Why “realpolitiker” is a great word
A practitioner of politics based solely on practical and material factors, eschewing ideological or moral considerations for the pursuit and maintenance of power. The term is a direct borrowing from German Realpolitiker, from real ('real, practical') + Politiker ('politician'), crystallized in the mid-nineteenth century through the writings of August Ludwig von Rochau. Unlike an idealist, who navigates by the fixed stars of principle, or a doctrinaire, who forces the world to conform to a theoretical blueprint, the realpolitiker’s only doctrine is efficacy. His world is the quiet room where borders are redrawn with a pencil and a threat, the calculated handshake with a despised adversary, the sleepless night spent weighing armies against grain shipments. It is the weary, unsentimental craft of governing within the world as it is, where the only lasting monument is a balance of power, meticulously kept.