International Ideals and the National Interest

F all men were saints and all women angels, the Marxist ideal of the withering away of the state could doubtless be readily realized. All government is a reflection of sin, at least in its coercive and enforcement functions. Conscience keeps most mortals virtuous and assures conformity to the mores. But the weaker vessels among us are ever tempted to transgress and must be deterred from ways of vice through fear of force and prospect of punishment-and, if vicious, kept confined-by the organized power of the community. Ethics, as translated into law, are thus buttressed by policeman, jury, judge, and jailer to the end that all decent citizens may go about their business in peace, free of the evils of anarchy and lawlessness. These truisms are universally accepted in all ordered societies and are peculiarly sacred in the Anglo-American tradition. They admit of application to the problem of morality and of law and order in the society of nations. The problem itself, however, is the product of a paradox. Moreover, the customary application of the generalizations or principles already referred to is the fruit of an analogy which is ancient, revered, and all but unanimously embraced by the present generation, but nevertheless so false (it will here be argued) as to be misleading and dangerous in the highest degree. The paradox has never been more striking, nor has the analogy ever been more fanciful and hazardous, than in our own time. Both are deserving of the closest scrutiny on the part of all who strive for straight thinking about the confusing interrelationships of ethics and power in the tangled fabric of motives and acts comprising the community of states

Analogy · Epistemology · Ideal (ethics · Law and economics · Lawlessness · Mores · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Sociology · Global Peace and Security Dynamics · Law · Philosophy

• The reality and power of international law

  Open Access•Carmen Chas•Cooperation and Conflict•2024

  Add to list