Hans Morgenthau (February 17, 1904 - July 19, 1980) was one of the main figures of the 20th century in the study of international politics. His works belong to the tradition of realism, and he is usually put on the same line as George F. Kennan and Reinhold Niebuhr, one of the three leading American realists of the period after World War II. Hans Morgenthau made a significant contribution to the theory of international relations and the study of law. His policy among nations, first published in 1948, went through five editions during his lifetime.
Morgenthau also wrote extensively about US foreign policy and foreign diplomacy. This is especially visible in publications of a general distribution such as The New Leader, Comments, Worldview, New York Book Review and The New Republic. He knew and corresponded with many leading intellectuals and writers of his era, such as Reinhold Niebuhr, George F. Kennan, Karl Schmitt and Hannah Arendt.
At one point, at the start of the Cold War, Morgenthau was a consultant to the US Department of State. Kennan then headed his headquarters for policy planning, and a second time at the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Until he was fired, when he began to publicly criticize American politics in Vietnam. However, for most of his career, Morgenthau was considered the academic interpreter of US foreign diplomacy.
European years and functional jurisprudence
Morgenthau completed his doctoral dissertation in Germany in the late 1920s. It was published in 1929. His first book is The International Office of Justice, Its Essence and Borders. The work was reviewed by Karl Schmitt, who at that time taught as a lawyer at the University of Berlin. In an autobiographical essay written closer to the end of his life, Morgenthau said that although he was looking forward to meeting Schmitt during a visit to Berlin, it went poorly. By the end of the 1920s, Schmitt became the leading lawyer in the growing Nazi movement in Germany. Hans began to consider their positions as irreconcilable.
After completing his doctoral dissertation, Morgenthau left Germany to complete his master's degree (university teaching license) in Geneva. It was published in French under the title “National Legal Regulation”, “Fundamentals of norms and, in particular, norms of international law: fundamentals of the theory of norms”. The work has not been translated into English for a long time.
Lawyer Hans Kelsen, who had just arrived in Geneva as a professor, was an adviser to Morgenthau's dissertation. Kelsen was one of Carl Schmitt's strongest critics. Therefore, he and Morgenthau became colleagues for life, even after both emigrated from Europe. They did this in order to occupy their respective academic positions in the United States.
In 1933, the author published a second book in French about political relations between nations. Hans Morgenthau in it sought to formulate a distinction between legal disputes and political ones. The investigation is based on the following questions:
- Who has legal authority with respect to disputed objects or problems?
- How can the holder of this power be changed or held accountable?
- How can a dispute be resolved whose subject matter is jurisdiction?
- How will the defender of legitimate authority be protected during its implementation?
For the author, the ultimate goal of any legal system in this context is to ensure justice and peace.
In the 1920s and 1930s, a realistic theory of international politics by Hans Morgenthau appeared. It was created to search for functional jurisprudence. He borrowed the ideas of Sigmund Freud, Max Weber, Roscoe Pound, and others. In 1940, Morgenthau set out a research program in the article “Positivism, Functionalism, and International Law”.
Francis Boyle wrote that post-war work may have contributed to the gap between comprehensive science and legal research. However, the policy of nations by Hans Morgenthau contains a chapter on international law. The author remained an active participant in this topic of relationships until the end of his career.
American years
Hans Morgenthau is considered one of the founding fathers of the realistic school in the 20th century. This line of thought argues that nation-states are the main actors in international relations, and that the study of power is considered the main concern in this area. Morgenthau emphasized the importance of national interests. And in Politics Between Peoples, he wrote that the concept of international law is the main indicator that helps realism break through the landscape of international politics. Hans Morgenthau defined it in terms of power.
Realism and politics
Recent scientific assessments by the author show that his intellectual trajectory was more complex than originally thought. The realism of Hans Morgenthau was riddled with moral considerations. And during the last part of his life, he advocated supranational control of nuclear weapons and was strongly opposed to the US role in the Vietnam War. His book "A Scientific Man Against Power Policy" was an opponent of excessive trust in science and technology as a solution to political and social problems.
6 principles of Hans Morgenthau
Starting from the second edition of Politics between Peoples, the author included this section in the first chapter. Paraphrased principles of Hans Morgenthau:
- Political realism believes that society as a whole is governed by objective laws. They have their roots in human nature.
- The main property is the concept of political realism by Hans Morgenthau. It is determined from the point of view of power, which affects the rational order in society. And thus, a theoretical understanding of politics is possible.
- Realism avoids problems with motives and ideology in the state.
- Politics does not rethink reality.
- A good external area minimizes risks and maximizes benefits.
- The determining type of interests varies depending on the state and cultural context in which external diplomacy is conducted, do not confuse it with international theory. This does not give interest, defined as power, a meaning that is fixed once and for all.
The 6 principles of political realism by Hans Morgenthau recognize that political realism is aware of the moral significance of action. It also creates tension between command and the demands of successful action. He argues that the universal moral principles of Hans Morgenthau's political realism should be filtered through the specific circumstances of time and place. Because they cannot be applied to the actions of states in their abstract universal formulation.
Political realism refuses to identify the moral aspirations of a particular nation with the laws governing the universe. He supports the autonomy of the diplomatic sphere. A statesman asks: “How does this diplomacy affect the power and interests of the nation?”
Political realism is based on a pluralistic concept of human nature. It must show where the interests of the nation differ from moralistic and legal views.
Disagreement with the Vietnam War
Morgenthau was a consultant to the Kennedy Administration from 1961 to 1963. He was also a strong supporter of Roosevelt and Truman. When the Eisenhower administration received the White House, Morgenthau directed his efforts to a large number of articles for magazines and the press in general. By the time Kennedy was elected, in 1960 he became a consultant to his administration.
When Johnson became president, Morgenthau began to express his disagreement with American participation in the Vietnam War much louder. For which he was dismissed from the post of consultant to the Johnson administration in 1965. This debate with Morgenthau was published in a book about political advisers McJorge Bundy and Walt Rostow. The author’s disagreement with American participation in Vietnam attracted considerable attention from the public and the media.
In addition to describing politics between peoples, Morgenthau continued his prolific writing career and published a collection of three volumes of essays in 1962. The first book was about the decline of democratic politics. Volume Two - The Dead End of the State. And the third book is Restoring American Politics. In addition to his interests and competence in writing articles on the political affairs of his time, Morgenthau also wrote about the philosophy of democratic theory when faced with situations of crisis or tension.
American years after 1965
Morgenthau's disagreement with politics in Vietnam forced the Johnson administration to fire him as an adviser and appoint McGeorge Bundy, who publicly opposed him in 1965.
In Morgenthau's book Truth and Power, published in 1970, his essays of the previous tumultuous decade are collected, both on foreign policy, including Vietnam, and domestic. For example, the civil rights movement. Morgenthau dedicated the book to Hans Kelsen, who, by his example, taught to tell the truth to power. The last major book, Science: A Servant or a Master, was dedicated to his colleague Reinhold Niebuhr and published in 1972.
After 1965, Morgenthau became the leading authority and voice in the discussion of the theory of just war in the modern nuclear era. A similar work was further developed in the texts of Paul Ramsey, Michael Walzer and other scientists.
In the summer of 1978, Morgenthau wrote his last essay, entitled “The Roots of Narcissism,” in collaboration with Ethel Person from Columbia University. This essay was a continuation of an earlier creation studying this subject, the 1962 work, Public Relations: Love and Power. In it, Morgenthau touched on some topics that Niebuhr and theologian Paul Tillich considered. The author was captured by his meeting with Tillich’s book, Love, Power, and Justice, and he wrote a second essay related to topics in this direction.
Morgenthau has been a tireless book reviewer for several decades of his scholarly career in the United States. The number of reviews he wrote was close to nearly a hundred. They included almost three dozen thoughts only for The New York Review of Books. The last two reviews of Morgenthau's books were not written for the New York Review, but for the work “Prospects of the USSR in International Relations”.
Criticism
Acceptance of Morgenthau's works can be divided into three stages. The first occurred during his life and until his death in 1980. The second stage of the discussion of his work and contribution to the study of international politics and law was between 1980 and the centenary of his birth, which took place in 2004. The third period of his works is between the centenary and the present, which indicates a lively discussion of his continuing influence.
Criticism in the European years
In the 1920s, a review of a book by Karl Schmitt from Morgenthau's dissertation had a lasting and negative effect on the author. Schmitt has become the leading legal voice for the growing National Socialist movement in Germany. Morgenthau began to consider their positions incommensurable.
For five years after this, the author met with Hans Kelsen in Geneva as a student. Kelsen's appeal to the works of Morgenthau left a positive impression. Kelsen in the 1920s became Schmitt's most thorough critic and earned a reputation as the leading international author of the National Socialist movement in Germany. Which corresponded to Morgenthau's own negative opinion about Nazism.
Criticism in the American years
“Relations between peoples” had a great influence on the generation of scientists in the field of global politics and international law. In the framework of the realistic theory of Hans Morgenthau, Kenneth Waltz called for more attention to be paid to the purely structural elements of the system, especially the distribution of opportunities between states. Waltz's neorealism was more conscious than the scientific version of Morgenthau.
Hans' concern over nuclear weapons and the arms race led to discussions and debates with Henry Kissinger and others. Morgenthau considered many aspects of the nuclear arms race as a form of irrational insanity, requiring the attention of responsible diplomats, statesmen and scientists.
The author remained an active participant in the discussion of US foreign policy throughout the Cold War. In this regard, he wrote about Kissinger and his role in the Nixon administration. Morgenthau also wrote a short “Preface” in 1977 on the theme of terrorism that arose in the 1970s.
Morgenthau, like Hannah Arendt, devoted time and effort to supporting the state of Israel after World War II. Both Hans and Arendt traveled annually to Israel to provide their established academic voices to the still young and growing community during its first decades as a new nation. Morgenthau's interest in Israel also extended to the Middle East in a broader sense, including its oil policy.
Criticism of heritage
An intellectual biography published in an English translation in 2001 was one of the first significant publications about the author. Christoph Rohde published a biography of Hans Morgenthau in 2004, available only in German. Also in 2004, commemorative volumes were written on the occasion of the centenary of the birth of Hans.
John Mersheimer of the University of Chicago studied Morgenthau’s political realism attitude toward neoconservatism, which prevailed during the Bush Sr. administration in the context of the 2003 Iraq war. For the author, the ethical and moral component was, on the whole, and, in contrast to the positions of defensive neorealism, an integral part of the thinking of a statesman and an essential content of responsible science in relations. Scholars continue to study various aspects of the concept of international law by Hans Morgenthau.