In this incisive essay, renowned policy analyst Bright Simons introduces the concept of “magical realpolitik” to describe a growing dysfunction in contemporary foreign policy: the inability of strategic thinkers to integrate two competing species of fact. The first, “expert-mediated facts,” emerge from structured inquiry, peer review, and institutional memory (e.g., Robert Pape’s finding that strategic … Continue reading Magical Realpolitik: Two kinds of facts wrestle for the soul of Realism