Foreign Policy and Domination

Abstract

Foreign policy, even when well-intentioned, operates beyond the control of the individuals whose lives it affects, and this makes it suspect from a republican-cosmopolitan standpoint. When a republican state aspires to avoid dominating others, may it still formulate its own foreign policy? This chapter suggests that there are two ways forward for preserving space for independent foreign policy. The first proposal parses categories of foreign policy initiatives according to their dominating effects in order to (cautiously) permit some and prohibit others. The second proposal conceives of a ‘licensing regime’ to signal which states have reliably displayed a robust commitment to non-domination in their dealings with others, and thus which states may be granted more leeway in formulating independent foreign policy than others.