Power Politics and Appeasement: Political Realism in British International Thought, c. 1935–1955

Abstract

It has been argued that the failure of 'realist' international thought to take root in Britain in the aftermath of the Second World War, as it did in the United States, was a function of declining power. This article challenges this view, suggesting instead that for the British, the term 'realism' had been discredited, in the late 1930s, by its associations with appeasement and the 'power politics' of the dictators. Examining the international thought of politicians and scholars in the years before, during and after the war, this article offers a reinterpretation of the British rejection of political realism.