The era of surrealpolitik

In November 2025, I was invited to discuss the publication of a special issue of an academic journal in Brazil addressing contemporary defence topics. A statement in the issue’s introductory text caught my attention. The authors wrote: "In a transitional international environment, where realpolitik is gaining more and more ground… defence policy is a key task."

I do not disagree with the corollary of the statement. However, I was unsure about one of its propositions: that realpolitik is gaining ground. I had already read and heard similar claims from other analysts and academics: mostly, that ‘Realpolitik is back’, since the global order no longer rests on ideals, but on a direct exercise of power, solely based on interests, where alliances are fluid and strategically calculatated.

To express – if not my disagreement – at least my discomfort with this statement, I suggested a new term, which is perhaps more appropriate to describe the contemporary international environment. I called this a context of 'Surrealpolitik'.

Surrealism as a framework for thought

I explain here this conceptual suggestion. The term Realpolitik was coined by Ludwig von Rochau, a nineteenth-century German writer and politician. In his 1853 book “Grundsätze der Realpolitik angewendet auf die staatlichen Zustände Deutschlands” (‘Principles of Realpolitik Applied to the National Situation of Germany’), he defines the concept as follows:

“The study of the forces that shape, sustain, and transform the state is the starting point of all political knowledge, the first step of which leads to the understanding that the law of force exerts a dominion over state life similar to that which the law of gravity exerts over the physical world.

The oldest political science fully understood this truth, but drew a false and pernicious conclusion from it: the right of the strongest. Modern times have corrected this immoral fallacy, but, in renouncing the supposed right of the strongest, have also tended to deny the real power of the strongest and the necessity of its political validity.” (von Rochau, 1853)

John Bew, my colleague at King's College London, explained in a 2014 lecture at the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress in Washington, that much of what is understood today as Realpolitik deviates from the term's original meaning. According to Bew, the concept was an early attempt to achieve liberal Enlightenment goals in a world that did not follow enlightened liberal rules. For Bew, what Realpolitik represents is precisely an Enlightenment achievement in understanding power, countering the idea that power is only coercive. Realpolitik is therefore logical and rational: a model that requires rules and norms, coherence and consistency.

What I propose with the term Surrealpolitik here is not a joke or a play on words. The instability of the international context in which we live is extremely worrying. Actions by global leaders produce a sense of strangeness and seem inconsistent with reason, moving beyond reality. In my view, the dynamics we are seeing in international relations today resemble what we might call the surreal. Hence, Surrealpolitik.

And here I am deliberately deriving the term from the aesthetic concept of Surrealism, as formulated by André Breton in his “Manifesto of Surrealism” (1924). The term itself was coined by the poet Guillaume Apollinaire, in a preface to a theatrical work first performed in 1917, “Les Mamelles de Tirésias” (The Breasts of Tiresias). However, it is with Breton's Manifesto that Surrealism gained a coherent aesthetic definition.

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines Surrealism as “the principles, ideals, or practice of producing fantastic or incongruous imagery or effects in art, literature, film, or theater by means of unnatural or irrational juxtapositions and combinations”. The root term ‘surreal’ is defined as “marked by the intense irrational reality of a dream” and as “very strange or unusual.”

Breton himself was more meticulous in his definition. For him, Surrealism was “psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express – verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner – the actual functioning of thought. Dictated by thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern.”

Aesthetically, Surrealism positioned itself as a zone where the boundaries between reality and imagination dissolve. From a technical point of view, Trompe-l'œil (French for ‘deceive the eye’) , for example, was widely explored by surrealist artists because it creates an optical illusion of three-dimensionality, blurring the lines between reality and illusion. One of the movement’s leading figures in painting, Salvador Dalí, conceivedthe Paranoial-critic method of artistic production, which consists of exploring paranoia and delusions to unlock the unconscious and thus create surreal images – a surefire way to disturb the viewer, subverting their established sense of order.

Another key technique of Surrealism was the juxtaposition of unrelated or contrasting elements, without commitment to reason or logic. Often these juxtapositions were the result of collages of diverse materials, images and objects, assembled in disparate ways, inspiring the fantastic and the dreamlike.

Photography, a medium originally associated with capturing objective reality, takes on other contours in Surrealism. The use of procedures such as double exposure, combination of prints, photomontages and solarization dramatically evoked the fusion of dream and reality, freeing photographs from their obligation to objectively represent a seen reality.

Many artists who embraced Surrealism as an aesthetic were also politically engaged. André Breton himself became a member of the French Communist Party in 1927 and in 1935 wrote some texts on the political character of Surrealist aesthetics. Breton sought to reconcile the "total subversion" of Surrealism with the totalising ambitions of revolutionary Marxism. The experiment was not very successful, and disagreements abounded on all sides. The central ethos of Surrealism – insubordination – did not combine well with the discipline required by the proletarian revolution.

From aesthetics to political analysis

At first glance, this relationship between Surrealism and politics may seem inappropriate for the present time. However, if we transplant the aesthetic characteristics of Surrealism to the domain of politics and international relations, what we are experiencing today seems to be the emergence of the Surreal in politics: Surrealpolitik.

The current political context seems to transform the human experience of reality itself. There is a very fragile balance between a rational view of life and one that affirms the power of the unconscious and dreams. Some politicians today, within this context of Surrealpolitik, seem to be drawn to the beauty in the unexpected and unusual, in the disregarded and unconventional. At the heart of certain contemporary foreign policies is a willingness to challenge imposed values and norms in pursuit of something framed as freedom.

Political statements and ideas increasingly resemble expressions unlocked from unconscious minds, dream worlds or hidden psychological tensions, “in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern,” to use Breton's own words.

Paraphrasing Breton's definition, we might tentatively define Surrealpolitik as a belief in the superior reality of previously neglected interpretations of the world; in the omnipotence of dreamlike rethoric; and in the irresponsible play of thought. It tends to undermine all other allliances mechanisms and to substitute itself for them in solving the principal problems of international relations.

In an international context shaped by a Surrealpolitik, it's as if we've transformed the world into a fantasy island: one with little room for rules, an impetus for fulfilling impulses, and little concern for logical coherence.

So, how does this reflection help us? Isn't this text just another intellectual juggling act? I honestly don't know. But it seems to me that we need to seek new concepts for the novel social and political experiences we are living through. Perhaps the analytical and critical tools developed in the study of Surrealism can help us better understand this Surrealpolitik in which we are globally immersed.