Prospect: Theory

Owen Harries, retired diplomat and the former editor-in-chief of the National Interest, has an interesting essay entitled “Power and Morals” in the April 2005 issue of Prospect. If IR, or political, theory are your bag, I recommend it. Here is a taste:

The characteristic fault of realism is that it believes the application of a morality to foreign policy to be negligible, if not entirely irrelevant. The characteristic fault of liberalism is that it considers the application of morality to foreign policy to be easy. In fact it is both necessary and difficult. And as the balance shifts between a world vertically divided into sovereign states and a world horizontally connected by interdependence, it is likely to become even more necessary and more difficult.