Many years ago I studied history as an undergraduate at Edinburgh University. My motivation was a fascination with the future more than with the past: without historical study, as my fellow Scot Niall Ferguson has argued elsewhere, our reference points for understanding the future are limited to either personal biography or theoretical models. Realpolitik: a History exemplifies the benefits that can be gained by careful and methodical study of history as a means to a better understanding of contemporary challenges.
By examining the origins, uses and misuses of the concept of realpolitik over the past century and a half, John Bew, reader in history and foreign policy at King’s College London and a contributing writer for this magazine, reveals a notion that is more often discussed than defined, and offers the reader a lens through which to view many of the most acute problems currently confronting policymakers in the West.
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