Abstract
Realists claim that questions of obligation have little or no place in international relations, which they portray as a world of power politics: raison d’état, realpolitik. Diplomatic and commercial rela- tions between sovereign states, not to mention military encounters and acts of war or intervention, are instrumental activities calculated to advance or defend national interests. Issues of obligation—issues that demand or require acts of performance, observance, or compliance as a matter of duty or responsibility—are confined to states and do not extend across international borders. The state is the terminal political community: there is no community beyond the state. Political obligation is the duty to uphold and abide by the constitution, laws, and regulations of the state. It involves the most fundamental demands the state can lay upon its officials and citizens: allegiance to the constitution, obedience to the law, conscription, taxation, and education are among the most important.1 The notion of international obligation is a flight of the imagination. Worse than that, it is a misunderstanding and misrepresentation of international relations. Sovereign states are not in a position to demand or require acts of performance, observance, or compliance from each other as a matter of duty or responsibility. They cannot bind each other in the same obligatory way they can bind their officials and their citizens—when the state is effectively institutionalized.
In the house of human history there are many mansions.
Isaiah Berlin
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Notes
This pluralist feature of human conduct is explored with characteristic brilliance by I. Berlin, The Crooked Timber of Humanity (New York: Vintage Books, 1992).
See the insightful investigation of the idea in J.R. Lucas, Responsibility (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995).
D.D. Raphael, Problems of Political Philosophy 2nd ed. (London: Macmillan, 1990), ch. 7.
Aristotle, The Politics, rev. ed., tr. T.A. Sinclair (London: Penguin Classics, 1981).
This is the core of a famous definition of sovereignty and law by J. Austin, The Province of Jurisprudence Determined (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
T. Hobbes, Leviathan (Oxford: Blackwell, 1946), ch. 13.
For a general discussion with various points of view see S. Caney, D. George, and P. Jones (eds.), National Rights, International Obligations (Oxford: Westview, 1996).
“Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch,” in H. Reiss (ed.), Kant: Political Writings, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 102–05.
These are usually listed as the primary sources or bases of international law. See M. Akehurst, A Modern Introduction to International Law 6th ed. (London: Allen & Unwin, 1987), ch. 3.
See the critique of this conception by former U.S. senator D.P. Moynihan, On the Law of Nations (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990).
See J.H. Jackson, “Helms-Burton, the U.S. and the WTO,” ASIL Insights (The American Society of International Law) (March 1997).
See D. Hendrickson, Peace Pact: The Lost World of the American Founding (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2003).
G. Schwarzenberger and E.D. Brown, A Manual of International Law (London: Professional Books, 1976), p. 551.
See L. Gross, “The Criminality of Aggressive War,” The American Political Science Review, vol. 41 (April 1947), pp. 205–25.
See R. Tuck, The Rights of War and Peace (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 115–18.
See L. Mulholland, Kant System of Rights (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990).
One of the best discussions is still J.L. Brierly, The Law of Nations, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1936).
See K.T. Jackson, “International Jurisdiction,” in C. Gray, The Philosophy of Law: An Encyclopedia (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1999), vol. I, pp. 431–33.
See E.A. Posner, “Do States have a Moral Obligation to Obey International Law,” Stanford Law Review, vol. 55 (2003), pp. 1909–10.
Quoted in T. Strong, “History and Choices: The Foundations of the Political Thought of Raymond Aron,” History and Theory, vol. 11 (1972), p. 186.
For an excellent discussion and critique see R. Stromberg, “The Idea of Collective Security,” Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 17 (April 1956), pp. 250–63.
M. Wight, Power Politics, 2nd ed. (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1979), pp. 217–18.
Martin Wight, International Theory: The Three Traditions (London: Leicester University Press for The Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1991)
and Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics, 2nd ed. (London: Macmillan, 1995).
M. Donelan, Elements of International Political Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990).
See, e.g. R. Fletcher, The Conversion of Europe: From Paganism to Christianity, 371–1386 A.D. (London: HarperCollins, 1997).
Quoted by J. Bowle, Western Political Thought: From the Origins to Rousseau (London: Methuen, 1961), p. 374.
See W. Bain, Between Anarchy and Society: Trusteeship and the Obligations of Power (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).
See I. Hannaford, Race the History of an Idea in the West (Washington, D.C.: The Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1996).
D. Hay, Europe: The Emergence of an Idea (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1968).
See Ali Mazrui, Towards a Pax Africana (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967).
See J. Jackson Preece, “Ethnic Cleansing as an Instrument of Nation-State Creation: Changing State Practices and Evolving Legal Norms,” Human Rights Quarterly, vol. 20, no. 4 (1998), pp. 817–42.
See J. Jackson Preece, National Minorities and the European Nation-States System (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).
Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (London: Routledge, 1985).
I. Berlin, The Crooked Timber of Humanity (New York: Vintage Books, 1992), pp. 79–80.
See R. Jackson, The Global Covenant: Human Conduct in a World of States (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990).
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© 2005 Robert Jackson
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Jackson, R. (2005). Knots and Tangles of International Obligation. In: Classical and Modern Thought on International Relations. Palgrave Macmillan History of International Thought Series. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403979520_6
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