Realist : The Life and Ideas of Hans Morgenthau

The first biography of Hans Morgenthau, refugee from Nazi Germany and pioneer of the ‘realist’ approach to international relations, now resurgent in global politics.

‘International politics, like all politics, is a struggle for power.’ Hans Morgenthau wrote these words in 1948, as Soviet–American wartime cooperation deteriorated into tense post-war rivalry. His Politics Among Nations quickly became the defining international relations textbook. Henry Kissinger said, ‘All of us who taught the subject after him, however much we differed from one another, had to start with his reflections.’

Morgenthau’s realism stemmed from his traumatic experiences in interwar Germany. Amid rampant anti-Semitism, his classmates ostracised and spat at him. He saw Hitler break the law with impunity when he marched on Morgenthau’s hometown, Coburg. Morgenthau concluded that abstract ideals offered no protection: power only yielded to countervailing power. Fleeing to the US in 1937, his influential thought drove Cold War foreign-policy debates. As his peers backed the Vietnam War, Morgenthau dismantled the case for intervention on realist grounds.

Meticulously researched and masterfully written, The Realist shows the enduring relevance of Morgenthau’s ideas in our age of international disorder and great power competition.