Ethics, Liberalism and Realism in International Relations

This book explores the complex issue of international ethics in the two dominant schools of thought in international relations; Liberalism and Realism.

Both theories suffer from an inability to integrate the ethical and pragmatic dimensions of foreign policy. Liberal policy makers often suffer from moral blindness and a tendency toward coercion in the international arena, whilst realists tend to be epistemic sceptics, incorporating Nietzscheā€™s thought, directly or indirectly, into their theories. Mark Gismondi seeks to resolve the issues in these two approaches by adopting a covenant based approach, as described by Daniel Elazarā€™s work on the covenant tradition in politics, to international relations theory.

The covenant approach has three essential principles:

• policy makers must have a sense of realism about the existence of evil and its political consequences
• power must be shared and limited
• liberty requires a basis in shared values.

Ethics, Realism and Liberalism in International Relationswill be of interest to students and researchers of politics, philosophy, ethics and international relations.