MANLEY O. HUDSON MEDAL LECTURE

Every impulse to protect the weak and help the infirm is noble. The impulse to use the means at a people's disposal to liberate a people from a government that poses no imminent or prospective threat to them but that is so despotic, violent, and vicious that those suffering under it cannot shake it off is also noble. The action that gives effect to that impulse may sometimes be internationally lawful. It may sometimes be feasible. It is often - but not always - misconceived. States have long meddled in the politics of other states in order to change the governments there to their own liking, whether in pursuit of some revolutionary political, racial, or religious ideology, out of fear, or out of sheer lust for power. Because there is no such place as the "international arena" but only the territories of states, much of what diplomats rather grandly style "international politics" has always involved using the essential tools of statecraft, which include thuggery and bribery and messing about in other states