The Ethical Imperatives Of Foreign And Defence Policy

摘要

In this article I seek to set out the bare bones of an argument to show how, as participants in the practices of international relations, we cannot but be involved in making decisions about ethical matters. This is true in foreign policymaking generally and also in the making of defence policy. It applies when thinking about strategy and when thinking about tactical issues. In what follows I shall also give a brief outline of the kind of ethical engagements that are called for in these fields of action. Doing these things in a comprehensive way would require book length treatment.1 In order to condense the argument here I shall produce a number of propositions, each of which I shall defend briefly.