The Realist Theory in Pyrrhic Victory

The new edition of Professor Morgenthau\u27s well-known work on Politics Among Nations merits brief editorial comment. It is designed, the Preface tells us, to take into account such recent political experience as the emergence of new trends in the structure of world politics, the development of the colonial revolution, the establishment of supranational regional institutions, and the activities of the United Nations (p. viii). The author introduces new concepts of containment, cold war, uncommitted nations, and Point Four and offers elaboration, clarification, refinement, and change\u27? of such earlier concepts as political power, cultural imperialism, world public opinion, disarmament, collective security, and peaceful change, with application of these concepts to the novel developments of recent years (p. viii). In the faith that a realist theory of international politics has been largely won, a new introductory chapter has been added for outlining the major tenets of this theory. In basic structure of organization and in general orientation of thought, this edition of Professor Morgenthan\u27s book remains, however, substantially the same as the earlier and is, accordingly, subject to both the same praise and the same criticism. The exploratory map of world politics presented is still largely\u27 that of nation states, possessed of certain elements of power, pursuing through certain conflicting policies of status quo and imperialism and under certain limitations—imposed by the balance of power, international morality and world public opinion, and international law —a national interest primarily defined in terms of power. The application of this map in the concluding chapters is still to the problem of peace, with contrasting appraisal of the potentialities of international organization and of a diplomacy of accommodation