the boisi center interviews no. 31: February 18, 2009 jean bethke elshtain is the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Professor of Social and Polit- ical Ethics at the University of Chicago, and the Thomas and Dorothy Leavey Chair in the Foundations of American Freedom at Georgetown University. She spoke with Boisi Center associate director Erik Owens before participating in a panel discussion on realism, ethics, and U.S. foreign policy. owens: There is a wide assumption driving this, or are they kind of layered can never be fully achieved in the affairs that realism and foreign policy in interna- on when you’d already decided to do of this earth. There can never be a perfect tional relations is aggressively amoral or something anyway for strategic reasons? link between the moral norm and the at least attempts to be so. Could you say So those are all assessments that one has policy and the outcome. So if you try to a word about how accurate that descrip- to make, but you can’t make them unless bring moral norms to complete fruition tion is and in what sense you consider you acknowledge that you can’t just sever in international relations, you’re going yourself a realist? ethical considerations from international to wind up with a moralistic endeavor relations. and something that may invite overreach elshtain: Well, your description of the and triumphalism and some other deep attempt is very accurate. Certainly the problems. The Christian realist position way I was taught international relations consists of different forms of realism, in graduate school was precisely that a but it doesn’t dispense altogether with nation’s foreign policy could not be as- political realism. sessed according to ethical criteria of the sort we usually think of when we think owens: You’ve argued in many differ- of ethics. Rather that there was an inner ent places against utopianism of multiple sort of ethos in the conduct of interna- types in foreign policy. Could you say a tional relations that was driven solely by bit about the dangers of utopianism and power considerations and the articula- where we see it in actual foreign policy tion of something like national interest. practice? Once you start to probe deeply into these elshtain: Well, I think we see it in issues, you discover that it’s really not so a couple of different modes. One very easy to separate out normative concerns common one, nowadays, is simply the of a certain kind, ethical and moral val- arguments being made by people—some ues, from the conduct of foreign policy. in international relations, some in peace If you look at the United States, you can study, some in law—that we can some- see that very clearly—whether it’s the how wind up with a world where we have As to what kind of realist I might be, World War I era or the World War II era, reduced conflict to the vanishing point. there’s a tradition called Christian real- even Vietnam and certainly Iraq. You We can somehow overcome this hangup ism, associated in the United States, with have the articulation of certain moral with the nation state and rise to some Reinhold Niebuhr, the public theologian. norms, very high ideals that are consid- universal or collective level of deci- It holds that you cannot make that split. ered to be or are claimed to be in play. So sion-making. These are really, in a way, At the same time, one of the lessons of one has to assess the activity, the policies, fantasies concocted by people out of their political realism is that there are limits to in light of some of those moral norms. own heads that have very little connec- power as well. That is, a high moral norm How much are the moral norms really tion to political reality at all. The problem 1 the boisi center interview: jean bethke elshtain with these kinds of utopianisms, is that utopian impulse? Furthermore, how does difficult circumstances to get a more it makes the humanly possible work look it relate to this model? responsible, accountable, transparent like nothing at all. The hard work that democratic society. So that makes that elshtain: That’s an interesting ques- diplomats do and the hard work that situation rather different from the end of tion, and it’s a bit of a tough one. Inside various international organizations do to World War I, where you didn’t have these all of the countries in the Middle East, try to ameliorate conditions, to try to stop human rights forces and democracy forc- there are people pushing democracy and the worst stuff from happening, that all es unleashed on the world as we do now. pushing human rights, often very brave looks really second rate when measured people who pay a pretty heavy price for Certainly, as an aspiration, democratic up against this utopian grandeur. doing that. The question is how do we states in the Middle East would be a great To the extent that these people have an respond to those who see themselves as thing if it could happen, by contrast to influence on decision-making, which is democratizing forces in each of these autocratic orders, which human rights the other conduit for utopianism, I think countries and societies? It’s right and it’s being violated systematically. That has it invites what I warned against already, to come, if it will come, over time and in which is this grandiosity and a kind of ways that we cannot foresee now but that moralism. “I embody the moral approach are also consistent with the culture. It has and therefore I can’t be wrong. This is “The problem with to be derived from that culture too. So the moral approach and everybody who that makes it very, very complicated. How criticizes me is somehow immoral or utopianism is much do you stand back and watch? How amoral.” So I think you get those kinds of that it makes the much do you intervene? That’s a delicate dangers in a utopian approach, whether business, to say the least. it’s on a level of argument or on the level humanly possible owens: With regard to your comments of policy. work look like about international organizations and On the level of policy, you’re never going the utopians who think that they can to get someone to say this is utopian. nothing at all. flatten out conflict through the use of However, when you look back and assess international organizations, your most it you can see it. We could take for ex- The hard work recent book is a massive study on the ample Woodrow Wilson’s plan after the that diplomats concept of sovereignty – theological, conclusion of World War I. He thought political and psychological. Could you say you could divide up the old Austro-Hun- do to stop the a bit about whether you think the nation garian Empire into perfect little states state is an inevitable or a natural political with national self-determination, where worst stuff from arrangement? If not, what would be an you had a congruence of the border of a appropriate relationship between person state with a type of linguistic community. happening looks and state, because this relates back to Theoretically that was supposed to ease really second several of the issues you’ve talked about the tensions and the conflicts in Europe. with regards to states in the international Of course, it had quite the opposite effect rate.” community? because you have these small, relatively elshtain: Certainly there’s very little vulnerable states where you always have that’s inevitable, as you know, in the minorities who don’t fit in the ideal of the good thing to do to support them to world of human affairs. The nation state what counts as the nation. You just set the extent that we can. as we know it grew out of a particular the stage for many of the conflicts that configuration of historic forces in Europe, led up to World War II. When people That seems to me rather different from but it has been universalized. It is now want to issue a cautionary note, they al- the notion that there is one model of the universal form that organized politics ways go back to that and say, this is what democracy that can be superimposed on takes, so that the United Nations consists happens when you get a strong moral a culture that has no experience of that of sovereign states, and you must have a vision, and you’re not taking account of kind of society. There is a careful line to recognized sovereignty to be a member. the actual conditions on the ground. walk between a kind of superimposition So you’ve got this tension at the heart of of a certain understanding of democra- owens: Would you argue that the im- the U.N., because to be a sovereign state cy by contrast to working with human pulse to democratize the Middle East is a means you are the judge of your own rights groups, democratizing groups, on case. You can make the determination the ground, who are struggling under 2 the boisi center interview: jean bethke elshtain whether to go to war or not. You do not need U.N. approval. You might want it, but you don’t require it. And so you set the basis for the policy of your own country.