Twenty Years of Institutional Liberalism
Idealism and interests: the revival of moralism in world
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| Idealism and interests: the revival of moralism in world
politics The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 made the US and liberal democratic states elsewhere believe that they could construct ‘a new world order’ more consistent with the values and practices of liberal domestic politics. The language of moralism, which had 130 International Relations 26(2) previously been used in conjunction with efforts to stop the spread of Communism dur ing the Cold War, was now detached from great power struggles. Four examples of mor ally justified activities are as follows: • The conclusion of a number of major human rights treaties in the decades of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, and the continual push for their implementation by non governmental organizations committed to human rights and by some govern ments. These efforts included efforts to protect the rights of women and children in societies with well-entrenched practices adverse to the protection of these rights. 13
• Efforts by democratic governments and civil society to promote democracy in Eastern Europe after the Cold War and around the world. These efforts were insti tutionalized in what Sarah Bush has called ‘The Democracy Establishment’ – a network of individuals in governments and NGOs working to institute democratic practices in countries that were not stable democracies. 14 The institution of exten sive international election monitoring provides one notable aspect of the work of the Democracy Establishment. • The Responsibility to Protect Doctrine, agreed by the Millennium Summit of the United Nations in 2005, which calls on states to protect their populations and provides for UN Security Council action to protect populations if the state with formal jurisdiction fails to do so. R2P, as it is called, has become a strong norm affecting UN action, although it is not a legal rule. R2P is a good example of mor alism as I have defined it: the belief that moral principles provide a valuable guide to political action. 15 •
Serbia, and last year to overthrow the Qaddafi regime in Libya. UN Security Council Resolution 1973 of 17 March 2011, authorizing the use of force against the government of Libya, referred to the Libyan government’s responsibility to protect its citizens, and expressed the Council’s determination to protect civilians, without explicitly invoking the R2P doctrine. In defending his support for military intervention, Barack Obama, on 28 March 2011, declared: ‘Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different. And as President, I refused to wait for the images of slaugh ter and mass graves before taking action.’ 16
These themes reflect the ‘moralism’ decried in Politics Among Nations by Hans J. Morgenthau and in
by George F. Kennan, but not, in The Twenty Years’ Crisis, by E. H. Carr. 17 Carr criticizes both the utopian equation of individual and state morality and the Realist denial that ‘ethical standards are applicable to relations between states’. Carr argues that ‘there is a world community for the reason (and for no other) that people talk, and within certain limits behave, as if there were a world com munity’. But this world community is thin because people do not accept the principle of individual equality on a global scale and therefore do not put the interests of the global community above those of their own nations. Hence ‘in the international order, the role of power is greater and that of morality less’, and ‘any international moral order must rest
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on some hegemony of power’. However, this does not mean that morality is irrelevant: on the contrary, the hegemonic power needs to engage in a ‘give-and-take’, even involv ing some ‘self-sacrifice’, in order to make its hegemony ‘tolerable to the other members of the world community’. 18 Moralism is endemic to liberalism and reflects one of its strengths: its creation of an environment in which social movements built around values rather than material inter ests can thrive. Carr’s profound analysis shows us that moralism is, up to a point, also consistent with power politics, since moralism performs an essential function for domi nant states: to make hegemony legitimate. In my view, and consistent with my interpretation of E. H. Carr, the Realist view of moralism as misleading and pernicious only holds in a particular context: when moralism leads publics and governments to act in ways that threaten more fundamental values, such as the preservation of their democratic institutions or even physical security itself. If moral ism inhibited Britain and France from aligning with the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany in the late 1930s, it played a negative role, just as it would have been an inappropriate application of moralism for the United States to have refused to defend South Korea against North Korean aggression in 1950 because South Korea’s ruling regime was deficient by democratic standards. But when threats recede, moralism should in my view re-emerge. It is good for democracies to try to implement their values by appropriate means where it is feasible to do so at low cost. And since there is little material self-interest incentive for democratic politicians to do so, that incentive needs to be provided by social movements, whose members are not motivated by self-interest – since a public good is at stake – but by moral principle and moral passion. Without moral guidance, the exercise of power, even by democracies, is likely to become pernicious and illegitimate. However, Realists have another arrow in their quiver: that even if moralism could in principle be valuable as an impetus to action, the ideals on which it rests are inevitably cor rupted, in practice, by power. This theme – one actually borrowed from classical liberalism – is that power corrupts in at least three ways. It generates arrogance, it leads actors to distort analysis to fit the demands of the powerful, and it can serve as a rationale for actions with other motivations. Senator J. W. Fulbright in 1967 called it the ‘Arrogance of Power’, which Americans saw in full measure in the Vietnam War and in the George W. Bush administration. Distortion of analysis often follows. For instance, a Bush administration aide told a reporter in 2002: ‘We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.’ 19 Obviously, the United States failed to create its own reality in Iraq: as soon as American forces left, in December 2011, the Shiite-dominant government sought the arrest of the Sunni Vice-President. 20 The United States, in my view, is clearly failing to create the reality it prefers in Afghanistan, as it failed in Vietnam a generation ago. A concern for morality is therefore both essential and dangerous. It is essential to establish criteria other than those of power and material interests to guide leaders of states and by which to hold them accountable. Democratic forms of governance are based on and justified by moral principles, and the relevance of these principles hardly diminishes when democratic states project power outside their borders. But a concern for morality is dangerous because in the hands of fools or demagogues it can become a per nicious form of moralism, serving not to check power but to justify its use in ways that are false and typically damaging.
132 International Relations 26(2) So we should give two cheers for moralism in an era lacking vital threats to the secu rity of our societies and our democratic institutions. First, moralism provides an impetus to social movements that provide incentives for democratic politicians to promote liberal democratic values abroad. Second, as Carr pointed out, moralism, if enunciated in mod eration and practiced more or less consistently, can enhance the legitimacy of hegemonic states and the orders they seek to maintain. But we withhold the third cheer: the Realists are right to point out that power corrupts, so we need to beware that moralism can also generate arrogance, facilitate the distortion of reality, and even conceal nefarious purposes. Yüklə 102 Kb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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