Political Realism

According to foreign policy in a realist’s mind, it is how we get from “the way the world is” to “how the world should be.” It recent events, the United States and ISIS clearly both have their own versions of how the world is and should be. According to the U.S., the world's borders should be protected and  relationships between foreign countries, various religions and beliefs should be civil. To ISIS, it should be their extremist ideas and ways believed across the Middle East.

According to Morgenthau and the Six Principles of Political Realism “Political realism does not require, nor does it condone, indifference to political ideals and moral principles, but it requires indeed a sharp distinction between the desirable and the possible – between what is desirable everywhere and at all times and what is possible under the concrete circumstances of time and place.” The United States desires to have peace and under these circumstances of dealing with terrorist groups such as ISIS it is important for them to be dominant and efficient. ISIS believes their religious and political beliefs should dominate the Middle East and they will kill anyone in their way of that. 

In the past, the U.S. has dealt with terrorism in many different ways, from compromising for hostages to exploiting terrorist leaders, the U.S. has done it all. But against ISIS it is much different. ISIS, a group of extremists in the Middle East, is one of the toughest situations the U.S. has had to deal with in the last decade. As the Six Principles of Political Realism emphasizes, states are the rational actors when dealing with certain matters such as foreign policy. In this case, the U.S. and ISIS are these rational actors.

The United States is seemingly more powerful than any of the terrorist groups in the world, but because of the three realist theories, balance of power, security dilemma, and offense/defense they struggle with being rational and preventing war. Due to the security dilemma, “one state’s security is another states insecurity,” ISIS and the U.S. have been using more intense military actions such as U.S. air-striking ISIS in Syria and ISIS beheading people whom don’t believe in their extremist ideas. This demands both states to practice offense and defense, according to the realist theory. Although U.S. maintains a good balance of defense and offense, ISIS practices a more intense offense. Recently, this has caused the U.S. to play more on offense to maintain security internally and in ally countries.

In comparison, U.S. tends to be more reasonable than ISIS. The U.S. is outsourcing to other states for military support, training Syrian soldiers to protect their state from the inside as well as coming up with strategic plans of preventing a war with the extremists. ISIS on the other hand has not been very reasonable. They have refused any compromise or proposal the U.S. has offered. They focus more so on being strategic and using the media to broadcast their actions such as beheading non-believers to show what they are willing to do and scare people from not joining their cause. 

All in all, more than 50 European, Asian and Arab countries have joined forces with the United States to stop ISIS. Thus, further proving ISIS is seen as unreasonable with their foreign policy. While most advances of ISIS have been halted, US and their allied leaders know they have a long fight ahead of them to dislodge them.