Why Realism Works

Yesterday in my group we discussed why Realism is in a way dated because there are many things that Realism does not account for. Such as Soft power, Nuclear Power, diffferent types of political governments. Realists argue that the state and its survival is most important, in which case all matters not directly concerning the state are of no importance. However a Country that that has a military far inferior to one state should still be a great concern to the superior state if both states posess the same amount of nuclear weapons. It should be a concern because in the case of nuclear war it really doesn't matter what your military strength is as long as you have some sort of nuclear capability. However realists may also argue that states will not engage in nuclear war because it jeapordizes not one but both states existence, even though the realist argument does not always consider all aspects it still holds up to many arguments that try and contest it. Additionaly the other disciplines that attempt to prove realism wrong, contain weaknesses as well as contradictions within themselves (such as the ones i pointed out in my first blog of the week) and thus are not as strong as realism and are not as widely accepted. Until another discipline can create as strong an argument as the realists, it is likely that realism will continue to dominate its field.