Realpolitik

Douglas Alexander, New Statesman John Bew has done a great service in writing this concise, readable and informative history

Wall Street Journal A heavily researched, readable, and comprehensive review of political and diplomatic history ... A sweeping array of political actors and earthshaking events.

Jonathan Powell, Prospect scholarly

Niccolo Machiavelli, Standpoint brilliant new study

Peter Whitewood, Times Higher Education a well-researched account and a superb introduction to a concept that still has relevance to today's foreign policy questions.

John Bew is Reader in History and Foreign Policy at the War Studies Department at King's College London and Director of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence. In 2014, he was named the Henry A. Kissinger Chair in Foreign Policy and International Relations at the Library of Congress' John W. Kluge Center. He is the author of Castlereagh: A Life.

Introduction ; Part I: Real Realpolitik ; 1. The origins of Realpolitik ; 2. Foundations of Realpolitik ; 3. Realpolitik and Bismarck: a fatal compromise? ; 4. Realpolitik after Rochau ; Part II: Anti-realpolitik and the Anglo-American Worldview ; 5. The English Discovery of Realpolitik ; 6. American Realpolitik ; 7. The Coming Peace and the Eradication of Realpolitik ; Part III: Inter-war Realpolitik ; 8. The Ingestion of Realpolitik ; 9. Germany and the New Realpolitik ; 10. Machiavelli's Return? Realpolitik, Fascism and Appeasement ; Part IV: The Americanisation of Realpolitik ; 11. America's Awakening: Geopolitics and the Ethics of American Statecraft ; 12. Realpolitik through the Back Door? The Role of the Emigres ; 13. Bismarckism and Anti-Bismarckism ; Part V: Practical Realpolitik ; 14. Reluctant Realpolitik in the Cold War Era ; 15. Realpolitik in the Nixon-Carter Era ; 16. Wither Realpolitik? The End of the Cold War and Beyond ; Conclusion: Why we need a Renaissance of Realpolitik