Welcome to the President's inbox. I'm Jim Lindsay, the Mary and David Boyes

distinguished senior fellow in U.S. foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations.

This week's topic is, a new U.S. grand strategy, the case for a realist foreign policy.

With me to discuss what a realist U.S. foreign policy might look like is Stephen Walt.

Steve is Robert and Renee Belford Professor of International Affairs at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.

He is a columnist at Foreign Policy Magazine and co-chair of the editorial board of international security. Steve is one of America's most distinguished scholars of international relations,

and he has written a vast number of influential books and articles. His most recent book is The Hell of Good Intentions,

America's foreign policy elite in the decline of U.S. primacy.

One of his recent columns in foreign policy that is particularly relevant for our conversation today

was titled The Realist Case for Global Rules.

This episode is the eighth in my ongoing series on U.S. Grand Strategy. Steve, thank you very much for coming on the president's inbox.

Jim, it's my pleasure to be with you. Now, Steve, you are well known as a leading proponent of

the Realist School of International Relations. So let's begin there. What does it mean to be a

realist? I think virtually all realists start from the premise that in international politics,

there is no central authority to keep order, to enforce peace, to make sure that agreements are

kept, and that therefore states, which are the principal actors in

world politics, are forced to defend themselves. They're forced to rely on their own devices

and strategies in order to be secure and prosperous. The implication of that is, first of all, security

can be precarious. You have to worry about that a lot. And that while

cooperation is both necessary and useful, it also can be somewhat fragile, because again,

states worry about others cheating them. They worry that balances of power will shift adversely.

So realists tend to have a rather bleak view of the world, that it's a world of some suspicion,

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