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Idealism illuminates the changing norms of sovereignty, human rights, and international justice, as well as the increased potency of religious ideas in politics.

President George W. Bush promises to fight terror by spreading liberal democracy to the Middle East and claims that skeptics "who call themselves 'realists'…. have lost contact with a fundamental reality" that "America is always more secure when freedom is on the march."

National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, a former Stanford University political science professor, explains that the new Bush doctrine is an amalgam of pragmatic realism and Wilsonian liberal theory.

Sen. John Kerry sounded remarkably similar: "Our foreign policy has achieved greatness," he said, "only when it has combined realism and idealism."

Krauthammer argued for an assertive amalgam of liberalism and realism, which he called "democratic realism."

Fukuyama claimed that Krauthammer's faith in the use of force and the feasibility of democratic change in Iraq blinds him to the war's lack of legitimacy, a failing that "hurts both the realist part of our agenda, by diminishing our actual power, and the idealist portion of it, by undercutting our appeal as the embodiment of certain ideas and values."

At realism's core is the belief that international affairs is a struggle for power among self-interested states.

hicago political scientist Hans J. Morgenthau, are deeply pessimistic about human nature, it is not a theory of despair.

In liberal democracies, realism is the theory that everyone loves to hate. Developed largely by European émigrés at the end of World War II, realism claimed to be an antidote to the naive belief that international institutions and law alone can preserve peace, a misconception that this new generation of scholars believed had paved the way to war.

China's current foreign policy is grounded in realist ideas that date back millennia.

Realism gets some things right about the post-9/11 world. The continued centrality of military strength and the persistence of conflict, even in this age of global economic interdependence, does not surprise realists.

Realists point out that the central battles in the "war on terror" have been fought against two states (Afghanistan and Iraq), and that states, not the United Nations or Human Rights Watch, have led the fight against terrorism.

The realist scholar Robert A. Pape, for example, has argued that suicide terrorism can be a rational, realistic strategy for the leadership of national liberation movements seeking to expel democratic powers that occupy their homelands.

nsights from political realism -- a profound and wide-ranging intellectual tradition rooted in the enduring philosophy of Thucydides, Niccolò Machiavelli, and Thomas Hobbes -- are hardly rendered obsolete because some nonstate groups are now able to resort to violence.

Standard realist doctrine predicts that weaker states will ally to protect themselves from stronger ones and thereby form and reform a balance of power.

Despite changing configurations of power, realists remain steadfast in stressing that policy must be based on positions of real strength, not on either empty bravado or hopeful illusions about a world without conflict.

The liberal school of international relations theory, whose most famous proponents were German philosopher Immanuel Kant and U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, contends that realism has a stunted vision that cannot account for progress in relations between nations.

If the dead begin to rise from the grave and attack the living, what thinking would -- or should -- guide the human response?

How would all those theories hold up under the pressure of a zombie assault? When should humans decide that hiding and hoarding is the right idea?

Zombie stories end in one of two ways -- the elimination/subjugation of all zombies, or the eradication of humanity from the face of the Earth.

If it is true that "popular culture makes world politics what it currently is," as a recent article in Politics argued, then the international relations community needs to think about armies of the undead in a more urgent manner.

There are many varieties of realism, but all realists start with a common assumption: that anarchy is the overarching constraint of world politics. Anarchy does not necessarily mean chaos or disorder, but rather the absence of a centralized, legitimate authority.

In a world of anarchy, the only currency that matters is power -- the material capability to ward off pressure or coercion, while being able to influence others.

How would the introduction of flesh-eating ghouls affect world politics? The realist answer is simple if surprising: International relations would be largely unaffected.

To paraphrase Thucydides, the realpolitik of zombies is that the strong will do what they can and the weak must suffer devouring by reanimated, ravenous corpses.

States could also exploit the threat from the living dead to acquire new territory, squelch irredentist movements, settle old scores, or subdue enduring rivals. The People's Republic of China could use the zombie threat to justify an occupation of Taiwan. Russia could use the same excuse to justify intervention in its near abroad. The United States would not be immune from the temptation to exploit the zombie threat as a strategic opportunity. How large would the army of the Cuban undead need to be to justify the deployment of the 82nd Airborne?

All liberals nevertheless share a belief that cooperation is still possible in a world of anarchy. Liberals look at world politics as a non-zero-sum game. Working together, whether on international trade, nuclear nonproliferation, or disease prevention, can yield global public goods on a massive scale.

The 2009 film Zombieland is about the articulation of and adherence to well-defined rules for surviving in a zombie-infested landscape.

'The only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation.' I think we can all appreciate the relevance of that now."

Provided that the initial spread of zombies did not completely wipe out governments, the liberal expectation would be that an international counterzombie regime could make significant inroads into the problem. Given the considerable public-good benefits of wiping the undead from the face of the Earth, significant policy coordination seems a likely response.

Quasi-permanent humanitarian counterzombie missions, perhaps under United Nations auspices, would likely be necessary in failed states. Liberals would acknowledge that the permanent eradication of flesh-eating ghouls is unlikely.

Instead, neocons would recommend an aggressive and militarized response to ensure human hegemony. Rather than wait for the ghouls to come to them, they would pursue offensive policy options that take the fight to the undead. A pre-emptive strike against zombies would, surely, be a war against evil itself.

"An outbreak of zombies infecting humans is likely to be disastrous, unless extremely aggressive tactics are employed against the undead.… [A] zombie outbreak is likely to lead to the collapse of civilization, unless it is dealt with quickly."

They would inevitably lump reanimated corpses with other human threats as part of a bigger World War III against authoritarian despots and zombies -- an "Axis of Evil Dead." This would sabotage any attempt at broad-based coalition warfare, hindering military effectiveness in a Global War on Zombies (GWOZ).

Powerful states would be more likely to withstand an army of flesh-eating ghouls. The plague of the undead would join the roster of threats that disproportionately affect the poorest and weakest countries.

Realism predicts an eventual live-and-let-live arrangement between the undead and everyone else.

Liberals predict an imperfect but nevertheless useful counterzombie regime.

Neoconservatives see the defeat of the zombie threat after a long, existential struggle.