The theory must be judged by empirical and pragmatic test. Its purpose is to bring order and meaning – Do the facts as they actually are lend themselves to the interpretation the theory has put upon them, and do the conclusion at which the theory arrives follow with logical necessity from its premises? Is the theory consistent with the facts and within itself?
Six fundamental principles of political realism:
Political realism believes that politics, like society in general, is governed by objective laws that have their roots in human nature. In order to improve society it is first necessary to understand the laws by which society lives. (…) Realism, believing as it does in the objectivity of the laws of politics, must also believe in the possibility of developing a rational theory that reflects, however imperfectly and one-sidedly, these objective laws. It believes also, then in the possibility of distinguishing in politics between truth and opinion – between what is true objectively and rationally, supported by evidence and illuminated by reason, and what is only a subjective judgement, divorced from the facts as they are and informed by prejudice and wishful thinking. (…) A theory of politics must be subjected to the dual test of reason and experience. To dismiss [such] a theory [balance of power] because it had its flowering in centuries past is to present not a rational argument but a modernistic prejudice that takes for granted the superiority of the present over the past, (…) and the assumption that we can have opinions but no truths.
For realism, theory consists in ascertaining facts and giving them meaning through reason. It assumes that the character of a foreign policy can be ascertained only through the examination of the political acts performed and of the foreseeable consequences of these acts. Thus we can find out what
