The book is designed to speak, the editors say, to Cook and his fellows—to the foreign policy analyst and policymaker who too often slight the normative dimension. The editors recall a British government minister, Alan Clark, who wrote in his diary about “a creepy official” who briefed him on Chile speaking “all crap about Human Rights. Not one word about the UK interest.” This recalls the order Secretary of State Henry Kissinger scrawled across a memo sent to him from Santiago by Ambassador David Popper during the worst of the Pinochet crimes: “Tell Popper to cut out the poli sci lectures!”

The contributors to this volume begin by offering policymakers three takes on the question “What is an ethical foreign policy?” All three authors' concern is with balancing competing ethical goals, such as, to quote an example given in the introduction to the volume, the goal of suppressing arms sales balanced with the goal of preserving jobs in the arms industry.

But is balancing moral concern against moral concern the essence of the policymaker's problem? Anthony Lake, an academic who combines considerable policy experience with a strong normative bent (and who insisted on giving Kissinger poli sci lectures until Lake quit in disgust at the invasion of Cambodia) offered his own balance theory (“Defining the National Interest,” Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science 34 [no. 2, 1981]: 202–13). In an expansion on a theme of Walter Lippmann's, Lake called on policymakers to maintain a triple balance by asking three questions: Is the policy in keeping with American ideals? Is it in line with American interests? Is it in proportion to American power? If it meets the first and second only, or the first and third, it will not be sustainable. If it meets the second and third, it will not win the support and allegiance of the people of a democracy.

This may be the kind of guide that policymakers would find most useful, yet Lake's performance with regard to Rwanda suggests it is not adequate. Perhaps the most interesting current line of research on ethics and foreign policy centers on determining why experienced and well-intentioned figures like Lake failed so utterly to respond to that crisis. Samantha Power has begun the task with A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide (2002).

The most penetrating of the three normative essays that open the volume is Molly Cochran's “A Pragmatist Perspective on Ethical Foreign Policy.” Her pragmatism, however, is philosophical pragmatism, and there is little here that would speak to the person responsible for policy whose goal is to preserve a commitment to principle. She quotes with approval William James in a letter to a friend in 1898: “The way the country puked up its ancient principles at the first touch of temptation was sickening” (p. 56).

The second portion of the book proposes to treat the application of normative theory by considering such projects as the export of democracy, the promotion of human rights, and the establishment of an international criminal court. These essays concur in endorsing Stanley Hoffmann's dictum that “well ordered crusades begin at home” (Duties Beyond Borders 1982), then speak quite abstractly and not very originally of the lofty immutables: sovereignty, authority, power, rights, and values. These issues have been examined many times, and they are not the concepts policymakers most need to hear discussed once more. Perhaps the contributors do not realize this since none of them has had any experience as a government official involved in policy formulation, according to their brief biographical statements. One author, Karen M. Fierke, does draw explicitly on her experience, but it was as an organizer for the U.S. Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign.

One essay that one might expect to have been overtaken by events after September 11 proves not to have been. Christopher Coker's “The United States and the Ethics of Post-Modern War” proves quite prescient. Surprisingly, it devotes an entire page to Osama bin Laden, referring to the episode in October 1998 when 75 cruise missiles were fired at his compounds in Afghanistan. Coker grants him the title “first sovereign terrorist” for having been attacked by the United States. He rightly finds that in May 2001, when the book went to press, the United States was talking “the language of humanitarianism,” but it “[did] not have the will to adopt a policy that would enforce it” (p. 166). Since then the United States has been talking the language of war to eradicate evil, but one suspects that the main objective behind its operations in Afghanistan has been just what Coker focuses on most: preemptive war to manage risk.

It is perhaps unfair to criticize a book for what it does not discuss, but there are many pressing topics never touched upon. This brief volume contains no treatment of environmental issues, and no mention of bribery and corruption—the ethical issue most likely to suppress the development of an economy and the institutions of civil society that will make for democratic progress. It contains next to no mention of terrorism or of the problem of protecting citizens' rights and the rights of the accused in a democracy stalked by terrorists, nor are refugees, child labor, traffic in women, or slavery treated beyond mere mention.

Turn to this set of essays for an intelligent if largely predictable treatment of some current issues from foreign policy. Do not expect to find incisive guidance for policymakers, but do count on the authors for reasonable and current critiques that, to their credit, never stray either into cynicism or into moral perfectionism.