Realpolitik is a sham, it got us two world wars. After these, rule of law became, for a short prosperous time, more dominant, at least in Western Europe.

These things (laws, ability to peacefully cooperate, ethics) are like religion, if you believe in them, they, for all intent and purposes, exist.

But we are infused with an ideology of rational distrust, because a small amount of people can't mentally grasp any alternative to power. so we dig our own graves.