Russia’s war against Ukraine has grave consequences in several political categories. These include: a reassessment of the school of ‘political realism’, one of whose proponents claims to have predicted the war. Was the West partly ‘responsible’ for the war? Second, to what extent does the war of aggression, as an undeniable violation of law, damage the status of international law and justice? Third, the war is embedded in political developments that stretch back a century. It is examined in its context (...) within American foreign policy since the Wilsonian peace programme, in relation to the dangerous reluctance of the EU to pursue a decisive geopolitical policy towards Russia, and interpreted in the light of Stalinist echoes within Russian politics. (shrink)

1795 erschien die 1. Auflage von Kants Schrift Zum ewigen Frieden. Zu einer der vordringlichsten, von der Philosophie aber häufig vernachlässigten Aufgaben der Politik stellt sie bis heute den wichtigsten klassischen Text dar. Kant entfaltet in ihm die philosophischen Grundlagen für eine internationale Rechts- und Friedensgemeinschaft. Gleichzeitig stellt er sich aber auch die Frage nach einer Vermittlung von normativer Theorie und politischer Praxis. In 12 Beiträgen wird Kants Text in diesem Band 'entschlüsselt', interpretiert, auf seine systematische Überzeugungskraft und auf seine (...) politische Tragweite hin untersucht und in seinen und unseren sozialgeschichtlichen Kontext gestellt. Der kooperative Kommentar wurde anlässlich des 300. Jubiläums Immanuel Kants überarbeitet und auf den neuesten Forschungsstand gebracht. Mit Beiträgen von Reinhard Brandt, Monique Castillo, Michael W. Doyle, Volker Gerhardt, Otfried Höffe, Wolfgang Kersting, Pierre Laberge, Jean-Christophe Merle, Hans Saner. (shrink)

This paper examines the Obama Administration’s approach to democracy promotion in Egypt. After a brief discussion of the motivation for promoting democracy, this essay compares the Obama Administration to its predecessor and analyzes the changes that were spurred by the Arab Awakening. Did the Obama Administration, during and after the 2011 Revolution, fully support democratic change in Egypt not only with rhetoric but also with the financial and programmatic support necessary to help a transitioning country? Did the Obama Administration offer (...) a consistent message on the importance of democratic policies? Or did the administration allow other policy objectives to trump democratic efforts? This paper explores the language, policies, and funding employed by the Obama Administration in Egypt to see what the impact has been. (shrink)

Attempting to apply the logic of conflict analysis developed by Thucydides to the chaotic spasms and clashes triggered by the collapse of the Soviet Union might appear inappropriate to many classical scholars, and entirely artificial to most Eurasian security experts. However, the two strategic landscapes, though separated by a period of some 2400 years, share a number of common features, and the ideas of the ancient strategic analyst may prove helpful for discovering structure in the chaotic violence of more recent (...) times. The notion of the ‘strategic dilemma’—one that Thucydides never used but is credited with inventing—lies at the centre of this investigation, which seeks to test the applicability of the notion in three distinctive settings: in a bipolar confrontation; in conflict manipulation by a third party; and in secessionist conflicts. The article suggests that, as an instrument of political analysis, the security dilemma tends to overpredict conflicts and essentially comes out as a trap of self-fulfilling ‘worst-case’ expectations, so that nowadays—much as in ancient Greece—whenever a security dilemma determines a political decision, disaster follows. (shrink)

Unfortunately, Adam Smith’s undeserved legacy as a proponent of laissez-faire and liberal institutions at the international scope inhibits profiting from his refined analysis of international affairs. I argue that the Wealth of Nations’ chapter on colonies contains Smith’s discussion of the sovereign’s adaptation to ignorance in global politics. I examine the sense in which the sovereign is ignorant according to Smith and how sovereigns adapt to ignorance with varying success. His comparative analysis suggests that reduction of one’s share in ignorance (...) is not always desirable, and a priori rejection of ignorance is impractical because it deprives of a potentially advantageous resource. A careful reading of his work enables learning from his approach to global politics, without filtering it through his ideas on the free market. (shrink)

One of the most problematic aspects of the ‘Harvard School’ of liberal international theory is its failure to fulfil its own methodological ideals. Although Harvard School liberals subscribe to a nomothetic model of explanation, in practice they employ their theories as heuristic resources. Given this practice, we should expect them neither to develop candidate causal generalizations nor to be value-neutral: their explanatory insights are underpinned by value-laden choices about which questions to address and what concepts to employ. A key question (...) for liberal theorists, therefore, is how a theory may be simultaneously explanatory and value-oriented. The difficulties inherent in resolving this problem are manifested in Ikenberry's writing: whilst his work on constitutionalism in international politics partially fulfils the requirements of a more satisfactory liberal explanatory theory, his recent attempts to develop prescriptions for US foreign policy reproduce, in a new form, key failings of Harvard School realism. (shrink)

We aim to find a middle path between disease models of addiction, and those that treat addictive choices as choices like any other. We develop an account of the disease element by focussing on the idea that dopamine works primarily to lay down dispositional intrinsic desires. Addictive substances artifically boost the dopamine signal, and thereby lay down intrinsic desires for the substances that persist through withdrawal, and in the face of beliefs that they are worthless. The result is cravings that (...) are largely outside the control of the addict. But this does not mean that addicts are bound to act on such cravings, since they typically retain their faculty of self-control. The issue is one of difficulty not impossibility. Controlling an addictive craving is exceedingly demanding. (shrink)

This article explores the extent to which the decision to invade Iraq in 2003 coheres with the normative precepts of liberalism as an international political theory. Beginning with a Lockean liberal theory of the state, this article first examines the evolution of international liberalism in order to identify the fundamental normative postulates of liberal theory as it pertains to international relations, especially regarding the use of military force. The article then advances two interrelated arguments: First, that the underpinnings of the (...) decision to invade Iraq embodied in the Bush Doctrine draw heavily from the liberal tradition, though still depart from it in important ways. Second, that the Bush Doctrine as manifested in the Iraq war reflects in many ways the liberal thinking that prevailed during the interwar years and is therefore susceptible to a similar charge of ‘utopianism’ that was leveled against interwar liberalism by E. H. Carr in his Twenty Years' Crisis. (shrink)

The nationally embedded and relatively broad-based economies characteristic of developed industrial countries are usually seen as the incarnation of a modern economy. These economies are largely internally oriented and are based, to a relatively great extent, on production and services based on local and national needs. Their provenance is generally assumed to have been processes of development that began in the sixteenth century and that, in the nineteenth century, accelerated with the expansion of industrial production and the growth of global (...) trade. This article challenges that assumption. It argues that today’s modern economies represent, not the culmination of long-term processes, but a recurring phenomenon within capitalism. It argues that, in the history of capitalism, there have been phases of nationally embedded and global free market capitalism – periods when capital is relatively more, and relatively less, free from the regulation of nation state. Today’s nationally embedded economies represent, not a further point along a unilinear developmental trajectory, but a return to features of the moral economies that characterized both European and non-European societies before the nineteenth century. (shrink)

The primary instrument of dispute management in political liberalism is a form of political thinking and talking that tries to reconcile opposed positions with an impartial settlement based on fair arrangements and mutual respect, one that is careful to treat rival views equitably, and reasoned through from start to finish with open methods that lead to a public justification understandable to the disputants. But this model of reasoning is notoriously deficient in resolving disputes among radically different communities. A more effective (...) form of political reasoning for these disputes that yet respects the background values of liberalism is found in the languages of state depicted in realist accounts of international relations. These languages avoid liberal appeals to be reasonable, reciprocity controlled by moral criteria, and the quest for common reasons. They represent a deliberative search for an accord that will meet the interests of the disputing parties as they define these interests and understand the settlements, and in this sense are welcome models to manage divisive issues in pluralist democracies. A complete version of political reasoning would contain both liberal and realpolitik models and a mechanism to adjudicate the appropriate uses of each model. (shrink)

In Democratic Authority, David Estlund (2008) presents a major new defense of democracy, called epistemic proceduralism. The theory claims that democracy exercises legitimate authority in virtue of possessing a modest epistemic power: its decisions are the product of procedures that tend to produce just laws at a better than chance rate, and better than any other type of government that is justifiable within the terms of public reason. The balance Estlund strikes between epistemic and non-epistemic justifications of democracy is open (...) to question, both for its neglect of the roles of non-epistemic values of equality and collective autonomy in democracy, and for the ways his use of the public reason standard overshadows empirically based epistemic arguments for democracy. Nevertheless, Estlund presents telling critiques of rival theories and develops a sophisticated alternative that illuminates some central normative features of democracy. (shrink)

For the role of utilitarianism in the ethics of war and peace, Shaw suggests there is a Utilitarian War Principle (UWP) and argues that the principles of the just war theory should be treated as intermediate principles that are subordinated to UWP. He also argues that the state should be the primary legitimate authority to wage war and holder of the right of national defense. I argue that the utilitarian approach should be specifically linked with contingent pacifism, a new understanding (...) of pacifism from within the just war tradition, and the utilitarian contingent pacifism only endorses individual self-defense but not national defense. This finding is not only theoretically important but has practical implications for the debate on Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution. Utilitarian contingent pacifism supports the idealist position that Article 9 is morally significant because it makes Japan a pioneer of the new kind of pacifism. (shrink)

There are many East and West debates on human rights. One of them is whether all civil and political rights are human rights. On one hand, scholars generally agree that rights to physical security are human rights. On the other hand, some scholars argue that rights to political liberty are only Western rights but not human rights because political liberty conflicts with some East Asian cultural factors, especially the Confucian tradition. I argue that physical security also conflicts with some parts (...) of the Confucian tradition, but rights to physical security are still human rights because physical security is a minimal value. I then argue that political liberty, similar to physical security, is also a minimal value. Therefore, similar to rights to physical security, rights to political liberty are also human rights, even though political liberty also conflicts with some parts of the Confucian tradition. (shrink)

In my reply to Pogge's critique of Rawls's international relations theory, I will try to show two things: (1) that Pogge's account of the public criterion of domestic social justice endorsed by Rawls is a partial one and (2) that this leads him to wrongly postulate a significant asymmetry between Rawls's domestic and international theories of justice. In the end, I hope to show that the domestic and international accounts are characterized by a significant degree of symmetry ? that both (...) accounts are motivated by Rawls's fundamental concern with self-respect. In other words, a more expansive, complete account of the domestic public criterion of social justice necessarily leads us (contra Pogge) to affirm a significant degree of continuity between the domestic and international accounts. (shrink)

Maquiavel, ao afirmar que a principal atividade do governante é a guerra, sugere fazê-lo de forma definitiva. A guerra pode ser a ocasião que mais põe à prova o poder do governante. Dela ele sai fraco ou digno de glória. Seu poder, no entanto, não se constrói necessariamente por ser o mais forte, mas por ser o “melhor”. Melhor por efetivar os objetivos próprios de um governante e que dizem respeito à conquista e à manutenção do poder. O simples uso (...) da força, mais especificamente, da violência, está longe de ser o meio mais eficaz para efetivá-los. Segundo Maquiavel, encontramos uma espécie de divisão pontual dos afazeres do governante ao lidar com a guerra, sugerindo haver duas maneiras de guerrear: “com obras” ou com a “mente”. Destas formas de guerrear surgem questionamentos sobre sua atualidade em relação ao uso da força nas Relações Internacionais. Portanto, o objetivo deste trabalho é explicitar esses modos de guerra no pensamento de Maquiavel e suas possíveis implicações para a discussão na contemporaneidade das Relações Internacionais. (shrink)

In everyday usage, ‘realism’ is often used as a name for a practically or epistemically low-ambition attitude, while ‘idealism’ is often taken to denote a highambition—if not utopian—attitude. In philosophcal usage, mostly, it is the other way around: those who are called realists tend to claim more than their opponents—they are the philosophical optimists. Within philosophy itself, ‘realism’ adopts a variety of interrelated and contested meanings. It is used as the name for doctrines about issues such as perceptual access to (...) reality, the existence of universals, the goals and achievements of science, the nature of truth, the objectivity of morality, and many other things. Given this variety, no single shorthand definition of the term ‘realism’ can be provided. One manifestation of this variety is that the opponents of realism about these issues are not called uniformly by a single label (other than the rather uninformative ‘antirealism’): the labels used include idealism, phenomenalism, instrumentalism, conventionalism, fictionalism, noncognitivism, constructivism, relativism, irrealism, and others. Sometimes such labels vary from one dispute or domain to another even when similar ideas are being expressed. Sometimes they are used to make claims that are specific to the domain at hand and distinct from other antirealist theses. In what follows a brief tour will be taken along some of the representative philosophical highways and lanes, from ontology through semantics to epistemology. Along the way, realism will be confronted with some of its various opponents and internal conflicts. The philosophical landscape in the neighborhood of realism is nowadays much broader than it used to be: in a typical older encyclopedia, ‘realism’ was taken to name doctrines about universals or about perception, or both, to the exclusion of much of its present coverage, and many of the current opponents were missing from view altogether. (shrink)