The Tragic Science: The Uses of Jimmy Carter in Foreign Policy Realism

Since the end of the Cold War, there have been a growing number of attempts to reassess political realism—the dominant paradigm of international relations in the United States since World War II. This article seeks to shed light on the possibility of a paradigm shift by assessing the rhetoric the realists used to head off the last serious challenge to their hegemony over American foreign policy thought and practice—Jimmy Carter's human rights policy. The narrative of Carter's failed foreign policy, as constructed by a wide range of international relations theorists and historians, has the generic constituents of a tragedy. The realist account of Carter reveals the paradigm's rhetorical strength, its resistance to other perspectives, and its stark philosophical implications for the possibility of a more humane world order.