Eureka

Does Machiavelli support Liberal Interventionism? After its inception in the 1980’s, the principle of liberal intervention has now become widely accepted and practiced by dominant (democratic) states and international organizations—such as the United Nations and North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The deployment of peacekeeping forces, armed forces or any foreign policy geared towards intervening in the domestic affairs of state in conflict have become frequently practiced by dominant democratic states such as the United States of America, France, United Kingdom or even UN. Although intervention as it is explicitly manifested by crossing borders is already understood as a violation of state sovereignty, states have become no longer reluctant to engage in such act for the sake of promoting human rights. As the principle of ‘liberal intervention’ has already been established in the 1980’s by Paris-based intellectuals—Mario Bettati, an international law professor and physician-activis...

As one of his profound works, The Republic manifest Plato’s proposal of an ideal society. Notwithstanding the emphasis on man, it presented justice as a “‘universal principle’ laid down at the foundation of the commonwealth” (Ebenstein 2000, p. 50). Hence, the focal discussion of The Republic revolves around questions on justice—‘what is it and why one should be just’. However, going beyond Plato’s ideas, there are also contemporary ideas on justice—for which some stand in contrast with the kind of justice purported in The Republic, such as Rawls’ Theory on Justice and Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice. As to substantiate his own theory, Plato presented the conventional theories of justice for which he all rejected. These were represented on the views espoused by Cephalus—that “justice means honesty and rendering what is due to gods and men”, Polemarchus—that “it is helping one’s friends and harming one’s enemies”, Thrasymarchus—that it serves the interest of the stronger, and Glauc...