Illiberal and irrational? Trump and the challenge of liberal modernity in US foreign policy

Building on a growing body of literature on the application of Morgenthau’s ethics to post-Cold War US foreign policy, this article applies Morgenthau’s concept of irrationality to Trump’s foreign policy. Based on this application, the article highlights the limit of rationality in Morgenthau’s theoretical analysis. Specifically, the article argues, pace neo-realist critiques of ‘liberal hegemony’, that Trump reveals an empirical puzzle: US foreign policy can be both irrational and illiberal simultaneously in the pursuit of nationalistic universalism. This is the case, the article argues, because nationalistic universalism in Morgenthau’s analysis is not rooted in liberalism per se but the dynamics of liberal modernity. The Trump puzzle thus reveals an on-going tension between rationality and liberal modernity in Morgenthau’s theoretical analysis: rationality offers an insufficient tool to take upon the challenge of liberal modernity from which Trump’s nationalistic universalism stems. This, the article concludes, leaves Morgenthau’s concept of interest ‘defined in terms of power’ open to misappropriation to ends contrary to their original aim: furthering nationalistic universalism, rather than limiting power. Keywords irrationality, Morgenthau, Trump, US foreign polic

Bringing Morgenthau's ethics in: pluralism, incommensurability and the turn from fragmentation to dialogue in IR

Why did IR pluralism end with so many incommensurable camps? (How) can IR be demarcated as a discipline where these camps can find common ground for dialogue without glossing over theoretical pluralism? To answer the first question, the paper argues that Morgenthau’s critique of IR as social science can explain the proliferation of camps in IR pluralism that are incommensurable and cannot engage in dialogue. By transcending the dilemma of politics as highlighted in Morgenthau’s critique of social science, theories today are ideological camps that bestow on morality an ideological function that justifies their powers-that-be that serve particular means/ends hierarchies. This leads to the proliferation of empirical causal analyses that cannot be debated, since they rely on political interests that theory ideologically justifies and offers internal validation. To avoid this problem, the paper answers the second question by proposing to demarcate the discipline through Morgenthau’s concept of ‘interest defined as power’. It argues that demarcating the discipline on the basis of this concept opens room for engaging in dialogue in IR through leaving open the normative debate of means and ends, and thus acts as a bulwark against the proliferation of ideological camps, while promoting theoretical pluralism. Keywords Classical realism, dialogue, fragmentation, incommensurability, Hans Morgenthau, IR pluralis

Debating global justice with Carr: The crisis of laissez faire and the legitimacy problem in the twenty-first century

In Carr’s ethics, there is a link between the rise of the socialised nation and the crisis of laissez faire due to its loss of legitimacy among the lesser privileged. How far is this link in Carr’s ethics relevant today? There are two aspects to this relevance – theoretical and empirical. Theoretically, the article argues, Carr’s analysis is relevant to the statist-cosmopolitan debate on global justice. It highlights the political vacuum in which this debate operates in the absence of a framework of rights and obligations under laissez faire. Consequently, statist and cosmopolitan arguments are implicit in their acceptance of the violence committed by the status quo and lack the legitimacy Carr deemed necessary for international justice in the age of the socialised nation. The article then turns to highlight the empirical relevance of this critique. Here, it argues that the resurgence of nationalism in world politics shows that the problem of legitimacy is especially pressing today. The article thus calls for the debate on global justice to engage more seriously with Carr’s analysis of the crisis of laissez faire – specifically the legitimacy problem it raises in the twenty-first century. Keywords Brexit, classical realism, E. H. Carr, global justice, Trum

Kosovo, Libya and the problem with depoliticisation in the theory and practice of post-cold war humanitarian intervention

The key challenge humanitarian intervention is facing when protecting a universal human rights, is that it allows the intervener that defines its interest in terms of the ethical end, that is, universal human rights, to transcend the political – defined in terms of actors with different socio-political aims – that is, to depoliticise its actions. This act of depoliticisation in humanitarian intervention allows the intervener to ignore the role of power in politics – that is, to mutually adjust and settle the different socio-political aims – and thus not to be enquired about the restraint necessary in the pursuit of its own socio-political aims against other states. The main question of the thesis is: can the act of depoliticisation in humanitarian intervention protect universal human rights in the post-Cold War era? To answer this question, this thesis uses the humanitarian interventions in Kosovo in 1999 and Libya in 2011 as examples, and argues that when the act of depoliticisation in post- Cold War humanitarian intervention attempts to transcend the political, it presents the interests of the intervening actors in a manner that blurs the distinction between what they accept as universal human rights in theory and their practice of humanitarian intervention that presents their own socio-political aims, namely, to advance one mode of the pursuit of human rights that entails their decision to support one ally in the target state, and to confine universal human rights to their rights, while denying it to the alienated party. Having blurred this distinction, when depoliticisation in the theory and practice of post-Cold War humanitarian intervention ignores the role of power in politics, in practice, it justifies the status quo of the exclusionary force that imposes one mode of pursuit of human rights in the target state, based on the socio-political aims of the intervener. It, thus, presents a paradox that undermines the role of humanitarian intervention to protect universal human rights in the post-Cold War era, as states, with their clashing socio-political aims, use force to protect the human rights of their allies rather than universal human rights