It's all relative.

I found myself very taken with the pragmatic and goal-oriented strategies laid out in The Prince. I am a practical person and I see Machiavelli as being along the same lines. I appreciated that he didn’t beat around the bush in explaining that leaders rule through the manipulation of human foibles. And it is by this reasoning that I would say that yes, Machiavelli’s arguments remain essentially usable. As we seemed to conclude in each of our weekly question posts, there is no hard yes or no to an issue, but rather” yes/no, however in this area… “. The same applies to Machiavelli, some of his arguments no longer apply to modern politics but so many of them do.
I am very much a believer in the interconnectedness of all things, it’s all relative. That realists choose to name their primary goal as territorial integrity is great and sounds very simple. However, territorial integrity as we discussed in class extends beyond material borders to culture, economy, people, etc. And so on in turn do these overarching categories hold their own host of issues which must be addressed in order to have “territorial integrity”. Through this connection I find realism to be a very appealing political theory, easy to explain and on the surface very cut and dry with its single-minded goal. But looked at deeper, realism does have a human element, one it seeks to protect and secure.