Imperial Realism: Post-War IR Theory and Decolonisation

The paper reviews the record of realism in IR theory in relation to the process of decolonisation. It argues that despite being traditionally set against imperial adventures and opposed to the kind of idealism in which they are usually coated, realism was remarkably silent about decolonisation, at a time when most commentators thought that the emergence of newly independent countries was a more portentous event than even the cold war. It explains this silence by the structure of the post-war debate on decolonisation, largely monopolised by modernisation theorists and often confined to the precincts of international organisations, but also by the fact that IR theory had built-in arguments against the unlimited extension of sovereignty that allowed its practitioners to advocate a pragmatic support for imperial powers and reproducing classical tropes of imperial thought.