If this one-day conference is anything to go by, the conjunction of ‘ethics’ and ‘foreign policy’ continues today to be the conceptual and practical mine-field it has been since the inception of the modern inter-state system. The familiar tension between justice and order in the sphere of international politics played itself out both in the successive presentations given in the course of the day by Onora O’Neill, Rony Brauman, Neil MacCormick, Douglas Hurd and Jonathan Glover, and in the contributions from an audience of over a hundred people drawn from academia, the media, assorted non-governmental organisations and the diplomatic world. Despite the numerous issues left unresolved, one firm conclusion emerged from the meeting: the relation between ethics and foreign policy is a discussion worth having, among other reasons because it is the attempt at reconciling interests and ideals, and the contradictions inherent in this endeavour, which arguably drive contemporary international politics.

Onora O’Neill’s opening lecture focused on the relation between rights and obligations - and by extension, aspirations and capabilities - in the implementation of ethical policies on an international scale. Though pitched at a philosophical level (the speaker is Professor of Moral Theory at Cambridge University), O’Neill was principally concerned with addressing the practical dimensions of extending human rights globally. Two basic claims emerged from these considerations: on the one hand, that rights are best enforced through the existence of corresponding obligations (and that the demands on both should be roughly equal); and consequently, that those (international) institutions responsible for enforcing ethical obligations require the accompanying resources or capabilities. O’Neill set off from an unequivocally cosmopolitan conception of universal rights as a politically empowering ‘rhetoric’ across the world, but proceeded further to criticise the narrow-minded assumption set out in the UN Declaration on Human Rights, that it is sovereign, territorial states which are solely responsible for the implementation of these ethical obligations. For O’Neill, securing and extending human rights across the world requires the recognition that a variety of so-called ‘non-state actors’ (multinational corporations, international NGOs and so forth) also have international moral obligations, thereby extending the reach of ethics beyond that of the foreign policy of states. This prompted the crucial question from the floor regarding the democratic accountability and legitimacy of non-state actors. For independently of whether international non-state actors have sufficient capabilities or not (O’Neill’s chief concern), the prior consideration must surely be whether such actors are subject to democratic scrutiny, and indeed how such actors can and do relate to the established democratic ‘community of fate’: the modern sovereign state.

Interestingly, its was the former director of Médicins Sans Frontières, Rony Brauman, who pressed the ‘democratic deficit’ of non-state actors furthest in his intervention on ‘NGOs: New Actors, Old Games’. For Brauman, the framework of NGO activity in world politics has not yet been properly legitimised and is therefore in many instances politically unaccountable. Indeed, he candidly admitted that many NGOs are ‘not prepared to be criticised’ for their actions, as such criticism is often perceived to be a wholesale attack on the integrity of this ‘third sector’ activity. Citing the example of the food crisis in Ethiopia during the mid-1980s, Brauman illustrated how MSF clashed with other NGOs over the ethics of supporting local authorities who instrumentalised humanitarian assistance to orchestrate mass deportations in that country. Plainly, in these and other similar ‘complex emergencies’ it is very difficult for NGOs and other ‘neutral’ agents to avoid the very real power struggles over authority and legitimacy both within the state and society. Although Brauman had earlier insisted on the absence of a ‘geography of suffering’ and the consequent necessity of treating individuals equally in their shared humanity regardless of distance and context, he also appeared unconvinced about the prospects of radically undermining the preponderance of states in contemporary world politics. In fact, Brauman had begun his talk denouncing the double standards and incompetence of the international community when dealing with successive ‘humanitarian crises’ after 1989, concluding his survey of the international interventions in Iraq, Somalia, Bosnia, Rwanda and Kosovo with the dual claim that the ‘new interventionism is a pure fallacy’ and that in his experience, it is ‘national interests that drive foreign policy’ in these contexts.

With such familiar Realist refrains coming from a representative of ‘global civil society’, the defence of foreign policy ‘pragmatism’ by the former British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd initially came across as a Third Way policy statement. This impression, however, soon dissipated as the former cabinet member regaled the audience with his sharp opinions on the uses and abuses of ethics in international relations - all, it should be said, in a thoroughly engaging and accessible fashion, no doubt honed through recent TV appearances. Hurd’s intervention began with a survey of what he termed ‘idealist’ politicians ranging from Gladstone and Wilson to Blair, thus claiming a lineage of Anglo-Saxon idealism in the ethical pursuit of foreign policy (although he also included Jawaharlal Nehru in this tradition). He then proceeded to suggest that, although ‘increasing decency and humanity in the world’ was a legitimate aspiration of foreign policy, it must be pursued in a ‘pragamatic’ ie. presumably adhoc fashion. Current, ‘principled’ invocations of an ethical dimension to foreign policy run the risk, according the former Foreign Secretary, of being ‘distorted and smothered by the bureaucracy involved in implementing this objective.’ By way of illustration, Hurd poured scorn on the recent instances of states offering apologies for past violations of human rights abroad, while also expressing deep scepticism about the abilities of a putative International Criminal Court carrying out its proposed brief. Although not entirely clear to this reviewer, these statements appeared to buttress earlier views to the effect that, although ‘justice is condition for peace’, such an objective could never be categorical, but rather should be always pursued in the context of very specific circumstance such as, according to speaker, Saddam’s Iraq, post-apartheid South Africa and the contemporary Balkans.

Douglas Hurd’s speech raised predictable charges of inconsistency and double-standards on the part of the audience. However, in a spirited defence of his record and the opinions aired at the conference, Hurd displayed the true colours (some might say the cyniscm) of a professional diplomat by insisting that the foreign policy of states, and that of the UK in particular, is characterised by continuities rather than sharp ruptures from one government administration to the next.

However self-serving, Hurd’s rendition of the relationship between ethics and foreign policy was at all times lively and coherent. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the turgid and inchoate talk by the Scottish nationalist MEP Neil MacCormick on the potentially interesting subject of ‘Intelligence and Ethics’. In principle, the contribution was aimed at addressing the ethical questions raised by the ‘Echelon’ system of ‘communications interception’, and MacCormick was presumably invited in his capacity as member of a European Parliament inquiry into the potential abuses of both individual civil liberties and European trade interests by this system. The speaker, however, confused analysis with anecdote, and as a consequence, at the end of a talk which substantially overran the alloted time, it was difficult to discern the exact contours of the argument presented.

It was left to the final speaker (Jonathan Glover, Director of the Centre for medical Law and Ethics at King’s College London) to put the conference back on track, and partly return it full circle by mounting a philosophical defence of a robust cosmopolitanism. Glover set up an ideal-typical contrast between traditional conceptions of national interest as security, prestige, influence and independence on the one hand, and a broader notion of national interest which might encompass the prevention of wars and actions against genocide, on the other. For the speaker, these two expressions of foreign policy are not incompatible, as it may, for instance, be in a liberal-democratic state’s national interest to promote security through the extension of human rights across the world. By historicising the state, the nation and national identity, Glover contended, the nationalist conceit of a transhistorical, uninterrupted ‘national interest’ is uncovered for what it is: a justificatory myth. He further suggested that although the world today appears as a Hobbesian ‘state of nature’ - with the Pax Americana as its Leviathan - it is possible to envision a more Kantian world where a ‘proper international police force, and a properly funded United Nations’ might address the common objections regarding inconsistency and disproportionality in the international application of moral sanction.

Such conclusions neatly captured the general tenor of the day, where, despite the stated intentions of many speakers, the emphasis on ideal (though not necessarily idealist) thought was not matched by an equal consideration of the actual social structures and processes which throw up many of the tensions and contradictions that exercise any concerned citizen in the world today. For the ‘historicisation’ of national interest which Professor Glover spoke of, could readily be applied to notions of an ‘ethical foreign policy’ and ‘humanitarian intervention’ too: it is surely no coincidence that these concepts and practices have accompanied the triumphal ascendancy of North Atlantic liberal-democracy after the end of the Cold War. In this regard, the fact that only one of the five speakers at this European forum was from outside the British Isles in itself might reflect the geographical limits to the existing formulation of the ‘ethical dimensions’ to foreign policy .

Alejandro Colás teaches international relations at the University of Sussex and is the editor of first review. a.colas@sussex.ac.uk