2 Realism and Neo-realism

2.1 Classical RealismLineage: Thucydides (the Melian Dialogue's "the strong do what they can, the weak suffer what they must"), Kautilya (the mandala theory of concentric friends and enemies — a South Asian realist a millennium before the term), Machiavelli (the prince's world of effectual truth, not oughts), Hobbes (the state of nature: without a common power, no law, only insecurity).Core claims:1. Human nature drives politics — appetite for power (animus dominandi) is rooted in human nature; politics is a struggle for power (Morgenthau's Politics Among Nations, 1948, and its sixprinciples of realism — politics governed by objective laws rooted in human nature; interest defined in terms of power as the category that travels; interests are not universally fixed; morality matters but state survival precedes it; no universal morality above states; the autonomy of the political sphere).2. The state is the principal actor; the international system is anarchic (no world government above states);3. Survival and security are the prime interests; power is both means and end;4. Conflict is natural; cooperation is episodic, fragile and conditional on power;5. E.H. Carr's The Twenty Years' Crisis (1939) added the anti-utopian polemic: interwar idealism (League, disarmament, law) failed because it ignored power.2.2 Neo-realism (Structural Realism)Kenneth Waltz's Theory of International Politics (1979) relocated the cause of conflict from human nature to structure:1. Anarchy (self-help system) +…