Responsibility to Protect (R2P)

Mass moral atrocities and genocidal tendencies have not lessened with the supposed end of the Cold War. If anything, they have increased.

Few have discussed Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s formative early years of public service prior to joining Biden’s staff, years when our paths crossed.

Realism and the just war ethic both pursue war in certain contexts, so they can appear to be close cousins. But the just war ethic shares less with realism than realism shares with pacifism.

What is the role of moral values in the conduct of foreign relations? Although many answers have been given, three major traditions predominate: realism, idealism, and principled realism.

The international community should renew the responsibility to protect and empower regional organizations to uphold it. Such would be a fitting remembrance of the Rwanda genocide.

In the ceaseless struggle between civilization and barbarism, America has tipped the scales toward civilization, toward freedom and justice. In many ways, it has organized its national life—its economic, military, and moral resources—toward this end. Are we still up to the task?

Determining when and where to serve “the interest of humanity” is not a science. In a broken world, American policymakers must seek the counsel of the heart and the head, aim for the achievable, and choose the least-bad option.

Jean Bethke Elshtain (1941-2013) was an American political theorist, ethicist, and public intellectual who made scholarly contributions to various debates, and especially on the just war tradition.

It is said that victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan. In the case of NATO’s military intervention in Libya six years ago, both sides of the adage seem to apply.