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I still haven’t quite got you on track, it seems, as you’re veering around wildly in all sorts of wrong directions (in the process chucking out a few shot-in-the-dark epithets – ‘moralistic’ & ‘anti-American’ indeed. I can say with assurance that you won’t find me falling into either camp). Anyway, allow me one more go.

First, my remarks on unintended consequences are not just echoing your observations. The suggestion was that to separate the end and the means to that end in the way you describe is a fabulous way to massively increase the unpredictability of the consequences of your actions. For example (and here’s the Reagan link), the connections between the US interventions in Afghanistan in the 80s and the current ’situation’.

This separation of end and means is simply not possible in the period of history in which we live. It’s a legacy of the 19th century we need to learn to do without, for very realistic reasons, involving resource depletion, environmental damage, and the results of spreading economic and political instability, amongst others. Any definition of the national interest in these interdependent conditions has itself to be undertaken in the context of an idea of the general interest – as indeed it always is, whether the decisions are being taken by ‘moralists’ or realpolitikers. The difference between these viewpoints lies only in the kind of general interest being posited (I note that Larry made a similar point in the discussion he gives a link to above).

If that is not done, then ‘blowback’ is not just an accident, it is being invited, almost as if there were some kind of self-destructive pathology behind the decision making. And arguably it was always so, only now the nature of the problem is particularly obvious. You might try googling ‘tragedy of the commons’ to get an idea of the logic governing the kind of situation I have in mind.

Your concept of national interest is quaint enough. Such a shame that it is still believed in, tooth fairy style, by the fatheads who rule us.

Anyway, you’re a good chap because you gave me a smile, something that rarely crosses my flinty features these days. You write, with my emphasis added: “to imagine that the national interest can be defined in isolation from the interests of other nations *may once* have had some utility” – you mean, like the whole of recorded history up until now, I assume! The national interest can only *ever* be defined in isolation, however, the means to achieve it must definitely take other nations into account.

Given my insistence that the future can never be foretold then your remark that policy is likely “to result in all kinds of unexpected repercussions” is, if I may say so, an example of ’stating the bleedin’ obvious’! (I should warn you at this point, that exactly the same criterian applies to so-called ‘moralistic’ policies as well. The ‘future’ is an equal-opportunities nut-kicker!)

Finally, by “Reagan” I assume you mean the president who finished off the Soviets and raised the American economy to new heights? If you were looking (for your own anti-American reasons) for a totally dim and inept president, why not pick Jimmy ‘Peanut’ Carter even if he was, er, moralistic!

Finally, to our honest host. Well done, Sir, “tell truth and shame the Devil”, er, but don’t try your luck in politics!

Machiavelli would have had some harsh words to say about such people, but then he was a republican and not a ‘realist’. In a world where the complexity of the economic and political interactions between nations makes the future ever more uncertain, then the last thing anyone needs is a pseudo-Hobbesian worldview in which ‘national interest’ is the sole criterion fo action. And in such a world, robust international institutions of some kind are required.

His “thought experiments” are little more than traps designed to confirm his prejudices about those he wittily refers to as “the trot lot”.

One commenter alluded to the difficulty of defining what actually *is* in the national interest, and of course, the answer is that no-one knows for sure because the future, despite what silly old Karl thought, is unknowable. It is up to ‘princes’ to use their best wit and intelligence to decide but only history will be the final judge. However, if a ‘prince’ tells you that henceforth he will follow a foreign policy based on, say, the ten commandments, or, for example, on what he thinks is best for the people in a foreign country, then one would have to be deaf, dumb, blind and possess no sense of smell in order to vote for him!

‘Rochenko’ tells us that “If DD’s analysis of the way government works is indeed accurate, then I find myself shocked by the naivety of our rulers, and indeed, of all rulers anywhere, anytime” to which I can only add that with one or two rare exceptions (Bismark, Talleyrand, Palmerston, Lord Salisbury, the Reagan/Thatcher partnership) so am I.

“To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”

What this means is that every act of violence that the US army commits in Iraq as a consequence of its unprovoked invasion is a crime. The excuses are irrelevant since the US soldiers should not be there at all.