When introducing Politics Among Nations to his readers in the fall of 1948, Hans Morgenthau was explicit about the volume's ultimate purpose. His book was neither “disinterested” nor did it mean to offer “knowledge for its own sake.” Rather, 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.”Footnote 1
Ever since Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Morgenthau had been looking for ways and means to “contribute something worthwhile to the solution of the problems with which this country is at present confronted.”Footnote 2 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 where he sought employment. It was not until 1943, with an appointment at the University of Chicago, that Morgenthau was able to make good on his pledge—and he proceeded to do so in his original field of expertise, as a scholar. From just 1946 to 1951 he published six booksFootnote 3 and thirty-four articles, in addition to numerous commentaries and reviews. Even with the war over, Morgenthau felt certain that he was indeed making a valuable contribution. As he saw it, the United States was ill-prepared for the challenges that lay ahead. More precisely, Americans had the wrong answers to fundamental questions. They suffered from a disease that had its origins in mistaken philosophic assumptions and thus inevitably extended to all realms of thought and life. Typical symptoms such as legalism, moralism, and perfectionism were easy to detect, and in each of these “isms” Morgenthau recognized an intellectual fallacy, which he set out to correct. Much like the earlier Scientific Man vs. Power Politics (1946) and the later In Defense of the National Interest (1951), Politics Among Nations was written specifically for an American audience: “I deem it my public duty to do what I can in influencing American political thought.”Footnote 4
In those years, Morgenthau thought of himself not only as an analyst but also as a doctor who could cure the disease by having recourse to the full spectrum of therapeutic options. While Scientific Man had dealt with fundamental philosophical assumptions, and whereas In Defense of National Interest would focus on foreign policy and practical application, 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 international 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.
Clearly, then, Politics Among Nations did find an audience. But is it truly an American book? And if so, to what extent? The evidence is mixed. On the one hand, this work best showcases the way in which Morgenthau consistently made use of concepts and theoretical components that he had developed prior to his arrival in the United States. It can be claimed without exaggeration that the plan for the book already existed by 1938. On the other hand, the finalization of the work in 1947 and 1948 turned out to be an important vehicle for the immigrant scholar's acculturation. Communicating his message to American readers required the inclusion of examples that were familiar to them. It also required referring to a different set of experiences and citing Anglo-Saxon sources in support of specific arguments. While it is implausible to assume that Morgenthau (by this time in his mid-forties) 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.
A Brief Genealogy
Morgenthau's early writings on politics developed out of the young scholar's active rebellion against the sort of scientific work he encountered at German universities, 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. While the protagonists of the dominant positivist school were determined to keep jurisprudence clear of all political or sociological entanglement, a growing number of scholars held that political and social aspects should be incorporated. Among them were Rudolf Smend, an integrationist; Carl Schmitt, a decisionist; and Hermann Heller, with his insistence on empirical social research. Several other approaches surfaced, all of them aiming to unshackle German Staatslehre (a term that essentially denotes public and constitutional law) from the narrow cage of legal reasoning. This great debate provided the backdrop for Morgenthau's early work. The self-imposed task before him was to develop his own theory of the state, one “grounded in experience,” as he put it in a footnote to the last sentence of a manuscript in 1932.Footnote 5
There is no need to dig any deeper into Morgenthau's early books and manuscripts in the present context.Footnote 6 Suffice it to say that the energy the young legal scholar invested in incorporating extra-legal elements increased over time. As regards politics, his conceptual framework, broadly inspired by Max Weber and developed in fruitful opposition to Carl Schmitt, was focused on power, on variants of the struggle for power, and on manifestations of the balance of power. On the institutional side, he explored the current strength of normative systems well beyond their legal provisions. By 1936 his conceptual framework—“a theory grounded in experience”—had taken shape. However, in comparison with both his doctoral dissertation (1929) and Habilitation (1934), his heuristic priorities were conspicuously changed. In the “political” as a vital human force, and in “politics” conceived as a struggle for power, Morgenthau had found the raw material of the social world, and thus the analysis of politics would henceforth precede that of law, mores, and morality.
On the strength of his own experience and observations, Morgenthau felt compelled to center his work on the complex interplay of the political with the moral and legal realms. By 1936 he saw with frightening clarity the prospect of “politics” freed from normative restraints. What lay ahead was war at worst and a precarious balance of powers at best: “The very existence of international law today depends exclusively on this equilibrium.”Footnote 7 Hence, there was a dire need for accommodation in the short run (diplomacy) and for structural transformation in the long run (world state as rational desideratum). Any reader familiar with Politics Among Nations will easily recognize these conclusions first offered in 1936. Back then, however, the various components of Morgenthau's framework were still not fitted together, just loosely connected as a “théorie réaliste” as he put it in the same year.Footnote 8
Putting the various components together was one of his projects now. An outline dating from the summer of 1938 unmistakably contains the basic features of what was to become Politics Among Nations. By then, Morgenthau had the structure of his comprehensive synopsis in mind. “This work will continue attempts for a realistic understanding of International Politics, which I undertook in preceding publications,” the 1938 proposal reads. “I expect to complete the project in one year.”Footnote 9 Up until 1943, however, Morgenthau and his wife were struggling to survive one day at a time, first in New York City, then in Kansas City. In Chicago he was finally able to get the job done by expanding and connecting his material. Based on the early writings (1927–1936), it is in fact possible to trace back the genesis of every single topos listed in the 1938 grant proposal.Footnote 10
It is not surprising, therefore, that a five-hundred-page volume would ultimately take so little time to complete. Less than two years after the publication of Scientific Man vs. Power Politics, the manuscript was ready. Both in its structure and its main line of argument, it was the product of an assemblage long overdue. The assembly line reached from Morgenthau's office through the library to the classrooms of the Chicago campus. Step by step, the conceptual framework that the European scholar had brought along to America was amended with post-1939 developments (such as using the United Nations as a more recent example of “international government” or UNESCO of “world community”), and for the first time illustrated with historical material.
Who Has Read the Book?
Morgenthau's magnum opus has gone into seven editions and remains in print some seven decades later. Its publishing success notwithstanding, the book's reception has been remarkably one-sided within the field of International Relations. Whereas Morgenthau himself had fused empirical and normative concerns (and thereby refused “to divorce knowledge from action,” as stated in the first editionFootnote 11 ), his real or alleged Realist offspring would soon follow Kenneth Waltz in systematically expelling normative issues from the proper confines of inquiry. Normative political theorists, in turn, tended to either accept a seriously truncated reading or ignore the treatise altogether. As a result, Morgenthau became the “unhappy founding father of an influential but normatively numb Realist research paradigm.”Footnote 12 And for many in the field, he still stands tall as a commanding but somewhat forlorn figure, cast in one piece and distinguished by a single-minded commitment to “power” as the essence of international 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 clear message as heuristic priority goes to the raw material of the social world, that is, to its political anatomy. Against the false hopes of historical optimism and the simplifications of a naïve legalism, Morgenthau upholds the permanence of political forces and the autonomy of politics. The first third of the book (parts one, two, and three) is thus devoted to mapping “politics” among states. While the aspiration for power is the constitutive element of this specific realm, the struggle for power is its most distinctive feature, and the balance of power one recurrent manifestation of this struggle in the international arena. What is more, many of Morgenthau's statements have the hectoring tone of dogmatic positions. To those readers who are put off by the first chapters of Politics Among Nations and disregard the rest of the book, the case may thus indeed be clear: here is a theorist who takes his stand on the demonic side of the social drama and leaves it to others to side overtly with the angels.
What they miss, however, is a multifaceted strategy of limitation as unfolded throughout the remaining two thirds of the book (parts four to ten). They miss out on the guiding questions offered by Morgenthau, questions bringing him close to the side of the angels. Can we eliminate the destructive tendencies inherent in international politics under present conditions? If not, can we at least confine these tendencies and keep them within socially tolerable bounds? Last but not least, a truncated reading misses out on subsequent conceptual extensions that turn the original framework of analysis into a broad, nuanced perspective. “Knowing some of his earlier work and his reputation, I did not expect to like Morgenthau,” a bewildered Kenneth E. Boulding wrote upon reading and reviewing Politics Among Nations. “I was most pleasantly surprised.” 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.”Footnote 13
What is Morgenthau's strategy of limitation? In part four he starts out by assessing a crucial self-regulatory mechanism immanent in the political world. Since the balance of power is a necessary but crude and unreliable method of mitigating conflict, parts five and six turn to alternative sources of restraint, that is, morality, mores, and international law. Again, however, the result of Morgenthau's thorough analysis is sobering: none of these normative systems are “today” capable of keeping the struggle for power within peaceful bounds. In part seven he goes on to explore more recent techniques to mitigate and minimize conflict, from disarmament through judicial settlement down to mechanisms of international government. For Morgenthau, the United Nations represented an admirable yet ultimately insufficient quest to secure peace, inasmuch as the Security Council was a mere reflection of the underlying structure of international society at that time.
Rather than throwing up his hands at this juncture, the author stubbornly goes on—what else can be done?—and finally gets to the bottom of his argument. The main stumbling block vitiating all attempts at restraining conflict on the international scene so far is national sovereignty itself. Genuine redress will be possible only if both the instruments of sanction and the authorities dispensing them are concentrated at a higher level. If lasting peace is to be secured, a world state will have to emerge (part nine).
Such a state, in turn, can only develop on the basis of a world community willing and able to support it. In the absence of a quick fix, a complex secular process of community-building and state-building on the global level is Morgenthau's best hope. It speaks volumes about the man's intellectual openness and deep commitment to his quest that he goes out of his way in search of observable tendencies in international affairs that at least suggest 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 explored—and warmly endorsed—David Mitrany's functional approach “to create a community where none exists.”Footnote 14
What, then, must be done in the short and medium term? Since neither a world society nor a world state will emerge overnight, it is necessary to buy time and work toward conditions under which it will at least not be impossible from the outset to develop more effective mechanisms. For Morgenthau, that task translates into the mitigation of those political conflicts that evoke the specter of war. As long as ideal solutions are out of reach, we need to do that which can be done. Thus, Politics Among Nations ends with a plea for “peace through accommodation”—to wit the restoration of diplomacy, and with it of the techniques that have controlled the mutual relations of states since time immemorial. In a society of sovereign nations, this is “the best means of preserving peace.” Under the conditions of modern war, however, “it is not good enough.”Footnote 15
It is not implausible to claim that Politics Among Nations “singlehandedly initiated many generations of U.S. international relations students” into the field of International Relations.Footnote 16 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.Footnote 17 Is it possible that the book has suffered the fate of many 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.
An American Book?
Finalizing Politics Among Nations turned into yet another exercise through which the immigrant scholar performed his cultural assimilation in the United States. The “process of Americanization” entailed Morgenthau's anglicizing the sources of his argument, “thus making German philosophy speak predominantly through the mouths of British and American historical personalities.”Footnote 18 In another crucial regard, the evidence of genuine U.S. academic impact on Morgenthau is undeniable. Back in Germany he had started out as a jurist. Over the ensuing years he would gradually turn into a Wirklichkeitswissenschaftler, a “scholar 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.Footnote 19 With a view to this foreigner's acculturation, a sense of belonging thus expressed is certainly not a minor detail. Its origins notwithstanding, Politics Among Nations was meant as a contribution not to legal scholarship, but to what we call international relations theory today. For Morgenthau, “International Politics” as an academic discipline was distinct from International Law.
On the face of it, Politics Among Nations is thus indeed an American book—and all those who seek to highlight how far Morgenthau would go to adopt ideas and notions and concepts from the English and American traditions will readily find what evidence they need. Others, and especially those with a similar intellectual background to the German émigré himself, will see continuity almost everywhere.
Although revised on several occasions, the basic narrative of Politics Among Nations remained remarkably unchanged. In preparing the second edition, released in 1954, the author added “six principles of political realism”—principles that basically restated ideas Morgenthau had previously endorsed without having consistently described them as Realist.Footnote 20 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 leaving assumptions, tenets, and theoretical structure intact.”Footnote 21 By then, the book was becoming a classic, and it was Morgenthau's honest conviction that he had done what could be done.
