1 Wheeler, N., N. and Dunne, T., ‘Good International Citizenship: A Third Way for British Foreign Policy’, International Affairs, 74:4 (1998), pp. 847–870CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Smith, Karen E. and Light, M., Ethics and Foreign Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Chandler, David and Heins, Volker, Rethinking Ethical Foreign Policy (London: Routledge, 2006)Google Scholar ; Chatterjee, Deen K. and Scheid, Don E., Ethics and Foreign Intervention (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).Google Scholar

2 Rare exceptions include: Kille, K. J., The UN Secretary General and Moral Authority (Washington D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2007)Google Scholar ; North, Richard D., Mr Blair's Messiah Politics: A story of inspired government, 1997–2007 (London: Social Affairs Unit, 2006).Google Scholar Robert H. Jackson's essay ‘The Situational Ethics of Statecraft’ advocates a return to analysing the virtues of leaders in Nolan, C. J., Ethics and Statecraft: The Moral Dimension of International Affairs (London: Praeger, 2005), pp. 21–38.Google Scholar Its title is rather confusing in that situationists in other disciplines, especially social psychology, are those who emphasise external factors on choice outcomes rather than individual character traits. Jackson deploys the term to note the specific moral constraints under which statesmen and women operate. This article places greater emphasis on the individual as an autonomous moral agent. Michael Walzer seems to move towards a psychological approach to ethics in his chapter ‘The Divided Self’ in Thick and Thin: Moral Argument at Home and Abroad. However, he does not make explicit how internal ethical conflicts can be analysed by other actors. Lebow, Richard Ned does discuss virtue in his recent book A Cultural Theory of International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).CrossRefGoogle Scholar However, this is more a theory of motives than an exploration of the character traits of leadership per se.

3 Hill, C., ‘What is to be done? Foreign Policy as a site for Political Action’, International Affairs, 79:2 (2003), pp. 233–255.CrossRefGoogle Scholar One writer sees the end of the Cold War as bringing forth an era in which ‘the world was deeply plunged in “ethical delirium”’ (Badiou, 2002, as cited in P. Cunliffe, ‘Poor Man's Ethics: Peacekeeping and the Contradictions of Ethical Ideology’, essay in Chandler and Heins (2006), p. 71.

4 Kampfner, J., Blair's Wars (London: Free Press, 2004)Google Scholar ; North (2007), p. 28; Chandler and Heins (2006), p. 55; Danchev, A., ‘Tony Blair's Vietnam: the Iraq War and “special relationship” in historical perspective’, Review of International Studies, 33:2 (2007), pp. 189–203.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Williams, P., British foreign policy under New Labour, 1997–2005 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2005), p. 229, fn. 28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Erskine, T., ‘Locating Responsibility: The problem of moral agency in International Relations’, essay in The Oxford Handbook of International Relations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).Google Scholar

7 Smith, S., Foreign Policy Is What States Make Of It: Social Construction and International Relations Theory', essay in Kubalkova, V., Foreign Policy in a Constructed World (London: M.E. Sharpe, 2001), p. 38.Google Scholar

8 Wæver, O., ‘Resisting the Temptation of Post Foreign Policy Analysis’, essay in Carlsnaes, W. and Smith, S., European Foreign Policy, the EC and Changing perspectives in Europe (London: SAGE, 1994), p. 265.Google Scholar

9 The first international arrest warrant of a serving Head of State was issued on 4 March 2009 by the International Criminal Court against Omar Hassan Ahmad Al Bashir, President of Sudan. See also Meernik, J., ‘Victor's Justice or the Law?: Judging and Punishing at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, 47:2 (2003), p. 151CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Roach, S., Politicizing the International Criminal Court (Plymouth: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006)Google Scholar ; Zhou, Han-Ru, ‘The Enforcement of Arrest Warrants by International Forces’, Journal of International Criminal Justice, 4 (2006), pp. 202–218.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 Kant famously advanced the notion of the ‘categorical imperative’ – that we should act such that it may be willed as a universal law. In other words, we must consider all actions as establishing a precedent and make sure that we would accept similar behaviour from other actors in similar situations (2002), pp. 33–7.

11 For a critique of this view see: Brown, C., ‘On morality, Self-interest and Foreign Policy’, Government & Opposition (2002), pp. 173–189.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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15 See Payne, R. A., ‘Persuasion, Frames and Norm Construction’, European Journal of International Relations, 7:1 (2001), pp. 37–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 The most prominent recent proponent of this view is Singer, Peter, see Practical Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).Google Scholar

17 The Bush Doctrine could be seen as an example of the ideological variant, see Jervis, R., ‘Understanding the Bush Doctrine’, American Foreign Policy: Theoretical Essays (London: Pearson Longman, 2005).Google Scholar

18 Brown (2002).

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21 This is not to ignore the extensive work being done on how individuals make foreign policy decisions (See Stein, J. G., ‘Foreign Policy Decision Making: Rational, Psychological, and Neurological Models’, essay in Smith, S., Hadfield, A. and Dunne, T. (eds), Foreign Policy: Theories, Actors, Cases (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007)Google Scholar and Hudson, V., Foreign Policy Analysis: Classic and Contemporary Theory (Plymouth: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007)Google Scholar for full bibliographies). But, to conceive of individuals as explicitly moral agents provides a different flavour to the discussion, encompassing emotional and value-laden responses to policy problems and colouring all material relations with explicit judgments about right and wrong. Renewing our attention to individual responsibility is also in accordance with developments in international law, from Nuremburg to the International Criminal Court, that refuse to accept the notion that context can explain and excuse immoral behaviour.

22 Mapel, D. R., ‘Prudence and the Plurality of Value in International Ethics’, Journal of Politics, 52:2 (1990), p. 450.CrossRefGoogle Scholar In The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005), Michael Ignatieff argues: ‘No society can avoid official crimes and brutality unless [a] sense of responsibility is widely shared among public officials. Rules and procedures are not enough. Character is decisive’, p. 22.

23 Watson, G. W., Freeman, R. E. and Parmar, B., ‘Connected Moral Agency in Organizational Ethics’, Journal of Business Ethics, 81 (2008), pp. 323–341.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24 Ibid., p. 324.

25 Martha Nussbaum specifically rejects Virtue Ethics as a separate form of moral inquiry as both Kantians and consequentialists often discuss virtue (1999). However, the primary focus of these approaches is not the internal moral psychology of the decisionmaker but the external forces acting upon him/her.

26 See Brown, C., Nardin, T. and Rengger, N., International Relations in Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

27 ‘No end of a lesson: Vietnam and the nature of moral choice in foreign policy’, essay in Nolan, C., Ethics of Statecraft: The Moral Dimension of International Affairs (Westport, Conn: Praeger, 2004), pp. 75–93.Google Scholar

28 McDowell, J., ‘Virtue and Reason’, essay in Crisp, R. and Slote, M. (eds), Virtue Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 141.Google Scholar

29 MacIntyre, A., After Virtue, 3rd edition (Kings Lynn: Biddles Ltd, 2007), p. 148.Google Scholar

30 Swanton, C., Virtue Ethics: a pluralistic view (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31 As cited in Swanton (2003), p. 24.

32 S. Wolf, ‘Moral Saints’, essay in Crisp and Slote (2006), pp. 79–98.

33 Gismondi, M., Ethics, Liberalism and Realism in International Relations (London: Routledge, 2007), p. 165.Google Scholar

34 MacIntyre (2007), p. 154.

35 The assumption of individual agency in foreign policy is vital if virtue ethics is to be applicable to this sphere. As John McDowell notes: if we are to think of virtue as guaranteeing action, virtue must consist not in the sensitivity alone but in the sensitivity together with freedom from such obstructive states”, (2006), p. 143, fn. 4.

36 Swanton (2003), p. 19.

37 MacIntyre (2007), p. 190.

38 MacIntyre (2007), p. 194.

39 MacIntyre (2007), p. 185.

40 A Catholic Archbishop recently classified the following as sins: Environmental pollution; Genetic manipulation; Accumulating excessive wealth; Inflicting poverty; Drug trafficking and consumption; Morally debatable experiments; Violation of fundamental rights of human nature, see: {http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/ethicalliving/2008/03/have_you_sinned_today.html}.

41 North (2007), excuses Tony Blair's emphasis on passion rather than reason because ‘He wasn't to blame for the zeitgeist which formed him and which he read so well’, (p. 19). Nevertheless, if his actions are reinforcing this to the point that misjudgements are made then we can perhaps see his behaviour as morally culpable.

42 Milgram, S., Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View (London: Pinter & Martin, 2005).Google Scholar

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44 Arjoon, S., ‘Reconciling situational social psychology with virtue ethics’, International Journal of Management Reviews (2007), pp. 1–21Google Scholar . The implications of these experiments have been debated vigorously from a range of perspectives, see Miller, C., ‘Social Psychology and Virtue Ethics’, The Journal of Ethics, 7:4 (2003), pp. 365–392.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

45 For evidence to support this, see Hartman, E. M., ‘Socratic Questions and Aristotelian Answers: A Virtue-Based Approach to Business Ethics’, Journal of Business Ethics, 78 (2008), p. 323.CrossRefGoogle Scholar On the other hand, even experts may succumb to the negative consequences of career and personal pressures, as acknowledged by Phillip Zimbardo, architect of the infamous Stanford prison experiment. Zimbardo concedes that he encouraged an evil situation to persist to an unacceptable stage. ‘The Lucifer Effect’ (London: Rider Books, 2007), p. 173. He has since argued in favour of developing moral reflection and celebrating heroism (ibid).

46 Merritt, M., ‘Virtue Ethics and Situationist Personality Psychology’, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 3 (2000), pp. 365–383, 374.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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48 Merritt (2000), p. 381. In support of this, one could offer Hannah Arendt's observation that ‘the one common denominator uniting opponents of Nazi rule in Germany was a capacity to ask, at all times, what kind of person one was or wished to be. 'Ignatieff (2005), pp. 21–2.

49 Merritt (2000), p. 374.

50 The durability of character traits is suggested by research into people who helped to save Jews from the Nazis during World War II, who were found to be more likely to continue to display positive social behaviour in their later lives, see Miller, C., ‘Empathy, social psychology, and global helping traits’, Philosophical Studies (2007), p. 14, fn. 40.Google Scholar

51 Garrett, Stephen A., ‘Political Leadership and the Problem of “Dirty Hands”’, Ethics & International Affairs, 8 (1994), pp. 159–175CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Walzer, M., ‘Political Action: The Problem of Dirty Hands’, Philosophy and Public Affairs, 2 (Winter 1973), pp. 160–180.Google Scholar

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53 Collins, Susan, ‘Moral Virtue and the Limits of the Political Community in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics’, American Journal of Political Science, 48:1 (2004), pp. 47–61.Google Scholar

54 (2004) p. 50.

55 Boswell, J., The Life of Dr Johnson (London: J. Davis, 1820).Google Scholar

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57 Nomi C. Lazar, ‘The Ethics of Order: Moral Reason of State and Emergency Powers in Liberal Democracies’, paper for MidWest Political Science Association (2003).

58 In a similar vein, Ignatieff (2005) suggests: ‘human beings can justify anything as a lesser evil if they have to justify it only to themselves’, p. 14.

59 A. Baier, ‘What do women want in a moral theory?’, essay in Crisp and Slote (2006), pp. 263–77.

60 Bloomfield, P., ‘Virtue Epistemology and the Epistemology of Virtue’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 60:1 (2000), p. 34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

61 Wheeler, N. J. and Dunne, T., Moral Britannia? Evaluating the Ethical Dimension in Labour's foreign policy (London: Foreign Policy Centre, 2004).Google Scholar John Lanchester has asserted that: ‘Thatcher never claimed to be Good, just Right. Blair's political personality has always been predicated on the proposition “I am good”’ (as cited in North (2007), p. 15).

62 See {http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page5.asp}.

63 T. Blair, ‘Doctrine of the international community’, speech at the Economic Club (Chicago, 1999).

64 Blair (1999); T. Blair, ‘Values and the power of community’, Prime Minister's speech to the Global Ethics Foundation (Tubigen University, Germany, 2000).

65 T. Blair, ‘PM statement on Iraq following UN Security Council resolution’ (8 November 2002c).

66 T. Blair, (2002b).

67 T. Blair, ‘Prime Minister's statement to Parliament following his meeting with President Bush’ (3 February 2003c).

68 T. Blair, ‘Let the United Nations mean what it says and do what it means’ speech (Glasgow, 15 February 2003d).

69 T. Blair, ‘Prime Minister's New Year Message’ (1 January 2003a).

70 ‘Blair Terror Speech in full’, BBC (5 March 2004), available at: {www.bbc.co.uk}.

71 T. Blair, (2003d).

72 T. Blair, ‘Prime Minister's statement opening Iraq debate’ (18 March 2003e).

73 Blair (2003e).

74 T. Blair, ‘Prime Minister's speech to the US congress’ (18 July 2003f).

75 T. Blair, Interview in ‘The Blair Years: Blair at War’, BBC TV programme aired on 25 November 2007.

76 Volker Heins has suggested: ‘New Labour reasserted the elitist element of the British political tradition which stresses strong decisive leadership at the expense of public deliberation’, ‘Crusaders and Snobs: Moralizing foreign policy in Britain and Germany, 1999–2005’, essay in Chandler, D. and Heins, V. (eds), Rethinking Ethical Foreign Policy (London: Routledge, 2007), p. 55.Google Scholar

77 Fisher, Roger and Ury, William, ‘Getting to Yes’, essay in Barash, David P. (ed.), Approaches to Peace (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000)Google Scholar ; Spector, B. I., ‘Deciding to Negotiate with Villains’, Negotiation Journal (1998), p. 44.Google Scholar

78 Blair (2000).

79 Blair (2002c).

80 T. Blair, ‘Prime Minister's speech at the Foreign Office conference’ (7 Jan 2003b).

81 Blair (2003d).

82 Blair (2007).

83 Blair (2003d).

84 Blair (2003f).

85 Indeed, Blair at one point asserts: ‘I only know what I believe’ (as cited in North (2007), p. 18).

86 T. Blair, ‘Prime Minister's Speech to TUC conference in Blackpool’ (10 Sept 2002a).

87 T. Blair, ‘Prime Minister's Iraq Statement to Parliament’ (24 Sept 2002b).

88 Blair (2003a).

89 Blair (2003d).

90 Blair (2003e).

91 Blair (2003e).

92 This arguably seems to go against the virtue of prudence, which would normally assume that action must be justified more than inaction. This is because prudence, at times rendered as practical wisdom, requires some level of contemplation and so caution. In Aristotelian terms, it seems to lie closer to the extreme of over-caution than its opposing vice of rashness/impulsiveness, Aristotle (1976), p. 108.

93 T. Cross (2009), ‘Oral evidence to the Iraq Inquiry’ (7 Dec 2009), p. 34. Gen Cross was the UK's Joint Force Logistic Component Commander embedded with the US military and responsible for coordinating the logistical aspects of the theatre of operations – particularly in relation to the UK's contribution.

94 Cross (2009), p. 58. Blair did acknowledge the importance of planning for the postwar situation in evidence to the Liaison Committee in January 2003 – as cited by Baroness Prashar in T. Blair (2010), ‘Oral evidence to the Iraq Inquiry’ (29 January 2010) available at: {http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/}, p. 169. But, Prashar characterises this as ‘inadequate’ and it is clear from Blair's testimony that he assumed the UN would take charge of this – despite problems with the war's legal basis (Blair, 2010, p. 176).

95 Blair (2002b).

96 Blair (2003b).

97 Blair (2003d).

98 Blair (2003e).

99 N. Morris and B. Russell, ‘Blair admits he did not know 45-minute claim referred to battlefield weapons’, The Independent (5 February 2004).

100 ‘Transcript of Blair's Iraq Interview’, Newsnight (2003) available at: {http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/2732979.stm}, 2003.

101 Newsnight (2003).

102 Blair (2010). Blair here argues that the overall sense of the resolution is more important than the specific wording – a position which has been highly controversial in debates over the legality of the war.

103 For a fuller treatment of Blair's emphasis on will power and belief, see Dyson, S. B., ‘Personality and Foreign Policy: Tony Blair's Iraq Decisions’, Foreign Policy Analysis, 2 (2006), pp. 289–306.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

104 In fairness to Blair, this has been identified as a common characteristic of human beings in general. Janice Gross Stein cites experimental evidence that: ‘people strongly prefer consistency […] they are made uncomfortable by dissonant information, and […] they consequently deny or discount inconsistent information to preserve their beliefs’, ‘Foreign policy decisionmaking: rational, psychological, and neurological models’ essay in Smith, S., Hadfield, A. and Dunne, T., Foreign Policy: Theories, Actors, Cases (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 104–105.Google Scholar

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106 Ibid.

107 Aldrich, Richard J., ‘Intelligence and Iraq: the UK’s four enquiries’, in Andrew, Christopher, Alrdich, Richard and Wark, Wesley K. (eds), Secret Intelligence: A Reader (Abingdon: Routledge, 2009), p. 239.Google Scholar

108 See Cross (2009), p. 55; D. Bowen, (2009), ‘Oral evidence to the Iraq Inquiry’ (7 December 2009) available at: {http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/}, pp. 42, 51; Blair (2010), p. 227.

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112 Blair (2003d).

113 Mapel (1990), p. 436.

114 Blair (2003d).

115 Dobel (1998), p. 77.

116 Coll (1991), p. 44.

117 As cited in Coll (1991), p. 44.

118 MacIntyre highlights the difficulty in constructing a rational typology of the virtues since they are located in practice and practices alter; as such: ‘there is necessarily a kind of empirical untidiness in the way that our knowledge of the virtues is ordered’ (2007), p. 178.

119 See Daddow, O., ‘Playing Games with History: Tony Blair's European Policy in the Press’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 9:4 (2007), p. 590.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

120 In a famous speech in 1999 railing against the ‘forces of Conservatism’, Blair stated that he wished to ‘liberate Britain from the […] old structures, old prejudices, old ways of working and of doing things that will not do in this world of change’. The text is available at: {http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/460009.stm}.

121 For evidence of Blair's vision of a new framework for international politics, see his ‘Chicago’ speech, T. Blair (1999) and his valedictory address T. Blair, ‘A Global Alliance for Global Values’ (2006); ‘Clash of Civilisations’ (2006); ‘Reform of the Global Institutions’ (2006) all three are available at: {http://www.number10.gov.uk/Page9549}.