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This is an excerpt from Realism in Practice: An Appraisal. Free to download from E-International Relations.

International realism has many branches. Beginning with historical thinkers such as Thucydides, Machiavelli, and Hobbes, the realist narrative has swept forward through time to practitioners such as Richelieu, Bismarck, and Kissinger, and writers such as Morgenthau, Waltz, and Mearsheimer. Analysts of realism have grouped contemporary realists into different schools. These include classical realism, traditional realism, neo-realism, neo-classical realism, structural realism, liberal realism, left realism, offensive realism, defensive realism and others (see e.g. Bew 2015; Elman and Jensen 2014). The potential list of realisms seems limited only by the finitude of adjectives.

At the risk of contributing to further theoretical overpopulation, we here present another variant: post-realism. Post-realism begins by anchoring itself in the tenets of traditional realism, and then adjusting them. It adapts historical realism to a contemporary evolutionary path, appropriate for complex globalising society. According to a standard realist narrative, states are the major actors in international relations. They are motivated mainly by interests in maximising power. They extend their domestic monopolies of violence onto anarchical international society through military actions and war. Post-realism does not reject these elements but incorporates them into a larger, more intricate story. Yes, states are substantial, but there are other significant actors. Yes, interests and power matter, but there are other motivations. Yes, military actions and war are important, but there are other noteworthy forms of global action. (cf. Legro and Moravcsik 1999; Beer and Hariman 1996, 2004). In any event, the essential realist narrative, as we understand it, hardly reflects, or even guides, the actual practice of most international relations scholars or the mechanics of actual day-to-day governmental and non-governmental foreign policy operations — political, military, economic, social, cultural, or technological. Here, professionals operate within their own regimes and disciplines, epistemic communities and knowledge-based networks, private languages and political bases. They have their own motivations and worlds of meaning, exercising important policy influence very far from the direct guidance of realist theory (cf. Cross 2013; Haas 1991).

Instead of a reduction to a few variables of states — interests, capability to project power, credibility, and the like — post-realism directs attention to those points where individual actors or the system as a whole may appear less comprehensible or consistent through a traditional realist lens. Post-realism aims to refocus realism with a higher fidelity real-time picture: thicker description, more intricate explanation, more nuanced prediction, and a better toolbox for policy-makers trying to understand and navigate the multifaceted modern world in which we live. Below, we illustrate post-realism’s utility using the example of ISIS.

Post-realism, like realism, begins with states as actors. At the same time, it goes beyond states to include a wide variety of non-state actors within the mix of players on the world stage. These comprise various networks of governmental and non-governmental actors combined in supra-national, national, sub-national forms.

One set of such actors include militant groups such as Al Qaeda, Boko Haram, Hamas, Hezbollah, Shabab, the Taliban — and ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, also known by other names including Daesh or ISIL (see Gerges 2016; Nance 2016, 20). We focus specifically on this last group, to which we shall refer as ISIS, which is a multidimensional, quasi-state/national actor. It has its own global, regional, and local networks with links to other networks. It emphasises specific issues; it combines acts of violence against enemies with social services to its clients. It has created a distinctive presence in global media and discussions of foreign policy.

ISIS aspires to be a state; the Islamic State in Syria, Iraq, the Levant, and elsewhere. But it has much larger ambitions. The Caliphate, if successful, would eventually expand to the ummah, the entire community of the Islamic faithful. It harkens back to the past as it points toward the future; it is thus pre-national and post-national, pre-colonial and post-colonial, pre-realist and post-realist.  In this quest, ISIS aims at continuing the deconstruction and reconstruction of the remains of the old empires. The most immediate target includes the vestiges of the former Ottoman Sultanate. But ISIS also aims to demolish the remains of the Sykes–Picot Agreement of 1916 between Britain and France, with the consent of Russia. This agreement, together with the Balfour Declaration of 1917, from the United Kingdom's Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour to Baron Rothschild, helped establish the political framework ordering the Middle East. Ironically, the successors to the old imperial European states have themselves engaged in their own post-realist rebellion against the Westphalian state system. They have simultaneously hoped to subsume themselves into a larger European supra-national community, and to make all borders more porous for flows of capital, labour, and information. Tribal, national, and post-national domains are thus parallel worlds for ISIS and other actors where post-realism is an emerging common sense.

More than Interest and Power 

Post-realism, like realism, suggests that political actors are driven, if they are to survive, by national self-interest defined primarily by considerations of power. Post-realism, however, goes beyond self-interest and power to include many other motivations, goals, and intentions implicit in economics, society, and culture as well as multiple other frames — metaphors and narratives; ideas, ideologies, and identities; mentalities and cognitions; emotions and attitudes — that surround and give meaning to the actions of political leaders. It does so by taking communication seriously: especially the discourses, images, and public arts that constitute collective identity and public opinion. These can be analysed not merely to identify self-interest and perceptions of power and balance, but also to identify multiple other drivers of political action (cf. Rice 2008).

These extended — but not extrinsic — elements of consciousness are evident in the self-definition and scope of ISIS. The organisation invests heavily not only in military but also in media operations. It threatens others not only by territorial conquest, but also through its persuasive reach across continents to hundreds of millions of followers. It is also an economic actor, supervising commercial activity in the sectors that it controls, profiting from a range of industries from oil to drugs, paying its civil servants and soldiers, though not always well. ISIS is finally a social, cultural, and theological actor. It aims at ‘the restoration of an Islamic golden age and a “glorious” new caliphate based on holy war’ (Clarion Project - Harris, 2014).

More than Military Actions 

Post-realism, like realism, includes military actions and war. In an anarchic world, violent capabilities are unevenly distributed and there is no universally accepted legitimate political order, no central authority, no governmental monopoly of violence. Force remains a powerful instrument of foreign policy, and ISIS certainly undertakes many military actions that are consistent with the standard realist narrative. Its massed attacks have seized and held territory such as Mosul in Iraq and al-Raqqah in Syria, at least temporarily. Its suicide bombers recall the Japanese kamikaze pilots of World War II. The Western response to ISIS’ use of force also has had a strong military component, including advisors, special forces, drone strikes, conventional air and missile bombardment, and military assistance to allied........

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