Ethical Realism
by Anatol Lieven & John Hulsman
Published by Vintage Books
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Reviewed by Muhammed Hassanali
Lieven and Hulsman provide a framework for crafting contemporary foreign policy. To buttress their framework they provide historical examples, discuss elements of contemporary American foreign policy, and provide some broad recommendations of what policy makers should focus on. Each of key elements has areas where additional consideration is needed.
The authors look at Presidents Truman and Eisenhower’s policies, extract over-riding principles and apply these principles to contemporary American foreign policy. The conditions during the Cold War are very different from those today. A key question here is that given the differences between the Cold War era and the contemporary one, how relevant are the underpinnings of Cold War foreign policy to our world today?
The authors advocate formulating foreign policy on the following principles: Prudence, humility, study, responsibility, and patriotism. One issue is that the reader is left to define these principles; hence different readers are likely to derive different meanings and advocate differing policies. Another consideration is that the authors do not shed light on what to do if these principles contradict one another within a given policy. Yet another concern is that if one were to accept the Truman-Eisenhower era as a paradigm, then are the generalizations presented here a valid extraction of that paradigm?
Perhaps the most contentious part of this book is the recommendations. Here one has to be mindful that there can be several manifestations of foreign policy that could all be derived from a common set of principles. A framework to determine the relative merits of each specific proposal would be useful, but is beyond the scope of this work. Lieven and Hulsman have different political perspectives and seem to have successfully presented an outline for American foreign policy. Truman and Eisenhower pursued similar foreign policies. Is our pluralistic society today sufficiently cohesive to agree on a common foreign policy?
This book is unlikely to change anyone’s political perspective. It does however ask what we ought to do and how we should go about doing it. While the authors feel this is lacking in contemporary times, upon further reflection, the book raises more questions than it answers.
Armchair Interviews says: A thought provoking book if read between the lines.