realism

Realism is the oldest and most influential paradigm in International Relations theory, tracing its intellectual lineage to Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War (the Melian Dialogue, c. 416 BCE), Niccolò Machiavelli's The Prince (1513), and Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan (1651), whose depiction of a "state of nature" as a war of all against all supplies realism's core image of anarchy. As a self-conscious modern theory it crystallised after the collapse of interwar liberal internationalism, articulated by E.H. Carr in The Twenty Years' Crisis (1939) and given systematic form by Hans Morgenthau in Politics Among Nations (1948), whose six principles ground politics in an objective "national interest defined in terms of power." Realism rests on three assumptions: statism (the sovereign state is the primary actor), survival (security is the supreme goal), and self-help (in the absence of a world government, states must rely on their own capabilities).

The mechanism of realism follows from international anarchy — not chaos, but the absence of an overarching authority above states. Because no Leviathan guarantees security, states accumulate power and form alliances, producing the balance of power as the system's recurring stabilising logic. Classical realism (Morgenthau, Reinhold Niebuhr) locates the drive for power in flawed human nature (animus dominandi). Neorealism or structural realism, founded by Kenneth Waltz in Theory of International Politics (1979), relocates the cause to the structure of the system itself: anarchy and the distribution of capabilities compel even satisfied states to seek security, generating the security dilemma in which one state's defensive build-up threatens others. Waltz's defensive realism is contrasted with John Mearsheimer's offensive realism (The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, 2001), which argues states maximise relative power and aspire to regional hegemony.

Realism explains enduring patterns: the Concert of Europe after 1815, bipolar stability during the Cold War, and contemporary great-power competition. Mearsheimer applied offensive realism to predict NATO expansion would provoke Russia, a thesis revived in debates over the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. As of 2026, realism frames analysis of US–China rivalry, the "Thucydides Trap" (Graham Allison, 2017), and India's strategic autonomy and non-alignment, which realists read as classic balancing and hedging behaviour. Critics — liberals (Keohane, Nye on complex interdependence), constructivists (Alexander Wendt's 1992 "Anarchy Is What States Make of It"), and Marxists — fault realism for neglecting institutions, norms, economic interdependence and non-state actors.

For the examinations, realism is foundational to the IR component — UPSC Political Science & International Relations (PSIR) Optional Paper II, the FSOT, and CSS International Relations. Typical question angles ask candidates to compare classical and neorealism, evaluate the balance-of-power concept, contrast realism with liberalism and constructivism, or apply realist logic to contemporary cases such as US–China competition or the Russia–Ukraine war. High-scoring answers name the theorists and texts precisely (Carr 1939, Morgenthau 1948, Waltz 1979, Mearsheimer 2001), distinguish the variants, and deploy the security dilemma and self-help as analytical tools rather than slogans.