Hans J. Morgenthau's Influence On International Politics

Introduction
Hans J. Morgenthau’s devoted his career to discovering the ‘truth’ behind what drives international politics. Confident that states, like men, have an innate lust for power and that international law cannot constrain the forceful pursuit of power, Morgenthau (1945) described the League of Nations as a “heroic and futile attempt to transform the political scene according to the postulates of liberal rationality”, naïve in assuming “that a rational system of thought by its own inner force can transform the conditions of man” (p. 145). At the time of writing, a new utopia had resurrected, a Machiavellian one this time, in the form of the United Nations. As idealist it was for the League of Nations to believe that peace could prevail on the basis of rationality alone, Morgenthau argues, “it is no less utopian to expect that a stable, peaceful society can be built on power alone”

91). Postmodern critics consider international law as an institution of domination that is turned to the advantage of the elite; used by powerful for the powerful. They point to the ambiguity of legal language and its potentialities for abuse: “Indeed, it seems that international law serves no purpose but its abuse for the ideological purposes of the strong, that is, in Marxian terms, as Überbau (superstructure) of the interests of the powerful” (Paulus, 2001, p. 727). Often compared with the early Realist tradition of international relations, postmodern critics argue that international law is not law at all, if not international morality, then just a type of international politics. Where the first wave of critical theorists sought to deconstruct the law and expose its deficiencies, the second wave of critical theorists was interested in making changes to law after deconstruction believing it might, in fact, be capable of doing