What is realpolitik, and why is the world said to be returning to it? Professor John Bew CMG traces the idea back to its origins.

The world may well be entering a new age of realpolitik, but the harder question is defining which kind. The term is usually associated with an unsentimental use of power to further national interests, often seen as a rejection of a more idealistic, values-based approach to international relations. But that's not where it came from. Realpolitik was first coined in 1853 by Ludwig von Rochau, a German liberal, who used it to describe something different: the ability to understand and adapt to the realities of power, and to pursue enlightened goals in a world that doesn't follow enlightened rules. For von Rochau, Realpolitik wasn't just about foreign policy – the strongest states, he argued, were those that could harness social forces at home and manage internal division effectively.

Professor John Bew is a historian at King's College London and a leading figure at the Centre for Statecraft and National Security. He has advised four British Prime Ministers and authored three UK National Security Strategies. His book, Realpolitk: a History is a definitive work on the subject, just as are his biographies on Castlereagh and Attlee.

Further reading:

John Bew, Realpolitik: A History (Hurst, 2026).

Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy (Simon & Schuster, 1994).

Henry Kissinger, A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh and the Problems of Peace, 1812–22 (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1999).

NATO expert Dr Florence Gaub explains how strategic foresight helps NATO anticipate and avoid strategic surprise in an uncertain world.

Strategic surprise happens when new information fundamentally changes how we see the world. In an increasingly uncertain global landscape, predicting exact outcomes is nearly impossible – and that unpredictability heightens the risk of surprise. Yet as Lord Mervyn King explored in Season 6, genuine 'Black Swan' events – to quote Nicholas Taleb – are rarer than we think. Dr Florence Gaub describes how we can use strategic foresight to anticipate possible – even if unlikely – futures and avoid being caught off guard. She cautions, however, that it is not enough to 'think the unthinkable', futurologists also need to have their voice heard and acted on by those in power, so the work has to straddle both creative thinking and engaging with bureaucracies.

Dr Florence Gaub is the Director of the Research Division at the NATO Defence College having previously worked at the European Union Institute for Security Studies. Her PhD in international politics is from Humbolt University. She is the author of Future, a User's Guide, a graphic novel for NATO called NATO, 2099, and editor of What If…?: Ten Dragon King Scenarios for 2030, which was published at the NATO Defence College in 2025.

Further Reading

Florence Gaub, Future, a User's Guide, Hurst, 2026.

Florence Gaub, NATO, 2099: A Graphic Novel, NATO, 2024

Florence Gaub (ed.), What If…?: Ten Dragon King Scenarios for 2030, NATO Future Series, November 2025

Florence Gaub and Jonathan Heist, 'NATO's Permanent Crisis', Foreign Affairs, 16 June 2026.

Philip Tetlock and Dan Gardner, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction, Random House, 2015.

Related RUSI Talking Strategy Episodes

• Talking Strategy, Season 3, Episode 6 – Net Assessment as a Tool of Strategy, with Andrew Marshall and Dr Thomas Mahnken. RUSI.
• Talking Strategy, Season 4, Episode 14 – Evolving, Adopting and Adapting Alliance Strategy, with Lord Peach. RUSI.
• Talking Strategy, Season 5, Episode 1 – Leading a Defence Start-up: NATO's First Secretary General, Lord Ismay, with Lt Gen Sir John Kiszely. RUSI.
• Talking Strategy, Season 6, Episode 3 – Effective Strategy for Radical Uncertainty, with Lord Mervyn King. RUSI.

Former UN Ambassador and National Security Advisor Sir Mark Lyall Grant discusses the challenges facing delivery of Western security strategies.

In this season of Talking Strategy we have explored many of the key themes of today's security and defence strategies, but the test of a strategy is what changes as a result. A perfectly written strategy that makes the wrong assumptions, or that cannot be delivered, is meaningless at best, and often worse. In the final episode of this season, we examine the vital question of how defence strategy is delivered.

With so many Western strategies built on the assumption of a rules based international order, the fracturing of that system poses profound challenges for our defence strategies. Sir Mark, who chaired the UN Security Council four times, describes how the assumption was perhaps overblown – based on a 'Golden Age' that only lasted for 25 years – and how the world is moving in a disorderly manner towards a three-tier model in which interests are enforced through power.

In this new world, governments need to confront the reality that they cannot guarantee the safety of their citizens alone or without the help of their populations. This affects how governments operate – their structures and processes – and the conversations they need to have with their people and allies.

Further Reading

Mark Lyall Grant, 'The world order in crisis', Horizons: Journal of International Relations and Sustainable Development, vol.21 (2022): 124-133.

Peter Ricketts, Hard Choices: The Making and Unmaking of Global Britain, Atlantic Books, 2021.

Jack Watling, Statecraft: The New Rules of Power in a Divided World, Macmillan, 2026.