Liberal Legacies, And Foreign Affairs

Kant, Liberal Legacies, and Foreign Affairs
MICHAEL W. DOYLE
I
What difference do liberal principles and institutions make to the conduct of the foreign affairs of liberal states? A thicket of conflicting judgments suggests that the legacies of liberalism have not been dearly appreciated. For many citizens of liberal states, liberal principles and institutions have so fully absorbed domesticpolitics that their influence on foreign affairs tends to be either overlooked altogether or, when perceived, exaggerated. Liberalism becomes either unselfconsciously patriotic or inherently "peace-loving." For many scholars and diplomats, the relations among independent states appear to differ so significantly from domestic politics that influences of liberal principles and domestic liberalinstitutions are denied or denigrated. They judge that international relations are governed by perceptions of national security and the balance of Power; liberal principles and institutions, when they do intrude, confuse and disrupt the pursuit of balance-of-power politics.
Although liberalism is misinterpreted from both these points of view, a crucial aspect of the liberal legacy is captured byeach. Liberalism is a distinct ideology and set of institutions that has shaped the perceptions of and capacities for foreign relations of political societies that range from social welfare or social democratic to laissez faire. It defines much of the content of the liberal patriot's nationalism. Liberalism does appear to disrupt the pursuit of balance-of-power politics. Thus its foreign relationscannot be adequately explained (or prescribed) by a sole reliance on the balance of power. But liberalism is not inherently "peace-loving"; nor is it consistently restrained or peaceful in intent. Furthermore, liberal practice may reduce the probability that states will successfully exercise the consistent restraint and peaceful intentions that a world peace may well require in the nuclear age. Yetthe peaceful intent and restraint that liberalism does manifest in limited aspects of its foreign affairs announces the possibility of a world peace this side of the grave or of world conquest. It has strengthened the prospects for a world peace established by the steady expansion of a separate peace among liberal societies"
“Kant, Liberal Legacies, and Foreign Affairs, Part 2,” by Michael W.Doyle from Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 12, No. 4 (Fall 1983). Copyright 1983. Reprinted by permission of Blackwell Publishing.
Liberalism has been identified with an essential principle the importance of the freedom of the individual. Above all, this is a belief in the importance of moral freedom, of the right to be treated and a duty to treat others as ethical subjects, and not as objectsor means only. This principle has generated rights and institutions.
A commitment to a threefold set of rights forms the foundation of liberalism. Liberalism calls for freedom from arbitrary authority, often called "negative freedom," which includes freedom of conscience, a free press and free speech, equality under the law, and the right to hold, and therefore to exchange, property withoutfear of arbitrary seizure. Liberalism also calls for those rights necessary to protect and promote the capacity and opportunity for freedom, the "positive freedoms." Such social and economic rights as equality of opportunity in education and rights to health care and employment, necessary for effective self-expression and participation, are thus among liberal rights. A third liberal right,democratic participation or representation, is necessary to guarantee the other two. To ensure that morally autonomous individuals remain free in those areas of social action where public authority is needed, public legislation has to express the will of the citizens making laws for their own community.
These three sets of rights, taken together, seem to meet the challenge that
Kant identified:...