Abstract

The mere fact that this question can be raised is in itself a small revolution. We were accustomed to wondering: “Does the Right have a monopoly on foreign policy?” or “Is the Left even capable of having one?” The Left has always been uncomfortable with international relations. Has it not been supposed by its very nature to be attached to themes of peace and to rhetorical transparency and is foreign policy not the domain, if not of war, at least of the risk or the threat of war; if not the domain of lies, at least that of duplicity and guile; if not the domain of rejection of commitments, at least that of flexibility and unpredicability?