Should Foreign Policy be about Promoting Values in the World or simply about Protecting the National Interest?
It has been said that the foreign policy of a nation state is not built upon abstractions, but that it is rather built on practical conceptions of national interests which arise from some immediate exigency or from the influence of historically outstanding events that have shaped the nation (Beard, 1934 in Shembilku, 2004,, “The Idea of National Interest”). However, in a world that has been influenced by many wars, conflicts and catastrophic events from which hard lessons have been learnt, it has to be asked if foreign policies of nations ought to contain elements that attempt to promote useful ethical and moral values that are thought to be important for the progress of humanity (Donnelly, 2004, Pp. 1 – 16)? This brief essay presents a discussion of this issue.
Details
- Publication Date
- Oct 1, 2011
- Language
- English
- Category
- History
- Copyright
- All Rights Reserved - Standard Copyright License
- Contributors
- By (author): Farrukh Khan
Specifications
- Format