Interpreting Ethical Foreign Policy: Traditions and Dilemmas for Policymakers

What are the ethics of foreign policy? How do foreign policymakers decide between competing ethics? Could policymakers make more ethical decisions? These questions achieved prominence in the UK context when Robin Cook—then Foreign Secretary—announced in 1997 that British foreign policy should have an ‘ethical dimension’. Subsequent commentary on New Labour's foreign policy would often use the phrase ‘ethical foreign policy’ to disparage the moralistic rhetoric of Tony Blair and Robin Cook. This article utilises interviews with former Foreign Secretaries and Ministers of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to explore why ethics should be so controversial in British foreign policy discourse. Using Mark Bevir's concepts of the ‘traditions’ and ‘dilemmas’ of governance, it conducts an interpretivist analysis of this data; aiming to understand how policymakers posit themselves as ethical agents, define what it means to be ethical, and rationalise their own ethical judgments in policymaking.