Hans Morgenthau

Hans Joachim Morgenthau (born February 17, 1904 in Coburg , Bavaria , † July 19, 1980 in New York ) was an American political scientist and lawyer of German-Jewish descent. He is considered to be the founder of a systematic, realistic explanatory approach in international relations .

Morgenthau initially studied law and political science in Frankfurt a. M. , later in Munich and Berlin law and philosophy. In 1929 he finally received his doctorate in Frankfurt a. M. on international law . Then he was at the labor court in Frankfurt a. M. works as a judge. From 1932 Morgenthau taught public law at the University of Geneva . Due to the seizure of power by the National Socialists , he did not return to Germany, but emigrated to the USA . There he worked at various high-ranking universities, including a. from the University of Chicago and the New School for Social Research in New York . In addition to his academic work, Morgenthau particularly campaigned against the Vietnam War and for the emigration of Soviet Jews to Israel .

Life

Youth (1904–1923)

Residential building Spitalgasse 3 in Coburg

Crowned Duke Casimir at the Casimirianum

Hans Joachim Morgenthau was born on February 17, 1904 in a middle-class Jewish family in Coburg. His parents were the doctor Ludwig Morgenthau and Frieda Bachmann, the daughter of a wealthy merchant from Bamberg. He remained the only child of his parents. Morgenthau's environment was marked by anti-Semitic discrimination even in his youth. He attended the Casimirianum grammar school in Coburg . As the second best student in his class, he was traditionally allowed to give the eulogy for the grammar school and the school's founder, Duke Johann Casimir , at the annual "Foundation Festival" on July 3, 1922 . Anti-Semitic leaflets had been distributed against Morgenthau's podium speech, during the lecture a large number of people left the event at times and he was insulted when marching away.

See also : Coburg in the time of National Socialism

Germany (1923–1932)

From 1923 to 1927 Morgenthau studied in Frankfurt am Main, Munich and Berlin, first philosophy and then law at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin ( constitutional law with Rudolf Smend and Heinrich Triepel , international law with Viktor Bruns and Edwin Borchard ). In Munich he attended international law seminars with Karl Neumeyer and Hans Nawiasky . The trainee years he spent in Frankfurt (1928-1931) at HUGO SINZHEIMER . In 1929 he finally received his doctorate on international law in Frankfurt am Main. He then worked as a judge at the labor court in Frankfurt am Main. Since 1923/24 he was a member of the Munich Thuringia in the Burschenbunds-Convent .

Europe (1932–1937)

On February 17, 1932, Morgenthau left Germany and taught public law at the University of Geneva as a private lecturer . Due to the anti-Semitic professional ban, Morgenthau lost his position at the Frankfurt labor court in autumn 1933. From 1935 he worked at the University of Madrid , where he married his long-time friend Irma Thormann. Because of the seizure of power by the National Socialists , he did not return to Germany. After moving with his wife from Spain to Italy , then to Paris , and then back to Geneva, they both emigrated to the United States in 1937.

America (1937–1980)

Morgenthau first worked for a year at various New York universities specializing in comparative government , the political system of the United States, and political theory . In January 1939, he moved from New York to Kansas City and began teaching at two faculties simultaneously: Liberal Arts College and Law School. After the USA entered the Second World War in 1941 , Morgenthau applied to the Army and Navy , but unsuccessfully. In 1943 he took American citizenship. In 1944 he moved from Kansas City to Chicago , where he later published six books and 34 articles from 1946 to 1951, as well as a large number of commentaries and book reviews in daily newspapers. In 1949 Morgenthau became a full professor of political science and contemporary history at the University of Chicago. In 1971 he moved back to New York. Between 1949 and 1977 he held 20 visiting professorships at ten American universities, including Harvard (1959–1961), Yale (1956/57), Columbia (1956/57), Princeton (1958/59) and the University of California ( Berkeley 1947, Santa Barbara 1961, 1977). In 1958 Morgenthau was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . Since 1961 he was a member of the American Philosophical Society . His circle of friends also includes national and international personalities from politics, science and culture: Hannah Arendt , John F. Kennedy , Dean Acheson , Dean Rusk and Henry Kissinger . In 1975 he was awarded the Great Cross of Merit . Hans J. Morgenthau died on July 19, 1980 in New York.

Morgenthaus key messages

For the "6 points of classical realism" by Hans Morgenthau see Political Realism .

Morgenthau assumed that power is by nature the central driving force behind human activity and that this also applies to state activity and the international system. But he made an explicit distinction between power and violence politics.

Hans Morgenthaus main work "Politics among Nations" in German " Power and Peace " does not see the international environment as a world of harmony that is temporarily disturbed by individuals , but as the scene of constant conflicts of power and interests that are repeatedly expressed violently when power can circulate indignantly in the international system. Morgenthau sees reasons for this in the imperfect socio-ethical nature of man and in the anarchic structures of the international system. This view is based on Morgenthau's image of man , which on the one hand leads people to the creative acts of love, but on the other hand also to the destructive behavior of uninhibited imperialist politics (in Morgenthau's sense: overcoming the status quo, e.g. in gaining local supremacy up to and including to achieve world domination). The structural conditions to which he is exposed lead man to an unjust exercise of power. Humans do not act on the more uncertain basis of trust , but rather builds on the more secure basis of control . Morgenthau extends Lenin's prophecy to the Marxist workers, "Don't take your word for it, check it most rigorously." responsible.

International politics is thus an eternal struggle for power, in which not all states are equally intensively involved, the ability to influence world politics and geopolitical conditions play a major role. The actors have the following goals:

• Politics of state preservation or the preservation of power
• Politics of changing the balance of power or increasing power
• Politics of prestige or demonstration of power

Classical realism is considered the starting point for the systematic study of international relations. Neoliberalism emerged from classical realism , and structural realism (also called neorealism), neoclassical realism, offensive realism, defensive realism and neorealism of the Munich School (NRMS) can be traced back to Morgenthau. Morgenthau used the methodology of dialectical historical rationalism, a double-sided method for analyzing long-term processes in international politics by combining positivist and hermeneutical methodology. This was derived from the Kantian dualism.

Classical realism is a political theory with universal validity. Theory claims the ability to make statements about the behavior of political actors who have to stop regardless of cultural, temporal, technical or other limits. The approach combines political theory with practice.

Power Equilibrium Theory

For Morgenthau, the balance of power is an effective mechanism to regulate the power struggle in the international system. It reduces the incentive for open imperialist politics. But Morgenthau also recognizes that the balance of power is only effective to a limited extent: it can limit conflicts, but not prevent them. Morgenthau regards the balance of power in the 19th century as the "ideal". This, however, has disappeared from the scene. According to Morgenthau, the actions of the actors in the international system are pursued in the interests of power. A logical consequence of this is the balance of power that arises from the striving of different nations for power, some of which are trying to maintain and some to change the status quo. A flexible alliance policy is associated with the policy of equilibrium. The balance of power is based on the primacy of foreign policy , which means that the actions of the international system determine the behavior of a foreign policy actor more than domestic policy factors. However, the position of a nation in the international system affects domestic politics to a great extent. In a historical analysis, Morgenthau describes the interests of the USA as follows:

• Predominance in the western hemisphere
• Defense of a balance of power in Europe
• Defending a balance of power in Asia

For this basic interest he derives strategies for American foreign policy. Morgenthau speaks out against an aggressive enemy encouraging pacifism and against the complete exclusion of violence; he considers this attitude counterproductive as it encourages the aggressive behavior of despots. Rather, states consciously create a balance of power in order to minimize aggressive behavior against their own state. The balance of power thus has a preventive function.

Morgenthau criticizes an arrogant isolationism as well as naive scientific concepts of world improvement and American exceptionalism . He advocates the assessment of various foreign policies of other nations from the perspective of the national interest. This should lead to a realistic and rational political strategy. The balance of power is said to have a stabilizing effect. This is achieved when the balance of power in the shadow of constructive norms arises from the interactions of various actors. However, it will not work if it is merely the result of the mechanical uncoordinated actions of the actors. He saw this thesis confirmed by the time after the Vienna Congress , when it gave the system relative stability and limitation of conflicts. The interwar period harbors a negative example, in which statesmen did not react to signals such as the occupation of the Rhineland by the National Socialists.

Morgenthau is of the opinion that a policy of the balance of power becomes “provable” when a country's foreign policy is in contradiction with its own political culture and its own ideological guidelines.

Morgenthau's attitude to war, especially the Cold War

According to Morgenthau, the cause of wars is not based on a lack of knowledge about one another, but on a lack of understanding of the practical constraints of the political opponent. The international power struggle arises not only from material conflicts of interest, but also from the struggle between ideologically incompatible systems. Morgenthau relies on the diplomacy of statesmen to resolve conflicts. For Morgenthau, factors promoting war are the following:

• excessive definition and representation of national interests
• excessive nationalism
• excessive ideologization of national politics

For him not only communism , but also fanatical democracy is a dangerous postulate.

Unlike the accusation by critics that classical realism glorifies violence, Morgenthau was one of the main critics of a foreign policy that relied too heavily on military solutions during the Cold War. He criticized a "non-organic relationship between civil and military power in the USA, which leads to insufficiently differentiated ways of thinking about practical political measures". However, he is actually interested in a functioning national security policy , he described all other national goals as "extras". This also included the global spread of democracy. He campaigned for increased armament after the break of the nuclear monopoly by the USSR in 1949. However, only because he recognized early on that the danger of a nuclear escalation in the Cold War would lead to a paradoxical result. Namely, that the powers that be had to suffer a decline in their deployable military power. He criticized Henry Kissinger's approach of a limited nuclear war , which was later also revised. On the other hand, Morgenthau saw the proliferation of nuclear weapons as the greatest threat to the US and world politics. For Morgenthau, the Cold War was less of an ideological problem than a geostrategic one. According to Morgenthau, there has never been a homogeneous world communism. In his opinion, the veil of ideology was laid on geostrategic differences. He saw a natural enemy of China destroyed by the Vietnam War .

Morgenthau's view of the United Nations

The United Nations (UN) is not a panacea for Morgenthau. He sees them as functionally dependent on the overarching political conditions. Nevertheless, Morgenthau wanted the UN to play a significant role in regulating global conflicts, but did not forget the limited effectiveness of international law.

Morgenthau as a scientist and political activist

Morgenthau was a great political theorist. He was also actively involved in the political process. Morgenthau founded the National Committee on American Foreign Policy together with George D. Schwab , which formulates American interests in contemporary issues. In addition, Morgenthau was for many years chairman of the “Academic Committee of Soviet Jews”.

Morgenthaus precursor

Friedrich Nietzsche

Thanks to Christoph Frei, clues could be found that illustrate Nietzsche's influence on Morgenthau (in the USA and Israel Nietzsche's influence is often put in the background, e.g. in Mollov's "Power and Transcendence - Hans J. Morgenthau and the Jewish Experience", Lexington Books, Oxford 2002). Samuel Magill recognized in 1962 in “A Christian Estimate of the Political Realism of Hans J. Morgenthau”: “Nietzsche's revolt against reason with his message of salvation through the“ will-to-power ”profoundly influenced Morgenthau's concept of the nature of man. Nietzsche's emphasis upon the irrationality of man has obviously provided Morgenthau with his insights about the motivations of human behavior in all social action. "Morgenthau parted with Nietzsche's normative premises, but retained for the most part his worldview and pervasive diagnostic methodology (see Nietzsche's" Wille zur Power "). In addition to biological ideas, Morgenthau also refers to philosophical ideas in order to explain the power drive inherent in humans.

Max Weber

Morgenthau admits that Max Weber had an influence on him, as he was “presentable” in the USA compared to Nietzsche. Weber influenced Morgenthau in several ways (see "Scientific Man"). Both see the inevitable power struggle in politics, in which the success of the lesser evil is the goal to be achieved. Morgenthau and Weber are also very similar when it comes to claiming a science of man. Reality is structured based on value ideas that defy any scientific basis.

"The objectivity of sociological knowledge depends rather on the fact that what is empirically given is always geared towards those value ideas that alone give it cognitive value, understood in terms of their meaning from them, but never made a pedestal for the empirically impossible proof of their validity" (Max Weber)

But where Weber (in relation to values) only speaks of a struggle of different views, Morgenthau demands the enforcement of certain values. This statement releases Morgenthau from any suspicion of nihilism . Morgenthau later defended Weber and absolved him of nihilism.

Morgenthau's criticism of Kissinger

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Morgenthaus and Kissinger's understanding of politics sometimes deviate sharply from one another, but both are often drawn into the category of amoral power cynicism. In comparison to Morgenthau, Kissinger was never able to establish his own systematic political theory. Kissinger was a political pragmatist and historian, Morgenthau a political theorist. Morgenthau was against the presence of ideologies in politics, against the pursuit of interests in politics. But even if ideology can never be completely removed from politics, his view formed a valuable political pillar in the Nixon-Kissinger era. What seemed to work in relation to the American triangular diplomacy (bipolar world + China) could not be implemented in the Vietnam conflict. Morgenthau praised Kissinger's political thinking, but criticized the immense antinomy that saw between American macro and micro politics. Although Kissinger tried to avoid ideological arguments, the United States waged a kind of "credibility war" in Vietnam that defied any pragmatics. Kissinger justified the American presence with the argument that a withdrawal would lead to complete chaos in the affected regions, because not only Vietnam, but also the invasion of Laos and the bombing of Cambodia were part of the same ideological-political action for Morgenthau. Kissinger:

"We felt it had been agreed that we had the right, and even the duty, to defend an agreement for which fifty thousand Americans had given their lives."

Morgenthau says the bombing was the beginning of the decline of local Cambodian society. Prince Sihanouk tried to avoid the armed conflict with the United States. At the end of the 1970s, Morgenthau's criticism of the domino theory was confirmed, because geostrategic conflicts, which he had indicated against the concept of the communist world conspiracy, broke out after the United States withdrew from Indochina. The internal communism conflicts between Cambodia and Vietnam in 1978 and Vietnam and China in 1979 demonstrated the regional power dynamics that lead socialist regimes into massive disputes with one another, regardless of related ideology.

Morgenthau and the Vietnam War

In addition to his role as a “neutral” academic, Morgenthau also took on another role, namely that of a political activist. Although he was convinced of the inability of science to produce detailed political prognoses and despite numerous hostilities, he took on the role of the intellectual draft horse of the protest movement. In his opinion, US Indochina policy was utterly misguided. He even became the subject of a White House investigative committee, code-named Project Morgenthau. Due to his position alone, he became a victim of internal US communist groups who wanted to instrumentalize him for their own purposes. But socialist states also used Morgenthau to underpin their own ideologies. The GDR, for example, had children write letters and paint pictures in the name of Morgenthaus, in which they represent an ideal peaceful world. They saw in him the bearer of hope, who could be able to put the "depraved capitalist" USA as a world power in its place. Some opponents took the "threat" posed by Morgenthau seriously and mobbed at the lowest possible level. But Morgenthau's anti-communist stance was never seriously questioned. Especially in the German-speaking countries, Morgenthaus’s Vietnam position stands in blatant contradiction to his power theory, or is completely unknown.

Works

• The international administration of justice, its nature and its limits. Frankfurt treatises on war prevention law. Leipzig: University Press Noske, 1929.
• Stresemann as the creator of German international law policy. in: The Justice. Monthly for the renewal of the German legal system, 1929.
• Scientific Man versus Power Politics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1946. ISBN 0-226-53826-5 .
• Politics Among Nations. The Struggle for Power and Peace. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1948 (new editions 1954, 1960, 1967, 1973, 1978). ISBN 0-07-043306-2 .
  • German Translation by Gottfried-Karl Kindermann: Power and Peace. Foundation of a theory of international politics. Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1963/1989, 480 pp. ISBN 3-571-05946-8 .
• In Defense of the National Interest. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1951. ISBN 0-8191-2846-5 .
• The Purpose of American Politics. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1960. ISBN 0-8191-2847-3 .
• Politics in the Twentieth Century. Vol. 1-3 (Vol. 1: The Decline of Democratic Politics; Vol. 2: The Impasse of American Foreign Policy; Vol. 3: The Restoration of American Politics). Chicago: University Press, 1962.
• Vietnam and the United States. Washington DC: Public Affairs Press, 1965.
• A New Foreign Policy for the United States. London: Pall Mall Press, 1969.
• Truth and Power: Essays of a Decade, 1960-1970. London: Pall Mall Press, 1970.

literature

• Duncan Bell (Ed.): Political Thought and International Relations: Variations on a Realist Theme. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2009, ISBN 0-19-955627-X .
• Christoph Frei: Hans J. Morgenthau. An intellectual biography. Haupt, Bern 1993, ISBN 3-258-04800-2 .
• Christian Hacke , Gottfried-Karl Kindermann , Kai Schellhorn (Eds.): The Heritage, Challenge, and Future of Realism. In memoriam Hans J. Morgenthau. V&R unipress, Bonn / Göttingen 2005, ISBN 3-89971-244-7 .
• Alexander Reichwein: Hans J. Morgenthau and the "Twenty Years' Crisis". A contextualized interpretation of realistic thinking in the IB. Dissertation, Frankfurt am Main 2013.
• Oliver Jütersonke: Morgenthau, Law and Realism. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2010, ISBN 0-521-76928-0 .
• Felix Rösch: Depoliticization in the Modern Age. On the centrality of the concept of the political in thought Hans J. Morgenthaus. In: Journal of Politics . 60th vol., No. 4, 2013, pp. 430–451.
• Christoph Rohde: Hans J. Morgenthau and world political realism. VS Verlag, Wiesbaden 2004, ISBN 3-531-14161-9 .
• Christoph Rohde, Jodok Troy (Ed.): Power, Law, Democracy. Hans J. Morgenthaus's understanding of the state. Nomos, Baden-Baden 2015, ISBN 3-8487-1100-1 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Hans Morgenthau in the catalog of the German National Library
• Hans-Morgenthau , Encyclopaedia Britannica .
• Entry on Hans Morgenthau in the personal lexicon of international relations virtual (PIBv), edited by Ulrich Menzel , Institute for Social Sciences at the Technical University of Braunschweig

Individual evidence

1. ^ Morgenthau, Hans J .: War and Peace, Contributions to Basic Problems of International Politics, edited by Uwe Nerlich; C. Bertelsmann Verlag, Gütersloh, 1963, p. 45
2. ↑ Anneliese Hübner: Customs at the Casimirianum - The story of the wreath. In: Musarum Sedes 1605 - 2005. Coburg 2005, ISBN 3-9810350-0-3 , pp. 68-69
3. ↑ Digital city memory of the city of Coburg. Morgenthau family: About Hans Joachim Morgenthau , as of May 26, 2011
4. ^ Kurt Naumann: Directory of the members of the old gentlemen's association of BC Munich e. V. and all other former BCers as well as the old men of the Wiener SC . Saarbrücken, Christmas 1962, p. 44.
5. ↑ Member History: Hans J. Morgenthau. American Philosophical Society, accessed December 18, 2018 . 
6. ^ Hubert Fromm: The Coburg Jews - History and Fate . Evangelisches Bildungswerk Coburg e. V. and initiative Stadtmuseum Coburg e. V., 2nd edition Coburg 2001, ISBN 3-9808006-0-1 , p. 289