mentioned earlier, this is no legal issue as the question of extra-territoriality does not arise with regard to action taken by a State within its territory. The fundamental postulate in the debate is that sovereignty should no longer mean the mere exercise by one State of rights over its territorybut should also mean the right of that State to ensure the safety and security of its citizens as well as the integrity of the State.
Public international law is increasingly becoming different from what it was a few decades ago. It can be said with some justi.cation that international law is the thread which runs through the fabric of international politics and provides the latter with its abiding moral and ethical .avour. Without principles and practices of international law, foreign policy would be rendered destitute of its sense of cooper-ation and become dependent on a nation’s self interest. As President Woodrow Wilson once claimed:
It is a very perilous thing to determine the foreign policy of a nation in the terms of material interests ... we dare not turn from the principle that morality and not expediency is the thing that must guide us, and that we will never condone equity because it is convenient to do so.330
This statement, made in 1950, has great relevance today, when continued progress is being made in technological and economic development and policy decisions of States have far reaching consequences on a trans-boundary basis. Nation States are becoming more interdependent, making decisions made by a particular State in its own interest have a signi.cant negative impact on the interests of other States. Therefore ethics in foreign policy has largely become a construct which combines cultural, psychological and ideological value structures. Within this somewhat com-plex web of interests, decisions have to be made, which, as recent events in history have shown, require a certain spontaneity from the international community. For example, when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, the members of the United Nations chose economic sanctions against Iraq, claiming that war was the last resort to be embarkedupon againstIraq if economic sanctions didnot prove to have any effect. In hindsight, one could argue one way or another, .rstly, as did the United States, that the use of force bore quick results and, on the hand, as did many of.cials in Paris, Moscow, Ottawa and Washington, that the decision to wage war againstIraq was too precipitous as not enough time had been given to economic sanctions to compel Iraq to retreat from Kuwait. The precipitous but quick action taken in going to war with Iraq might be justi.ed by some with the analogy of Britain appeasing Hitler in the 1930s without adopting a more aggressive and perhaps belligerent attitude toward German atrocities. This action, which was later airobi as folly by most political scientists, was applauded and endorsed at that time in the British Parliament.
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