February 28, 2025 - 1:00pm
One of the most dramatic effects of Donald Trump’s second administration is that it has thrust the doctrine of realism to the forefront of public debate. A storied theoretical tradition rooted in the academic discipline of International Relations, realism has recently won greater public prominence through the efforts of pugnacious exponents such as Chicago professor John Mearsheimer, known for his sharp criticisms of US foreign policy over Israel and Ukraine.
Yet since Trump returned to the White House this year, realism has been used less to attack Western foreign policy than to promote it. It has now been officially endorsed by both Labour and the Conservatives in the UK. Foreign Secretary David Lammy set out his doctrine of âprogressive realismâ last summer, while Tory leader Kemi Badenoch this week promulgated her own theory of âconservative realismâ.
On the face of it, Badenochâs version of realism sounds better than Lammyâs. She explicitly differentiates herself from those she calls neoconservatives and cosmopolitan internationalists. Unlike the Foreign Secretary’s veneration of international law, she voices her frank scepticism. She criticises the current governmentâs deal with Mauritius to relinquish British sovereignty over the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean, and moots the possibility of raising national spending on defence above the 2.5% targeted by Labour. She also explicitly talks in terms of pursuing the national interest, something that Lammy abjures, predictably damning it by association with colonialism.
With British voters now having the choice of conservative realism or progressive realism, one is left wondering: why is realism itself not sufficient? In her speech on Tuesday, Badenoch argued that âprogressive realismâ is a contradiction in terms, but what is the reality from which she needs to shield herself by caveating realism with the word âconservativeâ?
Realism has been historically defined by its focus on the ruthless pursuit of the national interest. The difficulty for Badenoch is that pursuing the national interest today is not a conservative task but a radical one, going far beyond adding a few more slivers of GDP to defence. Pursuing the national interest today requires remaking the British state itself. This is something from which Badenoch shies away, as she predictably qualifies the prospect of Brexiting from the European Convention on Human Rights and the International Criminal Court, talking in terms of âdisengagementâ rather than departure.
The truth is that whether the chosen buffer for realism is progressive or conservative, both Lammy and Badenoch are shielding themselves from reality, while at the same time trying to domesticate realism and make it safe for a decaying Westminster elite. The logical endpoint of all this will be another hapless British politician calling in due course for a âreal realismâ. To claim a conservative realism as opposed to a progressive realism is only to announce that you are incapable of rising to the challenges of realism.
Talking in terms of âconservativeâ or âprogressiveâ realism indicates a political elite that is thinking in terms of global culture wars rather than representing and defending the nation. Like the linen rolls clinging to a decomposed mummy, such labels are ideological strands that are intended to entwine us forever in online discourse in service of crumbling political parties. The point of the national interest is precisely that it transcends the tedious ideological polarisation of the Westminster state and the ancien regime of globalism. Serving the interests of a new British nation will require a new generation of political representatives. The current crop simply wonât do.
Philip Cunliffe is Associate Professor of International Relations at the Institute of Risk and Disaster Reduction, University College London. He is author or editor of eight books, as well as a co-author of Taking Control: Sovereignty and Democracy After Brexit (2023). He is one of the hosts of the Bungacast podcast.
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SubscribeEveryone considers themselves a realist. No one says, “I’m actually a wild-eyed radical whose ideas are so detached from reality that they’re only visible from Pluto.”
I don’t know why but reading the last part of your comment, Liz Truss immediately sprang to mind.
Reminds me of the hard left and identity-politics loonies. What is realistic about believing a trans man, even after surgery, can ever become a biological woman?
Ha exactly just like 80% of people are somehow “moderates.”
Unherd ignores the Starmer-Hermer-Sands brand of ‘realism’. They have been very clear what their worldview is. But you won’t read about it here. That would open it up to criticism.
More waffle instead.
It is Unherd, and bad journalism in general, that avoids reality. And the consequence? There is no accountability. Starmer and Co can do and say anything.
What about the Labour MP let off after a brutal assault? More two tier justice.
Why does Unherd protect Labour?
Yes RL. Unherd has become an apologist for our anti-white anti British government.
Heâs talking about Foreign Policy Realism, which is an actual ideology that has nothing at all to do with being realistic, as much as its proponents claim it does.
I’m just making the point it is another Unherd smokescreen.
The British political class if not the state itself just needs to take in some home truths as regards geopolitics and the Special Relationship. Namely, that the neocon project for the Ukraine has got us sending money over there which should have gone to our own defence.
Defence against what? Moscow is our main enemy. Ukraine is our defence.
Yet since Trump returned to the White House this year, realism has been used less to attack Western foreign policy than to promote it.
Why exactly is this a problem? If we look at people voting with their feet, the West is far and away the world’s preferred destination. That’s not an accident. If a govt is not pursuing “the national interest,” then what is it doing? Foreign policy is part of that interest; if something benefits the country, then it is in the country’s interest. If it does not benefit the country, then it is not.
Personally, I don’t want the UK government to engage in “ruthless pursuit of the national interest”.
It’s not that I think the national interest doesn’t matter. But it’s not the only thing that matters to me, and it’s wide open to interpretation.
Plus, “ruthless pursuit” does in no way guarantee that you achieve your aim.
Much of this piece does not make any sense. Basically, he’s saying my version of realism is more real than thine. Gibberish. If he disagrees with specific points argued by Lammy and Badenoch, he should do so, without getting tangled up in metaphysics.
Only in the last sentence does it become clear. He’s trying to suggest “Vote Farage,” but without giving any reasons why at all.
I’m a realist; he’s pragmatic; they’re just selfish. His view of realism, of course, is an academic one and so may be very different from most normal people’s ideas. In my opinion it’s a significant problem for lucid communication when the academics, aped by politicians, define things in highly restrictive terms. We see it all the time with ‘critical’, ‘populist’, ‘genocide’, ‘activist’, ‘oppressor’, ‘militant’, ‘resistance’ and so on. Sometimes the problem is caused by the disconnect between academics and the normal world, and by deliberate use of self-defined language to impress and bewilder other people.
It is always good to be realistic. The ideology of ‘realism’ – the ruthless pursuit of immediate national interest, as advocated by Mearsheimer and practised e.g. by Putin and Mussolini, is a lot more controversial. If ‘progressive realism’ means preferring to promote democracy, fight disease and starvation, and keep good relations with other countries, it is neither wrong nor stupid. Provided, of course, that before you embark on some policy you make sure you have a clear idea of what it will cost, whether you can afford it, and what the consequences are likely to be in the real world.
Projects like introducing a pluralistic democracy in Afghanistan or keeping the communists out of Vietnam were perfectly laudable aims. What doomed them was not that the goals were not worth while, but that they were very costly and highly unlikely to give a good result.
Meaningless pseudo-intellectual drivel.
Politicians are increasingly struggling with the term realism and their tendency to attach superlatives like progressive or conservative because they are being âdisingenuousâ. I use this word intentionally because my standard for politics is higher than that of the average person, who may not have access to the same level of information. Politicians, with their policy teams and resources, have the means to be fully informed, yet they manipulate language to obscure their true intentions.
Authenticity is not necessarily aligned with nationalism in everyday discourseâwhy is nationalism so often framed as right-wing? In Europe, nationalism has been deliberately tarnished and turned into a negative concept. As I have pointed out before, in order to colonize, one must disregard the nationalism of others. Now, it has become difficult to claim nationalism without exposing political hypocrisy: if you assert your own national identity, what does that imply about your actions toward others?
A simple example is Gazaâif a politician embraces nationalism, they must also be prepared to defend it consistently, including when their actions conflict with the nationalism of others. This creates a dilemma: asserting oneâs own national interests while disregarding or undermining another nationâs sovereignty exposes contradictions that demand justification. In many cases, rather than addressing these contradictions, politicians retreat into isolationism, avoiding discussions of nationalism altogether or fall into the disingenuity I mentioned above. However, this approach is not a viable strategy in political realism, as it fails to acknowledge the interconnected nature of global politics. So yeah both are lying basically!
Additionally, British society lacks a unified collective culture, as it comprises diverse groups with different identitiesâreligious, cultural, and even linguistic (BTW do not think of immigrants but even historical languages like Celtic or Gaelic are making a comeback). This raises the question: what does nationalism mean in a society with such varied elements? Importantly, it is not the role of politicians to create a collective identity but to enforce and sustain it. This is because politicians come and go but collective identity is to last a long time. This distinction is important part of the conversation.
What is missing in the western evolution of governance (basically that is what we are talking about) is a meaningful tradition of storytelling and philosophers who can begin to rehabilitate terms such as nationalismânot as a relic of 19th-century Britain but as something that fits Britain in 2025. These voices are absent in the marketplace of ideas (either they are ranting or they are identity driven like these politicians). A politician can inspire an idea that already resonates with the collective, but they cannot successfully sell an idea as historically complex and politically fraught as nationalism without first addressing its contradictions.
I guess it is a bit of a circular argument, but in order to resolve the conflicts caused by nationalism, and nations, we need diplomacy (as Vance and Trump intimated yesterday), which involves realpolitk and realism, and perhaps a fluctuating balance of powers, as opposed, perhaps, to the utopian Internationalism of the so-called rules-based international order. The same old argument as to whether Obama’s arrow, or arc of history, is flying straight and true, or going round in circles.
Trumpâs latest moves reject conventional politics in favor of raw realism. While currently framed as pro-business (mineral contract for private property), expect rhetoric to pivot toward nationalismâdefending âthe nation, land, and people.â This shift will unsettle private capital (whose interests transcend borders) but resonate with ordinary citizens tied to national identity, exposing tensions between global wealth and grassroots nationalism.
Europe is sticking to private property for now but US is pivoting to narrative of nationalism which is antidote to individual ownership (private property) which removes the collective ownership of the resources. Trump is thinking like Putin because to breakthrough this conundrum, Russia had 3 revolution or “national”crisis in 1917, 1947? And 1993?. America never had a revolution within other than to stop human capital or slavery. West population only owns votes. Russia no votes important if they do not change reality.
“Talking in terms of âconservativeâ or âprogressiveâ realism indicates a political elite that is thinking in terms of global culture wars rather than representing and defending the nation”
To me it indicates a political elite who collectively haven’t the faintest idea how to really think about anything. Pretty much every single policy being pursued by the current government was initiated by the previous government. Furthermore, setting aside any ideological motives, none of them bear up to the scrutiny of the basic question: “Is this policy sensible?”, the answer in almost every case being “No”.
The UK is desperately in need of a reformation of common sense and national self-interest.
There will be no reality until a declaration that there are only two sexes ; that law is applied equitably without favour of minorities; until police stop and search; that trans is not funded by the public purse, terrorists are exiled and we leave the ECHR.
We need more love in the world
Realism belongs in the dustbin of history along with Marxism. Its legacy is failure and bloodshed. Nothing else. American realism brought the Castros to power in Cuba and the Sepah e Pasdaran to power in Iran. Realism birthed the Khmer Rouge. A better course of action would be to emphatically and decisively reject realism in itâs entirety.
Realism as a force of political action usually requires the intrusion of reality into current events in order to become manifest. As long as the political class can get by with singing and dancing the theoretical abstractions of the philosophies they cherish, they will never toil with the brooms and shovels of leadership grounded in reality. They will play games of virtual reality. Realism means not deferring financial reckoning by deficit spending. It means acknowledging that social benefits to the populace have been progressively diluted and approach the point of being beneficial in name only. Realist politicians don’t dress up more admirals in fancy uniforms than there are ships to captain to project a pretense of credible defense. They don’t close their eyes to the decay in education, healthcare, economic security, crime, and collective ethos. Eventually, reality will impose itself upon us in ways we have managed to avoid for almost a century. Pray that, when it does, the realists empowered by events will be wise, honest, and just.
How refreshing. Yes, realism is similar to truth. If it has to be labelled further it isn’t truth.