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15 Ratio Juris 1 (2002)

handle is hein.journals/raju15 and id is 1 raw text is: Ratio Juris. Vol. 15 No. 1 March 2002 (1-15) Foreign Policy, Rationality and Morality FELIX E. OPPENHEIM Abstract. To determine the relevance of judgments of rationality and of morality in foreign policy decisions, it is necessary to provide a value-neutral definition of the national interest. This makes it possible to ascertain, in principle, whether a given governmental foreign policy decision is rational with respect to this goal, in turn a necessary means to any government's ultimate purposes. While it is pointless to judge the pursuit of the national interest itself morally right or wrong, moral judgments are relevant to policies and goals compatible with the national interest. However, moral principles are often invoked to justify the pursuit of this intermediate goal. An empirical definition of the concept of the national interest (Section 1) makes it possible to formulate judgments of rationality about a govern- ment's national interest decisions (Section 2) and to determine the area of relevance of moral judgments in this area (Section 3). Moral principles often function as disguise for national interest policies (Section 4). The views I shall propose might be categorized as Realism (often capital- ized),' still the most powerful theory of international politics (Grieco 1993, 118), but I shall indicate that they differ in important respects from the theories which generally go under that name. 1. The Concept of the National Interest Writers and politicians tend to use the national interest to characterize whatever foreign policy they happen to favor, and special interests often masquerade as national interest. It has been contended that the value-laden character of the concept makes it difficult to employ it as a tool for rigorous investigation (Rosenau 1968, 34) in the area of foreign policy. It seems to me possible to provide a descriptive, value-free definition of this notion. To do ' The distinction between Realism and Neo-Realism is not relevant to this study. © Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2002, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 lJF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

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