Hans J. Morgenthau of the University of Chicago, seated right on stage, at the Sheraton Park Hotel during a "Teach-In" debate on the Johnson administration's policy in Vietnam in 1965, along with historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., standing, and British writer Isaac Deutscher, centre (Bettmann via Getty Images)

Morgenthau: A realist ethic

A new biography by David Sacks finds the ideals beneath theorist Hans Morgenthau’s hard-edged realism.

Ved Shinde

2 November 20263 min read

In the long 20th century, no one became more associated with the concept of “realism” than the formidable thinker Hans J. Morgenthau. He was the first to offer a smooth, frictionless theory of international politics, drawing on the Hobbesian view of human nature: humans are conflict-ridden, imperfect, and tragic.

In a newly released biography, The Realist, think-tanker David Sacks brings us a clear account (Opens in new window) of a man who, Sacks tells us, often felt apart. Morgenthau was born in Coburg in 1904 to a Jewish family under a father of strict German sensibility. Harrowing incidents as a schoolboy left a young Hans convinced that no matter how well he assimilated, he would always be an outsider in Germany. Confiding in a school essay, he wrote, “human nature is prone to inclinations that can thwart all law-abiding conduct in their unbridled power.”

As he stepped into university to explore a life of the mind, the cauldron of anti-Jew hate boiled over.

Morgenthau found companionship in the works of Max Weber, not to romanticise power but to see it in service of higher values. This idea would animate Morgenthau’s thinking for a long time.

By 1932, as Germany buckled under the dystopia of Nazism, Morgenthau escaped to Geneva, then Madrid, and finally New York. After suffering some years in the vortex of academic politics at the University of Kansas, fortune finally smiled. He secured a temporary teaching position at the University of Chicago and would soon write his seminal tome, Politics Among Nations.

Sacks’ wonderful biography illustrates that Morgenthau’s grimy and sometimes politically incorrect “realism” sprung from the kernels of high ideals. For him, statecraft was not simple cynicism. It was an ethic of responsibility. As he himself put it while evaluating the work of the historian E. H. Carr, “it is a dangerous thing to be a Machiavelli. It is a disastrous thing to be a Machiavelli without virtù”. In that sense, a true “realist” did not asphyxiate truth. To be real meant objectivity. To strive for truthful analysis, never power for the sake of power.

Sacks glides through American Cold War history while neatly documenting Morgenthau’s public life. It is in this vein that Morgenthau’s story as one of the most prominent critics of Washington’s bungling war in Vietnam is told. Sacks shows how early in the war, Morgenthau made it a point to visit Vietnam and evaluate the ground reality himself. He quickly perceived that no concrete American interests were being defended in Vietnam. The war was a morass of misplaced prestige, bluff, and excessive ideological rhetoric. Morgenthau’s “realism” was not a caricature of perpetual hawkism.

A true realist did not asphyxiate truth. To be real meant objectivity.

Morgenthau made mistakes, and Sacks charts these too. Morgenthau misjudged Anwar Sadat’s intentions in making a peace deal with Israel. Sacks also covers Morgenthau’s deep intellectual bond with the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr and friendship with the philosopher Hannah Arendt.

After Morgenthau, “realism” has evolved. Yet for all the nuance and assumptions added by political scientists, real-world events have a rich texture and too regularly defy any single theory. At best, a robust theory captures a significant chunk of reality. At worst, it obfuscates the truth.

But the writings of Morgenthau continue to influence the way many students, scholars and practitioners think of the world. In Henry Kissinger’s words, “All of us who taught the subject after him, however much we differed from one another, had to start with his reflections”.

The Realist: Hans Morgenthau and the Purpose of American Power, by David Sacks, is published by Henry Holt & Co, 2026.

About the author

Ved Shinde

Ved Shinde is an incoming doctoral candidate at the University of Cambridge. He has previously been associated with the Asia Society Policy Institute and the American Enterprise Institute.

Topics

United States Diplomacy