War in Ukraine and anti-realism on American foreign policy

Amidst the current developments indicating the "return of geopolitics" – especially the consistent growth of China in various critical political dimensions and the strong reaction of its government and that of Russia to Western/American expansionism in Eastern Europe or its presence in Eastern Asia –, a clear remolding of American political-strategic culture has increasingly become evident. American politics has long considered realism an unwelcome narrative of international politics. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end-of-history unipolar hype, realism became harmless in the eyes of the American foreign policy elite and less relevant to the public debate consequently. Liberal internationalist foreign policies became quasi-consensual in Washington, while liberal approaches in the American/global IR discipline research rose to prominence against the prior traditional domination of realists. However, in the post-2008 crisis, as realist critics have pointed out the signs of the security dilemma's return, post-Cold War orthodoxy in American foreign policy has grown ferocious. First, there was the insistence on Barack Obama's un-Americaness in his relativization of exceptionalism. Then, the prompt dismissal of Donald Trump's foreign policy as mere isolationism or bad miscalculation flowing from an aggressive temper. With Joe Biden's election, renewed hope for another round of Wilsonianism seemed to be disappointed by his early implementation of the military withdrawal from Afghanistan – previously set forth by Obama and further defined by Trump – annoyed fellow liberals. It gave signs of favoring accommodation to the broader trends in world politics over exceptionalism in foreign affairs. Nevertheless, Biden's primetime with liberal internationalists would come in the opportunity laid by Russian aggression on Ukraine. That meant realists were to taste unsavory days ahead. This paper aims at the phenomenon of anti-realism in American foreign policy. In specific terms, it will do so by studying the public interactions between realist analysts that have positioned themselves critically against the almost direct involvement of the US in the war in Ukraine and their critics, denouncing unwanted support for Putin's cause. How does the myth of anti-realism in America live on in the face of an exhausting unilateral moment extended in ideational inertia? Despite the higher incidence of works pointing to a neglected genuine American realist tradition (and not simply the neorealist systemic given constraint), evidence and argument suggest that anti-realism has gained new momentum in public opinion. With a reactionary movement that echoes in the history of media behavior during national crises, liberal internationalists' mobilized significantly broader attention within the dynamics of social media and "culture wars" and "canceling" realist critics on the way.