ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that realism, considered as a political philosophy that regards security from external threats as the first objective of collective policy, remains the most effective means of understanding international politics. It suggests that this is true even for a conception of the politics of globality in which the sociopolitical realm has now reached a planetary level: the advent of transnational and supranational problems, ranging from climate change, to nuclear proliferation, to sub-national terrorism, to a volatile globalized capitalism that no single state can regulate, has made the traditional framework of interstate politics far less important. The chapter shows how Hans Morgenthau responded to the nuclear revolution while it unfolded and how his reaction permits us to reconceive classical realism as an historical episode. It intends to identify two implications of the end of the Cold War that are particularly relevant to a reconceptualization of classical realism today.
