The first pioneers (founders) of the realist school (Thucydides, Machiavelli, Hobbes)

Abstract

The realism school is the most significant school of thought in international relations. Realism has attempted to provide a more realistic scientific method than the idealist school (the school that concentrated on morals in international relations) to study and understand international relations and international politics, which led to its emergence and dominance in international relations study.

The realism school became the dominant school in international relations after World War II, and realism was born as a response to the idealist school that dominated international relations in the aftermath of World War I. The realist school sees international relations primarily as a conflict between sovereign states and self-interests that participate in the game of power politics within an international system based on anarchy in the absence of supreme authority.

The international system, according to this school of thought, is an environment devoid of morals and values in which the state is seen as a rational and unifying actor, as the state finds itself in perpetual conflict with the other states in the system due to the lack of an overarching world government (a supreme authority).

Judging by their pessimistic view of human nature, the only way to achieve security in the international system, according to political realism, is for states to seek to increase their power and create a balance of power.

The realist school of international relations has claimed that Thucydides, Machiavelli, and Hobbes are the actual ancestors of this school and based this claim on the fact that the fundamental beliefs and opinions of these philosophers and political thinkers can be classified as purely realistic. Despite not adopting the school of realism, they are considered the three preeminent realist thinkers' pre-twentieth-century.