Is the United States a Realist?

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Realism comes from a need of the social sciences to find something that they can measure and quantify. And so you wind up neglecting the whole human aspect of international relations, he says. The realist position suggests that the only just world is a world in which multiple powers are balanced against each other,. otherwise you have egeminy and domination.

Robert Kagan is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. The author of Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order, his most recent book is The Jungle Grows Back: America and Our Imperiled World.

In this week’s discussion, Yascha Mounk and Robert Kagan discuss the danger that Donald Trump continues to pose to American democracy, what the “realist” theory of international relations gets wrong (and right), and how liberal democracies can defend their values around the world.

This transcript has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

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