Human rights and U.S. policy in central America: a classical realist view

Webster, David Neil (1999) Human rights and U.S. policy in central America: a classical realist view. University of Southampton, Doctoral Thesis.

Abstract

This thesis sets out to examine the relevance of classical realism as a guide for foreign policy, and as a means of dealing with ethics in statecraft. It takes as its illustrative example US policy and human rights in Central America during the Carter and Reagan years. With the broad task of this work one of understanding how morality might be brought into contact with statecraft, it is argued that classical realism's linked devices of the "National Interest," and the Ethic of Responsibility, can perform this function. These are used to describe an ideal standard of realist statecraft, one that then informs the discussion of the Kissinger approach to foreign policy, and the Carter and Reagan policies in Central American.

By looking at each in regard to this proffered realist standard, it is possible to offer a view of where each administration departed from realist foreign policy, and to uncover the role of partisanship and other narrow political concerns in their respective statecrafts. This permits some conclusions to be advanced about the flaws of the American foreign policy process. The objective of this work, then, is to understand the failings in American foreign policy of the period, and to offer some suggestions as to how it might be better made to conform with the vision of realist statecraft that this work proposes. In doing this the continuing value of classical realism, both as a theory of international relations, and as a guide for foreign policy, is underlined.

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