ABSTRACT
This book is concerned with ways in which political leaders and policy-makers in the post-cold war era have claimed to infuse their actions with moral considerations that go beyond, and help to redefine, the national interest of their respective countries. These claims have materialized in armed humanitarian interventions, human rights conditionalities in foreign aid allocation, changes in military ethics or voluntary attempts to repair the harm caused by predecessor governments. What exactly is controversial about such claims and ambitions? After all, few thinkers today would doubt the very possibility of sustained – and politically relevant – collective moral action in modern society. Almost everybody believes in morally inspired social movements that achieve some good at least sometimes. What remains controversial is the extent to which governments can transmogrify into moral actors in international society. Perhaps there is something inherent in states as representatives of particular, territorially delimited political communities which makes it inevitable that they will continue to play their part as monstres froids in a dangerous world.
