Session 6- Realist Liberalism, An Easy Way Out.

Herz in his article talks about the concept of Realist Liberalism. At first this strikes as quite an interesting concept which unites both the leading theories of international relations, Realism and Liberalism, but one should also consider how pragmatic this concept really is.

While Realism talks about anarchy and the selfish nature of the human beings, it is cruder in nature, Liberalism talks about peace and harmony through the structure of efficacious institutions. Both these theories have been at loggerheads since their inceptions, they talk about two different approaches to International Relations. Hertz’s idea of Realist Liberalism is defined as the “theory and practice of the realizable idea.” This idea put forward looks to combine the basic practical ideas of both Realism and Liberalism. While its “less glamorous than Political Idealism, it is also less utopian, while less emotional, it is also less sober.” Through this theory, Herz through this approach, tries to settle down the differences between the two leading approaches and we can say he tries to mend the gap between the two approaches which lie down on the opposite ends of the spectrum of the theories to conduct your relations in the international system.

While all this sounds good when heard, I feel this is nothing but a hasty way of finding the easy way out. Combining two leading rival theories is like living in a world of denial. Yes I agree if successful, this can be a very efficacious way to solve the problems of the International system and can aid in making very efficient decisions, but this looks very hard to actually combine. Not only the two schools are staunch believers of their views, you can’t just take the strong points from the two and merge them together. I don’t know why but I feel somehow this is a mockery of the discipline of International Relations. There will be several shortcomings of both the theories, which will hinder the development of the development of Realist Liberalism. Though I’m not against the idea completely, but I feel this concept needs to be dealt with in more depth and Herz should have given instances where this theory can be applied to solve the pertaining issues.