Morgenthau, Hans 1904-1980

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Born in Coburg, Germany, in 1904, Hans Joachim Morgenthau became the greatest contributor to the theory of realism in the field of international relations. Until his death in New York in 1980, Morgenthau actively influenced generations of scholars and policymakers, and his writings continue to do so today. Morgenthau’s writings reflect his antipathy toward liberalism and idealism, arguing that the influence of international law, norms, and organizations were minimal at best. Along with E. H. Carr (1892–1982) and George F. Kennan (1904–2005), Morgenthau is known as a founder of the field of international relations.

Before immigrating to the United States, Morgenthau studied law and diplomacy at the universities of Frankfurt and Munich and taught public law at the University of Geneva. In 1937 he fled to the United States due to his Jewish identity and the growing Nazi power in Germany. Morgenthau taught at several universities for short periods before ending up at the University of Chicago, where he taught political science from 1943 to 1971. After his retirement, he taught at City College of New York and the New School for Social Research. In addition to teaching and writing, Morgenthau worked as an adviser and consultant to the U.S. departments of State and Defense in the 1940s and 1960s.

Morgenthau’s first book, Scientific Man versus Power Politics, published in 1946, outlined his belief that human nature is truly selfish and humans have a natural longing to dominate each other through power. By applying his realist philosophy of human nature to politics, Morgenthau argued that all politics was merely a struggle for power. His most seminal work, Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, published in 1948, provided an empirical basis for the theory of realism, the most influential theory in international relations. The theory of realism argues that power is the primary interest of all states in the international community and therefore, policies and actions taken by governments are merely means to achieve or maintain power relative to other states.

Politics among Nations argued that all states in the international community would pursue foreign policies that sought to maintain or achieve relative levels of power and that international politics was therefore about the competition of states to seek power. A major contribution to realist theory was the idea of balance of power, in which Morgenthau claimed that the most powerful states would attempt to balance each other by pursuing certain foreign policies to either gain more relative power or suppress the relative power of another state. Unlike political scientist Kenneth Waltz, who later argued that bipolarity was the most stable type of power balance, Morgenthau was skeptical that the balance of power between the United States and the Soviet Union was stable. Rather, Morgenthau argued that there should be a larger number of great powers in order to achieve stability in the international system. In addition to Politics among Nations, Morgenthau published many other books and hundreds of articles about power politics, diplomacy, U.S. foreign policy, cold war politics, and U.S. relations with the Soviet Union.

SEE ALSO Cold War; Diplomacy; Realism; Realism, Political; Waltz, Kenneth

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bucklin, Steven. 2001. Realism and American Foreign Policy: Wilsonians and Kennan-Morgenthau Thesis. Westport, CT: Praeger.

Griffiths, Martin. 1999. Fifty Key Thinkers in International Relations. London: Routledge.

Morgenthau, Hans. 1985. Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace. 6th ed. New York: Knopf.

Russell, Greg. 1990. Hans J. Morgenthau and the Ethics of American Statecraft. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.

Thompson, Kenneth, and Robert J. Myers, eds. 1977. A Tribute to Hans Morgenthau (Truth and Tragedy): With an Intellectual Autobiography by Hans J. Morgenthau. Washington, DC: New Republic.

Krista E. Wiegand