![]() Despite their origins in a critique of neorealism, rationalist treatments of cooperation, for instance, strip out the moral nature of reciprocity, thereby perpetuating (perhaps inadvertently) the notion of the autonomous sphere. Yet it is hardly only realism that explicitly maintains or implicitly accepts that the structural nature of the international system differentiates anarchic international politics from interpersonal interactions within well-organized societies in a way that makes morality irrelevant to foreign affairs. Down through the centuries, Machiavelli and Machiavellianism have stood for a doctrine which places princes and sovereign states under the rule not of ordinary morality but of the ‘reason of state,’ considered an amoral principle peculiar to the realm of politics.” Footnote 3 As Waltz explains, “A foreign policy based on this image of international relations is neither moral nor immoral but embodies merely a reasoned response to the world about us.” Footnote 1 Morgenthau calls this the “autonomy of the political sphere,” one in which there is no “relevance” or even “existence … of standards of thought other than the political one.” Footnote 2 Most identified with realism, “the idea that power politics are beyond the pale of morality is not new. Under anarchy, ethical considerations must be set aside because morality's restraints hinder the necessary pursuit of egoistic interests through the use of threats and violence. The findings erode notions of IR as an autonomous sphere and upset traditional materialist–ideational dichotomies.Ī frequent theme in international relations (IR) theory is that foreign affairs is an amoral realm where everyday ethical norms know no place. Word embeddings applied to large political and nonpolitical corpora, a survey experiment in Russia, and an in-depth analysis of Hitler's foreign policy thought suggest that individuals both condemn aggressive behavior by others and screen for threats on the basis of morality. Third, foreign policy driven by a conception of international relations as an amoral sphere will be quite rare. Second, state leaders and the public will use moral judgments as a basis, indeed the most important factor, for assessing international threat, just as research shows they do at the interpersonal level. First, it is almost impossible to talk about threat and harm without invoking morality. Our argument has three empirical implications. It is not despite anarchy but because of anarchy that humans have an ethical sense. Evolutionary and moral psychology, however, suggest that morality emerged to promote human success under such conditions. A central theme in the study of international relations is that anarchy requires states to set aside moral concerns to attain security, rendering IR an autonomous sphere devoid of ethical considerations.
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