Boulding wrote with perplexity upon reading
and reviewing Politics Among Nations in 1964. “I was most pleasantly sur-
prised.” In light of the full narrative, Boulding commended the work “for
its rich insights, and a constant attempt to give the student a feeling for the
complex but nonrandom nature of the world social system” (1964: 66–67).
What did Morgenthau himself try to accomplish? While Scientific Man
vs. Power Politics (1946) had dealt with social philosophy, to wit, with first
and fundamental questions about the nature and destiny of man, Politics
Among Nations was meant to introduce social theory. More specifically,
what the author had in mind was an interdisciplinary type of political the-
ory geared towards “the understanding of the forces that mold interna-
tional politics and of the factors that determine its course.” (1948: 8) In
helping his fellow Americans, Morgenthau’s ambition was to go beyond
recent history and current events. His theory was to orient and guide
action in a reliable manner. Hence, Morgenthau meant to identify timeless
elements of social interaction so as to extract from them basic concepts and
typologies. “Finding solid ground,” is how he described this process in the
first pages, “getting down to fundamentals” (1948: 4). Theory from this
perspective was to be understood as congealed experience, built upon
insights as distilled from the study of history, then tested and modified in
light of never-ending observation of the here and now. In its natural ambi-
tion to transcend the confinements of time and place, theory had to focus,
first of all, on the evolutionary make-up of human beings. From there, it
would go on to examine the wider social sphere perceived as an arena
where individual impulses and collective forces interact under the most
diverse frameworks. In the context of his own theoretical synopsis as pub-
lished in 1948, Morgenthau would end up offering a rather lean concep-
tual framework. Embedded in countless historical examples, here was his
own best attempt at grasping timeless features of the social arena: power,
ideology, political limitations of power, normative limitations of power.
70 C. FREI
His own aspiration for universal validity notwithstanding, Morgenthau

fully recognized that every social and political theory is unalterably embed-
ded in its own time. A phenomenon such as the sovereign state, for exam-
ple, was in itself a product of specific historical circumstances and, as such,
bound to disappear in line with technological and social innovation. More
generally speaking: configurations of power are as historically contingent as
are normative systems that societies bring forth to protect themselves. In
the face of constant, though unnoticeable change, good theory will stand
the test of time. Even good theory will, however, need adjustment once an
epoch generates genuinely new forms (Morgenthau 1959, Guilhot 2011).
In his own time, Morgenthau did not recognize many fundamental nov-
elties. Although revised on several occasions, the basic narrative of Politics
Among Nations thus remained remarkably unchanged. In preparing the
second edition, released in 1954, the author added “six principles of politi-
cal realism”—principles that basically restated ideas Morgenthau had previ-
ously endorsed without having consistently described them as Realist. In
addition, he worked on the “elaboration,” “clarification,” and “refinement”
of his framework, so as to take into account developments such as the
increasingly visible processes of decolonization and European integration.
No further substantial changes were introduced later on. The year 1960
thus marks the end of theoretical emendations: the third edition of Politics
Among Nations contains only a few slight changes in emphasis, “while leav-
ing assumptions, tenets, and theoretical structure intact” (Morgenthau
1960: iii). It was Morgenthau’s honest conviction that he had done what
could be done on the side of theory. “Many of the issues which are out-
standing in international relations have been sufficiently researched, that is,
we know about all there is to be known about them. The fact that they still
await solution is due to political factors which require political solutions”
(1963).12 And by then, his book was becoming a classic.
It is plausible to claim that Politics Among Nations “singlehandedly
initiated many generations of U.S. international relations students” into
the field of International Relations (Scheuerman 2009: 102). In spite of
Morgenthau’s commanding position and influence, however, it is difficult
to escape the impression that the man has been more often cited than read
(Williams 2005: 82). More recently, the extent to which Morgenthau con-
tinues to be identified with caricatures of his theory, or credited with posi-
tions he never held, has itself become the subject of academic research
(e.g., Behr and Heath 2009). Is it possible that his magnum opus has suf-
fered the fate of other classics? Morgenthau’s writings at any rate have
become quarries where, by dint of selective appropriation, many help

themselves to suitable blocks and all find the ones that fit their needs.
Against the backdrop of an increasingly motley spectrum of interpreta-
tions, the best and perhaps the only way of doing justice to Morgenthau’s
work is unchanged. It involves both stubborn reliance on primary sources
and the cultivation of comprehensive rather than selective reading.
Notes
1. Morgenthau to Frederick S. Dunn, 11 December 1941, The Papers of
Hans J. Morgenthau (hereafter referred to as Papers) Manuscript Division,
Library of Congress, Washington DC, Box 16.
2. Ibid.
3. As author: Scientific Man vs. Power Politics (1946), Politics Among Nations
(1948), In Defense of the National Interest (1951); as editor: Peace, Security,
and the United Nations (1946), Principles and Problems of International
Politics (1950, with Kenneth W. Thompson), Germany and the Future of
Europe (1951).
4. Such expressions are first present in Morgenthau’s Diary, entry of 30 May
1930; the reference to the struggle for power as being the raw material of
the social world will return in Politics Among Nations (1948: 50). All of
Morgenthau’s private papers are today in the safekeeping of the Leo Baeck
Institute in New York.
5. Even the extensive manuscript “Über den Sinn der Wissenschaft in dieser
Zeit und über die Bestimmung des Menschen” (On the Meaning of
Science at This Time, and on Man’s Destiny, 1934b) is embedded in long
reflections on the current state of the interplay between politics and an ever
more precarious reality of normative restraints.
6. Morgenthau to James Putnam, 5 February 1945 (Papers, Manuscript
Division, Library of Congress, Washington DC, Box 37).
7. Morgenthau to Roger W. Shugg, 6 June 1947 (Papers, Manuscript
Division, Library of Congress, Washington DC, Box 121).—Six years
later, Morgenthau would proudly report that his work now had “more
adoptions than all other textbooks taken together and more than twice as
many as its nearest competitor, which is Schuman (i.e., Frederick Schuman’s
International Politics—CF).” Letter, Morgenthau to John Hawes, 15
October 1953 (Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress,
Washington DC, Box 126, Folder “Correspondence”).
8. On the very first page of Politics Among Nations (1948: 3), Morgenthau
quotes with almost palpable enthusiasm an observation offered by Grayson
Kirk: “The political scientist is moving into the international field at last.”
72 C. FREI
9. Following the first release in 1948, Morgenthau personally edited the fol-
lowing five editions: 1954, 1960, 1967, 1973, 1978. The 1985 edition
was supervised by Kenneth Thompson; the 2006 edition by Kenneth
Thompson and David Clinton.
10. A point well made by Angelo Panebianco (2010: 225).
11. In the Preface to the second edition of Politics Among Nations (1954: viii),
Morgenthau thus quotes from the plea that Montesquieu made to the
readers of De l’esprit des lois (1748).
12. Morgenthau to Raymong Platig, 29 March 1963 (Papers, Manuscript
Division, Library of Congress, Washington DC, Box 11).
References
Amstrup, Niels. 1978. The “Early” Morgenthau. A Comment on the Intellectual
Behr, Hartmut, and Amelia Heath. 2009. Misreading in IR Theory and Ideology
Critique: Morgenthau, Waltz, and Neo-Realism. Review of International
Studies 35 (2): 327–349.
Boulding, Kenneth. 1964. The Content of International Studies in College: A
Review. Conflict Resolution 8 (1): 65–71.
Carr, Edmund Hallett. 1946. The Twenty Years’ Crisis: 1919–1939. 2nd ed.
London: Macmillan.
———. 2016. Politics Among Nations: Revisiting a Classic. Ethics & International
Affairs 30 (1): 39–46.
Gangl, Manfred. 2009. Einleitung. In Das Politische. Zur Entstehung der
Politikwissenschaft während der Weimarer Republik, ed. Manfred Gangl, 7–18.
Frankfurt: Peter Lang.
Guilhot, Nicolas. 2011. The Invention of International Relations Theory. Realism,
the Rockefeller Foundation, and the 1954 Conference on Theory. New York:
University Press.
Morgenthau, Hans J. 1929a. Die internationale Rechtspflege, ihr Wesen und ihre
Grenzen. Leipzig: Universitätsverlag Robert Noske.
———. 1929b. Stresemann als Schöpfer der deutschen Völkerrechtspolitik. Die
Justiz 5 (3): 169–176.
———. 1930a. Der Selbstmord mit gutem Gewissen. Zur Kritik des Pazifismus
und der neuen deutschen Kriegsphilosophie (Manuscript Division, Library of
Congress, Washington DC, Box 96).
———. 1930b. Über die Herkunft des Politischen aus dem Wesen des Menschen
———. 1932a. Der Kampf der deutschen Staatsrechtslehre um die Wirklichkeit

des Staates (Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, Box
110).
———. 1932b. Einige logische Bemerkungen zu Carl Schmitts Begriff des
Politischen (Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, Box
110).
———. 1932c. Arbeitsplan (‘Plan for Work’). Supplement to Research Grant
Application (Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, Box
151, Folder ‘Unidentified’).
———. 1933a. La notion du “politique” et la théorie des différends internationaux.
Paris: Librairie du Recueil Sirey.
———. 1933b. Die Wirklichkeit des Völkerbundes. Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 2.
April 1933, Edition 3.
———. 1934a. La réalité des normes, en particulier des normes du droit interna-
tional. Paris: Felix Alcan.
———. 1934b. Über den Sinn der Wissenschaft in dieser Zeit und über die
———. 1935a. Théorie des Sanctions Internationales. Revue de Droit International
et de Léglislation Comparée 16 (1935): 474–503. 809–836.
———. 1935b. Die Krise der metaphysischen Ethik von Kant bis Nietzsche
———. 1935c. Die Entstehung der Normentheorie aus dem Zusammenbruch der
Ethik (Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, Box 112,
Folder ‘Ergänzungen zum Kennwort Metaphysik’).
———. 1936. Positivisme mal compris et théorie réaliste du droit international.
Madrid: Bernejo.
———. 1937. Kann in unserer Zeit eine objektive Moralordnung aufgestellt
werden? (Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, Box
112, Folder ‘Ergänzungen zum Kennwort Metaphysik’).
———. 1938a. “Plan for Work” (Manuscript Division, Library of Congress,
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———. 1946. Scientific Man vs Power Politics. Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press.
———. 1948. Politics Among Nations. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
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———. 1959. The Nature and Limits of a Theory of International Relations. In
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Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.
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———. 1960. Politics Among Nations. 3rd ed. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Panebianco, Angelo. 2010. Morgenthau: Political Theory and Practical Philosophy.
In Masters of Political Science, ed. Donatella Campus and Gianfranco Pasquino,
vol. 1, 223–237. Colchester: ECPR Press.
Rohde, Christoph. 2004. Hans J. Morgenthau und der weltpolitische Realismus.
Wiesbaden: Springer.
Rösch, Felix. 2015a. Power, Knowledge, and Dissent in Morgenthau’s Worldview.
———. 2015b. Die staatskritischen Potentiale des klassischen Realismus in Politics
Among Nations. In Macht, Recht, Demokratie. Zum Staatsverständnis Hans
J. Morgenthaus, ed. Christoph Rohde and Jodok Troy, 175–191. Baden-Baden:
Nomos.
Scheuerman, William E. 2009. Hans J. Morgenthau: Realism and Beyond.
Cambridge: Polity Press.
Schuman, Frederick. 1941. International Politics. 3rd ed. New York: McGraw-
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Shilliam, Robbie. 2009. German Thought and International Relations: The Rise
and Fall of a Liberal Project. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
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Harcourt, Brace, and Co.
Williams, Michael C. 2005. The Realist Tradition and the Limits of International
Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
The National Interest and the ‘Great Debate’
Cornelia Navari
The concept of ‘the national interest’ first appeared, somewhat like thun-
der out of China, in the essay ‘The Primacy of the National Interest’
(Morgenthau 1949) as part of a forum in the Spring 1949 issue of The
American Scholar.1 It was presented alongside a piece by William T.R. Fox
(Fox 1949), in what by the forum’s title appear to be alternative principles
for the coming American foreign policy. The forum was entitled ‘The
National Interest and Moral Principles in Foreign Policy’. As William
Scheuerman observes, ‘the concept of the “national interest” first takes on
a special analytic status in this essay’ (2009: 214). There, it is presented as
a necessary corrective to what Morgenthau had already characterised in
Scientific Man and Power Politics as legalism, moralism and sentimentalism
in American politics, and as a more effective guide to foreign policy than
the American tradition seemed able to provide. It established the distinc-
tion between ‘realists’ and ‘idealists’, as well as Morgenthau as the pre-
eminent realist, and its appearance would launch what came to be known
in academic circles as the ‘first great debate’,2 initially on the requisites of
American foreign policy. Reputedly conducted between realists and
idealists, at the time the realists were as vocal in denouncing Morgenthau
as were the ‘idealists’.
C. Navari (*)
University of Buckingham, Buckingham, UK

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67498-8_4
76 C. NAVARI
The foreign policy context is critical. It is the onset of the Cold War;
there is growing public unease not only about Soviet intentions but
American responses. Scheuerman stresses the role of the Russian atomic
bomb explosion in August 1949 (but only made public at the end of
September) and the vexed issue of the new demands of an atomic age. But
the use of national interest in this way predated the August test—the
forum was organised in late 1948, and was in response to the steady insti-
tutionalisation of the Cold War that had occurred through 1948 (the sign-
ing of the Brussels treaty, the decision to go ahead with Marshall Aid
absent Soviet concurrence and the building of an Atlantic security pact;
American Scholar editor Haydn referred in particular to the administra-
tion’s claim of ‘selflessness’ in relation to Marshall Aid3). American
responses to the Soviet Union seemed to be organised around George
Kennan’s ‘Sources of Soviet Conduct’, the article analysing the tendencies
in Soviet foreign policy, which had appeared anonymously the previous
year and which had recommended a ‘policy of firm containment, designed
to confront the Russians with unalterable counter-force at every point
where they show of encroaching upon the interests of a peaceful and stable
world’ (1947: 856). Morgenthau was uneasy about containment because,
he would argue, it engendered an unnecessary degree of enmity between
the United States and the Soviet Union (e.g. 1951a). Partly as a result, he
had been invited by Kennan—then head of policy planning in the State
Department—to join the team of State Department consultants advising
on America’s Cold War policy.
The invitation should have caused him wonder. He had only arrived in
America in 1937 from a few provincial European postings, with few friends
and none in a position to provide him with much help. In the Law
Department at Kansas, he was a junior lecturer, relegated to an office next
to the latrines. But he had been publishing steadily on themes related to
America’s post-War foreign policy (see Frei above). The invitation to
replace Quincy Wright temporarily at Chicago and his securing tenure
there in 1944 had led him to recover a good deal of his sense of himself
(he wrote to Altamira that ‘it is a stimulating atmosphere and I am very
happy here’4). He had established contact with George Kennan, whom he
had met in Chicago earlier that year, and who would assure him that he
was ‘being read with attention and respect’. The generally favourable
reception of Politics Among Nations (PAN) led him to the reasonable
belief that he had found an audience—the reviews were on balance posi-
tive and the sales more than encouraging. More to the point, he was not
THE NATIONAL INTEREST AND THE ‘GREAT DEBATE’ 77
satisfied to remain a mere academician. With the onset of the Cold War,
Morgenthau had assigned himself a project—nothing less than to mitigate
the growing divide between the United States and the Soviet Union.
His mantra would come to be labelled ‘negotiation’. Morgenthau had
underlined his commitment to the classic principles of diplomacy in
1946—in response to the coming United Nations—arguing against the
emerging idea that, with the establishment of a world forum, traditional
diplomacy had thereby become outmoded (Morgenthau 1946). He had
carried the argument forward in PAN with an analysis of the role of mod-
ern warfare in relation to diplomatic practice, arguing that modern tech-
nology had obviated the use of war as a mechanism of dispute settlement,
thereby increasing the importance of diplomacy. In PAN, he had also out-
lined the theory and practice of spheres of influence, presenting the divi-
sion into political spheres as one method of balancing power, but more
importantly as a way of limiting hostilities between powers (1948a:
135–136). By 1950, with the break-up of allied cohesion, he would openly
advocate a negotiated settlement between the United States and the Soviet
Union, based on the idea of spheres of influence.
The inspiration for the article appears to have been E. H. Carr’s The
Twenty Years’ Crisis, the British diplomat-historian’s excursion into the
genre of statecraft (and destined to become a classic). Morgenthau had
been handed the entire corpus of Carr’s foreign policy works to review for
the first issue of World Politics—it had appeared in August 1948
(Morgenthau 1948c), and his, long, review is full of praise for Carr’s anal-
ysis of the psychological and political roots of interwar ‘idealism’, the term
Carr had used to characterise the liberal internationalists who had so stren-
uously defended the League of Nations and who had pledged themselves
to ‘pacificism’. The juxtaposition of idealism to the wiser councils of ‘real-
ists’ was a central feature of Carr’s analysis, and Morgenthau immediately
adopted the distinction, thereby establishing the schema by which theories
of international relations would be ordered (and a good deal of their his-
tory written) for the rest of the century. (His student Robert Osgood was
the first to employ the schema, for his doctorate. It was published in 1953
as Ideals and Self-Interest in America’s Foreign Relations.) But what
particularly struck him—he repeated it twice—was Carr’s designation of
the requirements for ‘effective political thinking’—that is, the political
requirements for an effective foreign policy in a liberal age. These were, in
Carr’s formulation, ‘a finite goal, an emotional appeal, a right of moral
judgment, and a ground for action’ (1946: 89)
78 C. NAVARI
He had been puzzling the ‘right of moral judgment’ and a ground for
action in the American context since at least 1940 when he had lectured
on liberalism and foreign policy at the New School of Social Research,
lamenting the effects of Wilsonianism on American foreign policy. Five
years later, in a long and seriously considered article (Morgenthau 1945),
he had reviewed the whole gamut of contemporary ethical responses to
foreign policy dilemmas—utilitarianism, ‘perfectionist ethics’, the dual
morality thesis and Kantian ethics—arguing that private no less than pub-
lic morality suffered from the same limitation—the limited self as the ref-
erent in all action. In it, he had presented the doctrine of the lesser evil as
the only ethical doctrine that made sense in foreign policy.5 But it was a
grim argument with which to counter America’s liberal idealism.
(Morgenthau might have been influenced by Nature and Destiny of Man
written by Reinhold Niebuhr, whom he would soon meet and with whom
he established a firm friendship. Niebuhr (1947) returned the compliment
with one of the few positive reviews of ‘Scientific Man’ calling it ‘an impor-
tant little book’ and ascribing its neglect to the ‘prejudices and idolatries
of a scientific age’.) Three years later, in a less ambitious piece (1948b),
Morgenthau had contrasted the ‘universalist’ morality of the eighteenth
century with the nationalist moralities that had emerged during the late
nineteenth century and their consequences for international relationships,
again, however, ending on a pessimistic note. The ‘national interest’ pre-
sented itself as the more positive idea with which to circumvent
Wilsonianism: it provided a grounding for American foreign policy that
was at once emotional, finite and possibly even moral. It was a ‘conces-
sion…to American liberal sensibility’ (Panebianco 2009: 227).
Morgenthau’s understanding of ‘national interest’ has been variously
assigned. Christoph Frei (2001) places it with Meinecke and the continen-
tal Machiavellian tradition; Amstrup (1978), more accurately, with the
German legal idea of Lebensinteressen, the technical term Morgenthau
used for international claims in his 1929 doctoral dissertation. The latter
term derives from German labour law, and Morgenthau was trained in
labour law, serving in Frankfurt during 1931 as president of a labour
court. ‘Life interests’ were those claims that related to the specific physical
and mental condition of the worker, his body and mind, as opposed to the
trade unionists’ proclivity for making extraneous political and managerial
claims, considered less ‘vital’ to the worker. It would be translated into the
idea of core interests.
But the critical question in 1949 was not the technical content of
national interest, but rather its use as a guide or fundamental principle in
foreign policy, and in this aspect there can be little doubt, as he tells us so
himself. In the forum essay, he relates the idea directly to Alexander
Hamilton’s Pacificus and Americanus articles. Hamilton had set out a
principled case for neutrality in the Pacificus letters, based on three prin-
ciples: the duty of the executive to promote peace, the distinction between
defensive as opposed to offensive war and the security consequences for
the new Republic. In Americanus, intended to answer whether America
should always place itself on the side of liberty (in this case to take the side
of Revolutionary France), Hamilton had asked whether the ‘cause of
France be truly the cause of liberty’ and whether the benefits to liberty of
participating in the conflict were likely to compensate for the evils that the
United States was likely to suffer as a result. Hamilton was Morgenthau’s
model, and he set his research assistant, at the time Kenneth Thompson,
to collect similar instances of ‘national interest’ conduct, with the result
that soon Disraeli appears on the scene, and instances of Jefferson, to be
followed in quick order by Salisbury, Hume, Charles James Fox, Talleyrand,
and eventually Niebuhr as well as some American statesmen (Bismarck was
notably absent.) Their findings were published in 1950 as a set of readings
entitled Principles and Problems of International Politics, under the joint
editorship of Morgenthau and Thompson. The set was intended to dem-
onstrate that acting in the national interest was a respectable tradition in
American foreign policy and a well-established tradition in other, success-
ful, foreign policies.
Morgenthau explained his preference for an Anglo-Saxon reading of
national interest in his 1951 piece for the British Yearbook of Foreign
Affairs, to be his third excursion on the subject. There, he castigated the
Machiavellian tradition (of which Meinecke’s was ‘the classic account’) as
an ‘a priori abstraction’ and an essentially philosophical polemics, ‘leaving
the issue in the end where they found it [i.e. the practice of debating dif-
ferent principles in the abstract]’. Morgenthau implied this was a
Continental habit, whereas in the English-speaking world the idea of
national interest was reflected in actual decision-making and displayed ‘a
continuing concern with the successful conduct of foreign policy as the
precondition for national greatness and survival’. And this had been due
to Castlereagh [among others], holding ‘with an unshakeable constancy…
principles [that] were in no degree abstract or speculative’ (1951a: 36).
80 C. NAVARI
Morgenthau is arguing that the Anglo-Saxon tradition, with its concern

for palpable ‘interests’, had made of the national interest the grounding of
a great, and as he would soon come to argue, principled foreign policy.
The argument, put briefly in those terms, did not immediately con-
vince. Fox’s reply, published alongside and entitled ‘The Reconciliation of
the Desirable and the Possible’ declared that the national interest was
impossible to determine without some explicitly declared set of value pref-
erences, reflecting the grounding of American political culture in value
pluralism. Fox had four years previously published The Superpowers (1944),
identifying the new cohort of great powers created by the demise of
Germany, and Morgenthau regarded him as a ‘realist’ and a sympathetic
colleague, causing him to question Fox as an interlocutor.6 But Fox was a
‘native’ realist—he was not opposed to the idea that the United States
might have interests or that such interests might guide foreign policy. He
was arguing that there was no independent grounding for an understand-
ing of national interest and no objective way of determining one—at least
not before a value orientation had been declared. Edgar Mowrer, Pulitzer
Prize winning journalist, Deputy Head of the Office of Public Information
for the war’s duration and author of The Nightmare of American Foreign
Policy7 echoed Fox in the subsequent issue, with an argument for ‘the
normal and sometimes inevitable choice between conflicting moral values’
(1949: 376). Other responses reflected the continuing influence of Charles
Beard’s 1934 The Idea of National Interest, in which Beard had argued
that there was no ‘national’ interest guiding American foreign policy,
which was dominated, on the contrary, by sectoral interests.
The following August, the Soviets exploded their atomic device, and
Morgenthau set to with the ‘flurry of articles’ documented by Scheuerman
(2009: 70–71), analysing the implications for American diplomacy, mov-
ing quickly to offset claims that the Soviet test constituted a radical change
in the East/West confrontation. He repeated his argument that technol-
ogy had already obviated war as policy, of which the atomic bomb was
merely the latest demonstration, arguing that it had only enhanced the
significance of negotiations and diplomacy (Morgenthau 1950a8). The
polemics brought him to the attention of the president of the University
of Chicago, Hutchins, who, unlike his predecessor was not an enthusiast
for the Merriam-style social science that dominated political studies at
Chicago (represented by Quincy Wright in international affairs). Hutchins
preferred more policy oriented studies, and he had in his gift the Walgreen
lectures, given annually in the spring, and which were intended to
ighlight critical issues in the national agenda. He proposed Morgenthau

h
for the 1950 series, the lectures that became the text of In Defense of the
National Interest. Morgenthau would use the lectures to ground his idea
of the national interest and to spell out the basis on which the United
States could negotiate with the Soviet Union.
For the ethical grounding, he took on board Fox’s criticism—that ‘the
national interest’ could not stand alone and needed a value referent. In the
first lecture, to become chapter one of the book, he adjusted his argu-
ment. It was not merely that the founding fathers had supported (and
accordingly authorised) the idea of acting in the national interest for the
new republic. Not only was it the case, as the British in particular had most
clearly and repeatedly demonstrated, that the idea had been instantiated in
concrete policies. More importantly, the resultant policies were also prin-
cipled policies. In the first of his Walgreen lectures, he claimed to have
divined the true significance of the Monroe Doctrine, among other sig-
nificant policies in the history of the Republic. Guarding the Western
Hemisphere from Great Power rivalry was not merely an ‘interest’; it
rested on ethical principles, notably the ‘moral postulates of anti-
imperialism and mutual non-intervention’ (1950b: 846). It was a policy in
the national interest in that it provided the conditions for the ‘safety and
enduring greatness of the United States’, but it was also a moral policy in
that it rested on ethical principles. In the fourth of the lectures, he laid out
his ‘Conditions for a Negotiated Settlement’, setting out the case as
between the alternatives of ‘Negotiation or War’. He outlined the possi-
bility of, and negated, what in the event did occur—a cold war ‘lasting
perhaps for a generation’ (1951b: 139)—and publicly put forward his
argument for spheres of influence. The argument was that the Soviet
Union was an imperialist rather than a revolutionary power, and that a
stable international order was possible if a sphere of influence were
accorded to it in Eastern Europe.
Whether the United States was gifted with the ability to deliver a
spheres of influence agreement in 1950 is doubtful. A.J.P. Taylor, review-
ing the book for The Nation in a piece provocatively entitled ‘No Ideas
and No Illusions’ (1951), suggested that the tussle for Germany had obvi-
ated a spheres of influence settlement and that it was an illusion for post-
War Europe. He also opined that ideas and illusions were different things,
and that perhaps the best tool for the statesman in the opening skirmishes
of the Cold War was to have a few ideas in his arsenal, a reference perhaps
to the growing ideological aspects of the conflict, but also implying that
82 C. NAVARI
In Defense of the National Interest was short on ideas. (Morgenthau wrote

to Max Beloff that Taylor had treated his work ‘in the most irresponsible
manner’.9) The other leading European ‘realist’ at the time was Raymond
Aron who had already disputed the idea of spheres of influence in his le
Grand Schism of 1948, naming Morgenthau as the major proponent of
the idea. Aron had emphasised the ideological aspects of the superpower
confrontation from its beginnings and had predicted a long stalemate.
(The famous quote was ‘War is improbable and peace impossible.’) In the
midst of preparing Les Guerres En Chaîne (to be translated as The Century
of Total War), he introduced the idea of a national (or ‘general’) interest,
but as an operative principle, not a moral guide, and one that could not be
understood in terms of interests alone. There he posed the question,
which echoed Fox, ‘How are we to arbitrate the conflicts that affect ide-
ologies?’ A historical sociologist, he outlined two ‘solutions’, drawn from
historical precedent. One, the ‘conservative solution’ and ‘leading to
fascism’ is where, contrary to a ‘general will’, the national interest ‘is
defined by those very persons who rule the state’; the other solution, gen-
erally employed by the party in opposition, is ‘to submit to the majority
rule’ (1954: 244–245). In short, it was a political strategy, not a moral or
rational guide.
At home, and more damaging for the task Morgenthau had set for
himself were two articles by Frank Tannenbaum, senior Latin Americanist
and distinguished historian within the American academy, and a review by
Carl J. Friedrich of both Kennan’s and Morgenthau’s books. Then at
Harvard, Friedrich was the foremost theorist of the time on totalitarianism
and, like Morgenthau, a German émigré. Seconded to Lucius Clay,
Military Governor of Germany, he had almost singlehandedly moulded
the democratic reconstruction of West Germany. He asked the appropriate
question in respect of that role: Why shouldn’t America use the ‘broad
and ideal goals that are part of the American heritage’ as a sword, and not
merely as a shield? Did the realists suppose that America’s ‘unprecedented
rise to its position of world power is the work of incompetent “moralisers”
without any sense of “realities”’? In what John Bew (2016: 214) would
characterise as ‘a classic reworking of the anti-realpolitik tradition’, he
argued that the ‘logic of power cannot be divorced from the logic of jus-
tice and right’ (Friedrich 1952: 227). Friedrich’s was one of the earliest
liberal arguments on the power of ‘soft power’, but his argument was that
soft power was closely tied to and indeed dependent on hard power.
If Carl J. Friedrich was emerging as a liberal realist, Tannenbaum was

emerging as the champion of liberal internationalism. The first of his fight-
ing articles was on the ‘American Tradition in Foreign Relations’ and
appeared in Foreign Affairs of October 1951; the second and more signifi-
cant was entitled ‘The Balance of Power and the Coordinate State’ and
won a place in the Political Science Quarterly of June 1952. Tannenbaum
argued that balancing power was not in the American tradition, citing the
Latin American and Western Hemisphere experiences, where the United
States had not in fact played powers off against one another. In the second
article, he presented an alternative model for American foreign policy, one
that fulfilled Morgenthau’s requirement for a principled policy and that
did so rather convincingly. Tannenbaum’s ‘co-ordinate state’ argued that
the American tradition in foreign affairs derived from its unique experi-
ence with federalism, one that, transposed to the international arena,
implied and demanded an ‘equal dignity of all states’, irrespective of wealth
or power. As examples of ‘federalism in international relations’, he
proffered the organisation of states in the ‘American system’, the

Commonwealth, the Swiss Confederation, and the coming Atlantic
Alliance. In the Foreign Affairs article, naming Morgenthau, he charged
that policies based on the national interest and spheres of influence had
‘ruined half the nations of the world…[ and] always led to war and to
national suicide’ (1951: 47). (Morgenthau asked Armstrong, Foreign
Affairs editor, if he could prepare a rejoinder, a request that Armstrong
evaded.)
But a still more serious challenge in the policy context was becoming
the scientific status of the concept. In June 1952, the American Academy
of Political and Social Sciences organised a two-day conference on the
subject of the ends of American foreign policy, entitled ‘The National
Interest: Alone or with Others’, a clear bow to Morgenthau’s growing
influence, but attended by experienced practitioners. Abraham Feller, for-
mer professor of international law at Yale and head of the legal department
of the United Nations was invited to address the issue directly. In the
meantime, George Kennan, who had followed Morgenthau as the 1951
Walgreen lecturer (on Morgenthau’s recommendation), had published his
lectures under the title of American Diplomacy. It demonstrated clear def-
erence to Morgenthau, aligning him with Morgenthau’s realism. Feller
addressed himself to both and charged that ‘neorealism’ as he called it
consisted of little more than the ‘mantras of diplomacy and negotiation’,
84 C. NAVARI
and that it proposed no real end or objective to which policy should be

directed. Diplomacy was a ‘procedure’, he declared, ‘with no more sub-
stantive content than speaking or writing’ (Feller 1952: 78–79).
A participant, Morgenthau had taken the opportunity to stipulate
American interests, but only briefly. (These were first, predominance in the
Western hemisphere, secondly, a European balance, and third an Asian bal-
ance—the latter in tatters, he claimed, because the administration was refus-
ing to deal with the Chinese communists: 1952a.) His response to the critics
(and to the mixed reviews of his and Kennan’s books; see e.g. Kirk 1952)
was to prepare a much more substantial account than anything he had
attempted so far, addressing the charges of vagueness and the heterogeneity
of interests, refuting Tannenbaum’s ‘co-ordinate state’ and denying any
serious role to the United Nations in producing peace, the latter reflecting
the seriousness with which he regarded Feller’s charges. But it was also to
define precisely what was at the heart of a national interest. It appeared in
the December 1952 volume of the American Political Science Review, enti-
tled ‘Another ‘Great Debate’: The National Interest of the United States’
and is generally considered the definitive statement (Morgenthau 1952b).
The article evinces a serious attempt to give substance to the concept,
opening with its place in significant debates in the history of American
foreign policy and presenting the current debate as ‘more fundamental to
the understanding of American foreign policy’ than any that had preceded
it (1952a: 961). (Morgenthau drew heavily from Osgood’s Ideals and
Self-Interest for the detail.) He acknowledged that ‘the argument [of elu-
siveness and lack of definition] has substance as far as it goes but … it did
not invalidate the usefulness of the concept’ (971). He made a new dis-
tinction between the ‘logically required’ and the ‘variable’, the first refer-
ring to ‘the physical, political, and cultural identity [of the nation] against
encroachments by other nations’, and the second, or variable, as ‘deter-
mined by circumstances’. He, moreover, acknowledged that ‘the contri-
bution that science can make to this field…is limited’ and gave an account
of the analytical steps that would have to be taken to produce a definitive
understanding of a particular national interest at a particular time.
On the idea that America was a ‘co-ordinate state’ and that American
federalism offered itself as a model for how to treat other nations,
Morgenthau responded with an analysis of federalism that replicated
almost exactly the classic realpolitik reasoning Treitschke had offered
almost 70 years earlier—that in all federations, power tended to move to
the centre. He declared that American federalism did not rest on any
rinciple of the equality of states, but rather on the actual superiority of

p
the federal system of government and on its executive power: ‘The politi-
cal cohesion of a federal system is the result of superior power,’ he declared
(968). That America might, uniquely, escape power politics was, accord-
ingly, an ‘escapist fantasy’.
The reference to the ‘physical, political and cultural identity’ of a nation
was the closest that Morgenthau ever came to defining a ‘national inter-
est’, and it was the most satisfying of all his attempts, containing what are
arguably the three essential elements of any enduring political community.
The logically required were a physical presence and a political organisa-
tion, but Morgenthau went further and linked them to a common cultural
identity. It was the reflection of an education dominated by the German
historical school, but the association would come to be accepted by many
political sociologists and state-builders in the age of nationalism. (It is
reflected in the contemporary search for a ‘common European identity’ to
underpin a ‘European Community’.) In the event, it reflected his concern,
to be treated in his coming work on The Purpose of American Politics, that
America did not have a strong enough sense of national purpose to
manoeuvre the Cold War. But he did not pause to defend his triad—he
seemed content merely to stipulate it.
The analytical section focused on two sets of exclusions that should be
exercised by anyone going in search of a ‘national interest’, and three
guides. First, the interpretation by statesmen of their own acts ‘must needs
have a strictly subsidiary place’; secondly, prevalent popular ‘fantasies’, in
America’s case ‘the fantasy of needless American participation in war, the
fantasy of American treason and the fantasy of American innocence’
needed to be rigorously excised. Following the excisions, the relatively
permanent aspects of a national interest could be derived ‘from three fac-
tors’: the ‘nature of the interests to be protected’ (i.e. the particular fea-
tures of the physical, political or cultural identity), the ‘immediate political
environment of their placement’ (i.e. the threats to them) and ‘the ratio-
nal necessities which limit the choice of ends and means by all actors on
the state of foreign policy’.
He had, however, some difficulty going much further. The argument
descended into a ramble on the nation as a product of history, with its
inevitable ‘variable’ elements (among which he named sectional and
‘other-national’ interests in the American case). There was staunch denial
of the idea that the United Nations could represent a collective interest,
following which the discussion moved towards aphorisms. These included:
86 C. NAVARI
(1) ‘a country which had been settled by consecutive waves of foreigners

was bound to find it particularly difficult to identify its own national inter-
est’; (2) ‘a rational order must be established among the values that make
up the national interest’; (3) ‘the national interest of a nation which is
conscious not only of its own interest but also of that of other nations
must be defined in terms compatible with the latter’ (975–979).
Such a conclusion was less than rigorous and was registered as such in
what were destined to become two classic realist statements. The first was
Arnold Wolfers’ ‘National Security as an Ambiguous Symbol’, which
appeared in the Political Science Quarterly almost immediately. Wolfers
argued that while the national interest did indicate a general direction of
policy, in the sense of ‘demands that are ascribed to nations rather than
individuals…beyond this, it has very little meaning’ (1952: 481). From
Raymond Aron, it wrenched the ‘Quest for a Philosophy of International
Relations’ written directly in response, which first appeared in the January
to March 1953 issue of Revue Français de Science Politique. It is perhaps
the first statement setting out a case for why a theory of international rela-
tions is required, and it was a pretty emphatic denunciation of Morgenthau
and all his works.
The Quest acknowledged the importance of the debate that Morgenthau
and Kennan’s books had unleashed, dealing as it did ‘with the very bases
of any foreign policy [and] with the nature of states’. But it moved imme-
diately to squash the idea that Wilsonian ‘idealism’ had been responsible
for the weakness of the peace that had followed World War I or that ideal-
ism was in any way implicated in the war’s disasters. These were due rather
to the ‘responsibility of events’; that is, to the protracted nature of the war
and to the disintegration of the empires that had followed it. Beyond such
‘circumstantial reasons’ lay not idealistic illusion, but misinterpretations of
reality. Neither Roosevelt nor Churchill, at the end of the Second World
War, had been convinced that a country ‘liberated by the Red Army was…
going to be a Soviet satellite’ (Aron 1960: 80–81). So far as Morgenthau’s
hopes for a negotiated settlement were concerned, these were false hopes,
arising from ‘confusion between an eternal truth and a historical proposi-
tion’. Morgenthau had supposed that the diplomatic devices of an earlier
age represented some natural order of things. Had the United States and
the Soviet Union belonged to the same diplomatic culture and ‘to the
same reasonable Machiavellianism’ that had characterised the ancient
regime, a compromise of sorts might have been possible. But they did not.
The division between East and West did not provide the foundations for a
negotiated settlement; rather, it was a stand-off, produced by conflicting

notions of political order and political good. Finally, it was impossible to
understand the national interest ‘apart from ideological preferences’ or to
ignore ‘the ideologies on which the number of its allies depend and which
serve as weapons in the struggle’ (1960: 80).
Left to his own devices, Morgenthau might have quietly let the whole
matter of national interest rest where it was at the end of 1952, at best as
an essentially contested concept, at worst in a conceptual limbo. In any
event, three-power agreement on German reconstruction had sealed the
fate of a policy of negotiations,10 and he was soon to leave public service,
quite determined not to serve power, at least not immediately. What
intervened was not a ‘great debate’ or an intellectual awakening. It was a
publisher with a nose for extended shelf life. Alfred Knopf, who had
published In Defense of the National Interest, and who had provided
Morgenthau with ‘enthusiastic support and wise council’11 wanted the
concept of national interest incorporated into a second, revised, edition of
PAN, to appear in 1954.
Morgenthau had been consistently reluctant on the question of a
revised edition, particularly on the inclusion of new case studies, arguing
to Roger Shugg, his immediate editor, that it would disturb an already
coherent argument. He had partly relented in the midst of the Great
Debate, writing to Shugg in November that he would consider revision
and that he would ‘start the book with a general simple explanation of the
philosophy underlying it’.12 This resolve hardened in the autumn of 1953,
after a disturbing correspondence with Frank Altschul, of the Council of
Foreign Relations. Morgenthau had written to Altschul asking for finan-
cial support for his Center for American Foreign Policy, established at
Chicago following his appointment to the circle of State Department advi-
sors. It was no more than a fishing expedition, asking for the possibility of
support, but Altschul’s response was a surprisingly emphatic negative,
reporting the general view in the Council that ‘the work of the center was
less than objective and that its research was to a degree colored by certain
profoundly held preconceptions regarding American foreign policy’
(Altschul 1953). It appeared that the New York establishment was gang-
ing up against the Chicago realists. In October following the correspon-
dence, he alerted Gottlieb, his text editor, that he would be ‘elaborating
the basic philosophy of the book’.13 Morgenthau would engage with his
critics yet again, but this time with a statement that would underpin and
secure political realism. This was the immediate origin of the Six Principles
88 C. NAVARI
of Political Realism that would appear as the first chapter in the revised
1954 edition of PAN.
But he did not forget about ‘the national interest’. Indeed it became
central to the new argument. It appears, briefly, in the First Principle as
‘interests in terms of power’ and more extensively in the Second Principle
as ‘the main signpost that helps political realism to find its way through
the landscape of international politics’. Morgenthau incorporated the
national interest into the foundational argument of PAN by the simple
expedient of subordinating it to power. In the first principle, he threw out
the ethical aspects, and recast the national interest as ‘interests in terms of
power’. In this, now fifth formulation, the ‘national interest’ emerges sim-
ply as the acquiring, maintenance and expansion of a state’s power.
Secondly, it is the guide or thread to the analytical exercise. It was a bril-
liant idea, to bring power and interests together and to make one the
measure of the other. The formulation solved the problem of the hetero-
geneity of interests. But it meant leaving behind the thick concept that he
had originally aimed for. It was no longer a set of historical variables, no
longer a moral guide, a via media, a synthesis of realism and idealism or a
justification for negotiation. It settled down as one of a set of ‘principles
of political realism’ and a somewhat redundant aide de camp in the realist
quest for analytical rigour.
Over the next few years, there would be some efforts to sharpen the
concept. On the analytical side, Karl von Vorys distinguished between
‘ends interests’ and ‘means interests’ for a State University of Iowa publi-
cation on concepts used in the teaching of international politics (1957)
and he went on to publish American National Interest: Virtue and Power
in Foreign Policy (1990) where he laid out a hierarchy of interests to guide
US policy makers. Fred Northedge, professor at the London School of
Economics would develop the idea of ‘core interests’ for his The
International Political System (1976), identifying them with permanent
tendencies in a foreign policy tradition.
At the rhetorical level, the concept of core interests came to be used
frequently in relation to China, to signal those issue areas in which com-
promise with the rising power was not possible—notably Taiwan and
Tibet. It also appeared regularly in American presidential addresses on the
aims and requirements of American foreign policy. In his major foreign
policy speech at West Point in 2014, President Barack Obama cited
America’s core interests as threats to ‘our people, our livelihood …or
when the security of our allies is in danger’ (Seib 2014). The previous year,
addressing the U.N. General Assembly, he had described the United

States’ [end] interest in the Middle East as ‘confront[ing] external aggres-
sion against our allies and partners’. The ‘means interests’ were ‘the free
flow of energy from the region to the world’, dismantling terrorist net-
works, and impeding ‘the development of nuclear weapons that could
trigger a nuclear arms race in the region, and undermine the global non-
proliferation regime’.
In large part, however, the concept was overtaken by the search for
scientific rigour, initially in the form of the ‘decision-making’ approach
(Snyder et al. 1954). Partly out of a concern to render concepts usable
by linking them to observable behaviour, students of decision-making
argued that the national interest was inevitably composed of values (in
their terms, composed of ‘what people want’, as Rosenau 1968 put it),
and that it was not susceptible of objective measurement, even if defined
in terms of power, and that, accordingly, ‘the only way to uncover what
people need and want is to assume that their requirements and aspira-
tions are reflected in the actions of a nation’s policy makers’ (1968: 40).
For these analysts, in other words, the national interest was whatever
the officials of a nation sought to preserve and enhance. As the two
leading spokesmen for decision-making put it, ‘The national interest is
what the nation, i.e., the decision-maker, decides it is’ (Furniss and
Snyder 1955: 17).
It gave way to interest group analysis, an approach no less damaging to
Morgenthau’s conception. In his increasingly influential The Governmental
Process, David Truman had located the essence of politics in the controver-
sies and conflicts deriving from the activities of interest groups. The role
of government was primarily establishing the conditions for interest
groups to act. In a keynote article for the Journal of Politics, Roy Macridis
observed that what had been originally intended as one factor in politics
had been ‘elevated to a general theory’ (1961: 25) and was now the preva-
lent approach to political analysis. It was largely in response to what he
called ‘interest group liberalism’ that Stephen Krasner wrote Defending
the National Interest (1978), in which he demonstrated the critical role
that securing raw materials played in U.S. foreign policy and the role of
‘statism’ in determining raw material investments.
But Morgenthau never lost faith with the concept as a guide that could
direct American power to purposes that were both rational and principled.
He republished the 1952 version in the three-volume anthology of his
writings, collected to accompany his political testament, The Purpose of
90 C. NAVARI
American Politics. His analysis as to why the United States should not go
to war in Vietnam was based entirely on the 1952 concept: His argument
was that the civil war in Vietnam endangered neither the physical, political
nor cultural identity of the United States, while military engagement, if it
did not touch its physical identity, endangered both its political and
cultural identity (Morgenthau 1965). For Morgenthau, in the context of
Vietnam, it was a limiting concept.
Nor did it entirely lose its association with broader aims. In 1994,
Robert Jervis, summarising the importance of Morgenthau for American
foreign policy, stressed the centrality of his concept of the national interest
‘for what it denied: that states should follow either sub-national or supra-
national interests’. Reporting the impression it made on him as a young
scholar, it conveyed the idea that a nation could legitimately be considered
to have concerns of its own, apart from the concerns of individual citizens
or groups. More importantly, it allowed that ‘the concerns of segments of
the population’ could ‘legitimately be put aside’ in favour of ‘the wider
good’ (1994: 856). This is the doctrine of raison d’état, tamed to an
American understanding.
Notes
1. The American Scholar is the Phi Beta Kappa magazine; originally for mem-
bers of the society, it had become a venue for the presentation of intellec-
tual debate on issues of national importance.
2. The term is an academic conceit: the actual ‘first great debate’ was in 1793
and concerned whether the fledgling republic should ally with revolution-
ary France in its external wars. For the disputed status of the 1950s ‘first
great debate’, see Schmidt 2012.
3. Haydn to Morgenthau, 16 October 1948. Morgenthau Papers, Box 97, file
10.
4. Morgenthau to Altamira. Morgenthau Papers, Box 3, file Altamira.
5. ‘To act successfully, that is according to the rules of the political art, that is
political wisdom. To know with despair that the political act is necessarily
evil but to act nonetheless is political courage. To choose among several
expedient actions the least evil one is moral judgment’ (1945: 18).
6. Morgenthau to Moorehead, 8 December 1948. Morgenthau Papers, Box
97, file 10.
7. Published just before PAN, also by Knopf, Mowrer argued that Americans
had to engage in power politics to protect their democratic institutions.
The Chicago Evening Mail’s foreign correspondent in Europe in the run
up to war was a social democrat and one of the founders of Americans for
Democratic Action; he illustrates the ease with which American liberals

could be converted to power politics, so long as power was in the service
of good causes.
8. Morgenthau joined Kennan and Bernard Brodie as the initial cohort of
nuclear ‘revolutionaries’ who held that, as Kennan’s 1950 memorandum
to Secretary of State Dean Acheson urged, the United States should treat
nuclear weapons ‘as something superfluous to our basic military posture—
as something which we are compelled to hold against the possibility that
they might be used by our opponents’; that is, as a deterrent; https://
history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1950v01/d7, accessed 29 May
2017.
9. Morgenthau to Beloff, 9 January 1953. Papers, Box 7, file 13.
10. In a Declaration of 18 September 1951, the western occupying powers
declared that they ‘regard the government of the Federal Republic of
Germany as the only German government freely and legitimately consti-
tuted and therefore entitled to speak for the German nation in interna-
tional affairs’, forestalling any spheres of influence agreement.
11. In the Acknowledgments, p. vii.
12. Morgenthau to Shugg, 21 November 1952. Papers, Box 121, file 9; he was
‘following the suggestions of some people whose advice I value’.
13. Morgenthau to Gottlieb, 26 October 1953. Papers, Box 126, file Second
Edition Correspondence 1953–58.
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The Purpose of American Politics
Richard Ned Lebow
Hans Morgenthau’s The Purpose of American Politics was published in

1960, at the end of the Eisenhower administration and on the eve of the
civil rights movement and military intervention in Vietnam. He certainly
hoped to influence contemporary thinking about foreign policy and its
connection to domestic politics and values. I suspect he was also writing
more for a future audience and hoped to produce a book that would ulti-
mately be regarded as a worthy successor to Tocqueville’s Democracy in
America. There are many conceptual and substantive similarities in his
approach. The following year, he began to collect previously written arti-
cles and essays, and to write short pieces, for a follow-on book, The Decline
of American Politics, that would further support this ambition.
Overview
The Purpose of American Politics was Morgenthau’s first attempt to author
a book primarily about the United States. He explores opposing American
political traditions and their implications for foreign policy. In the process,
he comments on past and present domestic and foreign crises and the ways
they are refracted by Hamiltonian and Jeffersonian understandings of the
R.N. Lebow (*)

Department of War Studies, King’s College London, London, UK

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67498-8_5
96 R.N. LEBOW
national purpose. Morgenthau is drawn to the Hamiltonian approach,

which is realist in its assumptions. He is nevertheless sympathetic to
Jeffersonian emphasis on freedom, which differentiates America, in his
view, from other countries. The book represents Morgenthau’s coming to
terms with America: it lauds the purposes for which the country was
founded. The overall argument of the book is nevertheless pessimistic. On
the home front and abroad, Morgenthau contends that America has lost
its sense of purpose. When read next to his Scientific Man and Power
Politics, published in 1946, it reveals a significant shift in his intellectual
and political orientations (see Behr, Chap. 2, in this volume).
The Purpose of American Politics is very much a book of its time in terms
of the outlook of the author and the issues it addresses—the Cold War, and
specifically, the missile gap, the economic challenge of the Soviet Union,
alliances and foreign aid, and nuclear weapons and deterrence. This is
equally true of the home front, where Morgenthau offers a version of ‘the
end of ideology,’ voices optimism about closing the gap between rich and
poor, and voices concern over growing materialism and corporate influ-
ence and McCarthyism. He portrays the Soviet Union as unremittingly
aggressive and the United States as a beacon to the world. There is much
discussion about inequality, but entirely in economic terms. The plight of
African-Americans or women is never mentioned, and there is a passing
reference to Native Americans as ‘redskins’ (Morgenthau 1960a: 134).
If Morgenthau is a man of his time, he nevertheless transcends paro-
chial perspectives. He treats domestic and foreign policy as components of
a holistic analysis. His book, while limited to America, is comparative in
the same sense as Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, as it is deeply
informed by his European upbringing and experiences. Like Tocqueville’s
account, its core arguments are rooted in political philosophy. Tocqueville
and Morgenthau were motivated by personal and political objectives, and
although both were concerned with the purpose of America, they pro-
duced different kinds of works. Tocqueville offers a profound analysis of
America and its likely future, with equality and its consequences its central
theme. It is a mix of optimism and pessimism. Morgenthau attempts to
produce a similarly profound analysis, also on the theme of equality, but
writes what has rightly been described as a jeremiad (Tjalve 2008).
Democracy in America became what Thucydides would describe as a ‘pos-
session for all time.’ The Purpose of American Politics sold well when pub-
lished, but, contrary to Morgenthau’s hopes, is read today by only a small
number of international political theorists.
THE PURPOSE OF AMERICAN POLITICS 97
The title of the book captures its central theme: discovery and restora-
tion of the national purpose. It is a Jeremiad in the sense that its author
contends that something central to our lives has been lost, can be recov-
ered, and that recovery can lead to a better future. It also resembles a
Jeremiad in tone; it strikes a register somewhere between detached analy-
sis and sermon.
At Home
Morgenthau laments that the purpose of America has been reduced to
‘equality at home and safety abroad.’ These goals lack substantive content
and say nothing about ‘the transcendent purpose’ for which equality and
safety are sought. America has a purpose—multiple purposes, in fact—that
derive from the conceptions of order that motivated the country’s early
settlers and were encouraged by its natural environment. They are less
substantive than procedural, and consist of ‘a peculiar way of thinking and
acting in the social sphere, and a peculiar conception of the relations
between the individual and society’ (Morgenthau 1960a: 19–21). Equality
in freedom was the incentive that drove millions of Europeans to American
shores. In lieu of fixed stations in life, people could achieve a status com-
mensurate with their skills and hard work. They are also free to express
their opinions and collectively to remake the social order in accord with
their needs (Ibid: 23–40). Loyalty to this purpose constitutes the core of
American identity, and distinguishes it from other countries where it is
based on inheritance. Only in America, does a ‘man’ choose his country
(Ibid: 56).
Freedom and equality do not guarantee a healthy polity. This requires
individual dynamism and independence. Democracy can encourage or
undermine it depending on the values and interests of the citizenry. The
Janus-faced nature of democracy was evident to the authors of the
Federalist Papers and to Tocqueville. Both warn of the tyranny of the
majority. For James Madison (Hamilton et al. 2003: No. 10), this arose
from majority passions that led to the trampling of the rights of the minor-
ity. For Tocqueville (2000: II, 209–10), as citizens become more equal
and alike, they are less likely to follow blindly the opinions of another man
or class. Their similarity with others gives them ‘an almost unlimited trust
in the judgment of the public.’ The very equality that makes them inde-
pendent of their fellow citizens, leaves them ‘isolated and without defense
against the action of the greatest number’ (Ibid). In the absence of
98 R.N. LEBOW
eaningful debate, politicians who advocate unlimited expansion of pop-

m
ular power can easily mislead citizens. Instead of restraining officials, elec-
tions can become the vehicle for destroying real democracy.
Morgenthau offers a variant of Tocqueville’s tyranny of majority and a
somewhat different and more conservative remedy. American equality has
led to what he calls equality without distinction. All opinions and cultural
products are considered equal. The standards for excellence in politics, art,
literature, and ethics are fast disappearing (Morgenthau 1960a: 237–43).
The vox populi becomes the accepted arbiter of everything, and it often
represents the lowest common denominator. Conformity becomes the
most powerful social norm (Ibid: 61–63, 243–45, 249–52).
The standards Morgenthau wants to uphold were historically associated
with traditional, even aristocratic hierarchies. In Britain and Germany,
they sustained culture and respect for learning. Their negative features are
well enough known to require no elaboration. Morgenthau was right in
thinking that freedom and equality were central to the American purpose
and self-definition of its citizens. The sexual revolution—which embodied
both values—was just beginning when his book appeared. The civil rights
movement was already underway. Commitment to freedom and equality
would remove remaining restrictions on Catholics and Jews, go a long way
toward alleviating formal and informal oppression of African-Americans,
inspire feminism and the push for equal rights of every kind for women,
and more recently, for homosexuals.
Morgenthau contrasts the Hamiltonian and Jeffersonian traditions.
Jeffersonians valued weak national government and considered it essential
to preserve freedom. By contrast, Hamiltonians favored strong govern-
ment as essential to security and economic development (Ibid: 77–83,
266–68). Morgenthau is a committed Hamiltonian, and restates the case
for a strong government. It is essential for the kinds of reforms necessary
to compete with the Soviet Union. Of equal importance, governmental
intervention in the economy is critical to sustaining vertical and horizontal
mobility. Instead, we are witnessing what he calls a ‘new Feudalism.’ This
is the paradoxical condition of a government with increasing powers but
with a corresponding decline in the power of those charged with govern-
ing by the Constitution. The decline is due to the fragmentation of power
within government, especially in the executive branch, which has been
divided and subdivided into a plethora of agencies. The president cannot
supervise them effectively, and the Congress cannot supervise the execu-
tive. The result is government behind closed doors that gives excess power
to business and their lobbyists. It will ultimately produce inequality and

reduce upward mobility (Ibid: 219, 274–92, 302).
Abroad
Morgenthau’s analysis of the Cold War derives in part from the realist
theory he developed in Politics Among Nations (1948a). It differs impor-
tantly from his In Defense of the National Interest in his depiction of the
Soviet Union. In the earlier work, he expresses the hope that it could be
confined to a sphere of influence. Now, he describes the Soviet Union as
an ‘imperialist’ power intent on upsetting the territorial status quo. It is
essential to balance against it and to work with other status quo powers,
especially those most directly threatened, toward this end. The United
States must maintain necessary conventional and nuclear forces to deter
the Soviet Union or make war against it, if necessary.
Politics Among Nations was intended to offer general principles to
guide foreign policy and its analysis. The application of those principles is
always context dependent in a double sense. Context determines if they
will be applied, and if so, how they will be applied (Lebow 2003: ch. 5).
The Purpose of American Politics is all about context. Morgenthau believes
that it is possible to check the Soviet Union, but worries that Americans
lack the commitment to do so. He is also concerned that allies will exploit
American economic and military aid for parochial ends and weaken anti-
Soviet coalitions while increasing the risk of regional conflict.
Morgenthau’s application of principles to case is revealing. Balancing
can never be applied in an objective manner because it depends in the first
instance on the identification of an imperialist power to balance against and
other states possibly willing to do the same. Morgenthau has no doubts
about Moscow’s aggressive intentions; like other Cold War hawks, he
treats—implicitly in his case—Khrushchev’s Soviet Union as the successor
to Hitler’s Germany. Its goal is world conquest and its leaders are willing
to use force, not only subversion, to achieve it. Given the ends communist
leaders seek—and Morgenthau treats Russia, China and Vietnam as a
monolith bloc—the United States must ‘reshape our economic, educa-
tional, and governmental systems on radically new lines.’ He calls for an
‘unprecedented and concerted national effort’ in a time of peace, without
which successful competition will be impossible (Morgenthau 1960a:
166). This is because the communist adversary is ‘in its totality, directed
single-mindedly by a totalitarian government’ (Ibid: 332).
100 R.N. LEBOW
There is no nuance in Morgenthau’s depiction of the Soviet Union and

no recognition that its leaders might have more limited objectives and be
at least as keen as their American counterparts in avoiding war given their
experience in World War II. Morgenthau fails to recognize or acknowl-
edge that Soviet domestic and foreign policies underwent considerable
evolution in the seven years since Stalin’s death in 1953. Nor does he
display any sensitivity to what John Herz called the security dilemma: how
efforts by states to protect themselves against threats tend to confirm the
worst-case fears of leaders of states whom their preparations are directed
against, who in turn may act in ways to ratchet up tensions (Herz 1950).
Morgenthau’s views on nuclear weapons became stronger since the
development of the hydrogen bomb and the Korean War. He acknowl-
edges that nuclear weapons create a novel situation for theorists and poli-
cymakers alike. American reliance on ‘massive retaliation’ has reduced the
country’s credibility to use its arsenal against another nuclear power
because all-out nuclear war in these circumstances is tantamount to sui-
cide. Overreliance on massive retaliation has reduced the country’s ability
to fight more limited wars or to take advantage of Soviet weaknesses.
Despite the Eisenhower administration’s proclamation of a ‘rollback’
strategy in Eastern Europe, Morgenthau complains, it stood by helplessly
when Soviet tanks and troops crushed the East German uprising of 1953
and marched in to Hungary to do the same in 1956 (1960a: 167–77,
528–29).
A related and striking feature of the book is Morgenthau’s scorn for the
Eisenhower presidency. He alleges that Ike allowed government to frag-
ment, undermining his own power to impose order and consistency on
American foreign policy. He adopted the wrong standards for government
by bowing to public opinion rather than holding fast to the national inter-
est. He failed to rise to the challenge of the Soviet military threat and
remained passive in response to Sputnik. Morgenthau advocates the kind
of military buildup that the Kennedy administration would put into effect
(Ibid: 206–09, 328–29).
World Order in 1960

The ‘existential threat’ that nuclear weapons pose to all nations cannot be
addressed with the framework of sovereign states. The only solution is to
transfer control of nuclear weapons to a supranational authority. This is,
however, an ideal. American efforts to this goal, most notably the
Acheson-Baruch-Lilienthal Proposal of 1946 and the 1958–1960 nego-

tiations for a cessation of atomic testing, failed. The Soviet Union was
unalterably opposed to supranational control of nuclear weapons,
Morgenthau argues, because its leaders believe, not unreasonably, would
put it at a comparative disadvantage. He urges American leaders to be
more compromising in their demands and to accept tolerable risks when
it comes to nuclear agreements and inspection on the assumption that
half a loaf is better than none (Ibid: 171–77).
Morgenthau follows his treatment of the nuclear threat with a discus-
sion of world order. Survival is a first-order priority but we need a reason
to survive. Retreat into isolation is no longer feasible, so the purpose of
survival must assume an important international dimension. America
responded by applying its defining domestic principle of equality to for-
eign policy and treating its allies more as equals in lieu of establishing a
hierarchical order. Application of this principle ‘has resulted in disintegra-
tion and anarchy’ (Ibid: 185). North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO) is a ‘rather loosely knit’ and ‘stagnating’ alliance. Foreign aid
given to allies treated as equals merely strengthened the conservative
political and military forces in favor of the status quo in these countries
and allowed the communists to present themselves as favoring the forces
of progress. Washington should use its power to impose its anti-imperialist
tradition on these countries by using aid as a vehicle to bring about demo-
cratic change (Ibid: 188–96). He shows no recognition that such a policy
might readily be condemned as neo-imperialism.
Morgenthau’s preference for hierarchical alliances is motivated by a con-
cern for credibility in Europe and democratic change elsewhere in the
world. He fails to consider the downside of such alliances, of which the
Warsaw Pact offers a prime example. His claim that the United States
relates as equals to its allies because of its domestic experience and anti-
imperialism tradition finds recent resonance in the claim of John Ikenberry
(2001), who argues that the United States differed from previous hege-
mons, and from its Soviet rival, in establishing a more consensual system of
alliances and economic arrangements in which it was merely primus inter
pares. Unlike Morgenthau, Ikenberry regards this kind of restraint as a
good thing. Morgenthau and Ikenberry alike have been criticized for over-
stating the case. Certainly, NATO and other American alliances were never
as hierarchical as the Warsaw Pact, but the United States never hesitated in
pushing its interests and at times acted unilaterally when it could not build
a consensus for its policies. In the first decade of this century, the Bush
102 R.N. LEBOW
administration encountered serious criticism in Europe for this reason. It

consistently acted unilaterally, seeking to exploit what its supporters
claimed was a ‘unipolar moment’ to establish American hegemony.
Post-publication Interactions
Morgenthau spent the academic year 1959–1960 off campus, completing
the manuscript and returned to teaching in the autumn of 1960. His
Politics Among Nations was now widely used as a core text in American
universities and Hans was at the height of his fame. Alfred Knopf, his pub-
lisher, regularly took him to Lutèce, recently opened by André Soltner on
East 50th Street in Manhattan and known for its over-the-top menu.
Publisher and guest succumbed to sautéed foie gras with dark chocolate
sauce and orange marmalade. Morgenthau became an advisor to the new
Kennedy administration and his publications appeared in Foreign Affairs
and Commentary. He was on the Rolodex—a rotating mechanical device
for storing names, numbers, and addresses—of journalists who wrote
about foreign policy and elected officials, lobbyists, and intellectuals who
tried to influence it. Hans reveled in becoming a public figure. He never
said so but the attention and accolades he received were welcome psycho-
logical balm to the isolation and alienation he grew up with in postwar and
very anti-Semitic Bavaria.
Morgenthau was ambivalent about his teaching and supervision; it took
a lot of time that he could profitably use for writing and networking, but
it also provided a forum for him to work out his ideas. I attended his
undergraduate course in the autumn quarter of 1960, and did a graduate
course with him that spring. In the autumn of 1961, Herman Finer, for
whom I worked as a research assistant, went on medical leave, and
Morgenthau picked me up. He was preparing the first of the three vol-
umes of his essays, The Decline of American Politics, published in 1962 and
intended to accompany Purpose.
One of my tasks for Morgenthau, as for Finer, was to read through the
weekly Foreign Broadcast Information Service booklets prepared by the
Central Intelligence Agency. Both professors were recipients and found
these reports useful, although for different things. Finer was interested
primarily in Europe and the Middle East, and Morgenthau in the Cold
War worldwide. I would put markers in reports I thought would be of
interest to him and summarize what I thought was important about these
entries, individually and collectively. Kennedy had become President in
January 1961. In the next 12 months the United States tested the first
Minuteman missile; the Congo crisis began; Kennedy proposed the
Alliance for Progress between the United States and Latin America.
Eichmann was put on trial in Jerusalem, Yuri Gagarin orbited the Earth,
the Bay of Pigs invasion failed, Freedom Rides intensified, dancer Rudolf
Nureyev sought asylum in France, and the Eritrean war of independence
began. Dag Hammarskjöld dies in a plane crash in the Congo, the Soviet
Union exploded a 58-megaton bomb and Kennedy sends helicopters to
Vietnam in support of Diem.
The virtue of reports on these subjects to Morgenthau was their pre-
sentation of non-American perspectives not readily available in the elite
press or elsewhere in the pre-internet age. Hans also had me check facts
for him, another time-consuming task in those days. He would also try
out his ideas for new articles and books in class. I would take extensive
notes and present him with a transcript he would use as the starting point
for a publication. This work was not exciting but gave me access to my
boss, who was willing to chat and answer questions. I quizzed him about
his theory and approach to contemporary foreign policy problems and he
asked me my views. I realized quickly that what interested him in what I
had to say was how it reflected the ‘American take’ on events or those of
the student generation.
Three foci of our discussion are worth reporting. The first is civil rights.
Morgenthau was a great believer in civil rights for intellectual and personal
reasons. As a Jew, he knew first-hand the physical, economic, and psycho-
logical costs of discrimination. For Eisenhower it had an instrumental
importance, that is, it makes America look bad around the world. For
Morgenthau, promoting civil rights was an ethical responsibility and a
litmus paper test of American values.
We discussed the civil rights movement and student involvement in it.
He was pleased that I joined a group to lobby Illinois legislators about civil
rights legislation but was of two minds about freedom riding. He recog-
nized that progress was slow and that protests might accelerate it. But he
worried about freedom rides provoking violence, especially in the South,
and impeding progress toward civil rights. He gradually came around to
supporting student activism, impressed by its non-violence and its ability
therefore to confront white Americans with clear moral choices. Whenever
I wanted to go off on a civil rights march, he gave me time off, insisting
that my work could wait.
104 R.N. LEBOW
I questioned Morgenthau about his theory. Critics complained, and

with justification, that it was both descriptive and prescriptive. ‘Realism,’
he insists in Politics Among Nations, is superior to ‘idealist’ approaches on
both counts. It is more rigorous because its axioms are logically derived
from its starting assumptions. It is empirically valid because ‘the facts as
they are actually lend themselves to the interpretation the theory has put
upon them’ (Morgenthau 1960b: 1). Morgenthau makes much of the lat-
ter claim, contrasting his theory with ‘idealist’ theories and related strate-
gies that fly in the face of political reality. However, Politics Among Nations
excoriates appeasers for not balancing against Hitler and thereby encour-
aging his aggressive designs. Morgenthau wanted his cake and to eat it
too.
Morgenthau (Ibid: 8) dismissed this criticism; the purpose of theory, he
patiently explained—and here I quote from his writings—was not an
‘indiscriminate description of political reality,’ but rather an attempt to
develop a ‘rational theory of politics.’ The balance of power was ‘an ideal
system,’ and in his more pessimistic moments, Morgenthau was willing to
admit that it was ‘scarcely found in reality.’ Realism provided a benchmark
against which actual policies could be understood and evaluated. For the
same reason, it contained a strong normative element. It was a ‘theoretical
construct’ of a fully rational and informed foreign policy that ‘experience
can never completely achieve,’ but which can be used as a guide for mak-
ing and assessing policy (Morgenthau 1963a: 49).
Morgenthau’s rejoinder is far from satisfactory. He made unabashed
empirical claims for his theory; and behavior at variance is anomalous. All
social theories encounter anomalies, and the telling question is whether
Morgenthau’s theory provides a better account of international behavior
than competitors. Morgenthau would insist on a second empirical crite-
rion: the outcome of foreign policies at odds with realism. He maintained
that ‘idealist’ policies failed to promote peace and stability. But two
decades later, we shall see, he was equally critical of realist approaches, at
the other end of the spectrum, that failed to recognize moral and practical
limitations on power. Most of us would probably agree that appeasement,
as practiced by the Western democracies in the 1930s, rewarded Hitler’s
appetite for aggression and helped to provoke a long and costly war.
Woodrow Wilson’s policies find more support in the scholarly community,
although all but his most ardent supporters admit that he may have been
naive in execution of some of his most important initiatives.
This problem could have been resolved—although never to the satisfac-

tion of positivists—if Morgenthau had been true to his Kantian education
and Weberian commitments. He drew on both to construct his theory.
From Kant, he took the idea of the dialectic, which he used, as Clausewitz
had before him, for purposes of exposition. His theory of politics repre-
sented the thesis—an abstract and parsimonious formulation of the phe-
nomenon in question. The antithesis was what happened in practice—often
at odds with the theory because of friction in the form of domestic poli-
tics, ideology, and less-than-wise leaders. The goal for Clausewitz, as it was
for Morgenthau, was a synthesis—a choice of sensible policy options and
their implementation, and combined with awareness of problems that
could arise and forethought about how to address them. For Clausewitz,
Gustavus Adolphus and Napoleon were geniuses because of their ability to
pursue rational goals and minimize friction, thus achieving a synthesis. For
Morgenthau, this was true of leaders like Talleyrand, and Bismarck,
although he had serious qualms about the latter’s project and its
consequences.
From Weber, Morgenthau took the concept of the ideal type, which
was how he conceived of the balance of power. It helped to explain poli-
tics, but was an abstract representation of it based purely on rationality. It
provided a framework for studying politics because it was a benchmark
against which to measure real world policy. The analytical question, fol-
lowing Weber, was not the expectation that it would guide policy, but
studying why and how policy deviated from it.
Theory offered both an underlying description of international politics
and a guide to foreign policy in the more immediate sense. But it was only
the first step to creating explanatory narratives or policies. Success or fail-
ure would depend on context and leadership, and, of course, luck. I only
realized decades later that Morgenthau fell into his descriptive-prescrip-
tive can of worms as a result of his effort to escape another can of worms,
the cultural one. He recognized how different American intellectual cul-
ture was from its German counterpart and worried that a theory with an
elaborate metaphysical superstructure would be misunderstood and
rejected by American readers. He may, of course, have made the right
decision given the success of Politics Among Nations. But his attempt to
be simple and phenomenological invited criticism from sophisticated
thinkers.
106 R.N. LEBOW
Ethics and Politics
The third focus of our discussions, ethics, deserves a subheading of its
own. In Scientific Man vs. Power Politics, Morgenthau described three dif-
ferent views of public morality. The traditional approach of Salus publica
suprema lex acknowledges that states could temporarily set aside normal,
legal, and perhaps other norms as well to protect the republic. He some-
what inaccurately associates Machiavelli and Hobbes with this view, as well
as the European tradition of Realpolitik (Morgenthau 1952). From the
time of the Greeks, he notes, it was widely acknowledged that people were
not allowed to act in the political sphere as they pleased. State actions had
to conform to a higher standard of morality than simple interest. In mod-
ern times, two distinct strategies developed to reconcile private and public
morality. Wilsonian liberalism sought to compel states to conform to the
standards of private morality through the application of international law.
This effort failed, as Morgenthau believed any such effort must, and
helped to bring about the kind of aggressive behavior it was expected to
prevent. Lenin and the Bolsheviks embraced a third strategy: they justified
state actions in terms of the beneficial ends they were intended to achieve.
Behavior at odds with conventional standards of private morality was legit-
imized with reference to a higher principle. Morgenthau dismissed this
strategy as a perfidious sleight of hand because we can never know the
longer-term consequences of our actions. The claim that the end justifies
the means is nothing more than an attempt to escape moral responsibility
(Morgenthau 1946: 151–68).
Here too, Morgenthau was implicitly relying on Weber, and admitted
as much when I raised the latter’s famous essay on ‘Politics as a Vocation’
and attempted to interpret his approach to ethics in terms of it. The ensu-
ing discussion indicated that Hans had thought deeply about Weber’s
essay, which he heard the great sociologist deliver in Munich at the end of
the First World War. He agreed with Weber that politicians sometimes had
to use force, and other means that would not be acceptable in interper-
sonal relationships. Thus, the appeal of an ethics of responsibility to Weber.
But its successful application required some understanding of the likely
outcomes of one’s policies in circumstances in which the social world was
opaque, and the political world more so. Morgenthau thought Weber was
deluding himself if he thought this possible, and may be why, we agreed,
that Weber ended up making a pitch for some combination of the two
ethics. Morgenthau is adamant that morality—defined in terms of the
conventions of the epoch—should limit both the ends that power seeks
and the means employed to achieve those ends. Certain ends and means
are unacceptable, he contends, because of the opprobrium that attaches to
them. Morality puts the stamp of its approval on other ends and means
(Morgenthau 1963a: 59).
Morality, like theory, has prescriptive and descriptive value. It defines a
code of behavior that states ought to follow but not infrequently violate. It
is descriptive in that foreign policy often conforms to the prevalent moral
code, even when it conflicts with short-term interests or has power-related
costs. States routinely ‘refuse to consider certain ends or to use certain
means, either altogether or under certain circumstances, not because in
the light of expediency they appear impractical or unwise, but because
certain moral rules interpose an absolute barrier’ (Morgenthau 1948a:
174–75). Leaders also recognize that policies that reflect existing moral
codes are more likely to gain leverage at home and abroad.
Morgenthau’s commitment to ethical imperatives might appear puz-
zling in light of his rejection of Wilsonian liberalism and assertions that
politics is about power. But he vehemently denied any contradiction, and
criticized E. H. Carr for trying to divorce power from morality (Morgenthau
1948b). Wilson’s error was not his concern for morality, but his failure to
grasp the immutable character of human beings and the role of power in
domestic and international politics. It is proper and realistic to be bound
by moral constraints, but naive and dangerous to believe that morality,
expressed through law and international institutions, can consistently
restrain the pursuit of relative advantage (Morgenthau 1934 and 1935).
Any analysis of international morality must ‘guard against the two extremes
either of overrating the influence of ethics upon international politics or of
denying that statesmen and diplomats are moved by anything else but
considerations of material power’ (Morgenthau 1948a: 174).
During the Vietnam War, Morgenthau made an interesting admission
about the centrality of power in his theory of international relations.
Politics was undeniably about power, but in the 1940s, he had emphasized
it to the point of excluding other features of politics as a reaction to the
liberal idealist emphasis on law and morality. This had been a strategic as
much as an intellectual choice. In The Purpose of Political Science, he wrote:
When the times tend to depreciate the elements of power, it [political sci-
ence] must stress its importance. When the times incline toward a monistic
conception of power in the general scheme of things, it must show its
108 R.N. LEBOW
limitations. When the times conceive of power primarily in military terms, it

must call attention to the variety of factors which go into the power equa-
tion and, more particularly, to the subtle psychological relations of which
the web of power is fashioned. When the reality of power is being lost sight
of over its moral and legal limitations, it must point to that reality. When law
and morality are judged as nothing, it must assign them their rightful place.
(Morgenthau 1966a: 77)
By the mid-1960s, the political culture of national security in the United

States had undergone an about-face. The role of morality and law now
needed to be brought to the attention of policymakers and theorists alike.
Following Kant and Hans Kelsen, Morgenthau (1934) treated law as a
system of norms (nomos), and argued that international society had evolved
to encompass a wide range of norms that states for the most part obeyed:
‘The influence of civilization [has made] some policies that are desirable
and feasible ethically reprehensible and, hence, normally impossible of exe-
cution’ (Ibid: 176–77). Politics Among Nations (1948a) devotes a chapter
to restraints on the use of violence that emerged since the Thirty Years War.
These include the understanding that war is a struggle between competing
armed forces, and not a contest between entire populations; conventions
that protect prisoners of war and keep them from being tortured or killed;
the prohibition of certain weapons, and limitations on the use of others; the
responsibilities and rights of neutrals; and general acceptance of the view
that violence should be restricted to the minimum level compatible with
the goals of war. Laws and conventions also proscribe behavior (e.g., terri-
torial violations, bugging embassies) in which states routinely engage. ‘The
protestations of innocence or of moral justification by which accusations in
such matters are uniformly met’ are, Morgenthau maintains, ‘indirect rec-
ognition of the legitimacy of these limitations’ (Morgenthau 1948a: 180).
Morgenthau (1934) considered the twentieth century enigmatic in this
respect; more new norms had been created by international treaties than
ever before, but adherence to norms of all kinds had declined. International
morality had reached its high-water point in the eighteenth century, and
had receded subsequently in response to the rise of nationalism and the
growing dependence of leaders on public opinion.
Morgenthau’s concern for ethics undergirded his opposition to the
Indochina war. He was an early critic of American intervention and
equally skeptical of subsequent escalations. Beginning in November
1963 he produced a steady stream of articles for Commentary and The
New Republic as well as letters to the editors of the Washington Post and
New York Times (Morgenthau 1963b, 1964a,1 1965a, b, c, 1966b, c,
1967, 1967a, 1968, 1968b, 1972a, b). Behind the scenes, he provided
anti-war arguments to Frank Church, one of the principal Senate oppo-
nents of intervention. On 31 December 1964, Morgenthau (1964b)
urged Church to pressurize the administration to seek a withdrawal by
means of a neutralization agreement. In January 1967, he provided
Senator Frank Church with a critique of a Department of Defense film
justifying American intervention.
Morgenthau was deeply troubled that American policymakers had jet-
tisoned idealism only to adopt European-style Realpolitik. Vietnam was
being fought in the name of realism, but represented a perversion of that
philosophy. Realism had a moral basis. It was not merely a self-serving
justification for the status quo (Falk 1977; Raskin 1977). Morgenthau’s
opposition to Vietnam cost him the much-coveted presidency of the
American Political Science Association; its right wing administrator mobi-
lized pro-war professors to block his nomination.
In 1965, Morgenthau (1965d) published a book on Vietnam in which
he excoriated American intervention on practical and moral grounds. He
insisted that the use of military force to shore up an unpopular, oppressive
government of absentee landlords was certain to fail. In a follow-on article
(1968), he insisted it was an ‘improvident and foolish use of power’ that
would inevitably lead to a ‘serious loss of prestige.’ A ‘foreign power’ has
no business ‘defending the status quo against a national and social revolu-
tion’ (1969: 134–35). Morgenthau was particularly offended by
Washington’s military strategy. ‘Counterinsurgency’ was a ‘mechanical
connivance’ that differed from traditional warfare in that it was directed
against the population rather than identifiable armed forces. Military
action aimed at the destruction of guerrilla forces entailed ‘the destruction
of entire villages, people and crops alike’ (Ibid). His public statements and
this book make clear how much his view of the Cold War had evolved.
When air and ground operations did not produce the expected results,
Washington sent more forces, carried out more extensive air operations,
bombed Hanoi and Haiphong and extended the ground and air war into
the rest of Indochina. Morgenthau worried—needlessly, as it turned out—
that such escalation risked a wider war with China and the Soviet Union.
He was equally disturbed by the moral implications of escalation. If South
Vietnam survived long enough, he conceded, the United States might
compel the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese might halt their military
110 R.N. LEBOW
campaign in the South. But such a victory would not be achieved by

breaking the enemy’s will to resist, but ‘by killing so many of the enemy
that there is nobody left to resist.’ Such a strategy was a perversion of
Clausewitz, who conceived of killing in war as a means to bend or break
an adversary’s will. In Vietnam, ‘killing becomes an end in itself.’ The
physical elimination of the enemy and victory ‘become synonymous.’
Hence, the ‘body count,’ however fictitious, became the metric of success
(Ibid: 137).
Morgenthau warned that ‘No civilized nation’ could wage such a war
‘without suffering incalculable moral damage.’ The resulting opprobrium
would be all the more severe because most of the world saw no military or
political benefit that could warrant the kind of widespread, indiscriminate
killing and destruction the United States was inflicting on Indochina.
Such behavior stood in sharp contrast to American claims to be ‘a novel
experiment in government, morally superior to those that went before it,’
and made a mockery of its claim to be ‘performing a uniquely beneficial
mission not only for itself but for all mankind’ (Ibid: 137–38). Vietnam
was costing the United States its hegemonia.
Morgenthau elaborated this theme in a subsequent article in The New
Republic (1974) in which he accused the United States of trying to sup-
press the symptoms of instability rather than addressing its causes.
Throughout the Third World, and especially in Vietnam, successive
administrations had consistently supported the side of repression in an
ongoing struggle over social, economic, and political reform. American
leaders pursued short-term stability and the expense of the long-run insta-
bility of tyrannical rule. ‘The United States has found itself consistently on
the wrong side of the great issues, which in retrospect will appear to have
put their stamp upon the present period of history’ (Morgenthau 1974).
There was also a domestic component to Vietnam. Leaders of democra-
cies are frequently pulled in opposite directions by state and political inter-
ests. Postwar American presidents had repeatedly mobilized public opinion
to support foreign policies based on uncompromising opposition to world
communism. Over time this strategy made the government the prisoner of
the passions it had aroused and had compelled it to intervene in Vietnam.
It threatened to destroy the give and take of ‘pluralistic debate through
which errors can be corrected and the wrong policies set right’ (Morgenthau
1970: 40–44). There had been no meaningful public debate prior to
American intervention, and once committed, it became impossible for the
Johnson administration to extricate itself when its policy had failed. The
decline of American democracy was at its core a problem of ethics.
In Retrospect
In retrospect, Eisenhower looks better than Morgenthau and other critics
acknowledged at the time (Greenstein 1994). He ended the Korean War,
shunned intervention in Vietnam, was never intimidated or unduly wor-
ried about the Soviet Union, refused to escalate the arms race in a dra-
matic way, and warned of the growing power of the military-industrial
complex in his farewell address.
In the 1960s and 1970s Morgenthau came to sound more like
Eisenhower. He became more concerned about the development of
nuclear weapons and America’s nuclear policy; and he spoke out against
the arms race and the emerging nuclear strategies based on war fighting
like those of Herman Khan, as opposed to existential deterrence. He
became an advocate of restraint and criticized demonization of the Soviet
Union. Above all, he was a vocal opponent of US intervention in
Indochina, which he described as contradictory to American interests and
traditions (Zimmer 2011; Campbell and Logevall 2009).
With good reason, The Purpose of American Politics is not a book that
has endured. It fails to develop the links between the theory and practice
of foreign policy in convincing ways. Its author would shortly disavow
some of his key positions concerning nuclear weapons and strategy. His
predictions were also off the mark. Despite the absence of supranational
control of nuclear weapons, the superpowers avoided war, reached a series
of arms control agreements, and brought their conflict to a peaceful reso-
lution. NATO has not collapsed but prospered.
Morgenthau’s domestic arguments fare only a little better. He is right in
worrying about corporate influence, although the vehicle for the influence
is just as much the result of the cost of campaign finance as it is backroom
deals. In contrast to Tocqueville who understands contemporary trends
and their possible futures, Morgenthau was relatively blind to the change
going on around him and the social upheaval it would produce in the
decade after his book appeared. This revolution can be described at least in
part as a renewal of the American purpose in exactly the manner Morgenthau
desired. Social change is always for better and for worse, and Morgenthau
was only sensitive to the latter. This too would change, and very rapidly.
He became a great supporter of civil rights and cut me slack as his research
assistant to take time off to participate in civil rights demonstrations.
In his lectures and conversations, Morgenthau drew the parallel
between the ill-fated Athenian expedition in Sicily and the United States
112 R.N. LEBOW
in Vietnam. Both failures were attributable to hubris and the lack of pru-
dence it engendered. The biggest difference between the two conflicts,
Morgenthau hastened to point out, was that Thucydides thought that a
more serious effort by Athens to reinforce and support its military opera-
tion in Sicily might have resulted in victory. By 1967, Morgenthau was
adamant that further buildups of American forces could not materially
affect the outcome, and that the only way to end the war, in the absence
of wise leadership, was through domestic opposition that would convince
the Congress to halt funding for the war (Lebow 1963–1878).
Morgenthau saw obvious parallels in the methods and goals of ethics
and international relations theory. Philosophers and theorists alike should
search for underlying, universal truths through the study of history, and
adapt them to contemporary circumstances. It is the task ‘for every age,
and particularly a scientific one, to rediscover and reformulate the peren-
nial problems of political ethics and to answer them in the light of the
experience of the age’ (Morgenthau 1946: 146). In ethics as in politics,
Morgenthau attempted to perform this service for his adopted country.
Notes
1. A rejoinder to an earlier article by Zbigniew Brzezinski in favor of military
intervention in Vietnam.
References
Campbell, Craig, and Fredrik Logevall. 2009. America’s Cold War: The Politics of
Insecurity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Falk, Richard A. 1977. Normative Constraints on Statecraft: Some Comments on
Morgenthau’s Perspective. In Truth and Tragedy, ed. K. Thompson and
R. Meyers, 77–84. New York: Transaction.
Greenstein, Fred. 1994. The Hidden-Hand Presidency: Eisenhower as Leader.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Hamilton, Alexander, James Madison, and John Jay. 2003. The Federalist Papers
with Letters of ‘Brutus’. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Herz, John. 1950. Idealist Internationalism and the Security Dilemma. World
Politics 2 (2): 171–201.
Ikenberry, G. John. 2001. After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint.
Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Lebow, Richard Ned. 1963–1978. Conversations with Hans Morgenthau.
———. 2003. The Tragic Vision of Politics: Ethics, Interests, and Orders. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Morgenthau, Hans J. 1934. La réalité des normes, en particulier des normes du
droit international. Fondements d’une théorie des norms. Paris: Félix Alcan.
———. 1935. Theorie des sanctions internationals. Revue de droit international et
de legislation compareé, 3e série, 16: 474–503 and 809–836.
———. 1946. Scientific Man versus Power Politics. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
———. 1948a. Politics Among Nations. New York: Knopf.
———. 1948b. The Political Science of E. H. Carr. World Politics 1 (1): 127–134.
———. 1952. ‘Philosophy of International Relations,’ Lecture Notes. Hans
J. Morgenthau Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, Box 81.
———. 1960a. The Purpose of American Politics. New York: Knopf.
———. 1960b. Politics Among Nations. 3rd ed. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
———. 1963a. The Decline of Democratic Politics. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
———. 1963b. The Impotence of American Power. Commentary 36 (5):
384–386.
———. 1964a. Letter to the Washington Post, March 15.
———. 1964b. Correspondence with Senator Frank Church. 31 December. Hans
J. Morgenthau Papers. Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
———. 1965a. To Intervene or Not to Intervene. Foreign Affairs 45 (3):
425–436.
———. 1965b. Vietnam and the United States. Washington, DC: Public Affairs
Press.
———. 1965c. We Are Deluding Ourselves in Vietnam. New York Times Magazine,
April 18, pp. 61–73.
———. 1965d. Russia, the US and Vietnam. New Republic, May 1, pp. 12–13.
———. 1966a. The Purpose of Political Science. In A Design for Political Science:
Scope, Objectives and Methods, ed. J.C. Charlesworth, 63–79. Philadelphia:
American Academy of Political and Social Science.
———. 1966b. Truth and Power: The Intellectual and the Johnson Administration.
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———. 1966c. Johnson’s Dilemma: The Alternatives Now in Vietnam. New
Republic, May 28, pp. 12–16.
———. 1967. What Ails America? The New Republic, October 22, pp. 17–21.
———. 1968. Bundy’s Doctrine of War Without End. New Republic, November
2, pp. 18–20.
———. 1969. A New Foreign Policy for the United States. New York: Praeger.
———. 1970. Truth and Power: Essays of a Decade, 1960–1970. New York: Praeger.
———. 1972a. The New Escalation in Vietnam. The New Republic, May 20,
pp. 9–11.
———. 1972b. Between Hanoi and Saigon: Kissinger’s Next Test. The New
Leader, November 13, pp. 5–6.
114 R.N. LEBOW
———. 1974. Explaining the Failures of US Foreign Policy. Letter to the New
York Times, October 10.
Raskin, Marcus. 1977. The Idealism of a Realist. In Truth and Tragedy, ed.
K. Thompson and R. Meyers, 85–94. New York: Transaction.
Tjalve, Vibeke Schou. 2008. Realist Strategies of Republican Peace: Niebuhr,
Morgenthau, and the Politics of Patriotic Dissent. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Tocqueville, Alexis de. 2000. Democracy in America, 2 Vols, Trans. and ed. Harvey
C. Mansfield and Debra Winthrop. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Zimmer, Louis B. 2011. The Vietnam War Debate: Hans J. Morgenthau and the
Attempt to Halt the Drift into Disaster. Lanham: Lexington Books.
Vietnam Writings and the National
Security State
Douglas B. Klusmeyer
In Scientific Man vs. Power Politics, Hans Morgenthau (1946: 219–223)

celebrated the noble role of the statesman, whose tragic destiny entailed
accepting the agonizing moral burden of committing lesser evils as the
inescapable price for securing the greater good. In this elitist vision, the
statesman is primarily accountable to personal conscience rather than to
the poorly informed, undisciplined judgment of any democratic elector-
ate.1 In focusing on the statesman’s pivotal role, Morgenthau glossed over
the ways the New Deal and the Second World War had transformed the
institutional context within which American presidents made foreign pol-
icy.2 As he shifted his attention to American policy toward Vietnam in the
late 1950s and 1960s, however, his view of presidential leadership and the
executive branch changed significantly. Morgenthau came to see the
growth of the national security state and the unaccountable exercise of
executive power as a twin threat to the foundations of republican govern-
ment. His critique emphasized the ‘moral corruption’ and other patholo-
gies of policymakers who were insulated within this state apparatus
(Morgenthau and Chomsky 1972: 364).
Scholars examining the evolution of Morgenthau’s postwar thought
have called attention to his shift from an elitist conception of statesmanship
D.B. Klusmeyer (*)

American University, Washington, DC, USA

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67498-8_6
116 D.B. KLUSMEYER
to an increasingly republican one that emphasized the importance of the

citizenry in the democratic process and identified the national interest
with the common good (Gilbert 1999; Scheuerman 2009). Morgenthau’s
emergence as a prominent, fearless critic of US involvement in Vietnam
has long been seen as a key part of this story (Rafshoon 2001; See 2001;
Scheuerman 2009: 165–195; Zambernadi 2011).3 However, in explain-
ing this evolution, scholars have largely ignored a fundamental change in
the historical context during this era: namely, the establishment of the
permanent institutional apparatus of the national security state, as exem-
plified in the creation of a network of new national security institutions
(Craig 2007; Zimmer 2011; Rösch 2015). This context provides essential
background for understanding how many of Morgenthau’s specific
insights and critical observations fit into a broader story. Moreover, since
he makes many broad empirical claims resting on impressionistic evidence
in his criticisms of the executive branch’s conduct of the war, examining
such contexts is essential for assessing the merits of his claims.
Organized into five sections, this chapter begins by situating several of
Morgenthau’s major criticisms of the national security state within the
broader developmental trends that scholars have identified. The next two
sections focus on his general criticisms of American policy in the Vietnam
War and the institutional pathologies in the policymaking process. The
fourth section compares Morgenthau’s criticisms of the American policy
with those of Noam Chomsky in their 1972 debate over the national
interest and the Pentagon Papers. The fifth section explores his growing
concern over the decline of an ethic of responsibility among policymakers.
The final section examines his criticisms of Henry Kissinger’s conduct as
policy adviser and statesman.
Morgenthau and the Entrenchment of the National

Security State
Even before the Second World War, the concept of national security was
displacing the older concept of national interest as a guide for foreign
policy. The new concept emphasized the role of military preparedness and
the need for stronger state institutions to coordinate policy. Rejecting iso-
lationism as a viable option after the modern advances in communication,
commerce, and transportation, it was also predicated on the view that the
defense of freedom at home required meeting threats to it around the
VIETNAM WRITINGS AND THE NATIONAL SECURITY STATE 117
globe (Stuart 2008). The growth of the national security state was reflected
in the declining influence of traditional diplomatic methods in favor of a
more militarized foreign policy and the growing prominence of the
Department of Defense over the Department of State in shaping policy
(Hogan 1998; Rosenberg 1993; Stuart 2008: 119–121). At the same
time, government research funding for national defense purposes became
a major source of revenue and employment for academic researchers and
their host institutions from the late 1940s through the 1960s (Wolfe
2015). The integration of scientific and military elites into its technocratic
administrative infrastructure, Morgenthau (1964: 1402; 1967) argued,
means that ‘the determination of foreign and military policies has become
virtually free from democratic controls’.4 During this period, Congress
and the courts entrusted the executive branch with broad authority over
the collection and use of intelligence information, which facilitated the
massive expansion of the government’s secrecy system (Moynihan 1998;
Fisher 2006; Pallitto and Weaver 2007; Horton 2015). ‘The function of
that intragovernmental secrecy, whatever the intentions of its initiators
and administrators might be,’ Morgenthau (1964: 1403) concluded,
cannot be the prevention of unauthorized disclosure of state secrets; if it

were, it would cast doubt upon the reliability of the great mass of govern-
ment officials, who while having been cleared for top secret information in
general, are precluded from access to special secrets. Rather the function of
this special secrecy is political. By protecting esoteric knowledge, it protects
and enhances power.
Denied access to this expanding web of official secrets and unable to eval-
uate the scientific rationales invoked to support policy agendas, the citi-
zenry in Morgenthau’s (1964: 1386–1387, 1402–1408) view lost the
capacity to provide meaningful inputs into the political decision-making
process.
The growth of this secrecy system was accompanied by the introduc-
tion of loyalty programs and the intensification of (often illegal) domestic
spying against perceived dissidents (Stone 2004, 2008; Schrecker 2008;
Rosenfeld 2012; Weiner 2012). As the legal scholar Geoffrey Stone (2004:
12) has observed, ‘the Cold War, which followed hard on the heels of
World War II, marked perhaps the most repressive period in American his-
tory.’ Morgenthau (1955) attacked the introduction of new security mea-
sures into the State Department for crippling its effectiveness, driving
118 D.B. KLUSMEYER
away talented foreign service officers, inducing conformity, applying dubi-

ous standards, and providing weak guarantees of procedural fairness.
When the CIA’s involvement in the National Student Association (NSA)
(among many front organizations that it and the NSA had created,
financed, and/or coopted over several decades for propaganda and sur-
veillance purposes) was exposed, he was also sharply critical of this kind of
political subversion, which in his view proved counter-productive after it
had been revealed (Paget 2015; Morgenthau 1970d).
The rise of the national security state considerably enhanced the power
of the presidency and its capacity to act unilaterally. Morgenthau’s evolu-
tion from an advocate for stronger presidential leadership to a sharp critic
of the presidential abuse of power was consistent with a broader shift in
liberal thinking in response to the Vietnam War and the Watergate scan-
dal.5 However, this shift needs to be understood against a much longer
trend of aggrandizement in presidential power. Critical of constitutional
formalism and congressional dysfunction, progressives had championed
this trend since the late nineteenth century. In the process, they had helped
to weaken many of the traditional checks on presidential power. In the
postwar era, the dramatic expansion of the White House staff enabled
presidents to consolidate an increasing array of policymaking functions
inside their office. As Morgenthau (1970e: 164) observed in 1966: ‘Today
the President’s power sweeps all before it. The Supreme Court has become
his ally, and Congress stirs but half-heartedly and ineffectually in b
ondage…
What is so ominous in our present situation is not that the President has
reasserted his powers but that in the process he has reduced all counter-
vailing powers, political and social, to virtual impotence.’ To appreciate
why he saw Lyndon Johnson’s and Richard Nixon’s abuses of executive
power as a threat to the republic’s constitutional order, it is important to
recognize how their conduct in office fits into this longer trend, which has
transformed the structure of governance at the national level. An impres-
sive array of congressional legislation enacted after Watergate6 to impose
new constraints on the exercise of executive power have proven much less
effective than their advocates had hoped (Silverstein 1997; Olmstead
1996; Rudalevige 2005: 101–210). Many contemporary scholars on both
the right and the left argue that this trend has continued to the present for
better or worse (Rudalevige 2005: 211–285; Nelson 2007; Shane 2009;
Bacevich 2010; Skowronek 2009, 2011; Posner and Vermeule 2010;
Glennon 2015; Ackerman 2010).
The ‘national security discourse’ through which this transformation

was explained and justified, the historian Michael Hogan (1998: 208)
observes, ‘was essentially a discourse in state-making.’ Despite its suc-
cesses, he points out, its state-building agenda did not go unchallenged.
Its critics on both the right and the left drew on ‘a discursive tradition that
stretched from the Founding Fathers through the antiwar and antigovern-
ment campaigns of the recent period’ (Hogan 1998: 8). The development
of Morgenthau’s thinking from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s exempli-
fies this kind of critical response to policymaking in the national security
state. In this era, he was one of several influential émigré German intel-
lectuals, including Hannah Arendt, Carl Friedrich, and Karl Lowenstein,
who expressed growing concerns about how the rise of the administrative
state during the 1930s and 1940s threatened democratic governance and
individual autonomy. As Anne Kornhauser (2015) has shown, their expe-
riences with the collapse of the Weimar Republic, Nazi rule, and the post-
war occupation of Germany had given them a distinctive vantage point
from which to critically appraise the significant tensions between democ-
racy and bureaucracy. Consistent with President Eisenhower’s famous
warning about the military-industrial complex in his 1961 farewell address
to the nation (Avalon 2017), Morgenthau criticized a broader pattern of
incestuous relationships that had developed between regulatory agencies,
their congressional oversight committees, and the constituent groups
subject to these agencies. Rather than impartially serving the public inter-
est, he argued, the instruments of the administrative state have become
prone to capture by powerful private interests (Morgenthau 1960:
204–205, 283–288). Since the American administrative state had been
constructed as an emergency expedient, Kornhauser observes, to meet the
crises of economic depression and the Second World War, its creators
never needed to articulate a broader rationale for their innovations. Its
subsequent defenders, she contends, have never been able to overcome
these tensions or provide a compelling ‘form of public justification, that is,
of making political arrangements justifiable to the citizens who must live
under them’ (Kornhauser 2015: 11). Because the legitimacy of the admin-
istrative state was never secured, she contends, the door was left open for
earlier liberal critiques of it to become radicalized during the 1960s
(Kornhauser 2015: 8, 220, 223–230).
For Morgenthau, the American disaster in Vietnam was indicative of
the pathologies in policymaking that had emerged with the rise of the
national security state. By advancing a ‘shift’ of both ‘material power’ and
120 D.B. KLUSMEYER
‘the effective power of decision from the people to the government,’ this
rise posed an acute threat to the survival of the American form of republi-
can government (Morgenthau 1967: 17). In his view, the growth of a vast
secret infrastructure of government institutional networks whose decision-
making processes, information collection, and core operations were not
subject to public scrutiny was incompatible with the fundamental princi-
ples of rule by popular consent and rule of law in a free society.
Morgenthau’s Critique of American Policy

Toward Vietnam
For Morgenthau (1962a: 38–41, 52, 1973a: 8, 10), scholars have an over-
riding responsibility to truth, which (if heeded) is likely to lead them at
times to challenge core assumptions and beliefs of their contemporaries.
In developing his realist approach to international politics, he always
insisted that includes a normative component. The roots of his opposition
to American military intervention in Vietnam can be traced back to his
critique of the 1947 Truman Doctrine and the national security policy
framework it reflected. In cloaking the cause for rendering aid to Greece
and Turkey as part of a global crusade against communism, Truman had
bound the United States to the defense of ‘free’ people everywhere, a
position that ignored the practical limitations of American power and
resources. By sharply dividing the world between the forces of freedom
and the forces of authoritarianism, the ideological rationale for this cru-
sade obscured the geopolitical variables that differentiated particular cases
from one another and clouded their relationship to specific American stra-
tegic interests. In short, by focusing on checking Soviet ambitions, the
Truman national security policy framework inclined American decision-
makers to reflexively prioritize military means over political or diplomatic
ones in addressing policy challenges (Morgenthau 1956: 14–16, 1965:
55, 1970h: 420).
By the early 1950s, Morgenthau had already concluded that military
means could not advance American security interests in Vietnam, and he
warned that the national liberation movements would likely prevail in the
long run. Siding with colonial forces or their puppet governments, there-
fore, placed the United States on the wrong side of history. More immedi-
ately, any prolonged engagement in this losing effort would drain American
resources and would undermine the country’s moral prestige by identifying
American policy goals with repressive action (Morgenthau 1965: 29; see
also Morgenthau 1948: 50–60, 1951: 117–21, 208). As President Lyndon
Johnson escalated the war, Morgenthau concentrated more of his energy
on speaking out against it. Given the nature of the war, he contended that
the victory the administration sought could only be achieved through the
total destruction of the enemy, which would entail not only massive bomb-
ing but also a protracted and overwhelming deployment of American com-
bat forces. In his view, the administration’s determination to conduct a
limited war in pursuit of a negotiated settlement would not only fail, it also
demonstrated how poorly US policymakers understood the motivations of
the enemy. Since victory was not possible, perpetuating the war was immoral
and unjust. Coming to terms with this reality, however, would require fac-
ing up to some unpleasant truths, ones deeply at odds with conventional
assumptions of US policymakers about the intrinsic goodness of American
intentions and ideals (Morgenthau 1965: 20, 39, 91).
The Insular World of Elite Policymaking

in the Vietnam War
In considering retrospectively how the experience of the 1960s had altered

his understanding of policymaking, Morgenthau (1970a: 5) acknowl-
edged his earlier mistake in expecting ‘that if power were only made to see
truth it would follow that lead.’ But the Johnson administration’s backlash
against even the most distinguished critics of its Vietnam policy had shown
this expectation to be naive. Government officials, Morgenthau (1965:18)
concluded,
are under a compulsion to protect at all costs, intellectual and moral, their
imaginary world from contact with the real one and they must force them-
selves and the world to believe that their imaginary world is real, that their
myths are the truth. For if they did not do that they would have to change
their policies radically and in effect admit that they been consistently wrong
for years and that they cannot be trusted with the fate of the nation. Thus
disastrous policies consistently pursued serve the self-protection of those
who have initiated or inherited them. We are here in the presence of an issue
not of foreign policy or military strategy, but of psychopathology.
In his view, the growth of the national security state fostered a danger-
ously insulated policymaking apparatus. From inside this bubble, American
122 D.B. KLUSMEYER
policymakers not only perceived the world through their own lens of
power and authority, they also screened out any information and opinions
that controverted their assumptions, such as those of journalists reporting
from Vietnam (Morgenthau 1965: 17, 1973a: 7; Morgenthau and
Chomsky 1972: 354–357, 359, 362, 364). The Pentagon Papers,
Morgenthau argued, revealed that policymakers had lost the capacity for
prudent judgment or critical thinking. Instead, they engaged in an ‘end-
less bureaucratic repetition of certain clichés, certain stereotypes’ without
‘any attempt to understand the consequences of their action’ (Morgenthau
and Chomsky 1972: 354).7 Since their modes of expression concealed
even from themselves the meaning of what they were doing, their techno-
rational discourse shielded them from having to face up to the conse-
quences of their actions.
This self-deception among policy elites, Morgenthau emphasized, went
hand in glove with their systematic lying to the general public. While this
kind of governmental deceit was hardly new, it had become increasingly
sophisticated, owing to techniques of modern public relations and adver-
tising (Morgenthau 1960: 266, 1965: 17). The executive branch devel-
oped new tactics to ‘silence, discredit, or corrupt’ dissidents through
intimidation, vilification, and rewards (Morgenthau 1970b: 18). This
manipulation of domestic public opinion, he argued, succeeded in under-
mining any effective democratic check on policymakers (Morgenthau
1970b: 20, 23–24, 1970c). However, as Morgenthau pointed out, even
the most sophisticated public relations campaign will eventually lose its
effectiveness as the gap between image and reality grows. When the public
realizes that its government has been deliberately deceiving them, he
warned, the result will undermine not merely support for a particular pol-
icy agenda but, more broadly, public trust in the governing institutions.
Morgenthau’s criticisms of the insular bubble of elite policymakers are
similar to those of his friend, Hannah Arendt. In her view, the Pentagon
Papers illustrate the disturbing degree to which this elite had become
divorced from the factual world of human experience and to which they
were prepared to manipulate public opinion to serve their own ends
(Arendt 1972, 20038). Their original motives, she contends, were not
imperialistic ones of seeking power and profit through global expansion
but rather more defensive in seeking to protect the national image of the
United States as an invincible superpower. Confident in their technocratic
modes of analysis, they ignore basic facts of history, geography, and poli-
tics in developing their appraisals of potential threats and their policy
rationales. Blinded by old Cold War dogmas, such as the domino theory,
they neglect the fact that the United States had no compelling national
interest to intervene militarily in Vietnam. As a result, they have employed
a massive means of violence vastly disproportionate to the actual stakes the
United States had in the conflict’s outcome. Employing a sanitized termi-
nology, such as rural pacification and relocation, that is drained of all fac-
tual content to describe the aims and consequences of their policies, they
shielded themselves and their audiences from the brutal realities of what
they were doing.9 The Pentagon Papers, she argues, betray a haunting fear
of failure but primarily with respect to how it would damage the policy-
makers’ own reputations and the standing of their president rather than
how it might harm the nation as a whole. Morgenthau defended Arendt’s
analysis against Noam Chomsky’s criticisms in their debate over the
Vietnam War.
Debate with Chomsky over National Interest

and the Pentagon Papers
Morgenthau and Chomsky were two of the most influential intellectual

critics of the Vietnam War (Tomes 1998: 146). Both emphasized the
responsibility of intellectuals to speak out against it and criticized aca-
demic scholars for their unwillingness to do so (Chomsky 1969;
Morgenthau 1969: 155, 1970b). Because of Morgenthau’s stature as an
international relations scholar, the executive branch likely deemed his
objections as posing a more serious challenge than Chomsky’s, who wrote
as an advocate outside his domain of scholarly expertise. While the former
always insisted that his opposition to the war was grounded on impartial
rational analysis of international politics, the latter regarded the ‘problem
of foreign policy’ as ‘essentially a moral one’ (Morgenthau and Chomsky
1972: 370). Morgenthau likely deemed Chomsky’s anarchist-socialist ide-
alism as exemplifying a moral approach to politics that ignored the funda-
mental realities of power. However, critics charged that Morgenthau’s
own arguments against the Vietnam War were driven more by moralistic
passion than strategic analysis.10 In addition, he was also vulnerable to the
charge of utopianism in advocating the creation of a world government to
supersede the nation-state system that could not meet the threat of nuclear
war (1962b: 167–175; see also Craig 2007: 93–116). Both thinkers
shared similar views on the filtering effects of the elite policymaking
124 D.B. KLUSMEYER
subculture and the bureaucratic rationality informing that subculture.

While they disagreed sharply over how the idea of national interest should
be understood, their differences proved less substantive than portrayed in
their debate.
In their debate, Morgenthau began from the premise that the national
interest can be determined objectively as the supreme standard for guiding
policy. While acknowledging that states may have many secondary national
interests, the primary one entails protecting a ‘nation’s physical, political
and cultural identity against encroachments by other nations’ (Morgenthau
1952: 972). In the case of Vietnam, he argues repeatedly that the United
States has no vital interest in the Vietnamese civil war, so it should not
commit its prestige and resources to intervening in it. Having not recog-
nized its limited stake in this war, he observed, the American government
has employed excessive means to reach its objectives. It has, Morgenthau
(1965: 20) writes, ‘embarked upon a scorched-earth policy by destroying
villages and forests, we have killed combatants and non-combatants with-
out discrimination because discrimination is impossible. The logic of guer-
rilla war leaves us no choice. We must go on torturing, killing, and burning,
and the more deeply we became involved in Vietnam, the more there will
be of it.’ The radical disproportionality between means and ends, he con-
tended, makes this war effort not only bad policy from a political stand-
point but also an immoral one (Morgenthau and Chomsky 1972: 371). A
superpower conducting this kind of savage war against a small, underde-
veloped nation runs counter to its interests in the sheer expenditure of
resources, damage to its global prestige, brutalizing its own troops, risking
war with China and Russia, and dividing its own citizenry (Morgenthau
1969: 129, 131, 1970f: 401–402).
By contrast, Chomsky was deeply skeptical that any meaningful notion
of national interest is analytically or normatively distinguishable from
whatever the collective interests of the ruling groups in a political and
economic system are (Morgenthau and Chomsky 1972: 363). Terms like
‘national interest,’ he contends, are ideologically laden. While on the
surface it appears to refer to the common interests of the society’s mem-
bers, in practice it is invariably tailored to the particular interests of the
ruling groups (Chomsky 2002: 37, 2003: 147). When national interest
is understood in this sense, then the US decision to intervene in Vietnam
is rational and consistent with the American self-interest. ‘The United
States,’ he explained, ‘has strategic and economic interests in Southeast
Asia that must be secured. Holding Indochina is essential to securing
these interests. Therefore we must hold Indochina’ (Morgenthau and

Chomsky 1972: 336–337). For Chomsky, the US intervention in
Vietnam must be understood as part of a global pattern of American
imperialism driven by a relentless quest for new sources of raw materials
and cheap labor, for new investment opportunities, and for new markets
for selling goods and services (Morgenthau and Chomsky 1972: 345).
Because of the communist allegiances of the Vietnamese nationalist
movement, its perspective victory posed an obstacle to this imperialist
drive. In Chomsky’s analysis, the goals of American foreign policy are
never laudable.
Morgenthau rejected Chomsky’s imperialism thesis as one-sidedly
drawn and inadequately supported by the facts. By reducing politics to
economics, the thesis presupposes in Morgenthau’s view a dubious mate-
rialist determinism (Morgenthau and Chomsky 1972: 355–357). It runs
directly counter to his emphasis on understanding the dynamics of the
political realm—based on the struggle for power—on their own terms. In
addition, he criticized Chomsky for underestimating the role contingency
plays, such as the character flaws of Presidents Johnson and Nixon, in
influencing policy choices (Morgenthau and Chomsky 1972: 356–357).
He also defended his conception of the national interest as an objective
standard. Without it, he contended, there are no authoritative criteria by
which to assess the rationality of a policy, so one is left with the subjective
judgments of rival partisans representing different parochial interests.
More broadly, Morgenthau recognized that objectivity is more of an ideal
to which scholars should aspire than an obtainable result. His use of it
reflects his commitment to a model of scholarship that employs a rigorous
rational method of inquiry, weighs rival perspectives fairly from a detached
standpoint, and builds analysis from verifiable facts. He never equates
scholarly objectivity with neutrality (Morgenthau 1962a: 38–39, 44–45,
52; see also Rösch 2015: 30–36, 152–153).
In his account of the policy debate over the Vietnam War, Louis
Zimmer (2011: xxviii–xxx, 47–51, 78–81, 120, 144, 196) emphasizes the
repeated failures of the war’s supporters to seriously consider Morgenthau’s
national interest arguments as if doing so would have materially affected
the course of the war. However, Zimmer simply accepts on their face
Morgenthau’s claims of the objective character of his concept without
ever exploring its problematic aspects. Since his early formulations of this
concept, critics have cogently argued that it hardly provides the clear
determinative guide to foreign policy that he had imagined.11 While there
126 D.B. KLUSMEYER
is no need to retrace this same ground here, it seems worth pointing out
that his normative understanding of the American national interest
reflected the ideological currents of his era. For example, in contrasting
the abstract generality of international norms with the concrete specificity
of American national norms, Morgenthau (1951: 34) observed: ‘What
justice means in the United States can within wide limits be objectively
ascertained; for interests and convictions, experiences of life and institu-
tional traditions have in large measure created a consensus concerning
what justice means under the conditions of American society.’ In propos-
ing this conception of national interest, he recognized the pluralistic char-
acter of American society that would seem at odds with his portrait of
consensus. But, Morgenthau (1952: 985) contended, the United States
has developed a sufficient institutional framework to prevent any group
from gaining ‘permanent supremacy’ and to apply effective ‘methods of
genuine compromise and conciliation’ to the competitive struggle among
groups.12 By invoking this notion of national consensus, he exemplifies a
widespread view among postwar intellectuals (Pells 1985: 96–107; Purcell
1973: 251–266, 333–334; Horwitz 1992: 250–252). This view was pro-
moted through the coordinated campaigns that government officials, cor-
porate lobbyists, advertising executives, and other civic leaders during the
1940s and 1950s, who sought to construct this ideological image of a
binding national cultural consensus (Wall 2008; Lears 1989).
For someone who emphasizes the struggle for power as the essence of
politics, it is remarkable that Morgenthau (at least implicitly) joined hands
with the postwar ‘consensus’ historians who stridently attacked their ‘pro-
gressive’ predecessors for their focus on class conflict and sordid power
struggles in explaining American history (Novick 1988: 63, 320, 333–335,
439–440; Noble 1989). David Ciepley (2006: 194–228) argues that this
pluralistic, consensus model was fashioned as an ideological counter-image
of the totalitarian model identified with Nazi Germany and the Soviet
Union. Proponents of the former made virtues of what earlier progressive
reformers had viewed as vices of American democracy, such as the corrupt-
ing effects of private interest group lobbying on policymaking. Despite
their differences in content and purpose, it is not that big a step from
Morgenthau’s conception of the national consensus to the NSC 68’s (May
1993: 23–82) ideological vision of national identity. At a minimum, the
ways in which his definition of national interest here reflects the ideologi-
cal currents of his era suggest that its utility as a means to decontaminate
American foreign policy is more daunting than Morgenthau (1969: 242)
recognized. Moreover, as Zimmer (2011: xxiii, 54, 63, 85–87, 95, 125,
145, 152) documents, the supporters of the Vietnam War—both inside
and outside the executive branch—invoked the idea of national interest to
defend American policy when it served their purpose, which suggests it is
just as open to partisan interpretation as any other foreign policy principle
or concept.
While critical of the reductionist simplicity of Chomsky’s approach,
Morgenthau had argued earlier for the predominant influence that private
interests exercised over government policy. ‘Legislators and administra-
tors,’ Morgenthau (1960: 284) contended, ‘tend to transform themselves
into ambassadors of economic forces, defending and promoting the inter-
ests of their mandatories in dealing with each other on behalf of them.’ In
the 1970s, he came close to conceding one of Chomsky’s key points.
Pointing to the long-running consistencies of the broad outlines of US
foreign policy, he contends that they do not simply reflect the enduring
nature of American national interests but also that of the power structure
in American society. ‘Many observers have noted the paradox,’ Morgenthau
(1977: 50–51) wrote,
that the new foreign policies on which the new administration is said to be
embarking are to be executed by a group of men who are identified with the
disastrous policies of the past, especially those in Vietnam…The answer lies
in a characteristic of American politics which is rarely mentioned although it
explains much which at first glance defies rational explanation. We are refer-
ring to the enormous staying power of the conservative element in American
society. The concentrations of private power which have actually governed
America since the Civil War have withstood all attempts to control, let alone
dissolve them. They have survived all such attempts from Populism to the
Great Society.
This claim marks a sharp departure from the case he had advanced origi-
nally for the national interest, when he expressly dismissed the possibility
of any group ever managing to establish permanent dominance. The claim
is reminiscent of the sociologist C. Wright Mill’s (1956) depiction of the
power elite, which he posed as a direct challenge to the consensus view of
his scholarly contemporaries. However, he never explores how this perma-
nent power structure may have systematically influenced American foreign
policy (as Chomsky argued) and not simply by permitting elites to return
to power after earlier failures in office. If policy elites are chosen by their
128 D.B. KLUSMEYER
willingness to serve the interests of the powerful rather than the so-called
objective national interest, it also raises the question concerning how
would anyone committed to serving the latter ever rise in high office or be
effective in it? This problem is compounded by Morgenthau’s criticisms
regarding the corrupting effects of government funding and recognition
on academic scholars, because it calls into question the capacity of the
academic community to offer impartial appraisals of the national interest
as a corrective of the power elite’s conception.
The Elusiveness of Responsibility and Accountability

Commenting on Richard Goodwin’s book (1966) on American policy in
the Vietnam War, Morgenthau focuses attention on Goodwin’s two
approaches to dealing with responsibility for terrors and failures. ‘In the
first version,’ Morgenthau (1970g: 409) observed, ‘responsibility cannot
be assessed at all; in the second, it is so widely distributed as to be mean-
ingless. Either it is nobody’s fault or it is everybody’s fault.’ While critical
of many aspects of American policy, Goodwin (in Morgenthau’s view)
could not bring himself to assign individuals responsibility because of the
loyalty he retained from serving in both the Kennedy and Johnson
administrations.
For Morgenthau, the evasion of accountability and responsibility had
become the hallmark of the policy elite. While never showing that earlier
generations had honored a higher standard, he criticized the erosion of
any ethic of responsibility among contemporary policymakers. This ero-
sion had effaced the distinctions necessary for judging issues of responsi-
bility, either with respect to the consequences of one’s own conduct or to
that of others. As a result of this systemic process, Morgenthau (1974a:
15–16; see also 1970f: 409) observed:
Shame, the public acknowledgement of a moral or political failing, is virtually

extinct. The members of the intellectual and political elite whose judgments
on Vietnam proved to be consistently wrong and whose policies were a disas-
ter for the country remain members of the elite in good standing; a disgraced
former President moves easily into the position of an elder statesman receiv-
ing confidential information and giving advice on affairs of state. Thus the
line of demarcation between right and wrong, both morally and intellectu-
ally, is blurred. It becomes a distinction without lasting moral or political
consequences. To be wrong morally or politically is rather like a minor acci-
dent, temporarily embarrassing and better forgotten. That vice of moral and
intellectual indifference is presented and accepted as the virtue of mercy,
which, however, as forgiveness and dispensation with the usual reaction to
vice, supposes a clear awareness of the difference between virtue and vice.
His argument concerning the inversion of moral vocabulary recalls

Thucydides’ (1998: 130–132) analysis of corruption in his account of the
civil war in Corcyra (see also Klusmeyer 2011b). This problem of corrup-
tion is compounded by the fact that policies are developed and executed
without adequate democratic checks. ‘Thus small elites within the execu-
tive branch,’ Morgenthau (1964: 1401) wrote, ‘can commit us to infor-
mal alliances and undeclared wars, they can choose military strategies and
weapons systems—and what public debate exists is like the chorus of a
Greek tragedy, praising or bewailing what has already been done.’ From
this standpoint, inadequate public scrutiny and democratic checks create a
perpetual moral hazard problem, because the agents (e.g. policymakers)
are insulated against being held accountable for their own failures by the
lack of information that the principals (e.g. the public) have about how
their agents have acted, so the penalties are seldom proportionate to costs
of these failures.
Morgenthau’s critique of the moral facileness of the American policy
elite complements Arendt’s analysis of the inadequacy of traditional con-
ceptions of evil to comprehend a new modern form of criminality. While
she developed her thesis initially in drawing implications from the Adolf
Eichmann trial, its motifs also inform both her and his assessments of the
Pentagon Papers. This new type of criminal, she contends, commits hor-
rendous wrongs not from nefarious intent but from a failure to think
through what they are doing in any critical fashion and an inability to see
the world from any perspective apart from their own. They do not grasp
the human costs of their actions because they think in terms of abstract
categories, ideological templates, and statistics, so the factuality of what
they have done is obscured from them. Confident that their intent was not
malicious, they resist accepting any specific personal responsibility for
wrongful conduct and its human costs. If they believe that their intent was
good (which they often do), this difficulty is compounded. For Arendt,
this type of wrongdoing is most characteristic of modern bureaucracies
where decision-making and responsibility are widely distributed, so every
individual is shielded from direct accountability for collective actions and
their consequences (Arendt 2006: 252, 276–277, 286).13
130 D.B. KLUSMEYER
Morgenthau on Kissinger’s Practice of Statesmanship

The example of Henry Kissinger illustrates the problematic character of
Morgenthau’s ideal of the statesman. In many ways, the former secretary
of state exemplifies the key attributes of this ideal. He brought to office a
brilliant mind steeped in diplomatic history, well versed in realist theory.
He also came with a deep distrust of the bureaucratic policymaking cul-
ture of government that fed his determination to operate as independently
of it as possible. The realist concepts of national interest and balance of
power have long been central to his strategic analysis, including the
Vietnam War (Kissinger 2003: 12, 27, 133, 148, 269, 539, 562). Even
when criticizing his policies, Morgenthau ranked him as one of the most
knowledgeable and skillful secretaries of state in American history. While
even more elitist than Morgenthau’s ideal, Kissinger’s model of the states-
man shares significant affinities. For Kissinger (1957: 329)
[t]he statesman is…like one of the heroes in classical drama who has a vision
of the future but who cannot transmit it directly to his fellow-men and who
cannot validate its “truth”. Nations learn only by experience; they “know”
only when it is too late to act. But the statesmen must act as if their intuition
were already experience, as if their aspiration were truth. It is for this reason
that statesmen often share the fate of prophets, that they are without honour
in their own country, that they always have a difficult task in legitimizing
their programmes domestically, and that their greatness is usually apparent
only in retrospect when their intuition has become experience.
In explaining this model, Kissinger emphasized the parochial character of

the people, who cannot grasp (among other things) that principles of jus-
tice are mere bargaining chips in conducting international diplomacy.
Since statesmen require sufficient popular support to sustain their policies,
they must serve as educators to their people while remaining attentive to
public opinion. His model then reduces the question of democratic
accountability to an issue of legitimating policy agendas, because the
people are presumed not qualified to judge either what is in their own best
interest or the realities of international politics.14
In same year that Kissinger published his portrait of the statesman,
Morgenthau (1957: 11) was lamenting the ‘decline of democratic govern-
ment in the United States’ while calling attention to the indispensable roles
that the citizenry and their political representatives play as a ‘check on the
government’s version of the truth against their own.’ The ‘assumption of
democratic pluralism,’ Morgenthau (1957: 11) argued, ‘that neither gov-

ernment nor anybody else has a monopoly on the truth in matters political
minimizes the temptation for government to impose its version on society
by concealment and misrepresentation.’ Even before he began his active
opposition to the Vietnam War, he had concluded that the executive branch
was routinely succumbing to this temptation.
While admiring Kissinger’s many gifts, Morgenthau pointed repeatedly
to a long record littered with failures in judgment and policy. He traces
these failures from Kissinger’s early advocacy of the strategic value of tactical
nuclear weapons through his strategy for ending the Vietnam War. He criti-
cized Kissinger’s fundamental misapplication of realist concepts in his quest
to build an enduring, stable international order while ignoring the underly-
ing sources of change in that order. He also called into question Kissinger’s
character in his personal style of diplomacy and his willingness to sacrifice his
convictions to maintain access to those in power. Morgenthau makes clear
that the problem is not simply one of judgment but also character.15 For his
part, Kissinger seldom acknowledges mistakes. As his memoirs amply attest,
he has displayed no contrition or remorse over the human costs of his con-
duct and policies.16 He has been prone to attribute failures in his own policy
strategy to others, such as the anti-war m ovement, Congress, the press, or
the government bureaucracy. In his account of the Vietnam War, he refer-
enced Morgenthau only once and never engages Morgenthau’s substantive
criticisms of the war (Kissinger 2003: 44). Moreover, Kissinger’s ‘confi-
dence in his ability to judge consequences is so great,’ Michael Smith (1986:
216; see also Gismondi 2007: 446–453; Epp 1997) aptly observes, ‘that the
ethic of consequences in effect merges with the ethic of intention.’ This
proclivity effaces the distinction Morgenthau (1946: 185–186) had empha-
sized between these two ethical approaches. In contrast to Morgenthau,
Kissinger also seems to have never rethought his statesman ideal in light of
any commitment to the principle of democratic pluralism.
Conclusion
In emphasizing the role of domestic politics and institutions in shaping
foreign policy, Morgenthau raised an array of issues that can only be ade-
quately addressed by investigating this domestic context. Part of that
investigation involves not simply testing his arguments and claims against
the historical record but also identifying continuities or discontinuities
between his era and our own,17 such as the militarization of foreign policy
132 D.B. KLUSMEYER
and the accretion of presidential power in the American constitutional

system (see, e.g., Curley 2015). Publishing in a variety of article formats,
Morgenthau never organized many of his arguments and insights about
how this domestic context affected policymaking during the Vietnam War
era into a systematic, empirically grounded full-length study.18 The impres-
sion that he was often writing more in a journalistic and even polemical
fashion than in a scholarly one has doubtlessly limited their enduring influ-
ence. Therefore, it is not surprising that more recent scholarship on the
imperial presidency, the national security state, domestic surveillance, and
torture has largely ignored Morgenthau’s legacy. While most of these crit-
ics do not seem to recognize that they are advancing arguments similar to
those Morgenthau had made decades earlier, their critiques suggest the
continuing relevance of his critiques of the national security state.
In Why Leaders Lie (2011), John Mearsheimer complains that few schol-
ars have examined the role of lying in international politics. However, he
curiously ignores Morgenthau’s contributions to this subject.19 In develop-
ing his analysis, Mearsheimer appears to work from a simple model: leaders
lie for both good reasons and bad, though not as often as many of us may
suspect. His approach assumes that leaders actually know the truth or accu-
rately comprehend the factual reality of the case at hand; thus, his concerns
are why leaders decide to lie in such instances and the consequences that
flow from that choice.20 Morgenthau, however, saw lying as part of the self-
deception, willful blindness, and moral atrophy of policymakers within the
institutional context of the national security state. Unlike Mearsheimer,
Morgenthau also underscored how habitual lying was but one of many
tactics employed—including bribery, intimidation, and domestic spying—
to manipulate public opinion and silence dissenting voices. This problem is
compounded, Morgenthau (1972) observes, by the fact that officials rou-
tinely lie to one another even within the same branch of government.
Despite his emphasis on the irresponsibility and other moral inadequa-
cies of policymaking elites, Morgenthau did not provide any guidance for
developing new accountability measures or much hope for thinking that
there are any feasible ones. As the United States remained mired in the
Vietnam War, he also emphasized the importance of bringing to light the
errors that led to such a debacle. ‘When a nation allows itself to be misgov-
erned in such a flagrant fashion,’ Morgenthau (1969: 139–140) observed,
there must be something essentially wrong in its intellectual, moral, and politi-
cal constitution. To lay bare what is wrong is not an idle exercise in ex-post-
facto fault-finding. Rather it is an act of public purification and rectification. If
it is not performed and accepted by the government and people alike, faults
undiscovered and uncorrected are bound to call forth new disasters – perhaps
different from the one we have experienced in Vietnam, but just as detrimen-
tal to the interests of the nation.
His call for ‘public purification’ seems inspired more by the example of
classical tragic heroes, such as Oedipus, than by any careful assessment of
the prospects for such a national self-cleansing. His expectation that politi-
cal leaders should publicly acknowledge their errors ignores how partisan
politics discourages such admissions for fear of giving adversaries an advan-
tage. It also reflects the moralistic strain in much of his commentary on
the Vietnam War as well as the stark limitations of a moralistic approach of
which he was well aware. However, he may not have moved beyond these
limitations because he could never envision any practical structural reforms
to propose.
At their core, Morgenthau’s critiques reflect a fundamental concern
that the devices introduced in a late-eighteenth-century constitution to
regulate the allocation and exercise of power have proven inadequate to
control the national security state. As Stephen Holmes (2009: 323–331)
has emphasized, government officials who cannot be effectively called into
account to defend their policies against critics are less likely to be cogni-
zant of biases and unwarranted assumptions in their judgments, because
these judgments are never subjected to searching external scrutiny.
Moreover, government officials are inevitably inclined to use this insula-
tion from scrutiny to conceal their mistakes and underreport the costs of
their policy choices. Beginning with his critique of the depoliticization of
the public realm and the debasement of citizenship into passive consumer-
ism, Morgenthau (1960: 197–215) came to emphasize the important role
that public engagement and debate play in sustaining a republic’s consti-
tutional order and free government. In his view, their exercise of this kind
of public freedom can potentially provide a check on the government’s
abuse of power, but he was hardly optimistic about this prospect.21
Notes
1. For incisive critiques of this approach to political ethics, see Warner 1991:
9–60; Gismondi 2007.
2. This neglect is especially noteworthy when one recalls that Harold Lasswell
(1937, 1941) had been publishing influential studies analyzing the emerg-
ing clash between the ‘civilian state’ and ‘garrison state.’ The fear that the
134 D.B. KLUSMEYER
United States might become a garrison state influenced postwar American

national security (Hogan 1998: 28–29, 67, 72, 79, 112, 138, 150–151,
289, 335, 351–352, 464, 467). For a compelling monograph seeking to
explain how the United States avoided this outcome in institutional and
economic terms, see: Friedberg (2000). For a counterview emphasizing
how militarization has shaped postwar culture and ideology, see Sherry
1995; Bacevich 2005.
3. Zimmer (2011) has written (by far) the most comprehensive overview of
Morgenthau’s role in opposing the Vietnam War.
4. Bacevich (2007) has reached similar conclusions.
5. The progressive historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. (1973), exemplifies
this pattern. See, generally, Tatalovich and Engeman (2003); Rudalevige
(2005: 19–100).
6. For Morgenthau’s view of Watergate, see Morgenthau 1973b.
7. This formulation is strikingly similar to Arendt’s analysis of Eichmann’s
thoughtlessness. See Arendt (2006: 48–49, 52–53).
8. I develop the comparison between Morgenthau and Arendt at much
greater length in Klusmeyer 2009, 2011a. See also Rösch (2013).
9. Although Arendt makes no reference to George Orwell (1968), her point
here shares strong affinities with the argument in his classic 1946 essay.
10. For example, Kissinger (2003: 44) focuses on this point in his comment on
Morgenthau’s opposition.
11. See, e.g., Scheuerman (2009: 78–100), Navari, In Defense of the National
Interest, in this volume.
12. For a cogent counterpoint, see Smith 1997.
13. Morgenthau (1963) defended Arendt’s controversial study of Eichmann.
14. In his history of postwar policy experts, Bruce Kuklick (2006: 229) con-
cludes, ‘They did their best work in constructing ways of thinking that
absolved leadership of liability, deserved or not…the culture paid a pretty
penny for the expertise, especially when so many intellectuals disdained a
democratic public.’ He does not exclude Morgenthau from this censure
but bases his interpretation of his views primarily on his immediate postwar
writings.
15. Morgenthau (1974b: 61) makes this relationship explicit in his assessment
of Henry Kissinger’s performance in office, observing: ‘That ability to be
“lucky” requires a quality of character rather than that of mind or of
manipulative finesse. For the statesman, in order to be endowed with that
ability, must be capable of separating his ego from his task, subordinating
both to objective laws that govern the political universe.’
16. Asked at a public forum about his role in the Vietnam War, Kissinger dis-
missed any question of apology as ‘highly inappropriate,’ adding: ‘I have
no regrets.’ Quoted in Allen 2006: B5; also quoted in Zimmer (2011:

xxiii).
17. For example, historians have found that the patterns of collaboration
between academic scholars and the national security state were much more
complex than Morgenthau had recognized. These historians have also
emphasized that by the late 1960s, many universities had begun to sever
formal relationships with government agencies in the face of mounting
criticisms from the anti-war movement. As a result, policymakers have
come to rely increasingly on in-house social science research or that of
private consulting firms. Most of this research is not vetted by academic
scholars and is not available to public scrutiny, which raises new questions
which have only begun to be investigated (Rohde 2013).
18. In the last public assessment of presidential power in foreign affairs,
Morgenthau (1983: 1–35) ignores his entire structural critique in return-
ing to reflect on the timeless factors that shape its exercise in foreign
policy.
19. He also ignores Arendt’s contributions to it.
20. ‘There is the possibility, of course,’ Mearsheimer (2011: 16) acknowl-
edges, ‘that a person who thinks that he is telling a lie has his facts wrong
and is inadvertently telling the truth. The reverse might also be true as
well: a person who believes he is telling the truth might have his facts
wrong. This problem, however, is irrelevant for my purposes.’
21. For elaborations of this view of public freedom, see Holmes (2009: 323–
326); Villa (2008).
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Morgenthau in America: The Legacy
Greg Russell
Political Science is an expanding discipline, with a proliferation of subfield

specializations, and increasingly few works live past the generation of the
author, much less earn the rank of seminal or classic contributions in gen-
erations to come. Morgenthau’s Politics Among Nations is the rare excep-
tion, prompting Robert Jervis (1994: 853–854) to observe that this
weighty tome ‘to a large degree made the field’ and that ‘scholars still cite
his work, even if they have not read it recently…and even if their main
objective is to attack it.’ For Jervis, Morgenthau continues to be read, and
remains relevant, ‘because he had so much to say about so many timeless
questions…[that] scholars find it impossible to avoid him’ (Jervis 1994:
854). While previous chapters in this volume have analyzed the formative
experiences and intellectual foundations of Morgenthau’s worldview,
often trying to disentangle the Anglo-American from the Continental
dimensions, the emphasis here will be on his legacy and his influence upon
leading American scholars and public figures of his day, in addition to
some contemporary international thinkers. That influence registered dif-
ferently according to time and issue, and in relation to different aspects of
Morgenthau’s complex personality. This chapter will consider the philo-
sophical Morgenthau, the academic Morgenthau, and the public person,
at different periods and in different environments.
G. Russell (*)
University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, USA

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67498-8_7
144 G. RUSSELL
The Philosopher in the Public Space

In the decades before and after World War II, the leading spokesmen of
the American realist tradition exhibited a persistent philosophical and his-
torical interest in the relation between power and moral purpose. Walter
Lippmann, Reinhold Niebuhr, George F. Kennan, and Kenneth
W. Thompson clearly rejected classical raison d’état as an appropriate stan-
dard for United States foreign policy. At the same time, however, they
deplored the tendency of idealists and naïve moralists to sacrifice the pru-
dent calculation of American national interest for the promotion of
abstract designs and moral absolutes in international politics.
Among this group, Morgenthau was the leader and in important senses
the guide. Not only did Morgenthau defy the trend of contemporary
political science, where scholarship and public policy are increasingly dis-
tinct, he retained a lifelong concern that philosophy had a necessary place
for any theoretical understanding of international politics as well as for
probing the moral and political requirements for statesmanship. Holding
that the very existence of power had a bearing on the expression of truth,
Morgenthau restated the principles of Platonic and Aristotelian episteme
politike. This ‘political science’ is not just one science among others; rather,
it is concerned not only with the attainment and preservation of the
supreme good for the individual ‘but also for the whole people (ethnos) or
city (polis)’ (Kinneging 2009: 15). His primary concern as a political sci-
entist was with ‘the restoration of the intellectual and moral commitment
to the truth about matters political for its own sake.’ Against social and
political pressures aimed at protecting the institutions and values of an
established order, he (n.d. Statement by Hans J. Morgenthau on Political
Science) warned his colleagues:
If the political scientist cannot resist these pushes and pulls by repairing to
the vision of the searcher for political truth, which the prophets exemplified,
what will become of him as a scholar, and what will become of a society
which has deprived itself of the ability to measure the conflicting claims of
interested parties against the truth, however dimly seen?
His model and soon-to-be collaborator was the theologian Reinhold

Niebuhr. Scholars still debate exactly who influenced whom and in what
particular ways, but the relationship was critical to both at seminal
moments in their respective careers. The two men first crossed paths at the
University of Chicago, where Morgenthau had been teaching since 1943,
MORGENTHAU IN AMERICA: THE LEGACY 145
and Niebuhr was on a lecture circuit, his reputation approaching its zenith
following the publication of the prestigious Gifford Lectures (1941–43).
Morgenthau was familiar with, and had read, The Nature and Destiny of
Man as well as Moral Man and Immoral Society (Rice 2008: 258). In
Scientific Man vs. Power Politics, Morgenthau (1946: 236) acknowledged
that ‘the books of Reinhold Niebuhr’ had ‘most illuminatingly treated’
the subject matter of the concluding chapter, ‘The Tragedy of Scientific
Man.’ For Morgenthau (1946: 40), Niebuhr ‘repudiated the claims of
rationalism in all its manifestations.’ He likened Niebuhr’s critique of
modern rationalism to the position taken by Alfred North Whitehead
(1926: 288–289), who called upon rationalism to ‘transcend itself by
recurrence to the concrete in search of inspiration.’ The fundamental
point here is that ‘the principles of scientific reason are always simple, con-
sistent, and abstract; [while] the social world is always complicated, incon-
gruous, and concrete’ (Morgenthau 1946: 10). The relationship between
the two would deepen considerably when George Kennan, Director of the
State Department Policy Planning Staff, brought Morgenthau and
Niebuhr together (along with other realists like Arnold Wolfers) for a
number of sessions between 1949 and 1950.
While Niebuhr (1965: 71) once described Morgenthau as ‘the most
brilliant and authoritative political realist,’ the latter returned the compli-
ment by judging his friend to be ‘the greatest living political philosopher
in America’ and ‘perhaps the only creative political philosopher since
[John] Calhoun’ (Morgenthau 1962c: 109). The extent to which
Niebuhr’s Christian Realism actually permeated Morgenthau’s political
thought remains something of an open question. Michael J. Smith (1986:
134) observes that Morgenthau secularized ‘Niebuhr’s insights…into a
general theory of international politics.’ Christoph Frei (2001: 111), part-
ing ways with Michael J. Smith, argues to the contrary that Morgenthau
essentially ‘used Niebuhr’s language to introduce his German intellectual
heritage in an unobjectionable manner in America.’ What Morgenthau
was really up to in Scientific Man, in Frei’s estimation, was ‘rephrasing
Nietzsche with slightly religious overtones’ (2001: 111). Later in life, with
a good deal of affectionate nostalgia, Niebuhr sent Morgenthau a brief
letter in which he wrote, ‘I am forced to ask whether all my insights are
not borrowed from Hans Morgenthau’ (Rice 2008: 257). Theologian
Roger Shinn, who studied with Niebuhr at Union Theological Seminary
and who also knew Morgenthau, emphasized that the relationship reached
beyond the particular career paths of two intellectual giants. The rapport
146 G. RUSSELL
between the two men demonstrated ‘the possibility of communication

between worlds of discourse [theology and politics] that are too often
kept separate (Shinn 2003: 185–86)’
Despite their common rejection of liberal moralism and utopianism, as
well as their intellectual camaraderie over the years, they had substantial
philosophical differences (what Daniel Rice describes as ‘various shades of
realism’) on power and the national interest (Rice 2008: 274–275). In a
1962 article entitled ‘Love and Power,’ Morgenthau saw the two impulses
as organically connected and arising out of human loneliness. ‘What love
seeks to discover in another man as a gift of nature,’ Morgenthau (1962a:
247) wrote, ‘power must create through the artifice of psychological
manipulation.’ The problematic aspect of this formulation, from Niebuhr’s
point of view, is that the will-to-power, the animus dominandi, serves as
both the beginning and end of self-identity (having turned to power to
achieve what it could not achieve through love). Smith (1987: 136–137)
notes that ‘for Morgenthau the will-to-power is the starting point of anal-
ysis; for Niebuhr it is an aspect of the sin of pride which is itself part of a
larger analysis.’ Niebuhr connected power and unbridled self-interest to a
deeper spiritual drama, beyond mere survival, where the will to power of
the self actually finds its highest realization in ‘self-giving.’ In Niebuhr, the
law of love is the ‘essential’ quality in man’s nature by which he ‘tran-
scends himself indeterminately and can only have God rather than self for
his end’ (Niebuhr 1953: 129–130). Niebuhr (1965: 75) thought that ‘in
Morgenthau’s realistic rigor to isolate the dominant motives of…nations
[the lust for power] from the pretended higher one [the hypocritical pre-
tense of a deeper loyalty to higher values],’ he may have made the mistake
of obscuring the important residual creative factor in human rationality.
While Niebuhr held that the ‘will to power’ was an undeniable fact of
experience as well as a perennial feature of human affairs, he discerned
‘spiritual’ depths in the will to power that extended its meaning (Rice
2008: 274). The question Morgenthau does not answer is ‘whether or not
there is anything in the anatomy of man, as a rational and moral creature,
which prompts his embarrassment about the consistent self-regard of his
parochial community and the consequent hypocrisy of claiming a higher
motive than the obvious one’ (Niebuhr 1965: 73).
Similarly, while Morgenthau championed the national interest defined
in terms of power, Niebuhr (1953: 136) countered that ‘a consistent self-
interest on the part of the nation will work against its interests because it
will fail to do justice to the broader and longer interests, which are involved
with the interests of the other nations.’ He once responded to Morgenthau

that little in the realist approach would be undermined ‘if we define the
moral ambiguity in the political realm in terms which do not rob it of
content’ (Rice 2008: 276 n. 71). Niebuhr was never comfortable with
treating the national interest as a moral end in itself. Morgenthau’s defense
of the ‘moral dignity of the national interest’ seemed to Niebuhr (1952:
148) to be ‘a preoccupation with our own interests [that] must lead to an
illegitimate indifference toward the interests of others.’ Politics Among
Nations raised ‘again the question whether a realistic interpretation may
not err in obscuring the residual capacity for justice and devotion to the
larger good, even when it is dealing with the dimensions of collective
behavior in which the realistic assumptions about human nature are most
justified’ (Niebuhr 1965: 71). Morgenthau’s fixation on the ideological
gloss on power was, for Niebuhr (Rice 2008: 279), merely an affirmation
‘that people, even nations, engage in this pretense because they are moral.’
Niebuhr (Rice 2008: 279) explained that the ‘pretense is not engaged in
to aid the ally or defeat the enemy, but to convince the people themselves
that they are behaving morally.’
Part of the problem of even recognizing and assessing the ethical con-
tent of Morgenthau’s public philosophy follows from the fact, as Professor
Jervis (1994: 867) observes, that he simply ‘diverges from what most
people associate with Realism’ (Jervis 1994: 867). It has become almost
commonplace for many scholars who apply moral perspectives to foreign
policy ‘to contrast their views with what they take to be Morgenthau’s’
(Jervis 1994: 867). Authors typically embellish their own positions by
finding someone with whom to disagree; however, ‘it will simply not do
to use selected quotations to show that Morgenthau thought that interna-
tional politics leaves no room for ethical considerations’ (Jervis 1994:
867). Morgenthau explicitly renounced the ethical dualism of raison d’état,
stating: No civilization can be satisfied with such a dual morality; for
through it the domain of politics is not only made morally inferior to the
private sphere but this inferiority is recognized as legitimate and made
respectable by a particular system of political ethics’ (Morgenthau 1945: 6).
In one exchange1 between Morgenthau and Niebuhr, Morgenthau was
asked: ‘Has ethics anything whatsoever to do with foreign policy in the
practical sense?’ His response deserves to be quoted in full:
Of course it has. This is one of the old chestnuts that there are two compart-
ments: one is foreign policy and the other is ethics. Neither I, nor you, nor
148 G. RUSSELL
anyone else can act without considerations of morality. Neither can a states-
man. Surely the making of foreign policy, as a human act, is involved with
moral decision. This is inevitable because man is a moral being—the states-
man, too. (Rice 2008: 286)
While Morgenthau was often reluctant to follow the Niebuhrian incli-

nation of treating the interests and power of nations within more inclusive
structures of justice (Griffiths 1992: 53), he was certainly attuned to nor-
mative precepts that would guide the wise and prudent statesman who
acts on the basis of an intuitive understanding of the ‘tragic dilemmas’ of
foreign policy. William Scheuerman (2009: 88) argues that Morgenthau’s
defense of the national interest ‘was also intended as a normatively minded
contribution to political ethics.’ As a brake upon both political hubris and
ideological abstractions, the national interest properly conceived brought
to the statesman ‘a healthy sense of humility’ and even allowed him ‘to
interpret the political world from the enemy’s perspective’ (Scheuerman
2009: 89). Morgenthau’s ethical perspective on the national interest,
Scheuerman (2009: 89) insists, incorporates ‘the old fashioned virtues of
humility, moderation, and prudence.’ What is demanded of the statesman
is ‘a careful weighing of options, rigorous examination of their conse-
quences, and an appreciation of the familiar paradox that even the best of
intentions produce evil consequences, as well as a hard-headed consider-
ation of the inevitable limits of one’s action’ (Scheuerman 2009: 89).
Morgenthau’s profile of the statesman is replete with norms that serve
to direct and judge interest, and that accordingly play a large role in the
selection of national means and goals. In fact, the tragic predicament of
the statesman inheres in the fact that ‘the quest to tame the lust for power
by strict moral mechanisms remained no less constitutive of the human
condition’ (Scheuerman 2009: 89). Even if there is no rationalistic or
scientific model that can transcend the inevitable conflict between poli-
tics—the domain of power, and ethics—the domain of right, morality con-
sisted in facing this fact squarely. Recognizing the presence of evil in
political action, as Morgenthau (1946: 203, 218) did, does not dispense
with the moral courage by which the statesman achieves an ‘uneasy,
precarious, and even paradoxical’ modus vivendi between the harsh reali-
ties of power politics and uncompromising, but imperfectly fulfilled, moral
standards’ (Brands 1998: 159–160).
Morgenthau’s (1962a: 247) view of the relationship between morality
and expedience is complex and full of tragedy, awash in the perilous
crosscurrents of power and the longing for love. Understanding that
‘mankind has at all times refused to forego the ethical evaluation of polit-
ical action,’ he acknowledged that ‘political philosophy from the Greeks
to our time has started with the assumption that man in the political
sphere is not allowed to act as he pleases and that his action must con-
form to a higher standard than success’ (Morgenthau 1946: 176).
Political actors, ‘however they may be guided by considerations of expe-
diency, must pay their tribute to these standards by justifying actions in
ethical terms’ (Morgenthau 1946: 176–177). In one of the most impor-
tant passages, from the first book he published in America, Morgenthau
(1946: 177) wrote:
The moves and countermoves in the struggle for power must be intelligible
as a dialectic movement toward the realization of justice. However devoid of
positive ethical significance the individual political act may be, it is bound to
be less than completely evil and can never be without any ethical significance
at all; for the necessity of justifying it in ethical terms carries with it the obli-
gation for even the most cynical of actors to choose his measures so that
they, however evil, will coincide at least at some point, however limited and
superficial, with the standards of ethics and thus will lend at least color to the
positive ethical claims. These claims may be false, but they cannot be com-
pletely and absolutely false, as long as the actor is concerned with the appear-
ance of his act as just….This curious dialectic of ethics and politics, which
prevents the latter, in spite of itself, from escaping the former’s judgment
and normative direction, has its roots in the nature of man as both a political
and a moral animal….Man is the victim of political power by necessity; he is
a political master by [moral] aspiration.
Any distinction between private and political action is not one between
morality and immorality, but inheres ‘in the degree alone in which the two
types of action deviate from the ethical norm’ (Morgenthau 1946: 195).
Morgenthau (1946: 195–196) was quite clear that there ‘is not one kind
of ethical precept applying to political action and another one to the pri-
vate one, but one and the same ethical standard applies to both—observed
and observable, however, by either with unequal compliance.’
Morgenthau in Academia
Few were in a better position than Kenneth Thompson to observe the
impact and unfolding of Morgenthau’s career at the University of Chicago.
Thompson served as a teaching assistant for both Morgenthau and Quincy
Wright. These two luminaries, and their years together on the faculty,
150 G. RUSSELL
constituted ‘the golden age of international studies at Chicago’ (Thompson

1977: 22). Even with Professor Wright’s deep commitment to a science of
international relations, as reflected in his Study of War and Study of
International Relations, Thompson found ‘that he and Morgenthau came
out at similar or identical points, and this added to the tolerance he devel-
oped for philosophy and a type of thought that might have been incom-
patible with his own approach (1977: 23).’ A prolific writer, and first-rate
political thinker himself, Thompson received his PhD in 1950 and taught
there (in Political Science) and at Northwestern University until 1955.
Thompson admired, and was strongly influenced by, Morgenthau’s stead-
fast commitment to philosophy for understanding politics and interna-
tional relations. Moreover, Thompson (1977: 21) was impressed by
Morgenthau’s courage and persistence in justifying his lifelong concern in
a department where the dominant group was in the field of public admin-
istration ‘and where the views of Harold Lasswell and Leonard White had
gone largely unchallenged.’ With behavioral orthodoxy still in full bloom
in the immediate aftermath of the Charles Merriam era (Merriam having
retired three years before Morgenthau’s arrival in the department in
1943), Morgenthau was requested to offer a course in comparative public
law! Hoping perhaps to put their new colleague ‘on the right track’ (as
Thompson recalled), criticisms of his approach in the department were
somewhat offset by a general climate at Chicago relatively open to an
interest in political philosophy. This intellectual interest was exemplified
not least by University President Robert Hutchins (who had founded a
committee to write a world constitution), and was attractive to ‘leaders in
the undergraduate college such as F. Champion Ward, David Reissman,
Morton Grodzins, and David Meiklejohn’ (Thompson 1977: 24).
Thompson (1977: 21) recalled the popularity of a class Morgenthau
offered on Aristotle, in addition to a course entitled Philosophy of
International Relations (‘one of the earliest and most stimulating courses
offered at the University of Chicago’). As acting chair of the department
for a period of time, Morgenthau played an important role in recruiting
Leo Strauss from the New School of Social Research to the University in
1949 (a relationship that over time had, according to Thompson, its share
of ups and downs). Still it was in the classroom with students, as well as
with junior faculty (Charles M. Hardin, Milton Rakove, Gerald Stourzh,
George Liska, Tang Tsou, and Robert Osgood), where Morgenthau
would have his greatest impact and find strong support. New students
entering his class would follow a predictable pattern, often there in the
beginning ‘to scorn and ridicule,’ always inclined to interrupt to bolster

their confidence in world government or international law, and suspicious
of Morgenthau’s ‘Germanic way of looking at things’ at a time when
‘power politics was a dirty and forbidden word in the Chicago of his day’
(Thompson 1977: 23–24). Morgenthau’s success in the classroom was
due less to his having exorcized the idealistic and ideological proclivities of
his students and more to his ability to impart to them a philosophical
framework to think more broadly about the interrelationship of human
nature, power, law, and morality. Thompson (1977: 23) remembered that
those idealistic students who arrived in Morgenthau’s class ‘left with mod-
erate to evangelical commitment to his ideas.’ As time passed, ‘they began
to see that his conception of international politics had coherence precisely
because it was grounded in a coherent philosophy that was still evolving’
(Thompson 1977: 23). What made for success among his students (a
remarkable group who returned to Chicago after World War II) was a
portent of his later contribution to international politics and political sci-
ence as a discipline. His students would transmit and interpret his thinking
to others, including Professor Wright; and if, in consequence, ‘the princi-
ples he was propounding were subject to testing on many fronts’
(Thompson 1977: 23), this only served to spread and strengthen them.
At the same time, however, Thompson (1977: 26) was also situated to
understand that Morgenthau brought to his work not only ‘all the
strengths of the philosopher’ but also ‘some of the limitations.’ He often
wondered if his mentor, occasionally austere and single-minded in profes-
sional settings, might have increased support for his approach had he
‘taken a somewhat conciliatory approach’ to other theoretical and meth-
odological perspectives in political science (Thompson 1977: 26). The
double-barreled critique of scientism and rationalism in Scientific Man
drew some rather deep and perhaps unforgiving intellectual lines in the
sand. He passed up few opportunities to speak on the limitations of inter-
national law (especially in the company of international lawyers), not to
mention the conspicuous shortcomings of quantitative political science.
The occasional sharp tone could belie the famous remark of Walter
Lippmann: ‘You are not the harsh realist you are painted but the most
moral man that I know’ (Thompson 1977: 26). Finally, constructive
diplomacy was not always Morgenthau’s strong suit in the workings of his
own department, whereby he ‘was unsuccessful in building political coali-
tions’ and ‘was often puzzled and intrigued, rather than galvanized into
action, by the political stratagems of colleagues and sometime friends’
152 G. RUSSELL
(Thompson 1977: 26). Thompson (1977: 26) never forgot a familiar

refrain: ‘When you are thrown into a den of lions,’ Morgenthau would say,
‘either the lions will get you or you the lions.’
On Morgenthau’s specific intellectual contribution to the subject,
Thompson stressed the European heritage. According to him (1980: 88),
Morgenthau transformed certain traditional European ideas to fit the
American experience and formulated them in useful terms. He continued
to rethink and restate these ideas to accord with the realities of American
democracy, which he accepted and praised, particularly in his later writ-
ings. His achievement was more remarkable because he celebrated the
uniqueness of American ideas and institutions at the same time that he
defended without compromise what he called the iron law of international
politics.
Of his influence on Thompson, the latter rated the influence of Niebuhr
on his own work to be the more important (Rajee 2013: 21). But at
Carnegie, when in the 1950s, Thompson convened both the American
and British Committees on the Theory of International Politics, for the
purpose of defining an approach to international relations that could guide
sound foreign policymaking, it was to Morgenthau, Nitze, and Wolfers
that he looked to serve as the core of the American committee.
The Public Policy Morgenthau

John Bew’s excellent new book, Realpolitik: A History, offers the first
comprehensive history of Realpolitik as a concept that moved from
Germany into the mainstream of Anglo-American discourse. As Bew’s
work itself indicates, the idea is now enjoying something of a comeback,
along with the ‘return’ of history, nationalism, and geography, following
the brief-lived idealism and triumphalism of the end of the Cold War.
Bew’s original research (and extensive use of the Hans J. Morgenthau
Papers) has the timely virtue (especially for this volume) of analyzing the
rise of, and reaction to, American realism in official circles, in addition to
evaluating Morgenthau’s interaction with notable public personalities in
the Realist school throughout the postwar years.
Morgenthau’s work had come to the attention of George F. Kennan
during the period when the latter served as director of the Policy Planning
Staff (a Kennan creation) at the State Department. Having first met in
1948, and struck up a friendship, Kennan informed Morgenthau that he
was ‘being read with attention and respect by many who have responsibility
for the conduct of foreign policy’ (Bew 2016: 210). Morgenthau’s writing
directly influenced the foreign policy thinking of Kennan, whom
Morgenthau recommended for the University of Chicago’s Walgreen
Lectures in 1951. Kennan’s lectures (subsequently published as American
Diplomacy 1900–1950) drew extensively from many of arguments of
Morgenthau’s In Defense of the National Interest, and his later dissociation
from military containment also followed Morgenthau’s lead.
The resonance of his work, in his conversations with Kennan, was due
in good measure to Morgenthau’s ‘strong conviction in the unique power
of the United States’ as well as (and perhaps ironically) a confidence that
American idealism was ‘much more robust and resilient than the traditions
of German idealism (represented by such thinkers as Goethe),’ the reputa-
tion of the latter having been trampled in the last hundred years’ (Bew
2016: 211). Kennan heard an idealistic Morgenthau, who willingly drew
on American exceptionalism, express the hope ‘that America could lead
the unification of Europe in a way that mirrored its own federal polity’
(Bew 2016: 211). In a related vein, and unlike later neorealists whose
theory privileges the structure of the international system over the role of
domestic factors in explaining foreign policy behavior, Morgenthau’s
‘sense of balance in international relations grew out of his understanding
of how the successful and stable states (chiefly the Anglo-Saxon ones)
achieved internal equilibrium’ (Bew 2016: 209–210).
Morgenthau eagerly sought out connections and exchanges with promi-
nent public figures, partly because realists felt themselves under siege by a
barrage of criticism (and often by German-speaking émigrés like Frank
Tannenbaum, Carl J. Friedrich, and Peter Viereck) and partly because ‘he
believed that the case for a realist foreign policy could not simply be fought
within academia’ (Bew 2016: 217). And indeed, Morgenthau struck a deep
nerve in Washington, where he was the one man ‘to whom the label Realpolitik
was most often appended’ (Bew 2016: 208). Morgenthau’s correspondence
with Dean Acheson led the former Secretary of State in 1953 to admit that he
‘was a follower of the Morgenthau line’ (Bew 2016: 217). Both at the State
Department, and in meetings at the Cosmos and Cosmopolitan Clubs in
Washington, Morgenthau developed a friendship with Walter Lippmann,
America’s most influential political journalist. Lippmann praised his ‘public
spirit, courage and insight’; he also told Morgenthau that these qualities ‘will
assure you a place in history as one of the great mentors of our time, regardless
of whether your advice will be heeded or not’ (Bew 2016: 217). The two met
and compared reviews of their works, and Morgenthau sent Lippmann books,
154 G. RUSSELL
which he read. Although some in this early postwar realist coterie would over
time develop important policy differences (as Acheson, Lippmann, and
Kennan clashed over the Cold War and containment), the lines of communi-
cation sustained Morgenthau’s hope that, as he once expressed to Kennan in
1954, the coterie could influence not just ‘academic’ but ‘public thinking on
foreign affairs’ (Bew 2016: 217).
That hope would be realized not least in the work of Professor Robert
Jervis, Columbia University political scientist and a leading expert on the
role of perception and misperception in national security policy. He admit-
ted to having ‘relied heavily’ on Morgenthau in his two books on nuclear
strategy, particularly on Morgenthau’s critique of American security policy
during the height of the Cold War. He reckoned Morgenthau persuasive
on the question of how nuclear weapons had altered the traditional rela-
tionship between force and foreign policy, in addition to the fatal error of
evaluating nuclear weapons ‘within the conceptual framework appropriate
for conventional weapons’ (Jervis 1994: 862). The existence of second-
strike capability, the destructive power of the weapons, the difficulty of
wartime communications, the hold of human emotions—all of these made
of military victory a mutual suicide pact. Jervis (1994: 862) concluded: ‘I
think Morgenthau was correct to argue that one cannot understand policy
alternatives or international outcomes without grasping the content, ori-
gins, and implications of alternative views about how nuclear weapons
affect world politics.’
For Henry Kissinger, the importance of Morgenthau was not so much
in his direct influence on policy but in his role as an engaged intellectual
speaking truth to power and as an exponent of the tradition of Anglo-
American realism, following on from others such as E. H. Carr. For
Kissinger, speaking at his funeral (1980: 12), Morgenthau was more than
a friend; he ‘was my teacher.’ They had known each other ever since
Kissinger joined the faculty at Harvard in 1954 and ‘remained in sporadic
contact’ during the latter’s years of government service (Kissinger 1980:
12). They would see more of each other, and would remain very close,
after Kissinger left office. Kissinger (1980: 12) realized how rare the
opportunity comes when ‘one can identify a seminal figure in contempo-
rary political thought or in one’s own life.’ Morgenthau practically ‘made
the study of contemporary international relations a major discipline’
(Kissinger 1980: 12). All who came after him and taught in the field,
whatever differences might have existed, ‘had to start with his reflections’
(Kissinger 1980: 12).
In helping to define the theoretical boundaries of international politics

in the United States, Morgenthau faced a formidable task, Kissinger
(1980: 13) explained, (in what was no doubt also a self-reflection) because
‘the temptation to treat the subject by analogy to our domestic experience
was overwhelming.’ In addition, there already was a well-developed litera-
ture on international law ‘that saw international relations in terms of legal
processes,’ not to mention ‘a pragmatic tradition of solving issues that
arose on their merits’ (Kissinger 1980: 13). Particularly problematic was
‘the belief in America’s moral mission that had produced both isolation-
ism and, later on, global involvement’ (Kissinger 1980: 13). America’s
historic moral convictions produced over time two contradictory attitudes
toward foreign policy. The first is that American values are served best ‘by
perfecting democracy at home…acting as a beacon for the rest of man-
kind’ (Kissinger 1994: 18). The second is that the nation’s values impose
on it and obligation ‘to crusade for them around the world’ (Kissinger
1994: 18).
Morgenthau’s achievement, according to Kissinger (1980: 13), was ‘to
transcend all these disparate tendencies,’ convinced ‘that peace was a
statesman’s noblest objective,’ while never believing ‘that this yearning
alone would avoid war.’ His political credentials were unapologetically lib-
eral. Yet he understood that liberal aspirations depended not just on sim-
ple affirmation ‘but sufficient stability at least to enable man’s humane
aspirations to prevail’ (Kissinger 1980: 13). The fundamental dilemma for
any political leader is that ‘moral aims can be reached only in stages, each
of which is imperfect’ and that ‘morality provides the compass course, the
inner strength to face the ambiguities of choice’ (Kissinger 1980: 13).
Kissinger (1980: 13) shared Morgenthau’s conviction ‘that a proper
understanding of the national interest would illuminate a country’s pos-
sibilities as well as dictate the limits of its aspirations’; indeed, he adopted
Morgenthau’s conception as his own. In the ‘heartland’ speeches and in
the third volume of his memoirs, he refers to it repeatedly and in terms
recognizably those of Morgenthau, such as that the standard of national
interest was more than a brake upon liberal internationalist fantasies.
Morgenthau’s defense of the national interest, that it ‘saves us from both
that moral excess and that political folly’ of identifying ‘the moral aspira-
tions of a particular nation with the moral laws that govern the universe’
(Morgenthau 2006: 12) is entirely recognizable in ‘American Unity and
the National Interest’ which Kissinger delivered in Birmingham, Alabama,
in 1975. Both Kissinger and Morgenthau rejected what Bew called the
156 G. RUSSELL
‘equation of political moralizing with morality and of political realism with

immorality’ (Bew 2016: 213). He also followed Morgenthau that there
was an irreducible ethical core to the national interest, a kind of ‘moral
dignity,’ not least because, as Morgenthau insisted, it demanded great cau-
tion and restraint in the exercise of power (Morgenthau 1951: 3–39).
Kissinger (1980: 13) said of Morgenthau, in the 1960s, that he ‘proved
that he was beyond the manipulation of military calculations,’ opposing
the Vietnam War as he did ‘when it was still supported by fashionable
opinion.’ Their relationship would be tested. Just before Kissinger took
his position as national security advisor in 1968, Morgenthau wrote to
him to express his displeasure that Kissinger had not taken a strong and
visible public stand against the war or signaled his intention to help bring
it to an end (Bew 2016: 261). Kissinger recollected the 1966 debate the
two of them had in on Vietnam in Look magazine. Morgenthau ‘consid-
ered America over-extended, the war unwinnable [and] the stakes not
worth the cost’ (Kissinger 1980: 13). Kissinger (1980: 13) countered with
the argument that ‘the size of our commitment had determined our stake,
that we had an obligation to seek our way out of the morass through
negotiation rather than unconditional abandonment of the enterprise.’
Against those who contended that America’s credibility and prestige
throughout the world would be undermined by an abrupt termination of
military hostilities, Morgenthau wondered whether it is a boon to the
prestige of the most powerful nation on earth to be bogged down in a war
that it is neither able to win nor can afford to lose. Is not the mark of
greatness ‘in circumstances such as these,’ he asked, ‘to be able to afford
to be indifferent to one’s prestige?’ (Morgenthau 1965: 70–71).
Not only did Morgenthau (1967: 18) deem the war politically aimless
and militarily unwinnable, it also violated ‘the very principles upon which
the nation was founded and for which it has stood in the eyes of its own
citizens and the world.’ Vietnam, he wrote in 1967, ‘was Metternich’s war
being fought by the nation of Jefferson and Lincoln.’ Morgenthau, whose
criticism of America’s role in Vietnam dated back to 1961, was perhaps
the first prominent political scientist to rise above the suffocating air of
intellectual conformism within his discipline to expose what he considered
to be the corruption of power and principle at the highest echelons of the
United States government. The pressure upon intellectuals to conform
flowed from what he described as an insidious academic-political complex,
whereby the interests of the government are inextricably tied to the w elfare
of large groups of academics. Because of the money, prestige, and awards
that flow from government contracts with universities and private founda-
tions, the academic ‘enters into a subtle…relationship with the govern-
ment, which imperceptibly transforms his position of independent judge
to that of client and partisan’ (Morgenthau 1970: 26). In a revealing pas-
sage testifying to the tragedy of both President Johnson and the intellec-
tuals of America, Morgenthau (1970: 27) the political realist wrote:
These intellectuals must maintain their own regard for the truth in the face
of massive official disregard for it, which goes far beyond the necessities of
the political game. The official pronouncements on President Kennedy’s
assassination and the Vietnam War could perhaps still be justified in terms of
reason of state, although they have made civilized public debate with public
officials virtually impossible. But it is a different matter to habitually play fast
and loose with the truth, regardless of the public ends that might justify
such a play and for the sole purpose of enjoying another dimension of power.
Kissinger (1980: 13) conceded that Morgenthau ‘was right in his analy-
sis’ and ‘probably in his policy conclusions as applied to 1966.’ They both
‘stuck to their guns’ after Kissinger dealt with the problem three years later
as a policymaker (Kissinger 1980: 13). Reflecting back on their debate,
Kissinger (1980: 13) acknowledged that they ‘shared almost identical
premises.’ Kissinger did not disagree that the United States was overex-
tended, and they both sought a way out of the dilemma. ‘Hans,’ he said,
‘wanted to cut the Gordian knot in one dramatic move; I choose a differ-
ent route’ (Kissinger 1980: 13). Interestingly, Kissinger (1980: 13)
thought he and his friend ‘were both in a way lonely among our associ-
ates.’ Morgenthau is ‘not correctly understood as a protestor’; on the con-
trary, he ‘was a teacher trying to bring home to his beloved adopted
country the limits of its power, just as earlier he had insisted on its central
role’ (Kissinger 1980: 13). Through all the disagreements, Kissinger
(1980: 13) ‘never ceased admiring him’ or ‘remembering the profound
intellectual debt’ that he owed him.
The Contemporary Morgenthau

Among more recent scholars, Robert D. Kaplan has drawn on the real-
ism of Morgenthau in his 2012 book The Revenge Of Geography: What
The Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts And The Battle Against Fate.
Considering the fall of the Berlin Wall, Kaplan (2012a: 3) writes:
‘Suddenly, we were in a world in which the dismantling of a man-made
158 G. RUSSELL
boundary in Germany had led to the assumption that all human divisions
were surmountable.’ Following the triumph of the West in the Cold War,
many (including Kaplan) believed that human agency and its various
constructs—including human rights, free markets, democracy, science
and technology, and even humanitarian intervention—would emerge as
the most important forces shaping world events and would lead to free-
dom and prosperity across the globe. The years that followed, however,
revealed a much darker reality: while many societies did become more
democratic and prosperous, ‘it would be a long and difficult struggle,
with anarchy (in cases of several West African countries), insurrection
and outright wickedness (in the case of Rwanda) rearing their heads’ in
‘the long decade between November 9, 1989, and September 11, 2001’
(Kaplan 2012a: 5). In the new decade following 9/11, ‘geography, a fac-
tor certainly in the Balkans and Africa in the 1990s, would go on to
wreak unmitigated havoc on America’s good intentions in the Near East’
(Kaplan 2012a: 5). What Kaplan (2012a: 5) describes as the journey
from Bosnia to Baghdad, ‘from a limited air and land campaign in the
western, most developed part of the former Turkish Empire in the
Balkans to a mass infantry invasion in the eastern, less developed part in
Mesopotamia, would expose the limits of liberal universalism, and in the
process concede new respect to the relief map.’ In short, the debacle of
the early years in Iraq ‘reinforced the realist dictum…that the legacies of
geography, history, and culture do set limits on what can be accom-
plished in any given place’ (Kaplan 2012a: 23).
Realism, Kaplan argues, is essential for a proper appreciation of the
map, and in fact leads directly to it. He draws on insights from Politics
Among Nations ‘to set the stage’ for his larger, more philosophical discus-
sion about the relationship between human agency and determinism in
the field of geopolitics (2012a: 24). His starting point is Morgenthau’s
argument that the world ‘is the result of forces inherent in human nature’
(2012a: 24). In order ‘to improve the world, following Morgenthau’s
reasoning, one must work with these forces, not against them’ (2012a:
24). The political realist is one who accepts the material at hand (however
imperfect that material may be), who ‘appeals to historic precedent rather
than to abstract,’ and who ‘aims at the realization of the lesser evil rather
than of the absolute good’ (2012a: 24).
In 2003, a realist would have paid attention to ‘Iraq’s own history,
explained through its cartography and constellation of ethnic groups,
rather than to moral precepts of Western democracy, to see what kind of
future Iraq would be immediately capable of following the toppling of a

totalitarian regime’ (Kaplan 2012a: 24). After all, ‘good intentions have
little to do with positive outcomes, according to Morgenthau’ (Kaplan
2012a: 24). Countering the contention of Paul Wolfowitz—that the inva-
sion of, and regime change in, Iraq would end oppressive tyranny and
improve human rights—Kaplan (2012a: 25) cited Morgenthau’s reminder
‘that the need to marshal popular emotions cannot fail to impair the ratio-
nality of foreign policy itself.’ Many neoconservative proponents of the
war simply could not resist what Morgenthau described as the temptation
‘to clothe their own particular aspirations and actions in the moral pur-
poses of the universe’ (Kaplan 2012a: 25). It is one thing to know that
‘nations are subject to the moral law,’ but it is quite another ‘to pretend to
know with certainty what is good and evil in the relations among nations’
(Morgenthau 2006: 12).
Kaplan (2012a: 26) observes that realism enjoyed something of a resur-
gence following the violence in Iraq from 2003 to 2007, and ‘we all
claimed for a time to have become realists, or so we told ourselves.’ Yet,
given how Morgenthau defines realism, is that really true? Kaplan’s
(2012a: 26) uncertain answer to the question deserves to be quoted in
full:
do most of those who opposed the Iraq war on realist grounds also feel that
there is not necessarily a connection between democracy and morality? And,
Morgenthau, who opposed the Vietnam War on grounds of both ethics and
national interest, is the realist with whom we can all feel most comfortable.
An academic and intellectual his whole life, he never had the thirst for power
that other realists such as Kissinger and Scowcroft have demonstrated.
Moreover, his restrained, almost flat writing style lacks the edginess of a
Kissinger or a Samuel Huntington. The fact is, and there’s no denying it,
realism, even the Morgenthau variety, is supposed to make one uneasy….
Indeed, just beneath the veneer of civilization lie the bleakest forces of
human passion, and thus the central question in foreign affairs for realists is:
Who can do what to whom?
Christopher Layne makes another case—that Morgenthau’s realism

points to the need for restraint and self-awareness in American grand strat-
egy. Morgenthau and other leading realists ‘have always feared that a
hegemonic grand strategy would lead to excessive interventionism and
cause the United States to adopt both a crusading mentality and a spirit of
intolerance’ (Layne 2006: 203). Layne (2006: 259 n. 33) cites at length
160 G. RUSSELL
Morgenthau’s admonition that, when states claim universal applicability

for their ideas:
compromise, the virtue of the old diplomacy, becomes the treason of the
new, for the mutual accommodation of conflicting claims, possible or legiti-
mate within a common framework of moral standards, amounts to surren-
der when the moral standards are themselves the stakes of the conflict. Thus
the stage is set for a contest among nations whose stakes are no longer their
relative positions within a political and moral system accepted by all, but the
ability to impose upon other contestants a new universal political and moral
system recreated in the image of the victorious nation’s political and moral
convictions.
Morgenthau’s prudential understanding of the national interest is impor-

tant for he and others ‘have warned that over-concentrated power, even an
imbalance in America’s favor, can have dangerous consequences; insisted
that US strategy distinguish vital from secondary interests; and argued
against US involvement in peripheral countries’ (Layne 2006: 203). Yet,
in ongoing foreign policy debates between advocates of American strate-
gic internationalism and realist proponents of restraint, realists like
Morgenthau have not fared particularly well precisely because they have
often bracketed out values while leaning heavily on national interests and
power.
Layne (2006: 203) calls on realists to ‘shed their reticence to explicate
the values underlying their policy preferences, because this reluctance
allows their opponents to portray them—unfairly—as amoral (or even
immoral).’ Realists are well positioned, Layne believes, to address the nor-
mative dimension of national interest for two reasons. First, there is ‘no
single objectively true national interest’; Morgenthau himself refused to
consider the national interest as a static, self-evident principle of statecraft
whose formulation is immune from the complex interaction of domestic
and external influences on foreign policy decision-making processes
(Layne 2006: 203). Second, realists have understood that the United
States would pay a price at home for overreaching abroad, that ‘America’s
political institutions, prosperity, and social cohesion are best safeguarded
by grand strategic restraint’ (Layne 2006: 202). That is why ‘Kennan,
Lippmann, Morgenthau, [Robert] Tucker, and [Kenneth] Waltz opposed
America’s Vietnam policy, just as the current generation of realists took
the lead in opposing the Iraq War’ (Layne 2006: 203).
Few today have defended realist theory, or been more critical of recent
American foreign policy, than John Mearsheimer2 at the University of
Chicago. Observing pictures of Morgenthau and Samuel Huntington in
Mearsheimer’s office, Robert Kaplan (who interviewed Mearsheimer for a
feature in The Atlantic) reports: ‘Mearsheimer reveres both men for their
bravery in pointing out unpopular truths, and throughout his career he
has tried to emulate them. Indeed, in a country that has always been hos-
tile to what realism signifies, he wears his ‘realist’ label as a badge of honor’
(Kaplan 2012b: 81). Mearsheimer (2017) offers this summary judgment
of Morgenthau’s legacy:
Morgenthau is obviously a giant among IR scholars in the US and the world

more generally. He was the dominant IR figure in the U.S. from 1946,
when Scientific Man vs. Power Politics was published, until about 1965,
when the Vietnam War started and realism was pushed underground in the
academy. No other IR scholar was close to him in terms of influence during
those years, both inside and outside the academic world. He personified
what it meant to be a public intellectual.
With the onset of the Vietnam War, ‘Morgenthau’s influence began to

wane…because the searing hostility to that conflict on college and univer-
sity campuses created a hostile environment for realism and security stud-
ies’ (Mearsheimer 2017). The irony in this development, of course, is that
virtually every prominent realist opposed the Vietnam War. Despite the
national prominence of Morgenthau’s opposition to the war, in
Mearsheimer’s (2017) recollection, ‘students and faculty did not pay
much attention to Scientific Man or Politics Among Nations during the
Vietnam years, which ran from 1965–1975.’
The more likely reason why ‘Morgenthau’s star dimmed was that he
was deeply opposed to modern science,’ a recurring theme reflected in his
writings (Mearsheimer 2017). Mearsheimer (2017) thinks his ‘animus did
not matter much before the 1970s, but it began to matter in a big way as
the 1970s wore on and the social science revolution hit the IR field in full
force.’ His work ‘was no longer put up in bright lights’ and was judged
methodologically unsophisticated by an increasingly quantitative and
data-driven political science (Mearsheimer 2017).
Mearsheimer himself cannot remember reading Morgenthau as an under-
graduate at West Point or as an MA student at the University of Southern
California, although ‘I do remember people talking about him and I knew
that his name was associated with power politics’ (Mearsheimer 2017). After
162 G. RUSSELL
he arrived as a PhD student at Cornell in 1975, ‘realism was beginning to

make a comeback’ (Mearsheimer 2017). His entrée to realism came, inter-
estingly enough, through the International Political Economy (IPE) litera-
ture with its breakdown among realists, liberals, and Marxists. ‘The two key
realists we read were Bob Gilpin and Steve Krasner,’ in addition to a piece by
Waltz (not yet the seminal figure he would be after 1979) on economic
interdependence and war (Mearsheimer 2017). Although Mearsheimer
focused more on security than IPE at Cornell, ‘there was no major realist
figure in the security realm who we paid attention to’ (Mearsheimer 2017).
Aside from reading a chapter or two from Politics Among Nations for a grad-
uate class, ‘we did not pay it much attention’ (Mearsheimer 2017).
Mearsheimer (2017) continues: ‘I was well into my [doctoral] disserta-
tion in 1979, when Waltz’s Theory of International Politics came out and
did not read [it] until 1983, when I assigned it for my first IR seminar at
Chicago.’ Neither Morgenthau nor Waltz ‘had a significant influence on
my thinking about IR by the time I received my PhD in 1980’ (Mearsheimer
2017). Mearsheimer occasionally assigned chapters from Politics Among
Nations over the years; at the same time, however, he does not believe
Morgenthau had much influence on his thinking about realism, ‘mainly
because he is a human nature realist and I am a structural realist’ and
(since ‘that difference is so huge’) ‘there just was not much reason for me
to engage him’ (Mearsheimer 2017). Waltz was a different story ‘because
he is a structural realist and I knew from early on that I disagreed with him
in fundamental ways and wanted to challenge him’ (Mearsheimer 2017).
So it was Waltz, and not Morgenthau, who had a marked influence on
Mearsheimer’s thinking about international relations during the time he
was developing his own theory of offensive realism. Still, Mearsheimer
(2017) acknowledges, ‘many of Morgenthau’s substantive insights in his
books are so smart that he is still paid considerable attention, especially in
Europe.’
Where Mearsheimer (2005) did find intellectual commonalities with
Morgenthau, and where he insisted that Morgenthau had led the way, was in
their shared skepticism of the claims of ‘bandwagoning,’ and their opposition
to wars in respect of bandwagoning. In 2005, he published a piece entitled
‘Hans Morgenthau and the Iraq War: Realism Versus Neo-Conservatism’
where he argues that Morgenthau’s criticism of the Vietnam War parallels
his, and other realists, criticism of the Iraq War. According to Mearsheimer,
the core of the neoconservative theory of international politics ‘that moved
the invasion of Iraq’ consists of two strands. It has a power-based strand
‘which emphasizes big stick diplomacy and a bandwagoning logic,’ and an

idealist strand that calls for ‘spreading democracy across the Middle East and
maybe even the entire globe’ (Mearsheimer 2005: 3). With regard to
Morgenthau, ‘the critical issue is how he thought about the domino theory,
which is based on bandwagoning logic and which was at the heart of the
debate about whether to fight in Vietnam’ (Mearsheimer 2005: 4).
Morgenthau, like other realists, understood ‘that we live in a balancing world
and that the fall of Vietnam would not have had a cascading effect in
Southeast Asia, much less across the entire globe’ (Mearsheimer 2005: 4).
Mearsheimer (2005: 4) finds it implausible that Morgenthau ‘would have
accepted the neo-conservatives’ claim that invading Iraq would cause
America’s other adversaries to start dancing to the Bush administration’s
tune.’
Regarding the idealist strand of neoconservative theory, Morgenthau
would be in synch with other realists in believing nationalism, not democ-
racy, to ‘be the most powerful political ideology on the face of the earth’
(Mearsheimer 2005: 4). He consistently argued ‘that the North Vietnamese
and Viet Cong (the guerilla forces in South Vietnam) were motivated
mainly by nationalism, not communism, and that they would invariably
view American troops in their midst as colonial occupiers whom they
would fight hard to expel’ (Mearsheimer 2005: 4). Finally, Morgenthau
understood ‘that if the United States committed large-scale military forces
to Vietnam, it would face a major-league insurgency that would be
extremely difficult to beat’ (Mearsheimer 2005: 4). In sum, ‘the odds are
that Morgenthau would have applied the same basic logic to Iraq, and
“thus would have opposed the Iraq war as fiercely as he opposed the war
in Vietnam (ibid.).”’
Morgenthau’s Legacy
Upon the death of Professor Morgenthau in 1980, Robert E. Osgood
(1980: 35), who first met Morgenthau as a graduate student before becom-
ing one of his colleagues at the University of Chicago, lamented that the
nation ‘lost an outstanding figure in the intellectual history of its foreign
policy.’ In exhorting Americans to ‘come to terms with the realistic man-
agement of power on the international stage,’ Morgenthau ‘left a lasting
impact on a generation of scholars’ (1980: 35), but one based on misun-
derstandings. Those persistent doubters who claimed that Morgenthau’s
international and political thought excluded ethics, and that his defense of
164 G. RUSSELL
the national interest neglected purposes and values, ‘simply missed the
point’ (1980: 35). Osgood argued that Morgenthau’s critics overlooked
the central theme of The Purpose of American Politics (1960): ‘A nation
must pursue its interests for the sake of a transcendent purpose that gives
meaning to the day-by-day operations of its foreign policy’ (Morgenthau
1960: 8). Morgenthau always believed, in the semi-anarchical arena of
world politics, that ‘moral sentimentality and self-righteousness are the
true enemies of moral purpose’ (Osgood 1980: 35). In writing about the
moral dignity of the national interest, Morgenthau was always the conse-
quentialist, insisting that abstract principles must be filtered through cir-
cumstances of time and place. Osgood thought that Morgenthau’s most
profound statement about the moral universe of the statesmen found
expression in Scientific Man vs. Power Politics (the book that Morgenthau
would sometimes say was his best work):
Neither science nor ethics can resolve the conflict between politics and eth-
ics. We have no choice between power and the common good. To act suc-
cessfully, that is, according to the rules of the political art, is political wisdom.
To know with despair that the political act is inevitably evil, and to act nev-
ertheless is moral courage. To choose among several expedient actions the
least evil is moral judgment. In the combination of political wisdom, moral
courage, and moral judgment, man reconciles his political nature with his
moral destiny. (Morgenthau 1946: 203)
Osgood’s 1980 appreciation of the significance of Morgenthau’s life

and scholarly career for American foreign policy thinking has surprising
relevance for the world that the United States confronts in the twenty-first
century. During the Cold War, Morgenthau’s realism was a powerful
rejoinder to that part of the American ethos that found expression in the
militant rhetoric of anticommunism, the misuses of military power, and
alliances throughout the developing world ‘or the naïve formulas for con-
taining revolutions’ (Osgood 1980: 35). In fact, ‘being more of a critic
than a prophet,’ Morgenthau was ‘inspired by a mission that is never ful-
filled’ (Osgood 1980: 35). For, on the one hand, the United States
remains ‘exceptional among nations in the extent to which its citizens
insist upon…justifying its actions according to moral principles insepara-
ble from its national identity’ (Osgood 1980: 35). That exceptionalism
was grounded in the faith that the rest of mankind could attain peace and
prosperity by abandoning traditional diplomacy and adopting America’s
reverence for international law and democracy. On the other hand, Cold
War rivalries left the United States with the task of ‘managing power in an
environment inhospitable to these principles’ (Osgood 1980: 35). Osgood
(1980: 35), citing the inescapable tension between moral preferences and
the imperatives of power, concluded that the shifts in policy by the end ‘of
a self-consciously righteous [Clinton] administration,’ following the
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the seizure of American hostages in
Iran, ‘guarantees the enduring relevance of Morgenthau’s mission’
(Osgood 1980: 35). With the end of the Cold War, Henry Kissinger
(1994: 18–19) affirmed Osgood’s verdict on Morgenthau’s lasting contri-
bution by noting that the collapse of the Soviet Union was partly ‘the
intellectual vindication of American ideals and, ironically, brought America
face to face with kind of world it had been seeking to escape throughout
its history.’ The emerging world order, one that the United States could
neither dominate nor withdraw from, confronted America with ‘the chal-
lenge of reaching its goals in stages, each of which is an amalgam of
American values and geopolitical necessities’ (Kissinger 1994: 19).
Following World War II, the discipline of international relations repre-
sented an ad hoc mixture of scholarly pursuits ranging from international
law and organization to diplomatic history and descriptive area studies. It
was the lifelong achievement of one scholar-activist, Hans J. Morgenthau,
to integrate political realism within the mainstream of American political
science and help to establish international politics as an autonomous field
of inquiry. The national interest defined in terms of power, the precarious
uncertainty of the international balance of power, the weakness of interna-
tional morality, the decentralized character of international law, the decep-
tiveness of ideologies, the requirements of a peace-preserving
diplomacy—these were his legacies, set within a theory of international
politics that drew in turn on general principles of politics.
In pursuit of that theory, Morgenthau’s realism drew upon fundamental
philosophical conceptions about man, nature, and politics. Rejecting many
of the optimistic and reductionist beliefs of modern liberal thought, he
argued that objective laws that have their roots in human nature govern the
political realm. Stanley Hoffmann (1977: 44) correctly summarizes
Morgenthau’s intellectual contribution in the following terms: ‘He was
determined both to erect an empirical science opposed to the utopias of
international lawyers and political ideologues, and to affirm the unity of
empirical research and philosophical inquiry into the right kind of social
order.’ Against the wishful thinking and pious hopes of interwar idealism,
Morgenthau developed a theoretical approach to international affairs that
166 G. RUSSELL
both described national behavior and provided a framework for policymak-

ers. ‘The use of theory, then, is not limited to rational explanation and
anticipation,’ Morgenthau (1962b: 49) declared. ‘A theory of politics also
contains a normative element’ (Morgenthau 1962b: 49). While Mearsheimer
and Steven Walt, and other structural realists, have emphasized restraint
and humility in the exercise of political power, the ancient virtue of pru-
dence provided Morgenthau with a standard acknowledging the persis-
tence of self-interest without sacrificing the practical moral requirement of
adjusting self-interest to norms above the national community.
Notes
1. One of the most notable exchanges between Morgenthau and Niebuhr was
published as ‘The Ethics of War and Peace in the Nuclear Age,’ in The War/
Peace Report (7) 2 (February 1967) (published by the Center For War/
Peace Studies, 3–8).
2. Mearsheimer’s comments and judgments on Morgenthau’s impact on the
field of international relations, and upon his own work, are taken from a
letter to the author (January 17, 2017).
References
Aristotle. 1962. Nicomachean Ethics. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill.
Bew, John. 2016. Realpolitik: A History. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Brands, H.W. 1998. What America Owes the World: The Struggle for the Soul of
Foreign Policy. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Frei, Christoph. 2001. Hans J. Morgenthau: An Intellectual Biography. Baton
Griffiths, Martin. 1992. Realism, Idealism and International Politics: A
Reinterpretation. London: Routledge.
Hoffmann, Stanley. 1977. An American Social Science: International Relations.
Daedalus 106 (3): 41–60.
Jervis, Robert. 1994. Hans Morgenthau, Realism, and the Scientific Study of
International Politics. Social Research 61 (4): 853–876.
Kaplan, Robert D. 2012a. The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About
Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate. New York: Random House.
———. 2012b. Why John Mearsheimer Is Right (About Some Things). The
Atlantic 309 (1): 80–89.
Kinneging, Andreas. 2009. Eric Voegelin’s Philosophy of Law and Ethics: A
Critique. In Religion, Politics and Law, ed. Bart Labuschagne and Reinhard
Sonnenschmidt, 15–30. Boston: Brill.
Kissinger, Henry. 1980. Hans Morgenthau. The New Republic 183 (5/6): 12–14.
———. 1994. Diplomacy. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Layne, Christopher. 2006. The Peace of Illusions: American Grand Strategy from
1940 to the Present. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Mearsheimer, John. 2005. Hans Morgenthau and the Iraq War: Realism Versus
Neo-conservatism. www.openDemocracy.net, 1–7.
———. 2017. John Mearsheimer to Greg Russell, January 17.
Morgenthau, Hans J. 1945. The Evil of Politics and the Ethics of Evil. Ethics 56
(1): 1–16.
———. 1946. Scientific Man vs. Power Politics. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
———. 1951. In Defense of the National Interest: A Critical Examination of
———. 1960. The Purpose of American Politics. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
———. 1962a. Love and Power. Commentary 33 (3): 247–251.
———. 1962b. The Decline of Democratic Politics. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
———. 1962c. The Influence of Reinhold Niebuhr in American Political Life and
Thought. In Reinhold Niebuhr: A Prophetic in Our Time: Essays by Paul Tillich,
John C. Bennett, Hans Morgenthau, ed. Harold Landon, 97–116. Greenwich:
Seabury Press.
———. 1965. We Are Deluding Ourselves in Vietnam. New York Times Magazine,
April 18, pp. 61–73.
———. 1967. What Ails America? The New Republic 157 (18): 17–21.
———. 1970. Truth and Power: Essays of a Decade, 1960–1970. New York: Praeger.
———. 1978. The Roots of Narcissism. Hans J. Morgenthau Papers, Box 109,
Alderman Library, University of Virginia, Charlottesville.
———. 2006 (1954). Politics Among Nations, 7th ed., rev. Kenneth W. Thompson
and W. David Clinton. Boston: McGraw-Hill.
———. n.d. Statement by Hans J. Morgenthau on Political Science. Hans
J. Morgenthau Papers, Box 4, Alderman Library, University of Virginia,
Charlottesville.
Niebuhr, Reinhold. 1952. The Irony of American History. New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons.
———. 1953. Christian Realism and Political Problems. New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons.
———. 1965. Man’s Nature and His Communities. New York: Charles Scribner’s
Sons.
———. 1980. Hans Morgenthau’s Foreign Policy Impact. Chicago Tribune,
January 27, Section 3: 5.
Rajee, F. 2013. Kenneth W. Thompson, The Prophet of Norms: Thought and Practice.
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Rice, Daniel. 2008. Reinhold Niebuhr and Hans Morgenthau: A Friendship with
Contrasting Shades of Realism. Journal of American Studies 42 (2): 255–291.
Scheuerman, William. 2009. Morgenthau. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Shinn, Roger L. 2003. Christian Realism in a Pluralistic Society: Interactions
Between Niebuhr and Morgenthau, Kennan and Schlesinger. In The Christian
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Eric Patterson, 177–199. New York: University Press of America.
Smith, Michael Joseph. 1986. Realist Thought from Weber to Kissinger. Baton
Thompson, Kenneth W. 1977. Philosophy and Politics: The Two Commitments
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W. Thompson and Robert J. Myers, 21–31. Washington, DC: The New
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———. 1980. Masters of International Thought. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State
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Whitehead, Alfred North. 1926. Science and the Modern World. New York:
Macmillan.
Index1
A Anti-realpolitik tradition, 82
Academic acculturation, 62 Anti-Semitism, 2, 3
Academic Assistance Council, 2 Aquinas, Thomas, 31
Acheson, Dean, 91n8, 153 Arendt, Hannah, 3, 11, 15, 18n15,
Acheson-Baruch-Lilienthal Proposal, 29, 119
101 Aristotle, 31, 150
Adolphus, Gustavus, 105 Arms control, 111
Adorno, Theodor, W., 30 Aron, Raymond, 82
African-Americans, 96, 98 Atomic bomb, 76
Alliance for Progress, 103
Altamira, Rafael, 4
Altschul, Frank, 87 B
American Academy of Political and Balance of power, the, 83, 104, 130,
Social Sciences, 83 165
American cultural environment, 29 Balancing, 99
American experience, 33 Bandwagoning, 163
American intervention, 108 Basic norm, 4
American provincialism, 33 Bay of Pigs, 103
Americanus, 79 Beard, Charles, 80
Anglo-American democratic societies, 33 Behavioralism, 5
‘Another ‘Great Debate’, The National Behavioral revolution, 18n14
Interest of the United States’, 84 Behavioral sciences, 13
Anthropological foundation, 28 Behavioral turn, 5
Anti-imperialism, 81 Behaviorist, 45, 49n37
Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refers to notes.

1

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67498-8
170 INDEX
Beneditz, Mary Jane, 63 D

Bew, John, 152 Dahl, Robert, 29
Bismarck, Otto von, 105 Dahrendorf, Ralf, 4
Bonaparte, Napoleon, 105 Decision-making approach, 89
Boulding, Kenneth. E., 69 The Decline of American Politics, 102
Bretton Woods, 17n11 Defending the National Interest, 89
Brodie, Bernard, 91n8 In Defense of the National Interest,
Bush administration, 101–102 81
Democracy, 97
Democratic change, 101
C Democratic pluralism, 131
Carr, E. H., 61, 77, 107, 154 Descartes, 37
Castlereagh, 79 Deterrent, 91n8
Central Intelligence Agency, 102 Dewey, John, 33
The Century of Total War, 82 Diplomacy, 77, 151, 160
Chicago, 76 Disputes, 3, 10
China, 88, 99 Division between East and West, 86
Chinese communists, 84 Doctrine, Truman, 120
Chomsky, Noam, 116 Drive for self-preservation, 7
Church, Frank, 109 Drive to prove oneself, 7
CIA, 118
Civil rights, 103
Civil rights movement, 103 E
Classical tradition of political Eastern Europe, 81
philosophy, 35 East German uprising, 100
Clausewitz, Carl von, 105 Eichmann, Adolf, 129
Clay, Lucius, 82 Eisenhower, Dwight D., 103, 119
Cold War, 34, 76, 96, 123 Émigrés, 4, 11, 12
Commentary, 102 Émigré scholars, 3, 33, 36, 43–45
Common European identity, 85 Émigré scholarship, 27, 30, 39
Commons, John R., 33 Empiricism, 37
Concept of the Political, The, 2, 10, 11, ‘Ends interests’ and ‘means interests’,
16, 60 88
Congress, 98 Enlightenment, 4
Conservatism, 46 Epistemological, 38
Containment, 76 Epistemologies, 37, 39–41, 43
Coordinate State, 83 Equality, 97
Core interests, 78 Erfahrungswissenschaft, 37, 38
Council of Foreign Relations, 87 Erfahrungswissenschaftlich, 38
Council on Religion and International Erfahrungswissenschaftliche, 38
Affairs (CRIA), 7 Esmain, Adhémar, 63
Counterinsurgency, 109 Ethics, 106, 147
Crisis of modernity, 3–6, 12 Ethics of responsibility, 3, 16
Critique of modernity, 3 Europe, 102
INDEX
171
European academic socialization, 29 Great Power rivalry, 81

European Coal and Steel Community, Grodzins, Morton, 150
67 Gunnell, John, 30
European émigré scholars, 3
European experiences, 31
European provincialism, 33 H
Executive power, 118 Hamilton, Alexander, 79
Hamiltonian, 98
Hammarskjöld, Dag, 8, 103
F Hardin, Charles M., 63, 150
Fascism, 3, 4, 18n12 Hegelianism, 31
Federalism, 84 Heller, Hermann, 9, 57
Federalism in international relations, Herz, John, 2, 3, 17n11
83 Hilton, Ronald, 1
Federalist Papers, 97 Historical optimism, 64
Feller, Abraham, 83 Hitler, Adolf, 104
Finer, Herman, 102 Hobbes, Thomas, 67
First great debate, 75 Hoffmann, Stanley, 165
First World War, 106 Hogan, Michael, 119
Foreign Affairs, 102 Holmes, Stephen, 133
Foreign aid, 101 Holocaust, 32
Foreign Broadcast Information Hotz, Alfred, 62
Service, 102 Human nature, 151, 165
Foreign policy, 79 Hungary, 100
Foucault, Michel, 44 Huntington, Samuel, 161
Fox, Williams, T. R., 75 Hutchins, Robert, 80, 150
France, 103
Freedom, 97, 103
Frei, Christoph, 145 I
Freud, Sigmund, 7, 31 Idealism, 32, 35, 38, 77
Friedrich, Carl J., 82, 119, 153 ‘Idealist’ approaches, 104
Idealists, 75
Ideals and Self-Interest in America’s
G Foreign Relations, 77
Gagarin, Yuri, 103 Ideal type, 105
Geistesgeschichtliche, 31 Idea of National Interest, The, 80
Geisteswissenschaft, 32 Ideologies, The, 87
German historical school, 85 Ikenberry, John, 101
German reconstruction, 87 Immanent, 12
Germany, 81 Immanent and transcendent science,
Gnostic, 29, 39 12–15
Graduate Institute of International Immanent science, 12, 15
Studies, 2 Immanent scientists, 12
172 INDEX
Imperial presidency, 132 Lasswell, Harold, 150

Inner emigration, 44 Lauterpacht, Hersch, 63
Instituto de Estudios Internacionales y Law, 108
Económicos, 2 Layne, Christopher, 159
Interest group analysis, 89 Lazarsfeld, Paul, 30
Interests, 38, 88 League of Nations, 9, 10, 59
Interests in terms of power, 88 Lebensinteressen, 78
International Jurisdiction, Its Nature Legal positivism, 1, 4, 10
and Limits, 1 Legal positivists, 4
International morality, 108 Lenin, Vladimir, 106
Invasion, 103 Liberal internationalism, 83
Liberal realist, 83
Liberty, 79
J Lieber, Francis, 12
James, William, 33 Lippmann, Walter, 144, 151
Jaspers, Karl, 17n11 Liska, George, 150
Jeffersonian, 98 Lowenstein, Karl, 119
Jervis, Robert, 90, 143 Lying, 132
Johnson, Lyndon, 118
M
K McCarthy era, 13
Kant, Immanuel, 105 McCarthyism, 34, 96
Kaplan, Robert D., 157 Machiavelli, Niccolò, 106
Karl, von Vorys, 88 Machiavellian tradition, 79
Kelsen, Hans, 2, 4, 7, 9, 31, 32, 108 Madison, James, 97
Kennan, George F., 76, 144 Mann, Golo, 17n4
Kennedy, John F., 103, 128 Mannheim, Karl, 6, 13, 14
Kennedy administration, 100 Marcuse, Herbert, 3, 32
Kissinger, Henry, 116, 154 Marshall Aid, 76
Knopf, Alfred.A., 61, 87, 102 Massive retaliation, 100
Korea, 34 Max Beloff, 82
Korean War, 111 Mearsheimer, John, 132, 161
Kornhauser, Anne, 119 Meiklejohn, David, 150
Koselleck, Reinhart, 11 Meinecke, Friedrich, 69, 78
Krasner, Stephen, 89, 162 Merriam, 80
Kuhn, Thomas, 39 Middle East, 89, 102
Mills, C. Wright, 127
Missile gap, 96
L Mitrany, David, 8, 67
Lacqueur, Walter, 17n6 Modernity, 29
Landauer, Carl, 2 Monroe Doctrine, 81
INDEX
173
Moral crusades, 68 O
Moralism, 56 Obama, Barack, 88
Morality, 38, 106 Objectivity, 14
Morgenthau, Hans, 115 Oedipus, 133
Mowrer, Edgar, 80 On the Purpose of Science in These Times
and on Human Destiny, 2, 6, 12, 15
Orwell, George, 134n9
N Osgood, Robert E., 77, 163
National interest, 75, 116, 144
Nationalism, 4, 7, 18n12, 85
Nationalistic universalism, 66 P
Nationalist moralities, 78 Pacificus, 79
National security, 108 Pentagon Papers, 116
‘National Security as an Ambiguous Perfectionism, 56
Symbol’, 86 Philosophy, 144
National security policy, 120 Plato, 31
National security state, 115 Plessner, Helmuth, 5, 9
National Socialism, 32, 33 ‘Plurality of loyalties’, 9
National Student Association (NSA), Political philosophy, 149
118 Political realism, 37, 43
NATO, 101 Political science, 27, 30
Nazi Germany, 126 Politics Among Nations (PAN), 7,
Negotiation, 77 18n12, 76
Neo-conservatism, 162 Politics as a Vocation, 106
Neo-imperialism, 101 Positivism, 2, 4, 31, 32, 38
Neorealism, 83 Positivist, 28, 31, 45
Neumeyer, Karl, 4, 17n9 Positivist school of jurisprudence, 57
New Feudalism, 98 Poststructuralist, 45
The New Republic, 108–109 Post-War American society, 28
New School of Social Research, 28, Power, 36, 38, 40–44, 144
78 Principles and Problems of
Newton, Isaac, 39 International Politics, 79
Niebuhr, Reinhold, 3, 32, 78, 144 Progressivism, 29, 35
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 15, 31, 69 Prudence, 148
Nitze, Paul, 18n15 Purpose of American Politics, The, 90
Nixon, Richard, 118 Purpose of Science, The, 3, 5
Non-intervention, 81
Northedge, Fred, 88
NSC 68, 126 Q
Nuclear arms race, 89 Quest for a Philosophy of
Nuclear weapons, 100 International Relations, 86
Nureyev, Rudolf, 103 Quincy Wright, 76, 80
174 INDEX
R Socrates, 13
Radbruch, Gustav, 2 Socratic, 12
Raison d’état, 147 Soft power, 82
Rakove, Milton, 150 Sources of Soviet Conduct, 76
Ranke, Leopold von, 69 South Vietnam, 109
Rationalist, 37 Soviet Union, 81, 96, 99, 100, 126
Realism, 45, 83, 104, 158 Spanish Civil War, 2–3
Realists, 28, 31, 75 Spheres of influence, 77
Realpolitik, 106 Spykman, Nicholas, 61
Reissman, David, 150 Staatslehre, 32, 57
Republican government, 120 Staatsrecht, 31
Revolutionary power, 81 Stalin, Joseph, 100
Rockefeller Foundation, 2 State Department, 76
Rollback, 100 Statesman, 130
Rosenau, James, N., 89 Stone, Geoffrey, 117
Russell, Bertrand, 17n11 Stourzh, Gerald, 150
Russia, 99 Strauss, Leo, 29
Stresemann, Gustav, 16
Strupp, Karl, 2
S Suicide with a Good Conscience, 5, 7
Sabine, George, 34 Superpowers, The, 80
Santayana, George, 33
Scheuerman, William, 75, 148
Schmitt, Carl, 9, 10, 31, 57, 69 T
Schuman, Frederick, 61 Talleyrand-Périgord, Charles Maurice
Science: Servant or Master, 2, 16 de, 105
Scientification, 4 Tang Tsou, 150
Scientific Man vs. Power Politics, 2, 16, Tannenbaum, Frank, 82, 153
96, 115 Taylor, A. J. P., 81
Scientism, 28, 35, 36, 39–41 Technology, 80
Second World War, 119 Tensions, 9–11
Secrecy system, 117 Third World, 110
Secretary of State, 91n8 Thompson, Kenneth W., 62, 79, 144
Shinn, Roger, 145 Thormann, Irma, 2
Shoah, 4 Thucydides, 129
Shugg, Roger, 61, 87 Time Magazine, 34
Sinzheimer, Hugo, 6 Tocqueville, Alexis de, 96–98
Six Principles of Political Realism, 32, Totalitarianism, 33
87, 88 Tragedy, 148
Six Principles of Realism, 38 Transatlantic, 28
Smend, Rudolf, 9, 57 Transcendent, 12, 16
Smith, Michael J., 131, 145 Transcendent science, 13–15
Social sciences, 28 Transcendent scientists, 14
INDEX
175
Treitschke, 84 W
Twenty Years’ Crisis, The, 77 Walgreen lectures, 80
Walt, Steven, 166
Waltz, Kenneth, 63
U War, 108
UNESCO, 62 Ward, Champion, 150
U.N. General Assembly, 89 Warsaw Pact, 101
United Nations, 62, 83 Watergate, 118
United States, 81 Weber, Max, 32, 69, 105
University of Chicago, 28, 29, 55, 57, Weimar Germany, 32
62 Weimar Republic, 2, 3, 11, 16, 31, 32,
University of Geneva, 58 119
University of Kansas City, 55 White, Leonard, 150
US academic discourse, 34, 36 Wilson, Woodrow, 4, 104
USSR, 34 Wilsonianism, 3, 78
Utilitarian rationality, 40 Wilsonian liberalism, 106
Utopianism, 123 Wolfers, Arnold, 86, 145
Wolfowitz, Paul, 159
World state, 59, 67
V World War II, 100
Viereck, Peter, 153 Wright, Quincy, 149
Viet Cong, 109
Vietnam, 90, 99, 103, 156
Vietnam War, 16, 107, 116 Z
Voegelin, Eric, 3 Zimmer, Louis, 125

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Hans J.

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Hans J. Morgenthau is generally considered a political realist and the

Buckingham, UK Cornelia Navari

 orgenthau in Europe: Searching for the Political 1

 cientific Man and the New Science of Politics 27

 olitics Among Nations: A Book for America 55

 he National Interest and the ‘Great Debate’ 75

 he Purpose of American Politics 95

 ietnam Writings and the National Security State 115

 orgenthau in America: The Legacy 143

Hartmut Behr is Professor of International Politics at Newcastle University

are Forbidden Fruit: Counterfactuals and International Relations (2010); Why

© The Author(s) 2018 1

The Crisis of Modernity and the Loss of Values

2014: 274–276). This development would culminate during the 1950s

self-­reflection their commonly held assumptions might be shattered

However, ideologies are not deliberate attempts to create an illusion of

The Limitations of the Nation-State

[A]n international community must grow from the satisfaction of common

Initially skeptical of international organizations like the United Nations

his doctoral thesis at the University of Frankfurt (Morgenthau 1929) he

Rösch 2013c; Greenberg 2014). However, Morgenthau not only criti-

parties are not in a position to submit political disputes … to the decision of

Understanding these two types of conflicts, Morgenthau agreed with

Certainly, when people temporarily come together to pursue their

The intellectual in general, and the political scientist in particular, to be true

The Stranger in America: Immanent

Like Francis Lieber’s The Stranger in America (1835), Morgenthau was a

ideological doctrine of justification’ (Morgenthau 1934: 55). For

Facts have no social meaning in themselves. It is the significance we attribute

For Morgenthau, most people seek ways to conceal their imperfection, so

Political science which is true to its moral commitment ought … to be an

As they become aware of the intellectual and physical limits of human

legitimate attempts to provide meaning to life-worlds. Through these

a map and the traditional concept of sovereignty that yielded exclusive

Behr, Hartmut. 2010. A History of International Political Theory: Ontologies of the

Gangl, Manfred. 2009a. Einleitung. In Das Politische. Zur Entstehung der

Kindermann, Gottfried-Karl. 2015. Interview zur Rolle Hans Morgenthaus in der

———. 1966a. Introduction. In A Working Peace System, ed. David Mitrany,

Rohde, Christoph. 2005. Current Forms of Foreign Policy Realism in Morgenthau’s

Schuett, Robert. 2010. Political Realism, Freud, and Human Nature in

In 1946, there appeared Hans Morgenthau’s Scientific Man vs Power

© The Author(s) 2018 27

responsibilities, must assume an uncompromisingly realist perspective.2 In

The Émigré Experience

­ ew Science, like Scientific Man, conceptually and empirically reflects its

Where can Morgenthau and Voegelin be placed within this field? To

documented. More immediately, there was Reinhold Niebuhr, whom he

with European totalitarianism, especially National Socialism.17 As a conse-

with American culture. Similar to Morgenthau’s Scientific Man, the New

In reading the New Science as an immediate intervention in the US

This comment quite accurately reflects Voegelin’s multi-layered motiva-

The Critique of Scientism

Buckingham, UK Cornelia Navari

orgenthau in Europe: Searching for the Political 1

cientific Man and the New Science of Politics 27

olitics Among Nations: A Book for America 55

he National Interest and the ‘Great Debate’ 75

he Purpose of American Politics 95

ietnam Writings and the National Security State 115

orgenthau in America: The Legacy 143

self-reflection their commonly held assumptions might be shattered

ew Science, like Scientific Man, conceptually and empirically reflects its

s pecific strand of German political thinking (Nietzsche, Weber, Schmitt on

ighlight critical issues in the national agenda. He proposed Morgenthau

rinciple of the equality of states, but rather on the actual superiority of

eaningful debate, politicians who advocate unlimited expansion of pop-

Acheson-Baruch-Lilienthal Proposal of 1946 and the 1958–1960 nego-

limitations. When the times conceive of power primarily in military terms, it

subculture and the bureaucratic rationality informing that subculture.