Abstract

The end of the Cold War unleashed an impressive flow of rhetoric assuring the world that the West would now be free to pursue its traditional dedication to freedom, democracy, justice, and human rights unhampered by superpower rivalry, though there were some—called “realists†in international relations theory—who warned that in “granting idealism a near exclusive hold on our foreign policy,†we may be going too far and might harm our interests. [1] Such notions as “humanitarian intervention†and “the responsibility to protect†soon came to be salient features of Western discourse on policy, commonly described as establishing a “new norm†in international affairs.