Who Are the Real ‘Realists’?

Since at least 2016, foreign policy debates have been increasingly marked by entreaties for America to adopt a more “realist” posture in international affairs, which is generally taken to mean a more restrained approach. At the same time, the US foreign policy establishment continues to be more-or-less united around the idea of a US-led world order, with some disagreement over what that order exists to accomplish. What’s curious is that many in the latter camp also identify as “realists.” But how can both the critics and defenders of American involvement abroad consider themselves realists?

Part of the problem lies with “realism” being an attractive label for multiple competing ideologies, particularly in contradistinction to some form of “idealism,” usually identified with overly-optimistic conceptions of global affairs. For example, Just War Theory could be described as realist in contrast to pacifism or other ethical theories which deny that military force can ever be a legitimate tool of statecraft. The view that diplomacy and sanctions are the only justifiable foreign policy tools idealistically seeks to mitigate conflict, but, in practice, often enables it by declining to acknowledge and confront threats.

In 2025 there are two camps competing to define realism for American foreign policy/national security going into the mid-twenty-first century: the restrainers and the internationalists.

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James Diddams is the Managing Editor of Providence: A Journal of Christianity & American Foreign Policy, a publication of the Institute on Religion and Democracy.