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© by John Arkelian

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“Making Room for Moral Responsibility in Foreign Policy”

On February 9, 2021

© By John Arkelian

How we see, understand, and interact with the world says a great deal about us – as individuals and as nations.  In the realm of political affairs, principle has long taken a distant backseat to power politics.  The term of art for that approach is “realpolitik.”  It predicates policy and action based on practical objectives rather than abstract principles.  Its adherents scoff at treating ideals as the basis for national policy, in the domestic or foreign sphere, and instead claim a dubious pride in dealing with the world as it actually is, rather than as it ought to be.  In truth, realpolitik is the dominant organizing principle for human political affairs.  But, must it ever be so?

The answer is no.  There is another way, a way based upon shared moral responsibility and the eminently practical consideration that no man is free unless and until all men are free.  Václav Havel, Czechoslovakia’s playwright and dissident turned first post-communist president, said it best:  “One can imagine a foreign policy… that demonstrably does not merely pursue the selfish interests of a country, but instead displays a feeling of common responsibility for the fate of all human society, its freedom, its plurality, and its life in peace.”  Accepting a shared moral responsibility for the world means rejecting the notion that one nation (or group of nations) can be free, prosperous, and secure while others are deprived of those secular blessings.

See “Making Room for Moral Responsibility” at: https://artsforum.ca/ideas/the-wide-world

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