This chapter examines the concept of duties beyond borders and its implications for the practice of foreign policy. More specifically, it considers why states proclaim duties to those beyond their borders as well as the apparent expansion of those duties over the last two decades. After explaining what is meant by duties beyond borders and how it relates to the concepts of sovereignty and cosmopolitanism, the chapter explores how realist, liberal, constructivist, and decision-making theories account for the existence and expansion of these duties. It also describes why states failed to halt the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 and intervened in Libya in 2011, but not in Syria. It also analyses the growing tension between a foreign policy defined by realpolitik and a foreign policy that is increasingly affected and defined by intensifying interdependence in a range of issues and transnational connections between peoples.
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13. Duties beyond borders
Michael Barnett
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33. Humanitarian intervention in world politics
Alex J. Bellamy and Nicholas J. Wheeler
This chapter examines the role of humanitarian intervention in world politics. It considers how we should resolve tensions when valued principles such as order, sovereignty, and self-determination come into conflict with human rights; and how international thought and practice has evolved with respect to humanitarian intervention. The chapter discusses the case for and against humanitarian intervention and looks at humanitarian activism during the 1990s. It also analyses the responsibility to protect principle and the use of force to achieve its protection goals in Libya in 2011. Two case studies are presented in this chapter. The first one looks at Myanmar and barriers to intervention. The second one centres on the role of Middle Eastern governments in Operation Unified Protector which took place in 2011 in Libya.
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17. Middle East Conflicts in the 1980s
This chapter focuses on conflicts in the Middle East during the 1980s. Despite the Camp David settlement, peace remained elusive in the Middle East. An Egyptian–Israeli settlement could neither resolve the conflict between Israel and the Arab states nor bring stability and peace to the region. Anwar Sadat and Menachim Begin had achieved a limited peace for Egypt. Egypt, for its part, had abandoned the myth of Arab unity between the competing states of the region and pursued national interests. However, other conflicts were taking place in the region, including those arising from the Lebanese Civil War, which added to the fundamental failure to deal with the Palestinian Question. The chapter first considers Israel’s invasion of Lebanon before discussing the Arab–Israeli conflict and the Palestinian Question, the Iran–Iraq war of 1980–8, and the accusation of the US, that Libya was a supporter of ‘international terrorism’.
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6. Obama and smart power1
Joseph S. Nye Jr.
This chapter examines Barack Obama’s foreign policy agenda. The Obama administration referred to its foreign policy as ‘smart power’, which combines soft and hard power resources in different contexts. In sending additional troops to Afghanistan, his use of military force in support of a no-fly zone in Libya, and his use of sanctions against Iran, Obama showed that he was not afraid to use the hard components of smart power. The chapter first considers power in a global information age before discussing soft power in U.S. foreign policy. It then explains how public diplomacy came to be incorporated into American foreign policy and concludes by highlighting problems in wielding soft power.