Booth 2008 - On John Herz and Political Realism and Political Idealism

510 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 22(4)

Navigating the Absolute Novum: John H. HerzsPolitical Realism and Political Idealism

Ken Booth

Abstract

This article situates John Herzs work within the perennial debate about realism and idealism, and the issue of whether and how the two sets of ideas can be reconciled. The variety of realist and idealist concepts and conceptualisations within Herzs work, and his attempt to combine them in an approach he called Realist Liberalism, reveals the inadequacy of the addiction of many teachers and researchers in academic international relations to stick unhelpful labels on theorists (such as Realist) who advance complex and sometimes apparently contradictory intellectual positions. Placing Herzs work alongside other theorists who have grappled with the relationships between realism and idealism notably Carr and Rawls the article argues for categorising ideas and not individuals. More importantly, a case is made for the continuing validity of seeking to comprehend IR in terms of the interplay of idealism and realism, and for greater recognition of Herzs contribution to it.

Keywords: E. H. Carr, John H. Herz, Nazim Hikmet, idealism, international relations theory, liberalism, John Rawls, realism

Across the tumultuous decades of the last century, from the late 1930s to his death in 2005, John Herz concentrated his theorising about international politics in the frontier zones between Political Realism and Political Idealism (I will capitalise these terms, as he invariably did, when referring to his usage). The relationship between these ideal types1 continued to fascinate him, and to structure his theorising about international relations.

During the years since international relations (IR) became a separate academic discipline, groups of theorists (not to mention practitioners of one type or another) have advocated the virtues of pursuing their own versions of political realism and political idealism.2 In my view, though such paradigmatic purists continue to play a role in how students of the subject learn to think about the world, the most pragmatically progressive theorists have been more concerned to explore and map the frontier zones between rather than simply defend some notion of a pristine homeland. In addition to Herz himself, other explorers of the frontier not all of whom have primarily been theorists of the international have included his fellow migr from Nazi Germany Hannah Arendt, the US liberal theorist John Rawls, and the English diplomat-turned-scholar E. H. Carr. For Arendt the between was a form of cosmopolitanism;3 for Rawls an ideal theory generated a realistic utopia which sought to achieve something beyond the present, while not contravening the possibilities of the social world;4 while for Carr Utopia and Reality were two planes that could never in practice meet, though his own theorising sometimes implied they could and indeed should.5 These scholars, together with Herzs own conceptualisation of Political Realism and Political Idealism, open up general issues raised

International Relations Copyright 2008 SAGE PublicationsLos Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore and Washington DC, Vol 22(4): 510526[DOI: 10.1177/0047117808097314]

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NAVIGATING THE ABSOLUTE NOVUM 511

by attempts to comprehend world affairs through this familiar indeed foundational unity of opposites.

Contrary to those who criticise the framing of IR in relation to an idealismrealism dialectic, I will argue that if this Great Debate had never existed (even if sometimes it has been more mythical than actual) then it would have been our duty to invent it.6 What is more, while accepting that the fi rst Great Debate between political idealism and political realism in the 1930s and 1950s did not take place in the way professors of the discipline have traditionally claimed, it is important to recognise that its symbolic power nevertheless persists. As such, it functions as a disciplinary foundation stone which not only helps frame how we think about the history of ideas in the fi eld (what the philosopher W. B. Gallie used to call time-transcending dialogues with earlier thinkers) but also creates the possibility of new theorising through the periodic remapping of the conceptual frontiers between. Whereas Carr (with whose work Herzs invites most comparison on these matters) claimed that in theory there was an iron curtain between Political Realism and Political Idealism but that in practice they should be joined, Herz believed that there was a realistic and potentially productive political landscape between the ideal types that offered the promise, but certainly not the guarantee, of better times. He called this landscape he proposed to explore Realist Liberalism.

Theories and realities7

Herz developed his political philosophy in the opening three chapters of Political Realism and Political Idealism, a book published in1951.8 Here, he discussed his understanding of the fundamental (one of his favourite words) realities of international politics. In particular, he focused on what he considered to be the socio-psychological dynamics of human interaction under conditions of chronic uncertainty. In the following three chapters he elaborated the political theory deriving from his philosophising. Theorys task, in his view, was to ascertain and examine the kind of political behavior and action that can be based upon ones fundamental political philosophy; in other words, this is the task of determining what political attitudes and movements can be reconciled with the philosophy of liberalism without violating the lessons and precepts of Political Realism.9 The overall structure of Herzs argument in Political Realism and Political Idealism, to put it briefl y and in Waltzian terms, can be summarised as a political philosophy of international relations which has the concept of the security dilemma at its base, and a theory of foreign policy constructed around the principles of Realist Liberalism.10

Herz begins the book with a discussion of his understanding of the nature of politics. In his chapter On a Typology of Political Thought, he explains that Political Realism and Political Idealism are basic types of political thinking that seem to recur again and again throughout history.11 He saw them as being related to two transhistorical political instincts survival and pity which he believed to be in a relationship of irreconcilable tension. He wrote: we see that man is born into a world of fundamental antagonism. Pity, the urge to oppose suffering and pain, is irreconcilable with the survival urge.12 The basic approaches deriving from these instincts he believed to be quite independent of specifi c periods ... systems and ideologies though they are affected by the type of civilization, and the stage of economic and social development. For Herz, then, socio-psychological dynamics go all the way down. This is evident from the important chapter following this brief discussion of the basic types of political thought.



Chapter I, Psychological Bases is now a classic in the literature of IR, introducing as it does Herzs important and original concept of the security dilemma.13 The latter is the predicament that arises from certain psychological considerations, namely the concern that humans have for their future, and their knowledge that others have the inherent capacity to threaten them. Consequently, humans appear to each other as potential mortal enemies. He called this a fundamental social constellation, a mutual suspicion and a mutual dilemma: the dilemma of kill or perish, of attacking fi rst or running the risk of being destroyed. For Herz, There is apparently no escape from this vicious circle. A critically important few sentences follow, indicating that Herz was not basing his argument about international confl ict (any more than Kenneth Waltz) on a fatalistic view of human nature.14 He argued: Whether man is by nature peaceful and co-operative, or aggressive and domineering, is not the question. The driver of human insecurity for Herz was not anthropological or biological (as it was for Morgenthau) or religious (as it was for Neibuhr), but social. He expressed the root of the problem as follows: It is his uncertainty and anxiety as to his neighbors intentions that places man in this basic [security] dilemma, and makes the homo homini lupus a primary fact of the social life of man.15

In the grip of what he considered to be this existential predicament of intergroup life, Herz argued that humans react in typically different ways.16 He listed three: fi rst, they accepted the situation and sought as great a degree of security, and ... as high a position of power as possible; second, they rejected the egoist power type and sought to fi nd rational solutions by means of which power may be channelled into more peaceful and harmonious ways of social and political interrelations and interaction; and third, they rejected ingroup/outgroup constructions and sought to extend feelings of sympathy to all groups and all human beings. Because he thought the latter approach generally avoided all those social and political interactions involving the exercise of power and the infl iction of violence, it placed itself outside serious political consideration. It was the fi rst two approaches, therefore, that he considered to be the most important, and from them he drew the fundamental distinction between Political Realism and Political Idealism. The third approach he put to one side as mere utopianism.17

The key to his transhistorical bifurcation of political thought into Political Realism and Political Idealism was the dissimilar approach of each to the fundamental irrationalism which results from the power and security dilemma that faces men and groups in society.18 In his view political thought throughout the ages has refl ected these archetypal responses to the power and security dilemma and has drawn on one and now another conclusion from it.19 He characterised the distinction between the two ideal types in various ways, but the following is typical: fi rst, Political Realism knows that fundamental traits are inexorably determined by the prevalence of the factors connected with the urge for security and the competition for power.20 That said, Political Realism was not homogeneous in practice. He clearly did not want to be criticised for over-generalising, but he did not want to be specifi c at this point. He simply claimed: forms of government, structures of international relationships, and all the other political phenomena and developments vary in detail according to circumstances.

Second, Political Idealism:

on the other hand, starts from the contrary assumption: that a harmony exists already, or may eventually be realised, between the individual and the general good, between the interests, rights, and duties of men and groups in society; and that power is thus



something that can be channelled, diffused, utilized for the common good, and mitigated, or, perhaps, eliminated altogether from political interrelationships.21

Progress is possible, according to Political Idealism because political phenomena, despite being at present rife with confl icts, violence, and injustice, can, in the future at least, be adapted to the rational and harmonizing aims of Political Idealism.

Herz then referred to Reinhold Niebuhrs admirable book (The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness a Vindication of Democracy and a Critique of Its Traditional Defense, published in 1944), adding that if the children of darkness are realists, pessimists, and cynics, the children of light sin through a facile optimism that renders them blind and sentimental.22 Herz insisted on distinguishing between Niebuhrs theological concepts (original sin and the depravity of man) and his own more naturalistic ideas about the drivers of human behaviour, though he was quick to recognise that a good many of Niebuhrs conclusions were shared.

In this fi rst major elaboration of his political philosophy of international relations, Herz was modest about his goal. It was not his ambition, he said, to present a new system of political philosophy. His aim was to describe a kind of foundation for, or prolegomena to, whatever new or renewed political theory can be developed.23 He called the theory he did develop Realist Liberalism.

Realist Liberalism

Political theory seeks to direct political philosophy into purposive political behaviour, and everything we know about Herzs life tells us that he was interested in political ideas because he was interested in political action in how the world works and how it can be made to work better. With his Jewish background, his early studies of international law and politics, the life-jarring shock of the Nazi takeover in Germany, and his exile and life in the United States (Becoming an American24), Herzs academic concerns were well established by the time he was in his thirties and working for the US government during the Second World War. In 1945 they became immutable. In that year, the era of two Total Wars and the spread of totalitarianism reached its fearful apogee with the invention and dropping of the fi rst atomic bombs.

When Political Realism and Political Idealism was being conceived and written, from the late 1930s until its publication in 1951, Herz had thought he was still essentially dealing with the traditional international system. With the invention of what then seemed to be the ultimate weapon of annihilation, however, he argued that a completely new era of international politics had arrived: an absolute novum.25 Students of international politics were now challenged to defi ne the nature of the new international system and to assess its consequences for the conduct of foreign affairs. His own response was by no means completely expressed in Political Realism and Political Idealism (which had been conceived for a different purpose); that had to wait to be elaborated in International Politics in the Atomic Age, which was published in 1959.26 In his later works, Herz argued that the traditional territorial unit of security the sovereign state had been rendered untenable because of the permeability caused by the development of nuclear weapons, which opened up even the most powerful states to catastrophic destruction. A radically new world confronted human society. Although by the late 1950s he thought the traditional international system had changed, he did not work through the political theory set out



in his earlier book. For the time being the absolute novum only emphasised the need to walk the path of Realist Liberalism which he had worked out in the fi nal three chapters of Political Realism and Political Idealism.27

Realist Liberalism was the label Herz continued to use for his political theory over the next half-century. He recognised that it involved the union of the apparently strange bedfellows of liberalism and realism (see Chapter IV, Foundations of Realist Liberalism), and he was rather tentative about his conception. The very label, for example, was offered with a cautionary note: The idea which lies at the basis of the following discussion is to combine Political Realism and Political Idealism in what, for lack of a better term, may perhaps be called Realist Liberalism (my emphasis). What is more, he raised some doubts about the very validity of bringing Realism and Liberalism together: it may well be asked whether such a combination is possible, he said, in the light of the fundamental discrepancies between the two types of political thought.28 As will be shown later, any doubts he may have had were more presentational than real.29

The fundamental ethical assumptions underlying Herzs Realist Liberalism were based on his understanding of the complex idea of freedom.30 This was related to his very broad understanding of liberalism (for want of a better term he added, yet again tentatively). In a key passage that justifi es quoting at length, he declared that his conception of Liberalism:

is broader than the Liberalism of the nineteenth century free-traders and constitutionalists. It includes all socialism that is not totalitarianism, all conservatism that is not authoritarianism or mere defense of some status quo. It is not pledged to any specifi c economic theory, nor to any theory of the best form of a states government or constitution. Its basic assumption is derived from the ideal of freedom that underlies the major theories of Political Idealism. It thus accepts as ideals the age-old ideals of all kinds of liberal-democratic-humanitarian-socialist, etc., theories, schemes, and utopias. Negatively, it denies the ethical value and moral justifi cation of power, insofar as such power is exercised for the sake of restricting the freedom of the many and to maintain or create privilege and dominance of the few; it affi rms all that tends to limit, mitigate, or restrain such power, of an individual or of a group over other individuals or groups ... positively, the liberal ideal thus affi rms the value of freedom of the human person in the broadest sense of this word, the free and untrammelled life of the individual.31

It is likely that Herz expected criticism to be attracted to the broad sense in which he conceived freedom and liberalism,32 and Peter Wilson for one has described Herzs conception of idealism (the basis of his idea of freedom) as constituting a breath-taking array of other isms (universalism, cosmopolitanism, humanism; optimism; liberalism, socialism; pacifi sm; anarchism; internationalism; idealist nationalism; and chiliasm).33

One political philosopher whose work later embodied a similar liberal spirit as Herz was John Rawls, widely regarded as the most infl uential Anglo-American political philosopher of his generation, if not since J. S. Mill.34 Though Rawls dipped only briefl y (and inadequately) into the literature of academic IR, and probably never into that of Herz,35 the closeness of their (liberal) outlook derives from their debt to Kant. Both Herz and Rawls embraced a broad liberalism characterised by a commitment to fairness, decency, order, freedom, reciprocity, cooperation, international law, non-intervention,



self-determination, moderation, non-aggressiveness, a thin universalism, and the inescapable signifi cance of the international dimension of politics and justice.

Writing at a time when the Cold War was intensifying, and the disciplinary grip of realism was strengthening, Herz was undoubtedly more concerned about being attacked for being too idealistic or utopian rather than for being tentative or over-general.36 Like Carr, he seemed above all to be anxious to avoid being simply labelled utopian;37 and this was a label he continued vigorously to resist until the end of his life.38 Consequently, he sought to avoid the charge that his broad concept of freedom as the ethical ideal underlying our political philosophy might be interpreted as identifying with the utopian and rationalistic credos of Political Idealism a view he had argued was bound to be wrecked by political realities. He chose to answer the charge even before it was made byhis critics, asking himself: Are we not basing our theory on that very pity instinct orfeeling of sympathy and compassion that is, apparently, able to produce only bad con-sciences and bad political philosophies? His answer was negative, and he backed his position by returning his readers to the central issue of how to respond to power.

In order to defend his approach against the criticism of utopianism, Herz argued that his concept of Realist Liberalism:

would be entirely unrealistic if it accepted a doctrinaire concept of liberty opposed to power as such. It is true that it must make unambiguously clear that, in the strug-gle between an aristocratic, Nietzschean concept of freedom for the strong, and the democratic concept of freedom for the underdog, it unhesitatingly embrace the latter. This is its basic ethical foundation ... But while thus choosing the side of the Christian children of light, it must at the same time avoid the pitfalls of anti-power dogmatism, since not to do so would mean giving aid to the enemy.39

Whether people made use of power, or adopted an instinctive anti-power attitude, was at the heart of his political theory; ones attitude to power was in his view the litmus test of a persons political seriousness. This is where realism came into its own. Realisms relationship to power was clearly articulated by Herz. He wrote that realism

teaches ... that acting politically against the power element in history always entails making use of the means of politics, i.e. power. As against concentration of oppressive and discriminatory power, it involves organizing power by balancing it, checking it, setting it up as a limited system of government with certain guarantees of freedoms, and in many other ways.40

He then proceeded to illustrate these points (again note his cautious language) in a provisional way.

Herzs test of Realist Liberalism was therefore how it would deal with power and especially how it distinguished (as he put it):

between power that is to be rejected or combated and power which, under certain safeguards and conditions, serves the cause of liberty, and which justifi es action that, although it implies some degree of violence or oppression, is nevertheless warranted because of its probable results.41 (my emphasis)

These words imply that what ultimately mattered in politics for Herz was action a move that requires dealing effectively with power a fact that raised diffi cult issues for



liberalism. How could liberalism hope to make such distinction and calculation, he asked, if, as Political Realism seems to teach, all natural trends and forces of history are against it?42 Without being explicit about it, Herz had brought the discussion to one of the most perplexing of all issues in international politics, namely the problem of relating ends and means under the condition of anarchy.

Practically, Herz insisted, Realist Liberalism has to have the courage to utilize power for its own ends, to distinguish between greater and lesser evils, and to take the responsibility for a course of action even though the consequences are not one hundred per cent predictable.43 He then referred to Max Webers classic distinction between Verantwortungsethik and Gesinnungsethik, arguing that the ethical extremist adopted the latter but the Realist Liberal if he desired to achieve anything could not afford to do so, because he would then excuse himself from the use of power. A signifi cant few lines followed:

To a certain extent, the axiom which says that the end justifi es the means is valid for any political action, even though there may be limits to the means that the ethical liberal can afford to use. To that extent he has to be a Political Realist. This is the paradox, the danger, and ultimately the tragic guilt involved in a life of action.

So far, so clear: but Herz did not then proceed to offer his readers enough discussion of specifi c historical events or policies to know what may be the limits to the means he would have been willing to use in which circumstances to justify what ends. This might be considered the chief failure of the book from the perspective of students of IR, though I will later mount a qualifi ed defence of his position.

The relationship between ends and means is a critical dimension to any political theory. In brief, it is possible to conceive them as a duality (in the traditional the ends justifi es the means formulation so familiar in the realist tradition) or in a non-dualistic manner (wherein the means are equivalent to the changes one hopes to bring about a view identifi ed above all with the iconic fi gure of Gandhi). How one conceives the endsmeans relationship is therefore basic to how one seeks to resolve the idealismrealism tension in practice. In the traditional realist/Machiavellian formulation they remain essentially separate, but in the traditional non-dualistic/Gandhian formulation the idealism/realism ideal-types can be conceived as collapsing into each other.44 Herz did not explore this problematique; he was light on detail on this and other practical matters, though practice remained his ultimate political challenge. Even in his chapter entitled Realist Liberalism in the Present Situation, detail was left lacking. (Herz gave his readers only slightly more help in thinking about operationalising collective security than Rawls gave his readers in thinking about military intervention, while both had little to say about political economy.) That said, Herzs general political stance was not diffi cult to decipher if one looks to his writing beyond Political Realism and Political Idealism. It is evident, for example, in the reasons for his criticisms of specifi c policies, such as at the end of his life the way he criticised the Bush administrations so-called War on Terror, and the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.45

While in Political Realism and Political Idealism Herz is open to the criticism of not providing his readers with much practical illustration of the concrete issues he was raising, two defences of his approach can be offered. First, the book was conceived as a work of high abstraction, and Herz made no pretence of it being otherwise. (The comparison with Carrs approach to writing The Twenty Years Crisis is striking, both in the way the two



scholars conceived their arguments in relation to their understanding of the bifurcated structure of thought idealism/realism and also how they intended their works to be philosophical investigations, not detailed contributions to contemporary political analysis and practice.)46 The level of Herzs abstraction is evident in the fact that in the book under discussion, fi nished in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, and at the very start of the Cold War, the names of Hitler and Stalin remarkably attracted only three index entries each. Second, had Herz devoted much space to operationalising his political theory, he would have risked his work becoming a late-1940s how to do foreign policy recipe book. And the danger here would have been to have produced a book with a short shelf-life, rather than a work that has something to say to successive generations of students of international relations.

When it came to defending his broad understanding of liberalism, Herz attempted to counter charges of vagueness and over-generalising by rejecting at the outset any idea that his conception of liberalism should be neat and coherent as some of the passages quoted earlier bear out. Herz likened his approach to that of Jos Ortega y Gasset, who in a 1932 book had described liberalism as paradoxical, acrobatic and anti-natural.47 I take this last phrase as particularly central to all Herzian thinking. He himself said it was particularly important, and called it a profound insight. For Herz:

The ideal of freedom, in its contrast to the realist forces in the world which make for security urges and power politics, is indeed something unnatural, something against which all natural tendencies and forces of social and political life conspire, as long as they are uninfl uenced by ethical considerations.

If this general insight is transposed onto Herzs own thinking, one might say that the natural security dilemma in intergroup relations has to be engaged with through anti-natural political and social ideas if humans are ever to live in greater harmony. In this regard Herz deployed a long quotation from the nineteenth-century Darwinian biologist Thomas Huxley, in which Huxley had written that the ideas that are ethically best repudiate

the gladiatorial theory of existence ... The ethical progress of society depends, not on imitating the cosmic process, still less in running away from it, but in combating it ... The history of civilisation details the steps by which men have succeeded in building up an artifi cial world within the cosmos.48 (my emphasis)

Herz clearly identifi ed with this latter view, emphasising that to grasp the idea of freedom it is necessary to grasp the idea that what is human is also anti-natural.49

Herz hoped to create an artifi cial world of international politics in order to mitigate the existential psychological dynamics of the security dilemma; it would be constructed through the workings of anti-natural ideas such as freedom. In the event, this vision was sketched only lightly. In Realist Liberalism Exemplifi ed (Chapter V), for example, he elaborated somewhat on the basic assumptions Realist Liberalism is forced to make in the fi eld of judgments of value, and what choices, preferences, and sacrifi ces are involved in these assumptions.50 He discussed balance of power policies and collective security in a general way, but he did not do so in operational detail. Partly this was choice, but in both this book and the next (International Politics in the Atomic Age published in 1959) he was perhaps additionally constrained because he was all too aware of the



extreme diffi culty of making progress in a world dominated by two superpowers and their weapons of annihilation.

As mentioned earlier, Herz clearly wished to guard against being labelled a utopian rather than a realist,51 though he did not escape entirely.52 He was content nonetheless to be seen as a scholar with idealist ethics; he called it a position of non-utopian idealism.53 It is hardly surprising, given his persistent rejection of utopianism, that he is invariably categorised as a realist indeed one of the Masters of realism according to Kenneth Thompson.54 If we label ideas rather than individuals a more useful occupation then it is certainly possible to see a defi nite realist assumption at the base of Herzs theorising. This is his fatalistic kill or perish characterisation of the fundamental human socio-psychological condition. As a result of this starting point, it is possible to draw a genealogical line between Herzs original conception of the security dilemma and John Mearsheimers offensive realism perhaps realisms most theoretically pure variant.55 That said, the categorisation of Herz simply as a realist is to indulge in the disciplinary predilection of categorising people instead of ideas.56 Herzs thinking about the world was too complex to be described by one (contentious) label such as realist, but analysts seem to love to label, and in so doing are prone to tie themselves into knots.57 Even in the book in which Herz invented the realist concept of the security dilemma, we can also see him as a Kantian social idealist (he described himself later as being motivated by a normativism that combined political realism and ethical idealism).58 In todays IR theory lexicon, his combination of ideas would probably put him in the ever-expanding constructivist camp but to be so consigned is to raise at least as many questions as it may settle.

A particular reason for thinking of Herz as a Kantian social idealist derives from his conception of rationality. He wrote in Political Realism and Political Idealism that rationality is not inherent in things political themselves but that does not mean that because rationality does not exist in the world as we fi nd it, the ideas and ideals which constitute it cannot have any effect, except the negative one shown by the history of utopian intrusions into the world of politics.59 The question is: how much can ideas change the world? In the historical era in which he found himself for most of his life after 1945, Herz did not think the world could be changed radically but it might yet be saved. Herz was attracted to the word mitigation to describe the most he thought could be achieved in the Cold War.60 The problem was that there was rigidity both in the situation (particularly during the era of superpower bipolarity) and in the mindsets of those who make policy.61 When Political Realism and Political Idealism was written, he discussed the particular force of the security dilemma at that very moment in history, including the (offensive realist) temptation for preventive war (to kill in order not to be killed). Without separating what was rigid in the situation from what was rigid in the mindsets of the decision-makers, he showed the powerful combination of the two by foreshadowing Kenneth Waltzs well-known contention in Man, the State and War that If everyones strategy depends upon everyone elses, then the Hitlers determine in part the action, or better reaction, of those whose ends are worthy and whose means are fastidious.62 Finishing his book during the Korean War and the intensifying Cold War (while Waltz was also preparing his), Herz commented that the security threat at the time forces the liberal-democratic societies to become ever more totalitarian in every sphere of life and society.63

Confronted by the absolute novum, Herz in his 1959 book had prescribed a kind of holding operation between the superpowers: mutual recognition of bloc spheres and



boundaries, agreement not to use the nuclear weapon fi rst, and other means of creating an atmosphere of diminished fears.64 In other words, he was seeking to use the logic of mitigation to temper the security dilemma at a time when he claimed it had asserted itself more poignantly ... in our ... bipolar and nuclear world.65 The policy struggle he saw played out over the dilemma of response66 thrown up by the Cold War security dilemma was between those he called hardliners and detentists. In terms of security dilemma theorising, this political struggle was a manifestation of the split between those drawn to the logic of response embodied in those who might be called the Children of Kill or Perish (the Mearsheimerian tradition) and those embodied in the Children of Realist Liberalism (the tradition of Herz himself). Whereas hardliners pushed readiness for war and armaments eventually to almost grotesque dimensions, detentists believed that amelioration of the confl ict ... and reducing the security dilemma were possible, given a minimum level of reason on both sides and a willingness to avoid global catastrophe.67 Over four decades later Herz was able to record, thankfully, that the mitigator Children of Realist Liberalism had succeeded where the fatalist Children of Kill or Perish would have caused disaster. In practice, Herz wrote in 2003, we owe our survival to the detentists on both sides 68 (my emphasis).

IR = I/R?

The ideal types of political realism and political idealism capitalised or not continue to fascinate, as do their interrelationships. Many now (correctly) question whether there was ever a Great Debate between them in the 1930s and later, while others imply that to read the disciplines evolution in such bifurcated terms is a sign of disciplinary immaturity. Another set of criticisms again most recently by Jean Bethke Elshtain maintains that the realist/idealist divide serves no useful heuristic or even polemical purpose.69 In the light of the range of such views, is it not a waste of time to go back to Herzs old book onPolitical Realism and Political Idealism?

I think not, and in this concluding section I will argue that the IdealismRealism relationship however expressed can continue to play both an interesting and constructive role in IR (as it also can in political history70). Every once in a while in our disciplinary development, somebody comes up with a master variable or a conceptual innovation which they hope promises to be the key to explaining or understanding world politics.71 Todays textbooks on IR are hypermarkets of the fruits of such creativity, with carefully organised shelves of variables and concepts, inviting students to choose one or other of the intellectual goods on offer. Master variables include power, anarchy and polarity, while conceptual innovations have included the decision-making approach, constructivism and post-structuralism. While admiring the sophistication and seriousness of all these efforts to fi nd the golden key to explaining and understanding the worlds of politics, I am not convinced that any of them offers any more and they often offer less than discussions framed along the lines of Carr and Herz over half a century ago (regardless of what one may think about their own particular contributions). In my view, their approach to structuring how to think about the discipline invites a dialogue or struggle between the ideal types, and the exploration of the rich frontier zone between them. In this exercise are raised all the demanding questions in our subject relating to the interplay of mind and materiality, norms and necessities, and ideas about what is real, what can we know, and how might we act. In other words, IR can still usefully be



read as I/R the slash being the sign of the enduring unity of opposites represented by I(dealism)/R(ealism).

I want to elaborate this view in relation to three broad sets of reasons why I/R should remain at the heart of IR: fi rst, the debate (when there is one) is productive. The I/R Great Debate above all identifi es and engages with the biggest questions in our subject. In her survey of normative approaches, Kimberley Hutchings, for example, has interpreted international theory as being distinguished by the invention of the past in terms of seemingly infi nite variations on a standard theme (my emphasis). The latter, in her words, is the distinction between idealist and realist understandings of the actuality and potentiality of international politics. She observed that this theme is read back into the history of political thought in order to identify forerunners of these schools ... or representatives of a middle way between them.72 Whether engaging in a time-transcending dialogue with the past, exploring Rawlss ideal theory and Philip Allotts idea of the ideal, or speculating about current and future possibilities (desirable? feasible?) in international politics, reading IR as I/R is one way of discussing how to move towards the Herzian goal of building the artifi cial situation of civilisation in a bleak cosmos.73

Second, there is no beyond IR. Even if one might consider it a fl awed tradition, Herz was surely correct in suggesting that there is no escape from the transhistorical orientations of Political Realism and Political Idealism. Over time, they have been manifest in manifold guises and packages, but there is no beyond because schools identifi ed with particular master variables or conceptual innovations are themselves distinguished by individuals whose ideas are coloured by the I/R standard theme. Every school of IR worth its name must have some implicit or explicit theory of human nature and a theory about the role of ideas and material factors; likewise, every theory of IR has a role in the dialectic and mythology of I/R. In the tensions between defensive and offensive schools of realism, hard and soft branches of constructivism, radical and post-structural wings of feminism, the pluralist and solidarist camps of the English school and so on, it is possible to detect the old tensions evident across the I/R frontier zone.

Three, there are rich pickings on the frontiers. The discipline of IR continues to be fascinated by the ideas of realism and idealism. The characterisation of the disciplinary problematique in these terms remains signifi cant, not only because of the strategic use of language in the games academics and practitioners play, but more importantly for what can be gained in understanding world affairs as a result of thoughtful conversations between ideal types. Peter Wilson rightly discovered a modicum of value even with the original no-debate Great Debate: As a pedagogic device for bringing order to a bewildering array of theories and approaches, he wrote, the notion of a fi rst great debate is not without merit.74 By emphasising the rich pickings available on the frontiers between the two sets of ideas rather than the buttressing of paradigmatic purity, the value is evident of categorising ideas rather than people. The latter approach helps one avoid getting tied up in labelling wars: Is such and such a theorist a Realist or a Constructivist?, for example (when texts invariably reveal examples of both sets of ideas). The futility (and unnecessary disappointment) attendant on this addiction was evident in Otto Pfl anzes encounter with historians, political scientists and foreign policy experts who demanded to pigeonhole people whose ideas resisted simple classifi cation.75

As suggested earlier, the I/R relationship has been expressed by different theorists in different ways. For Herz it was a diffi cult conversation between the two, out of which he sought a compromise; for Rawls there could be no compromise because what he called



ideal theory and non-ideal theory performed different functions; and for Carr it was a stand-off two planes that could never meet in which fi rst one and then the other would be dominant. Herz initially asked whether realism and idealism could ever be brought together in combination because they might be thought to be a contradiction in terms:76 but I do not think he had any fundamental doubt about them combining (as did Carr though what Carr practised was not always what he preached). Herz questioned his own project, but went on to argue that there was a sensible path to follow between Political Realism and Political Idealism which he of course identifi ed with Realist Liberalism.77 Nearly four decades after the book was published he located Realist Liberalism as equidistant from Realism and Idealism.78 Such a middle way, of course, is not logically always the most sensible approach (for it depends on the extremes it is bisecting); nor are middle (or third) ways always seen as heroic. Herz recognised these potential downsides of his approach, though he continued to fl y its fl ag. He described where he stood with vigour in 1951:

Realist Liberalism, less glamorous than common Political Idealism, is also less utopian, less emotional, but also more sober. While it is less likely ever to become the battle cry of great political movements, it has more of a chance to contribute to lasting achievements in the direction of greater human freedom. Even though it will be attacked from both sides, it may be able to contribute to both Realism and Idealism some measure of attenuation, thus rendering the former more humane and the latter less chimerical. It is thus a kind of second liberalism, coming as synthesis after the thesis of utopian idealism and the antithesis of cynical realism. In it Political Realism gives up its easy assumption that nothing ever changes or should change, and Political Idealism renounces its easy assumption that the ideal is inherent in the world, at present or in statu nascendi.79

In political practice, Herz sometimes conceived the relationship between his two fundamental approaches to international politics as a dialectic rather than a middle way, and in so doing came closer to the theoretical viewpoint of Carr.80

Was Herz justifi ed in thinking that a middle way between Political Realism and Political Idealism could ever succeed? Clearly, a positive answer would depend upon how one defi nes the terms in the fi rst place. The idea of a middle way is always likely to be tempting to some, just as is the idea that the two might collapse into each other. The latter possibility is misconceived as long as the concepts maintain their traditional meaning. While this is so, realism will continue to propound that the boundaries between states are immutable, and that progressive cosmopolitan ambitions are fanciful in a world where ethics are baked in national(ist) bite-sizes. For its part, idealist ideas must accept that for a long time ahead human society globally must exist within a world constructed in important ways by the ideas of realism. Idealists must always be realistic, therefore, if they are to affect the world in benign ways. But engaging with the world as it is does not mean that one must surrender to all the practices of realism, for that would merely reproduce the problem that it is hoped to transcend. Rather, the world of realism must be worn down by the promotion of emancipatory politics that engage with the real but with means that are consistent with the progressive ends being sought universally.81

In the fi nal stages of writing Political Realism and Political Idealism, Herz was preoccupied with the gathering dangers of the atomic age. The context was generally conceived to be a time of necessity, not choice. Herz himself clearly had a good sense



of the disjunction between the call to reason in Realist Liberalism and the power of world-shattering destruction in the arsenals of the superpowers. Nonetheless, his social idealism expressed itself in his emphasis on the need for rationality to transcend what he saw as the fundamental state of nature the trap of the security dilemma. Faced with this, he believed that if humans did not choose the path of freedom, the outlook would be catastrophic. He ended his 1951 book in a tone that would not have been inappropriate in a pulpit: The atomic bomb, or what may follow, will then have made history the story of a race which could not solve its basic problem of power and security; the sad yet moving saga of hope and failure.82

As time passed, the dangers attending the absolute novum proliferated, and Herz remained far ahead of the game in recognising the growing risks facing the long-term human occupation of the planet.83 His interest in demography made him one of the fi rstto recognise the dangers of runaway population increase, his work in comparative politics put him in the front rank of those seeking to rethink the hitherto sharp divide between domestic and foreign policy, and he was a remarkably early environmentalist. His concerns about nuclear weapons led him to talk about the decline of the territorial state long before the rest of the profession discovered globalisation.84 As threats to human society intensifi ed, so did Herzs conception of the intellectual challenge. His disciplinary outlook became not just International Relations but Survival Research.85 In bringing new issues onto the security agenda, in broadening security beyond the so-called nation-state, in recognising the signifi cance of global security threats, in insisting on the recognition of universal interests, and in adopting universalism as a perspective, Herz was decades ahead of his time not just the six months of the average policy-wonk think-tanker. With the intensifi cation of the global challenges, and the evident dangers deriving from decades of policies dominated by realist mindsets, Herz in later years emphasised his version of universalism.86 He recognised that there was a world-historical crisis brewing of far greater signifi cance than even the nuclear revolution, and this makes him a theorist of today and the future as well as of the mid-twentieth century.

Like all intellectuals, Herz was (inescapably) a man of his time, but like the truly distinguished, he was also an individual of remarkable far-sightedness. The latter phrase, of course, is fi lled with tragic irony, given that his own professional work was hindered for the last 20 or so years of his life by failing eyesight, an affl iction that made it very diffi cult for him to read and therefore operate normally as a scholar. Tom Karis, in his Appreciation in this special issue, told us something of Herz as a human being as well as an intellectual with a continuing concern for the plight of the world. In commenting on Herzs physical plight, mention was also made of his desire to be able to see pretty girls again, and listen to beautiful music. This combination in Herz of intense political concern, physical imprisonment, the desire for ordinary human pleasures in dark times, and hope for radical change, evokes for me the work of the great Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet. Exiled from his country of birth, like Herz, Hikmet was also a universalist, though more explicitly a political leftist he died in the Soviet Union, not the United States. The great issues of world politics consumed both men, but they nevertheless clung to the idea of the ordinary pleasures of life when imprisonment (physical in one case, juridical in the other) limited their ability to live life to the full, publicly and privately.

At the very time when John Herz was working on Political Realism and Political Idealism, Hikmet wrote a powerful poem entitled On Living (1948).87 Its fi rst line evokes Herzs sense of the dark times Living is no laughing matter and intones: you must live with great seriousness. But the poet quickly moved to the desire, whatever ones



age or situation, to take pleasure in things outside ones confi nes not only people and animals, but also waiting anxiously for the next newscast (a line that could have been written for Herz). Even though its impossible not to feel sad ... well still laugh at the jokes being told, Hikmet wrote, stressing that we must love the world and that we must live as if we will never die. This exceptional poet, who loved life and lived in hope in dark times, perfectly captures for me the spirit with which the exceptional political philosopher and theorist John H. Herz still encourages students of international relations to navigate Historys absolute novum.

Notes

1 John H. Herz, Political Realism and Political Idealism. A Study in Theories and Realities (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1951), p. 17.

2 In this process, classical thinkers were detextualised and labelled, and performed the role (in Michael Donelans apt phrase) of ventriloquists dummies to speak the words of their manipulators; see his Elements of International Political Theory (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), p. 142.

3 Thanks are due to Patricia Owens for explaining the importance of between for Arendt. Her account of Arendts engagement with related matters is Between War and Politics. International Relations and the Thought of Hannah Arendt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).

4 John Rawls, The Law of Peoples (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), pp. 1268; see also pp. 6, 11.

5 Originally, what became Carrs classic book (The Twenty Years Crisis), was called Utopia and Reality: see Michael Cox, Introduction, in E. H. Carr, The Twenty Years Crisis 19191939. An Introduction to the Study of International Relations (Houndmills: Palgrave, 2001, reissued with a new introduction and additional material by Michael Cox), p. xxi.

6 Great Debates, in Steve Smiths view, have been one of the key self-images of the discipline, and none more infl uential than the fi rst one (even if it never really took place) between idealism and realism: see Steve Smith, The Self-Images of a Discipline: A Genealogy of International Relations Theory, in Ken Booth and Steve Smith (eds), International Relations Theory Today (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995), esp. pp. 1317. On the use and misuse of this supposed intellectual interaction, see Peter Wilson, The Myth of the First Great Debate, in Tim Dunne, Michael Cox and Ken Booth (eds), The Eighty Years Crisis. International Relations 19191999 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 115.

7 This subheading is part of the subtitle of Herzs book. For some reason, it has rarely been referenced (even by Herz himself).

8 The key fi rst expression of his position was the publication of Political Realism and Political Idealism (see also John H. Herz, Idealist Internationalism and the Security Dilemma, World Politics, 2(2), 1950, pp. 15780). He later recorded that the book was conceived prior to and during the war but published much later; see John H. Herz, An Internationalists Journey Through the Century, in Josef Kruzel and James N. Rosenau (eds), Journeys through World Politics. Autobiographical Refl ections of Thirty-four Academic Travelers (Lexington MA: Lexington Books, 1989), p. 250. Herz recorded that the books publication owed much to Morgenthau, and its actual dust-jacket records his fellow migrs warm endorsement. The books outstanding merit, Morgenthau wrote, is that it lays bare some ... intellectual roots of our political practices ... [It is] an important contribution ... to the political philosophy ... [and] the political practice of democracy. This article will focus largely on this book, though Herz himself characterised it as his intellektuelles Schmerzenskind (intellectual problem child) because he believed it had received so little intellectual attention: see Christian Hacke and Jana Puglierin, John H. Herz: Balancing Utopia and Reality, International Relations, 21(4), 2007, p. 373.

9 Herz, Political Realism and Political Idealism, p. 154.10 Another way of conceiving Herzs general approach to scholarship in this and later work was

suggested by Jana Puglierin. This is based on the Weberian distinction between doing value-free research in the fi rst place, and then developing prescriptions. She notes that in International Politics in the Atomic Age (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959), Herz sought fi rst to do empirical work (ostensibly value-free) and then engage in his normative approach, revealing his commitment



to universalism. I am very grateful to her for this and other insights, and for asking and answering many questions about Herzs work, in the course of reading earlier drafts of my article.

11 Herz, Political Realism and Political Idealism, p. 2.12 Herz, Political Realism and Political Idealism, p. 7.13 Herz, Political Realism and Political Idealism, p. 3. This is the key original statement, together with

the 1950 article (see note 8). The concept, and Herzs ideas, are discussed at length in Ken Booth and Nicholas J. Wheeler, The Security Dilemma. Fear, Cooperation and Trust in World Politics (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). Some of the arguments and terminology below are taken from this book. As ever, I want to recognise the importance of discussions with Nicholas Wheeler about all these matters.

14 On Waltz and human nature see Kenneth Waltz, Man, the State and War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959), pp. 1679, 8595. See also Booth and Wheeler, Security Dilemma, pp. 25, 2830.

15 Herz, Political Realism and Political Idealism, p. 3.16 Herz, Political Realism and Political Idealism, pp. 1415.17 See, for example, his discussion of the nuclear dilemma in Peter Stirk, John H. Herz: Realism

and the Fragility of the International Order, Review of International Studies, 31(2), 2005, p. 301.18 Herz, Political Realism and Political Idealism, p. 43.19 Herz, Political Realism and Political Idealism, p. 16. Compare Edward Hallett Carr, The Twenty

Years Crisis 19191939. An Introduction to the Study of International Politics (London: Macmillan, 1940), esp. pp.1628 (unless otherwise indicated, subsequent references are to this edition).

20 Herz, Political Realism and Political Idealism, p. 43.21 Herz, Political Realism and Political Idealism, p. 43.22 Herz, Political Realism and Political Idealism, pp. 43 and 255 n. 1.23 Herz, Political Realism and Political Idealism, p. 132.24 Herz, An Internationalists Journey, p. 247.25 Herz, An Internationalists Journey, p. 252; his classic account is The Newness of the New Age,

in Herz, International Politics in the Atomic Age, pp. 1225.26 Herz, International Politics in the Atomic Age, not to mention occasional pieces, such as those

collected in John H. Herz, The Nation-State and the Crisis of World Politics (New York: David McKay Co., 1976).

27 Herz, Political Realism and Political Idealism, p. 132.28 Herz, Political Realism and Political Idealism, p. 132.29 Much later, he suggested that Realist Liberalism might perhaps have been better called realist

idealism: see John Herz, Letter to the Morgenthau Conference, in Christian Hacke, Gottfried-Karl Kinderman and Kai M. Schellhorn (eds), The Heritage, Challenge, and Future of Realism. In Memoriam Hans J. Morgenthau (19041980) (Gttingen: Bonn University Press, 2005), p. 24.

30 See, for example, Political Realism and Political Idealism, pp. 1356.31 Herz, Political Realism and Political Idealism, p. 135.32 Herz, Political Realism and Political Idealism, p. 135.33 Peter Wilson was not here referring directly to Political Realism and Political Idealism, but to

Herzs infl uential article published in the previous year, Idealist Internationalism and the Security Dilemma; however, the book is open to the same comment, as the quoted passage above suggests. See Wilson, First Great Debate, p. 9.

34 These words are Chris Browns: see his The Construction of a Realistic Utopia: John Rawls and International Political Theory, Review of International Studies, 28(1), 2002, p. 6.

35 The key works are Rawls, The Law of Peoples, and John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1971). There is no evidence that Rawls was familiar with the work of Herz, or indeed of most theorists of international politics (with a couple of notable exceptions) as a two-minute skim of the index of Law of Peoples will reveal.

36 See Herz, Political Realism and Political Idealism, p. 135.37 Despite this, Kenneth Thompson, in assessing Herzs intellectual life, has argued that his infl uence as

a theorist was marred by his embracing utopian liberal attitudes. Thompson mistakenly considered the latter to be synonymous with Herzs notion of Realist Liberalism. See Kenneth Thompson, John H. Herz. Reconciling Realism and Idealism, in his Masters of International Thought. Major Twentieth-Century Theorists and the World Crisis (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1980), p. 111.

38 At the grand age of 95 Herz was writing that I have always been fi ghting utopian visions, but considered realizable agendas to be in conformity with political realism. See John H. Herz,



On Human Survival. Refl ections on Survival Research and Survival Policies, in Ervin Laszlo and Peter Seidel (eds), Global Survival. The Challenge and its Implications for Thinking and Acting (New York: SelectBooks, 2006), p. 24. In a contribution published the previous year he asked the anxious question: Have I landed in an idealistic utopianism? See Herz, Letter to the Morgenthau Conference, p. 27.

39 Herz, Political Realism and Political Idealism, p. 141.40 Herz, Political Realism and Political Idealism, p. 141.41 Herz, Political Realism and Political Idealism, p.137.42 Herz, Political Realism and Political Idealism, p. 137.43 Herz, Political Realism and Political Idealism, p. 143.44 I try and address these issues in Ken Booth, Theory of World Security (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 2007), pp. 2546, 42841. The basic idea was well captured in the title of Johan Galtungs The Way is the Goal: Gandhi Today (Ahmedabad: Gugarat Vidyapith Peace Research Centre, 1992).

45 See, for example, Herz, Human Survival, pp. 214. One quotation will suffi ce: The ideological agenda of the Bush regime thus aims at the complete reversal of the Enlightenment agenda ... [and] the Bush regimes refutation of even basic rules of international law surpasses the era of Hugo Grotius (p. 21).

46 On Carrs approach, see Cox, Introduction, p.xxi.47 Herz, Political Realism and Political Idealism, p. 137.48 Herz, Political Realism and Political Idealism, p. 137, quoting an 1896 book on evolution and

ethics.49 Herz, Political Realism and Political Idealism, p. 138.50 Herz, Political Realism and Political Idealism, p. 154.51 The famous (or infamous) hatchet job that Carr did on utopianism was done too well (see

the discussion in Wilson, The Myth). I do not dissent from that view, but I do dissent from those who have read Carrs relationship with utopia and utopianism too crudely: see Booth, Security in Anarchy: Utopian Realism in Theory and Practice, International Affairs, 67(3), 1991, pp. 52745.

52 See Thompsons misplaced opinion, Reconciling Realism and Idealism, p. 111.53 John H. Herz, The Security Dilemma in International Relations: Background and Present Problems,

International Relations, 17(4), 2003, p. 416.54 Just as Thompsons criticism of Herzs utopianism misses the mark, so, for reasons explained

earlier, does his labelling of Herz simply as a realist: see Thompson, Reconciling Realism and Idealism.

55 Discussed in Booth and Wheeler, The Security Dilemma, pp. 348.56 This general problem is discussed in Booth and Wheeler, The Security Dilemma, p. xx, and with

respect to Herz, p. x.57 See, for example, Otto Pfl anze, Realism and Idealism in Historical Perspective: Otto von Bismarck,

in Cathal J. Nolan (ed.), Ethics and Statecraft. The Moral Dimension of International Affairs, 2nd edn (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004), pp. 14964. Notable essays showing that the range of Herzs ideas was too wide to be captured by such a contested and inadequate label as realist are Stirk, John H. Herz, pp. 285306, and Hacke and Puglierin, John H. Herz, pp. 36782.

58 Herz, Internationalists Journey, p. 259. Rawls was explicit that his Law of Peoples was indebted to Kant (Law of Peoples, p. 86). Pfl anzes survey of European history in terms of idealism/realism fi rmly places Kant as a philosopher who saw the two concepts as necessary to each other: Realism and Idealism, p. 153. The key texts of Kant in this regard are Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose and Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch, both reprinted in Kants Political Writings, ed. Hans Reiss (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977).

59 Herz, Political Realism and Political Idealism, p. 133.60 The mitigator logic is one of the three a priori positions with respect to insecurity which it is

possible for an individual to take: see Booth and Wheeler, The Security Dilemma, esp. ch. 1.61 Compare with my discussion of Bernard Brodie, the most interesting of post-war US nuclear

strategists: Security in Anarchy, p. 545.62 Kenneth N. Waltz, Man, the State and War. A Theoretical Analysis (New York: Columbia University

Press, 1959), p. 238.63 Herz, Political Realism and Political Idealism, pp. 2289.64 Herz, The Security Dilemma in International Relations, p. 413.65 Herz, International Politics in the Atomic Age, p. 241.



66 This is the second of the two-level strategic predicament that defi nes the security dilemma: see Booth and Wheeler, Security Dilemma, pp. 405.

67 Herz, The Security Dilemma in International Relations, p. 413.68 Herz, The Security Dilemma in International Relations.69 Jean Bethke Elshtain, On Never Reaching the Coast of Utopia, International Relations, 22(2),

2008, p. 147.70 See Pfl anze, Realism and Idealism. The chapter concentrates on Bismarck and four centuries of

European history, but argues that the conceptual linkage between realism and idealism has been evident in most if not all historical fi gures from the Crusades to the Cold War.

71 A key volume is Martin Hollis and Steve Smith, Explaining and Understanding International Relations (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990).

72 Kimberely Hutchings, International Political Theory. Rethinking Ethics in a Global Era (London: Sage, 1999), p. 6.

73 See Rawls, Law of Peoples, pp. 1188. Philip Allott, The Health of Nations. Society and Law beyond the State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 796.

74 Wilson, First Great Debate, p. 1.75 Pfl anze, Realism and Idealism, p. 149.76 Herz, Political Realism and Political Idealism, p. 133.77 Herz, Political Realism and Political Idealism, pp. 141, 2267.78 Herz, Internationalists Journey, p. 251.79 Herz, Political Realism and Political Idealism, p. 146.80 Herz, Political Realism and Political Idealism, p. 42. See Carr, Twenty Years Crisis, especially

ch. 2 (Utopia and Reality) and particularly the opening sentence, p. 16.81 This general issue is discussed in Booth, Theory of World Security, pp. 2546, 42841.82 Herz, Political Realism and Political Idealism, p. 251.83 While there are grounds for arguing that Herzs work has generally not been given the recognition it

deserves in IR, his far-sightedness has been recognised by some important scholars (see, for example, Thompson, Reconciling Realism and Idealism). Jana Puglierins researches have discovered a publication by Herz as early as 1949 in which he talked about the new global problems facing human society.

84 On his achievements, see Hacke and Puglierin, John H. Herz.85 Discussed in Booth and Wheeler, The Security Dilemma, pp. 2615.86 In International Politics in the Atomic Age, Herz argued that his realist liberal or universalist

outlook on world problems had become literally a matter of life or death, p. v.87 Nazim Hikmet, Poems of Nazim Hikmet, trans. Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk (New York: Persea

Books, 2002), pp. 1324. I want to acknowledge Aylin Ozet and Ali Bilgic for helping me indulge my desire to better understand Hikmets life and work.


Booth 2008 - On John Herz and Political Realism and Political Idealism

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