Protecting Human Rights: A Comparative Study (original) (raw)

This collection of essays, by one of the leading advocates of the 'classical' approach to International Relations, provokes, pleases and perplexes in equal measure. It is a substantial contribution to the sub-fi eld of international thought, which ranges beyond the testing of theories that try to explain and predict the workings of the international system to explore its norms and ethics as well as its mechanics. For Robert Jackson, international thought is 'an enquiry into … fundamental ideas and beliefs' and into the 'language and discourse of world aff airs' (p. 1). His concerns in this book are varied: political realism, the work of Martin Wight, the notion of sovereignty, the question of international obligation, the possibility of justice in international relations and John Rawls's Law of peoples. Part commentary and part critique, it also serves as a companionpiece to Jackson's earlier Global covenant (Oxford University Press, 2000), the most substantive statement of his conservative, 'pluralist' vision of international society. Two essays-'Conversations with Thrasymachus' (chapter 2) and 'Lifting the veil of ignorance' (chapter 9)-stand out from the others, not so much for what they say as for what can be gleaned from them concerning the author's own views. The fi rst opens with an attack on realist ethics-or rather on the extreme argument, favoured by Thrasymachus in Plato's Republic, that 'justice is the advantage of the stronger'-and closes with a sympathetic, if slightly mischievous, account of the defence of political prudence Jackson thinks implicit in Thomas Schelling's The strategy of confl ict. Although he fi nds realist ethics 'one-sided and incomplete' (p. 37), the strong attraction he feels towards the classical realists' empiricism and historical sensitivity is clear. In the latter chapter, indeed, Jackson turns these formidable weapons on Rawls's Law of peoples. He complains that the book disregards 'human imperfection', 'knotty moral dilemmas' and the 'tragedy' of international relations; it is too abstract and utopian (p. 158). He objects to Rawls's understanding of the proper relationship of political philosophy to practice, arguing that it is not the scholar's place to provide plans for the improvement of the system of states. Readers will detect, in all of this, strong echoes of earlier 'realist' condemnations of 'idealist' international thought. But the underpinnings of Jackson's own realism are diffi cult to discern. He is no materialist, in the mould of E. H. Carr, nor does he appear to espouse religious belief, as did the so-called 'Christian realists' of the mid-twentieth century. Instead, in justifying his position, he appeals to that treacherous thing 'history'-overlooking, perhaps, Michael Oakeshott's warning not to use it as a 'fi eld in which we exercise our moral and political opinions, like whippets in a meadow on a Sunday afternoon' ('The activity of being an historian', p. 165). Some readers will fi nd fault with certain points of interpretation. Jackson's treatment of Thucydides, whom he takes to have favoured the Athenian case at Melos, will not satisfy those who read his History of the Peloponnesian war as a tragedy, that awful episode serving not to illustrate the 'realism',