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Politics Among Nations:
The .Struggle for Power and Peace
Fifth edition, revised
by Hans J. Morgenthau
(Knopf; xxviii + 650 pp.; $18.95)
Norman A. Graebner
The publication of the fifth edition,
revised, of Hans J. Morgenthau’s Politics
Among Nafions is a measure of the
enduring quality of the author’s contribution
to the study of international relations.
The thirty years that span the
publication of the first and latest editions,
although they did not .include a
major war, witnessed history’s most
dangerous and persistent crises in international
relations. No body of thought
and analysis purporting to explain the
nature of international life could have
faced a more profound test. The successive
editions of Polifics Among Nafions
trace the author’s intellectual responses
and adjustments to the changing times.
Morgenthau also evaluates the policies
of the major powers in the light of the
assumptions and principles he lald down
SQ clearly, and for many so compellingly,
in the first edition. In the preface
to the second edition (1954) he acknowledged
the changes demanded by
“developments during the last six years
in the intellectual climate of the United
States, the conditions of world politics,
and the mind of the author.” His first
edition, he recalled, had been a frontal
attack on the misperceptions that had
led to the threat of totalitarianism and.
finally, to world war. With the evolution
of more realistic approaches to world
politics in the postwar era, that battle
had been largely won; the second edition,
therefore, did not require polemics
to balance the erroneous assumptions of
the other side.
In 1954 the bipolar structure of international
politics was no longer so dominant.
New forces in Europe, Africa, and
Asia had added complexity and created
strong cross-currents in international
life. The author was compelled to integrate
such important developments as
NATO, containment, and the Korean
War into his theoretical framework, to
rethink such concepts as national power,
cultural imperialism; world public opinion,
disarmament, collective security,
and peaceful change in the light of cold
war developments. The third edition in
1960 included additional changes in emphasis,
but again without compromising
the basic assumptions of the original
theoretical structure. In the later editions
Morgenthau continued to bring
the book up to date, noting finally the
profound changes that came with the
Western recognition of the territorial
status quo in Europe and the evolution
of an independent role for China, Japan,
and Germany in world politics-the
decline, in short, of the cold war.
In the preface to the fourth edition
(1967) Morgenthau confronted the increasingly
fashionable behavioral approaches
to the study of international
pblitics. “What is decisive for the success
or failure of a theory,” he wrote, “is
the contribution it makes to our knowledge
and understanding of phenomena
which are worth knowing and understanding.
It is by its results that a theory
must be judged, not by its epistemological
pretenses and methodological innovations
. . . . Nothing I have read and
learned in recent years has dissuaded
me from my convictiqn that the theoretical
understanding of international politics
is possible only within relatively
narrow limits and that the present
attempts at a thorough rationalization
of international theory are likely to be
as futile as those which have preceded
them since the seventeenth century.
These attempts run counter to the nature
of the empirical world they are
dealing with, and are likely to issue in
the dogmatism which overwhelms reality
for the sake of rational consistency.”
From‘ the beginning Morgenthau
sought to understand and interpret that
empirical world. His theoretical framework
rests on the foundation of historical
experience, common sense, and the
Nations is replete with examples oft ir e
wisdom of the ages. Polilics Amo
author’s use of history to establish the
existence and validity of some essential
proposition. The following paragraph
illustrates the cosmopolitan nature of
international life in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries by noting the propensity
of diplomats to accept gifts from
other sovereigns:
“The desire for material gain especially
provided for this aristocratic society
a common bond that was stronger
than the ties of dynastic or national
loyalty. Thus it was proper and common
for a government to, pay the foreign
minister or diplomat of another country
a pension; that is, a bribe. Lord Robert
Cecil, the Minister of Elizabeth, receiired
one from Spain. Sir Henry Wotton,
the British Ambassador to Venice
in the seventeenth century, accepted
one from Savoy while applying for one
from Spain. The documents which the
French revolutionary government published
in 1793 show that France subsidized
Austrian statesmen between 1757
and 1769 to the tune of 82.652.479
livres, with the Austrian Chancellor
Kaunitz receiving 100,000. Nor was it
regarded any less proper or less usual
for a govqrnment to compensate foreign
statesmen for their cooperation in the
conclusion of treaties. In 1716, French
Cardinal Dubois offered British Minister
Stanhope 600,000 livres for an alliance
with France. He reported that,
while not accepting the proposition at
that time, Stanhope ‘listened graciously
without being displeased.’ After the
conclusion of the Treaty of Basel of
1795, by which Prussia withdrew from
the war agaisnt France, Prussian Minister
Hardenberg received from the
French government valuables worth
30,000 francs and com lained of the
insignificance of the gift! I n 1801, the
Margrave of Baden spent 500.000
francs in the form of ‘diplomatic presents,’
of which French Foreign Minister
Talleyrand received 150,000.’ It was
generally intended to give him only
100,000 but the amount was increased
49
50
after it had become known that he had
received from ‘Prussia a snuffbox worth
66,000 francs as well as 100,000 francs
in cash.”
Clearly the problem in the use of
history is that of separating the similar
from the unique. The test of judgment,
both for the scholar and for the statesman,
is the accuracy they exhibit in
detecting similarities and differences in
political situations. Events not identical
can still be similar enough to establish a
principle of human behavior. Perhaps a
dozen examples do not constitute a
universal rule of conduct, but the excerpt
above underscores the larger point
that eighteenth century diplomats, unlike
those of the preseh century, reflected
in their conduct the existence of
an international order of shared beliefs,
purposes, assumptions, and modes of
behavior.
Countless writers have contributed
substantially to an understanding of politics
among nations; the perccptive observations
and analyses of many appear
in the pages of Morgenthau’s successive
editions. Among them are Demosthenes,
Thucydides, Frederick the
Great, Edmund Burke, George Washington,
Alexander Hamilton, Bolingbroke,
John Stuart Mill, Max Weber,
Lord Salisbury, Theodore Roosevelt,
William Graham Sumner, and Winston
Churchill, as well as many other practicing
statesmen. Behind Morgenthau’s
historical conceptualizations is logic and
common sense of major proportions, as
well as the realization that precedence ’
and wisdom do not always guide the
behavior of nations. Principles cannot
be universal in operation, nor will any
system permit scientific predictabilty.
National leaders have demonstrated a
remarkable capacity to ignore or misinterpret
reality and to pursue with vigor
policies that could terminate only in
disaster. It is clear why Morgenthau
rejects the counsels of perfection that
charadterize much of the behavioral
writing.
Morgenthau asserts the simple proposition
that any theory of international
relations must be consistent with the
facts and within itself. What renders
such a theory possible, he believes, is
the existence in human society of objective
laws that have their roots in humqn
nature, laws that can be understood and
embodied in a rational theory that
reflects the objective laws. Morgenthau’s
fundamental assumption, which
he attributes to the nature of man and of
nations, is that nations act on the basis
of interests and power, and that these
elements transcend in importance any
judgment regarding motives or sentiment.
Interests, limited by evaluations
of power, alone can save nations from
moral excesses and political folly, for
governments must reasonably subordinate
all standards to those that reflect
political reality.
“The test of judgment both for the
scholar and for the statesman is the
accuracy they. exhibit in detecting
similarities and differences. in political
situations. ”
Morgenthau has erected his theoretical
framework, not only on the assumption
of an international struggle for
power among major powers, but also on
a thorough evaluation of national power
itself-its elements, nature, and uses. If
the struggle for power, with all of its
complexity and justifications, is the
foundation of international life, how can
society limit the use of power in the
broader interest of peace and stability?
The author answers that question in
detail by moving through the full spectrum
of efforts that human beings have
cxerted to that end. He begins with the
oldest form of limitation on national
ambition-the states’ historic reliance
on the balance of power. If a fluid
balanciilg system placed enormous limits
on national power, it never achieved
perfection or prevented wars. Accurate
judgments of interest and power were
simply too elusive.
But Morgenthau sees evcn less hope
for peace with international morality
and world public opinion as limiting
factors, largely because the nature of
international life denies them a real
existence. Nor does he find an answer to
the use of force in international law;
conflict among sovereign nations rests
on questions that are political, not judicial.
Morgenthau analyzes limitations
on the use of force such as disarmament,
judicial settlements, peaceful
change, international government, and a
world state. He finds all of them wanting.
History and experience have demonstrated
the ineffectiveness of all nonpower
devices to eliminate international
aggression. Given the persistence of
force in international life, Morgenthau
returns to the one method of limitation
that conforms to the twin realities of
sovereignty and power-accommodation
through traditional private diplomacy.
Any international system that
rests its hope for peace on the wisdom
and astuteness of national leaders may
possess few guarantees against war, but
in a world of sovereign nations there is
no other.
In the preface to his second edition
Morgenthau quoted the plea Montesquieu
addressed to the readers of The
Spirit of the h w s : “I beg one favor of
my readers, which I fear will not be
granted to me; that is, that they will not
judge by a few hours’ reading of the
labor of twenty years; that they will
approve or condemn the book entire,
and not a few particular phrases. If they
would search into the design of the
author, they can do it in no other way so
completely as by searching into the
design of the work.” The statement is
especially applicable to Politics Among
Nations, for it is a work of remarkable
erudition. The many criticisms leveled
at it have questioned some secondary
aspects of the book; this reviewer has,
on occassion, dissented from some of its
assumptions and conclusions. But Morgenthau’s
theoretical framework-beginning
with the basic assumption that
international politics is indeed a struggle
for power, advantage, and prestige,
then continuing through an entire spectrum
of rational conclusions drawn
from that assumption-is too well
grounded in political and intellectual
history to be disposed of readily by any
opposing structure. The initial formulation,
presented so simply and logically
in the first edition, has withstood thirty
years of experiences that have tested
every assumption. The conclusions of
the first edition, in the broad truths they
proclaimed, stand unscathed. Nations
will settle their differences through realistic
negotiation or they will not settle
them at all.
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