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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 May 2010
The Balance of Power worked with calculation almost as pure as in the days before the French Revolution. It seemed to be the political equivalent of the laws of economics, both self-operating. If every man followed his own interest, all would be prosperous; and if every state followed its own interest, all would be peaceful and secure.
A. J. P. Taylor, The Struggle for Mastery in Europe, 1848–1918 (1954, p. xx)To give meaning to the factual raw material of foreign policy… we put ourselves in the position of a statesman who must meet a certain problem of foreign policy… and we ask ourselves what the rational alternatives are from which a statesman may choose… and which of these rational alternatives this particular statesman, acting under these circumstances, is likely to choose. It is the testing of this rational hypothesis against the actual facts and their consequences that gives meaning to the facts of international politics and makes a theory of politics possible.
Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations (1959, p. 5)It is one thing to formulate a set of assumptions and to deduce consequences; it is another thing to relate those assumptions and deductions to reality in such a way that they facilitate our understanding of events. This is an especially important consideration in the present context since any set of abstract assumptions used to model complex macropolitical processes must be at odds to some extent with what we believe to be true about reality.
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