He starts by saying that political realism believes that politics, like society in general, is governed by objective laws that have their roots in human nature. In order to improve society it is first necessary to understand the laws by which society lives. The operation of these laws being impervious to our preferences, men will challenge them only at the risk of failure. He further stated that realism, believing as it does in the objectivity of the laws of politics, must also believe in the possibility of developing a rational theory that reflects, however imperfectly and one-sidedly, these objective laws. It believes also, then, in the possibility of distinguishing in politics between truth and opinion-between what is true objectively and rationally, supported by evidence and illuminated by reason, and what is only a subjective judgment, divorced from the facts as they are and informed by prejudice and wishful thinking. .
For realism, theory consists in ascertaining facts and giving them meaning through reason. It assumes that the character of a foreign policy can be ascertained only through the examination of the political acts performed and of the foreseeable consequences of these acts. Thus one can find out what statesmen have actually done, and from the foreseeable consequences of their acts one can surmise what their objectives might have been.
Yet examination of the facts is not enough. To give meaning to the factual raw material of foreign policy, one must approach political reality with a kind of rational outline, a map that suggests the possible meanings of foreign policy. In other words, one put himself in the position of a statesman who must meet a certain problem of foreign policy under certain circumstances, and one ask himself what the rational alternatives are from which a statesman may choose who must meet this problem under these circumstances (presuming always that he acts in a rational manner), and which of these rational alternatives this particular statesman, acting under these circumstances, is likely to choose.
