This is a book about the contributions of mid-twentieth-century classical realists, first and foremost E. H. Carr, Hans Morgenthau, and Reinhold Niebuhr. The argument is that the “realism” defended by these scholars is sadly misrepresented in mainstream textbooks. Textbook renditions of realism emphasize the pursuit of national interest and the importance of Realpolitik, deny morality any meaningful role in international politics, and confirm the primacy of the sovereign nation-state and the fragility of international institutions. Realists look to the balance of power as the major instrument in preserving peace, and they reject the idea that anarchy can be transformed as a result of globalization and interstate cooperation, even in advanced cases of the latter, such as the European Union.

A major part of this book is devoted to demonstrating that in the case of these midcentury classical realists, the textbook version is entirely misleading. Carr, Morgenthau, and Niebuhr, together with a secondary group of scholars comprising John Herz, Frederick Schuman, Georg Schwarzenberger, and Arnold Wolfers, are major representatives of “normatively and politically sensible mid-century Realism” (p. 7). The author coins the term Progressive Realists for this group.

How then are Progressive Realists (PRs) different from the mainstream realists with whom we are familiar? To begin with, this was not a backward-looking group of conservative intellectuals. Their political leaning was rather left-liberal; several of them were schooled as socialists and continued to support comprehensive political and social reform. They did not purge morality from international affairs; political actors were obliged “to make the best moral choice circumstances permit,” said Wolfers (quoted on p. 20). For Morgenthau, Hitler stood for amoral Realpolitik, while Churchill stood for “a combination of political wisdom, moral courage, and moral judgment” (p. 21).

Further, Progressive Realists were not as devoted to the nation-state as they are often claimed to be. Already in 1954, Morgenthau called the nation-state “obsolescent in view of the technological and military conditions of the contemporary world” (p. 37). He was referring to the challenges of economic interdependence and nuclear war. The nation-state also stood in the way of a stronger moral community of humankind as a whole. To confront the dangers of modern war and reap the benefits of an interdependent world society, Progressive Realists wanted to ultimately pave the way for a world government. This was a long-term goal, however, and a much stronger social community across borders had first to be built. Functionalism can take us part of the way towards integration, but the Progressive Realists also believed that resolute political action will be necessary and that this will only come in combination with a stronger supranational society. PRs, then, have their share of Cosmopolitan visions but, in contrast to many Cosmopolitans, PRs emphasize the need for a well-defined form of (world) government; “governance without government” will not be enough.

Against this background William Scheuerman takes us through two stimulating chapters on what Cosmopolitans and other global reformers (i.e., liberals, English School theorists, and constructivists) can learn from Progressive Realism. The core claim is that competing reformers are too modest in their demands for change. For PRs, a world state is the long-term goal; that requires a strong global community, which in turn can only be built on “substantial political and economic equalities” (p. 134). For some Progressive Realists, this involved a decisive move away from neoliberal capitalism toward a socialistic framework. Scheuerman is more modest; he refers to the book by Anthony Giddens (The Politics of Climate Change, 2009), as “a vision of planning appropriate to contemporary conditions” (p. 188).

The Realist Case for Global Reform is a fine achievement. It alerts us to important aspects of the work of a significant group of mid-twentieth-century realist scholars, facets of which have been played down by later generations of classical realists (e.g., Henry Kissinger) and neorealists (e.g., Kenneth Waltz). It also instructively clarifies how the Cosmopolitan visions of these scholars deviate from other groups of global reformers with whose work we are more familiar.

Why am I then not convinced that Scheuerman's book will lead to a revival of Progressive Realism as a major starting point for critical students of global politics? For several reasons. First, we need to address a central puzzle: How is it that realist authors who have been studied—and continue to be studied—as intensely as Carr or Morgenthau (plus one million hits on Google) can have been fundamentally misapprehended for so long and to such an extent that almost everything our students have “learned about realism is wrong” (p. 15)? The answer would appear to be straightforward: Most of what students learned about these realists is not wrong. The mainstream view faithfully reflects the tone of the empirical analyses of, for example, Morgenthau. He did consider politics a struggle for power, and he did give priority to the pursuit of the national interest. He did view international politics as an arena of conflicting state interests. True, there were also what could be called Cosmopolitan considerations in Morgenthau's writings, but they did not exert any considerable influence on his empirical analysis of world politics, and they represent subthemes of his work rather than core commitments.

In short, Progressive Realists were realists first (in their basic theoretical frameworks and in their empirical analyses) and “progressives” second; and while they sometimes indulged in normative considerations about a more desirable (i.e., Cosmopolitan) world, they most often added that such a world was entirely unrealistic today or even in any foreseeable future. If one wants to pursue a critical analysis of today's global politics, Progressive Realists do not present very clear theories and conceptual frameworks to build on; what they do bring to the table, rather, are some of the normatively desirable features of a more equal and more peaceful world.

Second, the diagnosis that PRs came up with in terms of pointing out the major ills of the world they lived in was not very precise, and to the extent that it was, it does not appear a very useful starting point for a critical analysis of today's world. As Scheuerman instructively emphasizes, many PRs were leftist liberals or even socialists, quite critical of the capitalist system. Their argument was that “neoliberal economics” cannot produce the substantial political and economic equalities that “a workable global community presupposes” (p. 134). Similarly, Progressive Realism is credited with the point made by Christopher Chase-Dunn that “even if a world state now represents a normative necessity, capitalism impedes its construction” (p. 148). In other words, capitalism is part of the problem. But how big a part is unclear. Scheuerman distances himself from the “naïve and anachronistic” (p. 188) endorsements of state planning by Carr and Schuman. In today's world, however, the global commitment to a capitalist market economy is considered an element that strengthens international society rather than the opposite (see Barry Buzan's From International to World Society? [2004]). It is not clear how the capitalist market-economy skepticism of Progressive Realists can make a big contribution here. The debate today is not about pro or contra capitalism; it is about the best format of the market economy, that is, the most effective state–market matrix.

The other major problem considered by PRs was nuclear weapons and the danger of comprehensive nuclear war. Progressive Realists argued that the system of sovereign states was simply too dangerous in a situation where interstate warfare might lead to nuclear warfare. The time had come to build a supranational community of individuals combined with a global polity, a world state. This was the only viable road to security in the nuclear age.

This prediction has not fared too well either. Both realist and liberal scholars today acknowledge the importance of nuclear weapons; they cannot be disinvented. But because of the dangers they represent, not only to enemies but to those that have them, nuclear weapons have over time tended to lead to more caution, more prudence, more stability in the military relationships between nuclear powers. This is not to claim that nuclear deterrence is a most desirable road to peace, and the problem with proliferation to unstable states remains. But few would claim that nuclear weapons make up the most dangerous security problem in today's world; the most acute problems in terms of violent conflict with high human cost are those conflicts inside fragile states. Again, it is difficult to observe any strong relevance of Progressive Realist thinking when applied to these issues.

Progressive Realists wanted a world state with liberal, democratic, and federal structures. Such a state was necessary in order to “circumvent the horrors of modern warfare” (p. 70). But the problem of war between states lacks the centrality it once had. Processes of democratization, economic and political integration, and increasing respect for common rules about territorial integrity have all but eradicated the occurrence of interstate war (see Georg Sørensen, “After the Security Dilemma: The Challenges of Insecurity in Weak States and the Dilemma of Liberal Values,” Security Dialogue 38 [September 2007]: 357–78). The classical security dilemma is irrelevant among some (democratic) states and in sharp decline among others. The threat of interstate war no longer warrants a world state.

Scheuerman argues that not merely security but “a host of additional social and economic imperatives underline the virtues of postnational political coordination” (p. 152). Still, the necessity of a world state needs to be better argued, as does the view that such a state can, with relative ease, be constructed as a liberal, democratic, and federal state. No major political faction in the world today argues in favor of a world state; there is simply no constituency for the visions of Progressive Realists.

In short, while Scheuerman presents an interesting rereading of the Progressive Realists, the distinctive features of today's global politics are not considered in the book in a major way. It is simply assumed that the normative ideas of PRs from half a century ago remain acutely relevant. But a different reading of the situation is possible: We have actually retreated from doomsday; nuclear war, even interstate war, is a much less pressing concern than it used to be; economic and political progress has happened; it is a world of common rules, even to some extent common values (Millennium Declaration). As I have argued in A Liberal World Order in Crisis: Choosing Between Imposition and Restraint (2011), not all is well. There are major crisis elements in the liberal world order. But the situation remains fundamentally different from the mid-twentieth-century world analyzed by PRs.

In sum, the contribution of Progressive Realism is not a new analytical framework; it is a set of normative visions about how the evils of the mid-twentieth century should be cured. These visions are not very relevant for today, and it is difficult to see where they would find any takers. Present-day neoclassical realism has moved in another direction: Neoclassical realism makes an analytical effort to combine, on the one hand, the systemic pressures analyzed by neorealists and, on the other hand, the role of ideas and domestic politics (see Steven E. Lobell, Norrin M. Ripsman, and Jeffrey W. Taliaferro, Neoclassical Realism, the State and Foreign Policy, 2009). If Progressive Realism is going to have a revival, it will need to directly engage the analytical concerns at the heart of today's realist scholarship.