"Hoffmann addresses the age-old problem of the place of morality in relations among states. Being a liberal humanist and also a keen observer of the game of power politics and the pursuit of national advantage as it has been and still is played, he is constantly searching for the compromises and balances and practical forward steps that will maximize the possibilities for human rights and a more just and moderate world order—and one which will survive. He does so with his usual display of learning, rationality, and felicity of expression."—Foreign Affairs
"A wonderful combination of skeptical realism and moral commitment. The result is a challenging piece of political theory—and also (what most political theory isn't) a guide to statesmen."—Michael Walzer, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University
Description
Can moral behavior exist in a world of states? Under what conditions? Where if at all, do norms for moral behavior, considerations of right and wrong, fit in the relations between states?
Drawing upon many historical examples, Stanley Hoffmann examines the complex questions of whether or not ethical action is possible in international politics and, if it is, what are the obstacles and constraints? Duties Beyond Borders tries to answer these questions and to suggest a course of “ethical politics” based on a pragmatic, realistic approach to international politics.
Table of Contents
1. Ethics And International Affairs
Preliminaries
The Moral Problem in International Relations
The Ethics of Foreign Policy Behavior
2. The Use of Force
Taming the Untamable
States and the Morality of War
Citizens and the Morality of War
3. The Promotion of Human Rights
What are Human Rights?
For and Against a Human Rights Policy
What is to Be Done?
4. Problems of Distributive Justice
International Injustice
Obligations
Diagnoses and Prescriptions
5. An Ethics of World Order
The Problem of World Order
The Interstate System
Persons
Notes
Index
About the Author
Stanley Hoffmann is the author of Primacy or World Order: American Policy since the Cold War, Decline or Renewal? France since the 1930s, and Gulliver's Troubles, or Setting of American Foreign Policy.
5.5 x 8.5, 268 pages
April 1981