AS FACTORS IN POLICY MAKING

Through treaties, declarations, and traditional methods of dealing with other states, most governments create abroad certain expectations that future actions will conform with past patterns of behavior. American officals expect that the British will conduct their foreign relations according to certain standards, and when these standards are not met or are violated, both governmental and public protests may ensue. Part of the unfavorable American reaction to the British invasion of the Suez Canal and Egypt in 1956 derived from the widespread expectation that the British did not, as a matter of style and tradition, resolve their international conflicts by military aggression. On the other hand, American policy makers for many years held an "image" of the Soviet government as untrustworthy, deceitful, aggressive, and an unreliable partner to treaties and other international commitments.²¹ When Soviet behavior did conform to this

²⁰ De Visscher, Theory and Reality in Public International Law, p. 98, trans. P.E. Corbett. Copyright © 1957 by Princeton University Press, revised edn. © 1968 by Princeton University Press.

²¹ See for example, Harry S. Truman, Memoirs, 1 (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1955), 320; John R. Beal, John Foster Dulles, 1888-1959 (New York: Harper & Row, 1959), pp. 199ff; James Byrnes, Speaking Frankly (New York: Harper & Row, 1947); Robert Murphy, Diplomat among

Warriors (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1964), pp. 435ff.

П Law and World Opinion in Explanations of Foreign Policy

image, indignation was not so strong, because the behavior was expected and predictable.

Opinions expressed by governments and peoples toward the actions of foreign states do not vary only because of different expectations. There is also the problem of different perceptions by peoples with different experiences. Many forms of Soviet or Chinese behavior that Westerners have considered unethical have been similar to types of behavior their own governments have practiced. The predominant American public "image" of Great Britain is that of a loyal ally, courageous and magnanimous in voluntarily adapting its colonial empire into a free commonwealth of nations. To an African nationalist, however, the concept of Britain arising from his personal experience may be that of a rapacious imperial power that exploited his people, practiced the most blatant forms of discrimination, and suppressed legitimate political movements. The same African, who has no experience with Soviet diplomacy and foreign policy, may look upon the Soviet Union as just another great power that has successfully industrialized in a short period of time. In turn, this "image" of the Soviet Union is not likely to be similar to that held by a refugee from the Hungarian revolution of 1956. Different historical experiences greatly affect our perceptions of reality and our expectations concerning the behavior of other governments. It is unlikely, therefore, that when one nation undertakes efforts of rewards or threats of punishment, its actions will be interpreted in a similar way in different areas of the world.

Aside from obvious cases, such as overt aggression or genocide, it is difficult to believe that such a thing as "world public opinion" exists today, if by that we mean a fundamental and popular consensus as to what constitutes legitimate, legal, or ethical behavior in international relationships. Unlike the European international system of the eighteenth century, where a small cosmo­politan aristocracy possessed similar cultural traits and social values, the people who make judgments on international events today do so from the vantage of diverse traditions, ideologies, and ethical standards. With such diverse values, and therefore perceptions, not only may the people in question differ as to what constitutes moral and immoral behavior, but the meanings they ascribe to a set of commonly perceived facts may be so diverse as to preclude develop­ment of any common worldwide opinion on a situation.

We must also approach cautiously the concept of "world public opinion" as an important factor explaining foreign-policy decisions because often the demonstrations condemning a foreign government's external policies are not spontaneous expressions of attitudes, but organized incidents led by government officials or professional agitators who wish to embarrass the target government for their own purposes. Freedom of the press is not practiced in most countries, and through government restrictions and censorship, citizens of many countries are able to get only their own government's version of a particular set of events. These governments usually characterize events in the light of their own ideologi­cal predilections and foreign-policy interests. Even in those countries where

378 Law and World Opinion in Explanations of Foreign Policy

press freedom is observed, reporting of news may be so slanted by stereotypes and omissions, or by under- or overemphasis, that the people who obtain infor­mation solely from these news sources may express opinions not congruent with the facts of a situation.

What, then, are we to conclude about the role of "world public opinion" and expectations of other governments in the conduct of a government's foreign relations? Because there are historical examples of both the effectiveness and the impotence of foreign opinion as influences on a government's behavior, it is difficult to generalize. However, some conclusions or hypotheses might be suggested. First, most governments are sensitive to the opinions expressed abroad about their policies and how they execute them. Otherwise they would not spend such large sums in trying, through diplomacy and propaganda pro­grams, to create favorable impressions abroad. But they are not equally sensitive to all sources of opinion. Where, for example, perceptions of reality vary greatly, the government being condemned will probably not count hostile opinions as important. If the Soviet Union characterized American intervention in South Vietnam as imperialism and aggression, this was so different from the American government's understanding of the situation that Soviet hostility would probably be discounted. Also, governments are no doubt much more sensitive to opinions expressed by their closest friends and allies than those emanating from nonin-volved or hostile countries. Similarly, they are more concerned with conforming their actions to their allies' expectations than to those of states with which they are not so directly involved.

Second, most governments are concerned with their prestige, an impor­tant, if intangible, aspect of their diplomatic effectiveness. No government could anticipate with pleasure a resolution in the General Assembly condemning its actions abroad. But in some crises, policy makers place such high value on achieving or defending their objectives that they are willing to break commit­ments, violate rules to which they normally adhere, and, in short, follow strictly national imperatives. In many other instances, policy makers anticipate the reac­tions of other governments and choose policy alternatives that are least likely to meet with hostile reactions. We can cite cases where resolutions in interna­tional organizations both failed and succeeded in persuading governments to observe legal and moral obligations; it is more difficult to know of all those cases where governments did not choose a particular course of action because their policy makers anticipated unfavorable responses abroad. If we conceive of "world public opinion" as being both the spontaneous and the organized expressions of attentive publics on particular situations, often communicated through propaganda channels, it can be an effective restraint on policy, provided that there is some agreement among the publics, that the attitudes are also expressed by friendly governments and are not merely the expected hostility of unfriendly states, and that defiance of those attitudes would lower a state's prestige and diplomatic influence.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Anand, R.P., New States and International Law. Delhi, India: Vikas Publishing

House, 1972. Bowie, Robert R., Suez 1956: International Crises and the Role of Law. New York

and London: Oxford University Press, 1974.

Bozeman, Adda, The Future of Law in a Multicultural World. Princeton, N.J.: Prince­ton University Press, 1971. ---------, "Law, Culture and Foreign Policy: East versus West," Atlantic Community

Quarterly, 12 (1974), 219-32. Cohen, Jerome, and H. Chiu, People's China and International Law. Princeton,

N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1974. Cohen, Raymond, International Politics: The Rules of Game. (New York and London:

Longman, 1981). Corbett, Percy E., Law in Diplomacy. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,

1959. De Visscher, Charles, Theory and Reality in Public International Law, trans. Percy

E. Corbett. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1957. Falk, Richard A., Law, Morality and War in the Contemporary World. New York:

Praeger, 1963. ---------, Legal Order in a Violent World. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,

1968.

---------, "The Reality of International Law," World Politics, 14 (1962), 353-63.

Fitzmaurice, Gerald G., "The Foundations of the Authority of International

Law and the Problem of Enforcement," Modern Law Review, 19 (1956),

1-13. Franck, Thomas M., "Who Killed Article 2 (4)? or: Changing Norms Governing

the Use of Force by States," American Journal of International Law, 64 (1970),

809-37. Henkin, Louis, How Nations Behave: Law and Foreign Policy, 2nd ed. New York:

Columbia University Press, 1979. Higgins, Rosalyn, The Development of International Law through the Political Organs

of the United Nations. London: Oxford University Press, 1963. ---------, "The Place of International Law in the Settlement of Disputes by the

Security Council," American Journal of International Law, 64 (1970), 1-18.

-, "Policy Considerations and the International Judicial Process," Interna-

tional and Comparative Law Quarterly, 17 (1968), 58-84.

Hoffmann, Stanley, "International Systems and International Law," World Poli­tics, 14 (1961), 205-37.

Kaplan, Morton A., and Nicholas de B. Katzenbach, The Political Foundations of International Law. New York: John Wiley, 1961.

Korff, Baron S.A., "An Introduction to the History of International Law," American Journal of International Law, 18 (1924), 246-59.

380 Law and World Opinion in Explanations of Foreign Policy

Levi, Werner, "International Law in a Multicultural World," International Studies

Quarterly, 18 (1974), 417-49.

---------, Law and Politics in the International Society. Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publi­cations, 1976. McDougal, Myres S., and Florentino P. Feliciano, Law and Minimum World

Public Order: The Legal Regulation of International Coercion. New Haven, Conn.:

Yale University Press, 1961. Northedge, F.S., "Law and Politics Between Nations," International Relations,

1 (1957), 291-302. Scheinman, Lawrence, and David Wilkinson, eds., International Law and Political

Crisis: An Analytic Casebook. Boston: Little, Brown, 1968. Stone, Julius, Legal Controls of International Conflict: A Treatise on the Dynamics of

Disputes and War-Law. New York: Holt, Rinehart 8c Winston, 1954. Young, Oran, "International Regimes: Problems of Concept Formation," World

Politics, 33 (April 1980), 331-56.

Ethics

In Explanations

Of Foreign Policy

In the past, much of the public and scholarly debate on the place of ethics in a society's foreign relations has assumed that policy makers have a choice between posing as "realists" or "moralists"—that ethical restraints are, in a sense, volun­tary or optional. There is, in fact, an intellectual tradition in American diplomatic history reflecting the realists' and moralists' approaches to foreign policy. The moralists often list among their heroes Jefferson, Wilson, Hull, and some lesser figures; Hamilton, Calhoun, and Theodore Roosevelt are often cited as expo­nents of a realist's approach to foreign relations. Looking at the speeches— although not the actions—of these men, one can see the distinction between the two approaches. In the early 1790s, for instance, Jefferson and Hamilton conducted a debate over the young republic's obligations to revolutionary France. Jefferson claimed that the United States was committed to assist the French in their wars because the Franco-American alliance signed during the War of Independence was still in effect. He asserted that a country had to meet its commitments even if it was not in its direct interest to do so. Hamilton claimed the contrary, arguing that a nation's self-interest can be its only guide to policy. One cannot, he suggested, apply ethical principles to problems of foreign policy.

Regardless of historical context, commitments to self-interest or ethical principles have, to most observers, appeared incompatible. A clear expression of this supposed incompatibility can be found in one of Woodrow Wilson's campaign speeches, when he claimed that:

382 Ethics in Explanations of Foreign Policy

It is a very perilous thing to determine the foreign policy of a nation in the terms of material interests. . . . We dare not turn from the principle that morality and not expediency is the thing that must guide us, and that we will never condone iniquity because it is most convenient to do so.¹

The difficulty with this sort of view is that it oversimplifies reality. Both moralists and realists assert that there is a choice between following policies of self-interest and those of principle. The moralists imply that pursuit of self-interest at the expense of principle leads to immoral, or amoral, diplomatic and military behavior. The realists reply that self-interest, when prudently pur­sued, is ethically justifiable in itself, and that the pursuit of ideals only causes great ideological crusades that end in tragedy. Some would add, quoting Machia-velli, "A man who wishes to make a profession of goodness in everything must necessarily come to grief among so many who are not good."² A review of diplomatic history would not support such extreme views of reality. It may be true that in Machiavelli's day, typical forms of diplomatic conduct were notori­ously low when judged by today's standards. Diplomats commonly lied, and many took their own cooks abroad for fear that local servants would poison them. The record of assassination, intrigue, and duplicity in Renaissance diplo­macy is well documented.

It is undoubtedly true that continued progress in technical and economic development has made it possible for policy decisions to have ever-greater conse­quences, good and bad, on the lives of ordinary citizens. And as nation-states become more interdependent, the decisions made by one government to protect its interests can have considerable negative impact on the affairs of other societ­ies. Ethical knowledge or moral norms, unlike technical knowledge, are not necessarily additive. It has never been demonstrated that knowledge of past history makes people better or worse. By any standards, Hitler's policies were more evil than those of Prussian monarchs. All we can suggest is that the potential for doing harm to large numbers of people is greater today and that policy decisions may have greater impact on more people than in the past. But explana­tions of foreign policy that claim that all statesmen are immoral, concerned only with their own power and prestige, and indifferent to the consequences of their actions are surely not warranted by facts. To condemn policy makers as a group overlooks the fact that in their values and moral predispositions, they are probably a fairly representative sample of the educated people in the world. We could not deny that often their calculations are wrong, that they frequently look only to the short run and fail to analyze the long-run impacts of their decisions, or that they often have a propensity to dismiss information that does not fit with their favorite theories or values. Yet are not all people guilty of these shortcomings? This is not to argue that publics should avoid

¹ Quoted in Hans Morgenthau and Kenneth W. Thompson, Principles and Problems of Interna­tional Politics (New York: Knopf, 1950), p. 24.

² N. Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. Luigi Ricci, rev. by E.R.P. Vincent (London: Oxford University Press, 1935), Chap. 15.

383 Ethics in Explanations of Foreign Policy

criticism of their leaders. Rather, it is to suggest that policy makers are probably no better or worse, from an ethical point of view, than their compatriots. They are in a unique position, however, to make decisions that will have adverse consequences on their own citizens and people all over the world.

Consider, too, that the best of motives may not guarantee that the conse­quences of policy will do "good." Decisions taken to implement great moral principles may lead to disastrous consequences just as easily as decisions made in the light of selfish interests. As a presidential candidate, Woodrow Wilson could afford to say that morality must precede expediency; but later, in office, he found that the practical application of moral principles could lead to severe injustices. His conduct of relations with Mexico in 1914 and with other govern­ments during the negotiation of the peace settlements following World War I certainly reveals that he was capable of being expedient when it served either American commercial or diplomatic interests or even his personal political for­tunes. In fact, the relationship between interests, policy, and ethics is very compli­cated; we can do well to begin the analysis by rejecting the simple dichotomy between expediency and morality.

ETHICS, MORALITY,

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