Victims of Realism

Alexander Vindman’s bracing new book argues that Ukraine has been made to suffer the consequences of Western naivety and restraint.

Berlin, Germany, 11 October 2024. Volodymyr Zelensky, President of Ukraine, is received by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz at the Chancellery in Berlin.

A review of The Folly of Realism by Alexander Vindman; 304 pages; PublicAffairs (April 2025)

Foreign-policy “realists” believe that the international order is entirely governed by power and the pursuit of national interests. Practitioners of this ostensibly hardheaded school of thought deem considerations of ideology, morality, and honour irrelevant. The origin of this doctrine dates back to the Peloponnesian War, when Athens laid siege to the island of Melos. When the Melians protested that the Greeks had no right to conquer them, they were told that in nature power is the only law. Or as Thucydides put it in his celebrated history of that conflict: “The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.”

The callousness of this approach to international relations can be observed with painful clarity in America’s looming betraya…