Realpolitik, Realism, and International Politics Before International Relations as a Discipline

A central and influential feature of the academic discourse in the field of International Relations since its consolidation in postwar British and American universities, is the meaning of a what it is to have a “realist” grip of world politics: power politics is it. The critical disciplinary history of IR has made great advances in understanding the contextual imprints of its intellectual references, the mythological functions in the modern discipline, and the backwardly invention of traditions such as realism itself. Though most of these contributions have brought the understanding that Carr and his “Twenty Years Crisis” – highly popularised in its 2nd edition in 1946 –, are at the origin of this invention and the founding debate of IR between realists and idealists, the goal of the paper is to trace back this counterconceptual semantic structure back to earlier origins, at the turn of the century, through the lenses of the evolving instances of the Anglo-Saxon reception of the narrative of German Realpolitik and its effects over European stability.