Do realists and leftists want the same thing?
▻https://inkstickmedia.com/do-realists-and-leftists-want-the-same-thing
It’s not the first time the left and realists have agreed on something. Both vehemently reject neoconservatism and military interventionism. Both vocally protested the US invasion of Iraq. Both see the US’ alliance with Israel as a militaristic distortion of the its role in the Middle East. And both opposed the successive rounds of NATO enlargement after the Cold War.
[...] Yet, the ideological tensions run deeper still. Realists believe security is divisible — that my security might need to come at the expense of yours and that’s just fine with me because, shrug emoji, that’s how the world works. Most leftists view security as something that’s either indivisible or that needs to sort classes in a manner that pits workers against the wealthy. Anti-war leftists, for example, have rejected balance-of-power politics since World War I — the conceptual stock-and-trade of realist politics —and many still reject it today. The left is also divided on the merits of engaging in sphere-of-influence diplomacy; a practice that realists find natural.
Realists center the state — not its classes or its people — in their analysis, and I’ve never heard a realist embrace the slogan, “No war but class war.” Similarly, what leftist would, in formulating their policy positions, systematically forsake the well-being of workers in other countries in favor of winning security in a violent, highly abstracted “great game” where progress rarely means more than improving one’s relative power position?