Agency and Ethics: The Politics of Military Intervention

Notes

Notes CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1. For the most hostile response, see Spitz 1959. For an analysis of the controversy, see McClure 1995. 2. For a representative sample, see Benyabib 1996, Bowen-Moore 1989, Bradshaw 1989, Canovan 1974, Gardner 1990, Hansen 1993, Honig 1995, Isaac 1996, May 1996, and Villa 1996. 3. Although she did not avoid thinking. Her work, The Life of the Mind (1978) is an examination of two aspects of human life, thinking and willing. Her lectures on Kant’s theory of judging, published posthumously (1982) is the third element of what she considered to be the essential functions of the mind. 4. Interestingly, this “common world” does not only arise from action but also from work, which creates physical objects that persist beyond the individual lives of persons, giving the world a permanence necessary for us to live. But, although work creates this common world, it is also affected by political action. 5. Arendt herself wrote very little on international relations, at least as I am considering it here. Her writing certainly addresses many important themes of global politics, such as human rights, refugees, and political violence. But she does not, as far as I know, explore the parallels between persons and states as political agents. 6. See Morgenthau 1962 and Arendt’s letters to Karl Jaspers in Kohler 1992. In both of these works the authors deal with the question of Germany after World War II, the role of Israel for Jews, and the superpower competition between the United States and the Soviet Union. 7. A Hegelianism shared by others in the classical realism school; see Liska 1990 for a good example. 207 8. In fact, Morgenthau concludes Politics Among Nations with an analysis of diplomacy. Rarely do interpretations of Morgenthau address this aspect of his work that I find to be the most important. 9. Arendt might have raised an objection to this characterization of the diplomat as the embodiment of certain national ideals. Her description of government by bureaucracy as part of totalitarianism (Arendt 1968: 244–45) raises important questions about the role of government representatives . My understanding of the representative is not the same as Arendt’s bureaucrat, although there could well be some overlap. Rather than guess at how Arendt would read my ideas at this point, I prefer to leave this as an unresolved tension in the text. I am indebted to Paige Arthur for raising this issue. 10. See Pocock 1991 for a similar argument concerning Europe and its inability to act as a coherent agent without a narrative history to support such actions. 11. The national purpose serves a further role. By defining an action like intervention in terms of a moral vision derived from a shared historical experience, the national purpose gives meaning to the lives of citizens in a way few other articulations can. In domestic politics, the values and meanings of a country’s purpose are constantly contested. But in foreign affairs, a nation is able to celebrate its identity and, in fact, assert that identity in relation to others. This celebration of national identity returns us to Rienhold Niebuhr’s interpretation of international politics, for it is in such moments of assertion that Niebuhr saw the inability of the national community to coexist with other national communities (Niebuhr 1932). More recent work in international relations theory has also addressed the ways in which foreign policy founds and sustains the nation in various ways (Campbell 1992). 12. The concept of a language game is borrowed from Ludwig Wittgenstein (1958). For a more extensive use of Wittgenstein’s ideas to understand intervention, see Lang 1996. 13. But see Isaac 1996 for an alternative view on Arendt as supportive of human rights. 14. See George 1979 and Eckstein 1975 for further explanation of the case study approach. 15. What I am calling “Wilsonian” here should not be seen as simply American. Many of the idealist notions that helped shape the League of Nations originated in Great Britain, especially the activities of Lord Robert Cecil. 16. Cf. Kratochwil and Lapid 1996 and Barkin and Cronin 1993 for attempts to address this failure. 17. I am indebted to William Connolly for this formulation. 208 Notes CHAPTER 2: INTERVENTION IN RUSSIA 1. Two other powers involved in the intervention were the French and the Japanese. While their roles were significant in different theaters (Japan in Siberia and France in...