Chih-Hann Chang - Ethical Foreign Policy?: US Humanitarian Interventions

ETHICAL FOREIGN POLICY?

Series Editors: Tom Lansford and Patrick Hayden

Since the end of the Cold War, explorations of ethical considerations within global politics and on the development of foreign policy have assumed a growing importance in the fields of politics and international studies. New theories, policies, institutions, and actors are called for to address difficult normative questions arising from the conduct of international affairs in a rapidly changing world. This series provides an exciting new forum for creative research that engages both the theory and practice of contemporary world politics, in light of the challenges and dilemmas of the evolving international order.

Justice and Morality

Human Suffering, Natural Law and International Politics

ISBN 978 0 7546 7522 8

Targeting Terrorists

A License to Kill?

ISBN 978 0 7546 4526 9

Bloody Nations

Moral Dilemmas for Nations, States and International Relations

ISBN 978 0 7546 7120 6

Ethics in an Era of Globalization

ISBN 978 0 7546 7195 4

From Terrorism to Politics

ISBN 978 0 7546 4990 8

US Humanitarian Interventions

CHIH-HANN CHANG

First published 2011 by Ashgate Publishing

Published 2016 by Routledge
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Copyright Chih-Hann Chang 2011

Chih-Hann Chang has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

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Chang, Chih-Hann.

Ethical foreign policy? : US humanitarian interventions. (Ethics and global politics) 1. Humanitarian intervention Moral and ethical aspects. 2. United States Foreign relations 19891993 Moral and ethical aspects. 3. United States Foreign relations 19932001 Moral and ethical aspects. 4. United States Politics and government 19932001. I. Title II. Series

327.73009049dc22

Chang, Chih-Hann.

Ethical foreign policy? : US humanitarian interventions / by Chih-Hann Chang.

p. cm.(Ethics and global politics)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4094-2548-9 (hardback : alk. paper)ISBN 978-1-4094-2549-6 (ebook : alk. paper) 1. United StatesForeign relations1993-2001Moral and ethical aspects. 2. Humanitarian interventionUnited States. I. Title.

E885.C47 2010

327.117dc22

2011005824

ISBN 9781409425489 (hbk)
ISBN 9781315580265 (ebk)

I wish to express my gratitude to Professors John Dumbrell and John Williams at Durham University for their guidance. I also wish to thank interviewees, including Professor Donald McHenry at Georgetown University, Charles Kupchan and James Goldgeier at Council on Foreign Relations, Gary Schmitt at American Enterprise Institute, Janusz Bugajski at Center for Strategic and International Studies, John Sitilides at Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Tomicah Tillemann who was professional staff member of United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, and Valon Gashi from Kosovo, for their valuable comments.

The possibility of introducing ethics and values into international relations emerged strongly in the post-Cold War era. The 1990s gave rise to a wealth of literature on the notion of ethical foreign policy in the field of international relations. Much recent discussion has focused on the shift from the pursuit of national interests to the emphasis on moral responsibility to protect the rights and interests of others in foreign policy. In particular, the end of the Cold War led to religious and ethnic conflicts in several parts of the world. This soon raised the questions: Where a government engages in genocide against a minority in its territory, what ought we to do about it? and, May we use force of arms to stop human rights abuses in other states? Humanitarian intervention thus became a heatedly debated issue amongst international relations scholars in the post-Cold War period.

The idea of a foreign policy with an ethical dimension challenged the traditional understanding of foreign policy from the classical realist point of view that governmental action should be determined by national interest. While the literature on this has provided critical analyses, it has tended to simply focus on a version of realism, which overlooks the role of ethics in international affairs, lacking empirical analysis of foreign policy decision-making, with relation to ethical values in the post-Cold War period. The purpose of this book is to address this gap in the literature, by exploring ethical realism as a theoretical framework and, in particular, by looking at US humanitarian interventions in the 1990s at an empirical level to analyse an ethical foreign policy in practice.

This book aims to make a contribution to developing a deeper understanding of ethical foreign policy in theory and practice by applying ethical realism as a theoretical framework to evaluate the Clinton administrations foreign policy on humanitarian intervention. There are three objectives of this book. Firstly, it will explore ethical realism and the concept of responsible power. The traditional Nevertheless, it is important to note that ethical realists criticize idealists conceptions of utopianism, but not of morality. They propose the idea of responsible power as an opportunity for balancing the tension between ethics and foreign policy. The concept of responsible power comes from the work of Max Weber. In his classic essay Politics as a Vocation, Weber outlined the central problem of political ethics and proposed the idea of the ethics of responsibility, attempting to balance the tension between ethics and politics. The application of ethical realism to the conducting of international affairs involves the assertion that powerful states should have responsibilities and exercise leadership with ethical obligations. This seems particularly useful as a guiding philosophy for the United States and its role as the only superpower in the aftermath of the Cold War.

Thus, the second objective of this book will be to look at the foreign policies of the United States and its experiences of dealing with humanitarian interventions during the Clinton administration. There are two reasons that US humanitarian interventions in the 1990s provide an ideal arena to study the notion of ethical foreign policy in practice. The first is that following the collapse of the bipolar world in the 1990s, the role of Americas power has been essential. In Stephen Walts description, the United States was in a position of unprecedented preponderance. could effectively promote liberal values, and make a commitment to moral goals in its foreign policy, rather than simply follow considerations of national security against the background of the end of the Cold War.