![]() ![]() Whereas in continental Europe, utopian idealism remained excluded from the realm of practice, in the United States it became a recurrent, contrapuntal theme of statesmen and politicians, commentators and theorists. While the American clash between realism and idealism owes an intellectual debt to antecedent European thought, it was in the United States that both doctrines were fully established, in theory and in practice. ![]() In the eighteenth century, doctrines of raison d' état contended with Enlightenment doctrines propounded by philosophers who objected to such practices of monarchical statecraft as mercantilism, balance-of-power politics, and the pursuit of dynastic goals at the expense of peace and human welfare. The stark realism of Niccol ò Machiavelli stood in profound opposition to the dominant Christian teachings that favored ethical constraints upon rulers. Western political thought always recognized the tension between realist and idealist views toward the actions of governments in both domestic and international transactions. These two modes of perceiving world politics were never uniquely American in precept or experience. ![]() Idealists tend to define goals in ideal, often visionary, forms, and presume that the means for their achievement lie less in measured policies, relying on diplomacy or force, than in the attractiveness of the goals themselves. Realists tend to accept conditions as they are and to define the ends and means of policy by the measures of anticipated gains, costs, necessities, and chances of success. Philosophically, realism and idealism comprise opposing approaches to the definition and pursuit of national objectives abroad. ![]()
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