POLITICS AMONG NATIONS: THE STRUGGLE FOR POWER AND PEACE (The Macat Library)

Hans Morgenthau’s Politics Among Nations is a classic of political science, built on the firm foundation of Morgenthau’s watertight reasoning skills.

The central aim of reasoning is to construct a logical and persuasive argument that carefully organizes and supports its conclusions – often around a central concept or scheme of argumentation. Morgenthau’s subject was international relations – the way in which the world’s nations interact, and come into conflict or peace – a topic which was of vital importance during the unstable wake of the Second World War. To the complex problem of understanding the ways in which the post-war nations were jostling for power, Morgenthau brought a comprehensive schema: the concept of “realism” – or, in other words, the idea that every nation will act so as to maximise its own interests. From this basis, Morgenthau builds a systematic argument for a pragmatic approach to international relations in which nations seeking consensus should aim for a balance of power, grounding relations between states in understandings of how the interests of individual nations can be maximized