The biggest problem with American foreign policy today is…
the missing relationship between US interests and American power. Sadly, this power is rarely deployed to protect, pursue, and achieve American strategic ends based on concretely defined US interests. Political machinations at home persistently misappropriate its use and subordinate US interest to overarching ideological commitments and grand ideas. As a result, American “foreign policy” has been a series of disjointed responses to domestic politics or ideological fantasies instead of calculated actions to serve long-term strategic interests. Due to this lack of strategic thinking in Washington, US foreign policy flounders.
In response to this alarming trend, Real Diplomacy’s single mission is to analyze and prescribe American foreign policy based on linking US national interests to (accurately assessed) American power.
Or, more succinctly, at Real Diplomacy we aim to put the Realpolitik back into American diplomacy.
Our preconceptions…
about international affairs color our perspectives of how we analyze state behavior and prescribe foreign policy. Here’s a brief synopsis of our fundamental views:
- We analyze state behavior through the international theory of Realism, which holds that states seek to secure their state or regime interests, using whatever diplomatic, economic, or military tools can best protect their security. Realism argues—and we agree—that the international arena is anarchic, that states are its principal actors, and that they amass resources as power permits to ensure their security.
- We prescribe US foreign policy through Realpolitik, a prescriptive guideline that formulates policy by linking a state’s power to its national interests. Its emphasis on practical factors and interests rather than theories and principles makes it an ideal tool for constructing effective, nuanced policy that meets the complexities of today’s international challenges.
Our influences…
may seem to some to be comprised of thinkers who divorce state conduct from morality; however, these thinkers argue that government authorities have a moral obligation to pursue the interests of the state they lead. These thinkers’ prescriptions are time proven. Our influences therefore include Niccolo Machiavelli’s yet relevant masterpiece, The Prince. Likewise, we esteem the brilliant foreign policy of Richelieu’s raison d’état in the 17th century, Metternich and Bismarck’s mastery of the balance of power during the 18th and 19th centuries, and Truman, Acheson, Nixon, and Kissinger’s realism in the most critical of times during the 20th century. Indeed, when we consider today’s problems, we hope for but a semblance of these statesmen’s know-how.
