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Is There any Shame in Being Cynically Realist?

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Abstract

These choice remarks are attributed to the American president, speaking of the Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza . Roosevelt’s caustic maxim has passed into the history of international anti-morality: it announces and reflects quite accurately a certain “spirit” of the Cold War.

He may be an S.O.B., but he’s our S.O.B.

—Franklin D. Roosevelt, as quoted in W. Michael Riesman (1989)

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© 2008 Ariel Colonomos

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Colonomos, A. (2008). Is There any Shame in Being Cynically Realist?. In: Moralizing International Relations. The Sciences Po Series in International Relations and Political Economy. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230611948_3

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