2026 Runners-Up I: Mythical Realisms
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Mythical Realisms
by Cameron Baillie
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Realism is back, we’re told repeatedly of late, since Trump-47. Realism, for those not steeped in academic IR-speak, theorises global affairs thus: brute power and loosely-defined “national interests” always eclipse abstract values—trivialities like human rights, international laws, or state sovereignty.
This revelatory moment crystallised for Western audiences in January. Realism—to which subjugated nations and populations globally were long accustomed—suddenly turned inwards. Trump threatened to seize mineral-rich Danish territory Greenland “one way or another.” Denmark soon mobilised for invasion.
European leaders effused shock-horror and solidaristic commitments to sovereignty scarcely afforded to others. Canadian PM Mark Carney gave his world-historic mask-off speech at Davos. At Locarno, inspired by Ernest Bevin, erstwhile Foreign Secretary David Lammy reappraised “Progressive Realism,” plugging his eponymous Substack: “Taking the world as it is, not as we wish it to be. Advancing progressive ends by realist means.”
So… Those same European leaders condemned, equal fiercely, heads of states’ extrajudicial kidnapping and murder. And illegally carpet-bombing thousands of Iranian civilians—children. Unilateral fuel blockades and plans to “take” Cuba, alike Greenland. Repeated invasion and occupation of south Lebanon. And overwhelming consensus of genocidal atrocities in Gaza and Sudan committed by allies. Right? Committed Realists don’t just ‘condemn’ mounting war-crimes—they do something about it!
Not quite. Instead it was the criminal party’s job to “justify the action that it has taken.” Our role to host “defensive-only” bombing missions; our allies’ to bomb “proactively in a defensive way to prevent them from inflicting higher damage.” If our side hit them, they’d hit us back—we had to hit them first! Because only our allies, our lands, have a right to “territorial integrity and sovereignty.” Our friends “have that right” to defend themselves through unchecked, indiscriminate aggression—nobody else’s.
To wish otherwise, well, would be un-Realistic. But it’s unclear what about this Realism is “Progressive,” per Lammy, and not the more accurate Thucydidean “Strong Do, Weak Suffer” vision Carney outlined. He named very Real problems of Realism, conveniently at a moment of alliance-in-crisis, before quickly settling back into the same pretences he’d so astutely articulated. Realism and “national interests”—or even mere convenience, it seems—will inevitably trump ethereal ideals.
Yet Realism has another, arguably more significant meaning: not in IR, but philosophy. It means, straightforwardly, cognitive contact with the external world; in essence, being in touch with reality. Regardless of whatever else enlightened leaders presently claim to care about, basic reality falls outside their Realism. Specifically: the ever-present deadly reality of—and really intensifying threat posed by—climate catastrophe.
Consider what now passes for ‘Realist’ foreign policy. Trumpian energy nationalism, even Europe’s renewed fossil appetite. Globally speed-running rearmament. Blind trampling of international laws by U.S., Israeli, or Russian militaries—all producing untold amounts of environmental waste, destruction and pollution. An energy-hungry and water-thirsty AI ‘arms race,’ joined unthinkingly. This reality becomes a mythic theatre of denial: refusal to engage with very material limits defining our twenty-first century. ‘Realism’ has become a fictional narrative, rationalising the irrational towards the utterly indefensible.
If Realism means clear-eyed recognition of our actual world, today’s ‘Realists’ seem most estranged from it: invoking brute necessity to accelerate ecological and geopolitical self-destruction. Instead of genuine Realism—policy attuned to material reality—we’ll suffer untold consequences of hallucinatory beliefs that extraction can continue indefinitely. That harder borders somehow shield nations from raging climate breakdown. That “Drill, Baby, Drill” constitutes strategy rather than eager death-drive.
What’s behind this “Disaster Nationalism”? Certainly, if it’s in anyone’s interests, they’re not “national interests.” That’s too vague to be meaningful. It’s not ordinary communities who reap the benefits of soaring fuel prices. These are vested interests: fossil capitalists. Too much invested; profits too high. We’ll all face the consequences, but some more than others: those South, the poor or migrants.
If any nation’s actually fusing peaceful Realism with reality, it’s China. Let’s hope Western leaders follow. If there’s anything to gain from another needless war, it’s the fossil era’s demise. Otherwise so-called Realism, from this young writer’s vantage, suggests that my very existence, my “generational interests,” are written off by an oily gerontocracy. Until this reality’s recognised, I won’t hear any more talk of “Realism.”
It’s not Realism—it’s denialism.
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Critical Reflection
I’m hardly alone among young journalists in drawing on George Orwell. I’ve tried to engage with him not just as a monument, but as a method. What strikes me across his essays and novels, beyond his politics, is his fixation on language—especially how easily it’s bent to obscure reality. Politics and the English Language is a helpful style guide, but also an irrepressible warning: when words lose meaning, so too does thought.
That concern sits at the core of my column. What I call “Mythical Realisms” are precisely the kind of linguistic corruptions Orwell identified: words that once implied clarity now used to justify their opposite. The euphemisms—“defensive” strikes, “national” interests, selective “rules”—emblemise Orwell’s critique of political language designed “to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable.” The casualness with which figures like David Lammy or Mark Carney deploy, and so destroy, such terms reflects not just hypocrisy, but a deeper detachment from reality itself. At least Trump doesn’t posture as principled.
Orwell’s life experiences ground his writing—whether among the poor in Down and Out or fighting in Spain in Homage to Catalonia— in his lived, material reality. That insistence on really confronting the world as it is, not as ideology presents it, ultimately underpins my arguments about climate breakdown. Orwell demanded honesty about empire, war and class; the same demand must now extend to ecological limits.
War is and will remain horrific. This much is not new, but the same excuses are becoming rapidly old. Climate change is relatively novel, post-Orwell. I wanted to link these themes, alongside linguistic abuses and hypocrisy. If my column echoes Orwell, it’s in this: refusal to accept political language at face value, and in sincere belief that clarity is itself a vital form of resistance. Make Realism Realistic Again.
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‘Mythical Realisms’ by Cameron Baillie is the Runner-Up in the Column Category of the 2026 Orwell Society/NUJ Young Journalists Awards. Cameron Baillie is an award-winning journalist and editor, who has won the SPA award for ‘Best Comment Piece’ and was shortlisted among the top ten ‘Best Newcomer’ student journalists in UK/Ireland. As a freelance he reports, edits for multiple outlets, and says that he loves writing most of all.
This post is the third of a series of the winners and runners-up in 2026
All photography thanks to Tiger Ant Productions