ABSTRACT
The major feminist challenges to realist theory go to two of its basic points, one descriptive, one prescriptive. The realist claim to rationality in foreign affairs meets direct challenge from feminist views of chronic confusion in male behavior concerning power. Foreign economic policy is another case in point. Increasingly, the international economy operates through transnational corporations capable of extracting labor and natural resources throughout the world largely on their own terms. Nations reconstructed on radically democratic lines would necessarily carry issues raised at home into foreign policy if that is where their implications went—which, in economic matters, would very often be the case. A short account cannot do justice to her highly nuanced analysis, but its application to foreign policy is especially valuable for its admonitions to the powerful. The clearest examples of realist over-objectification come from debates about nuclear strategy reported by feminists who were in some way eavesdropping on insider discussions.
