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Modus Vivendi: Realism's Missing Link
An authentic realism must champion peaceful coexistence as a cornerstone of international relations.
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Although the resurgence of realism in mainstream discourse has been a welcome development for advocates of pragmatism in foreign policy, it remains inchoate and incomplete. This is because many self-described realists routinely overlook a foundational principle of the realist worldview: that diplomacy must remain indifferent and agnostic toward foreign states’ domestic affairs and internal political arrangements.
This principle underpins the idea of modus vivendi—the recognition that different forms of life, political systems, and economic models can coexist peacefully without succumbing to perpetual or exaggerated existential hostility. Realism, properly understood, cannot function without the conscious affirmation of this disposition.
The so-called ‘Liberal International Order’—anchored in international law, Enlightenment ideals, and the belief in democratic peace theory—has historically shown an aversion to multipolarity, let alone true polycentrism.
This
order emerged as an ideological artifact of the postwar settlement and
achieved dominance only under the conditions of unipolarity. Its decline
was inevitable once the distribution of global power that sustained it
began to erode.
As the U.S. share of global economic and industrial power contracted, multipolarity and regionalism—historically the default conditions of international affairs—have reasserted themselves. Efforts to artificially prolong liberal internationalism, such as the repeatedly failing neoconservative project, have only hastened the order’s decline by overextending American power and drawing rival states like China, Russia, and Iran closer together. Moreover, the global resurgence of sovereignty and national autonomy among major powers reflects a deeper desire for communities to chart their own course, free from universal ideological prescriptions.
Owing to the Anglo-American political tradition’s proclivity for moral universalism and its desire for messianic empire, we should not be surprised that even self-styled realists in the West often resort to the language of human rights and democracy promotion. Rather than fortifying realism, these inherited rhetorical and ontological habits undermine it by implicitly conceding that political evangelism is a noble—if occasionally impractical—endeavor.
In a multipolar world lacking a hegemon to enforce shared normative values, modus vivendi becomes not just useful but essential to preserving reciprocal diplomatic relations.
Yet realism’s distinctive strength lies in positively distinguishing foreign from domestic affairs, allowing states to prioritize national interest over ideological mission. This sharp delineation enables a sober assessment of interests in an anarchic international system and reduces needless conflict by acknowledging that states—like the societies they represent—differ fundamentally.
Such acknowledgment is foundational to the principle of sovereignty. In a multipolar world lacking a hegemon to enforce shared normative values, modus vivendi becomes not just useful but essential to preserving reciprocal diplomatic relations.
History repeatedly affirms this necessity. From seventeenth-century France forming strategic ties with the Islamic Ottoman Empire and Protestant Sweden against the Catholic Habsburgs, to the U.S.–Soviet alliance in World War II, to Nixon’s landmark opening to Maoist China, realism has consistently required situational tolerance and strategic acuity that liberalism finds unsavory and uncomfortable.
One contemporary thinker who articulates this case against the melioristic and utopian disposition of liberal modernity with particular vigor is John Gray. In Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia, his critique of ideological world-remaking projects, Gray writes:
“The myth of The End has caused untold suffering and is now as dangerous as it ever has been. In becoming a site for projects of world-transformation, political life became a battleground. The secular religions of the last two centuries, which imagined that the cycle of anarchy and tyranny could be ended, succeeded only in making it more violent. At its best, politics is not a vehicle for universal projects but the art of responding to a flux of circumstances.”
This builds on Gray’s earlier argument in Two Faces of Liberalism, where he contends that genuine liberalism entails affirming plurality—not just of cultures, but of political and economic regimes. Indeed, he argues that historically the emergence of sovereign states was meant to reduce sectarianism and enable authentic cultural pluralism to flourish globally.
Genuine realism must provide an explicit repudiation of ideology and value-universalism in international affairs.
In a system comprised of sovereign states, values-diversity is not a glitch—it is the operating logic. Relearning how statesmen—and thinkers like Hobbes and Spinoza—navigated the aftermath of the Thirty Years’ War through strategic realism and toleration offers valuable lessons for today. As Gray notes:
“One of the paradoxes that comes with accepting that there are incommensurate values is that tragic conflicts of value can sometimes melt away. If there are many incommensurable ways in which humans can flourish, choices among them need not be tragic.”
Accordingly, realism must be defined not merely as a utilitarian calculation or in terms of offshore balancing, much less a zero-sum global quest for power. Rather, genuine realism must provide an explicit repudiation of ideology and value-universalism in international affairs.
History dictates that alliances and rivalries are transient; what endures are the localized interests and geopolitical realities that shape state behavior. Yet the global West’s discourse remains stubbornly saturated with rhetorical clichés about a “democratic world” facing down an “axis of authoritarianism” in some existential, cathartic contest. Nevertheless, the recentering of geopolitics and interest-based realpolitik has already exploded this self-righteous moralism, as rising regional and middle powers assert their autonomy and reshape the global landscape.
In a polycentric system where the primary imperative of states is survival and using the balance of power to maximize security, nothing is more necessary than a return to modus vivendi—a commitment to coexistence without consensus. Rather than downplaying this fact, realists should embrace modus vivendi as a core element of their tradition: an acknowledgment of multiplicity and difference as the natural global condition is not weakness, but a mark of wisdom.
The affirmation of modus vivendi—and the legitimacy of divergent political systems—is therefore essential not only for stabilizing a multiplex world in flux, but also for preserving the future of human life on the planet.
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