By Dr. Aaron T. Walter 

Introduction

Many people describe the current state of world politics as chaotic. Experts point to the disintegration of the post-Cold War order, growing nationalism, and fragmentation. Signs of the system's collapse include trade disputes, energy instability, tech restrictions, and rekindled military rivalries. But this perception is misleading.

These patterns show strategic adaptation rather than chaos. Nations are not rejecting collaboration or striving for complete independence. Instead, they are responding to a more demanding and coercive international environment by regaining control in key areas.

 National Realism, a strategic perspective that prioritizes sovereignty, adaptability, and domestic legitimacy while maintaining integration in alliances and international markets, can be used to characterize this change.

A common misconception might be its association with America's "America First" rhetoric. It is a structural response to global interdependence being used as leverage, escalating great-power competition, and growing political constraints rather than isolationism or ideology. Furthermore, similar strategies are being developed by countries with very different political cultures in the U.S. and Europe. National Realism offers a critical lens through which one can explore the interplay between state sovereignty, systemic resilience, and political legitimacy. The world system is changing, not collapsing.

The Limits of Liberal Internationalism

Liberal Internationalism was built on three main beliefs: that economic interdependence lowers the risk of conflict, international institutions can replace old-school power balancing, and liberal domestic politics would align nations over time (Ikenberry, 2001). For a while, it seemed to work. Global supply chains cut costs, Europe integrated more deeply, and U.S. dominance provided stability. But after 2008, cracks in the system became clear. Efficiency had been prioritized at the cost of resilience. Interdependence was assumed to be harmless instead of a potential threat. Domestic political friction was overlooked instead of managed. Then came a series of shocks. The 2008 financial crisis exposed the fragility of globalization. Russia’s aggression in Ukraine revealed that territorial conquest hadn't vanished. China’s strategic use of market access and regulation undermined the idea that economic integration would lead to convergence. The COVID-19 pandemic revealed the strategic dangers of outsourcing critical production.

Furthermore, news sources have been filled with tales of dissonance, the effects of trade wars reaching out across oceans, oil prices curving back and forth at will, the terms of digital service governed by unpredictable judgments handed down in a private court, and great-power show-of-force brinkmanship reminiscent of the Cold War. One might be tempted to describe this as a moment of chaos, a system that is unraveling, or a world order that is coming apart. But that does not catch the elements of strategic adaptation happening between states.

States simply stopped believing that international cooperation would ensure security, rather than abandoning it. The outcome was a renewed emphasis on national authority over industry, borders, technology, and energy. Instead of abandoning cooperation or ceding to insularity, they are reclaiming the core spaces in which their security and authority are most threatened. This is not a retreat from globalization but a new rearrangement of it.

A New Strategic Direction

National realism develops from neoclassical realism, which takes into account domestic politics and state capacity (Rose, 1998; Ripsman et al., 2016); classic realism, which stresses power and national interest (Morgenthau, 1948); and structural realism, which focuses on the distribution of power (Waltz, 1979). By acknowledging that contemporary power functions through networks just as much as through territory, it builds upon these concepts. These days, power is exerted through supply chains, data, technology standards, energy, and finance. Legal independence is no longer the only aspect of sovereignty; it now also refers to the capacity to act wisely in a globalized society. Three fundamental tenets underpin national realism:

1. Resilience over Efficiency: In order to lessen vulnerability in important areas, nations are prepared to bear financial costs.
2. Embedded Sovereignty: While alliances and institutions are important, they serve to reinforce rather than to replace national authority.
3. Domestic Legitimacy as a Strategic Restraint: Public approval must be reflected in foreign policy. Being elitist is not a strength; it is a weakness.

Therefore, National Realism is both a perspective and a strategy that prioritizes sovereignty, resilience, and domestic legitimacy in a framework that can nonetheless embrace the value of cooperation and market integration. While National Realism is easily mistaken for the slogans of “America First” or the reactive nationalism of Europeans, this would be to shrink what is a structural response into a simplistic ideology. What is happening is that a wide variety of political cultures have come to the same conclusion: that the edifice of interdependence has become an instrument of domination, increasing great-power rivalry while restricting the room for maneuver of national politics. This supports the core premise of (Farrell & Newman, 2019). The international order is not yet crumbling; it is being reconstructed by states that seek autonomy in an interdependent world.

Fragmentation and the Myth of Disintegration

The story of fragmentation is one of emerging economic blocs, of multiplying regional trade agreements, of resurgent national politics. And these phenomena are real. But they do not necessarily tell the story of deconstruction. Rather, they speak to a shift in the balance between globalization and national sovereignty.  Take, for example, the European Union’s reaction to energy insecurity. The EU is diversifying its energy sources, expanding renewable energy production, and creating energy stockpiles. These are not examples of leaving the EU but of rebalancing its policy (Meunier, 2020) so that the EU is less exposed to potential future disruptions while still reaping the advantages of a common market.

Thereby Europe’s parallel adaptation in its shift toward national realism, which, while more subdued, is no less important, particularly in Eastern Europe, saw the necessity of strategic realism sooner due to its closeness to Russian power. Long before it became popular, the Baltic states viewed sovereignty as a tool for security. Resilience deters aggression, as demonstrated by Lithuania's swift transition away from Russian energy, Estonia's leadership in cyber defense, and their emphasis on territorial defense. Poland struck a balance between strong national control over defense, borders, and energy and deep NATO integration. Even Germany, which was formerly dedicated to post-sovereign principles, has changed its mind, increasing defense spending and reviving its industrial strategy. A rejection of the European Union is not reflected in these changes. Rather, they signify a rebalancing. Only when firmly rooted in powerful, independent states do supranational organizations remain relevant. Although it is no longer viewed as a replacement for national authority, the EU is still important.

They may also employ nationalism as a means to an end. In political calculus, nationalism can serve as a useful card to play for various advantages. For instance, one nation might utilize nationalism to encourage another nation to go to war with a third nation that the first nation wants to attack but cannot on its own. Nationalism can be manipulated to support certain political goals or alliances.

The role of nationalist rhetoric is primarily seen as a tool for domestic mobilization. However, the author argues that it can also be conceived as a political tool that is being used to justify decisions that advance the cause of strategic autonomy. Claims to sovereignty are not only a question of identity but also part of a policy narrative that explains the need to reshore sensitive sectors, step up foreign investment screening, or push for autonomous standards in tech or finance.

As National Realism does not discard interdependence, it actually transforms it: integration is still desired for economies of scale, markets, and security, but it is not pursued at the cost of efficiency maximization but rather at the benefit of striking a balance between efficiency and building strategic buffers.

Implications for International Relations Theory

The National Realist approach forces sovereignty to be considered as an empirical capability and not a juridical power. Thereby, what is occurring is a reconceptualization of sovereignty. It is better understood, then, in the context of the rising significance of infrastructure networks, both digital and energy, and the needed framework to assess sovereignty in terms of control over non-territorial resources. The second reason is that the United States is redressing the power equilibrium. In addition to the usual measures of military strength, this calculus must consider technology and logistics. Rare earths, semiconductor fabrication facilities, and networks of undersea cables become essential components of national power.

Thirdly, we have to consider the security challenges that come with the nature of a networked world. The more interconnected we become, the more vulnerable we are to the weakest links in the chain. The failure of security at one point can compromise an entire system. For example, a chain of secure servers can be penetrated if one of them is using an outdated security protocol. The complexity of networks and the dependency on third-party elements introduce a myriad of potential security risks. The sharing of resources, such as storage and bandwidth, and the interaction with other networks also present risks. For instance, a distributed denial-of-service attack could be launched by infecting and controlling many nodes.

The quest for resilience may also provoke new security dilemmas. In the case of semiconductors, for instance, one country’s effort to ensure supply chain security may be seen by another country as a power play to control a strategic technology. Here too, a mix of realist analysis of power and interest with constructivist analysis of norms and legitimation will be necessary.

The Future of International Cooperation

If it is acknowledged that the international system is being remade, not broken, researchers and policymakers will be more prepared to face what international relations will look like in the future. Instead of trying to hold back the tide of sovereignty, they must find ways to construct, or maintain, flexible frameworks that balance the needs of a robust nation with the undeniable value of remaining a globalized society. National Realism implies that cooperative frameworks will shift towards more fluid, issue-based cooperation, allowing for the provision of buffers for sovereignty. Instead of a single, universal regime, we may find a complex of partial integrations, depending on the strategic importance of the issue.

This is not an image of a world order falling apart. It is an image of states reasserting their agency over the interdependent foundations of modern power, a world that prizes resilience, roots sovereignty in alliances, and has a commitment to domestic legitimacy.

Conclusion

In sum, the ideas of energy independence, fair trade, technology security, and reassessing alliances are all themes that are found in the intellectual armory of National Realism: the basis of external power is legitimacy within the state, and the state must have the capacity to sustain an external presence over the long term. As much is true of the European security order, particularly in the East, where there has been a strengthening of the national hand while retaining the key components of international cooperation. Given the threat of weaponized interdependence, there is a decoupling, but not deglobalization, and those decrying “dangerous nationalism” are reading the programmatic text wrong.

Hence, the current international situation is better described not as a breakdown of order, but as a transition, a perfectly logical reorganization of the international community onto more secure sovereign bases. National Realism is a very useful framework for understanding this transition and for explaining why very different states tend to arrive at the same decisions and how the international order can be restored on the idea that strong, accountable nation-states are the building blocks of international order.

Aaron T. Walter is a scholar of international relations and security studies with a PhD in International Relations. He lectures on U.S. foreign policy and international security systems with academic appointments in Europe at Mykolas Romeris University, Vilnius, Lithuania, and Masaryk University, Brno, Czechia. He has written monographs on Migration, Terrorist Organizations, and U.S. presidential elections, while chapters on topics such as the European Neighborhood Policy, Eastern Partnership and Cybersecurity have been published. From 2007 to 2014, he prepared Slovak Armed Forces personnel for deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2018 he served as an ISGAP Fellow and Scholar-in-Residence at St. John’s College, Oxford. Originally from the United States, he resides in Vilnius, Lithuania.